Dangerous (16 page)

was hardening, tightening, unfamiliar. I was clutched in the fist

of a giant.

Something clamped my wrist. It was a massive metal cuff.

I reached with my Fido hand to pull it off, and Dragon snapped

a second cuff over my robotic wrist, both connected by a short,

thick chain. I’d designed these cuffs but no longer remembered

exactly how. Restrained, my left hand couldn’t reach to remove

Fido and get free.

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Dangerous

Dragon said something as he took a few steps back. Was he

afraid that I would crush his skull? And would I?

I turned, looking for Wilder. There was a streak of blue

and a sting on my lip. I smelled powder. Wilder was standing

beside Mi-sun. He’d had her try to shoot a pill into my mouth.

Something to knock me out? Something to kill me?

I pressed my lips shut and backed away.

Wilder approached, hands up again, talking. If I focused

beyond my heartbeats, maybe I could hear him. I tried but

heard instead the sound of the water below, like television static,

crackling, angry, insistent.

We’re a team, I imagined Wilder saying, and I felt that

stronger than my own heartbeat. But Ruth was dead, and Wild-

er had tried to drug me, and I wasn’t even sure who Maisie

Danger Brown was anymore.

Wilder was still talking, Mi-sun was crying. I stepped to

the edge of the deck.

The water spread out before me, calm, undemanding. The

water looked like freedom. I wasn’t strong enough to run away

from Wilder, but I was strong enough to fall.

So I fell.

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C h a p t e r 1 8

I hit the water like a bomb, knocked off my shoes and

kicked. My hands were chained, so my legs did all the work.

The chilly water didn’t bother me, though I was intensely aware

of it, every molecule of H O brushing over my fingers and toes

2

and the tiny hairs of my skin. The water felt hard to push against,

but a good kind of hard. Satisfying, the speed liberating.

A helicopter clacked above me, spraying water. Didn’t Ruth

bring down a helicopter? Maybe she didn’t mean to. Maybe I

wouldn’t mean to either.

Wilder was calling to me with the megaphone, and I ached

to give in. He was the thinker; I shouldn’t leave him, I wouldn’t

be okay without—

Ruthless, her fist coming down on Duarte’s head
. The

memory shocked me like a live wire, and I dove under, burying

myself and my thoughts with five meters of water. I kicked, leav-

ing a trail of bubbles. Some time later I came up for a breath

and spied the helicopter a ways off. They couldn’t find me. Pain

bit at my heart, but I could take it. I went down again.

The whole world was blue as if it had absorbed the sky.

Currents rushed past me like wind, fish like birds darted over

my head. I seemed to fly.

The next time I surfaced, the helicopter was out of sight. I

fought the waves into shore, dragged myself onto an empty beach,

and lay facedown on the sand. I wanted to be dead. I fantasized

about a huge crane raising me into space and then dropping me.

If I went home to Mom and Dad—
Ruthless, her fist
. . .

Shannon Hale

Although I could no longer remember how the cuffs

worked, I did recall worrying that Ruth might discover their

weakness. I hammered the weak spot with my heel and eventu-

ally the cuffs came free.

I heard voices on the beach and spooked, fleeing back into

the water and swimming away. My speed and the strength was

more than Fido could bear, so I tucked my Fido arm against my

chest and swam on my left side. I sped, I zoomed. I gasped. I

was getting even stronger.

Blind, I swam through the night. I was so hungry, my en-

tire body throbbed like a wound, aching, aching, needing.

Dawn came like a seizure. I dove, trying to escape the sun,

and stayed in the deep for twenty minutes at a time. I had no

plan except the idea that I should get as far away from Wilder as

I could. Thoughts came in slow, thick drips, the way cold honey

pours. I didn’t seem able to think the truth—
I’m too dangerous

now, I can never go home
—but the idea was there, burning. I

swam away from it.

My muscles trembled, anxious for nourishment, and my

bones creaked, demanding it. When I could no longer bear the

pain, I crawled ashore, scavenging for food and finding nothing.

I saw cars nearby, and I was terrified that if I got near people, I

would do something horrible. I turned away from the cars and

the sea, and I ran.

My bare feet were alert to everything I stepped on, from

the jab of broken glass to sand grains on asphalt. I left the

paved road, ripping through clots of dark vines that hung be-

tween trees like webs of massive spiders. A couple of times, I ran

straight through a tree.

At an empty rest area, I gulped water out of the bathroom

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Dangerous

sink, went back outside and slumped on the ground next to the

vending machine. I was so hungry, the world seemed to vibrate

to the rhythm of my need—
food, food, food
. . .

My body trembled with tiny, hard shivers. I splayed my

hand on the vending machine glass. I pressed. The glass cracked,

making a web around the spider of my hand. It was beautiful. I

knew there was a reason why I shouldn’t break the glass, but at

the moment no reason made sense to me. I pressed harder. The

glass clicked and groaned. I gripped a shattered edge and tore a

hunk away. Exposed now were the neat, careful rows of candy

bars, nuts, chips, granola bars, crackers, fruit leather.

I ate it all.

When the frenzy passed, I was sitting in a pile of broken

glass and wrappers. I noticed the sound of a chittering bird in

a tree nearby, the windy zoom of cars on the highway. Perhaps

Ruth’s token hadn’t turned me into mindless brute—perhaps

my brain had just been too underfed to think clearly.

I picked up a shard of glass and tried to press it into my

palm. I could feel the edge of the glass, but my skin didn’t cut. I

pressed harder. The glass broke.

A car pulled off the highway toward the rest stop, and I

stood and ran like a kid from a broken cookie jar.

If I didn’t go home to my parents, I would either steal to

live or starve to death. But if I did go home, would I hurt them?

Maybe I wouldn’t turn into Ruth. Maybe I could be care-

ful. Even with Ruth’s blood on my hands, her volatile token in

my chest, I knew my parents would welcome me. I closed my

eyes, so grateful I thought I might cry.

With a thought, I activated the phone in Fido and dialed.

I was sobbing as I spoke. “Dad? Dad, can I come home?”

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C h a p t e r 1 9

Dad wired me money for a bus ticket and food. Mom and

Dad drove south, I rode north, and we met at a bus station in

the middle.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Mom hugged me and I held still, raising my hand to al-

most touch her back. I was mindful of what I could do to her

with just a squeeze, and it made me feel sick beneath the con-

stant hunger.

“
¿Qué pasó?
” she whispered, asking me what had happened.

I looked around the bus station. Some people were staring.

My clothes were stiff with salt. I felt like garbage swept up with

the tide.

Dad said, “Let’s talk in the car.”

On the long drive home, between bites of food, I told them

everything. The Beanstalk ride and space, the techno token and

Fido, the car crash and robot suit, Ruth’s death and the brute

token, the fear and the long swim. I spoke until my tongue was

sticky.

“Howell’s people haven’t figured out yet if the tokens are

harming us or how to get them out, and I don’t think they’re

going to.”

“So stay home,” Dad said, “and we go on as we always have.”

“They might come after me,” I said.

“Then we’ll deal with it,” said Mom.

How? Hours later when Dad turned onto our street, we

still hadn’t come up with a plan. Everything looked so small—

Dangerous

the bungalow houses, the rectangular front yards, the skinny

road, as if since leaving I’d grown into a giant.

Luther was sitting on the front porch. He looked the same.

“You know what’s longer than three weeks?” Luther said

when I got out of the car. “Six.”

“I haven’t gotten to advanced math yet, but I’ll take your

word for it.”

“Well hello there, Luther,” Dad said in an overly casual

tone. He pointed to Luther’s bike lying on the lawn. “You know

why a bicycle can’t stand up on its own? Because it’s two-tired.”

There was a pause. Dad turned to Mom and mumbled, “I

thought it was funny.”

Luther’s gaze dropped to my right arm. “That’s not Ms.

Pincher. Did you get a new one?”

Instinctively I curled my fingers into a ball, my wrist twist-

ing, a gesture too intricate for a normal prosthetic.

“Whoa. What is that?” Luther whispered. He took in our

startled faces, and his eyes narrowed. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I mean, I got a new prosthetic at astro-

naut boot camp. Whoever got the...the highest score on the fi-

nal exams won a prize.”

“Frak, Maisie, in what universe can you win a robotic arm

at summer camp?”

We’d decided to keep my change a secret, but Luther was

too smart to fool. Mom and Dad gave me significant looks and

left us alone on the front steps.

“Before I tell you what’s going on, make a guess,” I said.

Luther sighed, careful to look indulgent. “Bonnie Howell

met you and said, ‘I can rebuild her. I have the technology.’”

“The truth is so much weirder than that.”

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Shannon Hale

“Double good,” he said, plopping down on a step.

So I spilled—parts, anyway. I had Luther at “extraterres-

trial nanorobots.”

“You have to keep this to yourself, Luthe.”

“Of course. My parental units are not like yours. They

would so not be okay with my being shot into space and im-

planted with alien hardware.”

“So mum’s the word?”

“I hate that phrase, but yes, of course I’ll keep your secret.

So are you going to go out on the mean streets and fight crime?”

“I’m going to take a shower. My hair smells like the fish

department at Food 4 Less.”

“Maisie, you’re Luke Cage. You’re Wonder Woman. You

have
to be a superhero.”

“Shower,” I said as I went inside.

When I came out, clean and dressed, Luther was on the

tablet, searching “police scanners.”

“Won’t work,” I said. “There’s no way we can get to a bank

robbery or high-speed chase before the police.”

“In Gotham, Batman just stumbles onto crime,” said Lu-

ther. “Salt Lake is annoyingly tame.”

“I can’t get noticed,” I said, doing some pushups. My mus-

cles were going crazy after the inactivity of the drive. “It’d be off

to a government cage or the trophy case of a crazed supervillain.

If you’ve read any comics you know.”

“Just how tough are you?” he asked, picking up a pair of

scissors. I laughed derisively.

“Really?” he said.

I shrugged. “Go ahead.”

He stabbed my leg lightly. Then harder. I wasn’t numb. In

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Dangerous

fact, the brute token seemed to heighten sensitivity along with

strength. But nothing broke my skin, though he did make a

hole in my jeans.

“Hey!” I said.

I got bored with being stabbed, so I went into the kitchen

in search of anything edible. There was a tug on my hair and

a click.

I swirled around fast. Luther dropped the scissors and

leaped back, hitting the wall. My heart sped.

“Don’t . . . okay?” I said. “Don’t do anything too close to

me. Or surprise me. Don’t.”

His eyes went really big. He glanced at the door out, and

I felt way more pain than being hammered at with a pair of

shears.

“You won’t hurt me,” he said.

“You can’t be sure.”

I took a step back. He came closer.

“I’m sure.”

I nodded. “Okay. Okay, Luther.”

He nodded too, then held up a small lock of my hair. “And

now we know that the nanites don’t care about protecting your

hair.”

“Great.” I fingered the hole in my jeans. “Whatever pur-

pose I was made for, apparently I can do it bald and naked.”

Luther turned red and quickly opened the fridge.

Seriously? Was he imagining me bald and naked? In retali-

ation I tried to imagine
him
bald and naked...and then quickly

busied myself making a few cheese sandwiches.

Don’t do that again, Maisie. Ever.

Too late. My brain filled up with the image of Luther

133

Shannon Hale

again, naked but not bald. How come it was easier to imagine

him without clothes than without hair?

Stop it!

We ate and made rapid conversation that had nothing to