"Aw, come on, Oshleigh!" Murray cried. "This is really uncool!"

"I'm being uncool?" Oshleigh screamed. "I'm not the one who just tanked all of our plans and triggered THE ORGANIZATION's doomsday scenario! You guys are traitors—and so you're going to die here with these doosers from the Odd Squad."

"Doosers?" Orica asked.

"Dorks plus losers," Outlaw translated.

"Oshleigh . . . ," I began.

"Don't you start with me!" she shouted. "You're the biggest traitor of them all! You made me think you were my friend! You said you'd go to Shmumber World with me! But you were lying the whole time! You're a jerk!"

"You should talk," Orica muttered. "You're evil."

"That's not really helping," I told her.

"I'm not evil!" Oshleigh roared. "All I want is what's due to me! I deserve to be rich for all that I've been through. I worked my whole life only to get screwed! I deserved to make the Odd Squad gymnastics team. I stuck that landing! I stuck that—"

She didn't finish the thought, because someone whacked her on the back of the head with a tennis racket. Oshleigh crumpled into a heap once again, revealing her attacker behind her.

Ozo.

"Hey, OJ!" she said cheerfully, as though we'd just run into each other in the school cafeteria, rather than in a secret underground enemy lair that was about to blow up.

"Ozo?" I said, stunned. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm on a field trip!" she exclaimed. "The Odd Squad let me come on the mission as a reward for turning you in! I got to ride the tubes with some big-shot agents. It was super cool!" She glanced at Oshleigh, sprawled on the floor, and suddenly grew a bit self-conscious. "It's okay that I knocked her out, isn't it? I mean, it looked like she was going psycho on you guys."

Murray spoke before I could. "You did great, kid. Really great. Can we get out of here now?" He tried to rush past her, but Ozo cocked the tennis racket over her shoulder like a baseball bat and he stopped dead.

"One more step and I'll be more than happy to knock you out cold too," Ozo snarled.

I couldn't help but flash Orica a cocky grin. "I told you friends could be assets."

Orica rolled her eyes, then told Ozo, "We have to evacuate. A missile's en route to blow us up."

Ozo's eyes grew even wider than usual. "What?! Why?!"

"It's a long story." Orica pried the gadget from Oshleigh's hand and trained it on Murray and Outlaw. "Let's go," she told them. "Quickly. Though if either of you tries to escape, I'll zap you somewhere very painful, got it?"

Murray and Outlaw nodded obediently, then hurried out of the secret lair.

"Wait," Outlaw protested. "I saved the Odd Squad. I thought the hero was supposed to make friends, not get arrested."

"You saved Odd Squad?" Ozo asked him. "That's amazing!"

Outlaw now broke into a huge smile. Even though he was about to go to juvie and was fleeing for his life, after getting a compliment from Ozo, he looked like the happiest person on earth.

I stopped on the way out of the lair and hoisted Oshleigh onto my shoulder.

"You're rescuing her?" Orica asked. "She's the bad guy!"

"I'm not leaving her to die," I said.

"She just tried to leave you," Orica pointed out. "Carrying her is going to slow you down."

"I'll be all right," I said, hoping it was true.

Orica looked concerned, then hustled after Murray and Outlaw. I followed as quickly as I could. Since Oshleigh was small, she wasn't very heavy, but carrying her still wasn't easy.

I took a final glance at the TV screens in the control room. The remaining missile was still racing our way.

Ozo stayed back to help me with Oshleigh, though she looked nervous about it. As we passed the kitchenette, she gasped with surprise. "Whoa. They have a sundae bar in their secret lair?"

"With toppings," I said.

"We don't even have a sundae bar in our mess hall," Ozo groused. "And this rec center is way nicer than ours."

"I know," I admitted. "But on the other hand, they're evil and we're not. How'd you find me down here?"

"Oh, it was O'Shea's idea to search this building."

"O'Shea's here too?" I stumbled on my way up the stairs. Not out of surprise, really. It's very hard to carry an unconscious human up a spiral staircase.

"Yeah. They let me pick three friends to come along. So I brought O'Shea, 'cause he's almost as smart as you; Orca, 'cause he's tough; and Ores, because he'd have thrown a fit if I didn't pick him. Technically, we were only supposed to observe the mission, but Orca said it would be lame if we came all this way and just sat by the tube entrance. So he ran off and we came after him, and then O'Shea noticed the rec center and said we ought to check it out. We split up to cover more ground. The secret door to the underground lair was open and I heard you and the greasy kid and then spandex girl here going crazy, so I grabbed this tennis racket from the equipment room and came down to see what was going on."

"Thank goodness you did," I said. "You saved us."

Ozo's face lit up with pride. "Yeah. I guess I did."

We emerged from the lair and raced out of the rec center. Orica, Murray, and Outlaw were a good distance ahead of us, although I could still hear Murray. "How could they even think of me as a loose end? I'm not a loose end! I'm a core part of the team!"

"Maybe they got tired of hearing you whine all the time," Orica told him. "I've only met you you a few minutes and I'm ready to blow you up."

High up in the sky overhead, I could see the missile. It looked somewhat like a comet, a red streak of fire and smoke bearing down on us.

Hidden Forest was eerily quiet. The battle wasn't raging anymore.

"Did the Odd Squad win?" I asked.

"Big-time," Ozo told me. "It was pretty much over by the time we got here. All the evil guys were surrendering. Although most of them claimed they didn't even know what was going on. They said they were all independent contractors."

"Most of them were. Where's everyone now?"

"They evacuated," O'Shea said, running up from the basketball courts. Orca and Ores were with him. Orca had a large duffel bag slung over his shoulder that appeared to be crammed full of equipment.

Despite the urgency of the situation, I couldn't help but smile upon seeing my friends.

"We should evacuate too!" Ores informed us. "It seems like something bad is about to happen to this place."

"Then why are you still here?" Ozo asked.

"We were looking for you," Orca told her.

"Aw," Ozo gushed. "You guys are so sweet!"

"It was my idea," Ores said.

"We have to move fast," I told them. "There's less than four minutes left till detonation."

We all fell in together and ran for the closest exit, a hole the Odd Squad had blasted in the wall in the construction zone.

"Who's the dead chick?" Orca asked, pointing to Oshleigh.

"She's not dead," I told him. "She's unconscious. And she's a villain in training"

"She's cute," Orca said.

"Ugh!" Ozo cried. "Orca, she's evil!"

"Maybe on the inside," Orca told her. "But she's cute on the outside."

"Is that Oshleigh, the gymnast?" Ores asked.

"Yes," I replied. "Though now she's an evil gymnast."

"She was my favorite!" Ores exclaimed. "She really should have been on the team. The judge was blind. She stuck that landing."

"So I've heard," I said.

O'Shea glanced at the duffel bag Orca was carrying. "What's in there?"

"Sporting goods," Orca replied. "I got some primo rock-climbing gear, a couple of footballs, some bowling shoes . . . ."

"Hold on," Ores said. "While we were busy looking for OJ and Ozo, you were stealing stuff?"

"If you take stuff from the bad guys, it doesn't count as stealing," Orca said proudly. "It's payback."

Ores started to argue this point, but he was interrupted by a sudden yelp of surprise from ahead.

"That sounded like Orica!" O'Shea exclaimed.

I glanced across the construction zone and caught a glimpse of Outlaw and Murray sprinting for the hole in the wall. Murray was always easy to pick out because he had a very distinctive gait. He ran like he had a permanent stomach cramp.

However, Orica was nowhere to be seen.

I heaved Oshleigh off my shoulder and shoved her into Orca's arms. "Take her to the authorities," I ordered him, then told O'Shea and Ozo, "Catch those guys. I'll find Orica." I ran off before anyone could protest.

O'Shea and Ozo took off after Murray and Outlaw. Both of them were good sprinters and they moved quickly. Orca wasn't far behind them, even while holding Oshleigh. He was so strong, carrying the gymnast was like carrying a bag of potato chips. Since I hadn't asked Ores to do anything, he simply ran for safety as fast as he could.

Above me, the fireball in the sky was growing quickly as the missile came closer.

I ran across the construction zone, trying to approximate what Orica's route had been. "Orica!" I yelled into my walkie-talkie. "Where are you?"

Instead of using her own walkie-talkie to respond, Orica simply shouted through the construction site. "Never mind me! There's no time! Save yourself!"We raced through the sports courts into the construction zone. Now, in addition to the usual construction detritus of bent nails and wood shavings, there was also a great deal of dead skunkbats. I scanned the dark landscape around me but couldn't find any sign of her. "Darn it, Orica. Just tell me where you are!"

"No!"

I pinpointed the sound. It was coming from my right. I ran in that direction—and almost pitched into one of the missile silos. The hole was just darkness in the other shadows, perfectly concealed.

Orica was way down, clinging to the cement rim of the silo. There was nothing but a long drop below her.

I'd expected that she would have been thrilled to see me. Instead, she frowned. "Go away!" she yelled. "If you try to help me, we'll both die!"

"I'm not leaving you!" I yelled back, searching the area for anything of use. "You're my friend."

"I told you, having friends in this business only causes trouble."

I ignored her. There was a generator nearby. I tore the electrical cord loose, wrapped one end around my waist, and tossed the other end into the hole. "Grab this!"

"No. I'll pull you in."

"Just grab it! Or we'll die!"

The missile was now close enough to see, silhouetted against its own flame.

I sat on the ground. There was nothing to hold on to nearby except grass. I grabbed on tight and hoped for the best.

It didn't work. The moment Orica put her weight on the cord, the grass tore free. I slid quickly toward the hole, desperately digging my heels into the dirt, and barely managed to stop myself mere inches from the edge. The cord tightened around my waist, squeezing my abdomen so hard I thought my organs might get forced out my nose.

Thankfully, Orica was quick and agile. It took only a few seconds for her to scramble out of the hole. Instead of relief, there was embarrassment on her face. "You're an idiot," she told me.

Then she helped me to my feet and we ran.

"What happened back there?" I asked.

"Murray got the jump on me."

I started to ask how, but she told me, "Save your breath. We'll talk later."

It was good advice. Since I'd arrived at the Odd Squad Academy, there had been several times when I'd had to run for my life—but this time, I had to run even faster. My legs pumped harder than ever before, fueled by fear and adrenaline. Construction sites and earth-moving machines flew past us. Then we were out the gap in the wall I'd made with the bulldozer and into the field beyond. But as fast as we were going, it still wasn't enough to outrun the missile.

It was coming in with astonishing speed, growing exponentially in size as it hurtled down out of the sky.

Orica's hand was suddenly holding mine, clutching it tight. "Take cover!" she yelled, then yanked me into an irrigation ditch.

I curled into a ball and, before I could stop her, Orica curled around me protectively.

The missile came down right on the rec center.

I had my eyes shut tight, but I still felt almost blinded by the flash of white light that surrounded us. The noise was so loud, my whole body vibrated, and then the shock wave from the explosion pummeled me as well. The ground shook. A wave of heat rolled over us. I could sense things tearing apart and flying past.

And then, maybe because of the explosion, or maybe because I'd already almost drowned once today and was in a delicate state, or maybe because I was just completely and totally exhausted . . .

I passed out.