Titan Base (5 page)

Ethan grabbed the rope.

“I’m right up after you,” Emma told him in that older-sister, don’t-argue-with-me tone.

“Good,” he said. “Then Angel. Felix last.”

Felix scanned the skies overhead, squinting. “If I spot anything, I’ll give the rope two hard tugs.”

Without further discussion (although Ethan felt a full swarm of butterflies in his stomach and desperately wanted to procrastinate and talk more), he clambered up.

The residual heat of the metal, even on this shaded side, penetrated his flight boots. The polymer soles got soft and sticky. He couldn’t imagine trying to scale the wall in the full sun. He’d have melted to the side!

He grunted as he pulled himself over the top. The wall was six feet thick, so it was easy to lie flat. He wormed his way to the far edge and stared, astonished.

Below in the streets and along the arching bridges there were robots.

Lots of them. Everywhere.

Ethan counted dozens, moving back and forth—some in obvious patrol patterns, others speeding along on their single wheel on some urgent mission. These weren’t like the rusted suits in the metal graveyard outside the city. These robots gleamed with polished steel and oiled hydraulics.
They were similar to the athletic suits he’d played soccer in but had one wheel instead of legs and slitted helmets for heads. In either hand they held parabolic communication dishes.

There were no human pilots. Where one would have sat inside, there were heavy-duty hydraulic pistons and a bluish glow.

Ethan’s skin crawled. He knew what that glow was.

He’d seen it once before when one of his team’s athletic suits had gotten straight-armed into a goalpost. There had been a coolant leak in the tiny nuclear reactor, and Coach Norman had explained that the glow emanating from the reactor was a special type of radiation. Hazard teams had come and cleaned it all up, but the field had still been off-limits for an entire semester.

That’s all he needed now:
more
radiation.

To top it all off, the buzzing headache he’d felt earlier was back, louder now.

Emma wormed up onto the wall and crawled over him, planting her knee in his back in the process, and then lay flat next to him.

“This is bad,” she whispered.

“Shhhhh!” Ethan hissed at her. Was she crazy, making noise up here?

At his shush, though, the nearest robot froze, swiveled, and pointed both its handheld parabolic dishes toward their position on the wall.

Ethan and Emma ducked and froze.

He counted thirty thundering heartbeats and then risked a peek over the edge.

The machine had moved on.

Angel pulled herself up and wedged between him and Emma.

“Wow,” she mouthed, at least having the good sense to be quiet.

Felix came up last, and despite his bulk, stayed low.

One of the robots on a nearby bridge squealed to a halt, practically skidding sideways on its one wheel. It brandished its parabolic hand dishes back and forth on the surface ahead.

Ethan squinted.

A single tiny cockroach skittered from one shadow on the bridge—then made a dash for the other side.

A glow sparked within the robot’s head and intensified. A particle beam flashed, half lightning, half purple laser beam.

The cockroach flared and popped. The metal bridge where it’d been a second before glowed with an orange
heat spot. The robot inspected the smoldering bits and then, satisfied, sped along its way.

Ethan and the others pushed back from the edge.

“Whoa,” Emma murmured. “If those things can
hear
a cockroach at ten paces, we’ll be fried before we can take three steps down there.”

“We need our I.C.E.s,” Felix said, and his big hands involuntarily curled into fists as if he was ready to fight all those robots.

Ethan agreed (although how they’d fly their suits past the city’s missile-defense system would be the problem).

“Come on,” Ethan said. “We’re not going to learn anything up here other than how to get fried by robot particle beams.” He turned back to the rope but saw Angel crawl on her stomach farther along the wall, craning her head to see something that’d caught her attention.

He followed her. What insane thing was she going to try now?

She held one finger to her lips and pointed to a silver dome a hundred yards away.

Carved into a marble arch over the dome’s entrance was a single word:
LIBRARY
.

   
4
   
GOING WITH PLAN B

“SURE, IT’S CRAZY,” ETHAN TOLD HIS SISTER. “I’M
not denying that.”

The four Resisters faced each other, propped up on their elbows. Their flight suits had adapted to the new surroundings by taking on a silver sheen streaked with rust. They nonetheless stayed low on the wall so they wouldn’t risk being spotted.

Emma was all scowls and seriousness. Felix looked at him as if Ethan had bonked his head. Angel, though, was bright eyed and smiling (it was the first time he’d noticed how pretty that was, too).

“We’re running out of time,” Ethan said. “If we go back
for our I.C.E.s and then somehow get back here without alerting those robots or triggering the city’s missile-defense system, we just risk
more
radiation exposure.”

He glanced at the radiation counter on his wrist. It’d gone up one more tic since they’d cleared the junkyard. That was 21 percent toward the untreatable, lethal limit line.

He gulped.

“So we risk getting killed by robots instead?” Emma asked with maximum sarcasm.

“We won’t,” Ethan said. “I’ll toss my water bottle, and with those supersensitive antennae, the noise will definitely get their attention. Then we slide down the second line.”

He shook the second rope he’d attached with the gecko grapple. It lay coiled, ready to be tossed over the other side of the wall into the city.

“It’ll be an easy sprint to the library,” he said. “If there are any answers about this place or information about other intact cities, they’ll be there.”

“That’s not our mission, though,” Felix said with a shake of his head. “We’re supposed to see if
this
place could make a new base for the Resistance. With hostiles all over, I think that’s a no.”

“It’s our mission to find a new site for a Resistance base,” Ethan said. “Whatever that takes.”

It bothered him that his best friend, the person who would follow him almost anywhere, wasn’t supporting him when he needed it the most.

“Look,” Ethan continued, “what if we figure out a way to turn off the robots? Or reprogram them so they follow our orders? This has to be human technology from before the Ch’zar invasion. We could find a way to use it.”

“We better go back.” Emma examined the counter on her wrist, frowned, and massaged her forehead like she had a splitting headache, too. “We need to get treated for the radiation we’ve absorbed so far; then we can return with a better plan.”

Ethan ground his teeth, annoyed … but then he thought about it.

Emma was no coward.

His sister was smart. Sometimes—he hated to admit it—
smarter
than him.

So why did he still feel like he had to get into that library
right now
? Pushing so hard he might get them all killed?

Maybe because he wanted more than answers about the city’s defenses.

Answers like how the humans here had resisted the Ch’zar invasion.

Answers like how an adult person could avoid the alien mind control … like Ethan’s parents.

But no answers were worth getting melted by a plasma beam for.

“Okay …,” Ethan admitted. “You two are right, so—”

He noticed that Angel had belly-crawled away from them.

She jumped to her feet.

“I’m up here!” she shouted, and waved at every robot in the city. She grabbed the first rope, making a big show of starting to rappel down the outer wall. “Catch me if you can, you mechanized unicycles!”

Ethan felt his stomach drop into his boots.

Every robot in sight, dozens and dozens of them, halted on ramps, on bridges, and in doorways. Their antennae swiveled toward Angel. Each of them turned and sped to a gate in the wall.

Ethan grabbed for Angel’s leg.

She was too quick, though, and slid down the rope.

She called up, “Don’t worry—I’ll lose them in the junkyard. Double back. You’ll only have a minute. So make it count!”

Angel popped her gum and was gone down the rope.

Ethan peered over the edge. He couldn’t believe her!
This was beyond crazy. Sure,
he’d
done something just like it back at Ward Zero in Sterling, but that was different. Part of a plan.

This was totally insane.

Angel ran flat out to the junkyard.

Robots emerged from the city’s gate, chasing her and fanning out, leaving clouds of dust in their wake.

“She’s psychotic,” Emma whispered.

Ethan agreed, but he also couldn’t help but admire a tiny bit such raw fearlessness.

“We sure can’t go back that way,” Felix said. He tossed down their second rope on the city side. “Guess we’re going with Plan B.”

Ethan wavered. He wanted to run after Angel and save her from herself. She was part of his squadron, and he was responsible for her.

But there was no way he could chase after her with those robots between them. They’d hear Ethan and get them
all
.

On the other hand, she
had
maneuvered to give Ethan a shot at getting to that library. If by some miracle Angel survived and doubled back, they’d better be there waiting for her, or they might not ever find her again.

Ethan grabbed the rope, slid down, and landed hard inside the city.

Emma followed, almost on top of him. Felix then thudded to the ground.

No robots.

Ethan sprinted. He felt like a bad leader for leaving one of his team behind. Maybe that’s what leaders were supposed to do. He wasn’t sure.

The streets were paved with interlocking blocks of steel and green-tinged copper. Many buildings were made of glass. A few looked like they had been grown from crystals.

It was beautiful. And empty.

Seeing it all deserted sent a shiver down his spine.

Ethan ran straight for the geodesic dome of the library—through its white marble entrance arch and into the darkness beyond.

   
5
   
WAY OVERDUE AT THE LIBRARY