Dangerous (36 page)

me, the master blast had left a crater and a heap of charred

bodies. Those had been human beings. Now there were twenty

corpses on the ground and twenty rosy ghosts rising in the air.

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Dangerous

The only way to find the ship was to see a ghostman enter it.

I kept running, a moving target, but kept my eyes on the

ghosts. The first one disappeared—drawn into the ship. I aimed

at that spot, shooting chunks of havoc shaped like cut pipes. My

ammo disappeared into the sky. And for barely an instant, I saw

something kind of twinkle, a huge shape. The last of the twenty

ghosts entered the ship, and the shape zipped away.

I felt the air move at its departure. It was massive. And fast.

I doubted my shots had seriously damaged something that large,

but I was grateful it had retreated.

I fell on my knees, knocked over by the pain. That blast

had blasted the fight out of me. The ship might return any sec-

ond, but I couldn’t seem to move.

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C h a p t e r 4 6

Resting my head on my arm, I breathed, trying to get con-

trol over the pain. I had to move. Now, Maisie.

Humming the
Star Wars
theme to encourage myself, I

wobbled onto my feet. Sometimes a girl’s gotta provide her own

trumpet-heavy heroic soundtrack.

One of the empty white suits had escaped the ship’s blast.

I picked it up and hobbled back into the trees toward Howell

and Wilder.

A little nervous, I felt my back. Chunks of armor fell off

in my hand, mixed with pieces of my shirt. No blood at least. I

wondered what my back would look like if I hadn’t taken Wild-

er’s advice and armored up. Or if I’d have a back at all. Still, no

need for him to know he’d been right. I peeled off the remain-

ing armor as I went. When I reached my neck, a crispy hunk of

hair came loose.

As if I’d had enough hair left to lose. There would be a

pixie cut in my future.

I found Howell and Wilder, and we walked through the

woods into the night. Howell did not want to be carried again,

and my blasted back was grateful. I spent the walk thinking. If

shooting at the ship from a distance was enough to wreck it

and solve the alien problem, the fireteam would only need one

token.

By midnight we reached a spot I felt was safely far away

and called Dragon. He picked us up in a black SUV wafting the

scent of french fries.

Dangerous

My mouth watered. “Did you pick up dinner?”

He pointed to the exhaust. “You’re smelling the biodiesel.

Mm-mmm, good enough to eat.”

“Any word on my mom?” I asked, knowing the answer was

no or Dragon would have said something immediately. But I

couldn’t help asking.

He shook his head. “Next time you all do something like

this, don’t you dare leave me behind.”

“The president and vice president never travel together in

Air Force One,” Howell mumbled. “Either you or I should al-

ways survive . . .”

Her knees bent, and Dragon rushed forward to catch her.

He picked her up and put her in the front seat, tucking a blanket

around her arms and legs. I hadn’t noticed before that she was

shivering. It would be cold out for someone without tokens.

I almost looked at Wilder to see if he was shivering too but

stopped myself. As soon as I started caring about him in any way,

I could be vulnerable to his lies and manipulation.

I spent the ride inspecting the mini-trooper suit. The shell

was definitely a polymer. I cut it open with a havoc knife.

The polymer shell was completely filled with stiff, white

gunk, almost like a malt ball inside its chocolate coating.

Nougat, I named it in my head.

The suit must create specific atmospheric conditions for

the ghosts. Perhaps the ghostmen couldn’t stay put in empti-

ness. Perhaps they must inhabit and move through solid sub-

stance, just as humans can only move through gaseous or liquid

environments.

I dug through the white nougaty stuff, searching for any-

thing different, and discovering a polymer sphere in the center.

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Shannon Hale

I cracked open the sphere. It housed what had to be a computer

and power source, its parts also made up of plastics. So what did

that tell me about them? And how I could boot them all off my

planet?

I felt like I was in a room with the lights off, and I could

almost make out the details—but not quite. I wished I could

talk it through with Wilder, and then hated myself for the wish.

Dragon hit the first drive-through to get Howell something

hot to drink and tossed me a few bags of food. Despite the car-

bon nuggets slowly digesting in my stomach, I still craved real

food. I handed one bag to Wilder, because a robot would.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Don’t talk to me,” I said.

Sharing the back bench with Wilder felt as intimate as a

mattress. I could hear his breathing, smell the long walk ema-

nating from his skin.

I leaned forward to talk to Dragon and Howell in the front

seats. “How is it possible that gravity won’t hold the tokens?

Even the super-light hydrogen atoms in Earth’s atmosphere are

pulled in by gravity.”

“Well . . . there’s dark matter,” said Dragon.

Howell sipped her drink, still shivering. “Yes, that mysteri-

ous stuff that repels gravity. We’ve wondered if the tokens are

linked somehow to dark matter.”

“Or made of it,” I said. “And the ghostmen too.” The thought

of dark matter inside my chest gave me phantom heart pains.

I could feel Wilder looking at me, and my muscles tensed.

If I let him speak, I was afraid he would claim that the nanites

had made him crazy and now he was cured, and I couldn’t

bear to hear it because I’d want to believe him. But it couldn’t

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Dangerous

be true. Not completely. The nanites had affected all of us, but

he’d still made choices. Besides, if the Wilder in the warehouse

who admitted he killed Mi-sun and tried to kill me too had

been nanite-impaired-false-Wilder, then so was the Wilder in

the lair who kissed me. He was either all truth or all lies. I knew

this logically, but if he spoke—

“Maisie,” he said, “I want to—”

I jumped out of the moving car and rolled on the asphalt.

Dragon slowed, but I shouted to him that I would run back

alone. We were only a few kilometers from HAL.

I left the road, bounding through the brush. The lights of

HAL were barely visible, a low, faint star. After hours of trudg-

ing, the speed was liberating. I’d loved Wilder, and that con-

fused pain came out of me in a howl as if I were an animal. I

remembered Ruth running in the night, and me afraid to make

eye contact. She’d seemed fearless. But I was resisting the urge

to turn my back to HAL and run far away.

A high stinging sound cut the night air. I froze to listen—a

rabbit’s response. I forgot sometimes that I was the predator now.

Move, I thought.

I started to run again, but something tiny pricked my right

calf. I didn’t slow to investigate. A few steps later, I couldn’t feel

my leg at all. It just crumpled, and I fell. I looked to make sure

my leg hadn’t actually disappeared. Sticking out of my calf was

a long silver needle. I plucked it free and threw it at the ground.

In the couple of seconds I was down, another needle bit

into my left leg. I yanked it out, switched my impact boots to

hop, and slammed my left foot down. Midair, I felt my left leg

go numb too. The ground was coming in fast. I twisted, landing

on my back, and tumbled down an incline.

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Shannon Hale

I could hear footsteps and a car.

I phoned Howell while crawling through the brush, my

legs dragging. “I’m under attack out here. Not aliens. People.

Shot me with something, my legs don’t work.” It wasn’t until I

heard the panic in my own voice that I understood I was close

to toast.

I sent my coordinates from my GPS. Footsteps closer, com-

ing from right, left, behind. I fired havoc pellets into the dark-

ness. I took off my impact boots, put them on my hands (both

flesh and havoc), and slammed them down. I hurtled forward,

twisting and somersaulting in the air, belly flopping onto a bush.

It was a faster means of travel than dragging my body through

the dirt, so I kept up the exercise in self-humiliation.

The numbness in my legs was crawling up my pelvis.

Above, three helicopters with search lights came from

HAL. From the darkness, someone shot a missile. The helicop-

ters moved, the rocket missed, exploding on the ground beyond

us. Another rocket. The helicopters returned fire. A few bullets

struck me in the crossfire, burning holes in my clothes.

Another missile from the dark. A HAL helicopter lurched

and crashed. A rocket from a HAL helicopter struck a car on the

ground. There were shouts and commands.

A third bite, this time on my right shoulder. Before I lost

that arm to numbness, I slammed down my handheld boots as

hard as I could and launched myself at the nearest helicopter,

flipping through the air, shaking the boots off. I managed to

seize the helicopter’s foot with my left hand. Someone pulled

me in and we took off.

My head rolled back, the prick in my shoulder bleeding

cold into my neck and down my right arm.

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Dangerous

Dragon was holding me, his bald head shiny with sweat.

“They had needle darts, sharpened to the atom maybe.

Pierced my skin.” I shouted to be heard over the helicopter noise.

“Are you dying?” he asked.

I shrugged with one shoulder. Every part of me that wasn’t

numb was cold with fear.

“Don’t die,” he said. “If you have any choice in the matter,

choose not to, okay?”

I nodded once and couldn’t lift my head back up again.

We landed inside HAL’s courtyard. Doctors met us at the

helipad, Howell running alongside as they took me in.

“GT?” Howell asked.

“So it would seem,” said Dragon. “Hankering to punch him

in the face right about now.”

In the lab, Wilder was waiting. I swore in my head. I was

paralyzed, helpless. He could corner me and talk his manipula-

tive crap, try to convince me of his reformed nature like he’d

convinced Howell. For the moment he was standing out of the

way. Waiting.

“Go wake her dad,” Dragon told somebody.

I grunted a no. If I wasn’t dying, I didn’t want to worry him

or Luther.

Then I lost the ability to grunt.

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C h a p t e r 4 7

I spent hours immobile. Even my eyelids froze. One of the

doctors slid them shut for me, as if I were dead. My body felt

corpse cold, though it didn’t shiver. Drool slid out of my mouth

down my cheek, a cold wet line like the trail a snail leaves.

I didn’t sleep. My mind was microwave popcorn cooked

on high. I lay and thought and could do nothing at all. I was

waiting for one more change—either my mind would go dark

too and that would be that, or something would move.

Something moved. A finger. A twitch in my toe. My eyelids.

Wilder was still in the lab, waiting like a vulture for me to

die and give up my tokens into his grubby hands. When I man-

aged to sit, he gave up and left. One small victory.

“I’m taking credit for your not dying,” Dragon whispered to

me, “since it was my idea.”

“Fair enough,” I whispered back, my throat trying to re-

member how to talk.

“GT failed to get you out there,” Howell said, sitting by my

bed. “He’ll attack HAL next.”

I moved my right leg. My whole body prickled with re-

turning life.

Howell turned to Dragon. “Code Lockdown?”

Dragon wrinkled his nose. “We should have come up with

a better name, like Code Armageddon, or Code Imperial Fire...”

A few minutes later I eased myself out of the gurney, test-

ing my weight on my legs. My bones felt rubbery, my muscles

bags of sand, but I could stand up.

Dangerous

“If GT will attack here why don’t we go somewhere else?”

I asked.

“He’d track us wherever we went,” said Howell. “And HAL

is my best refuge.”

“My mom—”

“Will be found and brought here. This is where I have the

tools and supplies to support your mission. We’ll stand and fight.”

I went to find my dad only to see him coming to me un-

der the triplets’ guard, Hairy pushing his wheelchair. Dad’s legs

were bandaged and propped up, the gunshot wounds healing.

Luther walked with his hand on Laelaps’s head, looking every-

where but at me.

“I don’t need so much fuss,” Dad said. “I’m feeling fine. Look.”

He held up his right hand and made the Star Trek live-

long-and-prosper sign.

“Nice,” I said. “High five.” I made like I was going to slap

his hand. He pulled his hand down fast. “Easy, Dad. I was kid-

ding. I won’t hurt you.”