Dangerous (25 page)

I backed away, slamming against a wall. Should I run? This

was when it would have been handy to have Wilder in my ear.

205

Shannon Hale

You’re indestructible, I reminded myself. Or nearly.

I touched the screen and it lit up. A video was paused. I

pushed play.

The color was grainy, but I recognized my father on a

bench in a windowless room. Sitting on his hands. Looking

down and slightly away as if ashamed to be there. Instinctively

my hands covered my face.

GT was sitting on a chair beside him in a casual pose—

leaning back, one ankle propped up on his other knee, his el-

bow on the chair back.

GT: “Did you ever take her to school?”

Dad: “Just . . . once. One day of kindergarten.”

“And the kids were mean?”

Dad spoke quietly, reluctant but too afraid not to speak.

“They ran around with their elbows bent, pretending to be . . .

retarded. Having one arm and mental retardation was the same

to them, and a child damaged in any way became an object of

ridicule.”

“And Maisie didn’t notice, did she?”

Dad shook his head.

“You wanted her to stay like that. Unaware.”

Dad nodded.

So the small life I’d outgrown was my fault. My arm’s fault.

I’d figured, but it still hurt to have it confirmed.

“I get that,” said GT. He patted Dad’s shoulder, one father

comforting another. “So why didn’t you have another child?

Were you afraid it’d turn out like your first?”

“No. We . . . we love Maisie . . .”

“You were disappointed in your daughter—”

“No.”

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Dangerous

“Your maimed, handicapped daughter—”

“No!”

“Nick, just tell me. You never meant to have a child at all,

right? Maisie was a mistake.”

This video was intended to make me emotional and rash.

So I knew what I needed to do. Stay calm. Stay smart. Find my

dad. I’d turned away to search the camera feeds again when

GT’s voice said, “You deny it? Nick, can you explain why your

wife goes by the name Inocencia Rodriguez-Brown?”

Dad looked up sharply at GT.

GT stood, his hands busy with something—unwrapping

gum, no doubt. “She worked from home with an invented

name and a stolen social security number, she kept her daughter

out of the school system, she kept her whole life quiet.
Inocencia
.

An ironic choice for her alias, don’t you think? Inocencia is any-

thing but innocent. How many years was she a member of the

Yellow Flag? How much blood is on her hands?”

I wouldn’t listen to GT’s lies any longer. I slammed my

hand down, splitting the computer in two.

The speakers on the walls spoke to me.

“It just doesn’t seem fair that you hobble through life miss-

ing a limb while your lying, irresponsible parents enjoy whole-

ness. Let’s even things out. In four minutes your dad loses an

arm. Yes, go ahead and call the police. They will take seven and

a half minutes to arrive. By then you might not recognize your

daddy, because at the five-minute mark, I relieve him of his

other arm. Can you guess what happens at six minutes?”

One of the security monitors showed figures, hard to make

out. The room had no windows. Large. High ceiling. First floor

probably. I started running.

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Shannon Hale

“You want to know how to save him?” GT’s tinny voice

echoed off concrete. “Just step into my chamber.”

I didn’t slow to open doors, wood and cinderblocks crash-

ing around me. Three and a half minutes. My heart pounded,

my stomach felt full of hornets.

I came through a wall, masonry flying. The room was mas-

sive. Maybe it was for storing large things like jets, but now it was

mostly empty. It was hard to see up in the rafters and corners of

the room. There wasn’t a lot of light. But in the center stood a

metal box like a large upright coffin. It looked homemade, and

not lovingly so. GT’s “chamber.”

Sitting on a bench beside it was my dad. Mouth gagged,

hands tied, he looked at me, his bald head shining, his row of

hair poofed up by the gag of black cloth. My heart hurt.

GT was wearing a paint-splattered sweatshirt and jeans,

an earbud and microphone on his head. He stood behind Dad,

apparently weaponless except for Jacques, beside him in full

havoc armor.

“I have sharpshooters positioned all over this room,” GT

said. “You can’t get to them all, Maisie. And I’m sure you’ve

guessed—they’re not aiming at you.” He checked his watch.

“Two minutes, thirty seconds.”

“You want my tokens,” I said. Dad was staring back at me as

if trying to speak with his stare.

GT smiled that self-aware, charmer smile. “They’re a bur-

den anyway, aren’t they? My doctors know a safe way to extract

them. Just place yourself inside this chamber. The moment the

door is locked, I release your father. And I will only keep you

until the extraction is complete. Your family will be safe, every-

thing will return to normal.”

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Dangerous

Your family
. Did he have Mom too?

“But how do I know you won’t—”

“You
don’t
know,” GT said, snapping on his gum as if we

were chitchatting about the weather. “But you have no other

choice. Two minutes, ten seconds.”

If I ran to Dad, they would shoot him. I was strong but

not large. I couldn’t shield him from guns shot from multiple

angles. I couldn’t see a way through. I needed Wilder.

No, not Wilder.

The fear of losing the tokens made me shudder even as my

logical brain calculated that it wasn’t a terrible idea. Ruth had

killed. Mi-sun and Jacques had killed. And maybe Wilder. Was

I next? Maybe GT’s influence was incidental. Maybe the tokens

compelled us to murder.

Get rid of the alien wasp-stingers, I thought. Go into the

chamber and let it end.

Even though I didn’t trust GT, and the thought of giving

up my tokens zapped me with panic as if trillions of nanites

were clinging to my every cell, begging for survival, I still might

have done it. Except for Mom.

I knew that’s who Dad was thinking about. He blinked

once, long. Then he shook his head. Maybe Dad would survive

this, or maybe I would. But one of us had to. We couldn’t take

away Mom’s entire family in one fell swoop. And if I went into

that chamber, GT would have no reason to keep either me or

Dad alive.

“Jacques . . .” I said.

“What, you wanna switch sides now?” he said. “You realize

our beloved thinker isn’t so hot after all? He killed Ruth, he

killed Mi-sun, he tried to kill me—”

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Shannon Hale

“Be quiet,” GT said to Jacques.

Jacques took a step back. His nose twitched with a scowl.

Wilder killed Mi-sun . . . No, I would not think about it

right now.

Loose cinder blocks from my crash through the wall lay by

my feet. I scooped them up.

GT flinched. “Remember, if you harm me in any way,

those shooters have orders to kill your father.”

“Thanks for the tip.” Their order was to shoot if I harmed

GT, but it didn’t sound like he’d included the chamber in that

command. The thing must be brute-proof. On the inside. I

chucked a block at its control panel. The cinderblock shattered,

the panel sparked and popped. Its lights dimmed.

No gunshot.

“So, new orders,” I said, shouting to the hidden sharpshoot-

ers. “If you hurt my dad, I tear your heads from your bodies.

Emphasis on
tear
. None of you will have any mercy from me.

But leave us right now and I won’t follow.”

GT was frowning, uncertain. I don’t think he’d planned

on my destroying the chamber.

Jacques said, “Don’t you know good parenting, GT?

Always follow through on a threat. Pretty sure it’s been four

bleeping
minutes.”

“I told you to shut up!” GT shouted.

Jacques blinked. His arm lengthened with a havoc blade.

He grabbed my father’s right arm and sliced through.

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C h a p t e r 3 3

In a moment I was across the room, backhanding Jacques

away from my father. I heard Jacques hit the far wall. GT

jumped back. Gunfire erupted. I was hunched over my father,

covering up his head and torso with my own body as best as I

could. As the bullets pinged my back and head, I calculated

where they were coming from. The gunfire paused. I hurled the

two remaining cinderblocks at the west and north corners. Two

grunts. Those shooters were out at least. I had nothing to throw

to the northwest, so I angled my body between my father and

that corner as the shooting started again.

GT was gone. I couldn’t leave Dad and go after him. A

glance proved that Jacques had fled too. Just as well. I didn’t

have time for a fight.

For the first time, I dared look at my father. He was

slumped on the floor. I was aware now that he had been scream-

ing, something I’d managed to tune out until he’d stopped. I

checked his pulse—alive. Just fainted. Fainting is what you want

to do when someone cuts off your arm.

The gunfire paused. Sounds of running feet.

My father’s wrists were still tied together, though one of

the arms . . . My stomach clenched, trying not to vomit. I tore

off my sweatshirt and wrapped my father’s arm in it. There was

so much blood.

I’m holding my father’s arm. It’s bleeding. It’s bleeding . . .

I slapped myself mentally. Not a good time to freak out.

I picked him up and ran.

Shannon Hale

I hunched as I ran, holding my father like a baby, protect-

ing him with my body from the bullets.

More gunshots. His legs were bleeding. We left a trail of

blood. I clamped shut my jaw and refused to feel anything. I

kicked through doors. I ran.

Dad stayed out cold. Why wasn’t I fainting? I worried

about that, because I felt pretty sure my brain shouldn’t be able

to handle the fact that I was carrying my bleeding father and

his arm.

Don’t you dare faint, Danger Girl. Just run.

Outside, down the street, my brute legs propelling me into

arcing leaps. Stopping to borrow/steal a car would have taken

too long. I wasn’t tired. All I could do for my father was run.

And I could do that nearly forever.

Navigating the dark warehouse streets, I checked my GPS

for the nearest hospital. I could run there faster than an ambu-

lance could get to me. I called 911 on Fido without slowing and

told them that there’d been gunfire.

“Also, there’s a car in a vacant lot just to the east of those

warehouses. A guy named Brutus is tied up in there. He’ll freeze

to death if you don’t get him out.”

“What is your name and address?”

I disconnected.

I passed a man crossing the street so quickly, he fell down.

He didn’t seem hurt. I kept running. Thankfully there were al-

most no people out to see a girl in a T-shirt in negative-degree

weather carrying a bleeding man and bounding like a cartoon

character.

I must have looked pretty extraordinary bursting through

the emergency room doors. My father’s blood soaked my white

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Dangerous

T-shirt, smeared over my neck and chin.

“Amputated arm,” I called out. “Forty-six-year-old man,

no allergies, no prior medical conditions. Arm severed . . .” I

checked my internal clock. “Seven minutes, twenty-two sec-

onds ago. He needs help NOW!”

Orderlies took Dad from my arms and placed him on a

rolling bed. They wheeled him and his arm away. Someone

tried to check me in too, till she understood that the blood

wasn’t mine. She wouldn’t let me follow Dad.

I dialed Mom. Straight to voice mail. I kept trying every

few minutes.

The police arrived. I smiled, resenting that I had to fear

them. At least I wasn’t blood-stained anymore. The nurses gave

me scrubs to replace my bloodied shirt.

The officers were wearing face masks, like most of the

people in the emergency room. The trend was becoming in-

creasingly common since the Jumper Virus first emerged. I told

the officers GT Wilder and Jacques Ames had just cut off my fa-

ther’s arm. They radioed to get the info on the warehouse. Gun-

fire confirmed. Brutus found and in police custody. No sign of

GT and Jacques. I put my hand over my eyes. I was so tired.

The good-looking cop sat beside me. I wondered if he was

a lying murderer too. Seemed to be all the rage.

“Do you know why they did this?”

“They’re crazy!” I couldn’t remember if looking straight in

a person’s eyes was a sign of speaking truth or lies, so I ended up

meeting his eyes, then looking away, then back again. “GT’s son

and I were at astronaut boot camp together last summer, and

GT freaked out when we sorta dated.”

“So he kidnapped your father and cut off his arm?”

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Shannon Hale