"Wh-what do you mean he's missing? I know he's ben out o school sick this past week-" Sissy started, but Dukey shook his head.
"That's just what Susan and Mary told Mom and Dad; that something had gone wrong in the lab, and Johnny had to be quarantined for a while. They said that so no one would worry." Dukey was frentic.
"Then what is happening?"
"He's gone! They don't know where!"
"For a whole week? Why haven't they used that genetic scanner Johnny made to find me? His code shouldn' be that hard to track?"
Dukey shook his head. "It's not working. Come on, I'll show you." He took off for the lab, with Sissy in hot pursuit.
At the lab, Susan and May wee hard at work on something they were attatching to the scanner. Suddenly Susan cursed.
"Dammit! How can someone make a jammer pogram WE can't break through! I mean, we're geniuses! We've never encountered a tech we couldn't reverse engineer third try perfect!"
"Too many years of easy successes, I guess," Mary replied. She seemed...broken. She was worried about Johnny, and a week of sleepless nights without answers had taken its toll on her.
Susan saw what was happening to Mary, and came to her side. "Come on, Mary. You need to lie own. You won't do Johnny any good if you collapse in exhaustion on top of he tech."
Mary nodded dumbly and let Susan lead her to bed.
Sissy came in at that point with Dukey.
"This is the problem," Dukey said, as he led her to the scanner. "When we scan for Johnny's DNA, we get this scattered pattern. Susan and Mary think it's some kind of jamming program, but they can't figure out how to break through it." He turned. Sissy was staring at the screen, her lips silently moving. "Uh...Sissy?"
"This pattern..." She was staring at the scattering of the dots. Then her eyes went wide. "THis is no jamming progam. It's a scatter plot."
"What?"
"Someone scattered enough of Johnny's DNA in those spots - fresh enough to be picked up by Johnny's scanner - in a modified scatter plot. Just enough variance to look like a random jammer program for scanners, unless you look at them individually instead of as a whole."
"You mean...he's in all those places?"
"No, just one...but enough of his DNA - probably his blood - is in the others to fool the scanner." Sissy's eyes suddenly went wide. "But...how could Johnny handle losing that much blood?"
Meanwhile...
Johnny ached his back as pain seared into him again. It had been oing on lik this for...he'd lost track of time. The room was kep completely dark, so he had no way of keeping track of time. He knew i had been a long time, and wondeed why no one had found him. Pain hit him again, and he screamed.
"That's right, Johnny Test! Feel my vengeace! My rage! Feel he pain of my ulimate victory!"
Johnny turned to face his tormentor. He spat blood into his face.
"My, my...still strong willed? Well, you'll break eventually. And when you break...when you are nothing but a quivering shadow of you once srong self...then shall my victory be complete...and I shall gran your wish when you beg for death! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Johnny glared into th eyes of his tomentor. "I'll never break for you...Mr. Mittens."
"We shall see, Johnny Test!" Pain struck Johnny again as claws sheeed away his skin, and he screamed. "We...shall...see!"