Dangerous (37 page)

He smiled as if he’d been kidding too.

Through the plate-glass atrium I could see car after car

leaving HAL under guard of helicopters. Dragon got busy on a

walkie-talkie, speaking in code. Hallway lights were shutting off.

“¿Qué pasa?”
Dad asked.

“GT decided we didn’t have enough on our hands with the

whole alien thing so he attacked me outside the compound.”

“I don’t much care for GT,” said Dad.

Dragon intoned over the PA system that all remaining

complex residents should report to Howell’s office immediately.

The triplets hurried off with Dad, leaving me and Luther walk-

ing together.

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Shannon Hale

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” Luther said.

He put his hands in his pockets. “So, it was weird the other

day when we bumped into each other and our faces kind of ac-

cidentally smooshed together.”

I smiled, but kept my head turned so he didn’t see. “Yeah,

that was weird.”

Luther stopped, so I stopped too. His expression was intense.

“Just promise me it won’t be him.”

“What?”

“Wilder. Promise me you won’t choose him.”

If I hadn’t had the brute token, I would have slugged him.

“You’re disgusting.”

“Or I’m discerning and concerned.”

“You think I’m vacuous?”

“I think you’re a girl, and as far as I can tell, girls do vacuous

things for guys like him.”

I walked faster, my recently numb legs shaking beneath

me. “I thought you knew me better.”

“I used to know you,” he said, keeping up behind me. “Frak,

Maisie, I don’t know anything anymore.”

Those were words I never thought I’d hear Luther say. Ex-

cept for the “frak” part. I stopped.

“But we’re still best friends, right?” I said.

“Affirmative.”

“Then everything’s okay.”

He smiled as if I’d made perfect sense. I hoped my eyes

didn’t betray my fear. My mom was lost somewhere. I had all

five tokens and was weaker for it. I’d been failing and failing,

and it was getting harder to muster up any hope at all.

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Dangerous

A mechanical grating startled us. A metal wall was unroll-

ing from the ceiling, locking off the rest of the building.

Howell’s office was already filled—Dad, Wilder, plus Drag-

on and a crowd of security guys including Hairy, Scary, and

Larry. Just ten of the PhD/MD white coats remained after the

mass exodus.

“GT will attack us,” Howell said without preamble. “It

never rains but it’s pouring with old men snoring. I’ve sent away

everyone who has children at home, as well as anyone I can’t

trust with my life.”

I glanced at Wilder to see if he showed any shame. He was

leaning against the wall, his gaze on the ceiling.

“We’ve closed down everything but the core of this build-

ing,” said Dragon. “The lab, a few dormitories, security center,

staff kitchen, storage, bunkers, and this office. The gates in the

outer walls are locked. The electric fence is live. We are off grid

and well supplied. Until GT and aliens are no longer a threat,

this is your home.”

Luther was pale. Dad cleared his throat before speaking,

but his voice still cracked.

“But . . . my wife,” he said.

Dragon looked at his hands. “We’ve had no word—”

“My team in Florida is still looking,” said Howell, “and

when they find her, they will bring her here. Security, your job

is to keep us all alive. Everyone else, your job is to do whatever

Maisie Brown needs you to do. And what Maisie Brown needs

to do is save the world.”

Howell stood, catching us all in her fierce gaze. She picked

up three red balls off her desk and juggled them with just her

right hand, spiraling them in high ellipses. She caught two in

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Shannon Hale

her hand and the third in her mouth. Her people sprang to their

feet, applauding.

“Very nice, Bonnie,” Dragon said. “Team Basilisk, I want

your eyes on the monitors. Team Griffin to the turrets. Team

Yeti, take a rest, you’ll be on duty tonight.”

“Who named the teams, Dragon?” I asked.

He lowered his sunglasses to look at me as he left. “Team

Danger, you’re general of the civilians.” He shut the door.

“I’m general?”

“You’re the thinker now,” said Howell.

All eyes were on me. Even Luther’s. He was fussing with

the zipper on his sweatshirt, its
zing
the only sound in the room.

I cleared my throat.

“So, I think I know some things.” I was aware of Wilder

still leaning against the wall, but I didn’t look at him. Luther’s

zip-zip-zip
made me want to pace. “The ghostmen are old. Not

tortoise-old. Planet-old. They don’t die.”

Someone whimpered. I agreed that wasn’t good news.

“This is just a hypothesis,” I told my Dad as an apology.

“I’d say hypotheses are in order,” he said.

“Okay. So the ghostmen are adversely affected by gravity

and need robot suits in order to move outside their ship. When

the robot suit arm attaches to a human, the ghost can leave the

suit, shoot through the arm and into the person. An intangible

parasite, it takes over all the human body’s functions. After peo-

ple are possessed by the aliens, it looks like they mostly spend

their time eating and seeking out adrenaline rushes.”

“Seriously?” said Luther.

“They’re here to enjoy physical bodies,” said Wilder.

“That’s what I’ve observed,” I said. “Here’s my best guess

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Dangerous

about the rest. The ghostmen evolved from something like dark

matter. Maybe they came across technology from another spe-

cies and adapted what they found for their own uses.” This was

all feeling right, the thinker token seeming content inside me,

so I went on. “They didn’t know what pleasure was until they

inhabited another species’ bodies. Once they experienced a tan-

gible existence, it became their obsession, and now they cross the

galaxy seeking new hosts so they can experience sensations again.

“At some point their two ships arrived at what I’ll call Planet

A and started taking over bodies. Planet A inhabitants probably

discovered them, fought them, and failed, but managed to send

info about the enemy to Planet B, another planet they were in

contact with, probably their sister colony in another solar sys-

tem. After the ghosts used up the last of Planet A’s dwellers, their

ships traveled to Planet B.

“By the time the ships arrived, Planet B had made the to-

kens that gave five individuals the necessary skills to destroy the

ships. They succeeded with one, but the other ship got away,

heading, most likely, for the next nearest planet with sentient

life: Earth. The token-makers packaged up the tokens and sent

them to us, presumably to spare us the fate of Planet A and help

us destroy the second ship.

“The ghostmen will want to stay here as long as possible. I

think they try to be careful to avoid notice, inserting themselves

into people who live in isolated places.”

I glanced at Wilder. He nodded once as if he’d thought the

same thing, then looked back at the ceiling.

“When possessed humans die, the ghosts are booted out,” I

said. “I think if the ship isn’t nearby to suck them back in, the

ghostmen would keep floating right out of Earth’s atmosphere

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Shannon Hale

into space’s vacuum, where they’d be helpless. That’s where we

want them.”

I paused. Everyone waited.

“And so, in conclusion, I need to destroy their ship.”

“And . . . how?” asked Luther.

“I was able to fight off the mini-troopers pretty easily,” I said.

“But as soon as they realized I was the fireteam, the infected

humans must have alerted the big ship to my location, and it

master-blasted me. I don’t . . . I don’t know if a direct blast could

kill
me, but maybe. I think the fireteam’s purpose is to destroy

the ship. That has to be where they store their robot suits, and

without them, they can’t enter any new bodies. And without the

ship to recapture them, disembodied ghostmen will enter space

and have no way to return to take any more bodies.”

“Okay, so let’s get some heavy firepower and obliterate the

sucker out of the sky,” Luther said.

“Well, it’s super fast and invisible,” I said. “The only way to

locate it is to watch where the disembodied ghostmen go, and

only I can see them. So here’s the plan: we need to gather to-

gether a bunch of possessed people and somehow kick the little

pink aliens out of them. The ship will come to rescue them,

and I’ll follow the ghosts to the ship, break into it, and destroy

it from the inside.”

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C h a p t e r 4 8

It felt great to have a plan at last. I looked at Luther, ex-

pecting his approval of my superhero scheme. But he was just

staring at me. Everyone else looked away—at the floor, at their

hands. I felt the doubt in the silence like a vice.

“Do you know how smart the token-makers were?” I said.

“They could send an asteroid millions of kilometers at the per-

fect trajectory to safely land in Earth’s orbit, and even
they

couldn’t defeat two ships. Apparently no military or weapon was

sufficient. The fireteam was the best option.”

More silence.

I looked at Luther. “I know it’s risky, but what else can I

do?”

“Not die?” he said.

“Luthe—”

“I know you’re the Astounding Fireteam, but this plan . . .

it’s too much for one person, and outrageously dangerous. You

might as well jump into a volcano.”

“I know,” I whispered. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

“Let’s mull this over dinner, shall we?” Howell said brightly.

Everyone muttered agreement and began to shuffle from

the room. Luther glanced back at me before leaving. I just stood

there, already feeling half-dead.

Only the thinker could take up the tokens of the slain team

members. Clearly the token-makers had considered casualties

likely. If at least one out of five was expected to die, what was the

probability that one out of one would survive?

Shannon Hale

I wasn’t as strong as Ruthless, I couldn’t produce as much

armor as Jack Havoc or shoot as often as Code Blue. My techno

token was weaker than at first, and I clearly couldn’t plot as well

as the Wild Card. I longed to counsel with Wilder. I glanced

at him as he left and reminded myself how he’d laughed at me

when he’d shot off Fido.

I turned to Howell.

“I just want to remind you that GT’s son is still walking

around free.”

“I sent away everyone I couldn’t trust with my life,” she said.

“Yeah, and you’re crazy.”

Howell giggled. Straight up giggled. “But Miss Brown,

wouldn’t I have to be?”

I shouted after her as she walked away, “What does that

even mean?”

I ate dinner in the lab with my Dad and Luther. Dad was

chatty with the whitecoats, going over the robot suit, hypoth-

esizing about whether the interior of the ship would be solid as

well. He seemed so upbeat, but I detected cracks in his gusto.

Sometimes he looked at me like Luther did—as if seeing me

already dead.

For the first time since getting Ruth’s token, I didn’t want

to eat.

“What if you stay on the ground?” asked Luther. “What if

you watch where the pink ghosts go and don’t only shoot havoc

at it but direct missiles and, balefire Maisie, we could try a nuke,

right? There’s no reason—”

“The missiles won’t work. I don’t know why, but I have to

listen to whatever subconscious data the thinker token is up-

loading to my brain.”

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Dangerous

“I wish . . .” He took a deep breath. “I wish none of this had

happened.”

When the others went to bed, I stayed in the lab. Wilder

wasn’t there, but I knew he would come. Since the lockdown,

there was nowhere else for him to go except his lonely little

room, and he hated being alone. Only child. Missing mom/

absent father. He came to astronaut boot camp with an entou-

rage of friends, even though he had nefarious plans. He tried

(succeeded?) to get together with me, and who knew how many

other girls. The boy needed company. And I wanted a full con-

fession. The question and presence of Wilder was distracting

me from my mission.

I was fiddling with the mini-trooper suit when I sensed him

at the open door. I spoke before he could try to slink off again.

“Why does Howell trust you?”

“Because I didn’t kill Mi-sun.”

“You told me you did.”

“I was lying.”

“Brutus said—” I stopped. I hadn’t thought of it since get-

ting the thinker token and suddenly felt like a fool. Brutus had

said Wilder killed Mi-sun. He could have meant GT Wilder.

His testimony was questionable. I threw it out.

“Did you know we were going to kill Ruth?” I asked.

His tone was cautious. “So, are we talking now—”