Dangerous (34 page)

this, Maisie Brown—when the drama is over and Wilder’s use-

fulness is extinguished, say the word and I
will
kill him for you.”

I coughed a surprised kind of laugh. “I wouldn’t recom-

mend killing in general. Devastates a good night’s sleep.”

He bent over so his face was at my level. “You see these

eyes? Do you detect any laugh lines? I ain’t foolin’, girl.”

“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it. “I wish . . . I wish I

didn’t have to feel so much. I’d be better at all this.”

For my last birthday, Luther had made me a poster that

read ROBOTS MAKE THE BEST SCIENTISTS, and he’d drawn a Dr.

Frankenstein–esque robot building a scientist on an operating

slab. It was the only thing taped up in my abandoned bedroom.

“You’re human,” said Dragon, “which is exactly what you

should be.”

I took off the sunglasses and offered them back, but he

lifted his hand. “Keep them. They make you look as fierce as

you are.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling in better spirits than I thought I

should. “Tell Howell to keep him locked up, okay?”

He pointed at me as we went back inside. “You’re going to

do this, Brown. You’re going to save the world. And someday I’ll

sing about it! How about that?”

Dragon was moving my dad and Luther to a separate

building where they had constant guards. And a large-screen

TV with four hundred channels. I slept on their couch, cud-

dling with Laelaps, and kept the television buzzing all night to

282

Dangerous

drown out the irritating reminder of the Purpose. The nagging

was so raw and urgent there were whole minutes when I forgot

about Mom.

Dad was still asleep early the next morning when Luther

shuffled out of his bedroom. He stopped when he saw me awake

on the couch, and his cheeks-to-ears turned red. It was the first

time we’d made eye contact since our lip-smooshing fiasco.

“Hey,” I squeaked.

Luther looked away. He went into the bathroom, slam-

ming the door shut. I slipped outside before he emerged.

Sunlight was already drinking up dew. I closed my eyes and

lifted my face to the east. The sting of heat turned everything

orange and gold. The breeze smelled of warm soil and sweet

grass. Another day when maybe we would find Mom. Another

day when aliens might invade. How had this become my life?

I made my way to the lab for breakfast and workout. Since

getting the shooter token, I preferred to go without Lady unless

I was building. It’d also become habit to run my left hand along

a wall as I walked, my body pulling in spare electrons. I be-

lieved that the shooter token acted as a kind of electron battery,

storing those gathered electrons. When it was full, the tightness

and crackling in my chest became uncomfortable. I’d relieve it

by expelling some electrons down the nerves of my arm, where

they burst warm from my fingers. As satisfying as scratching an

itch—and harmless, if I wasn’t holding anything.

I was about to shoot off some electrons when I heard a

pounding in the cafeteria. Wilder was alone with a couple

dozen soccer balls, kicking them at the mended wall Ruth had

once run through. The neck of his shirt was dark with sweat, his

face glistening.

283

Shannon Hale

“You’re not locked up,” I said.

He didn’t stop kicking. “I was. I picked the lock after your

bands disintegrated. So are you going to kill me?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

He turned to me, his arms out, inviting. “Go ahead. I’m

gutted anyway.”

The thought of losing my own tokens was terrifying. Feel-

ing even a speck of empathy for this deliberate murderer made

me uncomfortable. I started to leave.

“You cut your hair,” he said, tilting his head.

I’d been wearing a havoc helmet at our warehouse meet-

ing. I fingered the ragged ends at my neck, then dropped my

hand.

“Jacques did.”

“Oh. Right.” He nudged a ball onto his toes and kicked it

up into his hands. “I do have some help to offer. If you’re not

going to kill me immediately, that is.”

“You’d better,” I said. “I won’t let Howell keep you around

just so I can admire your calves.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You admire my calves?”

Why had I said that? One of the soccer balls lay near my

feet. I picked it up and blue shot it past Wilder. It zipped by near

his head, its wind lifting his hair, and smacked against the wall.

It hissed air and plopped to the floor. Wilder visibly swallowed.

“Let me show you one thing,” he said, his voice dry.

I started to shake my head no, but the Purpose nagged.

I followed Wilder into Howell’s office. He nudged her away

from her computer, opened an Internet news site, and played

the video that we’d watched back in the lair. A man in a black

suit acting crazy outside a state capital. He has a gun. A police

284

Dangerous

officer shoots. The man falls.

Only this time, I saw something new. When the man hits

the ground, a blurry, pinkish form rises out of him. The news-

caster describing the scene, the headline, the text underneath—

nothing acknowledges the pink shape that exits the man’s body.

“I don’t see it anymore,” Wilder said. “Only the thinker can.”

I stood up fast, knocking my chair over. “They’re here.

Holy crap, they’re already here.”

285

C h a p t e r 4 4

“They’re here?” said Howell. “As in,
them
?”

“As in, run away screaming—aah, aah, aah,” I confirmed.

“But . . . but if they’re here, why isn’t Earth a smoldering black

heap?”

“Black heap?” Wilder hadn’t seen the alien video.

“I didn’t give you permission to ask questions.”

I played the video again. Like a lion’s DNA spells out ga-

zelle = food, my nanite-tinged cells were screaming, Hunt that

thing!

Was the pink stuff an alien? Had it been inside the man’s

body? I’d assumed the blackened planet meant the aliens had

some frightening weapon that would zap life from Earth at the

first opportunity. But perhaps the blackness was metaphorical,

and the aliens had more subtle means of destruction.

“Their ship would be orbiting Earth right now,” I said to

Howell. “Sending ghostmen down into people.”

“An invisible invasion,” she said.

I’d been toying with the idea of a laser mounted to Big Bar-

da to shoot the spacecraft before it got to Earth, but whenever

I’d tried to design it in earnest, a jet pack had felt more urgent.

Maybe because the subconscious data from the thinker token

indicated it was too late for that tactic.

“I don’t think the Jumper Virus is really a virus,” I said

slowly.

Wilder raised his hand a little. I sighed.

“Yes?” I said.

Dangerous

“People assume its name came from the virus’s ability to

infect one town but jump over others, spreading randomly. But

originally ‘jumper’ referred to the first discovery of the virus in

a village in Argentina. A visitor from Buenos Aires found the

entire village except the very young and very old converged on a

cliff, taking turns jumping off and employing an old parachute

at the last moment. Over and over.”

“And you know this because . . .”

“I hacked into the CDC director’s computer. Back when I

did that sort of thing.”

“Are they aliens that look like humans or humans who are

infected with aliens? And why would they leap off cliffs?”

“I don’t know. That was the first quarantined town. Last I

checked, there were over three hundred and fifty towns world-

wide. One is just a couple of hours away by helicopter.”

He looked at me expectantly. It made sense to bring him, if

only so I could be sure he was nowhere near my dad.

I put on my impact boots, and we ran to the helipad with

Howell.

“You don’t need to come,” I told Howell. “I can figure out

how to fly a helicopter. Besides, if it gets sketchy—”

“I’m not leaving you now,” she said. “This is all very exciting!”

“Don’t talk more than you have to,” I told Wilder as we

climbed in. “I can’t guarantee I won’t toss you out the window.”

I would not allow him to manipulate his way into my affections.

I didn’t trust myself. Wilder’s words had always been evil-wizard

dangerous.

Using short sentences, Wilder directed Howell to a small

town west of HAL. Then he was quiet for the rest of the two-

hour flight.

287

Shannon Hale

“Hey, does Ruth’s family know what happened?” I asked

Howell over the headset.

“That she died in a regrettable scuba accident? Yes, and

they were properly distressed and are suing me for negligence.

I’ll pay them a hefty sum to settle out of court and close down

the astronaut boot camp in a show of humble liability.”

“Wow, how noble of you,” I said. “Jacques and Mi-sun—”

“I’ve offered their families condolence money as well, but

none of that matters, Miss Brown. You saw what is coming.

We’re talking about the destruction of our entire planet. Green

to black.”

I remembered Mi-sun had been plagued with dreams of

“pink floaty things.” Had her nanites tried to upload data about

the ghostmen into her brain? Perhaps if the tokens worked right

in humans, the fireteam would have known about them from

the beginning.

Howell landed the helicopter on a street near the edge of

town. A barricade across the road said QUARANTINE.

“Fly off if anything happens,” I told Howell.

Wilder sat in back. He smiled at me—a sweet, friendly, go-

get-’em smile. I havocked his wrists and ankles together.

“Come on,” he said.

“Shut it or I do your mouth too,” I said.

“Promise?” he said, almost as if he couldn’t help himself.

I havocked his mouth.

Beside the barricade were US GOVERNMENT-branded crates,

empty now. Food and supplies dropped for the quarantined

town, I guessed. I walked farther in.

Flies twitched over rancid piles of garbage in the gut-

ters, front doors hung open. Dogs trotted around, sniffing the

288

Dangerous

ground. One sat curled up around a bone, gnawing at its old

meat. The bone looked a great deal like a human femur.

The dog with a bone growled when another got too close.

The second trotted off with purpose. I followed. The sound of

flies grew louder—an angry, mobbish buzzing. The gate to a

backyard was broken off. I followed the dog through.

There were at least a dozen bodies. Small and large.

Clothes eaten by weather and insects. I gasped, the smell struck

the back of my throat, and I turned and stumbled off. The way

the bodies lay in the dirt reminded me of laundry flung on the

floor. Heaped together, cast aside.

I saw no one living till I passed a park where four adults

occupied the swings, leaning back as they pumped as high as

the chains would allow. I stood staring.

“You shouldn’t be here,” said a voice behind me.

A white man stood behind the screen door of a house. His

face was as wrinkled as a fingerprint, his hair thin, white wisps.

“What happened here?” I asked.

“Viral epidemic. That’s what the government says. Over-

night people changed. It passed over all us old folk and the

youngest ones, but everyone else—”

“They changed how?” I asked.

“Just weren’t themselves anymore. Virus eats your brains, I

guess. We got quarantined. But the old couldn’t take care of the

babies by themselves for long, so they picked up the little ones

and left.”

“You stayed,” I said.

“My daughter’s here. My grandson too, even if they don’t

come home anymore.” He cried without noise, his eyes seep-

ing water, making tiny rivers of his wrinkles. “But they might

289

Shannon Hale

get better any day now. Are things out there still
normal
?” He

stumbled over the last word, as if he hardly knew what it meant.

“Normalish. Why don’t you come with me? I have a heli-

copter—”

He took a step back. “I’ll be here when they get better. I see

them when I go to the diner to get my meals. They know me

still, I can tell, but they don’t talk to me. You should go. In the

beginning doctors came into town in those yellow germ suits,

but they got infected anyhow.”

“I won’t stay long.”

I followed the main street till I couldn’t hear the squeaking

park swings anymore. Lights flickered on and off in a diner. I

peered through the plate-glass window. The place was packed.

Most people were in the kitchen, cooking and eating, some

overflowing to the counter, the booths. They smacked their lips

over apples and oatmeal, licked the backs of spoons, dipped

their fingers into jars of peanut butter. No one talked.

I opened the diner doors and a little bell tinkled. Everyone

looked over. No one stopped eating. A petite black woman in

an apron approached, half of a hamburger in her hand, her lips