Dangerous

by Shannon Hale

“What?” I said, suddenly so tired. “What now, what do you want?”

  He didn’t say anything, just stood in the doorway of Howell’s office, his hands in his pockets.

  I rubbed my forehead. “I hate lying to my parents.”

  “You okay?”

  “None of us are,” I said. “Ruth picked up that guy by his head. Jacques failed at name-that-tune. And Mi-sun—did she tell you that she’s dreaming about pink things? Is there something wrong with me that I’m not aware of? What if the nanites are toxic to humans, damaging parts of our brains, making us—”

  “No, we’re—” His voice cracked. He took a breath. “We’re a team, and if we stay together, we’re okay.”

  I nodded. Perhaps it was nanite poisoning, but I believed him.

  Wilder leaned against the threshold. “I’m glad you’re here, you know,” he said, and his words were like water to me.

  “I want to be here, with you—you guys,” I said. “I’m scared, but at the same time I can’t imagine ever leaving.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  Mom and Dad wouldn’t understand. Luther either.

  “I’ve never won a trophy or anything like that.” I found myself talking to him again like I used to, words pouring out, saying things I didn’t think through first. “It always seemed like a cool thing, to be part of a championship soccer team or win the school spelling bee. Earn a trophy for doing something great, proof of worth that I could hold. But my family doesn’t do stuff like that. Which is okay, but I guess I just felt … small. And here—with the token, with you guys—I don’t anymore.”

  He nodded, no judgment in his expression. His lips smiled slightly. Approval? An invitation?

  The space separating us seemed nearly unreachable, the vacuum between Earth and the moon. I wanted to cross it, to let him hold me. To re-create that night on the roof, that car ride. His attention had been addicting. I didn’t want to miss it, but I did.

  I stood there, thinking about microscopes but saying nothing. He looked down at his feet, slowly turned, and walked away.

  I fled to my workshop and made impact boots.

  Inside the soles of black leather boots, I packed an array of carbon nanotube springs, so every step I took stored potential energy. Besides allowing me to spring about, they would absorb impact. Theoretically. I wanted to practice before showing Wilder in case I flubbed it and landed on my butt.

  The day was cloudy. The cafeteria was dark, the light from the windows gray and mealy. I jumped off a table and felt as if I were landing after a tiny hop. Good. Now to climb higher.

  Fido was stronger than my left hand, so I had no trouble scaling the whitewashed bricks in the wall and hitching myself onto a ledge that housed wicker baskets full of fake greenery. Weird decorating choice. Who thinks, “Hey, plastic plants in dusty baskets. Now that’s what I call beauty!”

  I was about to jump down the four or so meters when I heard the door open.

  Ruth entered and made for the kitchen. When she found the door locked, she punched a hole, reached through, and ripped the entire thing out of its frame.

  I was about to speak up when a voice called out from the corridor. It was a security guy I’d nicknamed Collie because his hair was shaggy and goldish-brown.

  Ruth was tearing open a box of crackers with her teeth.

  “There’s plenty of food for you in the lab,” said Collie.

  “And plenty of people staring at me while I eat. I’ve had it. You know what that means? Had it? Sick of it? Done? That’s me.” She kicked the amputated door.

  “I’ve had it with you destroying property.”

  Collie pulled out his walkie-talkie as if he would call the security chief, but Ruth took it away, crushing it between her palms.

  “I’m stronger than you,” she said. “I’m stronger than … than everybody. And that means I don’t have to do what anyone says.”

  He stared at her. “You will come with me. Now.”

  He put his hand on her arm and pulled. She grabbed his arm, considered it, and twisted her hands. I heard a crack.

  The weird thing was that he didn’t scream. He just stared at his arm hanging wrong. Maybe the shock was too great. Maybe that’s why I didn’t speak either.

  Ruth was breathing hard. Her face seemed pained. She mumbled, “I can’t hurt anyone, I said I wouldn’t—”

  She glanced at the door, then back at Collie. His eyes were wide. He opened his mouth, perhaps at last finding that scream.

  Her fist came down on his head. He dropped to the floor.

  I pushed myself back against the wall, pressed myself there, my heart pounding at my gut, my gut rolling over, my head feeling full of helium.

  Do not look up at me, I pleaded. Do not look.

  Through the plants I could see Ruth sitting on her heels beside the body, her arms around her knees, rocking back and forth.

  She got up, paced, and then stalked to the door as if she would leave the cafeteria. I almost took a breath of relief, but instead she shut the door and locked it. She peeled a strip of metal from the broken kitchen door and used it to tie the cafeteria door handles together, locking us in.

  She paced, rubbing her hair, squatting down with her hands over her face, then rising to pace again. She pulled a taser from Collie’s utility belt and zapped herself. It didn’t seem to affect her. I guessed she was trying to make it look like Collie had attacked her.

  I began to lower myself down, trying to hide myself completely behind the baskets. I moved so slowly, I could hear my knees adjusting. I was setting my hands down when her eyes flicked up. I froze. She scanned the baskets, studying the grimy fake plants before her eyes spotted mine. I felt as if all warmth left my body in one mad rush.

  “Maisie.” Ruth took a startled step backward, then blurted, “It was an accident.”

  It wasn’t. I’d seen her eyes.

  When I was four or so, my mom had left the groceries on the counter while she’d gone to the bathroom, and I opened a carton of eggs. They were so beautiful. I squeezed one in my hand, punching through with my thumb, felt the shell give, the goo ooze out. I cracked another, because one time just wasn’t enough to understand. I let some fall onto the kitchen floor to hear the pleasant crunch and watch the splatter patterns. I knew that I was doing something wrong, but it wasn’t until I picked up the very last egg that I paused to really think about it. My mom returned, and I held out the last egg.

  “Here,” I said, as if it were a present.

  Suddenly I felt awful. I tried to run to my room, but she grabbed me and crouched down by me and said that she’d always wanted to do that too. She helped me clean up the mess and then do chores to earn money for another dozen eggs. But she never got mad.

  Had Ruth broken his arm out of curiosity, like dropping eggs onto the floor? But then she’d tried to hide the deed, and there was no way to clean this up.

  “Ruth,” I said. It was all I could say, all I could be sure of—her name. Though her old, short name didn’t seem to apply anymore. She was Ruthless.

  Her eyes were fierce. “An accident.”

  “I saw.”

  “An accident,” she said again, more insistent.

  “I saw, Ruth. I saw.” She’d done a big, scary, very bad thing, and the only way to keep it from getting worse was to face up.

  Her mind was whirring as she thought it through, weighed her options.

  Apparently she settled on the option that included killing me. She launched herself, jumping right up to my platform, grabbing it with her rock-solid hands, the concrete cracking. I stumbled away, just managing to seize the edge of the platform as I fell to orient myself so I landed on my feet. The impact boots worked, but they didn’t just take the drop—they shot me up again.

  Wrong setting, wrong setting, I thought as I ripped through the air, my arms spiraling. I must have accidentally switched “impact” to “hop.” The wall came rushing at me. I grabbed a windowsill with my Fido hand. Ruth jumped d
own, picked up a table, and hurled it at me. I let go, falling just as the table slammed into the wall where I’d been. Windows shattered around me. No chance to reset my impact boots. Once again as soon as I landed, they launched me into the air. Another thrown table whooshed past me. The force of its passing spun me around in midair. I struggled to land on my feet, only managing to get one down flat. I would have been rocketed back into the air again but I scrambled for a hold on the nearest table and pulled myself back down.

  “How are you doing that?” Ruth yelled.

  “How are you going to explain two deaths?” I yelled back, stooping to turn off “hop” before the boots could launch me headfirst into a wall. I ran toward the door, and another table smashed in my path. I pulled up short. “Come on, Ruth! There’s no way to make all this look like an accident.”

  She lunged again, and I dived under a table, scrambling out the other side. She grabbed for me, just missing my foot and cracking the floor tiles with her hand. She knocked the table out of her way. Nothing separated me now from the furniture-tossing monstrosity. My heartbeats were so painful, I thought my chest would explode. Three more seconds and I would be paste.

  Chapter 15

  “The cameras!” I pointed at one of the security cameras bolted to the ceiling. There was no pulsing red power light, but I gambled that Ruth hadn’t noticed.

  She leaped for one, tearing it loose before twisting it into metal scrap. She must have realized that if the camera had been filming, there would be a recording somewhere. Her face twisted like the metal, regret touching her eyes for the first time.

  “What should I do?” She wailed the words.

  “Just explain what happened. You wouldn’t have done this before that token crawled inside you. It’s not all your fault. The police will take it easy on you for that, and because you’re a minor too.”

  Ruth laughed, and she looked at me with hot contempt.

  “You think Howell will turn me over to the police when I have her precious alien technology?” Ruth put a hand over her chest, her eyes wild. “She’ll carve it out first.”

  We heard boots on tile, the doors shaking as people tried to open them. Ruth swiped at me, but I’d been backing away. I palmed a table with Fido and sprang over it. Her hand cracked down on the floor, busting a tile into shards. The shaking at the door was more intense.

  “I’m not afraid,” said Ruth. “I don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

  She squared her shoulders, facing whoever was trying to enter. The sparking light of a blow torch buzzed through the door. They would come in—Dragon, Howell, Wilder—and Ruth would kill them all.

  “They can’t take your token if you’re not here,” I said.

  She turned to me quick, and her eyes burned. I looked down, afraid of returning the predator’s gaze.

  “You can go anywhere, do anything,” I whispered. And I looked at the window.

  The door screeched against the blow torch. Ruth startled.

  She barreled through the bedlam of tables and shattered through the large window. I saw her sideswipe a truck in the parking lot before she was lost from view.

  Your turn, Maisie, I told myself. Run.

  But adrenaline had drained me dry. Not all dry, though, as I was sweating like a cold can of soda.

  I forced myself to stay on my feet and shambled forward, refusing to look at the body in the kitchen.

  “I’m here,” I shouted through the door. The blow torch stopped its work. My arms seemed to have forgotten how to function, so I kicked the rest of the metal band loose and pushed the door open with my hip, letting in Dragon, Howell, and a few others.

  “What’s going on?” Howell asked, scanning the room. “Miss Brown, perhaps you could test your gadgets outside—”

  I was suddenly on the floor. My legs felt like cooked noodles, cold and floppy and useless.

  Must’ve been the strain of the impact boots, I thought, before noticing that my arms were shaking too.

  Wilder was there. He crouched, looking into my face.

  “Ruthless,” I said. I pointed toward the kitchen and the body she’d left behind.

  After that things happened quickly. Someone carried me to the lab and the doctors. There was nothing they could do for Duarte (Collie’s real name had been Duarte). Dragon ran for a helicopter, and the security guys chased after him and Ruth in a swarm of black SUVs.

  “You’ve had a shock. Stay put and rest,” a doctor told me, but I was too restless to rest, so when his back was turned I went to Howell’s office. She was talking to Dragon on a headset, tracking Ruth on her computer. Wilder paced.

  “Shouldn’t we call the police?” I asked.

  “No point,” Wilder said. “I’m not sure the army could stop Ruth. And if they know what’s going on, they might take you and me and Mi-sun and Jacques and put us in little cages with sawdust and gerbil food.”

  “Don’t be dramatic,” I said. “Surely they’d give us bread and water.”

  I stood behind Howell’s chair, looking over her shoulder until I remembered how annoyed Luther would get when I did that to him. Luther. I felt a jab of homesickness. I’d messaged him that I was staying longer for a special project. He’d wanted to know how much longer, and I’d waited to reply until I knew. Was he logged onto the Japanese teeth-whitening site right now?

  Howell’s monitor displayed a map of Texas and a red blip moving south.

  “That’s Ruth,” said Howell.

  “She has a locator chip,” Wilder explained.

  If Ruth did, then I bet we all did. I thought over each poke and prod over the past weeks. One shot had seemed odd—in my ankle. I felt around, discovering a tiny lump on my left ankle that wasn’t on my right. I sat on the floor in the corner, where Howell and Wilder couldn’t see me. I took off an outlet cover, pulled out some wires, and, using a screwdriver, rubber door stopper, and paper clip, sent some pointed electricity into that spot on my ankle, frying the locator chip.

  “I’m telling you,” Wilder was saying to Howell, “the other four members of the fireteam are equipped to stop her.”

  Howell rubbed her head in frustration, kicking up a mass of curly hair. “I couldn’t predict this.”

  I could hear a crackle on Howell’s headset.

  “Keep her in your sights, Dragon,” said Howell.

  “Attacking will set her off. Offer her food,” Wilder said and Howell repeated.

  Dragon was shouting. I could hear the panic, even though I couldn’t understand the words.

  After a minute the sound stopped. Howell stared at the floor, taking deep breaths. She looked at Wilder.

  “Get the rest of your team,” she said.

  I offered to stay behind and build some Ruthless-proof handcuffs, but Wilder had me quickly sketch the plans for Howell’s team to build.

  “The fireteam has to stay together,” he said.

  Jacques had been in the pool and Mi-sun target shooting outside, so they both had to be caught up to speed in the helicopter.

  “This is bad,” Mi-sun whispered.

  “So if I ran off like Ruth,” said Jacques, “you all would, what, hunt me down? Take me out?”

  “You’re not going to run off,” said Wilder.

  “Jacques, she killed Duarte on purpose,” I said.

  “And just now she picked up one of the SUVs the security guys were driving and threw it at the helicopter,” Wilder said. “Three men in the SUV died. Of the four in the helicopter, only Dragon survived. Ruth escaped.”

  Jacques gnawed on an energy bar.

  Mi-sun started to cry. “It feels like it’s ending, and I don’t want it to end.”

  I put my arm around her and kind of rubbed her shoulder. Wilder said her name until Mi-sun looked at him.

  “We’re still a team, okay? I need Code Blue. We have to take care of Ruthless, we have to make it safe for everyone. Are you still with me?”

  She nodded.

  Wilder had brought Mi-sun a belt with two
bags that hung on her hips like holsters. No paint balls this time—one held screws, the other cut pipes. I doubted they’d even bruise Ruth.

  I spotted Ruth below us, running across a two-lane highway. A few kilometers away there was a town, and beyond that, the Gulf of Mexico. The helicopter passed her, and we landed between her and the town. Jacques was wearing havoc armor like a shiny brown body suit under his clothes. He and Mi-sun went first, Mi-sun holding a havoc shield. Wilder and I came up behind. I wore my robot suit but had changed out of the impact boots. I didn’t want to go hopping when I only meant to walk.

  “Ruth!” Wilder called.

  She stopped, squinting at us in the sun that had seared away the clouds. Her posture was tense, her leg crooked, ready to bolt.

  “Hey, sorry about all the mess.” He took off his sunglasses, squinting in the strong light, and shrugged boyishly. “Howell and everybody don’t get it. We don’t play by their rules anymore.”

  “I promised you,” said Ruth. “I told you I wouldn’t hurt anyone. But I … I …”

  “It happened,” he said. “It’s over. I’ll take care of it.”

  Ruth put a hand on her chest. “They’re going to try to cut it out.”

  Wilder rolled his eyes. “Like we’ll let them. Come on, we’re a team.”

  He sounded so sincere. Did he mean it? Or was he that great of an actor?

  Ruth rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand. “One-Arm there said I had to turn myself over to the police.”

  “Maisie!” Wilder gave me an incredulous expression. “Seriously, Maisie. You should apologize.”

  “S-sorry, Ruth.” This was ridiculous.

  “I’m sick of having all those doctors examining us and watching us like we’re freaks,” Wilder said. “I got Howell to give us our own place—this huge house off in the country, where we can figure out what we want to do. The kitchen is amazing. All the food we want. We’ll eat, hang out, play video games. Eat.”

  Ruth was still several meters away, but she took a step closer. “Stocked kitchen?”

  “Oh yeah, fully. It’s amazing. Steaks and pizza, burgers, hot dogs. You should see the waffle machine. Epic! We’ve got an entire freezer just for cheesecake. I want one of those soft ice cream machines—you know, the twisty kind, chocolate and vanilla? It’s on order, so hopefully we’ll get it soon.”