by Shannon Hale
“Don’t you dare truss me up,” he said, still coughing from my kick. “Cut me loose and let’s end this!”
“No.” I bounced on my left foot, my broken leg keeping me from pacing. Could I risk leaving him alone while I went for help? Could I drag him out on my own?
He muttered something in Russian.
“Translation?” I said.
He didn’t reply. He was rubbing his chin against his shoulder as if to scratch an itch, but he must have had a little pouch there, because there was a rip and then he was holding something white in his teeth. I leaped for him but he kicked me back, closed his lips over whatever it was, and chewed. His smile was so wicked it made my knees shake.
“Never mess with the thinker,” he said. “I always have a backup plan.”
Had his thinker-self found some drug that would increase the power of his shooter-self? Any second the bonds over his hands might crack in an electric-blue burst. I took a step back and grew a blade.
He lifted his cuffed hands, still smiling. I hopped behind a pile of crates. I waited. No sound.
I peeked. Wilder was lying down. His hands were still shielded. His eyes were closed.
“Wilder?”
He didn’t move. I stepped out.
“Wilder, are you playing possum?”
Blade forward, I walked to him and nudged his foot with my armored boot. Really scientific, Maisie. Might as well poke him with a stick.
“Wilder?” I said again. I knelt over him, releasing the armor from my fingers so I could search for a pulse at his neck, a breath from his nose, any sign of life. Nothing.
Wilder was dead.
Chapter 39
My head felt thick, my body so buried in armor I seemed to be falling into it, deep into nothing, away from life and movement and toward numbness.
Wilder had gambled on some trick pill to make him more powerful, but it had backfired and stopped his heart. My own heart was going rapid fire.
I felt in his mouth to make sure his tongue wasn’t blocking his throat. But I was more robot than flesh, so I released the havoc skin from my upper body. It clattered to the floor.
Maybe the trick was the pill made him seem dead. He’d wake now that I was unarmored and vulnerable. I stood back.
He didn’t wake.
“Not like Ruthless,” I said, and started chest compressions with my one hand. If I could keep his heart pumping, his tokens would stay put. I wouldn’t have to choose between losing them and claiming them. I started to cry—a crazy-girl, bewildered sobbing.
I winced with every press, afraid to feel his tokens rising, angry that he would really die and put me through this, and then laughing like a loca because I was in this nightmare again, killing someone and trying to save him at the same time.
“Wilder!” I slapped him across the face. “Breathe!”
He didn’t breathe. I held my hand to his chest, about to do more compressions, but stopped short. The skin of my hand tingled. Was I feeling the electricity of his tokens, nanites zooming in, ready to abandon his body? If they came out, I would have to fight that nanite-inspired urge to keep the tokens safe. Last time I had lost that fight. I couldn’t bear the agony again.
The pain of that decision seemed to throb in my crushed leg, my broken ribs, building and tightening in my chest. I leaned over him and gave him mouth-to-mouth. It was pointless. Without compressions his heart would never restart. I wouldn’t take his tokens, but I didn’t want them lost to outer space either. And I didn’t want to let someone else die. I couldn’t face Wilder’s ghost in my nightmares.
I breathed into his mouth. I breathed and breathed and breathed—
Ow. OW! Fierce pain in my chest. I tried to push away from Wilder, but it had already begun—his tokens, twisting together, white as light, rising from his chest and sinking directly into mine. They were supposed to go through hands! No fair!
I grabbed the ends as they dug into me. That made the pain even more brilliant, like reaching into my own gut and trying to pull out my organs. The freezing heat ripped through my sternum and slammed against my heart with a force that knocked me back and made me briefly blind and deaf to the world. My whole chest was fiercely hot, then ice cold, then numb right before the explosion of pain. The other times seemed gentle to me now. Wilder’s tokens burned, as if someone stuck his hand right into my chest, like a bully might grab your shirt, and twisted my heart and lungs in his fist. I wanted to die. I wanted to die, die, die …
My broken ribs snapped back into place, my jaw straightened, my leg flamed, nanites fixing up their host body, healing my injuries while my chest was ravaged.
No. I would not be responsible for another death. Wilder did not get to haunt me alongside Ruth, Mi-sun, and Jacques. Clawing my way free from the torture, seizing back my strength, I put my hand on his chest and restarted compressions.
Power roared through my muscles as the brute token lit up inside me. I became more aware of Wilder’s body, the give of his ribs beneath the heel of my hand. The ease with which I could crack them, even push my hand straight through his chest.
A heartbeat.
Maybe I just sensed my own heartbeat in my hand. I lay my ear against his chest.
Two heartbeats, stuttered and unsure. A raised chest. A breath.
First-aid training at boot camp had neglected to tell us what to do once the CPR actually worked. Did I stop compressions? Or did his heart still need some help to keep going? I held my breath and listened to his; I put my hand on his chest. Train cars of palpitations, one coming after another.
I picked him up and ran.
We were on the third floor. I kicked through a window, jumped, and literally hit the ground running. It was probably jarring for Wilder. I might have saved his life, but I wasn’t worried if he got roughed up a bit, seeing as how he’d been trying to kill me.
I was on autopilot, running the same route I’d taken with my father in my arms. The irony made me angrier. Whatever those random aliens made the tokens for, I was pretty sure it wasn’t to turn me into a glorified ambulance service. I actually tried to dial Howell on my Fido phone before remembering again.
I glanced down at Wilder’s face, unconscious, lying against my shoulder. My heart twitched. I remembered looking forward to waking up every day, knowing he was next to me. I’d never hated anyone before. After Jacques amputated my father’s arm, there was anger, disgust, and confusion. Not this boiling, steaming, crushing hate.
A robot wouldn’t hate, but a robot, programmed with ethics and justice, would save Wilder. There was some comfort in that. I believed I still made sense if I acted like a robot.
There’s something I’m forgetting. Something I need to do, now, now, now …
The nagging thought rode me as I ran. Whatever task I was forgetting could wait.
Howell was probably at the hospital with Dragon and the triplets. Waiting for my call. She’d have backup, people to guard her injured men, people who could guard Wilder too.
There’s something else I need to do … what is it?
I ignored the thought and ran harder, leaping, sometimes cracking the pavement when I came down from a bound. Wilder moaned.
“Stay unconscious or I will kill you,” I said.
Whether he heard my warning or was genuinely comatose, his eyes didn’t open.
“I’m back,” I said, rushing through the emergency room doors. “This one chewed a white pill and seconds later his heart stopped. I did CPR, and he came back. Don’t know what he ate, but I bet traces will be stuck in his molars. The cuffs on his hands and ankles will dissolve in about ten hours. After that, keep him tied up. He’s dangerous and wanted by the police.”
Wilder was on a gurney, EMTs wheeling him away, when a gray-haired orderly approached me. She wasn’t shy about looking me over—havoc armor covering my feet and legs up to my waist, and my right arm that ended well shy of a wrist.
“You brought in a man a few days ago with an amputated right arm. You
had yours then. Where is it now?”
“My right arm? It’s—” I looked at my stump, then patted my sides as if checking my pockets. “Now where did I put that?”
She did not look amused. “Police are on their way. You better stay put.”
“Sure,” I said. “I love police. Who doesn’t? Hey, my friend came here about an hour ago, Bonnie Howell, crazy lady with frizzy hair. She had four big guys with her who were unconscious.”
“Not here,” said watcher lady.
“You’re sure?” This was by far the nearest hospital.
“Crazy lady with frizzy hair and four big guys would stand out. You’ve got a lot of stories. I’m sure the police will love to hear them.”
“Yeah, I just need to borrow your phone to call the police and let them know about the dangerous criminal you just wheeled away.”
She indicated a hospital courtesy phone and then pointed at her eyes and back at me, an “I’m watching you” gesture. I nodded. I’d be suspicious of me too.
I phoned the cute detective who had helped me after Dad’s amputation and told him Jonathan Wilder had tried to kill me and then apparently OD’d on something. He said he was on his way and told me to stay put. I didn’t have any plans, besides taking over the cafeteria ASAP.
But there’s something I need to do …
Maybe I was just worried about Dad and Mom. I dialed the first few numbers of Howell’s cell, thinking about building a Fido 2. I flinched reflexively. I couldn’t rebuild Fido. Techno token had turned off for good.
No. I looked at the phone in my hand and understood how it worked. I glanced around the hospital, all the gadgets beeping and humming as if whispering their secrets to me. Techno token, like brute token, was alive again. And havoc token? I grew a tip to my finger to test it.
I hung up the phone and went to the bathroom. The watcher lady harrumphed so I’d know she was still watching. I waved politely and shut the door.
There was a piece of grout in the corner, loose between two tiles. I picked it up and shot it back at the floor, my hand tingling, a zip of blue marking its path. Four tokens. And the fifth?
Could I think better than normal? It was hard to test. But I stood in front of the mirror and examined my sternum. All five tokens, intertwined, all the same shade of dark brown. I traced the circle of the thinker token, the one that tied the other four together.
I was so busy saving Wilder and hating Wilder that I hadn’t thought of it. I had everything. All five tokens. All five powers.
I was sitting on the tile floor before I’d realized I’d fallen. It was a pathetic faint, no dramatic swoon, no out-flung arm and darkness all around. I just wilted and thumped.
I’m sitting on a public bathroom floor, I thought. Ew.
And that made me wonder if I could be harmed by bacteria and viruses like normal, tokenless people. I didn’t remember getting sick since our trip up the Beanstalk. Could I get a cold? Or food poisoning? Or that Jumper Virus? And why was I wasting time worrying about this inconsequential crap when Wilder might be brain dead or escaping or—
Something I need to do now, a purpose for all this.
The nagging warning was driving me crazy—a fat fly that buzzes you awake. I stood up and looked in the mirror. The marks were all the same shade of brown. The four tokens fit around the circle of the thinker token, extra spokes and circles tying the five tokens together into a complete symbol.
The design caught my breath. I’d seen it before. But that was impossible. When we’d held the tokens in Midway Station, they’d been as much liquid as solid. How could anyone know what shape each token would take inside a person, let alone the symbol they’d form if all five came together? And yet I felt sure I’d seen something like it.
And then I remembered. At HAL. When we ate dinner in Howell’s office the night before the Beanstalk ride, Howell had been doodling on a scrap of paper. She’d made a design a lot like this symbol.
Maybe it was the thinker token, but all those little loose pieces went snapping into place, and I could see so clearly, I felt like a fool for not realizing before.
From Blueberry Bonanza on, Howell had orchestrated everything. She knew what the tokens would do; she exposed us to them on purpose. She was responsible for all the deaths.
And she had Luther and Dad.
Part Three
Peligrosa
Chapter 40
I burst out of the bathroom, past the gray-haired watcher lady, and through the emergency room doors. The police would have to take care of Wilder. I’d trusted my Dad and Luther to a woman as rotten as GT. And Mom too, if Howell really had sent her crew to Florida. I understood now why thinker-Wilder hadn’t trusted Howell. Nothing she did made sense unless she was duplicitous, greedy, and power-mad.
I ran to the warehouse and found a car—different from the last one, but I could tell it was the kind of car Wilder would get. No key. I didn’t need one. Give me a junkyard and a few hours, and I could probably build a car. I could certainly hot-wire one.
I ripped out of the dirt lot and sped to the private airport.
There’s something I’m forgetting about, something urgent …
I swatted at the air as if the persistent warning were a swarm of gnats.
At the airstrip, a Howell jet was waiting for me.
“She took Dragon and the others back to Texas,” Yosemite Sam told me. (That’s what I called him—he had a bushy red beard.)
Yosemite flew me to HAL. I didn’t buckle up. I paced. Sometimes I caught him looking back at me and talking to someone on his headset. I felt strong enough to tear apart the plane with five fingers and land safely on the ground five thousand meters below. Though the techno and thinker tokens were live in me, I had no headache. I guessed the pain had been caused by the nanites scrambling to understand a new species, and now that they were reprogrammed for humans—
Something I need to do. Now. Now, now, now …
“The Purpose,” I whispered. That was the nagging warning, a powerful itch I couldn’t find to scratch. An awareness of the Purpose must be a side effect of the thinker token. How had Wilder not gone insane? Then again, perhaps he had.
Before the fireteam broke up, the four fighting members had one directive—follow the thinker. And the thinker had one directive—form a team and prepare for the Purpose. I was the fireteam now. I knew that I needed to prepare like I needed to breathe. But I had no idea for what.
Only focusing on Howell and that immediate mission made it bearable to ignore the pulsing Purpose.
The moment the jet landed, I pushed through the door and ran toward HAL.
I found Luther in the main corridor.
“Where’s Dad?” I asked.
Luther described the lab, so I put him over my shoulder and started to run.
“You’re … brutish … again!” Luther said, his stomach thumping against my shoulder.
“And Howell is evil,” I said. How had I not realized it before?
“I knew it.” Luther clapped his hands as if high-fiving himself.
I peeked into the lab. Dad in a hospital bed. Howell and Dragon and the triplets, looking recovered from the surprise gassing. The lab smell was familiar—disinfectant, grease, food, and the burn of electricity. It reminded me of those first post-Beanstalk days when I was nothing but a walking headache, and my stomach rolled with the memory of nausea.
“I’m going to have to be fast,” I told Luther. “You stay here. Stay!”
“Yes, Empress,” said Luther with a mock salute.
I ran into the lab. I must have looked pretty aggressive because Hairy, Scary, and Larry moved forward, standing shoulder-to-shoulder before a cowering Howell.
I moved them all aside with a running shove and grabbed Howell by her neck. She squeezed her eyes shut.
“How are you, Dad?” I asked over my shoulder.
“Okay.” His voice was sluggish, drugged. “What’s going on?”
“I want my parents safe,”
I said to Howell. “And Luther. Safe from you all. Forever.”
“Of course.” Dragon’s hands were in the air as if this were a stickup. “You’re all safe.”
“I want a promise—” Frakking flatscans. What good was a promise? I could feel the thump of Howell’s pulse against my wrist, the echo of it in her thin bones. It would be so easy to stop her for good. And Dragon. All of them. I thought of biblical Samson, tricked into a haircut and losing his strength, blinded and weak. He got his power back for just a moment and used it to knock down the pillars of a great house, killing everybody who had hurt him. I so got Samson just then. I didn’t like being lied to, being blind. I wanted to rip this building to shreds.
Howell whimpered against my arm. I shoved her back and showed her the complete mark on my chest.
“You’ve seen this somewhere before,” I said. “I want to know everything you know. And if you stall or lie or—”
“I’ll show you,” Howell said, her hands trembling. “I’ll show you the whole sh-sh-shebang.”
Was she lying again? I positioned myself in front of Dad. It was strange to think there was a time when I wasn’t always afraid.
Dragon put out his hand, an offering to shake. “You’ll all be safe. On my grandmother’s grave, who was a good woman, and on my mother’s, who wasn’t. None of us here will harm any of you.”
“They’re my family, Dragon.” My voice broke. “They’re fragile. I am sick of trusting people who hurt me. I want out of this.”
“There’s no out anymore,” he said. “Not for you.”
The words were a hard slap, but I knew at least they were true.
“Is she going to kill me or not, Dragon?” Howell asked.
He studied my face, one eyebrow lifted. “Not yet,” he said.
Howell sighed. “Good. Then let’s proceed, shall we? A world to save, blah, blah, blah.”
I pushed Dad’s hospital bed into the private bedroom that had been mine once and asked Luther to watch over him and make sure he slept. I moved a massively heavy steel shelving unit in front of their door. They were temporarily trapped, but at least no one could get in.
