Cloneward Bound

CHAPTER 1

“Morning, Fisher!”

Fisher Bas smiled and waved at Jacob Li, then winced. His elbow ached. He was still getting used to saying hello to other kids. Up until about two weeks ago, his existence at Wompalog Middle School had barely been acknowledged—much less appreciated. Before then, his Monday morning was usually spent mathematically analyzing the layout of the decorative plants in the school’s hallway, calculating the chances of being spotted as he dashed from one to another.

A lot can change in a few days. Fisher, once a stale bread crumb caught in the thin, scraggly stubble of middle school, had suddenly become a fresh, flaky croissant in the eyes of his classmates.

Fisher made his way down the hall, passing spots that would always stand as monuments to his past embarrassments: the Museum of Fisher’s Pathetic Existence. First he passed infamous locker number 314, where he’d spent
four entire class periods because he hadn’t known that the inside latch was broken when he’d hidden in it.

Next, he passed the chipped double doors to the school library. He knew that if he inspected the larger books inside, a good half of them would have the faint imprint of his head. He winced whenever he walked past the encyclopedia shelf, and not just because the entry on particle physics was in dire need of an update. He’d offered to write it himself and glue his new entry over the current one, but the librarians hadn’t been too pleased with the idea, which had baffled Fisher.

Leaving the library behind, he saw a line of metal coat hooks sticking out of the wall, one of which was bent crookedly toward the ground. Small as he was, Fisher weighed a lot more than a coat. The Vikings, the gang of bullies that had made his life a living nightmare since they had grown into hulking monstrosities in fourth grade, had held him down, stripped his coat off, and forced it on him backward. Then they’d pulled his hood up in front of his face and slipped it onto the hook.

“Well, well, well. What have we here?”

Fisher stopped dead in his tracks. He turned around, sneakers squeaking loudly, as if asking his permission to run away without him.

As though summoned by his thoughts, there they were: the looming, ugly faces of Brody, Willard, and Leroy. The
Vikings. They looked like statues cut from dark, grimy stone by a sculptor with no depth perception and very shaky hands.

Brody stood in the center as always, the leader of the pack. Willard bobbled back and forth slightly on clumsy, uneven legs on Brody’s right, and to Brody’s left stood Leroy. By far the dumbest and most easily distracted of the bunch, Leroy’s eyes started to drift after a few seconds.

“Good morning, Fisher,” Brody said with the least reassuring smile Fisher had ever seen. Alligators smiled with less malice. Fisher would know. His father kept one in the lab at home.

“Um … hello,” Fisher said, trying to muster up some of his newfound courage. Unfortunately, when facing the Vikings, it was definitely not in the mood to be mustered.

Before the TechX episode, most people at Wompalog had settled for ignoring Fisher. But the Vikings had gone out of their way to notice—and torment—him. They were obviously displeased that Fisher’s escaping from the famous TechX Industries—and exposing its dark secrets—had made him an overnight hero.

Now
everyone
noticed Fisher, and he was no longer such an easy target. But just because they had eased up a little lately did not mean that the threat was over.

“We’re just giving you a friendly reminder,” Brody said, rubbing his greasy palms together, “that we’re still here.”

“And things may *hic* be qu-quiet now,” Willard went on, “but k-keep your ears open.”

“We’ve, uh, got you under lobstervation,” Leroy finished. Brody turned and gave him a long, withering look, then let out a frustrated sigh.

“Observation, Leroy,” Brody said. He turned back to Fisher. “Now get out of here before we decide to make this chat a little more private. Maybe in that janitor’s closet over there …?”

Fisher looked to the closet in question and shivered. Unspeakable things had happened in the janitor’s mop bucket, and he wanted no part of them. He didn’t need a second invitation to flee.

“Lobstervation??”
he heard Brody say as he sped away. “What do you think I want to do, turn him into a shellfish? Willard, if you please.” The last thing Fisher heard before he turned the corner was the resounding
smack
of Willard’s broad, fat hand against Leroy’s broad, fat head.

He walked around the corner so fast that he ran smack into a kid he hadn’t seen, half somersaulting forward and landing in a daze on his back.

“Oop. Sorry, Fisher,” the boy said, helping Fisher to his feet. Fisher looked at the unfamiliar boy’s acne-pitted, smiling face. The boy was obviously an eighth grader.

“No worries …” Fisher said, backing away. He still wasn’t used to the idea that other people knew
him
.

Two weeks ago, an encounter with the Vikings would have ended with Fisher head down in a wastepaper basket or sifting the baseball field’s dirt out of his hair. But ever since his trained attack mosquitoes had swarmed the Vikings in the middle of the cafeteria, they’d been a lot more careful around him. He’d earned a degree of respect around Wompalog that even the Vikings were forced to acknowledge.

Except
he
hadn’t earned it. At least, he hadn’t earned it alone. A feeling of guilt squirmed in the bottom of Fisher’s stomach. As he headed to class, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a crumpled piece of paper. He unfolded it for the four hundred and fifty-fourth time—he’d counted—and read the note.

Two, aka Fisher-2, a genetically exact copy of Fisher. A clone that Fisher had made himself, using an extremely secret, highly dangerous chemical compound, Accelerated Growth Hormone, that he’d stolen from his mom’s personal lab. The last time he’d seen Two was in the collapsing corridors of TechX Industries, fighting with Dr. X: shadowy inventor, evil megalomaniac and, as it turned out, Fisher’s (former) favorite biology teacher.