The Adventures of Kid Combat Volume Two: The Heist of Spring Road Toys (3 page)

“She needs to get out of there before they
get through that door!” Roller exclaimed.

“Sam, the rover isn’t responding. You’ll have
to improvise,” Gears’s voice crackled over her earpiece.

“Improvise? Are you kidding? I’m on a
freakin’ roof here! What would you like me to do—fly?” Samantha
snapped back at the boys. She was pinned down, and she could hear
the two boys pounding on the access door to the roof. The door
wouldn’t take too much more before it was broken down. To make
matters worse, Samantha could spot flashing lights off in the
distance. She could also hear sirens approaching. The curator must
have called the police to report an intruder at the museum.

“Great,” Samantha said to herself. Her
expression quickly became one of deep frustration as she tried to
figure a way out. She surveyed her surroundings. For the life of
her, she couldn’t see anything that would help her out of this
predicament.

Samantha heard a loud crashing noise behind
her. The door that separated her from the two boys split in two.
The boys made quick work of what remained and made their way
through the door. Samantha began to freak out a bit and ran to the
farthest point away from the door. The two boys quickly saw her and
ran after her.

Samantha made it all the way to the corner
and then realized how trapped she was. The two boys came up from
behind her and stopped about ten feet short. Confused on what to do
with her, the two boys radioed back to the curator inside.

“Ah, we have her trapped on the roof, sir.
What would you like us to do next?” one of the boys said.

“Keep her there. The police will be here
soon. We’ll be right up,” the voice said back over the speaker.

“You heard him,” the other boy said. “Don’t
try anything funny. We’re bigger than you, and we would hate to
hurt you.”

Samantha just stood there facing away from
the boys and looked down. It was way too far to jump. There were no
drainage pipes, bushes, or even a dumpster down below to break her
fall. The situation seemed helpless.

“Samantha, it’s Roller,” came a voice over
her earpiece. “I have an idea, but it’s not the best one I’ve had
in my short career here.” That news didn’t exactly fill Samantha
with confidence. “I’ve managed to hack into the system that
controls the exterior of the museum. Apparently there is a
retractable awning right above the first-floor window that you’re
above. I think I can get it extended, but I have no idea if it will
hold you.”

Samantha stood there and rolled her eyes. She
couldn’t believe this mission was turning out like this. First she
blew her cover, then she smashed the only evidence she had, and now
she had to jump from a second-floor roof onto an awning that might
or might not hold her.

“Just do it,” Samantha said back to Roller.
Within seconds, the awning started to extend.

“Hey, who are you talking too?” one of the
boys asked.

“I would love to stay and talk to you boys,
but I gotta jet,” Samantha said. She then proceeded to dive off the
roof like she was a high diver at the Olympics. As she fell through
the air, Samantha executed a half circle, proceeded to tuck, and
waited for impact.

She hit the awning softly. The impact of
falling only twenty feet was nowhere near enough force to send the
small, thin girl through the awning. She bounced up about three
feet, hit the awning again, and rolled off of it. Samantha fell
about seven feet down, but she landed on her feet and sprang back
up.

She brushed herself off, took a quick look
back up to the boys, and bolted down the street. As she ran north
through the open section of the parking lot, three police cars
drove through the south entrance. With their lights flashing and
their sirens blaring, they rolled in and blocked that entrance. By
then, Samantha was long gone.

Seconds later, the curator and a boy dressed
in all blue emerged onto the roof. They stepped over the broken
remains of the roof door. The other two boys hurried over to both
of them.

“She got away, sir. She jumped,” one boy said
to the curator.
“It’s of no matter. Let her go,” the curator said. “Begin your
assignment.”

“Yes, sir,” the two boys said almost in
unison. They then ran back into the museum.

The curator and the boy in blue stood alone
for a second. The boy in blue wore a hoodie, along with thick
silver sunglasses to conceal his identity. Disgustedly, he shook
his head from side to side at the curator.

“He won’t be happy with this,” the boy said
to the curator.

“You don’t need to tell him about this, do
you?” the curator said back. His voice trembled with fear.

“No, I don’t have to tell him,” the
mysterious boy in blue said. He paused for a second. With a smile
that could be seen from underneath his disguise, he continued. “I
want to tell him.”

The curator’s look of fear quickly vanished
and turned into anger. Seeing that response, the boy in blue
enjoyed an even bigger smile.

The boy turned and disappeared back into the
museum, leaving the curator alone on the roof with his
thoughts.

Chapter Two:

The Return Home

10:15 pm

Samantha was a lot of things, but one thing
she wasn’t was late. Over the years, Samantha had gained a
reputation among the members of SOCKs as “the early one.” She had a
great sense of time. It stemmed from her early childhood.

A divorce shortly after her birth meant that
Samantha had been raised primarily by her mother alone. With just
the two of them, Samantha’s mom made tight schedules to fit
everything into their busy lifestyle. From having to get to and
from work and pick up Samantha from daycare, to eventually
adjusting to Samantha’s school schedule and school activities,
Samantha’s mom ran a tight ship. Samantha learned early on that
being on time for pickups and drop-offs meant the difference
between a happy mom and a crabby mom.

This carried over into life within SOCKs. If
you were to meet Samantha at seven o’clock, you better be there at
seven o’clock. Or better yet, fifteen minutes prior.

With such a regiment of being on time,
everyone knew that if Samantha was tardy for anything, it meant one
thing—trouble.

When Kid Combat, Samantha, and the rest of
the SOCKs group were planning for this mission, they estimated that
the time it would take to go from the museum on Spring Road to The
Playground in Maple Forest would be about twenty minutes. And that
was factoring in a few detours to throw off anyone that might be
following Samantha.

As the minutes continued to roll by since
Samantha had left the museum, it became official—Samantha was
late.

“What’s her status?” Kid asked Gears once
again.

“It’s just sitting there, Kid. I don’t know
what to tell you,” Gears replied, staring at his computer screen.
It displayed a virtual map of the town, zooming in on the museum.
There, near the southwest corner of the building, a pink light
flashed on and off. The pink dot was transmitted from the locater
device that was attached to Samantha’s shirt at the start of her
mission. Each member was assigned a color and a locator before
every mission. Kid’s was blue. Gears, green. The twins had orange
and white ones. Roller, brown. Samantha’s was pink.

“What are the chances it fell off when she
fell?” Kid asked.

“Probably pretty good, considering the way
she fell,” Roller responded. “I’m trying to pull up any visuals
from the surrounding area, but most were shut down prior to the
mission.”

“Try her radio again,” Kid snapped.

“Kid,” Gears said softly. “I’ve tried it four
times already. It’s off.”

Kid sat back down in his chair directly
behind the two boys. Man, can’t anything go right today? he thought
to himself. Still unaware whether Samantha was safe from the
curator, the police, or any other obstacle, Kid waited nervously
for signs that his friend was OK.

“It’s gone! The pink light—it just shut off!”
Gears said. Kid got out of his chair and looked over Gears’s
shoulder. The monitor in front of him displayed only a virtual map
of the town, nothing else.

“When do we go after her?” Roller asked.

“I don’t know. With the twins gone tonight,
we’re shorthanded,” Kid said. The twins, at the last minute, had
been forced to head to their grandparents’ house for dinner and a
movie. It had been unclear if they would make it back for the
mission; therefore, they were not included in any of the final
plans. “We’ll just have to be patient. I’ll be in my room looking
at feeds,” Kid turned and left Main Computer Lab 1.

It was now forty-five minutes since Samantha
escaped from the museum. Kid sat in his room and sifted through
different surveillance feeds from around town that Gears and Roller
were able to hack into. Security cameras from stores in the area,
ATM cameras, and stoplight cameras were all tapped, and their
signal fed back to TPG. Kid sifted through them for any sign of his
friend. He didn’t see one.

Roller and Gears stayed in Main Computer Lab
1 and tried to get the rover to respond. They also tried to reach
Samantha on the radio once again. They didn’t succeed at either
one.

Minutes went by. It seemed like an eternity.
The Playground was unusually silent for a mission night, mostly due
to the absence of the twins.

Suddenly, a red light started to flash above
Gears’s LCD. He quickly looked up at it and started typing away. A
new window opened and a video feed of Security Check Point 2
started to play on his screen. There, Gears saw Samantha enter her
code at the keypad entrance into The Playground. And then the back
wall started to open.

Gears picked up his headset, put it on, and
dialed a four-digit extension on his computer. “Kid, she’s
home.”

In his room, Kid stopped sifting through the
video feeds, switched his screen to the main entrance of TPG, and
saw his friend walking in.

“'Bout time.”

Samantha made her way through the main
entrance room of The Playground. The lights were off. The only
light guiding her was the light from Hallway 2.

Much work had been done to The Playground
over the last few weeks. All the floorboards were installed
throughout the secret base, and the nice light brown wood surface
shined under Samantha’s feet. It was much better than the broken
boards and cardboard that had been there no more than a few weeks
ago.

A few furnishings had been added to the main
research and development room as well. There were some workstations
for the crew to develop projects, but more important was the
additional recreational area. In the southwest corner, a ping-pong
table, foosball, and a pool table had been brought in. Just beyond
them, sat two flat-screen TVs, and a number of gaming systems lay
about the floor. The boys of The Playground loved this new corner
and spent many rainy days and nights here hanging out and playing
against one another.