by Shannon Hale
To release the armor I simply thought about it, an action like flexing a muscle, and cracks would form. I wasn’t sure exactly how that worked. Perhaps it was a coordinated effort with the bacteria to eat through the armor along those lines.
“My mom?” I asked Howell.
“I have a crew already in Florida,” she said. “This morning I sent some of my best security guys to help lead the search, but no news yet.”
Dad was stable but still recovering, so Howell’s doctors took care of him. The triplets taught me to throw knives—I used havoc blades. Hairy taught me some hand-to-hand fighting techniques. And I ate. And ate and ate. And talked with my dad. While eating.
Nights were hard. Often when I closed my eyes, there was Ruth, writhing on the ship’s deck. Now wide-eyed Mi-sun joined her, and Jacques, gaunt and shivering.
One night when everyone was asleep, I searched “the yellow leaf” online. Jacques’s last words. Macbeth the doomed king spoke them too, in a speech near the end of his life.
I have lived long enough: my way of life
Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf.
I read on till unexpected sadness sharpened into my heart. I didn’t have the energy to mourn the person Jacques had become. Not with Dad hurt. Not with Mom missing.
I pled with the ghosts behind my eyes to let me be, and I fell asleep.
I woke in a sweat, my heart pounding. I bolted upright, pulsing with panic that there was something I was supposed to do.
Wilder.
He was willing to kill to get all the tokens, and I had three buried against my heart. He’d come after me. And if I stayed by Dad, he’d be a target too.
I wouldn’t wait to be hunted. With two working tokens, Wilder had the advantage, but I wouldn’t be facing him alone.
Soon after dawn, I kissed Dad’s forehead, bumped knuckles with Luther, and got back in one of Howell’s jets.
“You’re sure they’ll be safe?” I asked Howell for the second time. Or twentieth.
“Who?” she asked.
“My dad and Luther,” I said. She’d probably been teasing, but you never knew with Howell.
“HAL is well defended. It would take an army.”
Go, go, go, I chanted silently at the air. Though I was dreading meeting Wilder, I needed to be done with it already. To distract myself, I went through my suitcase of stuff I’d left behind at HAL after Ruth died. My old clothes. My orange jumpsuit. My brush and hair elastics (ouch). My impact boots! I put them on.
And Wilder’s papers. I read through them again. So little information. His elective: soccer. Why? Because he was good at it. His chosen position: commander. Why? Because there was no point to anything if he wasn’t in charge.
We transferred to a helicopter at a private airstrip outside Philadelphia. Wilder had disabled the tracker Howell put in his ankle. The only way to find him was fireteam hide-and-seek. I directed Dragon to start near the lair and then fly over all the places he and I had gone together.
Wilder would want me to find him. He wanted what I had, and he’d be confident he could take it. I remembered his swagger, his brazen smile. And then I started remembering lots of stuff I didn’t want to.
I was guzzling a chocolate milk when I felt that twinge of the thinker. I looked out the window and laughed. He was where I’d left him a week ago, still waiting in that empty warehouse. He could have blue shot us out of the sky. Maybe he didn’t want me dead.
Then again, maybe he just wouldn’t risk killing me until my tokens were within arm’s reach.
Dragon touched us down at the nearest helipad, far enough away that I could no longer sense Wilder, and therefore Wilder could no longer sense me. We sat and let night come. We’d all seen Mi-sun’s blue shot pierce solid steel. The only armor that could stop it was mine, but making body armor for the others would deplete me. Night would hide us at least.
I watched the February sun get messy in the horizon, turning all goldy-rosy, making a show of going down.
“Maybe Wilder is innocent,” I said to Dragon.
He nodded. “Maybe.”
Jacques could be wrong. Brutus could be wrong. The butterflies in my stomach mutating into angry hornets could be wrong.
Dad called me on Dragon’s cell.
“If you see Mom before I do,” I said, “tell her the te-quieros and te-extraños, okay?” The I-love-yous, I-miss-yous. The words that tried and failed to convey pure emotion.
“She knows,” he said. “You’re doing more than any kid should, Maisie.”
“I didn’t say no,” I said.
“You shouldn’t have had to.”
The sunset didn’t last long. Dragon and the triplets left. They called Howell when they were in position outside the warehouse.
Howell nodded at me. My body felt vibrant and tense, in full fight-or-flight mode. Fight, just fight. I was going to see Wilder for the first time since I’d heard that he killed Mi-sun. But he was still Wilder.
The hornets in my belly turned vicious.
Howell had one of her guys drive me to the warehouse—he stayed on back roads, used no lights. The speed took my breath. The world is a scary place when you used to be invulnerable.
The closer I got, the brighter that beacon. Wilder was there. And now he knew I was here too. No need to be quiet. The driver screeched to a stop and I jumped out, growing armor over my clothes, over Fido, covering everything but my face. I wondered if Wilder could see me running from the car, wiggling every part of me from neck to fingers as I went so the joints would stay supple. I wondered if he’d laugh.
As soon as I reached Dragon, he cut the chain off the back doors and slid them open. The triplets ran forward and took up position in the dark room, never lowering their huge guns.
I peered in. There were stairs going up. Hairy made toward them. He stepped on something that crackled.
Pop.
The room filled with gas. I jumped back, holding my breath, and all four men dropped to the floor.
Chapter 38
I ran to Dragon first, felt a timid pulse in his neck, grabbed his ankles, and dragged him back into the freezing night. The effort made me sweat under my armor. I hated myself for being so weak.
“Please, please,” I muttered. I felt his pulse again, squeezed his hand. I didn’t want to leave him.
I went back for Hairy, calling Howell on Fido.
“Wilder gassed the room. They’re all out—alive but unconscious.”
How do you out-think the thinker? He guessed which door we would come in. He set a trap to get rid of everyone but me. I’d assumed GT had gassed my parents’ house. I needed to stop assuming things.
“Don’t go after him alone, Maisie,” Howell said in my ear. “That’s what he wants.”
“I have to,” I said, grunting as I dragged out Larry, the final triplet. “I have to get him focused on me instead of these guys, so you can get them to a hospital. Besides, if I don’t deal with him now—”
“Maisie—”
“I’m going.” I disconnected and ran back in before I lost my nerve.
I missed the strength of my legs propelling me forward. I missed feeling like Supergirl. The havoc skin was thick and dead feeling, a mummy costume.
I slowed at the stairs, scanning for other traps, gas-bomb triggers. The stairs creaked and I turned around, expecting to see Wilder behind me. I was alone.
Well, not alone. I could sense Wilder, though I couldn’t hear anything beyond my own shaking breaths.
He’s not going to kill you, I told myself. And you don’t have to kill him.
It was almost easier to track Wilder in the dark, with nothing to distract me from that agonizingly beautiful pull. Up the stairs. To the right. Through a door. The room was dark and large, cluttered with crates and abandoned office furniture.
I crouched behind an upturned desk, trying to slow my breaths. He’d be able to sense my general direction and nearness, but I didn’t want to give him an exact target.<
br />
“Man, you took a long time,” he said from somewhere.
Through a crack in the desk, I watched him come closer, and the little moonlight from the windows picked his shape out of the dark. He was wearing the same plaid button-down shirt and jeans he had a week ago, and he looked tired and unshowered. His hands were in his pockets, and he leaned against a crate.
I should attack him right now, I thought. Bind him with havoc bands before he has a chance to attack. Fast, Maisie!
I didn’t. My muscles felt like clay, my bones like twigs.
“I’ve been waiting for, like, a week,” he said, humor in his voice.
Maybe we could talk this through. I stood up.
“Hey, Danger Girl,” he said.
My stomach turned cold. I loved his voice. I loved his face. He murdered Mi-sun. He apparently pretended to love me so I would help him get Jacques’s token. After all that, I’d assumed my feelings for him would just dissolve.
“Hey, Wild Card,” I said.
“So … I take it Mr. Havoc is dead,” he said. “I bet taking a third token stings like the devil.”
“Why are you doing all this?” I asked, my voice cracking a little.
He leaned his head back, looking at the ceiling. “Don’t be a cliché, Maisie. That’s what everyone would ask.”
“Poor Mi-sun …”
“I figured you must have found out about that when you crushed your earpiece.”
“Wilder …” I had to say it, though I knew it couldn’t possibly help. “You and I are the fireteam. We’re not competition.”
“I’m not here to compete with you,” he said. “I’m here to take your tokens. If your death is the only means, then I’m truly sorry.”
I’d been prepping myself for his charming assurance that I’d gotten it all wrong and he was still on my side. I’d expected him to flatter, swear his innocence, sweet-talk me, so his words stung like sand thrown in my eyes. Since I was no longer the powerful brute, he didn’t need to use chivalry or trickery. Or kisses.
“Seriously, Wilder, were you always such a douche bag?”
“You destroyed the fireteam when you took Ruth’s token. If I’d gotten it, the four of us would still be together.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“Didn’t you? You were pretty quick to rush in and save someone who never liked you.”
“I was valuing the sanctity of life,” I said grandly. Inside I winced. Hadn’t Ruth liked me eventually? A little bit?
“So from your track record, I assume you’re here to fight me,” he said.
“I didn’t kill Ruthless. You—”
“You winched her up and dropped her in the ocean. You’re the one who figured out she’d barely paid attention in scuba class and wouldn’t make decompression stops.”
“But—”
“You hunted down Jacques and killed him for his token. And now here you are, coming after me with a team of heavily armed men.”
Enough. My fist clenched, the armor squeaking. I was stalling so I didn’t have to fight him. And he was toying with me.
I rushed him, my armor covering my face except for my eyes.
He lunged away, shouting, “Yeah! Bring it!”
He shot me with a handful of screws. I dived behind the desk, but the screws burned holes straight through. I shielded my eyes with my havocked arm, and just in time to feel the pings of screws hit. The armor held.
I waited for him to reach into his bag for more ammo, then stood and threw two havoc knives, aiming for his legs. One grazed his leg, the other stuck in a crate behind him.
He pulled it out, smiling. I’d just given him ammo that could cut through my armor.
I started to run, but he shot the havoc knife. There was a blinding streak of blue. The knife cut through the havoc armor over Fido and stuck into the arm itself. In the second I paused to look, Wilder must have scavenged my other knife because he shot again, slicing Fido clean off. The hand and forearm that had felt like my own now dropped dead to the floor. Just a few centimeters remained attached, looking like charred flesh. Phantom pains pierced me.
I dislodged the remainder of my arm and threw it back at Wilder, too angry to think. Angry not just that Fido was broken, but that he’d broken it. More than ever, I felt how every kiss had made me vulnerable. I wasn’t a fierce warrior. I was a stupid girl who let myself get duped.
He picked up the broken piece of Fido and shot it at me. How fitting if it had torn right through my head and ended it all, but his shot went wide. I couldn’t depend on the next one missing me. I had to keep moving.
I switched my impact boots to “hop,” slammed my feet down, and shot into the air.
“Whoa,” he said, and I knew he hadn’t been expecting that. The Great and Powerful Thinker had never seen my impact boots.
I grabbed a metal beam, grew a havoc hook where Fido had been, and using hand and hook swung from rafter to rafter. I hefted myself up and quietly crawled through a few more rafters, huddling in a recess of the ceiling. In his surprise, Wilder had hesitated, so by the time he started to fire again, he’d lost me. His thinker-tracking ability wasn’t exact, and the moonlight of the windows didn’t reach this high. I prayed the lights were off because the warehouse didn’t have power. If he could turn them on, I’d be an easy target.
Blue streaks peppered the ceiling in sweeping arcs, lug nuts and screws ripping through the metal roof. A couple hit the back of my head with bruising power. On his next sweep, something large struck my jaw. I swallowed a whimper of pain. My blood tasted like a mouthful of quarters.
The blue shots slowed. Each strike thinned my armor, and I had to layer new skin over the dents. I grew a blade in my havoc hook arm, turning it into a scythe—so sharp the edge was made up of single molecules. It would cut off Wilder’s arm with the gentlest nudge. It would slice through his ribs, right into his heart. My arm trembled.
Wilder was almost under me now, walking as he peered into the rafters to my right.
I switched my boots to “impact” and dropped ten meters down behind him. Wilder started to turn. My blade arm was already lifted, my insides fiery with hatred. I could end Jonathan Wilder. I brought my blade down—
And stopped, the blade millimeters from his neck. I’m not Jacques. I’m not Ruthless. I’m Maisie Danger Brown. Instead, I slapped him with the flat of the blade against his head.
He stumbled forward, turning to shoot at me as I ran away. Something large struck me in my back, and I fell facedown. He was shooting cut pipes now, the kind Mi-sun had put through tank armor. My breath was knocked out of me so hard, for a few seconds I wasn’t sure I’d ever get it back. And when I did, I almost wished I hadn’t. I hurt.
I ran again, growing more havoc skin over my back. He struck again, this time in my right leg. I fell flat on my face as another pipe flew just over my head.
Get up. Run, Maisie.
I switched my boots back to “hop” and scrambled to my feet. The pain in my right leg was so bad my stomach twisted, and I wanted to retch. I slammed my left foot down and shot into the air, pitching to one side. My armored head struck the roof as I grabbed a rafter. I swung to a new position and clung there, shaking. Whenever I lifted my arm, pain pierced my left side. Broken ribs?
Blue shot streaked around me, some hitting, but I stifled a cry, holding my breath.
Attack, I told myself. Go attack.
Several of my bones were broken. My Fido arm was gone. I felt cut in half, shattered, and defenseless. I’d had the chance to kill him and I hadn’t.
“Come on, Maisie! This is a sorry game of hide-and-seek!”
The roof seemed to tilt, and I clung on, shutting my eyes, too dizzy to see.
An image of Jacques hovered behind my lids, starved beneath his crumbling armor. Not gonna happen.
I’d come equipped with four camelbacks—those backpacks made to carry water for long hikes, though mine were filled with high-calorie energy drinks. I wore them against my
skin, under my armor. I removed my mouth armor and put a straw in my mouth, draining one of the camelbacks. My fingers and toes shivered.
Wilder was shooting the ceiling a few meters away. “Throw some more of those homegrown knives, Maisie. That was a brilliant idea.”
I removed my scythe hook, hiding it up in the rafters out of his reach. Apparently I couldn’t make myself use a lethal weapon. Instead I grew an arm over Fido’s absence, ending in a havoc fist.
I jumped down behind him and punched him in the head.
He turned to shoot, off-balance from my strike, and missed as my boots shot me back in the air. My broken right leg screamed at me, so I tucked it up, landing on just my left and hitting Wilder again as I descended, a left-right punch. He shot, but I was back in the air. I switched to “impact” while still arching over his head, and then landed and stayed. He was expecting another hop and aimed high. So while he shot over my shoulder, I struck him in the face.
I’d hit Hairy a few times when he tutored me. Hairy could take a punch. Wilder could not. He stumbled back.
I punched him again, getting him in the mouth. It felt really good. He fumbled for his bag of metal ammo, but I grew a short blade and sliced the bag from his side, throwing it as far as I could.
He faked left, then dived right for a loose pipe. I kneed him in the gut. It hurt my broken leg, but not as much as it hurt Wilder. He coughed and fell over, and I held his wrists together, growing havoc handcuffs over them and sealing in his dangerous fingers. I kneed him again to slow him down so I could call Howell—wait, he’d killed my phone.
How was I going to get him outside? I was hobbled, and he was stronger. His weapon hands were encased in havoc, but could he simply shoot them off? I grabbed his ankles, cuffing those as well.