Dangerous (31 page)

sions? 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 and

jumped, and literally hit the ground running. It was probably

jarring for Wilder. I might have saved his life, but I wasn’t wor-

ried 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.

255

Shannon Hale

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, steam-

ing, crushing hate.

A robot wouldn’t hate, but a robot, programmed with eth-

ics 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. Wild-

er 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

256

Dangerous

a gray-haired orderly approached me. She wasn’t shy about look-

ing 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 po-

lice 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 . . .

257

Shannon Hale

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 to-

ken, 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 tin-

gling, 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 I hadn’t

realized. 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 bacte-

ria 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 wast-

258

Dangerous

ing 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 looked in the mirror. The marks were all

the same shade of brown. The four tokens fit around the circle

of the thinker token with an exterior circle running through

them, 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 Sta-

tion, 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 ev-

erything. 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.

259

C h a p t e r 4 0

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 thou-

sand meters below. Though the techno and thinker tokens were

live in me I had no headache. I guessed the pain had been

Shannon Hale

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 warn-

ing, 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 be-

fore?

“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-

262

Dangerous

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, be-

cause Hairy, Scary, and Larry moved forward, standing shoul-

der-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

stick-up. “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—”

263

Shannon Hale

“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.