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Becky slowed to a stop, turning back to me with a quick confused look. The door was there, but it was just a regular wooden door, like all the others. She tried it. It was locked.

Ms. Vaughn was about forty yards away.

Becky shouted off the count. “One, two, three—”

Together we crashed into the door, and reeled back. It had hardly budged.

A second Ms. Vaughn appeared behind the first. And then an Iceman.

Becky and I tried the door again, and I heard a splinter, but it held fast.

“You’re not getting in there,” the front Ms. Vaughn said, raising her Taser and approaching cautiously.

There was a scream down the hall—loud and angry. Both Ms. Vaughns turned just in time to see Curtis slam a rusty pick into Iceman’s back. The android collapsed forward, instantly dead.

Carrie and Shelly appeared behind Curtis.

“Go!” Shelly yelled. “We’ll take care of these.”

Becky was grinning as our eyes met. We counted down again and then slammed our shoulders into the door, shattering the wood frame around the knob and falling into the room. I tried to jump to my feet and stumbled, colliding with a tall computer bank.

Becky was faster than me, throwing her back against the cracked door and shoving it closed.

The room was exactly how Birdman had drawn it. Tall computers—sleeker and stranger than any I’d ever seen—lined the walls. There was an audible hum, low and deep, and it seemed to come from everywhere, all at once.

Two men sat at the end of the room in swivel chairs that faced a thousand square screens. In the center of the screens—just as Birdman drew—was the large curved window. It bowed into the room, between and in the middle of the action. There was only darkness on the other side.

Neither of the men turned around.

“Bense,” Becky said, drawing my attention back to the door.

There was a loud splintering crack as an android tried to come in after us. I leapt against the broken door, but it was a losing battle. Ms. Vaughn was too strong.

“Wait,” Becky said, jumping to the side, to the computer banks. She put her weight against the first one—six feet tall and narrow like a filing cabinet. Just as Ms. Vaughn hit again, the computer tipped, sliding diagonally across the door.

“She’ll just knock it over,” I said, but Becky had turned to the two men.

“Call her off,” Becky shouted to them. “Or that thing falls.”

They continued to stare at their computers, seemingly oblivious to us.

Becky stepped back to me.

I waited for Ms. Vaughn, for the door to shake and the computer to fall. But it didn’t come.

One of the men turned around. It wasn’t Iceman. He was old.

“Well?” he said.

I stammered, looking down at Becky. She took my hand.

“Let them go,” I said. “All of them.”

“Or what?”

I knew his voice. It was the man who’d interrogated me, the man who’d laughed as Becky was being tortured.

I looked at her hand for the first time. There was a jagged scar between two knuckles, now mostly healed and pink.

The man laughed. “You thought we were hurting a duplicate, but you were wrong.”

“Who are you?”

“The truth,” he said, “is that your little tirade about not believing it was her is what gave us the idea to send the duplicate in today. It didn’t work, obviously, but you must admit it was a good idea.”

Becky stepped to a computer, scowling at the man. “What button should I push first?”

“That depends on who you want to kill,” he said, supremely confident.

He still hadn’t stood up. He knew we were unarmed and weak.

“Don’t forget that every one of your friends has an intensely delicate piece of technology in their brains. Smashing things—knocking over that computer, for example—could make you a mass murderer.”

“I’d hate to take that title away from you,” I said.

His mouth wasn’t quite matching up with his words. It was like he was a bad animatronic. Maybe one of the first androids?

“Who are you?” I asked again.

“Who do you think I am?” he said loudly. “I’m God! I make life. I control it.”

Becky shook her head and walked toward him. I followed.

“You destroy more than you create,” I said.

“We’ve just been practicing,” the old man said. “Getting better all the time. But things have finally started moving.”

I looked at the screens as we approached, finally able to make out the small images. There were faces, landscapes—

“Each one of these is a dupe?” I said, pointing at the tiny monitors.

“Yes,” he said. “We have quite a few. More than you thought?”

I stared. Becky’s hand gripped mine a little tighter as we began to pick out things we knew—a glimpse of the front of the fort, a hallway in the school, Gabby’s face talking directly toward a camera. But there were others—adults in houses, or cars, or on streets.

“Who are they?” Becky whispered.

I felt nauseated. This was bigger than I’d imagined.

I thought of the president’s daughters. “Why are you replacing real people?”

“Does that surprise you?” he said. “We’ve been practicing since way back when we built that fort. We have a duplicate of every human in that town you were hiding in, and it never crossed your mind that we were trying to replace people? That was the whole point.”

Up close, the old man didn’t look real at all. His skin was obviously fake, like a Halloween mask.

“But why them?” I asked. “Why the president’s daughters?”

The other android was still facing the front, but he wasn’t doing anything. I wondered whether he could even move.

“What do you think?” the android said. “I want you two to really mull it over and try to think of a reason someone would want to control the president. Go ahead. I’ll wait.”

I peered into the black curved window. There was something on the other side. Just a shape out of the corner of my eye.

Becky reached out to touch the old man. He swatted at her hand, but he was awkward and jolting. He missed.

“Who controls you?” she asked.

I turned, looking for something. Something hard.

“What makes you think I’m not like the others? Like Ms. Vaughn?”

“You’re too believable.”

He laughed. “This is believable?”

“I mean your personality,” she said. She wasn’t afraid of him at all now, standing in front of the machine, touching his rubbery face and hands. “Ms. Vaughn and Iceman don’t have humans attached to them. That’s obvious.”

“And you think I do?” he said. He was ancient. Whatever artificial skin he once had was now a mess. These androids hadn’t been updated in decades. Maybe even a century.

“Nope,” I answered, and I pushed the second, motionless robot off his chair. He slumped to the floor without a twitch.

Becky looked confused, and the old man turned to me.

“Violence won’t solve anything,” he said, and laughed and gestured mechanically to Becky. “I heard her say that once.”

“Who are you?” I asked. “Are you the first?”

“Do I look like anything other than a puppet?” he said. He gestured at the other android on the floor. “We’re relics, from a time when this room was more necessary. Now it’s all controlled remotely. A neural link straight to Mr. Maxfield.” He laughed, as though he’d made a joke.

I picked up the chair the second man had been sitting in. It was heavy and unwieldy, but heavy was exactly what I wanted.

Becky touched my arm. “What are you doing?”

I nodded toward the curved window. “I can’t smash the computers, so I’m going to smash that.”

The old man swung at me, and Becky pushed him over onto his face. He flailed, trying to get up, and Becky jumped away from him. Ms. Vaughn banged on the door again.

“Count of three,” I announced, knowing someone was listening. “One, two, three.”

I crashed the chair into the glass, and it bounced off with barely a scuff mark. I slammed it again, with the same result.

“Bravo,” the old man said, finally rolling onto his back.

“Hey, Bense.” I felt Becky’s hand on my arm, and turned to her.

She held out the two dropped Tasers, the box cutter, and the broken powerhead. They’d all been gathered on a shelf.

The old man laughed. “What did I say about damaging the computers? I don’t think a Taser would be wise. And what will a box cutter do to a puppet?”

I set down the chair and picked up the powerhead. It was just the pipe and the bullet, the screwdriver having broken off in the hall.

I held the pipe to the glass.

“Hey, Becky,” I said. “Find me something pointy.”

The old man flailed at me again, but he was ancient and weak. He couldn’t even stand.

“Would a pen work?” Becky asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Oh,” she said. “Here. It came off when we moved the computer.” She handed me a three-inch-long screw.

I positioned the screw at the back of the powerhead. I tried not to let my nerves show, but I was afraid I was going to blow my hand off.

And then it appeared.

There was a face in the window, obscured in the dark liquid. The two eyes stared back at us, and a slit of a mouth, but that was the only thing recognizable about it. The skin was red and patchy—almost like a leopard but more subtle—and it was smooth and sleek like a fish.

“What is it?” Becky whispered.

Something appeared—a tentacle, or a hand. It pressed against the glass for a moment, and then flashed away into the darkness.

“What the hell are you?” I stammered, nervously and quickly bending down to grab the screw.

The voice came from the old man, as the face faded back into the darkness. “Perhaps your astronomer Carl Sagan said it best. ‘Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.’ You should consider yourselves lucky. This is a landmark moment in human discovery.”

The old man, his rubbery skin, tried to smile.

I placed the powerhead against the glass again, and repositioned the screw.

“I don’t care what you are,” I said. “But unless you release every single human under your control, and shut down all the androids, I’ll smash that glass and spill you all over the floor.”

The face appeared again, the words coming from the old man. “I’ve worked too long for you to destroy it now.”

“Tell that to the bullet,” I said.

“Look,” Becky said, pointing at one of the monitors. It was a security camera watching one of the underground halls. At least ten kids from the town ran past, all armed. Shelly and the others were taking over the complex.

The face disappeared, swirling out of sight. It was darting around inside the tank, agitated.

“Yes,” he snapped. “All that interrogation, and I should have simply waited. The missing students tunneled down a few hours ago. They’ve been causing me no end of problems. I can kill them all right now if you’d like.”

I tapped the powerhead on the glass, and the face flashed angrily again in the darkness.

“You think you’ve won, but you’re fools,” he screeched.

It reappeared, closer to the glass this time. I could see tiny teeth in its inhuman mouth, the rippling scales of its skin. It was grotesque.

“Do it,” Becky demanded. “Now.”

One by one the screens around us dimmed to black, and a moment later they turned back on, showing different images—live feeds from the security cameras. The students in the school were panicking, half their classmates seeming to drop dead beside them.

“The implants are disabled?” Becky asked, her voice quiet now.

“Yes,” the old man snapped, his voice bitter and snarling.

“And the security? The gates and all the locks?”

“You’re free to go!” he bellowed. “But know what you’ve done. The president thinks he has just witnessed both his daughters collapse and die, and when they try to resuscitate them—when they take them to the hospital and scan them and autopsy the bodies—they’ll know the truth.”

Becky seemed to tremble at the thought. “You did it,” she said.

“We didn’t start a war,” he answered. “We were merely observing. You’ve incited a worldwide panic.”

“We?” I didn’t like the sound of that.

He laughed, one final defeated time. “I’ve heard you all theorize about it, and some of your guesses are less moronic than others. Maxfield Academy isn’t the only training facility. Trying to replicate human behavior is different for teenagers than it is for adults, different for Americans than it is for Chinese.”

“Let
everyone
go,” Becky said.

“Oh, I don’t have that kind of power,” he said. “I’m only one of many.”

The powerhead pipe was getting heavy in my weak hands. “I assume you have some way to escape?”

“I’m not staying here with you.”

“Good,” I said. “Because I’m smashing this glass in ten seconds. Becky, count it off.”

She grinned and began the countdown. The face spun angrily in the darkness, a froth of black bubbles battering the glass. As she counted, Becky jogged back to the door and pushed the computer bank—now completely silent and dark—out of the way and watched it crash on the floor.

The liquid began to froth, and the level dropped steadily. By the time she reached ten, there was only a foot of the black water left.

“Aren’t you going to smash it?” she asked.

I looked back at her. “What if it’s poisonous?”

“What if he comes back?”

I nodded, took a breath, and then punched the screw into the powerhead.

There was an explosion and I dropped the pipe. The glass didn’t shatter completely, but a two-inch hole punched through, and cracks splintered across the tank.

Becky took my shaking hand. We watched the monitors. Students were panicking, but I saw one boy down on the main floor try a door. It opened. He called to the others.

“Come on,” Becky said, pulling me toward the door. “They’re going to need help. And we have to find Shelly and the others.”

We stepped around the broken computer and pushed out through the splintered door. Ms. Vaughn lay lifeless in the hallway. Farther down was the Iceman Curtis had killed.

“I didn’t think it would work,” I said, letting go of her hand and pulling her next to me. The hall was narrow, but we didn’t need to walk single file if we were really, really close together.