Fallout (Lois Lane) (15 page)

Lucy had been bringing food and drink to my cell, and she even offered to lend me
Unicorn University
. Though she’d looked vaguely terrified that I might take her up on it and ruin her reputation.

But by Saturday night, I was out of productive distractions. I needed to get the bug for Monday.

I waited until midnight to make a jailbreak from my room to seek it out, banking that my parents would be sleeping soundly by then. I’d avoided them since the heated discussion the night before.

They were being unreasonable.

I crept down the stairs barefoot—channeling my inner elf—and into my dad’s home study where the contraband was stored. I crossed the threshold and the glowing lamp he always left on at night rewarded me with the sight of both my phone
and
my laptop stacked in a chair across from Dad’s desk.

Tempting, but only after I’d gotten what I came for.

Although not being able to lock the office door wasn’t ideal for the search. I was afraid to even close it, in case someone made a trip downstairs to the kitchen for a glass of water.

Wait. Dad wasn’t paranoid enough to have added a nanny cam, stashed away in some hollowed-out volume of military history or embedded in a statuette of a Civil War soldier, was he?

I hadn’t even considered that. Then again, those were the spots I had to check, the kind of places where he sometimes hid the key to the heavy lock on the tall wooden cabinet in the corner of the office. The cabinet where he stored the cache of high-tech toys and gear I planned to raid.

Well, not
raid
. Borrow from.

I went to a bookshelf and checked inside a volume about President Ulysses S. Grant, or more importantly in Dad’s view, the great General Grant, which was actually a hollowed-out box. Nada.

Given that we’d just moved to Metropolis, he could be homesick for places with a base closer by. So next I went to an end table with a model tank one of his soldiers had made for him years before and undid the hatch on top. Empty.

“Argh,” I muttered, looking around.

My attention landed on a framed photo on the short bookshelf beside his desk. It was us, our family decked out in our finest, with me and Lucy in front of Dad and Mom, the three of them smiling happily and me not. My black hair fell over my shoulders in soft waves that Mom had labored over, but I was scowling at the camera. We’d had it taken last year, and Dad and I had a big argument that day. I remembered slamming doors, but not what we fought about. Thinking back, though, he’d first mentioned requesting a permanent assignment right after that.

I walked over and picked up the picture frame. And . . . felt a shape along the back. I turned it around.

The key was stuck to the back of the frame with a small dollop of putty. I pulled it free and, setting the frame down, beelined for the cabinet. The key slid into the brass lock and the cabinet door gave up the treasures inside with a click.

Row upon row of Dad’s goodies awaited. Directly in front of me were a tiny camera, a few small laser pointers, and some sleek black cylinders that might have been actual handheld lasers. Below was a line of close-quarters prism flares and other gadgets; the flares we were allowed to use on the Fourth of July, a more exciting alternative to sparklers, as long as you called for everyone to squeeze their eyes shut before you let them off.

Finding the bug I needed was easy. I closed my palm around the ink-pen-shaped infrared video and listening device on the second to bottom shelf, complete with a pen-cap receiver. I stowed both inside the pocket of my fuzzy robe.

I closed the cabinet, glad I didn’t need directions on how to use the bug. One of the military scientists who liked Lucy and me best had let us observe when he demoed it for Dad. I’d kind of hoped to find an even newer generation with fresh improvements in Dad’s stockpile, but this would do nicely.

I relocked the door, crossed to the picture frame, and restored the key to the putty. I should go back upstairs, but I paused.

My laptop and phone were right there.

I scurried across the thick rug toward the chair. I was willing to risk booting up down here, instead of lugging the computer all the way upstairs where I might get caught on the way.

And I rationalized that I’d risk only a few more minutes to attempt a check-in with SmallvilleGuy, make sure nothing else had happened in the game, tell him about my plan for Monday, see if he had any new info to share.

Maybe he’d have a new picture of Nellie the baby cow or Shelby the dog to lift my spirits.

If Dad caught me, I’d tell him I was looking at email. Lifting the laptop, I sat down and opened it, letting my phone drop down beside me in the chair.

“If I wanted you to use that this weekend, then I wouldn’t have taken it away.”

I flinched.

Dad stood in the doorway. He flipped on the brighter overhead light. “I am surprised it took you this long to sneak down here, though. Now put that down and go back to bed.”

Good thing you didn’t show up two minutes earlier.
I closed the laptop, but hesitated for a split second, considering my odds of success if I tried to slip the phone into the pocket of my robe along with the bug.

“Leave the phone too.”

I scowled at him, imitating my expression in the family photo. But I did as he commanded. It was only one more day of this unnecessary captivity. One more day until I’d be able to take action.

When I reached the door, he stopped me with a hand on my arm. Now it was his turn to hesitate, but then he said, “I did what you told me to, read all those comments . . . Look, I get the point. Maybe the job isn’t all bad. I hope you get things straightened out. All we want is for you to be happy, Lois.”

I hadn’t expected him to take me up on the suggestion, or say anything remotely like that. I owed him an honest response.

“I don’t know if happy is what I want. I may want more.”

He nodded, fatherly, and I remembered that he wasn’t all tyrant. And even when he was, he was still my dad. He sighed and said, “Honey, that’s what we’re afraid of.”

I returned to my room, and my sentence. Sure, I could do my dad the favor of thinking about what I wanted my life to be like for one more day. But I didn’t need to.

I was beginning to think I’d figured out exactly what I wanted to do with it.

CHAPTER 19

On Monday morning,
Maddy caught up with me at my locker, practically bouncing with excitement. “You ready?” I asked her.

“Are you kidding? I couldn’t think about anything else all weekend,” she said, sweeping a hand down to indicate her leather jacket. “I tried to dress the part.”

“Excellent.” I extended my hand to her with the pen-shaped bug across my palm. “You’re on planting detail.”

She put out her hand and accepted the bug. She stared at it, like she was memorizing every detail.

“Just don’t let her see you with it, okay?” I said.

Maddy frowned. “But how do I . . . ”

I bent and untied the left one of her heavy-soled, swirly-colored shoes. “You’ll notice your shoe’s untied, and while you’re fixing it, you’ll stash the pen wherever is handiest. Her backpack would be best, in an outer pocket. Somewhere she’s less likely to notice it.”

“Oh, okay,” Maddy nodded. “What will you be doing?”

“Me? I’m the distraction.” I shut my locker. “Let’s go.”

“But what if . . . ” Maddy was worrying.

I couldn’t blame her. I’d spent a fair amount of the weekend doing the same. “You’re going to pull this off with no problem.
We
are. Girl power, right?”

“Girl power,” Maddy agreed. “Though it sounds really dorky when you say it like that.”

We went up the hall together, slowing when we got close to Anavi, like we were approaching a strange dog that might attack us.

Anavi might. Or if not her, then the Warheads around her, lounging against nearby lockers with no concern for whether they were blocking access. Anavi hadn’t seen us yet, busy putting books into her locker almost mechanically. Her backpack was slumped on the floor beside her feet, unzipped and open.

That was a lucky break. Maddy’s eyes widened as she noted the fact too.

The restrained quality to Anavi’s movements as she swapped out books was disturbing to witness. Not that she had been magically self-assured and the smoothest of smooth before the Warheads stole her soul, but she’d been . . .
herself
.

“Steady,” I said to Maddy.

Who rolled her eyes. Under the leather jacket, she wore yet another band T-shirt—King Wrong. My curiosity about it flared. About all of her shirts. Everything on Maddy’s playlist had been great, but
none
of the thirty bands on it were ones I’d seen advertised on her T-shirts, and that seemed odd. I’d ask her about it later.

Right now, Maddy was doing her best to be casual and would convince anyone except me with the act. She had her right hand in the pocket of her jeans, probably gripping the pen so hard her knuckles were straining.

“Anavi,” I said, clearing a path through a couple of Warheads by ignoring and ducking around them. Maddy stuck with me.

Anavi turned from her locker so that she was facing me, and the rest of the Warheads subtly shifted so they were too.

I muscled my way closer without touching any of them, so that Maddy could get into position right beside the lockers. And the backpack. But I didn’t check to make sure Maddy was where she should be. That might give us away.

“I wanted to apologize to you, to all of you,” I said, and I felt like a pretty good spy not to choke on the words. They practically flowed off my tongue, a necessary lie coated in warm honey.

“Really?” said a Warhead.

And the chorus chimed in: “That doesn’t . . .”

“. . . seem like you.”

Anavi’s head tilted to one side, her eyes narrowing a bit behind her glasses.

“No, it doesn’t seem like you,” she said.

I glanced around to confirm that the others had mirrored her posture. Could they be any creepier?

Probably shouldn’t try to answer that question.

“I am sorry, whether you believe it or not. So sorry that I felt like I had to tell you. We can call the whole thing done.” It was risky, but I couldn’t help adding, “You can leave Devin alone now too. Since this is over.”

“Can we?”

“I don’t know . . .”

“. . . if we can.”

“Or if we want to.”

“Look, I’m moving on and you should do the same,” I said, careful not to grit my teeth. “I just wanted to make things right with you. I want us to be friends.” And I went in for a hug for the capper.

If Maddy hadn’t already completed her task, then this was her moment. Her last chance to get the bug in place in the backpack.

Anavi took a few long moments to react to the hug. The Warheads weren’t used to random embraces.

I made sure my grip was firm. “I am sorry,” I said, lower.

I meant it. Just like I meant the part about being friends. I was determined to discover what Project Hydra was and end it—to find a way to bring Anavi back to herself.

Finally, Anavi grunted and the Warheads started talking.

“Let her go.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Get out of here.”

“Now.”

A press against my mind underscored the command, and I tightened my hold on Anavi in reflex. Thrown off balance, I needed something to hang on to. I’d forgotten about the threat of this.

But the pressure increased in response, shoving against my mind, longer than either of the previous times. I fought to think of the game, of teasing SmallvilleGuy, of that night in Kansas, of anything I could latch onto to try to ignore the pressure until I could get clear of them.

The problem was thinking at all. But I managed. Barely.

I was beyond grateful when Anavi’s hands came up between us and shoved me away. Anavi gave her head a shake, almost like she had in the classroom when she was fighting the Warheads’ intrusions in her own mind.

“Next time you will regret the consequences of your actions,” Anavi said.

“Yes, there’d . . .”

“. . . better not be . . .”

“. . . a next time.”

Anavi’s phrasing—“regret the consequences of your actions”—was like how she’d put things before she went all hive mind. The slip gave me hope she was in there somewhere, reachable.

But whatever of her had returned was gone again as quickly. Her face smoothed into a mask, and she shut the door to her locker. Without turning, she bent to pick up her backpack. And then she was moving away, down the hall with her pack animals, all of them in perfect sync once again.

I put my hand against the locker. “Did you get it in there?”

Maddy lifted her hands to dust them. “Yes, I got it in there. I thought you were about to ask her to run away with you, you took so long with the hugging.”

“Nice work,” I said, pasting on a smile in return.

“I don’t get that way they talk.” Maddy was watching the Warheads disappear up the hall. “How they always know what the other ones are going to say. What’s the deal with it, do you think?”

I shrugged. I didn’t want to lie to Maddy. And it wasn’t like I could explain everything yet.

Here was hoping the bug got us enough answers to end this.

*

By the time lunch period finally ended, I felt like my blood had been replaced with electricity. Over the course of the morning, the word had been circulated from Maddy to Devin to James that all of us would meet up in the library, in independent research room A, which Maddy had booked during her study period under the guise of watching a video about women factory workers in World War II for AP history.

If the others wanted to see and hear the bug show, they had to skip their first afternoon classes. I had the same study slot as Maddy, but I was supposed to stay in a different area of the library.

That was easy enough to deal with. The librarian only had us sign a sheet as we came in, and then got busy with the million other tasks that were her real job.

I rapped my knuckles on the door of room A, and it cracked a sliver. “Password?” came the whispered reply.

Maddy’s eyelinered eye was silhouetted in the shadow, a flickering black and white movie visible behind her projected on the wall.

“Let me in?” I had completely spaced the fact that Maddy had come up with a password code. She was getting into Independent Study: Cloak-and-Dagger in a major way.

“Password,” the reply came.

Over at her desk, the librarian was helping someone check out a stack of books, and the last thing I wanted was to draw her attention. I needed to activate the bug. But I couldn’t point this out to Maddy without prolonging the torture and exposure. Squinting, I recalled our earlier conversation about this.

My head hurt, which probably meant I didn’t remember right away because I’d been shaking off the sensation of having a bunch of hands—er, minds—pushing against mine. Maddy would make it something to do with the cover story, wouldn’t she? She’d been proud of it . . .

“Rosie,” I said, too loud with triumph. I verified the librarian was still busy. And she was, but two other boys in a stack nearby were looking over at me.

“The Riveter,” Maddy said in a softer tone, and swung the door the rest of the way open. “Enter.”

“Remind me never to cross you, Mata Hari,” I said.

“She was World War One, not Two,” Maddy said coolly.

“Then remind me to copy your history notes.”

Devin was already there, his feet propped on a table in front of the muted movie displaying on the wall. And so was James. Though he sat as stiffly as if he’d been marched in at gunpoint.

“Relax, James,” I said. “No one will ever know you’re a sleeper agent.”

I paused next to Devin. I hadn’t seen him yet today. He was staring up at the flickering footage, filmed on an old factory floor and filled with industrious women. Only he wasn’t really watching it. His eyes were simply pointed in that direction.

That was odd.

I nudged his shoulder with my hand. “You okay? Your loyal subjects were still on your side when you made your triumphant return, I bet.”

He shook his head side to side, and then blinked up at me.

“Oh,” he said, “yeah, fine. I didn’t stay in long.”

I wanted to question why he was acting so weird, but we were out of time. A look at the wall clock confirmed it.

“They should have arrived at the Advanced Research headquarters by now,” I said, tossing my bag onto one of the tables and rummaging for the cap that activated the bug and served as receiver. “And be through security, which means we’re on. You want to do the honors?” I asked Maddy, lifting the pen top.

“Go ahead,” Maddy said, though I got the impression part of her wanted to say yes. Playing it cool in front of James, I bet. Someday he’d kick himself for not noticing her.

I shrugged and pushed the little depression on the end of the pen cap, and a red light blinked, a soft beep following. “That door locked?” I asked.

“Yes,” Maddy responded immediately. Which was good, because we would have a tough time explaining this to anyone who happened to klutz into the room.

I set the cap down on the table, positioning it so we would all have a good view. The audio crackled to life first, tinny with footsteps shuffling along a hallway, and to accompany a projection that popped into being, showing the infrared heat signatures detectable by the bug. Walking bodies, beating hearts, shuffling feet . . . Then they were all standing close together. They were in an elevator. Yes, definitely, because a few seconds later a series of regular beeps sounded and right after the last one, they were filing out of the tight space and along another hallway.

James stood and leaned in close to examine it. “Where did you—did you steal this from your dad? Your dad, the very important general who already hates the
Scoop
?”

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “I borrowed it.”

James might have been skeptical, but he didn’t call me a liar. Which was good, because I wasn’t. I had every intention of putting the bug back where it belonged.

“What is it doing?” Maddy asked.

Devin hadn’t said anything. I’d thought he’d be the one interested in the tech.

“Devin, you can probably guess how it works. You want to explain?” I tried to drag his personality out. Maybe he was depressed about losing the castle? But I didn’t want to make the mistake of assuming he wasn’t in the Warheads’ mental crosshairs like Anavi had been.

“That’s all right,” he said, “you go on.”

“Pretty simple, really,” I said. “An audio-only bug is great for conversations, but useless if you might be looking to visit a place later or find something that the target has put in a safe or some other hiding spot in an office. This gen of infrared camera can shoot through fabric and let you see where your target goes within a location, how many bodies are in a room, stuff like that, not just what they say when they get there.”

The Warheads appeared to be filing into a room, and so I was able to avoid any more questions from James by pointing to my ear and then the image. Now we’d discover how Advanced Research Laboratories was molding young minds every afternoon.

“This must be our newest recruit,” a man’s voice said.

The audio was as crisp as if he was in the library study room with us. The tinny quality had vanished. Another feature of this particular bug model: it compensated for noise impurities. Too bad the latest iteration hadn’t been in Dad’s cabinet, because it boasted clearer visuals.

“Sir, yes, sir,” a chorus of voices said in sync.

“The Warheads?” Maddy said.

I nodded, frowning. I’d never heard them speak at the same time before, no overlapping.

“You don’t have to do that,” the man’s voice said, in a sympathetic way. “Or call me sir. Sorry, but it’s time to get you linked for real and into the sim. Hop up.” Given his gentle tone and that he sounded like he dreaded the next step, he might be the researcher expressing doubts on the private forum SmallvilleGuy had gained access to.

The heat signatures that were gathered around the man spread into a wide circle around him, then sat down one by one in a coordinated way. If I was right, they were facing the center of a large room.

The sympathetic man was joined by a trio of other people, who went by each of the seated Warheads in turn. The heat signatures didn’t make movements crystal clear, but they were plain enough that we could see that the man’s helpers appeared to be leaning in as they stopped at each Warhead, touching the sides of their heads. It was easy to guess they were hooking holosets over the Warheads’ ears.