by Rob Vlock
“I’m starving,” he complained. “Can we go out to get something to eat?”
“No,” Alicia snapped instantly. “It’s not safe.”
“But what’s the point of hiding out if we’re only going to starve to death?” he argued. “I need food.”
“Fine,” Alicia snorted. “Fine.”
She snatched up the phone, jabbed at a button, and cleared her throat. “Hallo, this is Mrs. Schmidt in room two fifty-four. We would like to be eating three pepperoni pizzas. Please have room service send them up right away. Ja, ja. Good-bye.”
She slammed the phone down. “Happy?”
None of us was.
As we waited in awkward, angry silence for room service to arrive, my fingers again started drumming against the chair.
They stilled when a knock rattled the door in its frame.
Knock, knock, knock.
Alicia positioned herself behind the bathroom door, where she could get a jump on anyone coming into the room.
“Relax,” I said. “It’s just our food. Probably.”
“I’m not taking any chances. Answer it,” she hissed, glowering at me.
Her reaction kindled a spark of anxiety in my chest. I took a few deep breaths. Blood pounded in my ears as I slowly moved to the door and turned the handle. Gritting my teeth and bracing myself for the worst, I pulled the door open.
There, in the corridor right outside our room, was . . .
CHAPTER 29.0:
< value= [A Meal to Remember] >
. . . OUR DINNER.
A metal room service cart covered with a crisp white tablecloth stood in the hallway. On top were three plates with shiny metal covers.
I let out a long breath, and the tension loosened in my shoulders. It was just our dinner.
“Good, I’m starving,” Will said, wheeling the cart into our room.
I lifted the cover from one of the plates. But what I revealed wasn’t a pepperoni pizza. It was a whole roast chicken. “Huh. They must have gotten the order mixed up.”
I pulled the covers from the other two plates. Two more roast chickens.
“This sucks,” Will complained. “I want pizza.” He was already looking for the room service button on the phone. “We should get them to fix our order. I hate—”
He froze.
“What’s wrong?” Alicia asked, sitting bolt upright on the bed, where she had stretched out.
Will’s eyes were wide. “Th-that chicken just moved.”
“Dude, you’re totally craz—”
But he was right. One of the chickens was actually moving. It wiggled its little drumsticks like it was trying to escape from the plate and avoid being eaten. The other two chickens started to do the same.
“I—I’m not hungry anymore,” Will stammered.
The three chickens struggled to their . . . well, they struggled to where their feet would have been if they still had feet. They stood up on their bony little drumsticks and unfolded their wings. But these wings weren’t tasty little morsels glazed with buffalo sauce.
No, these wings grew as they unfolded, telescoping until they were almost the length of my arm. They were muscular and powerful, each ending in a lethal-looking, three-inch talon.
For roast chickens, they were surprisingly agile. In unison, they leapt from the tray and launched themselves toward Will, Alicia, and me, their pointy talons slashing the air, seeking to sink themselves into our bodies.
Will scrambled across the room, his eyes trained on the sanctuary of the closet. He launched himself inside and pulled the door shut, a razor-sharp claw splitting the air where his face had been just a millisecond before.
Enraged, his chicken threw itself at the closet door, sending splinters flying as it punched holes in the polished wood.
“I don’t even like chicken!” Will screamed from inside the closet.
Alicia ducked as one of the monstrous chickens lashed out at her with a vicious swing. Brandishing her knife, she hacked at the nearest wing, managing to sever it from the rest of the carcass.
But even losing a wing didn’t deter the fiendish piece of poultry. It swooped low, then launched itself at her again. With a quick lunge, she buried her knife up to the hilt in chicken breast.
Sparks shot out of the chicken with an electric crackle, and the smell of burning poultry filled the room. The dead bird slid off Alicia’s knife and fell with a dull thud to the floor. It didn’t move.
“Sven!” Alicia yelled. “They’re Ticks! Go for the center of the chest! The CPU’s in the chest!”
A talon arced toward my eye. I twisted away from it, the rush of wind left in its wake ruffling my hair. “Go for the chest? With what?” I cried.
I held up my empty hands to make my point.
“Here,” Alicia called, tossing her knife to me.
The weapon sailed end over end toward me. I reached out to grab it.
And I caught it.
By the blade.
Aaarrgghhh!
I yanked my hand back and the knife seemed to fall in slow motion, tumbling toward my shoe until it stopped.
In my shoe. Point first.
I was actually glad that Fake Me was wearing my regular shoes. I had a pair of Dr. Shallix’s ugly tan suede ones on, and they were way too big for me. The point of the knife narrowly missed my big toe and sank into the sole, sticking out of the top of my shoe, handle up.
If my chicken had had a face, I think it would have been laughing at me. It shook with amusement for a moment, then propelled itself off the blue-and-gray carpet, did a single flip in the air, and punched its talon right through my shoulder, pinning me painfully to the wall behind me.
I wrenched at the wing that had impaled my shoulder, but it was stuck too deeply into the wall. I was trapped. The chicken’s free wing arced straight for my head. I raised my left arm just in time to catch the other talon in the meat of my forearm.
More pain.
“Help!” I called to Alicia.
But she had problems of her own. Will’s chicken, having given up on getting into the closet, turned toward her and launched itself at her head.
Without her knife, all she could do was punch and claw at the bird. That may have helped tenderize the meat, but it didn’t do anything to stop the creature from trying to kill her.
She needed her knife. It was still sticking out of my shoe, but I couldn’t reach it with my shoulder pinned to the wall.
So I flipped the knife to Alicia with my foot. Only it didn’t really work out that way. Sure, the blade slid out of my shoe when I kicked forward. But instead of sailing in a graceful arc over to Alicia’s waiting hand, it went straight up and stuck into the ceiling.
“Dude, why the heck did you do that?” Alicia screamed at me.
“Sorry,” I grunted, wrestling with the homicidal roast chicken. “I was trying to give it to you.”
“Well, you didn’t,” she responded angrily.
I rolled my eyes. “Thanks for pointing that out.”
My eyes stung as my chicken drew its sharp claw from the muscle of my forearm, dripping a trail of my blood on the carpet. The searing pain almost rivaled the pain in my shoulder where the other talon still had me stapled to the wall.
Waves of agony pulsed through my body. The only thought in my head was that if I didn’t get away fast, I was done for. But the thing had refocused on trying to embed its free talon in my face.
My eyeballs rolled back in my head as I dodged weakly. The murderous entrée was readying to deliver its death blow.
Even then, as I was fighting the piece of poultry that was trying to end my life, my stupid compulsion kicked in. I flicked my tongue out and licked the chicken. It tasted . . . well, like chicken.
Then something unexpected happened.
Well, I mean, something other than being attacked by a trio of roast chickens. The knife that I had kicked into the ceiling suddenly dropped free, tipped over until it was point down, and buried itself up to the h
ilt in the lethal fowl.
A crackle. Burned chicken smoke. And my roast chicken dropped dead to the floor.
Alicia writhed on the carpet, wrestling with the last remaining chicken. Glistening with melted chicken fat, the thing was so slippery that every time she got hold of a wing, the chicken would wrench it out of her grasp and attack her with it again.
I retrieved the knife from the chicken at my feet, took a step forward, and plunged it into Alicia’s foe. Like the others, it sizzled, burned, and dropped.
Alicia got up and kicked it across the room. It hit the closet door with a thud. Will whimpered from inside.
“It’s okay,” I called to him. “We got them.”
One eye appeared as the closet door opened an inch. Will surveyed the room—once he saw for himself that all three chickens had been vanquished, he stepped out.
“That was . . . weird,” he said feebly, then collapsed into a chair.
CHAPTER 30.0:
< value= [I Freak Myself Out] >
I STAGGERED INTO THE BATHROOM to see what kind of damage the chicken had done. I was a mess. Blood trickled freely out of the hole in my shoulder. The deep gash in my forearm gaped and seeped. My hand throbbed and burned where Alicia’s knife had cut it open.
Just as I was about to run out to grab the phone and call 911, the damaged tissue on my shoulder prickled with a strange tingling sensation. Like ants crawling all over the area. As I watched, the wound started to close in on itself and went from bloody to scarred to completely healed within a minute or two.
It must have been what Alicia was talking about—my emergency repair system kicking in. Just like what happened when I wiped out on my bike.
I expected my hand and forearm to heal as well, but they simply kept dripping blood and stinging with persistent pain.
A gentle knocking sounded at the door.
“Come in,” I called as I let the blood from my hand drip into the sink.
The door swung open and Alicia stepped in. “Are you okay, Sven? It looked like that chicken got you pretty good.”
I held up my hand in reply.
“Nice.” She smiled grimly. “I have bandages. Let me grab them.”
She stepped out of the bathroom, then reentered a few seconds later holding a clean white bandage roll.
“Is there anything you don’t have in that backpack?” I asked.
“Yeah, another Tick popper. That would be helpful.” She wet a towel and began cleaning the blood from my right hand and left forearm.
I winced in pain.
“Sorry, almost done,” she said gently, holding my gaze with an intense, green-eyed stare.
“What?” I asked once I started feeling a little uncomfortable.
She turned away and reached for the bandage. “Nothing.”
“It had to be something,” I pressed. “You were looking at me like I had two heads.”
“It’s just that . . . I don’t know . . . you’re different.”
My shoulders sagged. “Yeah, ‘different.’ That’s one word for it. Most kids just call me ‘weirdo’ or ‘freak.’ But ‘different’ is a little nicer.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she responded. “I mean you’re different from any of the Ticks . . . sorry, Synthetics I’ve seen before.”
“Different how? Like I don’t have the body of a snake and a clown nose and a rainbow wig?”
The corners of her lips pulled up into the hint of a smile. “Yes, that, too. But what I really mean is you’re actually kind of . . . I mean, I kind of . . . well, you’re the first one I don’t want to introduce to the business end of a Tick popper.”
I blushed. It wasn’t that she’d said anything mushy or whatever. But it was still the nicest thing a girl had ever said to me.
She tied off the bandage on my arm and quickly wrapped my hand. “There you go. Did you get hit anywhere else?”
I gestured to my shoulder. “This one healed itself.”
“I guess your CPU must have considered that one too major to leave unrepaired.” She gently touched the hole in my shirt with her finger. “Jeez, a few inches to the right and it would have hit your recirculator.”
“My what?”
“Your recirculator. It’s what Ticks have instead of hearts.”
“Do I need that?”
“Yeah.” She laughed. “You need your heart.”
“Well, then I’m lucky it wasn’t a few inches to the right,” I said, putting my hand on my chest.
“Yeah . . . lucky.” Her smile was replaced by a look of uncertainty.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong,” she replied in a carefree voice. But the way she bit her lip made it pretty obvious that she was feeling anything but carefree.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out why.
“Wait, you still think they’re not trying to kill me, don’t you? Even after I refused Squirrel Shallix’s offer? You still think that, what . . . I’m on their side or something?”
She shook her head too vigorously. “No. I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t need to say it. I saw it in your eyes.”
“Sven, I didn’t . . . that’s not what I . . .” Her shoulders sagged and she let out a long, slow breath. Then she silently rose to her feet, pulled open the door, and walked out of the bathroom, leaving me alone with everything she didn’t say.
I touched the healed area on my shoulder. Other than the ragged hole in my shirt, you’d never have known anything had happened.
I should have been relieved that I healed so quickly.
I wasn’t.
The sight of my body doing something so . . . inhuman reminded me of what I was. And what I wasn’t. I wasn’t a kid. Not really. I was a thing. An it. Just like the fake Will that got its head blown up in the school yard. I looked just like that on the inside. I didn’t have a brain. I had a CPU. I didn’t even have a heart. I had a recirculator.
When I raised my head, I was startled by the image of the boy I saw in the mirror. It was me, of course. I didn’t look any different than I had just a few days before. But now I somehow felt that it was a stranger staring back at me. A stranger who was just hours away from doing something horrible that would kill every human on Earth. And I had no idea what!
The disconnect between the person I always thought I was and the thing I actually was made me feel like I was being torn in two. Alicia and Dr. Shallix might be at war with each other. But me? I was at war with myself.
I blinked back the tears that began pooling in the corners of my eyes and turned my mind to practicalities. Those were easier to think about. Like when the next attack would come. Because it seemed to me that it really was just a question of when, not if. I mean, those chickens didn’t arrange themselves on plates with a garnish of parsley and lemon wedges, hide themselves under lids, and deliver themselves to our room. Somebody put them there. Somebody who was in the hotel.
I bent over to lick the toilet seat nervously, then came out of the bathroom to find Alicia and Will already discussing it.
“Why roast chickens?” Will asked. “Why not just a couple of guys with guns?”
“Think about it,” Alicia replied. “It was a sneak attack. They got into our room without creating a commotion. If they had sent a guy to kill us, there’s no way we would have just let him in without making a scene. And we know a scene is the last thing Shallix wants. As for guns, they never use them. It’s like they think it’s wrong to take advantage of lesser machines or something. Or maybe they just like getting up close and personal when they kill people. I don’t know. But they always fight hand-to-hand. Or chicken-wing-to-hand, as the case may be.”
Alicia stopped talking abruptly and eyed me, unable to let it go.
I sat down on the bed across from her. “You don’t really think I’m on their side, do you?” I breathed.
“I didn’t say that.”
“It’s not what you said. It’s how you look at m
e. You don’t trust me.”
She dropped her gaze to the blue-and-gray-patterned carpet on the floor.
Dead silence filled the room.
I guess I had assumed that by now, Alicia accepted me as an ally. But the look on her face was a blunt reminder that if it came down to it, she’d do what she had to do to save humanity. She’d kill me before she’d let Dr. Shallix get me back. And, of course, Dr. Shallix would probably do something far worse than killing me.
My stomach churned. Alicia wouldn’t look me in the eye. It was clear my chances of making it to my thirteenth birthday alive were dropping by the minute.
I wanted to reassure her, convince her that I was on her side. But I couldn’t find the words.
My best friend found them for me.
“Come on, Alicia,” Will said gently. “This is Sven. He’s been like a brother to me for as long as I can remember. He’s not trying to hurt anyone. I promise you that. I promise.”
He paused to take a deep breath, then continued, his voice beginning to shake. “You know what? When everyone else used to laugh at me and call me names because of my OCD, he always came to my defense. Always. In third grade, he got a bottle of glue dumped over his head for telling Brandon Marks to stop calling me Bizarro Boy and Sir Touch-a-Lot. In fourth grade, he got sent to the principal’s office for saying he was the one who kept hiding all the blue markers in art class so I wouldn’t get in trouble, because I used to have this thing against the color blue and kept dropping all the blue markers down the air vent at the back of the room. He was always there for me. I mean, this is Sven we’re talking about. He’s my best . . .”
Will’s bottom lip quivered, and he rubbed his eyes with the back of one huge hand.
Alicia just looked at me without saying a word. Which was good, because the lump in my throat was way too big for me to talk around.
“Listen . . . ,” Alicia began after a long silence.
Whatever she was going to say, she didn’t get to finish. There was another knock at the door.
CHAPTER 31.0:
< value= [I Decide to Get a New Hobby] >
