Codename Kids - Next Door

Numbuh 3 stopped sniffling. “That’s… not true… is it?”

Numbuh 1 stood in the doorway. “You sure about this?”

The face was young—maybe twelve, thirteen. But the eyes were ancient. Sunken. Gray. Like someone who had seen every war and lost. And those eyes were staring directly into the satellite camera. Into them . Codename Kids Next Door

Numbuh 1 walked over and knelt beside him. “You’re not wrong about the system, Harvey. It’s broken. It hurts people. But breaking things isn’t the same as fixing them.”

“Ew, it’s warm!” she squealed, then without thinking, she shoved the weapon into the backpack’s main compartment, zipped it shut, and hugged it tight. The lavender glow died. The device’s nanites, deprived of a targeting array, dissolved into harmless glitter. Numbuh 3 stopped sniffling

Harvey lay on the ice, panting. The rage was gone. Only the sadness remained.

Twenty minutes later, the Sector V treehouse was a war room. Numbuh 362, Supreme Leader of the KND, appeared on a holo-screen, her face grim. But the eyes were ancient

“Status report, Numbuh 5!” Nigel barked.

They found him in the Decommissioning Chamber. The massive, brain-shaped tank where memories were siphoned away was silent. Harvey stood before it, his coat now off. He was rail-thin, his KND uniform faded to a ghostly gray. Pinned to his chest was his old Numbuh 4.7 badge, scratched and dented.

He fired.

“What you’re seeing is Numbuh 4.7,” she said. “Or rather, what he used to be. Real name: Harvey Hapsburg. Decommissioned at age thirteen, standard protocol. He was a promising operative. Sector M. Invented the S.P.L.A.N.K.E.R. (Strategic Post-Logical Anomaly Neutralizing Kinetic Energy Rifle).”