Under Their Skin

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Eryn had had it with that “family vacation” pretense.

  “I think what your parents—and mine—didn’t tell us was that they mostly want to lay low for a while,” she said. She narrowed her eyes at Michael. “Right? Because of the attention on Nick and me, you’re more afraid than ever that someone’s going to find out the truth about Ava and Jackson. Aren’t you?”

  “Well, um . . . ,” Michael said, darting his eyes toward Ava and Jackson.

  “Dad?” Ava said, her voice high and panicky. “Mom?”

  Brenda put her arm around Ava’s shoulder.

  “This will just be a wonderful adventure out in nature,” Brenda said soothingly. “Surrounded by people you love. And by people who love you.”

  You don’t go camp out in the woods in the middle of winter to have a wonderful adventure in nature, Eryn thought. You only do that in the spring, summer, or fall.

  She’d just been throwing out a random accusation, but everything made sense. Keeping Ava and Jackson out in the woods also kept them away from electronic surveillance, from the danger that anyone else would find out that they weren’t human children.

  Good grief, Eryn thought. How long do the grown-ups plan to keep Ava and Jackson here? How long do they plan to keep us here?

  Michael stepped toward Eryn.

  “Please don’t say anything else to set my kids off,” he said under his breath. “They’re at a very fragile stage of their development, both of them.”

  And Nick and I aren’t? Eryn wanted to spit back at him. Aren’t we fragile because of the big revelation we heard just a couple of days ago? Aren’t we’re in danger of going extinct? The fact that everyone like us could die—doesn’t that prove we’re fragile?

  She bit her tongue. It would be easier to sneak out later and go back to the cave if she acted like she was going along with things now.

  “Hey, Ava, let’s go look for dry wood we can use for kindling,” Eryn called. “I’m sure you’ll feel a lot better once we’re sitting around a roaring fire. And I don’t know about your dad, but I bet my dad brought marshmallows for us to roast!”

  Dad grinned and began unzipping his backpack. Eryn wasn’t sure if he really had brought marshmallows, or if he was just teasing them with the possibility. Mom nodded approvingly. Jackson picked up a handful of sticks.

  Eryn couldn’t believe that the others seemed to be falling for her suggestion.

  Either that, or they were as desperate to keep up a pretense as she was.

  FORTY-SIX

  The grown-ups aren’t worried about smoke giving away our location, Nick thought, lying on the ground later that night and staring into the fire that all four of the kids had helped build. They’re not worried about anything but electronic tracking.

  Of course, that was because they were robots, and they were only worried about other robots finding them. As far as Nick knew, smoke could only be detected by others nearby, and obviously the eight of them were miles away from the nearest living soul. Or the nearest functioning robot.

  Nick snuggled deeper beneath the “blanket” Mom had tucked him under for the night—which was mostly just leaves piled on top of his coat and jeans. A log collapsed in the fire, sending off a burst of sparks, which quickly faded into the darkness. On the other side of the fire, Ava and Jackson didn’t even jump.

  Have they finally fallen asleep? Nick wondered.

  “It’s a shame we don’t have pillows and blankets to make it look like we’re tucked in and sleeping soundly like good little kids, even when we aren’t,” Eryn whispered beside him.

  “We could leave our coats behind, wrapped around logs,” Nick whispered back.

  Even he wasn’t sure this was a good idea—it was pretty cold outside—but he could tell that Eryn was shrugging her coat off next to him. If she was willing to risk the cold, how could he chicken out?

  Nick cast a quick glance at the lumps arrayed around the fire a little farther out than Ava and Jackson: Mom, Michael, Dad, and Brenda. Dad seemed to be snoring, and his messy hair cast odd shadows blowing about in the slight breeze.

  None of the other adults moved. Were they all asleep?

  “We’ll go quietly, one at a time, and wait by that tree over there,” Eryn whispered, pointing downhill into darkness. “If anyone notices us leaving, we can just say we have to pee.”

  Nick nodded, feeling grateful that Eryn had everything figured out. Silently he eased off his coat, slid it to the ground, and piled leaves on top of it. That was good enough. The coat alone would look like a sleeping body, as long as nobody looked too closely. But now he had on only a flannel shirt and jeans, and he couldn’t resist rubbing his arms.

  “It’ll be warmer in the cave,” Eryn whispered. “Aren’t caves a constant temperature year-round?”

  She tiptoed past him. When she reached the tree she’d pointed at before, she gave a quick glance around and then signaled for Nick to follow.

  Nick looked once more at everyone sleeping by the fire. Nobody had moved. He decided it was safe to tiptoe toward Eryn.

  “We’re going to need some kind of light,” he whispered. “I could barely see you signaling. Should we take a branch from out of the fire? Like, make it into some kind of torch?”

  “I already swiped Michael’s flashlight when he wasn’t looking,” Eryn said, holding out the pocket of her sweatshirt. That must be where she’d stashed it.

  “Sweet!” Nick said. “But—did you get back-up batteries? What if it dies when we’re halfway into the cave and we can’t get back out?”

  Something about going into a dangerous place to find out what had once killed off his entire species made him unusually cautious. Almost panicky, though he didn’t want Eryn to see that.

  “This is Michael’s flashlight we’re talking about,” Eryn said. “It’s high-tech, with every bell and whistle. And a battery-life gauge. It looks like it’s got thirty hours left. We’ll be fine. But I want to wait until we’re away from camp before I turn it on.”

  The two of them started easing down the hillside they’d run down before. It was harder than ever in the dark, and Nick kept tripping. He looked back, and they were far enough away now that he could no longer see the fire, only smoke.

  “It’d be better for you to turn that flashlight on now, than for us to wake up everyone screaming when we fall to the bottom of the hill,” he told Eryn.

  He expected her to argue just on principle, but she pulled the flashlight out of her pocket and switched it on. The weak glow seemed to make barely a dent in the darkness around them. Having a little light was almost scarier, because it cast such shadows.

  Eryn linked her elbow through Nick’s.

  “This way, if one of us starts to fall, the other one can catch him,” she whispered.

  Nick could have said, Catch “him”? You think I’d be the one to fall? He could have said, Wait—doesn’t this make it more likely that if one of us starts to fall, both of us do?

  But he kind of liked holding on to Eryn, and having her hold on to him.

  He didn’t say anything, just held on tighter.

  Slowly, gradually, slipping and sliding, they made their way down the hill. When they reached the bottom, the cave opening seemed even more enormous than before. Eryn shone her flashlight into the heart of it, but the paltry beam was just swallowed up; the cave seemed like nothing but a pit of darkness.

  Eryn giggled.

  “If they really wanted to keep people out, don’t you think they should have used something more than chains?” she asked. She let go of Nick to step over the rusty links. “A barbed-wire fence, maybe? An electrified fence?”

  Nick held his breath, but nothing happened to Eryn. A sinkhole didn’t open up in the ground to swallow her up. The ceiling of the cave didn’t fall on her head.

  He stepped over the chains as well.

/>   “I guess they thought the signs would do the trick,” Nick said. “They thought people would obey the signs.”

  He slid his feet tentatively forward. The ground under his feet felt perfectly solid and safe.

  Eryn snorted.

  “They thought robots would obey the signs,” she said. “Robots follow rules. That’s what they’re programmed to do.”

  Nick put his hand on Eryn’s arm.

  “Eryn—how many times have you ever seen a grown-up break a rule?” he asked. “Except for Michael and Brenda making Ava and Jackson, have you ever seen a grown-up do anything wrong?”

  He racked his brain, trying to think of even the most minor infraction. Dropping a wad of gum on the school floor? Switching cafeteria trays to get someone else’s larger serving of chocolate pudding? Shoving a friend’s books off his desk because you were mad? He’d seen lots of kids do stuff like that, but never a grown-up.

  “Dad yelled at us that one time,” Eryn said. “When we were asking him questions about Ava and Jackson.”

  “He barely raised his voice,” Nick scoffed. “And . . . it was connected to Ava and Jackson. Those are the only things we can think of.”

  He put aside everything he wondered about Ava and Jackson, because something else intrigued him more right now.

  “I always thought grown-ups didn’t break rules just because they were grown-ups,” he said. “And . . . that we’d be like that too, in another ten or twenty years. But we won’t, will we? Geez, what do you think the world’s going to be like once it’s all humans in charge again?”

  Eryn took the thought in a completely different direction.

  “What do you bet those signs were just there to keep out the robots, then?” she asked. “I bet this cave is perfectly safe, it’s just that there are tons of secrets here. Not just about the extinction, but—everything! Everything we humans need to find out for ourselves!”

  “But—” Nick started to object. It seemed like there might be lots of dangers connected to what they’d both just figured out.

  It was too late. Eryn was already rushing ahead of him, deeper into the cave.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Everything about the cave terrified Eryn. It was so dark—her flashlight beam seemed practically useless against the thick blackness pressing in on her and Nick. And with so little ability to see, she found that even the tiniest sound was magnified and turned horrific. Water dripped ominously somewhere farther in, again and again and again.

  Then she heard a sound like a pebble falling.

  Is that going to turn into an avalanche of falling rock? Eryn wondered. Right on top of us? Were we total idiots for ignoring the “keep out” signs, and now we’re going to die for our own stupidity?

  Mom and Dad would be so sad. Even if they were robots.

  Eryn froze, but the sound stopped. And then she forced herself to go on. Each step reminded her exactly how much she was a child of civilization. She wanted bright glowing electric lights that banished any hint of shadow from every corner of the cave. For that matter, she didn’t even want to be in a cave—she’d rather be looking for answers in clean, tidy rooms with no strange sounds that might be bats or mice or the beginnings of a rockslide.

  But she kept going. She did her best not to let Nick see how scared she was.

  Then something struck her that she couldn’t help sharing.

  “Remember back at the beginning, when we first heard about Ava and Jackson?” she asked Nick, even as they inched deeper and deeper into the darkness. “Didn’t you think, Oh, if I just find out what sports they play, or whether they like art or music—then I’ll know what they’re like?”

  “I guess,” Nick said.

  “That’s not even true about us,” Eryn said. “Maybe it is for some kids, but . . . I don’t care that much about tennis or being in the school play. I don’t even think you care that much about lacrosse. This is what we’re like. This is our true identities. That we nagged Mom to bring us down here. That we’re walking into a supposedly dangerous cave because we have to get answers.”

  “Is that just what we’re like, or is that what all humans are like?” Nick asked quietly.

  “I don’t know,” Eryn admitted.

  They kept creeping forward. Every few steps, Eryn would sweep the flashlight all around, in case there was something important off to the side or overhead they might have missed otherwise.

  There never was. Rock, rock, dripping rock, shadowy rock . . .

  Eryn took a few more steps, stopped, and did another sweep with the flashlight.

  “What’s that?” Nick gasped.

  Eryn moved her flashlight ever so slightly backward and squinted into the shadows.

  “I don’t see anything,” she said.

  “Isn’t that a doorknob?” Nick asked, pointing.

  Eryn was about to say, It’s just another rock. Rock formations look like doorknobs all the time. Especially in caves. But just to be sure, she took a step toward the wall Nick was pointing at. She held the flashlight steadier.

  It was a doorknob they were both staring at. Surrounded by a door built solidly into a doorframe in the rock wall.

  “Who would put a door in a cave?” Eryn asked, rushing forward. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Humans don’t make sense,” Nick whispered. He was right on her heels.

  They had to climb over a small pile of rock rubble on the floor, which made Eryn think uncomfortably of rock falls, but they kept going.

  “If it’s locked, we’ll figure out how to pick it,” Nick said. “We’ve got experience.”

  Eryn moaned.

  “I don’t have any bobby pins with me,” she said. “I didn’t think—”

  “We’ll find a really sturdy twig,” Nick said. “Or we’ll figure out how to rig up the batteries from the flashlight into some kind of explosive and blow the door open.”

  “You’re crazy!” Eryn said, half laughing and half convinced she’d be right there with him building bombs, if need be.

  But she reached for the doorknob, and none of that mattered.

  The doorknob turned easily as soon as she grasped it. The door swung open.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  “Shine the light in—let me see!” Nick called, grabbing for the flashlight in Eryn’s hand so he could direct its beam too.

  The light beam spun crazily, out of control. With both of them trying to move it, it zoomed over everything too quickly for Nick to figure out what he was seeing. But Eryn gasped, “Oooo, there’s a light switch!”

  Nick started to complain, That’s not going to work. Not after centuries. But Eryn had already reached over to the wall beside them and flipped the switch.

  Light poured down on them from above. After all the darkness, this was like being doused in light, being drenched with it.

  It was so bright, Nick couldn’t see.

  He blinked frantically, his eyes finally managing to focus on the center of the door they’d just opened.

  There was another “Keep out!” sign on it. Before, he’d been too intent on the doorknob to notice.

  “Oh, right, because they didn’t already tell us to keep out,” Nick muttered.

  “No, Nick, look,” Eryn said.

  Her hand shook as she pointed at small print at the bottom of the sign: “Absolutely no robots allowed past this point. No robots allowed into this room.”

  “We were right,” Eryn whispered. “They did want humans to be the first to find this secret.”

  Because . . . it’s so much fun finding out for ourselves how people can all die? Nick thought uncomfortably.

  “Finally we can find out how to save humanity,” Eryn said, almost as if she knew what Nick was thinking, and she wanted to flip his ideas around.

  Nick blinked again—just like Mom—and turned away from
the door, toward the open room before him. It had a black-and-white tile floor that reminded him of the cafeteria at school. The walls were a pleasant light gray. And the only furniture was a glass-topped desk right in the center of the room.

  “Their technology had to have been more advanced than ours,” Eryn said in a hushed voice. Nick wasn’t sure if she was whispering because she was awestruck or because she was scared. “Remember, they had already gotten past the early twenty-first century. That’s why they have lights that will still turn on after hundreds of years. And this room must have been airtight. Look how there aren’t any spiderwebs or dust or mouse droppings. . . .”

  Nick stepped forward, and he knew he was leaving footprints, since his shoes were dirty from walking through the cave. He shoved the door shut behind him so at least they wouldn’t let anything worse in.

  He was mostly just relieved that they hadn’t found skeletons.

  “Okay, so to find out all the secrets, we’re probably going to have to figure out how to operate something that’s, like, the great-great-grandson of an iPad,” Nick said. “Whatever we’re looking for, I bet it’s in that desk.”

  Together the two of them walked to the desk. But there wasn’t any sign of anything like an iPad. The glass on the top of the desk was smoky and impossible to see through. And though they both tried to get a grip on the glass to lift it, it seemed to be locked down tight.

  “Maybe the desk itself is the computer?” Eryn suggested. “Like maybe computers got big again, instead of always getting smaller? Where do you think we turn it on?”

  She began feeling along the sides of the desk.

  “Doesn’t this kind of remind you of something?” Nick asked. “Like . . . remember when Mom took us to Washington, D.C., and showed us the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives?”

  “You think this is the same kind of display case?” Eryn asked. “What’d the guide call the ones there—‘hermetically sealed’?”