I pointed at the central staircase “There are people. They’re all downstairs. Let’s go.”
We tried to hurry and remain cautiously alert at the same time while crossing a space bigger than a football field. If anybody had been around to see us, no doubt we’d have looked ridiculous. Nobody was.
The yelling had descended to mostly grunts by the time we reached the stairs, and when we reached the main market corridor―well, the place didn’t look like a battlefield, but there was a lot more litter strewn in the halls. The most noticeable item of clutter was a broken automaton, one we weren’t responsible for.
Two men stood in the hallway, fists clenched. They’d reached the part of a brawl where they were woozy enough that swinging punches took time and conscious effort. Plainly, they weren’t very good at this, but from the bruises on their faces and scraped knuckles, they had been trying their best.
I thought I saw a face peeking over a window frame behind them. Otherwise, conspicuous abandonment ruled. What there really ought to have been and wasn’t were automatons lecturing these guys on their bad behavior and dishing out punishments.
Ray eyed the combatants professionally. “Should we stop them?”
Tempting, but… “No.” I shook my head. “First we find out what we’re getting into.”
“How?”
I gave my head a jerk, thankfully down the opposite direction from the punch drunk grownups. “We check out our local contacts in the dorms.”
We had to carry Remmy the first few steps. She’d frozen up in shock, staring open-mouthed at the abandoned marketplace.
Once we got down the first flight of stairs, the station stopped being abandoned. People sat on benches looking stunned, or talked in hushed voices in small groups.
A chorus of cheerfulness broke the dark mood.
“Good day, Mr. Carmike.”
“Nice to see you, Carmike.”
“Having a nice day, Willy?”
A man as generically brown haired and dapper as every other Rotor walked up the hall in our direction. As he passed, miserable people faked smiles and greetings. The moment he’d left them behind, their expressions tightened into terror.
The much-feared Mr. Carmike stopped in front of a young woman and tipped his hat at her. “Enjoying our new freedom, Polly?”
“It’s wonderful, Willy!” She faked a cheerful, enthusiastic expression pretty well. If she didn’t have her back so tightly to the wall she might leave a dent, it would be more convincing.
“I’d like to use that freedom to see you this evening, if I may.” From her terror, I’d have expected a cruel leer, but he looked and sounded like a courting gentleman from a 50s sitcom.
“I’m looking forward to it.” Criminy. She was too scared to come up with an excuse.
He looked so normal. He kept looking normal as he left Polly with a little bow, and strolled amicably up to us. Right about the time he got close enough to put his hands on his knees and bend forward to ask, “Aren’t you a curious group of youngsters?” the normal fell apart.
Up close, I could see the red Puppeteer tentacles twining up his neck, melded into his skin, and disappearing into his hair. His eyes glowed faintly white.
Erk.
Claire stepped in front of me, right in front of me, crowded up against me and Ray. She threaded her fingers together and gave him a grin that should have struck him blind. “New arrivals, Mr. Carmike. We’re heading downstairs to get properly dressed now.”
His eyes went glassy and unfocused. “I can’t imagine why. You’re perfect the way you are.” He sounded blissful, like a man in love, and stepped around us to walk off with an extra spring in his step―but also as if he’d completely forgotten us.
“And that may be why we’re not supposed to trust adults,” I croaked. Remmy held her shaking arms tightly wrapped around the Puppeteer poisoning orb. Ray just looked suspicious, scanning the hall in both directions like a good bodyguard.
We made a little more haste down to the children’s dorms. The automaton at the front desk seethed and pulsed with red tendrils, but Claire had her golden angel act turned up so high, I had to shield my eyes from her. The automaton didn’t even speak to us.
That left us free to follow the babbling voices and the sound of crying to the schoolrooms.
This corridor was packed. Here was where all the kids were hiding. Only a few talked to each other in small, anxious groups. Most stood or sat against the walls shell-shocked, doing nothing.
Some of them looked in our direction. Gertrude ran up the hall, skirts tugging at her legs, until she had to stop and wheeze in front of us. Apparently, corsets weren’t that easy to breathe in after all.
“Bad Penny…,” she said between pants, “Please tell me you’re here to save us.”
Michael lurked behind her, following but not willing to get too close. “…and not to gloat,” he added much more nervously.
“The former. Definitely the former,” I promised Gertrude. “How did this happen?”
Gertrude dropped into a crouch, hands gripping the sides of her head. She was about ten seconds from completely flipping out in panic. “I don’t know. The first we knew anything was wrong was when Miss Rattlebottom came and told us all schedules were canceled and we could do whatever we wanted. We started to throw a party, but then Millicent’s dad showed up to get her. He had that… stuff on him.”
Claire laid her gloved hand on Gertrude’s head, stroking back over her hair. Gertrude took a few deeper breaths, relaxing her grip on her temples. The story continued, faltering but not hysterical. “We went to ask Miss Rattlebottom about that, and saw that she’d been…”
“Taken over,” Claire supplied, when Gertrude didn’t want to say it.
“Millicent became hysterical, and one of those things crawled out of Miss Rattlebottom and jumped onto her. Then she acted like everything was fine. Since then, it’s gotten worse. We’ve had to cook our own food, because the automatons that aren’t taken over are too confused to do anything. They let you do whatever you want, except complain. When you complain, they take you.”
She shuddered. So did some of the other kids starting to gather around. So did more who were merely within earshot. Someone I couldn’t see started to cry.
I set my jaw, and held out my hand to Remmy. She dropped the modified Conqueror orb into it. I’d barely had time to get to know them, but these were my friends, and seeing them like this made me burn inside. Some of that anger edged my voice as I told Gertrude, “We’ll start with Miss Rattlebottom.”
Only my teammates had the strength to follow me out into the atrium, and I waved Ray and Claire back. Claire’s power especially would pollute the experiment.
“It is time for school, Bad Penny, but you will be happy to know that is now optional. You are free!” jabbered Miss Rattlebottom. The fleshy infestation had changed her voice, making it richer and happier, which would be great if a web of red tentacles didn’t crawl around every joint and into her mouth and eye sockets.
Witty rejoinder?
No. I shoved the orb against the biggest exposed mass of Puppeteer crud, right up under her chin. They turned grey. The grey shot through the whole network, until dark ash rained down out of her body.
“Bad Penny. You have been delinquent―” she lectured me metallically, until her body jerked and a grinding noise inside signaled her gears getting caught on powdered Puppeteer corpse.
I growled in satisfaction. Gasps and a cacophony of footsteps sounded behind me, and I turned around to face a crowd of awed teenagers.
Ray was still scowling. “It works, but it’s not safe. You have to get within attack range.” His fists clenched and unclenched at the whole idea.
“I can fix that,” volunteered Remmy.
We all looked at her.
“I can fit the device into a Conqueror deactivation pistol. Make a ray gun out of it.” She stood up to her full diminutive height, setting her shoulders and thrusting out her barely-th
ere chin in defiance.
Nobody defied her. Personally, I was almost awed by how great a power Remmy had.
I looked up from her, and around at the crowd. “There’s only one of those guns left, but it’s here and I’m pretty sure where to find it. Does anyone know where the militia captain’s home is?”
“He’s been taken. All the important adults have been turned into meat puppets. Or disappeared,” said Aggie, peeking out from behind the second row. She held her goggles in her hands, twisting them nervously.
People yelped, and the crowd shook as someone forced their way through. A tall blonde, way too statuesque for a middle-schooler, shoved Gertrude and a boy I didn’t know aside to stand in front of me. Her skirts had been raggedly cut to her knees, and her corset left off, and her hair undone, hanging down nearly to her waist. Tear tracks covered her cheeks, and from her red eyes and cheeks they were fresh.
“I’ll take you there,” she growled. Sabrina. I recognized her. This was Donovan’s legendary fiancée, Sabrina.
“They took Donovan.” It came out in a rasp. Her fists clenched, vibrating with fury, and more tears bulged at the corners of her eyes. She stared down at the floor, and said through gritted teeth, “I threw a fit, and one of those things crawled out of a trash tube. He shoved me aside and started yelling, so it got him instead. He walked away and nobody’s seen him since. After the way I treated him, he still…”
I leaned close, and lowered my voice. “Lead us to the gun, and we’ll free him. We’ll free everyone.”
She stomped off up the stairs. Me, Ray, Claire, and Remmy rushed after her.
Sabrina made no attempt to be stealthy, but when we caught up, Claire fell in right beside her. In contrast to Sabrina’s furious trudge, Claire practically skipped…
No, she didn’t. That was her power. I tried to look everywhere but at Claire to avoid being sucked in. Like at the woman in a side hallway who stood with her hands on her hips, staring at illegible graffiti carved into the wooden wall paneling. She didn’t just have tentacles poking out of her collar. Two control squid, MY control squid, crawled across her shoulders, and another writhed in her hand.
When they’d been mine, they didn’t have little shining white eyes.
Neither they, nor the woman, reacted to us in any way. Ray, Remmy, and I crowded close behind Claire, letting her power make us invisible to Puppeteers.
Regular people saw us, but they had their own problems. We reached a door in a hallway that looked like any other to me. Sabrina grabbed the latch and shook it. Locked.
Ray gently placed his hands on her shoulders, and moved her aside, nodding his head in a brief but polite bow. Then he lifted his foot and kicked the door. The lock broke, slamming the door inward, and when it hit the inside wall, it fell off its hinges.
A middle-aged man walked out of a side room, buttoning up his shirt and shouting, “Don’t you understand? You’re free!” His visible chest, his neck, much of his head, and his forearms and the backs of his hands were all roped with fleshy red tentacles. A control squid crawled out of his collar as he yelled at us.
I didn’t even give Claire time to use her power. I pointed Archimedes at his chest. “Sleep! Sleep now! Sleep!”
He fell over like a statue, eyes closed by the time he hit the carpeted floor. The control squid curled up into a motionless ball. Another rolled out of his wrist cuff, also asleep.
We didn’t have to search for the strobe pistol. It hung on a rack over his bed below an old-fashioned tommy gun and a revolver. All mysterious, exotic weapons here.
As Remmy climbed up on the headboard to pull down the light gun, I asked, “Can you modify it while we walk? I want to get back to the dorms. I don’t want to find out they got swarmed with control squid the moment we left.”
She tucked my modified Conqueror orb under one arm and pulled out a screwdriver. “Maybe.”
“I’ll hold the parts,” Ray offered, taking the orb and holding it in front of her.
The same squid-infested woman was in the same place on the way back. Sabrina flipped her the bird as we passed.
On the steps down to the dorms, Remmy twisted a wire into place, and announced, “Got it.” She held up the newly combined strobe pistol and Conqueror orb, and they could not have been more obviously kludged together. Stiff wires fastened the orb onto the end of the gun by connecting to the golden band, and that was the only visible modification.
Things had gone quiet. At the foot of the stairs, I heard exactly one voice, a boy saying, “I know something’s up. Why won’t anyone tell me what’s going on? Do you not like freedom?”
Oh, criminy. I snatched the jury-rigged pistol out of Remmy’s hands, and raced for the school wing. Skidding around the doorway, I saw Donovan with his back to us, one fist on his hip, the other hand holding out a control squid towards a bunch of cowering teenagers.
“This is just the beginning. True freedom is coming soon,” he said, and I shot him in the back.
Pink light pulsed, firing like a machine gun. Something under his jacket writhed, and grey dust poured out. The red tendrils running up into his hair peeled and crumbled. Even the control squid he’d been holding turned into charcoal and disintegrated.
He screamed, but not very loudly at all, and fell over.
Sabrina sprinted past me, and caught him in her arms before he hit the floor. Sobbing, she curled up on the ash-covered carpet, cradling him against her chest.
I dropped down next to her. “Criminy. He’s bleeding.” I grabbed the first cloth that came to hand―Donovan’s lapels―and dabbed at the back of his neck. Sighing in relief, I called out, “It’s not bad. Just a scrape.” The control squid parasitizing him had left raw patches down his back, but nothing looked dangerous.
Donovan screwed up his face in discomfort, and peered woozily up at Sabrina. “I didn’t infect anyone else, did I?” She sobbed more loudly, and hugged him tighter.
I pushed myself back to my feet, hefting the Puppeteer killing pistol. Hardly a pistol anymore. With the heavy Conqueror orb attached, I had to hold it in both hands.
All of a sudden, I was the center of a mob. Kids crowded around me, all of them shouting.
“You did it!”
“You saved him!”
About three people hugged me at once, and one of them squealed, “Thank the stars you came back to save us.”
Gertrude lifted the makeshift gun out of my hands, staring at it. “I’ve never seen a mechanic’s work like this. How could anyone repurpose a Conqueror drone?”
Aggie stood on the other side of Sabrina from me, shaking her head. “Your power is incredible. Just incredible.”
Behind me, Remmy screamed, “ARE YOU ALL STUPID?!”
I whirled around to see Remmy march up shaking her wrench, first at Gertrude, then around at all the other kids. Her voice was raised to a high-pitched squeak. “Why are you praising her for fixing the mess she caused? She brought the Puppeteers here! She did this to Donovan! This is all her fault, and now you’re kissing her feet because she made half of one invention that isn’t evil for once?”
My stomach knotted. “Remmy―”
“SHUT UP!” she screeched, right in my face. I winced at the raw fury in her voice. “How do you do it?! Is this mind control? You destroy everything you touch, and people fight for the right to tell you how great you are!”
Claire stepped up next to us, giving Remmy a warm, sympathetic smile, face tucked down and eyes lifted. “Remmy―”
Whack. Remmy hit her in the face with her wrench, and Claire flew backward, rolling on the carpet.
I blinked. I hadn’t had time to react. I could see Ray out of the corner of my eye, and neither had he. We’d been slowed down by Claire’s power.
The wrench jabbed me in the chest, not as violently as she had hit Claire, but it still hurt. Remmy’s face had turned red, shading to purple as she yelled, “I’m not stupid! I heard her talking about clouding people’s minds! You drove Thompson crazy fo
r that spear. Every time you walk into a room, Calvin stops being himself!”
She drew back the wrench, but she didn’t have Claire’s power to distract us now. Ray caught her arms, and as she kicked and screamed incoherently dragged her over to a small door, out of place among the schoolroom doorways. It turned out to be a bathroom, and he threw her inside and held it shut.
Rubbing her cheek, Claire arrived with little metal sticks that must be lock picks. She fiddled them inside the lock, and when it clicked, jammed them into the hole and left them.
“Are you alright?” I asked over Remmy’s muffled yelling and the banging on the door.
She rubbed some more at the bruise forming on her cheek, albeit gingerly. “I’m fine. Lesson one I got from Mom was how to roll with a punch. You can’t cloud all of the people all of the time.”
She actually chuckled. “Five will get you ten I heal in less than an hour. My power won’t let anything happen to this pretty face.”
I took a deep breath. As disturbing as that had been, a lot of people were depending on us right now. Turning to the kids, I commanded, “Barricade yourselves in! We’ll try to clear out anything that tries to get to you, but there’s no telling how many Puppeteers there are, or how long it will take to kill them all. But I promise you this.” I lifted up the gun in both hands. “We will kill them all.”
I resisted the urge to laugh maniacally. I was trying to sound like a hero, not a villain, and frankly I didn’t feel it, not with Remmy locked up and raging against me. A laugh would just have been habit.
Posturing wasn’t any fun, either. I turned around without another word, and headed back through the atrium. Poking my head into the dorm hallways, I shot the housemothers first. Only two of them turned out to have parasites. The others just stammered, “Oh―I―Uh―You children―I’m being informed―” and so on. They were still getting messages to forgive everyone for everything.
I stomped up the stairs, making for the last Puppeteer I’d seen, the woman at the intersection. With Claire’s power turned off, as soon as she saw me, she pointed and asked, “Did you do this?”
Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon Page 31