Eclipse Academy loomed over Alex Thorne like a judgmental parent, all sleek steel towers and holographic "Welcome to Spy School" signs that flickered when it rained. Hidden in plain sight as a snooty private school in a bustling city, it was where future spies learned to vanish into crowds, hack government servers, and look cool in sunglasses. Alex, unfortunately, was terrible at all of it.
At sixteen, he was the son of Elena and Victor Thorne, spies so legendary they once infiltrated a dictator's birthday party disguised as the cake. Everyone expected Alex to inherit their flair. Instead, he inherited their knack for tripping over nothing. In stealth class, he'd knocked over a dummy, setting off alarms that blared Mission Impossible across the campus. In cyber espionage, he'd hacked a practice bot into a disco ball, complete with strobe lights. And don't ask about disguise training—his "old lady" costume looked like a burlap sack with a wig.
"Thorne, you're a walking catastrophe," growled Professor Grimshaw, a grizzled ex-spy with a face like a disappointed bulldog. "Your parents took down the Shadow Syndicate. You can't even take down a training drone."
Alex slouched in the cafeteria, poking at a pancake he'd failed to steal from the breakfast line. His best friend, Mia Chen, slid into the seat across from him, her neon-pink hair glowing under the fluorescent lights. "Dude, how'd you fail pancake espionage? It's literally food." She tossed him a stolen syrup packet, smirking.
"I sneezed," Alex muttered. "Loudly. The lunch lady tackled me."
Mia cackled, assembling a tiny drone from fork parts. "You're a Thorne. Shouldn't you be, like, backflipping over lasers by now?"
"Tell that to my shoelaces." Alex sighed, glancing at Lila Sato across the room. She was the school's sniper prodigy, cool as a cucumber in a snowstorm, casually twirling a pen like it was a throwing knife. His crush on her was as subtle as a foghorn, but she hadn't noticed. Probably because he'd once tripped into her during a drill, mumbling, "Uh, nice… aim?"
Today's humiliation was a mock mission: infiltrate a fake enemy base (the gym) and retrieve a "secret" file (a USB shaped like a rubber duck). Alex's team—him, Mia, and Jax "The Tank" Rodriguez—had a plan. Mia's gadgets would disable the laser grid, Jax would punch any robot guards, and Alex would… try not to ruin everything.
Spoiler: He ruined everything.
Mia's drone short-circuited, Jax punched the wrong panel (triggering a foam explosion), and Alex? He sneezed into a megaphone hidden in the wall, alerting every "guard" bot in a ten-mile radius. The bots chased them out, firing rubber darts while Grimshaw's voice boomed, "THORNE, YOU'RE A DISGRACE!"
Back in the dorms, Jax, a mountain of a teen who loved bad puns, clapped Alex's shoulder. "Don't worry, man. You're… loud. That's a skill, right?" His grin was as wide as his biceps.
"Very inspiring," Lila deadpanned, cleaning her sniper scope nearby. "Maybe next time, sneeze in Morse code."
Alex groaned, flopping onto his bunk. "I'm a failure. My parents are probably sipping martinis in a volcano lair, and I can't even sneak past a lunch lady."
Mia, tinkering with a gadget that looked like a toaster crossed with a grenade, nudged him. "Chill. You're not that hopeless. Just… mostly hopeless."
Desperate for a win, Alex wandered the academy's creepy basement labs that night, a maze of dusty equipment and flickering lights where students weren't supposed to go. That's where he found Dr. Zoltan "Zany" Zorba, a wild-haired scientist muttering to a toaster. "You'll revolutionize toast and espionage, my beauty!"
"Uh, Dr. Zorba?" Alex ventured. "Why's your toaster glowing?"
Zoltan spun, eyes gleaming like a mad cartoon villain. "It's not a toaster! It's a Neural Net Enhancer! Want to try it? It'll make you… better." He waggled his eyebrows.
Alex, figuring he had nothing to lose except his dignity (already gone), shrugged. "Sure. Can't get worse than sneezing my way to an F."
Zoltan strapped him to a chair, slapped electrodes on his head, and flipped a switch on the toaster-thing. "This'll connect your brain to the internet! Every skill, every tutorial, yours instantly!" Sparks flew. Alex's vision filled with cat videos, Wikipedia pages, and a pop-up ad for discount socks.
Then, blackout.
He woke up with a headache and a weird buzzing in his skull. "Did it work?" he mumbled.
Zoltan grinned. "Try tying a knot."
Alex thought about it. His brain flashed with a YouTube tutorial—How to Tie a Perfect Bowline in 3 Seconds!—and his hands moved on autopilot, tying his shoelaces into a flawless knot. "Whoa."
"Now, try martial arts!" Zoltan cackled.
Alex pictured a kick. His brain downloaded Krav Maga Basics for Beginners, and he nailed a high kick, only to knock over a shelf of beakers. Glass shattered. Zoltan clapped. "Marvelous chaos!"
Back in class the next day, Alex aced stealth training, flipping over lasers like he'd been born in a ninja dojo. In cyber class, he hacked a dummy server in seconds, his brain pulling code from obscure forums. Even his disguise—a fake mustache and fedora—fooled Grimshaw. "Thorne?!" the professor sputtered. "Did you… learn?"
Mia gaped. "Okay, what's the deal? Did you eat a spy manual?"
Alex grinned, dodging the question. "Just… inspired."
But the cafeteria was his real test. To impress Lila, he decided to juggle pancakes, his brain pulling a Juggle Like a Pro video. It went great—until he tried Flaming Pancake Juggling from a sketchy blog. Fire erupted, sprinklers drenched everyone, and Lila sighed, "Nice try, hotshot."
As Alex mopped syrup off his face, Grimshaw stormed in. "Thorne! Your scores are… improbably high. Report to the board. You're being considered for Shadow Squad."
"Shadow Squad?" Alex blinked. The elite team of student spies? Him?
Mia smirked. "Don't set the boardroom on fire."
As he headed to the meeting, Alex's brain buzzed with a stray Wikipedia page about Eclipse's history. A name popped up: Victor Voss, a former student turned evil mastermind, codenamed Vortex. And a chilling detail—Voss had been experimented on by a scientist named Zoltan.
Alex gulped. "What did I just sign up for?"