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Henry didn't spend enough time in his room to lose track of things. He was there to sleep (sometimes) and occasionally to hang out with Jasper and Charlotte (rarely). Most of the rest of his time was spent at Junk 'n Stuff or out in the field. School was supposed to be in there, he supposed, but he'd had to miss a few days to stop one of Minyak's schemes, and he'd been avoiding going back out of fear for the catch-up work that awaited him.
The point being, he wasn't in his room enough for it to get messy, so it shouldn't be so hard to find his PearPods, which he had removed and set down right here on his night-table when Captain Man summoned him away.
Henry swept his hand across the table, in case the PearPods had somehow turned invisible, then he got down on his knees and ran his hands through every inch of the rug next to and underneath his bed. Nothing. Not even a stray paperclip.
His mom had vacuumed the rug the previous day, by the look of the streaks on it, so he knew no one had been in his room since then except for him. Lifting the corner, he checked underneath. Still nothing.
"Piper!" he shouted, knowing that his voice could carry through the house without much effort on his part. He waited, listening for a response. None came, so sucking in a deep breath, he threw his head back and shouted her name over and over, only pausing long enough to fill his lungs for a new volley.
His bedroom flew open and Piper appeared herself in the doorframe, hands on her hips. "What?" She had on an apron streaked with flour dust and underneath it — what appeared to be — a long, floral-print dress with poofy shoulders. Baking, he thought? Dressed like that?
Piper was the last person who'd want to bake anything from scratch, which made it sound like a threat when she added, "I was busy!"
"Have you seen my PearPods?"
"That's your emergency? No, I haven't seen your ~PearPods~." She dipped the word in sarcasm, as if to humor his pronunciation. "Maybe you lost them while you were—" Her eyes flicked to his bedroom window, and by extension the tree outside that he often used when he had to sneak out to conduct business as Kid Danger.
How she knew he'd been out surprised him. He'd had lunch with her and his parents, in a rare alignment of schedules, then gone to his room to consider all the missing assignments he had to make up. That had lasted about ten minutes before Captain Man summoned him.
Henry shook his head. "Nah, I didn't take them with me. I'm usually too busy fighting crime to listen to—"
An alarm on Piper's phone went off, startling both of them. She silenced it, then threw a glare at him. "Whatever. This next part, I can't edit out, so keep your gob shut." With that, she turned and hustled back downstairs, revealing that she'd twisted her blonde hair into a bun.
Henry could only watch her go, astonished. He'd never imagined Piper would lower herself to dressing like an old fashioned woman, and he still didn't know where his PearPods had disappeared to. If she hadn't taken them, then who had?
He glanced one more time at his night stand, in case they'd popped back into existence, then sighed when he saw the same empty surface as before.
Without them, he wouldn't be able to block out the sounds of his family existing in the house—which he preferred to do. Especially when Piper was already this keyed up.
Flopping onto his bed, he pulled out his PearPhone and opened EnvyGram. He was quickly sucked into the kind of scrolling through a social media feed that felt like productivity to a tired mind. The Dog Judge account had posted some outtakes, there were memes based on an emotional reunion in Genuine Moments, and a lot of pictures of his classmates' meals. Neither Charlotte nor Jasper had posted anything to their personal accounts, but Jasper's long-abandoned Bucket podcast account had made its daily automated post to highlight an existing episode — this one on Buckets of the Wild West.
Henry frowned. Was that podcast connected to Piper's outfit? No, he decided, it couldn't be. There was no way Piper subscribed to Jasper's podcast feed. He scrolled on, noting updates about operating hours from the Museum of Boring History and incident reports on the Swellview Crime Blog.
A shout cut through the house.
"Where did it go!" he heard Piper yell.
Without hesitating, Henry rolled off the bed and raced downstairs, adrenaline spiking with the anticipation of a fight. Anything could trigger Piper into yelling about a perceived unfairness, but only a few things triggered that particular stridency — at least two of which would require a quick transformation into Kid Danger.
Henry whipped around the corner at the bottom of the staircase to find Piper crouched on the kitchen table, her hands wrapped around the mount of her tripod. She was shaking it, her mouth barred in a rictus of anger, her hair falling loose from her bun. Two ring lights bracketed the table, on which lay a cooling rack.
An empty cooling rack.
"Piper?"
She twisted toward him, and Henry automatically raised a defensive hand to block the tripod he expected her to throw at him. Anger mangagement classes had helped her immensely, but sometimes she still reacted on impulse.
"It's gone." She shook the tripod, as if to get it to cough up its secrets. "Where is it!?"
"What's gone? Where is what?"
Henry scanned his surroundings, checking for witnesses. Summer sun beamed through the kitchen windows, rendering the ring lights a supplement rather than a necessity. The dishes from lunch were stacked on the counter — whose turn was it to load the dishwasher? — and a pile of mixing bowls and cookware crowded the sink — it had better be Piper's turn, given the mess she'd made.
Their parents were gone. They must've stepped out for the afternoon, though Henry couldn't remember them saying anything about plans. Not that he cared. All that mattered was that he wouldn't need to erase their memories.
Cautiously, he approached the table, doing his best to project the kind of steadiness he used in the field when he was trying to break up a fight between criminals: a single step, and then he aimed the watch on his wrist at her and zapped. Piper crumpled forward, unconscious.
He caught her before she hit the floor and carried her over to the couch, then turned his attention back to the kitchen.
The oven light was on and the over door was cracked open, heat diffusing into the kitchen.
Sniffing, he caught the scent of some kind of bread-product baking. Though he had eaten recently, his stomach rumbled, and Henry faltered, momentarily distracted from his search. His nose twitched with another appreciative inhalation, and the pieces started to click together: The tripod, the cooling rack, the baking, the outfit. Piper must've been producing a video for her EnvyGram followers.
The only thing missing was also the reason for her rage: her phone.
He searched the floor and table, already knowing he wouldn't find anything. Piper had had the phone in her hand when she was in his room only a few minutes before. There was no way she'd have misplaced it in that time. In fact, the possibility of Piper misplacing her phone at all was harder to believe than the Toddler becoming the Tweenager.
Yet, it wasn't on the tripod. So, where was it? Objects didn't just disappear when you put them down, no matter what jokes people made about car keys and pens not being in the last place you put them, until suddenly they were.
On the couch, Piper stirred, groaned, then dragged herself into a sitting position. "You zapped me," she accused, rubbing her head. "Why did—" Her blue eyes narrowed, and Henry half-expected her to start blasting fire out of them, the way he'd once breathed fire after his accident with the desensitizer, then she bolted to her feet and charged toward him. "My phone. What did you do with it?"
Henry caught her with a hand to her sternum, locking his elbow to hold her in place while she flailed and tried to kick at him. That she was almost a foot shooter than him left her hitting only air. Henry contemplated zapping her again, then dismissed the thought; knocking her out would stop the shouting, but would also prevent them from talking.
“My phone!” she cried. “Give me back my phone.” She tried to grap at his pocket, and missed by inches.
“I don’t have it. You know I don’t have it.” Confident that he could keep Piper in place, Henry continued sweeping the room with his eyes. The phone had to be somewhere in it.
“You know where it is,” she accused. "Tell me where it is!"
Coffee table, couch cushions, floor — nothing.
“Why would I know where your phone is? You’re the one who lost it.”
“I didn’t lose it! It vanished.”
“That doesn’t explain why I would know where it is.”
“Because phones don’t just vanish. That means someone took it — and you're the only other person in the house.”
“I was in my room — which you know, since you saw me there. Are you sure you didn't put it in your pocket?" he asked. "Maybe you meant to plug it in and got distracted?"
"You think I'd get distracted from setting up my video?" she countered. "I only had the final step to record. You can't have a cooking video without the step where you show the finished product!"
That … was a good point. Henry had been trying to cover his bases. “Wait!”
Piper didn’t wait. Instead, she tried to feint and free herself and escape from his blockade, but Henry didn’t drop his arm. Instead, he retrieved his phone with his free hand and held it in front of her face where she couldn’t help but see it.
She stopped fighting, her attention captured like the device had a gravity well. “That’s not my phone.”
“I know it’s not your phone,” he answered. “It’s mine.”
"Why do you have your phone and I don't have mine?"
Henry faltered, stumped at the question. Why did he have his phone? Was it just the two items that had gone missing? If so, why those two? As often as weird things did happen in his life, not every problem had a super-villain at its core. But PearPods and PearPhones vanishing without a trace was exactly the kind of thing a super-villain would do.
"I don't know—" he started.
“Give it to me so I can track my phone! I want to track my phone!”
With lightning reflexes, she tried to snatch it. Even though his hypermotility had been gone for over a year, Henry was still faster. He jerked the phone out of her reach.
“Piper! I think I do know who would steal our stuff.”
She stopped fighting, intrigued by this new information. “You do?”
Henry nodded and thumbed open his screen. Before he could suggest that Piper step back and give him space to work, she acted on her own. His bracing arm dropped without her on the other end of it, and Henry stumbled forward. He blinked, surprised. Was this a sign of Piper growing up? Or was she just that desperate to get her phone back?
Later, he thought. They had technology to find first. He pulled up his ManTracker to scan the locations of the pins. Schwoz had built this function into their phones long ago, when it became obvious that he and Captain Man were fighting the same villains over and over again. By tracking their locations, they didn’t have to waste precious time guessing where to find their lairs or other top secret hideouts.
The app was taking its sweet time loading, though, the little hourglass icon filling and emptying over and over, as if the information the app sought wasn't available. He shook his phone, hoping to speed it up. The icon filled and emptied, and the screen stayed frustratingly blank.
"Come on, Henry! Tell me who it is." Her head tilted as she began to formulate elaborate revenge plans. A dangerous sweetness shaped her next sentence: "I want a word with him."
Henry's gaze lifted as he once more found his balance destablized; this wasn't a Piper he was used to seeing on his side. “Twitler,” he pronounced. “Who else would want to steal technology more than a tech bro who hates technology?”
“Twitler?” Piper asked, a questioning frown creasing her forehead. “As in, the creator of TwitFlash?”
“That’s him.”
"He invented TwitFlash and he hates technology? That's stupid!"
"He bought TwitFlash," Henry reminded her, "and the way people use it is part of why he hates technology now. He thinks we rely too much on it." A sudder ran through his body at the memory of how Twitler's plan to destroy the whole internet had cost Henry his superpower and crippled his ability to perform his role as Kid Danger.
A slow, dangerous smile spread across Piper’s face. She’d never liked that social media platform, having claimed that the character count restrictions were too restrictive.
"How am I supposed to tell people what I think of them!?" she'd demanded, before angrily deleting the post she'd been trying to send to Jana Tetrazini.
When Twitler publicly changed from promoting his platform to condemning people for using it, Piper’d spent a week basking in her ability to see through an obvious scam, and then announced that Twitler was responsible for everything wrong with social media. “Let’s go get him.”
The hourglass finally finished and vanished, freeing the app to show the rest of the display. Henry frowned at it. He'd expected most of the pins to point to the Swellview Prison, with a few stragglers from the villains who'd escaped or were out on bail. There were always a few. Unless it was two-for-one drinks night at TBD, then they all seemed to be converge there, no matter what their confinment status.
Instead, there were almost no pins at all. It was like all the villains in Swellview had fled town. The app didn't expand to the rest of the state, though. Schwoz had claimed that because Captain Man and Kid Danger weren't authorized were work outside of Swellview, his app couldn't display locations outside the city limits.
“What? No. I’m going to go get him. Just me. You’re going to stay here.” Henry pulled out his gumtube and shook a gumball out.
"You can't stop me from going with you," Piper protested.
Henry raised the wrist with his zapper on it, showing that he could, in fact, stop her very easily. An unconscious Piper wouldn't be following him anywhere.
Piper didn't back down. "So you knock me out. That's going to last, what, two or three minutes. Tops. Then what?"
"I'll tie you up."
"Yeah, Mom and Dad are going to love that. What do you think they'll do when they come home to find me trussed up like a pig, you gone, and the oven on?"
Henry's face scrunched as he imagined that exact scenario. The last step he could fix easily enough, but — he scanned the kitchen, noting again the dishes piled in the sink, the presentation spread across the table, and all the equipment for Piper's video out and set up. He didn't have time to clean right now. If they found Piper tied up and the chores unfinished, it would definitely end with a lot of screaming — and probably him being grounded for the next month.
"Where are Mom and Dad, anyway?"
Piper shrugged. "Don't know, don't care. I wasn't listening when they told me."
That tracked. It also presented another complication, because Henry had no way to know when they might return, so he couldn't plan to be home to untie Piper before they found her.
"Besides," Piper continued, as if anything she was saying was perfectly reasonable, "wouldn't it be better if you knew exactly where I was instead of wondering?"
"Gah!" Henry stomped a foot, caught out by that twist of logic. She'd been right about everything so far, but she hadn't known that. This, she was deploying on purpose.
"Give me a gumball," she ordered, sticking her hand out. "I'm going with you."
"I'm not going to give you a gumball. I'm the superhero."
"Sidekick," she corrected.
"Fine. Sidekick. This is my job, not yours." Henry popped the gumball in his mouth and started chewing. He'd wait until he was outside to blow the bubble, as it was better that the neighbors didn't see Kid Danger entering and leaving the Hart house. "What's wrong with what you're wearing?"
Piper glanced down at her dress and apron. "Please," she said. "I'm Rolling Thunder, not Prairie Woman. Give me a half a second to run upstairs—"
"No time to wait," Henry said, starting for the door. He finally had an advantage here and he was going to take it. "Gotta go now. Every minute we wait is another minute until you get your phone back."
Piper surged forward, caught between following him and going to retrieve her hoodie and facemask. "OK, but how are we going to get there? We don't have a car."
Henry shook his head. "We don't need a car. We're just gonna have a scene change."
"Huh?"
"We're just gonna have a scene change," he repeated, in the exact same cadence.
Piper scowled in confusion. "What does that mean."
Henry skipped back another step, a grin spreading across his face. Some parts of being the sidekick never got old. "You'll see."
Twitler lived on the edge of town in a massive stone-facade house with manicured gardens, a pool, and a five-car garage.
For all the expense put into the property, its security measures had left a lot to be desired. While there was a gate and cameras on the driveway, Henry had been able to cut a hole in the fence that encircled the property with his laser zapper with hardly any effort. It wasn't even an electric fence.
As he and Piper crept around the exterior of the house, peering in windows, Henry couldn't help commenting, "This place is huge. Why does one guy need so much house?"
"It's no bigger than the ManCave," Piper commented. "Why does Captain Man need so much space?"
"Because he needs a place to keep all his crime-fighting equipment."
Piper raised an eyebrow meaningfully — or, Henry guessed she did because she had her facemask pulled down and he couldn't actually see her eyebrows. A lifetime of living with her meant he no longer needed to see her body language to know what it was. "And he's a tech guru who needs lots of server space and ways to display his excessive wealth," she said. "Hoist me up."
They'd reached a window that was just too high for Henry to see in, yet still low enough that it still qualified as being on the first floor. "The window has a sill … and it looks like it might be open." He stretched up on his tip-toes and wrapped his gloved hands around the cement sill. Maybe if he held on tight enough, he could lift himself up. "Let me just—"
Piper kicked at his ankles, and Henry tumbled back, his grip broken. "You brought me along to help. I'm going to help."
"I didn't bring you along," Henry countered. "You tagged along."
"Whatever. I'm here, now bend over."
Despite the manicuring of the lawn, the ground was bumpy and uneven, and hidden rocks bit into Henry's knees. He wriggled around until he found a tolerable position, then signaled for Piper to climb on his back. Somewhere on the grounds, sprinklers kicked on, and Henry startled. The sprinklers were the first sign that anyone actually lived in this house and … that was weird, wasn't it? Shouldn't someone with cameras and gates on their property have the kind of security that would have alerted him to Henry and Piper's presence by now?
"It is open," she hissed back down to him. "I'm going to climb in."
"Piper, no."
The sudden sensation that this was a trap squeezed at Henry. It shouldn't be this easy to break into Rick Twitler's house. He was a famous billionaire. There should be security guards, alarms, and attack dogs. Robot attack dogs, even.
But Piper was stronger than she looked, and before Henry could do more than issue his protest, her weight lifted from his back. He heard the swish of a window sliding open and then the grunting and rustling of Piper maneuvering into the house.
"I'm in. Now, get a move on," she said, extending her hand back to grab his.
With her help, Henry climbed the outside wall and fell over the sill to land heavily on the carpet in Twitler's hallway. His thump echoed, yet no alarms triggered and no guards appeared in the doorways. He rose carefully to his feet, eyes sweeping the space for threats.
If the attention given to the outside of the house had given Henry any expectations about how Twitler lived, the inside crushed them. Paneled walls, thick carpet, and wall sconces gave Henry the impression of having stepped back in time — though not to one of the eras he'd visited before. The wrongness of the decor made the hairs on the back of his neck shiver.
"It looks rich," Piper commented.
"Yeah, the wrong kind of rich," Henry said. "Shouldn't there be, I dunno, smart lights, biometric doors, electric … anything?" He squatted by a panel in the wall that was the right size and shape to be an electric outlet, only to see that it had been sealed over. As was the next one and the next one. Nothing in the long hallway looked to be plugged in.
"You said he hates tech. Maybe he wasn't just talking about phones and computers and—" She lifted her nose, sniffing. "Why does it smell like vanilla? Real vanilla, too, not the artificial stuff in those plug in air fresheners."
"How do you know what real vanilla smells like?"
Piper shook her head sadly, as if Henry had let her down. "Do you think my followers would accept any but the real thing?"
At the first door, Henry gestured for Piper to stand back, then opened it to reveal a bedroom: canopy bed, heavy wooden bureau, thick carpet and drapes, and no indication that anyone had ever stepped foot inside. Not even to vacuum.
He shut the door and they moved on, checking the next room and the next.
"What are we going to do when we find him?" Piper asked. "For that matter, how will you know when you find him?"
"I've fought him before," Henry answered. "I'll recognize him."
"OK, but that doesn't answer what we're going to do."
"You're not going to do anything," Henry said. "I'm still the one here who's been trained to fight bad guys."
"Yeah, I remember how well that went last time we worked together," Piper said. "You ended up flat on your back, covered in grease."
"Only because you ran into me on your rollerskates," Henry reminded her.
"Well, I'm not wearing my rollerskates now, so you're not going to have that excuse."
Henry stopped, a change in the ambiance of the house catching his attention. "Shhh." He held up a gloved finger, silencing Piper so he could listen. The hallway and the bedrooms they'd found along it all felt somehow abandoned. They were decorated and ready for guests who never arrived or who had left a long time ago.
Now he and Piper and turned into a different hallway, one heavier with the scents of food and a palpable sense of occupation. Somewhere along this stretch, they'd find the kitchen, Henry knew. That would mean a dining room and living room. If Twitler was in the house, this was where they'd find him.
The soft carpet on the floors swallowed their footsteps as they confirmed each of the suspected rooms, and finally stopped before a set of double-doors.
Once more, Henry held up a finger to hold Piper back while he assessed what, if any, threat might be behind those doors. Twitler was a self-described genius and inventor, not a heavy-hitter. But Henry had to expect that he'd be protected by something: robots, lasers, maybe more iterations of Anti-Virus. Who knew what the man was capable of since his recovery. With a quick shake of his head, Henry refocused. He hadn't stopped by the ManCave to load up on weapons, so whatever he was going to do, he had only his zapper and his fists to do it with.
Piper glanced once at the upraised finger, then yanked the doors open and charged into the room. "Give me back my phone, you creep!"
"P—Thunder!" Henry shouted, catching himself at the last second from using her real name.
Twitler was seated in a thick, leather armchair, his feet up on a leather ottoman. In his hands lay a thick, leatherbound book. He looked up at the intrusion, not an ounce of surprise on his face. His brown hair was neatly combed, and his suit ironed, like he'd been waiting for them.
"That's not mannerly behavior for a guest," he commented. The next part he addressed to Henry with a weary sigh, "Yes, I knew you were here all along. Why don't you save us all some to-ing and fro-ing and tell me why you think I have your phone."
What? Henry thought. He knew? Had he been listening? How?!
"Her phone," Henry corrected, schooling his face to keep his shock off it. "My PearPods. They've both vanished and, well…."
"You suspected me." Twitler closed the book with a thump and puff of old-paper smell of two thick covers coming together and set the book on the table next to him where a china tea cup sat on a china plate. He stood up, brushing off his suit as he did. Though he was still in his thirties or forties, he gave the impression of being well into his senior years and tired of the drudgeries of life. "I don't have your phone, and—more importantly—I don't want your phone. I have absolved myself of all technology."
Piper gagged. "No one who says that really means it."
"Well, I do. Now I invite both of you to please leave my premises. Do it quietly, and I won't even press charges."
Henry shook his head. They'd come here on a mission, and he wasn't going to leave until they completed it. "Where's your phone?" Henry demanded. Piper's had vanished, but his was still in his pocket. There was still something important about that they were missing. "I saw it on the app. I know you have one."
Twitler shrugged. "I'm not going to pretend I don't know what app you're referring to. Captain Man commits privacy and consent violations like that and he says I'm the bad guy."
Henry took a step forward, aiming for brave, not threatening. He didn't want to fight Twitler if he didn't have to. "That's not an answer."
"It's the one you're getting. I haven't used my phone in—" He stopped, searching his memory for an answer or a reference point. "Long enough. I have embraced a fully-analog lifestyle." He swept a hand around the room, showing off the bookcases that lined the walls, the grandfather clock that ticked away in the corner, and the old-fashioned radio that Henry now realized was playing a very soft classical melody.
"Zap him," Piper ordered Henry. "Make him tell you where my phone is."
Henry sighed. "It'll be easier if you'd just let us see it."
"Why? What possible reason is there for you to see a phone I don't use and that isn't going to tell you whatever it is you think you want to know?"
Henry stuck out a hand, sensing that both of them were only arguing for the sake of arguing at this point. "Because it'll rule you out, and then Thunder won't be forced to start tearing your room apart while she tries to find hers."
Twitler stared at Henry for a beat. "You understand that doesn't make a bit a sense?"
Henry ran his explanation back through his head and had to concede that Twitler was right — no matter how much it pained him to do so.
"Very well." Twitler reached into the inside pocket of his suit coat and pulled out a phone. "Here it is. Are you happy?"
"HA!" Piper exclaimed. "I knew you still used it."
"I keep it in my pocket; I don't use it. There's a difference. But, if it'll make you happy …" He slid open the drawer on his end table and dropped the phone in. "See." He waved his empty hands, like a magician who'd just made the rabbit disappear. "No phone."
A suspicion gnawed at Henry. Keeping an eye on Twitler, he sidled across the room and slid the drawer back open. "No phone," he said, pointing to the empty space inside.
Piper let out a shriek, the solution she'd thought was so close now yanked away from her.
Twitler glanced in the drawer, seeing only the empty space they all saw, and did a double-take. "It's gone," he said, voice hollow. "How …. ?"
"That's what we're trying to find out," Henry answered. "Now, unless you know anything you haven't told us—"
"I know a great deal I haven't told you," Twitler answered. "What I do not know is where the phone might have gone to."
"I'll bet you're itching to have it back," Piper said, planting a hand on one hip. "You have a streak to keep or a twit-flash to post. I know you do."
"I have nothing of the sort. That phone was for emergencies only." He stopped, considered, then cocked his head. "And DoorDash. You have no idea how hard it is to get groceries delivered this far out of town — and someone like me cannot safely go grocery shopping on my own. You really have no idea where the phone went?"
Henry shook his head. "But maybe yours I can track." He pulled out his own phone and opened the ManTracker app. Twitler's phone had registered on it, so it stood to reason that it still would — unless it had vanished into an alternate dimension or elsewhen in time. Neither of those could be ruled out without more information. The hourglass icon filled and emptied while the three of them stood and watched the screen, waiting for the app to load. Finally, it did.
And no pin pointed to Twitler's phone.
"That's disturbing," he said.
"Very," Henry agreed. Quickly, he closed out the app before Twitler could see who the other pins referred to.
"Yet you still have your phone," Twitler pointed out.
Yes, he did. And Henry had the sneaking suspicion that figuring out why was the key to the whole mystery. "I do," he agreed. So, what were they missing? He glanced again at the empty drawer, and at Piper, whose fists were clenching and unclenching by her sides as she fought against the urge to start punching. "I'm just gonna let you return to your book. Sorry for the interruption."
Grabbing the hood of Piper's hoodie, he dragged the two of them out of the room and pushed the doors shut while Twitler stood, nonplussed, and watched them go.
"We need to get to the ManCave," Henry whispered. "Maybe Schwoz knows what's going on."
Piper gestured to Henry's wrist. "Why don't you just call him?"
"Well, because—" He stopped, not sure why he hadn't thought of that. "I don't—" No, that wasn't a better start. "It's not— We can't do that in enemy territory," he finally managed. There, that sounded plausible.
"Then come on. We'd better hurry up. I still need to get my buns out of the oven." Piper turned to stride ahead of him. "And maybe I can still finish my video tonight."
No sooner were they off the grounds, than she pointed at his wrist again. Whatever patience she had was wearing thin. With a sigh, Henry opened the communicator and called the ManCave.
The hologram of Schwoz popped up on the screen, the little man dressed in greasy overalls and a flat cap. He held a wrench in one hand and a blowtorch in the other, the flame flickering at the edge of the hologram. "Vat you vant? I am busy."
"I'm trying to find some missing phones," Henry said. "Do you know—"
"Missing phones?! Vat missing phones? I didn't know nothing about missing phones." The flame of the blowtorch flared, then the signal cut out entirely and Henry was left staring at an empty space over his wrist.
Piper's head dropped back as she figured out what Henry already had. "He has them, doesn't he?"
"Definitely. He's probably doing something to them, too."
"With a wrench and a blowtorch?"
PearDevices could stand a lot of heavy-handling, but Henry doubted that they were sturdy enough to survive an encounter with a blowtorch. "I hope not — but I wouldn't put it past him. If we're lucky, he's only updating the ManTracker. It seemed pretty glitchy."
"Then why take your PearPods? There's no ManTracker on those."
Henry threw his arms out in a broad shrug. "With Schwoz, it's really better to not ask. Even when he bothers to explain, it's all just science words." He cast a look at the horizon, where the sun was starting its descent and casting a pink tinge across the clouds.
"My video had better still be saved."
"I'm sure it's fine," he said, starting down the street. Junk 'n Stuff was all the way on the other side of town.
Piper strode beside him for a few steps. "Tell me why we're not doing a scene change?"
Just as Henry opened his mouth to explain that Schwoz had made it so the only ways in or out of the ManCave were through the store itself or the tubes, his phone rang. "Gah!" He jumped at the sound, fumbled the phone, and only kept it from hitting the ground with a quick save.
He didn't recognize the number, and almost let it go answered. At the last second, a tiny instinct prodded him to change his mind. "What?" he said, thumbing the answer button.
"Henry?!" His mom's voice, tinny and frantic came through. "Henry? Are you there?"
Henry glanced around quickly, verifying that he and Piper had moved far enough from Twitler's house to probably not be overheard. "Yes? "
"Henry, we need your help!" His dad's voice this time, even more frantic. Background noise roiled behind them, an indiscernible mash of people yelling and chaos brewing.
"Where are you?" Piper shouted across Henry's arm, toward the phone.
He shifted his hold and turned the speaker on, angling so they could both talk and hear more easily. Piper crowded in next to him and pulled the bottom of her mask up, to speak more clearly.
"We're at the Nacho Ball," their dad said.
"The close one or the nice one?" Henry asked.
"The nice one!" their mom answered, "And we're stuck. Our phones have vanished and we can't pay for our food."
"They want me to do dishes!" their father wailed.
Piper and Henry traded a grimace. The thought of their dad doing the dishes at a place like the Nacho Ball was enough to seed nightmares. There was a reason dishes were on the kids' chores list, and that was with only four people in the house.
"We'll come get you. Hold on, and tell them we'll pay your bill."
"We will?" Piper mouthed.
Henry silenced her objection with a look. "Hold on." Ending the call, he pulled his gumtube free and shook out a gumball. "Let me change back and then we'll call a Zipper car."
"But that'll take forever," Piper protested. "Shouldn't we just—"
"How do you think we'd explain getting there so fast?"
"What about me?" Piper asked, her voice pitching up at the possibility that Henry had forgotten to think about her. "I need my phone back more than they need to be picked right up. Let's stop by the ManCave first. Then we can get the car and go rescue our parents. They'll be fine for a few more minutes." She paused, and caught Henry's eye. For a moment, it was if they shared the thought about what could've caused the noise they'd heard in the background of the call, the sounds of dozens of Nacho Ball patrons panicking over unfinished purchases. "Probably."
"We'll get your phone after," he assured her, patting her arm. Piper glowered, crossing her arms, but Henry wasn't going to back down. While he didn't understand the science, he sure did appreciate it, and he had to figure that, if Schwoz had taken everyone's devices, he had a good reason. "I'm sure Schwoz will be done with whatever upgrades he's doing by then."
"Fine," she grumbled.
Henry smiled, glad to have her on his side. "Come on, let's get that car ordered and everyone rescued before Schwoz—" He tightened his grip around his phone, unwilling to even risk putting it in his pocket and out of sight, "realizes he's missing a device."