Dangerous (33 page)

“Yeah,” said Howell, shrugging. “I meant
more
brilliant.”

We were getting off track. “Hey, you put those things into

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Dangerous

the five of us knowing they might rip out of our bodies.”

“GT was confident enough to risk his own son,” she said.

“And I bet my life on it, didn’t I? As you see, you did not die.”

“Yet,” I said.

“I saw the danger of a ship that turns a green planet black. I

thought a little risk was in order.”

I frowned and so got them chatting a bit faster, since I’d

guessed much of it. Howell started an astronaut boot camp to

find a fireteam, using the “marketing survey” of the sweepstakes

to profile ideal candidates.

“Children raised hearing two languages have higher-level

cognitive abilities. I also wanted subjects who were intelligent,

risk takers, and problem solvers. You, Miss Brown, were an un-

expected bonus. I examined your DNA after you arrived at boot

camp, and as I suspected, you are genetically inclined toward

being right-handed but are forced to use your left. Therefore the

pathway between your right and left hemispheres is more open

than most. Your brain has been forced to compromise and is

stronger for it.”

“Um . . . yay?” I said.

She evaluated us further by our academic success, rank-

ings in the fireteam competitions, IQ exams, physicals, and

brain scans.

“Some of the participants’ brains were still too immature,

some too mature. Some were already spoiled by alcohol abuse,

which damages the forebrain and hippocampus of adolescent

brains and halts the production of new nerve cells. Abominable

waste of minds!”

Dragon rolled his eyes. Clearly this was a common tirade.

“There were other decent candidates for the fifth position, but

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Jonathan Wilder got in because his father blackmailed me.” How-

ell absently rubbed her nose. “On paper, you five were perfect.”

Far away, a sentient species created tokens to help five in-

dividuals stop the invaders. As a safeguard, if one member died,

the thinker could absorb and still use both tokens. I wondered

if Ruth and Jacques, and maybe Mi-sun too, might have recov-

ered from their injuries. But when their bodies were weakened,

the tokens fled to be ready for a new, healthy host, and in the

process, stopped their hearts.

There were five potential traitors in my chest. One day

they might kill me too. I wondered if I’d have a chance to save

the planet first.

274

C h a p t e r 4 2

I slept for a few hours in the same room as my Dad and

Luther, curling up on the floor between them and the door. In

the morning, we talked.

“I don’t want to have to trust Howell,” I said. “But she sent

fifty people to scout for Mom. She has resources. If the big bad

boat is coming, I want to be ready.”

“When? Soon?” Luther asked.

“It feels soon. If the thinker token is uploading the data

into my brain, I still can’t think in specifics. I’m just aware of

a persistent urgency. Not helpful, thinker token!” I shouted at

my chest. “Dad, Howell is going to pay off the bank and get our

house out of foreclosure, so there’s that.”

“Don’tworry’boutme,” Dad said groggily.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Maybe those docs should lighten up

your meds.”

We decided to stay. Howell was our best chance to find

where Mom was hiding. I kept busy so I wouldn’t have to con-

sider bleaker alternatives.

First I built myself a new arm—Lady Robotica the First,

Avenger of Fido. I wasn’t able to make Lady quite as extraordinary

as Fido had been. Too many nanites in my body elbowing for brain

space. The weakness also showed on Ruth’s weight machine.

“How do I compare?” I asked after a workout.

Dragon checked the charts. “Ruth was stronger by a fair

bit, but you’ve got her on class.”

I tackled the training mission out at the abandoned build-

Shannon Hale

ing. Five months before, the fireteam had rescued the cardboard

hostages in two minutes. Alone, I took over fifteen minutes. I

thought how disappointed Wilder would be before I remem-

bered that I didn’t care what Wilder thought anymore.

Luther kept me company while I worked on Lady, prac-

ticed blue shot outside, and lifted weights. He talked to me as

I made my way to the scuba pool three times each day. I’d go

under for twenty minutes, holding my breath and completing

obstacle courses that Howell designed for me. When I came

back up, Luther would start talking again.

I loved his company but didn’t talk back much. My brain

was too busy. Why would aliens go from inhabited planet to

planet? How might they attack? What could a fireteam do to

stop them that a military with nuclear weapons couldn’t?

Luther and I were alone in the lab five days after returning

to HAL. I was working on an engine that I hoped to convert to

a jet pack.

“I wonder . . .” I didn’t mean to say it aloud, but then I had

to finish the thought. “I wonder if the police charged Wilder yet.

If they can prove he killed Mi-sun, Wilder could go to prison

for a long time.”

“Which is what he deserves,” Luther said without looking

at me.

“I’m glad you’re here, Luther.”

“Of course you are. I’m monumental.”

“No, I’m really, really glad.”

I smiled at him. He looked at me funny, scratched his nose,

straightened his shirt. I was expecting him to say something

snarky. Instead, he grabbed me by the shoulders and pressed his

mouth to mine.

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Dangerous

My instinct was to shove him away, so I froze, afraid to hurt

him. Luther seemed to find this encouraging. He gripped my

shoulders tighter, kissing harder.

“Luther . . . ,” I mumbled against his mouth.

He pulled back, his forehead shiny. “Yeah? What?”

“Luther . . .” What could I say? “That’s not something . . . I

could hurt you, you should be careful.”

Luther began to pace, talking with his hands.

“I have pondered this question for a long time, Maisie, and

I have decided that it is awkward, if not impossible, to change

from friend to . . . to . . . to
boyfriend
, especially since we were prepubescent when we met . . .”

I wrinkled my nose. Some words I really never wanted to

hear from Luther’s mouth.

“. . . and incapable of honest romantic attraction. But now I

realize that you are the most attractive girl I know—”

“Wow, I’m blushing, really, but I’m the
only
girl you know.”

He pointed at me emphatically. “That’s not true! I see girls

everywhere—at the grocery store, at the library. A girl who works

at the computer store asks for my phone number
every
time I go

in. And then there’s TJ’s sister Anya, who always says hi.”

“Luther . . .”

“Don’t use that pitying tone.” His voice cracked. “That’s a

parental tone, not a Maisie one.”

“Luther,” I said, trying to soften my tone. “Let’s pretend

that didn’t just happen. Let’s say you slipped and we acciden-

tally touched lips and it was awkward, so now we laugh about it

and go back to being best friends, because that’s what we were

made for.”

“That is so false, it’s alchemy. It’s phrenology. It’s terracen-

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tric theory! You aren’t wired for mathematics so you don’t un-

derstand—”

“Wait, are you trying to use math here? Have you assigned

us symbols like N and Y and calculated our compatibility?”

He turned red.

“Repeat after me,” I said slowly. “Oops, I must have slipped.

I didn’t mean to smoosh your lips.”

Luther looked at the ground. He turned and left.

That night I dreamed about Wilder. He was kissing me,

and I wanted him to. When I woke up, I should have been

logical again, but my thoughts wanted to linger on a dream mo-

ment, Wilder standing behind me, his arm around my waist, his

lips against my neck . . .

Stop it.

I was still angry at myself for hanging onto the tattered

corner of that dream when I walked into the lab. Howell was

talking to a guy with dark hair and a set of shoulders and a chin

that looked a lot like Wilder. But it couldn’t be.

Then he noticed me. Looked at me.

“Maisie, before you—” he started.

I leaped across the room and formed a havoc bind around

his chest, pinning his arms. I turned him upside-down, hav-

ocked his ankles together, his face pressed to the floor. I gripped

one of his ankles, prepared to throw him against the wall.

“No, no, no!” said Howell. “That’s unnecessary. He only

just got here. I sent Dragon to warn you.”

My mouth must have been hanging open. “You
invited

him?”

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Dangerous

“I am officially harboring him.”

“You’re . . . harboring him?”

“Aiding and abetting. Such fun words.”

“Maisie,” Wilder said, breathless. I might have set his havoc

binds a bit tight. “I can help. If you—”

“You recall, Howell, that he’s a murderer,” I said.

“Even without his token, there is still helpful information

meshed with his gray matter.”

Wilder was making strangled sounds. I was about to break

the havoc band off when I realized that he was laughing.

“Stop it.” I shook him.

“You don’t think this is a little funny?” he said.

I dropped him and walked out. It would take several hours

for his binds to disintegrate. By then Dad, Luther, and I would

be long gone.

279

C h a p t e r 4 3

Dragon was by the front doors talking to the security guys.

“You promised to keep my family safe,” I said. “Our agree-

ment is forfeit. We’ll be leaving in twenty minutes.”

“You saw Wilder.”

“I saw Wilder.” I turned away.

“Wait. Look, Howell made the call. I don’t trust Wilder, but

I do trust her.”

“Why? How can you?”

“Take a stroll with me?” He opened the door, waited.

I frowned. I had no reason to trust Dragon any more than

Howell. A robot wouldn’t. Yet I did.

“Please?” he said. Then he sang it in that squeaky falsetto.

“Please? Oh please-o?” The security guys raised eyebrows, wid-

ened eyes, but Dragon kept singing to me.

“Shush already,” I said. “Put these guys on Wilder, make

sure he doesn’t move.”

Dragon gave the order and held the door for me. He let

me choose the direction and pace. The sun’s forehead rose over

the horizon, glaring at us. Dragon took off his sunglasses and

offered them to me.

“I’ve been working with Howell for twenty years,” he said.

“I was in a boys’ home because my grandmother had passed,

my parents were dead—probably—and my brother and I had

caused some trouble. Howell visited me. She’d seen my test

scores and psych profile and said she wanted me to work for

her. I was fifteen. She got me released from the boys’ home,

Dangerous

shipped me off to a prep school, then college, and by the time

I graduated I was Howell Aerospace Chief of Operations. I’m

not going to pretend she picked me out of the boys’ home

because she’s a charitable angel. She doesn’t
mean
to do good,

and yet she always does.”

“So you stay with the crazy lady because she accidentally

does good sometimes?”

“That and she lets me set my own salary. I set it well.” He

chuckled, and I smiled. Dragon chuckles like a baby, with a

squeak at the end. “She’s a juggernaut. She misses a lot of the

world around her but she also sees stuff no one else does. Big

stuff, like an asteroid in orbit, and little stuff, like a smart kid

in a boys’ home. And she’s going to save the world, whether she

means to or not. So, yeah, I’d harbor a killer for her. I’d take a

bullet for her.”

Aw, man! Dragon would take a bullet for her! Those words

deflated my righteous indignation. I sighed again.

“You just drink some soda?” he asked. “We used to sigh to

hide our belches from Grandma.”

So I belched. I could do that on cue now, some biological

change
gracias a los
tokens. Dragon laughed, making me laugh

too. And then suddenly the laugh turned into a cry. My chest

wracked and coughed with a sob. I tensed everywhere, forcing

the sobs to stop. I wiped my face and shook my head, meaning

I had no idea what just happened.

But Dragon said, “Hey, you were shot into space and stuck

with alien technology. Your body keeps changing in alarming

ways. You watched a former friend cut off your father’s arm.

Your mother is missing. You were an unwilling participant in

two deaths. You’re carrying the burden of somehow defending

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the entire world. After all that, you shouldn’t have to see Wilder

again. Ever.”

I nodded and thankfully didn’t explode into more sobs.

Dragon’s jaw muscle bulged as he bit down hard. “Know