Dangerous (38 page)

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

again, turning.

“Yeah, I knew. I knew other things too—that no one would

stop her but us. And she’d do a lot of damage first. Killing her

quickly was one option; the other was to let her rage and raze

until we were forced to kill her anyway.”

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Shannon Hale

“You didn’t have to kill her. If you’d—”

“No. She wasn’t going to fight for the team anymore, and

we needed the token back. Without all five, we’d fail, and my

nanites were constantly screaming that our mission would be

colossally important.”

“It was all an act,” I said. “You made me care about you so

you could use me.” I wished my voiced hadn’t quavered. That

weakness goaded me, and I shouted. “You perverted worm, you

nonhuman, you’re a hundred times worse than your father!”

He trembled. “I didn’t make you do anything! Besides,

that
wasn’t my plan. The
you
part.”

“You lied and manipulated me into going after Jacques—”

“The other part! The part where I fell in love with you.”

I felt as if I’d been slapped.

“Shut up.”

“Make me,” he said, then laughed at his own absurd joke.

Because of course, I
could
make him.

Enough confession. I pronounced judgment in a calm,

even voice that made me proud. “You are a murderer and a liar,

and you’re so far gone, you don’t even care.”

He matched my gaze as if it were a contest. “So, what are

you going to do with me?”

I couldn’t stand to have him around anymore. Every time

I looked at him, my heart hurt all over again. Besides, the way

he’d sat there like a vulture while I was paralyzed scared me.

Handing him off to the police was ridiculous. Everything we

were, everything we’d done with these tokens, it seemed apart

from the rest of the world.

“I’m the general now, and you’re not welcome here or any-

where near people I love. Leave HAL tonight and don’t come back.”

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Dangerous

I turned and got to work on my suit. He stayed for fifteen

seconds more. I counted his retreating footsteps till he was gone.

Then I sat down, elbows on knees, my face in my hands. I was

glad my body had waited for his absence to start shaking.

Instead of relief I felt a loss. I wanted to curl up in a dark

room next to Laelaps and sink into numbing sleep. But Wilder

had dumped new data on me, and I couldn’t relax till I’d exam-

ined it and organized it on neat little shelves in my brain.

Ruth. I hadn’t been the thinker when I’d known her, and I

had to admit, his analysis of her seemed right.

Mi-sun. The evidence indicated he’d killed her, but I

couldn’t be one hundred percent sure.

But Wilder couldn’t lie his way out of trying to kill me. He

most definitely aimed blue shot at my person and tried to—

I dropped my hands from my face. He’d aimed. And

missed.

I hadn’t understood before, but aiming was so easy with

the shooter token. My eyes were the weapon’s sights—I looked

and there my ammo flew. I could shoot someone in the eye, no

problem, especially from only a few meters away.

Okay, but he did destroy Fido.

Then again, he could have shot those havoc knives at my

torso or head. Instead he hit the only place that wouldn’t make

me bleed. I’d assumed he’d made mistakes that night, but what

if everything he did was on purpose? Maybe he took an over-

dose of potassium or something
intending
to stop his heart—a

self-execution. Why would he want to die in front of me?

So his tokens would leave his body. So I would be there to

take them.

But neither of us could have known what I was beginning

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Shannon Hale

to guess—when his heart stopped and the tokens began to shut

down, I leaned over him and the electricity of my three tokens

must have drawn his nanites back to their base. I’d pulled them

away before he was fully dead, and so I’d been able to revive

him.

He’d shot my Fido arm, even knowing that without it, I

wouldn’t be able to call for help. Help for
him
. He walked into

that building believing he would die. If I didn’t question that he

was the bad guy, then I’d let him.

The thought was so sharp, so sad, I fell back into a chair.

He wasn’t the thinker anymore. I shouldn’t have been able

to sense him, but I thought I could. He was above me. The up-

per floors were closed. What was he doing?

I remembered him in the cafeteria, turning to me, arms

open, inviting me to kill him. I’d wondered then if he didn’t

want to live.

Wilder was on the roof.

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C h a p t e r 4 9

I ran. Too hurried for stairs, I scaled the outside of the

building, leaping onto the roof. Wilder was standing near an

edge. With the building in lockdown, now that he was out,

there was no exit but down.

I walked closer, and he startled when he heard the gravel

slide beneath my feet. I’d never seen Wilder startle before. He

used to know when I was near. He used to know everything.

“Tell me again.” I stopped a few meters away. “I’m going to

try to listen better.”

He blinked surprise. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you.” He began to pace a short track in the roof’s

gravel top. “Okay. Everything? Um . . . my dad found out about

the tokens and Howell’s plans. He made sure I would be one of

the recipients. We had only a vague understanding of what the

tokens were and what they would do, but Dad knew they would

be valuable. I knew it’d be a risk, but when I heard that the

tokens might make me stronger or smarter, Dad didn’t have to

work to convince me.

“Dad intended to use me as his little spy and help lure the

rest of the token holders into his employ. ‘We’ll be more pow-

erful than anyone can imagine,’ he’d say. ‘We’ll do whatever

we want, own whatever we want. We’ll be a team.’ A few years

earlier, I might have really believed that once I had a token my

daddy would
wuv me
,” he said in a baby voice. “I knew better

than to be completely sucked in by his promises, but still, he

Shannon Hale

would
notice
me, and at the time, that was enough.”

He glanced up as if expecting I would walk away. I stayed.

He looked back at the ground.

“I chose you at boot camp because of your arm.”

“What do you mean you
chose
me?”

“I’d agreed with Dad I would stay single at boot camp

because Howell might choose anybody, and I didn’t want to

complicate matters with a potential teammate. The plan was

to secure everyone’s loyalty for Dad, and if anyone didn’t side

with us . . . Dad might have to . . . you know . . . get rough. I

did hook up with a couple of girls at boot camp, but I knew they

wouldn’t be chosen because they weren’t too bright. I got bored

with them. You didn’t qualify as not too bright, but I was sure

Howell wouldn’t pick you because of your arm.” He looked at

me, grimacing. “How am I doing on the hate meter? Rising up

to ten?”

I shrugged. I didn’t want to pass judgment yet.

He couldn’t seem to hold my gaze, looking down again.

“When your name was on the list, I was . . . wow, I don’t know

that I’ve ever been so angry. At Howell, at you, at myself. It

wasn’t until then that I realized I actually liked you, and how

much I thought that weakened me.”

I nodded, and he seemed encouraged to go on.

“Dad didn’t want you loyal to me—he wanted you loyal to

him alone. I was a terrible thinker. I could feel that urgency to

unite the team and train us for what was coming. But I wanted

to use that brain power to show my dad I was worth the gamble.

I wanted the world, and I wanted him to see me get it. And it all

backfired in Ruth. I should have seen what was wrong with her.”

“So you decided she had to die.”

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Dangerous

He nodded, still looking down. “I convinced myself I was a

hero who could stop a killer. It wasn’t until we were on the boat

that I knew she’d die. I felt sure that only the thinker should

salvage her token—but you took it first.”

“Sorry . . .”

“Yeah, you’re kind of grabby.” He tried to smile. “So . . .

you left, and when you did, my ability to keep the team togeth-

er broke. Jacques and Mi-sun went home—or so I thought. I

wasn’t going to stay with Howell, whom I didn’t trust. I left too,

and it was then I realized GT had killed my mom. I wanted to

punish him. I didn’t want him dead—I wanted him alive and

eaten away by remorse.

“But the pull of the fireteam interfered with revenge. I felt

like half of a person without you...you guys. And I was convinced

something really bad would happen if I didn’t reform the team.

So I made a plan, and it started with you. After Dad visited your

house, I gassed you out to make you feel in danger.”

“It
was
you.”

He laughed ruefully. “I know, this just gets better and bet-

ter. Are you sure you—”

There was an angry hum followed by a loud crack. I ran

to the edge of the roof. The north wall was splitting, chunks of

concrete falling loose.

“Speak of the devil,” Wilder said, crouching beside me.

“He’s determined to get these tokens, isn’t he?” I said.

“He’ll never stop.”

I called Dragon.

“I’m on the roof,” I said.

“Yeah, electric fence down and something is attacking the

north wall,” he said. “You stay put and stay low, Brown. They’re

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Shannon Hale

here for you. Don’t give them a target.”

“My dad—”

“Those suckers are not getting through our wall. We have a

few surprises.” He disconnected.

The turrets were showing their bristling firepower, weap-

ons lighting up the night. I saw a swarm of aerial droids take off

from HAL, zipping down the line of a search light. The wall

continued to crack.

“Laser gun?” I asked. After sporting alien technology for

half a year, a laser gun trying to break a wall seemed practically

mundane.

“Quiet, less likely to draw outside notice,” said Wilder. “GT

tried to paralyze you and take you away. That failed, so he won’t

try it again. He doesn’t know that the tokens won’t stay put in

gravity. So this time he’s here—”

“To kill me.” I nodded. “So go on. I can multitask.”

He smiled. “Okay.” We were whispering now, both of us

crouched and keeping an eye on the commotion. “So my plan

was to get you isolated from everything and make you believe I

was your one lifeline. But while you were in Florida—”

“You knew where I was?”

He shrugged. “Sure. I . . . uh . . .”

“You put a tracker in my necklace,” I said.

“And risk your discovering it? Give me some credit. No, I

monitored Luther’s computer activity, hacked that Japanese site,

and after you posted, followed your IP trail. But I didn’t lead

GT’s guys there. I didn’t know he had your dad—”

“I know,” I said. “Go on.”

Wilder took a breath. “So, GT had recruited Mi-sun and

Jacques straight out of HAL. They were especially susceptible

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Dangerous

to my dad’s manipulations. The nature of the tokens made

them want a team, a leader—but after Ruth, they didn’t want

me
anymore. Dad had them take out some of his old enemies,

partly just to get them in so deep they’d feel like they couldn’t

leave. Jacques went shopping for a ‘hitman wardrobe.’ Mi-sun

. . . got weird. I pretended to join up with Dad so I could figure

how to get Jacques and Mi-sun out. After a while Mi-sun agreed

to leave with me.

“I think she hadn’t really processed what she’d been doing

for Dad until she had a choice to stop. We were at Dad’s, and

she was heading to her room to pack when she started to scream.

I heard her in the hallway, but before I could get to her, she

pulled a ring off her finger and shot it at her own chest. Maybe

she was aiming at the token, but she hit her heart.”

I shivered.

“Dad picked her up and felt for a pulse. Brutus and some

other guys saw it happen, but they didn’t know about the blue

shot. It must’ve looked like Dad was choking her—and maybe

he did, to make sure she was dead.” He squeezed his eyes shut.

“Then he’s hollering at me to come take her token. It was com-

ing out of her chest. Whatever we were made for, we would

need every token. But I hesitated.

“Jacques was there too, and he leaped for her. I kicked

him back and took it myself. Better me than him, that’s what

I thought. Until the pain hit.” He took a breath. “It only lasts a

few seconds, but it feels like forever, doesn’t it?”

I nodded. In the distance we heard shouts, zaps, a heli-

copter. Still crouching, I bounced on my heels. I wanted to be

helping, not hiding.

“How did Jacques feel about that?” I asked to distract myself.