A few quick twists and Tessa had her old face back. “Um, I’m going to pass.”

“What? Best power ever!” Miss Information cried.

“It’s disgusting. I want something else.”

“The upgrade machine takes your greatest strength and makes it stronger. This is perfect for you! Don’t tell me you wanted to fly or something dumb like that?”

“Flying wouldn’t be so bad.”

“Yeah, freezing to death while bugs fly into your mouth,” the woman said. “That’s horrible. Any kid with an egg can knock you out of the sky. Tessa, with your face you can be anyone you want to be. Think of the trouble you can cause! You could rob a bank by pretending to be the branch manager. You could steal a jet by changing your face to look like the pilot!”

“How is this going to get my dad’s attention?”

“Imagine what you could do if you were the president of the United States.”

Tessa looked in the mirror and twisted her features until she looked just like her father. A million naughty ideas floated into her head. She could stop him from being reelected, and then she’d have him all to herself.

“I see you’re getting it,” Miss Information said, giggling. She clamped a bracelet onto Tessa’s wrist and snapped it closed. “While you were out I had the science team build this hologram machine. It will project any set of clothes you can imagine onto your body and totally help sell your transformations. Now, you said you wanted to get your dad’s attention, right? Let’s get started.”

“Now?”

“There’s no time like the present,” Miss Information said as she led Tessa out of her room and through a maze of hallways. They emerged into a space as big as a private plane hangar, but there were no planes parked inside, just a rusty yellow school bus. Standing in front of it was her team—the BULLIES. She looked them up and down and couldn’t help frowning. These kids were the biggest bunch of misfits she’d ever seen.

“Ta-da!” Miss Information said. “I call it ‘The School Bus.’”

“It is a school bus,” Tessa said.

“Not exactly,” Miss Information replied. She clicked a button on her key chain and the wheels folded upward replaced by rockets. Soon, the ancient bucket of rust was hovering five feet off the ground.

Tessa shrugged. “It’s got potential.”

“There’s more! BULLIES, hop on board,” Miss Information said.

The children boarded the bus one by one. A strange man sat behind the steering wheel. He was a mountain of muscles with crazy white hair, a wide chin, a dead eye, and a silver hook for a hand. He was also wearing white orthopedic shoes and a smock with bright blue flowers on it.

“Kids, this is the lunch lady.”

“Lunch lady? He’s a bus driver wearing a muumuu,” Loudmouth shouted.

“He’s not a lady, either,” Funk said.

“Actually, my name is the Antagonist, but—”

“YOU’RE THE LUNCH LADY!” Miss Information roared. “DON’T MAKE ME REGRET BREAKING YOU OUT OF FEDERAL PRISON, PAL. I CAN PUT YOU BACK THERE IN A FLASH. YOU GOT IT?”

The man with the hook lowered his head and nodded. “I got it,” he said quietly.

Tessa watched the woman’s outburst with concern. This was the second unpredictable rant she’d witnessed. Miss Information was obviously mentally ill—people didn’t wear masks with skulls on them because they were healthy—but just how crazy was she? A moment later she found out. Her new boss sat in a center seat next to a scarecrow wearing a black tuxedo. She cuddled up to it as if it were her boyfriend.

“This is so awkward,” Miss Information said in a conspiratorial tone.

“What?” Tessa said, trying to pretend everything was fine.

“The lunch lady and I used to be engaged. That’s before I met Alex here,” she said, caressing the straw man’s hay-filled face.

“Where to?” the lunch lady shouted.

“We’re going to Tessa’s house—1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. You might have heard of it. It’s called the White House.”

Tessa swallowed hard. Her greatest wishes were about to come true, and she owed it all to a lunatic in a mask smooching a scarecrow. She suddenly felt very nauseous.

When Ruby and the principal got back to school, they were rushed on board the School Bus. The platform the superjet was resting upon was already rising through the gym floor before either of them was given a clue as to the nature of the emergency.

“Does anyone want to tell me where we’re going?” the principal said as the rocket shot through the open ceiling. “So I know where to steer this thing?”

“Put in coordinates for Lake Mead, Nevada,” Matilda said. “We’re going to the Hoover Dam. And it wouldn’t hurt to floor it.”

“What’s happening at the Hoover Dam?” Ruby asked.

“Robot destruction!” Flinch bellowed while beating on his chest.

“I suppose we can blame them on Miss Information?” Ruby asked.

“Take a look for yourself. Our surveillance team caught this fifteen minutes ago,” Duncan said. He typed something on the mission deck keyboard, and in the monitors Ruby saw men unloading heavy wooden crates from a truck parked on a dusty road near a lake. When they opened one of the crates, something from a science fiction movie hopped out. It was about the size of a sheepdog but strutted around on two chicken-like hind legs. Its head was oval and black with a white skull pattern. It shrieked, flew twenty feet into the air on metallic wings, then fell back to the ground with a thud.

“Chickenbots,” Duncan said. “There’s ten of them, and they’re marching toward the dam.”

“Three minutes, kids,” the principal shouted from the cockpit.

“You better suit up,” Duncan said to Ruby. He handed her a duffle bag full of black clothing.

Matilda opened the rocket’s hatch and the wind blasted into the cabin.

Ruby peered out into the great blue oblivion as she pulled the flight suit over her school clothes.

“Um, aren’t we forgetting something very important … like parachutes?”

“If you pull the cord on your waist, you’ll release something better—wings!” Duncan shouted over the noise.

“Wings?” Ruby cried.

Duncan sighed. “Folks, we’re all given instruction manuals for this stuff. Am I the only one who reads them?”

Jackson nodded. “Yes, you are.”

“This is the ALZ-14 Aerial Assault Flight Suit. You pull the cord and two wings will extend from your shoulders, turning you into a human bird.”

“One minute!” the principal cried from the cockpit.

“And don’t forget the electromagnetic-pulse gloves,” Duncan said as he extended his hand to point out his special glove. It was black and covered in thin, silver wires that connected to a red disk on the palm. Ruby knew what an electromagnetic pulse could do to electronics. One blast and those robots would stop working.

“All right, kids! We’re over the target!” the principal shouted.

Flinch slurped down one very long red licorice rope like a little kid might eat a strand of spaghetti. “Fight robots! Aggghhhooo!” he cried as he leaped out of the rocket.

Soon Ruby and the others were plummeting toward earth at skin-stretching speeds. Below her, and getting bigger by the second, was the Hoover Dam, one of the most impressive structures ever built by human hands. A long time ago, when Ruby actually went to classes, she had written a report on it. It was built between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression, and it provided electricity for cities hundreds of miles away. It was 660 feet wide, stood more than 726 feet tall, and held back 9.2 trillion gallons of water. It was so massive that some said an asteroid might not even topple it. If Ruby knew how tough the dam was, Miss Information would certainly have to know. She was a librarian, after all. Even if these chickenbots managed to destroy it, the nearest big town was 125 miles away, which meant it wasn’t an imminent threat to anyone’s safety. So what was Miss Information’s plan?