Dangerous (29 page)

I needed someone who could bring my mom home and

protect my dad and Luther while I went after the Wild Card.

Because that was nonnegotiable. Anyone else he killed before I

could lock him up would be my fault.

“What happened to your hair?” Luther asked.

I could feel the ragged edges brushing my cheek.

“Jacques and some havoc scimitars,” I said.

“So Wilder will be your next kill?”

I choked. “What? I’m not an assassin! I’m going to capture

Wilder and lock him in a HAL thinker-proof cell.”

“Maybe you
should
kill him.”

“Shut up, Luther.” I knew he didn’t mean it. He was just

mad that I’d lost my brute strength for a power he deemed infi-

nitely less cool.

I stayed at HAL for three days while I practiced being

Dangerous

Maisie Havoc. Covering myself with armor was as easy as a

thought, my brain sending a signal through my nerves to the

bacteria to grow havoc. I quickly learned that when first grow-

ing the armor over my body, I had to move around to keep it

nimble. After a few seconds it set, and if I hadn’t bent my elbow,

for example, my arm would be stuck straight. I’d have to remove

the havoc skin and start over, which took a lot of fuel. I could

only stand to eat so many energy bars.

To release the armor I simply thought about it, an action

like flexing a muscle, and cracks would form. I wasn’t sure ex-

actly how that worked. Perhaps it was a coordinated effort with

the bacteria to eat through the armor along those lines.

“My mom?” I asked Howell.

“I have a crew already in Florida,” she said. “This morning

I sent some of my best security guys to help lead the search, but

no news yet.”

Dad was stable but still recovering, so Howell’s doctors

took care of him. The triplets taught me to throw knives—I

used havoc blades. Hairy taught me some hand-to-hand fight-

ing techniques. And I ate. And ate and ate. And talked with my

dad. While eating.

Nights were hard. Often when I closed my eyes, there

was Ruth, writhing on the ship’s deck. Now Jacques joined her,

gaunt and shivering.

One night when everyone was asleep, I searched “the yel-

low leaf” online. Jacques’s last words. Macbeth the doomed

king spoke them too, in a speech near the end of his life.

I have lived long enough: my way of lifeIs fall’n into the

sere, the yellow leaf.

I read on till unexpected sadness sharpened into my heart.

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Shannon Hale

I didn’t have the energy to mourn the person Jacques had be-

come. Not with Dad hurt. Not with Mom missing.

I pled with the ghosts behind my eyes to let me be, and I

fell asleep.

I woke in a sweat, my heart pounding. I bolted upright,

pulsing with panic that there was something I was supposed

to do.

Wilder.

He was willing to kill to get all the tokens, and I had three

buried against my heart. He’d come after me. And if I stayed by

Dad, he’d be a target too.

I wouldn’t wait to be hunted. With two working tokens,

Wilder had the advantage, but I wouldn’t be facing him alone.

Soon after dawn, I kissed Dad’s forehead, bumped knuck-

les with Luther, and got back in one of Howell’s jets.

“You’re sure they’ll be safe?” I asked Howell for the second

time. Or twentieth.

“Who?” she asked.

“My dad and Luther,” I said. She’d probably been teasing,

but you never knew with Howell.

“HAL is well defended. It would take an army.”

Go, go, go, I chanted silently at the air. Though I was

dreading meeting Wilder, I needed to be done with it already.

To distract myself, I went through my suitcase of stuff I’d left

behind at HAL after Ruth died. My old clothes. My orange

jumpsuit. My brush and hair elastics (ouch). My impact boots!

I put them on.

And Wilder’s papers. I went through them again. So little

information. His elective: soccer. Why? Because he was good at

it. His chosen position: commander. Why? Because there was

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Dangerous

no point to anything if he wasn’t in charge.

We transferred to a helicopter at a private airstrip outside

Philadelphia. Wilder had disabled the tracker Howell put in his

ankle. The only way to find him was fireteam hide-and-seek. I

directed Dragon to start near the lair and then fly over all the

places he and I had gone together.

Wilder would want me to find him. He wanted what I had,

and he’d be confident he could take it. I remembered his swag-

ger, his brazen smile. And then I started remembering lots of

stuff I didn’t want to.

I was guzzling a chocolate milk when I felt that twinge

of the thinker. I looked out the window and laughed. He was

where I’d left him a week ago, still waiting in that empty ware-

house. He could have blue shot us out of the sky. Maybe he

didn’t
want me dead.

Then again, maybe he just wouldn’t risk killing me until

my tokens were within arm’s reach.

Dragon touched us down at the nearest helipad, far enough

away that I could no longer sense Wilder, and therefore Wilder

could no longer sense me. We sat and let night come. We’d all

seen Mi-sun’s blue shot pierce solid steel. The only armor that

could stop it was mine, but making body armor for the others

would deplete me. Night would hide us at least.

I watched the February sun get messy in the horizon, turn-

ing all goldy-rosy, making a show of going down.

“Maybe Wilder is innocent,” I said to Dragon.

He nodded. “Maybe.”

Jacques could be wrong. Brutus could be wrong. The

butterflies in my stomach mutating into angry hornets could

be wrong.

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Shannon Hale

Dad called me on Dragon’s cell.

“If you see Mom before I do,” I said, “tell her the
te-quieros

and
te-extraños
, okay?” The I-love-yous, I-miss-yous. The words

that tried and failed to convey pure emotion.

“She knows,” he said. “You’re doing more than any kid

should, Maisie.”

“I didn’t say no,” I said.

“You shouldn’t have had to.”

The sunset didn’t last long. Dragon and the triplets left.

They called Howell when they were in position outside the

warehouse.

Howell nodded at me. My body felt vibrant and tense, in

full fight-or-flight mode. Fight, just fight. I was going to see

Wilder for the first time since I’d heard that he killed Mi-sun.

But he was still Wilder.

The hornets in my belly turned vicious.

Howell had one of her guys drive me to the warehouse—he

stayed on back roads, used no lights. The speed took my breath.

The world is a scary place when you used to be invulnerable.

The closer I got, the brighter that beacon. Wilder was

there. And now he knew I was here too. No need to be quiet.

The driver screeched to a stop and I jumped out, growing armor

over my clothes, over Fido, covering everything but my face. I

wondered if Wilder could see me running from the car, wig-

gling every part of me from neck to fingers as I went so the joints

would stay supple. I wondered if he’d laugh.

As soon as I reached Dragon, he cut the chain off the back

doors and slid them open. The triplets ran forward and took up

position in the dark room, never lowering their huge guns.

I peered in. There were stairs going up. Hairy made toward

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Dangerous

them. He stepped on something that crackled.

Pop
.

The room filled with gas. I jumped back, holding my

breath, and all four men dropped to the floor.

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C h a p t e r 3 8

I ran to Dragon first, felt a timid pulse in his neck, grabbed

his ankles, and dragged back him into the freezing night. The

effort made me sweat under my armor. I hated myself for being

so weak.

“Please, please,” I muttered. I felt his pulse again, squeezed

his hand. I didn’t want to leave him.

I went back for Hairy, calling Howell on Fido.

“Wilder gassed the room. They’re all out—alive but uncon-

scious.”

How do you out-think the thinker? He guessed which door

we would come in. He set a trap to get rid of everyone but me.

I’d assumed GT had gassed my parents’ house. I needed to stop

assuming things.

“Don’t go after him alone, Maisie,” Howell said in my ear.

“That’s what he wants.”

“I have to,” I said, grunting as I dragged out Larry, the final

triplet. “I have to get him focused on me instead of these guys,

so you can get them to a hospital. Besides, if I don’t deal with

him now—”

“Maisie—”

“I’m going.” I disconnected and ran back in before I lost

my nerve.

I missed the strength of my legs propelling me forward.

I missed feeling like Supergirl. The havoc skin was thick and

dead feeling, a mummy costume.

I slowed at the stairs, scanning for other traps, gas-bomb

Dangerous

triggers. The stairs creaked and I turned around, expecting to

see Wilder behind me. I was alone.

Well, not alone. I could sense Wilder, though I couldn’t

hear anything beyond my own shaking breaths.

He’s not going to kill you, I told myself. And you don’t have

to kill him.

It was almost easier to track Wilder in the dark, nothing to

distract me from that agonizingly beautiful pull. Up the stairs.

To the right. Through a door. The room was dark and large,

cluttered with crates and abandoned office furniture.

I crouched behind an upturned desk, trying to slow my

breaths. He’d be able to sense my general direction and near-

ness, but I didn’t want to give him an exact target.

“Man, you took a long time,” he said from somewhere.

Through a crack in the desk, I watched him come closer,

and the little moonlight from the windows picked his shape out

of the dark. He was wearing the same plaid button-down shirt

and jeans he had a week ago, and he looked tired and unshow-

ered. His hands were in his pockets, and he leaned against a

crate.

I should attack him right now, I thought. Bind him with

havoc bands before he has a chance to attack. Fast, Maisie!

I didn’t. My muscles felt like clay, my bones like twigs.

“I’ve been waiting for, like, a week,” he said, humor in his

voice.

Maybe we
could
talk this through. I stood up.

“Hey, Danger Girl,” he said.

My stomach turned cold. I loved his voice. I loved his face.

He murdered Mi-sun. He apparently pretended to love me so I

would help him get Jacques’s token. After all that, I’d assumed

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Shannon Hale

my feelings for him would just dissolve.

“Hey, Wild Card,” I said.

“So . . . I take it Mr. Havoc is dead,” he said. “I bet taking a

third token stings like the devil.”

“Why are you doing all this?” I asked, my voice cracking a

little.

He leaned his head back, looking at the ceiling. “Don’t be

a cliché, Maisie. That’s what everyone would ask.”

“Poor Mi-sun . . .”

“I figured you must have found out about that when you

crushed your earpiece.”

“Wilder . . .” I had to say it, though I knew it couldn’t pos-

sibly help. “You and I
are
the fireteam. We’re not competition.”

“I’m not here to compete with you,” he said. “I’m here to

take your tokens. If your death is the only means, then I’m

truly sorry.”

I’d been prepping myself for his charming assurance that

I’d got it all wrong and he was still on my side. I’d expected him

to flatter, swear his innocence, sweet-talk me, so his words stung

like sand thrown in my eyes. Since I was no longer the powerful

brute, he didn’t need to use chivalry or trickery. Or kisses.

“Seriously, Wilder, were you always such a douche bag?”

“
You
destroyed the fireteam when you took Ruth’s token. If

I’d gotten it, the four of us would still be together.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Didn’t you? You were pretty quick to rush in and save

someone who never liked you.”

“I was valuing the sanctity of life,” I said grandly. Inside I

winced. Hadn’t Ruth liked me eventually? A little bit?

“So from your track record, I assume you’re here to fight

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Dangerous

me,” he said.

“I didn’t kill Ruthless. You—”

“You winched her up and dropped her in the ocean. You’re

the one who figured out she’d barely paid attention in scuba

class and wouldn’t make decompression stops.”

“But—”

“You hunted down Jacques and killed him for his token.

And now here you are, coming after me with a team of heavily

armed men.”

Enough. My fist clenched, the armor squeaking. I was

stalling so I didn’t have to fight him. And he was toying with me.

I rushed him, my armor covering my face except for my eyes.

He lunged away, shouting, “Yeah! Bring it!”

He shot me with a handful of screws. I dove behind the