Dangerous (40 page)

spare. If only I wasn’t the only fireteam member.

An hour passed as I worked, aware of Wilder beside me,

watching, tapping notes on a tablet.

“What will you wear when you attack?” he asked. “You can

withstand the cold of the upper atmosphere, I think, but prob-

ably not the decreased pressure.”

I nodded. “I don’t want to end up like Ruth. I’ll wear a

pressure suit.”

“And havoc armor too? It just seems wrong—risky—to de-

pend on our own technology somehow. I remember thinking

that, back when I could think better.”

“Yeah, I agree.”

I’d decided not to say what I’d been thinking when I sud-

denly changed my mind. The idea was too big, too stark and

sharp to stay inside me. I whispered it.

“Wilder, I don’t think I’m strong enough to do this alone.”

He didn’t say anything for a minute.

“A ship, Wilder. A massive, flying, city-sized ship. I couldn’t

even . . . Dragon had to . . . one guy in black clothes with a stu-

pid needle gun, and I couldn’t—”

“Maisie,” he said in such a way that I looked up. “I don’t

know if I mentioned it, but I’m pretty smart.”

A laugh surprised me in my throat.

“And I used to be even smarter, you know,” he said. “With

my brain plus a thinker token, my super-powered conclusion

was, Maisie Danger Brown is the best—the only—person who

can do this. You, Maisie, can do this.”

It was a nice pep talk. But I was the thinker now, and I knew

the odds of a one-person fireteam were frighteningly small.

333

Shannon Hale

“Maybe I could take the drug you took to stop your heart

and dislodge the tokens,” I said. “And when the tokens leave me,

you could take one or two, and Luther too, and give a couple

back to me somehow after you’d revived me so there’d be three

fireteam members—”

His frown was as sad as his smile had been. He didn’t have

to say it wouldn’t work. It was a fantasy. All five tokens were

stuck together now. When Wilder’s two had come out into me,

there’d been no way to separate one from the other.

“I know,” I said.

“If you want me to, I’ll take them. I’ll be the fireteam for

you. But—” He shook his head. “What if we can’t revive you?”

“It’s okay, I’ll be the fireteam,” I said. “I just thought—”

“I know,” he said this time.

He did know. He was the only one in the world who could.

In silence I kept working, he kept watching. And I found

myself examining his story for holes, weighing his actions one

by one, still hesitant to trust him again.

When at last I thought I could sleep, I fell onto one of

the lab cots. Wilder was occupying another. He rolled over. He

looked at me. This boy who had been fairy tale, a figment, now

was next to me and almost real again. I wanted to lift my arm. I

wanted to touch his hand.

The idea was too much. I closed my eyes.

It seemed only moments later I woke up. Howell and the

PhDs were stumbling in. No one had slept much after laser

cannons and explosions. I sat up, saw Wilder beside me, and

couldn’t remember if I was supposed to scowl or smile.

334

Dangerous

Wilder must have detected my uncertainty. “I’m pretty

sure you revoked my banishment last night.”

“Did I?”

“If you can’t remember, then my answer is yes, absolutely.

You begged me to stay and swore unfailing, eternal love.”

Dad and Luther came in, and I blushed, remembering

what Luther had said.
Promise me you won’t choose him
.

Howell was arguing with the whitecoats about whether or

not to abandon HAL.

“Think GT will give up after last night?” I asked.

“That little skirmish? He was just testing our defenses.”

“When will he be back?” I asked.

Howell and Wilder looked at each other.

“He needs time to regroup,” he said. “Less than a week,

I’d guess.”

“Then we end this first.” I was surprised by how confident I

sounded. My stomach felt like dry ice on water.

“You have a plan, oh great and terrible thinker?” Wilder

asked.

“I don’t know what you did to this thinker token, but it

hasn’t been magically implanting foolproof plans into my head.”

“Maisie.” Dragon was holding a cell phone. His expression

was cautious. “Our team in Florida. They found your mother.”

Dad sat upright. Luther put his hand on my shoulder, as if

to shield me from bad news.

Dragon held out the phone. I took it with my left hand. It

was noticeably shaking so I switched to my cyborg hand.

“Mom?”

“Hola, Maisie. ¿Dónde estás?”

Her voice! I bounced on my toes and smiled at Dad. Drag-

335

Shannon Hale

on set the phone to speaker so everyone could hear. I glanced at

Howell, who I knew spoke Spanish as well as a dozen other lan-

guages, and she shook her head. I understood she didn’t want

me to reveal my location, just to be safe.

“I’m with Dad. Are you okay?”

“Yes, I am fine,” she said in English now. “I had dinner. I

had meat for dinner.”

What? Was she trying to speak to me in code or something,

afraid bad guys were listening?

“The people who found you are helping me out,” I said.

“You can trust them.”

“Do you still have that token? You’re still strong?”

“Yes...”

“Dígame dónde estás. Exactamente.”
She was asking again

where I was. Why wasn’t she asking about Dad? An idea began

seeping through me, cold.

“Um, what did you have for dinner?” I asked.

“Meat. It was tender. Very easy to chew.”

“Nothing like tender meat,” I said slowly. “Did you salt it?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “Plenty of salt to bring out the flavor.”

My cyborg hand was shaking too. I looked at Dad. His

frown touched his eyes, wrinkled his forehead. He was con-

fused. Wilder wasn’t. His look confirmed my fear.

I wished Jacques was alive to express in his ear-singeing

way exactly how I felt about the
bleepity-bleep
aliens who had

claimed my mom.

336

C h a p t e r 5 2

“Are you hurt?” I asked Mom. “Are you sick or injured at

all?”

“No. Where are you, Maisie?”

“Mom, I’m going to come get you, okay?” I said, trying to

keep my voice neutral. I didn’t want to say anything that might

lead the alien inside her to figure out that I was at HAL.

“¿Dónde estás, mi hija? Dígame.
I’ll come to you.”

“That’s not safe. Stay with the guys who found you, and I’ll

be there soon.”

I ended the call. Dad was staring at me. I wished the na-

nites made me immune to sorrow. I didn’t want to cry, so I

clenched my jaw and stared hard at the wall, my chin vibrating

like a rabbit’s nose.

“Don’t say it,” Dad begged.

“I don’t know how to help her, Dad,” I whispered to keep

from crying. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Frakking flatscans,” Luther muttered.

Wilder cursed in Russian.

“Apparently, while fleeing GT, she’d gone into a quaran-

tined town a couple of hours from where you’d been staying in

Florida,” said Dragon. “Our team rescued her from the town,

but I told them to stay put with her for now.”

“She must have gambled that GT’s guys wouldn’t pursue

her into the quarantine,” I said, my voice dry. “She didn’t know

that the Jumper Virus was an alien infestation.”

Dragon stepped in front of me, his shoulders straight, his

Shannon Hale

arms at his sides.

“Tell me what to do, Brown,” he said. “Give me an order.”

I knew—with a surety that felt like a thousand knives in my

stomach—that my mother was no longer controlling her own

body. I didn’t know if it was even possible to boot out the alien

and reclaim her. The thinker token didn’t just upload facts into

my head. I had to actively think something through and test out

its trueness.

“So Howell’s guys went into a quarantined town after your

mom and came out still ghost-free?” said Luther. “Sounds like

the ghostmen are trying to ferret you out. They want to find you

through her.”

I nodded. “Mom’s ghost-parasite has access to her mind.

We should assume the ghostmen now know everything she

knew, including that her daughter was a member of the fire-

team. If we bring her here, their ship can track her and then

master-blast us to a crater. They don’t seem to care about frying

host bodies. The ghosts inside just rejoin the ship.”

“Any way to move her without the ship knowing where she’s

gone?” Luther asked.

I shut my eyes and thought, demanding every kilowatt

from my nanites.

“Dragon?”

He nodded, eager for anything I would say.

“Tell your guys to sedate her. And capture and sedate as

many possessed people from the quarantined town as they can

manage—all at once, before any of them have a chance to re-

port back to the ship. Wilder might have some tips on gassing

a building. The ghosts inside become dependent on their hosts

for their senses. I think when their host bodies are unconscious,

338

Dangerous

the ghosts can’t communicate with the ship or each other. Bring

Mom and the other sedated host people here.”

“I will.” Dragon smiled, his teeth startlingly white. “Brown,

I’d take a bullet for you.”

He pointed at me as he left. Wilder followed him out.

The lab was quiet for a time. We ate lunch. Dad and I held

hands. I bet the last time we’d held hands, my preferred fashion

style had been pigtails and pajama pants.

We talked about Mom. We used present tense verbs. I

was glad I’d never told him about the bodies I’d seen piled up,

gnawed by stray dogs.

Wilder returned to report that Dragon’s team was on their

way to Florida.

“We need to be ready by the time they get back,” I said.

“All I’m sure of is I need to destroy the ship. Odds are it wasn’t

near that diner when I went in, but the ghostmen must have

communicated with the ship and it arrived fast enough to blast

our helicopter. The only way to identify its location is to see an

escaping ghost get sucked into it. So we need to boot a lot of

ghosts, one after another, giving me a trail to follow.”

“So,” said one of the PhDs, “it’s looking likely we’ll need

to—quickly and humanely—kill several possessed humans.”

Everyone groaned.

The guy lifted his hands up innocently. “I don’t
want
to!

But is there another option?”

“My mom is one of those possessed humans,” I reminded

him.

“So not her,” said the guy. “Save her for last.”

More groans.

“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger!”

339

Shannon Hale

“Seriously,” said Luther. “You need to shut your mouth.”

I was wincing. “Let me think . . . I need . . .”

“You need ideas to try out,” said Wilder, “see which one

feels right.”

I nodded.

“So . . .” The speed of Wilder’s pacing increased. “We could

expose the possessed humans to extreme temperatures—cold or

heat—or sound vibrations, loud or unique sound waves might

shake them loose. Or photons of light of varying shades and

intensity.”

I shook my head. None of those ideas clicked in my mind.

“They react differently to gravity, right?” said Luther. “How

about sending them to space? Shoot them up farther away from

earth’s gravity and see if they pop out.”

“A Beanstalk pod isn’t big enough for all the ghost-ridden

passengers we’d need,” I said.

“Yeah, and once they’re in space,” Luther said, “it would be

much more difficult for you to follow their trail.”

“Could you invent an antigravity chamber?” asked Howell.

“It’s about time the world had one.”

“That would be double-plus good,” Luther said wistfully.

I considered, the techno-tokened parts of my brain rolling

the idea around. “It’s too complicated, and it would take forever

to manufacture.”

“What about...pressure,” said Dad. “High pressure.”

“That would kill the human bodies too,” Howell said.

“A hyperbaric chamber?” said Wilder. “They use those for

treating scuba divers with decompression illness.”

I ran to a computer and looked up how hyperbaric cham-

bers worked. My thinker-nanites approved, my techno know-

340

Dangerous

how perking up. I started to scribble notes. “If we modify them

. . . the pressure from the chamber would temporarily make the

body inhospitable to the ghosts. Dad, I think it might work.”

I smiled, trying to exude more confidence than I felt. He

gave me a thumb’s up-and I had the impression he was trying

to buoy me up in return.

By dinner we had two hyperbaric chambers in the lab. Cy-

lindrical, made of glass, they looked like high-tech coffins for

Snow White. I gave my gaggle of whitecoats instructions on

their adjustments and returned to my jet pack. If the ship was

in the upper atmosphere, the jet pack would have to be very