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“You’re dead,” I said.

No answer.

If there was someone there, they’d expect me to jump out and attack. That’s what they were prepared for. So that wasn’t what I was going to do.

I took a breath, as deep as I could. And then I ran.

In an instant I was out the door and pounding down the hall.

At fifty feet I spun around.

Two of them, both Iceman. One, dressed in workman’s coveralls, had a metal baton. The other, wearing medical scrubs, held a Taser in his hand—it had been fired, the probes and wires lying tangled on the floor. He’d missed me as I ran.

He ripped off the cartridge and approached me now.

My hands were sweaty, and I suddenly worried about holding on to the powerheads.

“Please do not resist,” the workman said.

“Did you hear what I did to the others?” I said. “I killed four of you.”

The workman smiled as they continued toward me. “Death does not scare us.”

“Then why didn’t you come in that door to get me?”

I needed to do something soon. My back was to an open hallway. Someone could sneak up behind me anytime.

“Where’s Becky?”

“Perfectly safe. As you will be when you surrender.”

They were close now, maybe eight feet away.

“You already know about Fort Maxfield,” the workman said. “You know that we don’t kill or torture.”

“I’m not going back there.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Where’s Becky?”

The man in scrubs lunged at me, the face of the Taser sparking white and blue. I smacked his arm away with my left, but the powerhead in that hand flew out of my fingers, clattering down the hall.

He was almost on top of me, and I brought the other powerhead up, stabbing into his ribs.

Bang!

Everything stopped.

The noise exploded down the hall, and the shock made us both startle and stagger backward. The spent powerhead dropped from my fingers.

He had a bloody hole in his chest, a ring of torn skin and cloth around shattered circuits and machinery.

He looked at me and fell.

I jumped back to my feet. The workman looked stunned, staring at his dead partner.

I picked up the Taser. “Still not afraid of death?”

The workman jumped, swinging the baton like an ax. But the ceiling was too low, and it skittered against the cement, smashing a lightbulb and coming down harmlessly a foot away from me.

I leapt past him, running for the second powerhead. He was right behind me.

The baton swiped past my ear, the tip scraping painlessly down my shoulder as I dropped to grab the weapon. I snatched it off the ground, turned to him, and jammed the barrel into his stomach.

The powerhead bent in half, the barrel ripping off to the side and snapping off, leaving me holding only a screwdriver.

He didn’t wait, but crashed the baton into my arm. Pain shot from my fingertips to my shoulder. I dropped the Taser and screamed.

The workman advanced mercilessly, pushing me back toward the elevator. I didn’t have any good weapons left—just the screwdriver and the box cutter in my shoe. There’d be no time to get it.

“Tell me where she is and I’ll let you go,” I said.

He didn’t respond—not a word or an expression. He continued walking, and I kept retreating.

I glanced back. Nothing could help me. The door to the detention room, the elevator controls, a lightbulb. Nothing.

He swiped the baton again, but just to scare me. He knew he had me cornered.

But I was cornered only if I was going to stay underground.

I turned and ran, jamming the button for the elevator to go up.

I heard his footsteps behind me. I knew he wouldn’t let me go. He wasn’t trying to hit me now—he was trying to get inside that elevator before it left.

As soon as I got inside I spun, slamming the door into him. It caught on his shoulder and arm, and he reeled.

I rammed the screwdriver into his chest.

Whether it was his artificial heart or the power system Harvard had mentioned, it didn’t matter. He dropped.

I jumped back out into the hallway and shoved his body the rest of the way inside. I closed the door and let the elevator leave, taking the body of a dead robot up to the students.

I was dripping with sweat, my heart pumping so hard I could feel it in my neck, arms, and fingers. But I didn’t have time to catch my breath. Backup was sure to be coming.

I grabbed the Taser and stared down the hall, trying to visualize the map again. I needed to get to the cells.

I ran.

There was no one in the corridors. No one in the rooms to my sides. I’d killed six androids in the last week, and Becky had likely Tasered a seventh. Maybe they were running out.

I turned the corner to the cell block. The lights were on, but dim. Curtis was right—it looked like a hospital, with a nurses’ station and everything.

I crept in, but couldn’t walk quietly. My clothes were still soaking wet from the heavy snow, and my shoes squeaked on the tile floor.

Every room was the same: a bed and a sink and a toilet. They all had prison bars, and instead of a keyhole there was a ten-digit keypad. Those pads were the only thing in the entire cell block that looked less than fifty years old.

My heart was in my throat as I hurried down the row. I passed two dozen rooms, and a junction that led to another hallway, before I found her.

I gripped the bars and stared.

Becky was unconscious, a bandage around her head and a plastic mask covering her nose and mouth. A wheeled cart was beside her bed, and all the tubes, wires, and sensors covering her body ran to it. It hissed as she breathed.

They’d done the surgery. They must have.

Other than that, she didn’t appear hurt. She was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of shorts, and her arms and legs all looked perfectly undamaged. Her bicep was fully healed. Only a wide, faint scar was visible. Even the frost nip on her chin and nose were gone, leaving perfect, healthy skin.

I reached my arm in, trying to squeeze through the bars. To touch her. But she was six inches too far. My fingertips could reach the cart, and for a moment I thought I could use it to pull her toward me, but that wouldn’t work. It would just pull the equipment off her.

I ran back to the nurses’ station, wildly throwing open drawers and cabinets. The code for the keypad had to be somewhere. But all I found were rolls of bandage and tape and more of those foil sheets Jane had used. Whatever that stuff was, it would be worth billions in the free world, but it was as good as garbage to me here.

“Having trouble?”

I turned, holding out the Taser at Ms. Vaughn. She was standing at the hallway door, apparently unarmed. She wore a business suit. I wondered whether she was the same Ms. Vaughn I’d seen outside, dropping off the new kids.

“Let her out,” I said, but even I could hear the fear in my own voice. Ms. Vaughn stepped into the room, not threatening, not preparing for an attack. Just casual, like we were friends.

I shook the Taser at her. “Don’t come any closer.”

“What are you going to do?” she said. “You came here for her, and you can’t get her. You’ve lost.”

I backed up, cautiously moving to Becky’s cell. Ms. Vaughn followed.

Was there a way I could get her to open the cell?

A second android appeared behind her—another Ms. Vaughn, this one in scrubs, like the Iceman I’d killed. She didn’t appear to be armed either.

I focused back on the businesswoman.

“Are you out of guards?” I asked. “You don’t look dressed for a fight.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Were you going to fight?”

I was at Becky’s room again, and I glanced inside. I still had no idea how to make them go in there.

“Give up,” she said, and reached into her jacket.

No Taser this time. It was a gun. The same make and model as the .38 that Maxfield had once given Isaiah. “We use Tasers because you students are valuable to us,” she said. “But I think you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

I had no options. There was nowhere to run. I was captured, and I couldn’t save her.

Becky’s breathing was deep and loud as the ventilator on her face gave her oxygen. It was the only sound in the hall.

I moved to Becky’s cell bars.

The businesswoman laughed. “You don’t have to take a bullet for your girlfriend. She’s never been as much trouble as you. Besides, she’s already had surgery—we’d hate to waste it.”

That was what I was counting on.

I took a breath, and then turned my back to the android, reaching between the bars. My fingers were so close.

Someone grabbed my shoulder. I dropped the Taser and held myself against the bars, stretching.

My middle finger caught the cart, and the rest of my fingertips, and then my whole hand.

“Benson,” Ms. Vaughn shouted, yanking me back.

I let her. My hand was tight on the cart.

I flew backward, tossed by the businesswoman’s robotic strength. The cart followed, crashing into the bars when it could go no farther.

An alarm sounded, and despite the gun in my face I craned my neck to see Becky, to pray she was okay.

All the sensors and tubes had pulled from her body, and I could see she was fighting for air.

The woman in scrubs yelled at me. “You came this far just to kill her!” And she jumped past us to the bars. To the keypad.

6-5-6-3-8.
Buzz. Click
.

The bars popped open, and she was inside, checking the cart and pulling it back beside Becky’s bed.

“It’s over, Benson,” Ms. Vaughn said. And then she hit me with the butt of the gun.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

I
woke in the dark. It took a long time, a fight for consciousness against whatever chemicals were pumping through my body. People came and went. They asked me questions, and I think I answered them, but all of those conversations were lost to me now.

I was in a hospital bed, but the back was propped up so I could see everything in the room. The same white tiles were on the floor and halfway up the walls, and then it was concrete the rest of the way.

The room smelled like nothing. No soap, no must, nothing.

One of my eyes didn’t open all the way, but I felt no pain. I tried to touch it.

My hands were bound with thick leather restraints. My ankles, too.

“Mr. Fisher. You’re awake.”

I turned to look, but could see no one.

It was a male voice, but it didn’t sound like Iceman.

“Who are you?”

“You’ve caused me a lot of trouble, Mr. Fisher.” The sound was tinny, like it was coming from a microphone.

Or my ears weren’t working right. Or I was imagining it.

“Are you Maxfield?”

The voice chuckled, deep and warbling, like an old man’s. When he spoke he sounded like he had too much saliva in his mouth. “There’s no Maxfield. It’s a name. It could have been anything.”

“What do you want?”

“Does it matter what I want? I’m here to discuss what you want.”

“You know what I want.”

“Do I?” he asked. “You change your mind a lot. When you first came to my academy, you only wanted your freedom. But soon your freedom wasn’t enough. You wanted freedom for everybody.”

“What do you care?”

“Now I’m not sure what to think. You aren’t concerned about everybody anymore. You’re only concerned about one person. Rebecca Allred.”

“Where is she?”

“Why do you keep shouting?” he asked. “I can hear you perfectly.”

I fought against the restraints. There had to be some way out of this.

“I’m not in the practice of negotiating, Mr. Fisher,” he said tiredly. “I have gotten used to being in control. So it saddens me that things have come to this.”

I stopped pulling against the leather bands, panting, and listened.

“They say you should never begin negotiations without being prepared, without knowing your alternatives to an agreement. What, Mr. Fisher, are your alternatives to a negotiated agreement?”

I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure what he was talking about.

“I’ll help you out,” he said, condescension dripping from his voice. “Your alternative to negotiation is that I kill you. On the other hand, if you do negotiate, I’ll let you live in Fort Maxfield as part of the program.”

“The program?”

“The program,” he said. “You’re very familiar with the program.”

I didn’t want to talk about this. “Where’s Becky?”

“Ah, yes. That’s another part of the negotiation, isn’t it? You can save her or kill her, too. I’m only telling you this so that you know what you’re dealing with. You always want the town or the academy to be more fair, so I’m being fair. I’m telling you the rules.”

I was trapped and talking to a madman. “Why are you doing this?” I shouted.

He ignored me. “Now that you know the ground rules and the outcomes, let’s negotiate. You know something that I would like to know.”

“This isn’t a negotiation,” I said. “This is threatening me for information.”

He laughed, wet and guttural. “All negotiations are threats. Every negotiation says, ‘Agree to this or there will be a consequence.’”

I rubbed my head on the pillow, trying to tell whether I had a bandage. Had they done surgery on me? I didn’t feel anything.

“Well?” he asked.

“Well, what?”

“You have information that you’re hiding from me.”

“What do you want to know?” I yelled. “Walnut always takes more than his share of dessert. Harvard takes long showers and uses up all the hot water. Gabby—”

He cut me off, his voice suddenly sharp and harsh. “Tell me where the students are.”

I paused. The note I’d left for Lily had worked: to hide as many students as she could in the tunnel and stay there. If it was true that the implants couldn’t track them down there, then Maxfield would have no idea where they’d gone. It was my bargaining chip.

“Which students?”

“Don’t play with me.”

“No, really,” I said. “I don’t know which students.”

“Lilian Paterson, Curtis Shaw, Caroline Flynn, Michelle Bowers … Need I go on? The list is quite extensive.”