Dangerous (44 page)

in from the side. When all the black dots converged, I knew I’d

lose consciousness. I didn’t want to fall asleep. Desperate for

every moment. Black dots. White lines. Green speckles. Patches

of color. Indistinct becoming distinct.

An object was moving toward me, fast, coming up at an an-

gle. Imagined? I was barely conscious now, breathing in small

hurried gasps. The rushing seemed to fill me, my ears full of air

as thick as water, my chest a windsock.

An object charging at me.

You’re hallucinating. You’re crazy in your last moments.
O,

Mami, por favor . . .

I didn’t believe the thing was real until it slammed into me

with the roar of a jet pack. My left shoulder and arm crunched

at the impact, and the pain made me feel more alert. The jet-

packed person clung to my back, falling with me, while shov-

ing me around midair. I thought about fighting back, but what

was the point? That tree down there seemed so close, I almost

thought I could reach—

There was a gut-wrenching yank. It took me a moment

to realize what had happened—the person in a jet pack had

strapped a parachute to my back and pulled the cord, letting

me go. My plummet slowed with sudden force, and the little

air in my lungs was thrust out. I managed a few grateful breaths

before realizing the parachute was too late—the ground was too

close, and I hadn’t slowed enough.

366

Dangerous

I hit feet-first with a crunch in my legs, the rest of my body

following, slamming down into a rock pile, my havoc armor

shattering. The parachute gusted away, an urgent jellyfish. I

was dragged along with it. Rocks scraped my now-bare face and

arms.

Release cord, I thought airily.

My head slammed into a rock. Sound and sight changed,

as if I were underwater and a carnival blazed in the distance—

merry-go-round music, distorted and slowed. I kept blinking but

couldn’t focus my eyes. There was blood. It was mine.

I wasn’t dragging anymore. The parachute had caught on

something or else the wind had stopped. But that hadn’t im-

proved the situation.

I lay there, my whole body feeling like a rock pile. The

carousel music transformed into a hard, uncomfortable rhythm,

and I realized it was my own shuddering gasps.

Here’s the part where I die, I thought.

I was almost glad it had arrived at last. So much build up.

Still I clung to consciousness as if to the ledge of a sky-

scraper. Even pain was better than nothing.

There would be a few more minutes of agony and then I’d

slip away, and maybe I’d find out if there was some part of me

that went on. My scientific soul—unquantifiable, unprovable,

intangible? It wasn’t going to be a pleasant few minutes, but

they were
my
minutes.

And then something went and spoiled it all—a loud, angry

noise, like a swarm of giant insects. That kind of freaked me

out, because for all they’re the most prevalent creatures on the

planet, giant ones would be enormously creepy. I tried to sit up,

but things were broken inside me. I think I screamed.

367

Shannon Hale

The insects kept coming. I could see them now. Alien

ships, I figured. Maybe I only destroyed the first wave, and now

the real destruction would begin. The insects were brilliant,

shooting beams of light into my eyes. I could feel cold tears

leaking down my cheeks. It was one thing to linger in pain and

pass away, but another to go like this, attacked by alien insects,

and me broken and crippled and unable to fight back. And I’d

failed after all. It wasn’t over. Mom wouldn’t be okay.

I knew it would hurt, but I tried again to get up. Again,

broken bones slid, and I screamed.

“Stop that!” A hand on my forehead, the voice in my ear.

“Hold still, would you?”

“Why is she—”

“Look, her tokens are gone.”

“She hit the ground without—”

“Big bugs . . .” I said. My jaw cracked and hurt like crazy.

“Helicopters, Maisie,” said Wilder.

He smelled metallic, electric, like ozone. His hands were

ice cold. He was wearing a black helmet and something bulky

on his back.

“You made an extra jet pack,” I mumbled without moving

my jaw. He’d been the thing that put the parachute on my back.

“Just in case. I tried to match your design, but mine wouldn’t

go as high. I wish I could’ve transferred it to you midair—”

“Shouldn’t wear it . . . not designed for normal people . . .”

“A little third-degree burn on the backs of the calves never

hurt anybody,” he said.

I moaned sadly. I’d liked his calves.

“Stop trying to move,” he said.

His voice sounded wrong, false somehow. I realized he was

368

Dangerous

terrified. He thought I was going to die. I couldn’t blame him.

The hands that had been checking my pupils and pulse

now folded me in half, kicked me a few times, and threw me

onto a stretcher. In truth they were probably very gentle, but

that’s not how it felt. I screamed. I had no choice.

Someone put an IV in my arm, and it must have included

some serious painkillers because the pain in my body became

slick like sausages. Then I was trying to hold a handful of greasy

sausages, but they kept squelching out of my hands and falling,

and falling and falling into nothing. The sausages part was a

dream, I’m ninety-nine percent sure. And I was glad for it. Now

that I wasn’t officially dead, I wanted to stay unconscious for a

long time.

369

C h a p t e r 5 7

I woke. Mom was there. Alive. Or else we were both dead.

“You’re
not
dead,” she said as if she could read my mind.

And she touched my face to prove it. Her hand was warm. My

face was cold. Neither of us felt like a ghost. I tried to feel relief,

but I couldn’t seem to feel anything. Numbness was the new

happiness.

I looked her over to see if she was different after playing

host to an alien infestation. She was looking me over, I guess

searching for signs of how much I’d changed since becoming

the fireteam and destroying an alien ship. Her eyes seemed the

same. I wondered if mine did too.

I was in a hospital. A real one, not the lab at HAL. That’s

when I suspected HAL was gone.

“GT or aliens?” I asked my mom through my wired jaw. I

felt barely human, casts and bandages and monitors. I remem-

bered vaguely waking before to a doctor explaining that I had

six cracked ribs, a cracked skull and jaw, a cracked pelvis, bro-

ken arm, fractures in all six leg bones and many foot bones, not

to mention a ruptured spleen, crushed kidney, and punctured

lung. The doctor had said I should be dead. He’d said it with

a smile, as if I should be overjoyed by that news. I’d probably

passed out after.

“Both,” said Mom. “GT attacked first. Howell believes the

attack drew the ship’s notice away from the buses—so in one

way, GT was actually useful. There were flashes of white light,

and then HAL was gone.”

Dangerous

“Sucks . . . ,” I said.

Mom didn’t like that word, but she didn’t correct me.

“The blast also consumed most of GT’s attacking forces.

He was not among them.”

I had so many questions I wanted to ask. I blinked hard,

attempting to wake up, but then couldn’t get my eyelids to open

again.

“That boy with the jet pack was awfully slow to find you.”

“He got to me just in time,” I mumbled, moving nothing

but my tongue and lips.

“I would have preferred his arrival a little sooner.” She lay a

hand on my mummified leg.

I licked my lips, afraid to ask the next question. “Was any-

one inside HAL?”

“Some . . .” Mom sniffed. That was as close to crying as she

ever got.

“Dad?” I squeaked. “Luther?”

“They’re fine. They were on the bus with me.”

I relaxed and felt myself sinking again, darkness rising up

over my head. “Laelaps?”

“Alive and slobbering . . .”

I tried to smile but it hurt too much. Sleep was nicer.

371

C h a p t e r 5 8

I woke again, chased out of a dream by the image of

Jacques skinny and nearly dead under his armor.

“Mmmff,” I said, which meant, I haven’t eaten since I don’t

remember when and I have to eat all the time or I’ll deplete into

nothing like Jacques so whoever is nearby hurry and bring me a

cheeseburger on the double if you please.

Then I remembered I was tokenless. Everything hurt, in-

cluding my eyelashes and toenails.

“Mmmff yourself,” Luther said. He was sitting beside my

bed reading
Popular Mechanics
.

“Mmmaff,” I replied, which meant, please hand me that lit-

tle sponge-on-a-stick so I can wet my mouth because my tongue

feels like roadkill frog three days dead.

“Good Trog,” he said, patting my head. “Nice Trog.”

“Shut up,” I managed before falling back asleep.

I dreamed about falling. I kept expecting to hit the ground but

I never did. Is it possible to fall forever? That’s where the ghostmen

were now, falling through space, on and on and on . . .

C h a p t e r 5 9

Howell was beside my bed. I looked for Mom. She was read-

ing in a chair in the corner. Well, sort of reading. Mostly watch-

ing Howell. It made me feel kind of cozy that Mom didn’t trust

Howell. She was here now. Someone was looking out for me.

Then I noticed what I should have noticed immediately,

which made me even more alarmed about the general health

of my brain and eyes: Howell was bald. Her head looked alarm-

ingly tiny without her bouncy frizz. I almost laughed, but there

was something so pathetic about it that my throat constricted.

Maybe I guessed that it meant something very bad.

“Hello, Miss Brown,” she said. “Thank you for saving the

world.”

She placed a trophy on my belly. There was a little woman

in gold plastic with a fist raised in the air, a stance of victory.

The plaque on her pedestal read:

MAISIE DANGER BROWN

1ST PLACE

SAVING THE WORLD

In my periphery, I could see Mom roll her eyes.

“Thanks,” I croaked. “Your hair?”

Howell nodded, and no curly Afro bobbed with the mo-

tion. “I shaved it off. I’m in mourning.”

“Who?”

I thought I could take it. After all, loss was expected in a war.

But then she said, “Dragon.”

Shannon Hale

“He was in HAL?” I asked.

She nodded again. Her tiny pink face scrunched up and

she started to cry. Cry hard, cry like a small child cries, with

uninhibited, anguished sobs.

Mom came over. She put a hand on my forehead. She

cried with both of us.

374

C h a p t e r 6 0

I slept a lot. The doctor said that was normal. My body

needed all my energy to stitch back together and had little left

over for consciousness.

It wasn’t until I overheard Dad talking with a doctor about

my “skydiving accident” that I realized the doctors didn’t know

that I’d fallen from the stratosphere. I was grateful for the

lie. Explaining my defunct superpowers to the broader world

sounded exhausting.

Mom and Dad practically lived with me in the hospital.

Luther went back to his parents, who seemed genuinely elated

by his return. I think they probably always liked him as much as

they liked his sisters. They just needed a reminder.

Inez. Inez Aguilar Lugo. My mom’s real name. She seemed

pained to speak the words and yet relieved too.

She told me about being a small child, waiting for the cars

to come back after another protest, another attack, and count-

ing heads to see how many of her community had returned that

time. And if her parents would be among them.

“My parents never asked me to pull a trigger. But I would

have—for them, I would have done anything. And after they

were killed, I tried. But
mi gente
stopped me. The whole com-

munity took care of me, got me a new name, set me off on a

new life. The Paraguayan government grouped me with the rest

of
la Bandera Amarilla,
and I was convicted of the murder of

soldiers
in abstentia
, so I could never be Inez again.”

“That’s why we’ve lived as we have.”

Shannon Hale

“I hope you weren’t unhappy,” she said.

I’d pull a trigger for you, I thought. I’d live a small life for

you.

“Your father and I swore we’d never bring children into a

fugitive’s life. But you came anyway,
la Peligrosa
, and you made

everything better. We would have had a dozen more of you, if

we dared.”

“So . . . it wasn’t because of my arm?”

She looked confused. “Your arm?”

“GT said you were afraid that if you had another child, it

might be like me . . . born without a limb.”

Mom straight up laughed. “No,
la Peligrosa
, it wasn’t be-