Spy School

This chapter is set three weeks after Ben arrives at the academy. The students play a war game on the campus. They are armed with paintball guns. The chapter opens with Ben fleeing from another student. He runs and dives down a steep, snowy slope, sliding quickly towards an outcropping of jagged rocks. Ben expected the war game to be fun and entertaining, and when he inevitably was killed, he would go to the “morgue” and drink hot chocolate with the others. Unfortunately, their teacher announced that each student’s grade would be determined by how long they remained alive in the game, with the first 25 % of the class who died receiving a D.

Ben manages to turn himself around so that he hits the rocks with his boots instead of his face. His attacker appears at the top of the slope and is about to shoot him, but is shot herself by Zoe. Zoe comes out of hiding and shoots the attacker with a paintball before she can eliminate Ben. Ben reflects on how Zoe perceives and talks about him: she has dubbed Ben “Smokescreen” because of her staunch belief that he is simply faking being bad at spy skills to throw others off his true abilities. The more she advocates for him, the more the rest of the students believe the story. Ben explains, “The school was now divided into two camps. The majority thought I was Smokescreen, some kind of covert superspy who occasionally pretended to be inept. The rest suspected I actually was inept” (116). Ben knows that he truly isn’t qualified to be at the school, considering the caliber of the other students, but he is determined to prove himself worthy. He studies hard, works out a lot, and practices his shooting.

Ben and Zoe duck back behind the rocks and Zoe asks what Ben’s plan is. Ben does not have one, but he “learned one valuable lesson from Alexander Hale: You could always get someone who respected you to do your thinking for you” (117). He asks Zoe what she’s working on. She explains that she and Warren are trying to find the flag. Though Ben doesn’t like Warren, he must admit that the boy is an expert in camouflage. When Warren reappears, Ben sees, “He’d used tree sap to gum large chunks of moss and tree bark all over him, then blackened his face with dirt. There were even a few snails perched on him for good measure. He looked like a walking terrarium” (118). Warren tells them that the other team has hidden their flag on the roof of the old mill and reports that each corner of the building is guarded, as well as the roof.

The three students plan and carefully approach the old mill. Warren is preparing to create a distraction, but Ben himself is distracted by the sight of Chip and Hauser sneaking off to a small shed. Warren begins his distraction about 30 seconds too soon and Ben tries to shoot the guard on the roof, but he wildly misses. At that moment, Erica emerges from the snow, having tunneled to within a few feet of the building. She scales the wall of the mill, takes out the sniper on the roof, and claims the other team’s flag. Ben runs after Chip and Hauser, but when he arrives at the shed, he finds it empty.

The shed is empty, but Chip and Hauser’s wet footprints are still visible on the floor. Ben knows they could only have gone down, so he starts looking for clues as to how to access the hatch. He notices a footprint in the corner by some racks of tools, which he suspects is evidence of someone reaching for something. He finds a small trowel that swivels and lowers a hidden hatch on the floor. When he steps on the hatch, it silently descends 30 feet below the surface, revealing a tunnel “fifteen feet wide and ten feet tall, big enough to drive a golf cart through. […] Tree roots had forced their way through cracks in the ceiling, meaning the tunnel had been around for decades” (132).

Ben hears Chip and Hauser talking in the distance, so he sends the platform back up to the top and takes off his boots to follow them as quietly as possible. The other two boys are discussing school, but nothing clandestine or secret. They are heading back in the direction of campus, and the closer they get, the more tunnels there are branching off the main. Ben describes it as a labyrinth and thinks that he would have lost Chip and Hauser if he didn’t have them in sight. He is astonished by the size of the underground facility, as well as by the fact that he had no idea it was there. They pass dormitory and dining facilities and Ben suspects they date back to the Cold War and possibly hint at the level’s origins as a nuclear bunker.

Chip and Hauser stop at a section of wall. Ben uses Erica’s scope and sees “a nest of red and blue wires and some yellowish putty” that looks to him like a bomb (135). Hauser gives Chip a “kit” of some sort and Chip says that the thing on the wall is called “Scorpio.” Ben tries to take a cell phone video through the scope to show Erica or Alexander later, but he drops the scope, and it rolls loudly towards Chip and Hauser. The other two boys begin to chase Ben, who flees. He runs up two flights of stairs and through a door and is caught by Chip. They tumble into a carpeted room where Chip attempts to fight Ben. Ben uses the “Bashful Armadillo” technique of self-defense, “which simply involved curling [himself] into a ball and covering [his] head with [his] arms” (138). His heavy winter clothes also provide padding against Chip’s kicks and punches.

They are interrupted by the principal, at which point Ben realizes that the door let them out through a secret wall panel door in the main hall of the Hale Building. They are being observed by many students and faculty. The principal says that unsanctioned fighting is against the rules and summons them both to his office. Erica emerges from the crowd and places both of her hands on Ben’s face, asking if he’s okay. He whispers to her that there’s a bomb under the school; Erica simply says she will handle it. Chip threatens Ben’s life if he says anything about what he saw under the school. As they walk, Ben notices that the other students seem curious and impressed—not by the fight, but by Erica’s evident concern for him.

After a few minutes of the principal ranting, Ben is startled to hear Erica’s voice. She reveals that she slipped a miniature transmitter into his ear so that she could hear the principal and speak privately to Ben. She tells him he must do two things: pay close attention to what the principal does and insult him. She says she knows it’s asking a lot, but that he can trust her and that she promises everything will work out fine. Ben waits for an opportunity and then insults the principal: The principal says, “When I was a student here, we knew how to behave. […] Would you like to know how we were punished for fighting back then?” (146). Ben replies, “Wow, that would have been a long time ago. […] Did they put you in the stockade? They used that a lot in Colonial America” (146).

Ben continues with the insults until the principal says he is putting Ben on “total probation” (147). Erica instructs Ben to make the principal do it immediately, which he does. The principal tries to log onto his computer but stares at it for a moment and turns around to grab a dictionary. Ben thinks the principal needed help spelling his password, and the principal begins composing an email to the staff advising them that Ben has been placed on total probation until further notice. Chip quietly whispers to Ben that what he did was awesome. Ben insults the principal again, but Erica tells him he can “take it easy now” (148). The last insult pushes the principal over the edge and he vows to make Ben’s life miserable and sentences him to sleeping in the Box. Ben says that he’s already sleeping in the Box, which takes the principal by surprise. He summons two guards to escort Ben back to the Box. On their way out, Chip says, “you might be a fraud and a liar, but you also have some serious guts” and warns him to keep his mouth shut about “you-know-what” (151).

Ben is escorted back to the Box and locked in. He checks his messages and finds an invitation to another Elizabeth Pasternack party for tomorrow night from Mike. It makes Ben miserable because it’s a reminder of how much better his life used to be. He has no messages from Erica, which makes him more miserable. He checks to see how the photo he tried to take of the bomb turned out, and discovers it only contains the lens of the scope. Ben is saddened and feels incompetent but tries to play it cool for the cameras by working on homework. He discovers that his clock is broken and frozen at 4:30 p.m. He hits it with his hand, and this seems to fix it—the display now matches the correct time of 8:30 p.m.

Eventually, Ben falls asleep and is awakened by “the disturbingly familiar sensation” of having his arms pinned and his mouth covered (155). Ben realizes Erica is holding him down, even though he can’t see her in the dark. Erica tells Ben that she found where the bomb was located, but that it’s gone now. She retrieved the trace amounts of C4 explosives and has them with her in a bag. They debrief on the events of the day and discuss who could have placed the bomb. Erica says that the only damage it would have done, based on where it was located, was to “blow up a couple trees and a lot of canned peas” (159). Ben asks if there are cameras in the tunnels, but Erica says there aren’t. Ben asks what they should do now, and Erica says, “It’s time to hack the mainframe” (160).