“This is what people wore in 1987?” she asked.

“We’re not in 1987. We’re in 1977,” Heathcliff said.

“1977? Why did you send us so far back?”

“That was my idea,” Brand said. “A girl with superallergies, a boy genius, and a spy with a bum leg are no match for five superpowered kids and a crazy woman. We need help from kids who know how to handle these kinds of situations. Unfortunately, the NERDS team of 1987 was trapped in an ice prison by Dr. Frostbite that summer. So we’re going to recruit some new teammates—namely, the greatest NERDS team ever assembled. The first one.”

“You mean Four Eyes, Macramé, Ghost, Beanpole, and Static Cling?” Ruby cried as her heart did a backflip. She had studied the case files; she knew everything about every agent who had ever been in NERDS. If there was a team that could help them with the BULLIES, it was the NERDS of 1977.

Rupert P. Breckinridge III looked at his teammates and grimaced. They were a collection of sharp elbows, bony knees, runny noses, scabs, and insecurity. If their job was to protect the world, then the world was in serious trouble.

“Is there no better way to get into this facility? This is insanity!” Special Director Preston shouted after a tube had deposited him into a leather chair.

Rupert had been in that tube himself, and he knew it wasn’t a fun ride, nor was cramming into the locker to get to it.

Preston retrieved a shoe that had come off during the trip, then took off his horn-rimmed glasses and rubbed them on his pant leg. One of his pens was leaking in the pocket of his white short-sleeved work shirt. A piece of toilet paper was stuck to the back of the poor man’s pant leg. Rupert sighed. The boss was a bigger nerd than his agents.

“In three weeks, the school above this facility will open and you will begin attending classes with the rest of the children. When that day comes, the five of you will be officially activated and sent on missions, so we need to double-time your training. Let’s get back to our karate practice.” He took out a book titled Karate for Beginners and flipped through its pages.

Rupert wondered, not for the first time, why Preston had been put in charge of a group of superpowered agents. Sure, he was a spy—but most of his work had been in code breaking. He had no practical mission experience, no hand-to-hand combat training, and his karate knowledge came from watching Hong Kong Phooey cartoons.

“Aww, man!” came a predictable whine from Carmello Gotti, an Italian kid so pudgy he might have been made out of dough. Rupert had heard that before being recruited onto the team, Carmello hadn’t so much as thrown a ball. Now he had special implants in his gigantic round hairdo that fired massive blasts of static electricity. “Can’t we do something else? My parents are getting suspicious of all the bruises.”

“No, they’re not. They assume what everyone else assumes—that Billy Dunkleman is beating you up again,” came the sharp, sarcastic voice of May Price. Her wit was almost as fast as her fingers, which were supercharged with special gloves, allowing her to knit anything she could imagine out of yarn. Preston called her Agent Macramé.

“Burn!” Mikey Buckley said as he burst into laughter. He was as skinny as a cornstalk and had a brain for technology. He still hadn’t chosen a code name he considered cool enough but was toying around with “Fantastic Boy.”

“You guys are mean,” Minnie Dupont said. The tiny girl pressed a button on her jacket and vanished. Agent Ghost had a very cool power, and as far as Rupert could tell, she was the only one with a skill that could be valuable for spying. Unfortunately, she was brutally shy.

“People! We need to focus,” Director Preston said meekly, but he was ignored while the agents argued for another ten minutes.

Rupert sighed. The NERDS were never going to become a team. They didn’t even like one another, and all of them had scored zero on the self-confidence meter. It was a shame, really. When Rupert was recruited, he was sure the group would change his life. But it looked like he was headed back to the mundane world he came from, the one where he was chased home everyday by Matt Phaltz, the psychopath who enjoyed ripping the waistbands out of Rupert’s Fruit of the Looms. Well, Rupert liked his waistbands. He refused to go back!

What they needed was a James Bond type, a leader, someone the others could respect. If Preston couldn’t motivate the team, Rupert would do it himself. He flipped down one of the many lenses on his special glasses and a blast of white energy shot out of his eyes, causing a nearby wall to crumble.

“QUIET!” he shouted. “You kids are the most intolerable, unprofessional, frustrating, lazy, and cranky dweebs I have ever met. Mr. Preston has tried everything—pep talks, being your friend, being your enemy, being a drill instructor, begging, bribery—and none of it has worked. You bicker endlessly. You skip training sessions. You aren’t even sure how to use your gadgets. You treat this headquarters like it’s some kind of … some kind of playground!”

Preston blinked. “Yeah!” he cried.

Rupert pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose and looked around. “You might be perfectly happy to go out on a mission and get yourselves killed, but I have no plans to join you. So here’s the deal: Take this seriously or quit and go back to being the pathetic, bullied misfits you were six weeks ago.”

The threat seemed to have the desired affect. The thought of having to return to their normal lives, without the gadgets, was more than the NERDS could imagine. Each one tried to stand a little taller.

“Goodness gracious!” Preston shouted when he discovered his ruined shirt. “Let’s take five while I find something else to wear.”

He dashed off, leaving the children alone.

“OK, he’s useless,” Rupert said. “So if we’re going to learn to fight, it’s up to us. Each one of us has a skill, and if we work together, we can be unstoppable. That’s why they chose us. So let’s get back to training! Who’s with me?”

Rupert could have heard a pin drop.

Minnie raised her hand. “Um, I gotta get going.”

“Yeah, me too,” added May. “The Gong Show is on in fifteen minutes.”

“I’ve got work to do on Benjamin,” Mikey said.

“Are you still working on that stupid calculator?” May asked.

The boy grew defensive. “It’s called a computer, and someday it will be a huge asset. I’m programming it with all the knowledge of one of America’s greatest spies—Benjamin Franklin. It’s going to talk, and think, and help with mission reports. I’ve already figured out how to make it fly!”

He pressed a button and a massive machine at the far end of the room let out a chorus of screaming gears as it rose off the floor: one inch, then two, then three—then it came crashing to the floor.

“Way to go, Fantastic Boy,” Carmello quipped.

The team shuffled toward the exit tubes.

Rupert took one of the tubes up to his locker. The hallway was empty except for a crew of janitors screwing in lightbulbs and touching up paint jobs in preparation for the first day of school. He was glad something was almost ready.

“Hey, Four Eyes!” a voice shouted the moment Rupert stepped outside the school.

Rupert cringed. It was Matt Phaltz!

He took off running without looking back but could hear Phaltz and his friends running close behind. They were shouting and laughing as they chased him down the street.

“Leave me alone,” he cried, but they ignored his plea. He made a sharp turn at the corner and was nearly home when he tripped over a garden hose someone had left lying on the sidewalk. He fell hard, bruising his knees and wrists, and before he knew it, the bullies were on top of him, trying to de-pants him right there in the middle of the street.