Dangerous (13 page)

that,” I said.

“Rescuing kidnapped victims not our job,” said Wilder.

“Then what is?”

He shrugged, his face twisted with frustration. “Whatever

we’re meant for, it’s bigger than anything.”

Jacques was humming the Beatles tune Wilder had sung

earlier. “Is it the Rolling Stones?” he asked.

I no longer felt like skipping.

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C h a p t e r 1 4

Mom and Dad asked when I was coming home.

“Howell invited the five of us to stay longer, and all the

other parents agreed,” I said.

“You’re studying directly with Bonnie Howell?” Dad asked.

“Every day. You want to talk to her?”

They did, and from the sciencese Howell was spewing, I

knew Dad would be convinced I was safe in the hands of an-

other scientist.

We said the I-miss-yous and
te-quieros
. I hung up the

phone, and my chest felt hollow.

“Maisie,” Wilder said.

“What?” I said, suddenly so tired. “What now, what do you

want?”

He didn’t say anything, just stood in the doorway of How-

ell’s office, his hands in his pockets.

I rubbed my forehead. “I hate lying to my parents.”

“You okay?”

“None of us are,” I said. “Ruth picked up that guy
by his

head
. Jacques failed at name-that-tune. And Mi-sun—did she

tell you that she’s dreaming about pink things? Is there some-

thing wrong with me that I’m not aware of? What if the nanites

are toxic to humans, damaging parts of our brains, making us—”

“No, we’re—” His voice cracked. He took a breath. “We’re a

team, and if we stay together, we’re okay.”

I nodded. Perhaps it was nanite poisoning, but I believed

him.

Dangerous

Wilder leaned against the threshold. “I’m glad you’re here,

you know,” he said, and his words were like water to me.

“I want to be here, with you—you guys,” I said. “I’m scared,

but at the same time I can’t imagine ever leaving.”

“I know what you mean.”

Mom and Dad wouldn’t understand. Luther either.

“I’ve never won a trophy or anything like that.” I found my-

self talking to him again like I used to, words pouring out, say-

ing things I didn’t think through first. “It always seemed like a

cool thing, to be part of a championship soccer team or win the

school spelling bee. Earn a trophy for doing something great,

proof of worth that I could hold. But my family doesn’t do stuff

like that. Which is okay, but I guess I just felt . . . small. And

here—with the token, with you guys—I don’t anymore.”

He nodded, no judgment in his expression. His lips smiled

slightly. Approval? An invitation?

The space separating us seemed nearly unreachable, the

vacuum between Earth and the moon. I wanted to cross it, to let

him hold me. To recreate that night on the roof, that car ride. His

attention had been addicting. I didn’t want to miss it, but I did.

I stood there, thinking about microscopes but saying noth-

ing. He looked down at his feet, slowly turned, and walked away.

I fled to my workshop and made impact boots.

Inside the soles of black leather boots, I packed an array of

carbon nanotube springs, so every step I took stored potential

energy. Besides allowing me to spring about, they would ab-

sorb impact. Theoretically. I wanted to practice before showing

Wilder in case I flubbed it and landed on my butt.

The day was cloudy. The cafeteria was dark, the light from

the windows gray and mealy. I jumped off a table and felt as if I

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Shannon Hale

were landing after a tiny hop. Good. Now to climb higher.

Fido was stronger than my left hand, so I had no trouble

scaling the whitewashed bricks in the wall and hitching myself

onto a ledge that housed wicker baskets full of fake greenery.

Weird decorating choice. Who thinks, “Hey, plastic plants in

dusty baskets. Now that’s what I call beauty!”

I was about to jump down the four or so meters when I

heard the door open.

Ruth entered and made for the kitchen. When she found

the door locked, she punched a hole, reached through, and

ripped the entire thing out of its frame.

I was about to speak up when a voice called out from the

corridor. It was a security guy I’d nicknamed Collie because his

hair was shaggy and goldish-brown.

Ruth was tearing open a box of crackers with her teeth.

“There’s plenty of food for you in the lab,” said Collie.

“And plenty of people staring at me while I eat. I’ve had it.

You know what that means? Had it? Sick of it? Done? That’s

me.” She kicked the amputated door.

“
I’ve
had it with you destroying property.”

Collie pulled out his walkie-talkie as if he would call the

security chief, but Ruth took it away, crushing it between her

palms.

“I’m stronger than you,” she said. “I’m stronger than . . .

than
everybody
. And that means I don’t have to do what anyone

says.”

He stared at her. “You will come with me. Now.”

He put his hand on her arm and pulled. She grabbed his

arm, considered it, and twisted her hands. I heard a crack.

The weird thing was that he didn’t scream. He just stared

102

Dangerous

at his arm hanging wrong. Maybe the shock was too great. May-

be that’s why I didn’t speak either.

Ruth was breathing hard. Her face seemed pained. She

mumbled, “I can’t hurt anyone, I said I wouldn’t—”

She glanced at the door, then back at Collie. His eyes were

wide. He opened his mouth, perhaps at last finding that scream.

Her fist came down on his head. He dropped to the floor.

I pushed myself back against the wall, pressed myself there,

my heart pounding at my gut, my gut rolling over, my head feel-

ing like a fishbowl.

Do not look up at me, I pleaded. Do not look.

Through the plants I could see Ruth sitting on her heels

beside the body, her arms around her knees, rocking back and

forth.

She got up, paced, and then stalked to the door as if she

would leave the cafeteria. I almost took a breath of relief, but in-

stead she shut the door and locked it. She peeled a strip of metal

from the broken kitchen door and used it to tie the cafeteria

door handles together, locking us in.

She paced, rubbing her hair, squatting down with her

hands over her face, then rising to pace again. She pulled a

taser from Collie’s utility belt and zapped herself. It didn’t seem

to affect her. I guessed she was trying to make it look like Collie

had attacked her.

I began to lower myself down, trying to hide myself com-

pletely behind the baskets. I moved so slowly, I could hear my

knees adjusting. I was setting my hands down when her eyes

flicked up. I froze. She scanned the baskets, studying the grimy

fake plants before her eyes spotted mine. I felt as if all warmth

left my body in one mad rush.

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Shannon Hale

“Maisie.” Ruth took a startled step backward, then blurted,

“It was an accident.”

It wasn’t. I’d seen her eyes.

When I was four or so, my mom had left the groceries on

the counter while she’d gone to the bathroom, and I opened a

carton of eggs. They were so beautiful. I squeezed one in my

hand, punching through with my thumb, felt the shell give, the

goo ooze out. I cracked another, because one time just wasn’t

enough to understand. I let some fall onto the kitchen floor to

hear the pleasant crunch and watch the splatter patterns. I knew

that I was doing something wrong, but it wasn’t until I picked

up the very last egg that I paused to really think about it. My

mom returned, and I held out the last egg.

“Here,” I said, as if it were a present.

Suddenly I felt awful. I tried to run to my room, but she

grabbed me and crouched down by me and said that she’d al-

ways wanted to do that too. She helped me clean up the mess

and then do chores to earn money for another dozen eggs. But

she never got mad.

Had Ruth broken his arm out of curiosity, like dropping

eggs onto the floor? But then she’d tried to hide the deed, and

there was no way to clean this up.

“Ruth,” I said. It was all I could say, all I could be sure

of—her name. Though her old, short name didn’t seem to apply

anymore. She was Ruthless.

Her eyes were fierce. “An accident.”

“I saw.”

“An accident,” she said again, more insistent.

“I saw, Ruth. I saw.” She’d done a big, scary, very bad thing,

and the only way to keep it from getting worse was to face up.

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Dangerous

Her mind was whirring, as she thought it through, weighed

her options.

Apparently she settled on the option that included killing me.

She launched herself, jumping right up to my platform,

grabbing it with her rock-solid hands, the cement cracking. I

stumbled away, just managing to seize the edge of the platform

as I fell and orient myself to land on my feet. The impact boots

worked, but they didn’t just take the drop—they shot me up

again.

Wrong setting, wrong setting, I thought as I ripped

through the air, my arms spiraling. I must have accidentally

switched “impact” to “hop.” The wall came rushing at me. I

grabbed a windowsill with my Fido hand. Ruth jumped down,

picked up a table, and hurled it at me. I let go, falling just as the

table slammed into the wall where I’d been. Windows shattered

around me. No chance to reset my impact boots. Once again

as soon as I landed, they launched me into the air. Another

thrown table whooshed past me. The force of its passing spun

me around in midair. I struggled to land on my feet, only man-

aging to get one down flat. I would have been rocketed back

into the air again but I scrambled for a hold on the nearest table

and pulled myself back down.

“How are you doing that?” Ruth yelled.

“How are you going to explain two deaths?” I yelled back,

stooping to turn off “hop” before the boots could launch me

head-first into a wall. I ran toward the door, and another ta-

ble smashed in my path. I pulled up short. “Come on, Ruth!

There’s no way to make all this look like an accident.”

She lunged again, and I dove under a table, scrambling

out the other side. She grabbed for me, just missing my foot and

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Shannon Hale

cracking the floor tiles with her hand. She knocked the table

out of her way. Nothing separated me now from the furniture-

tossing monstrosity. My heartbeats were so painful, I thought

my chest would explode. Three more seconds and I would be

paste.

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C h a p t e r 1 5

“The cameras!” I pointed at one of the security cameras

bolted to the ceiling. There was no pulsing red power light, but

I gambled that Ruth hadn’t noticed.

She leaped for one, tearing it loose before twisting it into

metal scrap. She must have realized that if the camera had

been filming, there would be a recording somewhere. Her face

twisted like the metal, regret touching her eyes for the first time.

“What should I do?” She wailed the words.

“Just explain what happened. You wouldn’t have done this

before that token crawled inside you. It’s not all your fault. The

police will take it easy on you for that, and because you’re a

minor too.”

Ruth laughed, and she looked at me with hot contempt.

“You think Howell will turn me over to the police when I

have her precious alien technology?” Ruth put a hand over her

chest, her eyes wild. “She’ll carve it out first.”

We heard boots on tile, the doors shaking as people tried

to open them. Ruth swiped at me, but I’d been backing away. I

palmed a table with Fido and sprang over it. Her hand cracked

down on the floor, busting a tile into shards. The shaking at the

door was more intense.

“I’m not afraid,” said Ruth. “I don’t have to be afraid any-

more.”

She squared her shoulders, facing whoever was trying to

enter. The sparking light of a blow torch buzzed through the

door. They would come in—Dragon, Howell, Wilder—and

Shannon Hale

Ruth would kill them all.

“They can’t take your token if you’re not here,” I said.

She turned to me quick, and her gaze burned. I looked

down, afraid of returning the predator’s gaze.

“You can go anywhere, do anything,” I whispered. And I

looked at the window.

The door screeched against the blow torch. Ruth startled.

She barreled through the bedlam of tables and shattered

through the large window. I saw her sideswipe a truck in the

parking lot before she was lost from view.

Your turn, Maisie, I told myself. Run.

But adrenaline had drained me dry. Not all dry, though, as

I was sweating like a cold can of soda.

I forced myself to stay on my feet and shambled forward,

refusing to look at the body in the kitchen.

“I’m here,” I shouted through the door. The blow torch