by Shannon Hale
My legs shook, exhausted from pushing against the crumpled bench. How long until in panic I’d take a smoky breath and suffocate?
Minutes seemed to pass. I was somehow still conscious, unless there was no distinguishable difference between life and death, which I found unlikely, not to mention anticlimactic.
Then I thought: smoke means fire. Fire plus gas means—
I twisted around and banged the windshield with my Fido fist till the glass cracked.
The door ripped off above me and the bench went flying out. I took Ruth’s hands and a moment later I was running away. Behind me, a sputtering explosion. The boom shoved me in the back, heat whooshing past, knocking me to my knees. I took a breath. The night air was hot and singed.
Ruth had carried the driver away, and he was lying near the car’s dazed passengers—a woman and a boy.
Wilder roared up on his ATV. “The cattle?” he asked.
A loud moo in my ear made me jump. A cow was snuffling my shoulder.
“Got it,” said Mi-sun.
We could see lights down the highway.
“The good guys will take over from here,” said Wilder.
“Wait …” The woman propped herself up on her elbows. “Who are you kids?”
Wilder turned back, his helmet under his arm, his figure dark and dramatic against the piercing headlight.
“We’re the Fireteam,” he said, as if this were a trailer for an action movie. “Come on, let’s ride!” He revved his ATV and zoomed off the road and into the open field. We ran for our vehicles and followed, the whine of sirens chasing us away.
With relief I fell into my position in Wilder’s web. It hadn’t felt right when he was gone. It was like he was the nucleus, and without him the four of us were spare electrons, bouncing around without purpose.
He told us to keep our headlights off so no one could follow. It was scary driving back in darkness, never sure when we would hit a bump or a rut. Jacques kept himself armored. Ruth hit a rock and fell off her ATV. She kicked it, sending it vaulting into the air. It exploded.
“Nice,” said Jacques.
“Ruthless, calm down or—” Wilder started.
“Shut up,” she said, and ran beside us all the way back.
I could hear the pounding of her feet off to my left. I was thinking of the old warning—never make eye contact with a predator. Running in the dark, Ruth seemed more animal than person. I didn’t dare meet her eyes.
Chapter 13
“How was it?” Howell asked as we entered the lab, Jacques and Ruth making for the table with its never-ending supply of snacks.
Wilder told Howell about the crash. “We need lifelike training situations.”
“I got trapped in the truck’s cab for several minutes,” I said. “There was smoke, and I think I held my breath the whole time.”
Wilder looked at me, and then he was shouting orders. The doctors hooked us up to heart rate and oxygen monitors, Wilder set the clock, and the five of us held our breath.
It got boring fast. No talking. Just sitting. Watching the monitors. Five minutes. Ten minutes. I had to concentrate so I wouldn’t breathe out of habit. Fifteen minutes.
Are we actually dead? I began to wonder. This is creepy.
I found it comforting to imagine I was a dolphin diving into the blue—merely another mammal, not an alien freak.
Nineteen minutes.
I started to feel pressure in my chest, anxiety clawing at my lungs. My eyes watered. At twenty minutes we all gasped.
“That’s not something you see every day,” said Dragon.
“Their cells must be naturally oxygen rich,” Howell said.
“Like dolphins,” I said. “But … why?”
“I don’t know, but I’m sure we need to stay together and keep preparing for …” Wilder scowled, rubbing his forehead. “Whatever it is that we were made for.”
“Conquering the planet on behalf of a hostile alien force,” Jacques mumbled.
“Or putting on shows for kiddie birthday parties!” I said with a fake grin.
While they debated our mysterious purpose, Mi-sun wandered over to the slushie machine. I noticed GT approach her, and I went to a desk behind them, pretending to look at some papers.
“Hey tiger, I brought you a present.” GT opened a small velvet bag and poured silver rings onto the table. “Titanium, one for each finger. You can wear your ammunition. How awesome are you, huh?”
Mi-sun’s eyes widened and she took a loud, grating slurp of her slushie.
GT noticed me. His gum chewing got louder.
“Maisie Danger Brown.” He shook his head and smiled, and I got the feeling he was accustomed to charming people with his smile. “You could change Earth’s technology forever. What do you say we work on something really valuable? Cold fusion? Faster-than-light travel?”
I laughed. “I’m not a gumball machine of inventions, just put in your coin and out comes a prize!”
GT’s smile vanished.
“I mean,” I said softer, “the techno token doesn’t work that way. Mostly I just have an understanding of how some machines work. When I come up with a new idea, it’s not something random I want but something I need … or … I don’t know how to explain.”
He nodded as if interested, but I guessed he still hadn’t recovered from being laughed at.
“I have noticed your regard for my boy.”
“He’s our fireteam leader, that’s all,” I said, busying myself with Fido.
“I think it’s sweet that a girl like you caught his eye.” He held out an unwrapped stick of gum. I shook my head. “You’re not his usual type, but of course you figured that out. I’m sure he’s confided in you about his expulsions, his time in juvenile detention, his dozens of disappointed ex-girlfriends. Thanks for overlooking all that.” He put an arm around my shoulders and whispered close to my head, “I know he can be frustrating sometimes. If you ever need to talk, think of me as a second father?”
I glanced across the lab and found Wilder watching us. He didn’t look away until his father had left the room.
“I don’t like him either,” Mi-sun whispered, and it took me a moment to realize she meant GT.
“It’s like he wants to recruit us to work for him,” I said.
Mi-sun shook her head. I knew she felt as I did, that we wouldn’t leave the team for anything. Couldn’t, perhaps. If I was a prisoner—or a zombified caterpillar—for the moment I was a willing one.
She stirred her slushie, the straw making a rustling sound as quiet as her whisper. “I think I’m going crazy. Maybe what my dad has is catching.”
“Or maybe it’s the token.”
“Have you been having crazy dreams too?” Her eyes looked hopeful. “I dream about pink things. All the time.”
“Pink things?”
“Pink floaty things. You don’t dream of them?”
“I don’t think—”
“They don’t like me, the pink floaty things. They want to take my body.”
I patted her shoulder and hoped that would count as comforting.
At least we didn’t have to deal with GT much longer. He flew out the next morning.
Wilder started us on a schedule that made astronaut boot camp look frivolous. Up at dawn for a group run. Ruth ran circles around us. Literally.
Back to HAL for breakfast (Ruth and Jacques ate an entire ham each) and then fireteam training. We began to redo all the fireteam exercises from boot camp, shattering every previous record. Wilder’s strategies were scary-good. I wasn’t too shabby myself. Our model rocket flew eight thousand meters and broke the sound barrier.
In the afternoon we had time to hone our individual skills. I installed the guts of a GPS and satellite phone into Fido that I could control the same way I controlled the arm, dialing with a thought. But I wanted to offer more help than the ability to call 911. So like any reasonable teenager in my situation, I designed a robot suit.
A few days in
to the build, Wilder rushed into the workshop my lab groupies and I had taken over.
“We’ve got a training mission. Come on.”
He took off, and I dutifully followed.
“Some of the security guys were Special Forces,” Wilder explained over our headsets as Dragon flew us in a helicopter to the site. “They set up a simulated rescue. All we know is there are two VIPs trapped by enemy gunmen. They’re instructed to fall down as if dead when Ruth taps them or Mi-sun shoots them. Mi-sun, you’ll be shooting paint balls.”
While he went over tactics for a rescue operation, I strapped on my robot suit’s arm and leg pieces, the power pack and tool kit on my back. It was raw and skeletal, metal bars running alongside my limbs, a breastplate over my torso.
Soon Ruth was moaning in boredom, so Wilder scrapped the lecture and we started telling jokes. My dad’s puns were not a hit. Jacques told the showstopper:
All year Tommy looked forward to his birthday. He couldn’t wait for the party and presents. He especially couldn’t wait for the cake.
At last Tommy sat at the table, surrounded by all his friends, and his mom brought in a huge, frosted birthday cake. Tommy cheered!
“Cut the cake,” said his mom.
“I can’t,” said Tommy.
“Birthday boys always cut the cake,” she said.
“But I can’t,” said Tommy. “I don’t have any arms.”
Tommy’s mother sighed. “Sorry, Tommy. No arms, no cake.”
Jacques was laughing so hard by the time he got to the punch line, he nearly sobbed. Even Wilder laughed.
“You can’t think that’s funny,” I said.
“A bit, yeah,” said Wilder.
“It’s not even a joke.”
“It’s a joke because it isn’t a joke.”
I suggested we play “Stump Jacques” instead. Jacques used to get every song we sang at him, but he missed again and again. When Wilder did an obvious Beatles tune, Jacques said, “It … sounds familiar.”
I frowned at Wilder. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Why did you guys agree to go up?” I asked. “In the Beanstalk, we could have said no.”
“I was curious,” said Mi-sun.
“If someone offers you a gun,” Ruth said to me, “are you going to say, ‘No thanks, I’m scared of guns’? No, you take the gun, ’cause then you’re prepared for whatever.”
“I wouldn’t take a gun,” said Mi-sun.
“Yeah, well, you are a gun,” said Ruth.
“I’m not a coward,” Jacques mumbled.
“No one called you a coward,” said Wilder.
“My dad used to because sometimes I’d duck when he’d throw a ball at me. I didn’t want my glasses to break, so what? I don’t know why I even cared what the bleeper thought. Je ne suis pas un lâche. I hate heights. Hate.” He was sitting beside the window, his body angled away from it. “But I still climbed that bleeping string hundreds of miles straight up, so mon pére can eat my bleeping bleep.”
Ruth lifted her fist, and Jacques bumped knuckles with her.
“Why didn’t you say no?” Wilder asked me.
I wasn’t sure if he really wanted to know, but he waited for an answer, so I said, “Because Danger is my middle name.”
No one laughed.
We stepped out of the helicopter and onto sagebrush and rocks. In the distance, broken windows on an abandoned building looked chiseled by sunlight.
Jacques took up his familiar pregame stance, one fist raised, and he shouted, “Cry havoc!”
Mi-sun, Wilder, Ruth, and I were all thinking the same thing, I guess, because as one we shouted, “Havoc!”
Jacques beamed. “I love you guys.”
“Yay us,” Mi-sun said quietly.
“I mean it,” said Jacques. “We gotta stay in touch after all this is over.”
Wilder met my eyes, and I gathered that he already knew what I suspected: there might be no “over” for us—no going home, no leaving one another, no normal anything ever again. My heart cramped a little, but at that moment I was more afraid that it would end.
“Don’t hurt my guys,” Dragon said from the pilot’s seat.
At Wilder’s signal, we ran forward in our usual formation. Jacques was covered in his havoc armor, a motorcycle helmet to protect his exposed face. Mi-sun carried a havoc shield, and a bag of paint balls bounced on her hip.
The afternoon sunlight was coming down at an angle like a swinging blade. My heart picked up its pace; my limbs felt long and strong. I was becoming used to this delicious sensation, the motion of the fireteam, Wilder at the center, the four of us connected to each other through him. A word popped into my mind: “home.” Was this bizarre web my home now?
Mi-sun had the best vision of all of us and spotted snipers on the roof. At Wilder’s command she began shooting paint balls. Ruth ran out in front, fluorescent splatters of paint balls exploding against her chest and legs. If one hit me, I’d have to play dead. I ran low. I didn’t want Wilder to think I was useless.
Just as we gained the building, a gas cloud erupted around us. We held our breath, shut our eyes, and followed where we felt Wilder lead.
When I could open my eyes again, we were inside the building. Wilder gave instructions to the other three to scout out the surrounding rooms while I climbed up to a security camera, took it apart, and connected my tablet to the security system.
“Turn off—” he started.
“The cameras. Got it,” I said.
“And any—”
“Alarms are now off. There’s—”
“A lockdown area? That’ll be the prisoners. Can you shut down—”
“Yeah, just give me ten—”
“Havoc,” Wilder said on the headset, “detention block in center stage. Ruthless, back him up. Code Blue to me. Let’s get an escape route ready.”
Something exploded, and our back door was blocked with concrete chunks. Wilder and I ducked as paint balls fired through the broken windows.
I crawled to the doorway, slid the metal flats of my robot suit hands under the chunks, and lifted, sending our barricade tumbling.
“You’re awesome,” Wilder said.
“Thanks,” I said. “I work out.”
He gave me that appreciative smile, and I returned it. And maybe we held the moment a few seconds too long.
A crash and a boom from outside startled us.
“Sorry,” he said. “You’re distracting. I have to ignore you better.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Mi-sun arrived and began firing out the door, driving back our attackers. She took a paint ball on the leg.
“Blue, you’re hobbled now,” Wilder told Mi-sun.
“Climb on,” I said, and she sat on my robotic shoulders, still firing paint balls.
Outside Ruth was exiting the far side of the building, tapping guys and watching them sit down.
She’d just cleared the area for Jacques when an explosion bit my ears and briefly blinded me.
When the smoke cleared, Ruth was standing in a crater made by the blast. Her clothes were completely gone. It looked like someone—probably Wilder—had anticipated that because Ruth was wearing what I can only describe as havoc underwear, and her hair was wound up inside her havoc helmet. One lock had slipped out. Ruth noticed the charred-off chunk and screamed.
I set down Mi-sun and ran forward, shouting to Ruth to see if she was okay. She shoved me back just as another group of gunmen rounded the corner. Gunfire pinged her, splattering in carnival colors. Ruth yanked a paint ball rifle out of a shooter’s hands and threw it back at him, still screaming. The gunmen fled, and I don’t think they were faking their fear.
One didn’t flee. He kept firing, his eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. Ruth grabbed him by his head and picked him off the ground.
“Ruth, stop! Stop! Stop!” Wilder was running forward.
Ruth looked at Wilder. She released the guy, turned, and punched through the buildin
g.
“We said we wouldn’t let them hurt us,” said Ruth. “We promised.”
“I okayed the grenade,” said Wilder. “I didn’t think it would hurt. You’re not even bruised, see?”
He lifted her arm, and she yanked it away from him.
“Ruth, you can’t hurt anyone else. Okay? You promise me.”
She shook her head, then lifted one shoulder. “Okay, just … don’t touch me.”
Jacques ran out of the building carrying cardboard cutouts in people shapes holding signs that read: RESCUE ME. “Yes, we did it! We rock so hard!”
Howell’s security guys stood up and gathered around us, slapping us on our backs and shaking their heads. A huge, hairy ex-Marine kept saying, “Whoa. Seriously, kids—whoa.”
Dragon approached, checking his tablet. “Two minutes, six seconds. It was supposed to be hard.”
We started back to the helicopter. The exclamations and applause from the security guys felt like physical pats on my back. If I hadn’t been weighed down by a robot suit, I might have skipped.
“I bet there are real people in the world we could save like that,” I said.
“Rescuing kidnapped victims not our job,” said Wilder.
“Then what is?”
He shrugged, his face twisted with frustration. “Whatever we’re meant for, it’s bigger than anything.”
Jacques was humming the Beatles tune Wilder had sung earlier. “Is it the Rolling Stones?” he asked.
I no longer felt like skipping.
Chapter 14
Mom and Dad asked when I was coming home.
“Howell invited the five of us to stay longer, and all the other parents agreed,” I said.
“You’re studying directly with Bonnie Howell?” Dad asked.
“Every day. You want to talk to her?”
They did, and from the sciencese Howell was spewing, I knew Dad would be convinced I was safe in the hands of another scientist.
We said the I-miss-yous and te-quieros. I hung up the phone, and my chest felt hollow.
“Maisie,” Wilder said.