In Over Their Heads

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “I’m . . . fine,” Jackson muttered.

  He sounded anything but fine. The woman bent closer and reached for the pulse point on his neck.

  She isn’t going to move, Eryn thought. Not unless we push her away.

  So Eryn did.

  “Seriously,” Eryn said, shoving against the woman’s shoulders. “There’s nothing wrong with Jackson, but we all need to get out of this area. I didn’t want to admit this before, but . . . there was a rockslide up ahead, and so our guide, Lida Mae, told us to turn around and go back, and that’s when Jackson, uh, panicked a little and lay down. But everything will be okay if we all just turn around. . . .”

  Eryn sounded exactly like what she was: a kid making up a story to fool adults.

  A kid telling lies.

  A dozen flashlight beams at once swung toward the open portion of the room, the place where Eryn claimed there was a rockslide. The place where all the motionless baby and toddler and kid robots were waiting.

  “No,” Eryn gasped.

  Her lie had totally backfired. The official-looking man she’d held back before squeezed past her and Jackson and the EMT.

  “Is that . . . ?” he muttered. He squinted, a man in a dark tailored suit who suddenly seemed unstoppable. A man who’d already seen too much. “Are those . . . children?”

  The entire crowd of adults swarmed toward the robot children and babies. A woman in a police uniform raced out ahead of the rest. Jackson moaned, “No! Don’t arrest me again! I . . . I can explain. . . .”

  But the policewoman didn’t even glance his way. She dashed past the man in the lead and put her hands against his chest, holding him back.

  “Don’t look!” she cried. “I promise you—”

  “Promise me what?” the lead man asked. He ran his flashlight beam up and down the rows of cribs and children, one after the other. “I don’t understand. Every robot baby was supposed to be destroyed eleven years ago. Every robot toddler was supposed to be destroyed ten years ago. This row of children nine years ago, this row of children eight years ago . . . With every age the growing human children reached, all the robot children that age were supposed to be destroyed. They were needed only as placeholders and role models. We have human children now who are already twelve years old. Why do these younger robot children still exist? Why weren’t the instructions followed?”

  Beside Eryn, Ava took a step back into the shadows. But the policewoman grabbed the lead man’s arm.

  “Please,” the policewoman begged, “don’t you see? Those instructions never made sense. They were just . . . wrong. It’s wrong to take the life of any sentient being—human or robot. Loving parents who had cared for children for a year, two years, ten years, eleven—how could any loving parent then treat their child like . . . like a piece of trash only worth recycling?”

  “It’s what we were programmed to do,” the lead man said. “It’s for the good of society.”

  “It is not for the good of society,” the policewoman said. She had switched from begging to sounding more like a judge. “It is a contradiction of everything the new human society should stand for. So . . . parents followed a higher law than their programming. They brought their children here. In secret. To wait until the humans are in charge again. Since we are raising the humans to be good and kind—and not so bound by rigid programming—they will allow these children to return. . . .”

  Oh, Eryn thought, and she was so surprised she almost laughed. This woman thinks humans are going to be nicer than robots! She thinks we’re going to care more about the robot children than the robots do!

  She thought about how close she had come to swinging the rock column at the baby in the crib. She would have done it if Nick hadn’t stopped her.

  But then she thought about how she and Nick had run out into a blizzard to try to rescue their parents. How they had agreed that they would never follow the instructions to kill all the robots in the world.

  Are humans truly kind after all? she wondered. Or are we more likely to be cruel? What are we supposed to be like? How are we designed?

  In front of her the man in the suit angrily shook the policewoman’s hand off his arm.

  “This—this is completely against protocol!” he sputtered. “This is a violation! As an officer of the law, you allowed people to come here to hide their children? Did you just turn a blind eye, or did you actively help them?”

  “You’re not seeing this the right way,” the policewoman said. She was back to pleading again.

  “I am seeing this exactly the right way!” the man in the suit shouted. “I see that this egregious violation must be fixed immediately!”

  He looked around frantically and picked up a long, thin rock from the ground. Maybe it was the same broken rock column Eryn had used. He swung the rock at the first row of motionless robot children. The policewoman dove in front of him. The rock slammed into the side of her head even as she screamed, “No! Don’t do this!”

  Maybe it wasn’t just the policewoman yelling, “No! Don’t do this!” The words were too loud to come from only one voice. Maybe Nick and Lida Mae and Ava and Jackson and some of the robot officials were screaming the same thing. Maybe even Eryn herself was screaming. Everyone around Eryn—even Nick—started running toward the suited man and the policewoman and the rows of children.

  But the sound of screaming was too loud to be just from their small crowd of robots and humans. Maybe the cave itself was screaming. The cave seemed to be . . . shifting. Eryn spun her flashlight beam toward the rock wall behind the rows of robot children, and something like double vision hit her eyes. The wall stayed in place, but at the same time a massive creature separated from the wall, stepping out on legs of bulging rocklike muscles, swinging arms and hands that looked capable of crushing anything.

  Somehow in all the screaming, Eryn could hear a whisper beside her: Ava gasping, “There were killer robots hidden here too?”

  FORTY-FIVE

  Ava

  Ava clutched Lida Mae’s arm.

  We’re the only ones who understand what we’re seeing, Ava thought.

  Lida Mae whipped her head back toward Ava. Her braids flew wildly.

  “My family thought all the killer robots went extinct!” she screamed. “We thought after the humans were gone, the killer robots had no purpose and they just . . . ended! We’ve never seen any sign of them here. We didn’t think they’d be a threat ever again. Honest!”

  “I know!” Ava screamed back. That fit with everything she’d learned in the FOR ROBOT ACCESS ONLY room.

  But this was absolutely a killer robot emerging from the cave wall. This was absolutely a line of killer robots emerging alongside the first one. They stood nine or ten feet tall, their faces fierce and filled with hate, their bodies muscular under impenetrable-looking armor.

  Ava shivered, remembering the ancient scenes of destruction she’d glimpsed in the FOR ROBOT ACCESS ONLY room. She’d seen the battles between humans and robots; she’d seen robots loyal to humans murdered both by humans themselves and by the horrible killer robots they’d created.

  Still, she stepped in front of Nick and Eryn, to hide them.

  Lida Mae took off running toward the line of killer robots emerging from the wall.

  “You already won!” she screamed. “You killed all the humans centuries ago! There’s nothing left for you to do!”

  Ava resisted the temptation to glare back at Eryn and hiss, See, that’s how to tell a good lie! She hoped Nick and Eryn had the sense to crouch down, out of sight in the swarm of robots.

  But did it matter? Surely the killer robots had sensors to instantly detect the presence of humans. Even Lida Mae’s family had a sensor like that, and they didn’t have enough technology otherwise to maintain a full robot body.

  “Please . . . ,” Ava called, feebly.

  Oddly, none of the killer robots started advancing through the crowd, knocking everyone out of the way as they hunted down Nick and Eryn.


  Instead, improbably, the killer robot in the center laughed. It was a cold, cruel laugh, but it was a laugh nonetheless.

  “We were powerful enough to wipe out the human race,” he taunted in a horrible, gravelly voice. “Don’t you think we were powerful enough to evolve?”

  “We needed a larger purpose,” the killer robot beside him agreed, in an even more horrible voice. “Humans proved too easy to kill. Too inconsequential.”

  “But policing our own species?” the first one added. “Destroying robots who even consider killing their own kind? That’s a worthy challenge.”

  Ava suddenly realized that all the regular robot adults had fallen completely silent. They were frozen now, as if too stunned and confused to take any action. There was nothing in their programming for dealing with this situation.

  Ava felt exactly the same way.

  Then the man in the suit raised his rock column again.

  “What you’re saying—that’s despicable,” he said. He lowered the column slightly, as if something new had occurred to him. “Unless . . . could you be reprogrammed again to destroy these robot children? To take care of that for us? According to the proper plan? According to all of our original programming?”

  “WE WILL NOT DESTROY THESE ROBOT CHILDREN!” screamed the first killer robot who had emerged from the wall. Now his voice was beyond terrible. It was like hearing a gaping pit speak, like hearing evil itself. “WE USE THEM AS DECOYS! AS A TRAP TO FIND OUT WHO WILL ATTACK OTHER ROBOTS! LIKE YOU! WE FIND THIS OUT . . . SO WE CAN DESTROY ROBOTS LIKE YOU!”

  Numbly, Ava remembered the man in the suit smashing the policewoman to the ground. She remembered that he’d wanted to destroy the robot children.

  The middle killer robot raised a hand, and a narrow beam of light—a laser, perhaps—shot out.

  The man in the suit toppled over.

  “That’s not the right way to take care of these children!” Lida Mae cried. “To use them . . . That’s not the right way to live! Didn’t you learn anything from the robot-human wars?”

  “We learned to gather power for ourselves,” the lead killer robot said. “And we learned to wait patiently for the right time to use it.”

  “And the time is now!” the killer robot beside him screamed.

  He reached out—impossibly far—and swiped Lida Mae out of the way, sending her high into the air. Her body arced over all the rows of children and babies she’d been so determined to protect.

  And then she landed at the other end of the room with a sick-sounding thud.

  She didn’t get back up.

  Ava almost fell over with fear. She found herself on her knees beside Jackson.

  “Jackson!” she hissed at him. “You’re still strong, right? Help me get superstrong too, so we can hold off the killer robots and . . .”

  And let Eryn and Nick get away, she wanted to say. Let everyone else escape. Let that EMT find out if Lida Mae and the man in the suit are still alive or dead, and keep them alive, if possible. . . .

  But the lead killer robot strode forward, shoving the adults carelessly aside. He reached out—his arms stretching over half the crowd—and plucked up Ava and Jackson. He let them dangle high above the ground.

  “You dare to think you could challenge us?” he said. “You dare to think the puny improvements you made to your bodies and minds could last against robots specifically designed to kill?”

  “You—you said you’d changed,” Ava babbled. “Can’t you change . . . more? Why do you have to kill at all?”

  “Because we like it!” the killer robot replied. “It’s who we are! And look—this is how strong your brother is against us!”

  Ava saw him rear back, like a baseball pitcher preparing to throw. But it was Jackson he had balled up in his hand. It was Jackson he intended to fling against the wall.

  Ava reached for her brother, as if she still had hope that she could hold on to him and keep him safe. Her hand brushed skin, and she clutched her fingers together, grabbing desperately. Something came off in her hand: a cord. The cord she and Lida Mae had attached to Jackson’s neck to bring him back to consciousness.

  As Ava glanced at the cord, the killer robot hurled Jackson’s body through the air, toward the solid rock wall.

  FORTY-SIX

  Jackson

  I didn’t even get a chance to show how strong I am! Jackson thought, as the wind whistled past his ears. Nobody knows how much strength it’s taken to hold off the all-call from the robot network for so long, when my programming is screaming at me to let go, to tell everything. . . .

  And then he slammed against the wall. The impact was so much harder than he expected that it knocked the air out of his robotic lungs.

  It also knocked the resistance out of his mind.

  In the instant before he lost consciousness, he let everything he knew transfer to the robot network.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Nick

  Nick and Eryn ran toward the wall as if they actually thought they could catch Jackson as he slid down the rock. Nick could hear Ava and all the normal robot officials screaming behind him: “No!” “Don’t hurt him!” “Please . . .”

  And then it was only Ava screaming and pleading, “No, please . . .”

  All the normal adult robots went silent. And then, in unison, they let out a pained gasp.

  Ava changed what she was screaming.

  “Jackson, no!” she cried. “Keep resisting the all-call! Don’t let them know anything!”

  “I’d say it’s too late for that, girly,” the killer robot holding Ava taunted. Nick whirled around to see the killer robot shaking Ava back and forth. “Don’t you see all those robot faces, how they all looked identically shocked? I’d say everybody in front of me just found out the same information at the same time. . . . Maybe even I want to find out what it is. Troop, let’s link into the fool-robot network.”

  Nick turned and saw Jackson on the ground, his limbs askew. Maybe he’d broken an arm or a leg. Maybe he’d broken every fake bone in his body.

  He didn’t move.

  “Nick, look,” Eryn whispered, putting her hand on Nick’s arm and steering him back around to stare at the robots. They had all turned to face Nick and Eryn now, with identical glowers on all their faces.

  “Please,” Ava cried, still dangling from the giant killer robot’s hand. “Don’t be angry at my parents! They thought they were doing the right thing, creating Jackson and me . . .”

  The killer robot holding Ava didn’t even seem to hear her. His expression settled into the same glare as all the regular adult robots.

  “Those human children are holding instructions to kill every robot in the world?” the killer robot rumbled in his terrible voice. “The human children you were raising to be kind and gentle are already plotting against us? KILL THEM!”

  The entire pack of robots began advancing on Nick and Eryn—killer and regular robots together.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Eryn

  “No!” Eryn yelled. It was a useless word; it was useless to speak at all. She kept screaming anyway. “You don’t understand! We don’t want to kill anybody! Those instructions, those were from before. . . .”

  All the robots kept surging toward her and Nick. Were the robot officials coming to protect them? No—the robot officials’ faces were almost as menacing as the killer robots’.

  When the killer robots linked into the robot network, did they share their way of seeing the world? Eryn wondered. Have they changed the programming of every robot on the planet?

  “We’ve got to do something,” Nick muttered in her ear. “What can we do?”

  Eryn shook her head helplessly.

  “You’re supposed to take care of us!” Nick yelled at the robots coming toward them. “Not hurt us!”

  “Your generation of humans was supposed to be better!” one of the robot officials yelled back. “But you’re not! You’re just as murderous as your ancestors!”

  Something hit Er
yn for the first time: No matter how they’d been programmed, all the robots had hoped to survive. Or at least to have their robot children survive. It wasn’t just Nick and Eryn’s parents and stepparents who’d wanted that and created Ava and Jackson in defiance of the law. It wasn’t just the parents who’d hidden their babies and toddlers in this cave instead of letting them be destroyed. It was everyone. Maybe it was because robots were so similar to humans. Maybe they all had some humanity at their heart. Or maybe it was because anything alive had the instinct to hold on to life, to treasure it.

  The robots were still screaming: “We have to destroy you!” Eryn couldn’t even tell if it was killer robots or robot officials saying that.

  It’s not just Nick and me who are in danger, Eryn thought. It’s every other kid in the world, every embryo waiting to be born. . . .

  If Nick and Eryn didn’t figure out how to stop the robots, all of humanity could go extinct again. And this time it would be permanent.

  “KILL THEM! KILL THEM!” the giant monster robots at the back chanted, grinning gleefully, as if this was the most fun they’d ever had.

  Maybe it didn’t even matter how much the killer robots were influencing the others. Maybe any robot would become murderous, hearing about the instructions Nick and Eryn had gotten to kill their own parents, their own teachers—all the robots who had treated them with nothing but kindness their entire lives.

  The lead killer robot swung Ava around, as if she were a baton he was using to conduct the “KILL THEM!” chant. She looked terrified and ill, like someone with the worst motion sickness ever, trapped on an amusement park ride. She was shouting something at Nick and Eryn—maybe, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I don’t want you to die! I didn’t mean for this to happen!”

  Ava knew we had those instructions to kill robots, and she didn’t get mad at us, Eryn thought. I should have been like Nick and trusted her all along. I’m pretty sure Lida Mae knew about the instructions too. Jackson only knew we had the instructions; he didn’t know we were never going to follow them. I wish the robots had done the all-call on Ava’s or Lida Mae’s brains, not Jackson’s. Then they’d understand. . . .