“Eleanor!” she heard her mom call from the other side of the vehicle. “Sweetie, it will be okay!”
No. It wouldn’t be. Not ever.
“We’ll figure this out.” They’d pulled Uncle Jack from Eleanor’s side of the SUV. He towered over most of the soldiers, but he let them handcuff him, while a few feet away, Luke struggled a bit and got a fist to his stomach for it. Next to him, Dr. Von Albrecht had lost his glasses, either in the crash or from the manhandling of the soldiers. Across the vehicle, through the windows, Watkins looked unconcerned, almost serene.
“Secured?” one of the soldiers called out.
“Secured!” responded another from the other side of the vehicle.
“Load ’em up!”
Firm hands pushed Eleanor away from the SUV, toward the vehicles waiting at the roadblock. The soldiers ushered them through a staggered formation of white military assault vehicles and tanks, all of them marked with the UN logo. The soldiers wore camouflage fatigues and blue helmets. These weren’t G.E.T. agents, and Eleanor had no idea what to expect from them.
When they reached a large, covered white truck, the soldiers led them around to the back, where they opened the tailgate and forced them up into the bed. Eleanor stumbled up onto a bench that ran down the side, almost falling, and Uncle Jack managed to sit down next to her. Her mom sat down across from her, and she leaned toward Eleanor, trying to look her in the eye, to get her attention.
But that wasn’t something Eleanor was going to give.
Once they were all loaded and a few of the soldiers had joined them in the back of the truck with their guns, the truck moved out. Eleanor couldn’t see where they were going, only what was behind them. The UN blockade, soldiers walking to their vehicles, and beyond that, the crashed SUV.
Her plan to steal it had been risky, but it might have worked. If not for her mother.
If not for her mother.
“Where are you taking us?” Luke asked the soldier next to him, a young woman with lots of freckles and blond hair.
She looked back at him, stone-faced, and said nothing.
Eleanor raised her voice. “Hey!”
The soldier looked at her now.
“He asked you a question.”
“I heard him,” the soldier said. Then she looked away.
“Don’t antagonize them,” her mother said.
Eleanor locked her eyes on the chipped enamel coating the floor of the truck. It seemed they were heading roughly in the same direction they had been traveling since morning. She didn’t think they would be taking them to the alien ship, but Hobbes probably had some kind of base of operations near it, and that’s likely where they were going.
Out the back of the truck, Eleanor saw abandoned farmhouses and barns, and they passed through another ghost town, before slowing to a stop. The driver of the truck talked with someone else, and then the vehicle eased forward, and Eleanor saw a security gate close behind them.
They had entered an area fenced with razor-topped chain-link. They passed rows of tents, some of them small enough for sleeping, some of them large enough for meetings or research labs, like the G.E.T. encampment in Cairo near the pyramids. Eventually, the truck stopped again, and this time, the driver shut the engine off.
More soldiers approached the back of the truck and lowered the tailgate. Then the soldiers in the bed of the truck pulled Eleanor and the rest of them to their feet before pushing them out onto the ground, where Eleanor got a better look at where they were.
Tents surrounded them, and the base seemed huge. Their truck had come in by way of a road through the midst of them, and there were other streets leading away. Soldiers walked and hurried around them, some of them armed, like their captors, and others not. Eleanor searched in all directions, but saw no sign of the ship or Stonehenge.
“Welcome,” said a male voice.
Eleanor looked for its source, and saw Hobbes marching up to them. This was the second time he had captured her.
“Hobbes,” Watkins said. “What is the meaning of this? I demand you—”
“I take my orders from the UN now,” Hobbes said. “And even if I still worked for the G.E.T., you wouldn’t even have the authority to send me out for coffee.” Hobbes looked him up and down. “You’ve been neutralized, Watkins.”
The old man scowled and smacked his lips, apparently unable to put even one word together in response.
“As for the rest of you,” Hobbes said. “You’ll be taken to holding cells, where you will wait for transfer to a permanent facility.”
“What kind of facility?” Luke asked.
“A prison. Where you will await trial.” But then Hobbes turned to Eleanor. “Except you. You’re coming with me.”
Eleanor lifted her chin. “I’d rather go to prison with my friends.”
“Sweetie,” her mom said. “Please, just listen to him—”
“No!” The ferocity in Eleanor’s voice made her mom recoil. “You don’t get to say anything to me! After what you did? How could you—I trusted you! And you betrayed me!” Eleanor lowered her voice when she felt it was about to break. “I will never, ever forgive you.”
Her mom nodded, biting her lip. “I know that, sweetie,” she said. “I know.”
CHAPTER
19
ELEANOR SAT AT THE METAL TABLE, LOOKING HOBBES IN the eye. He sat across from her, while her mom sat on her left. But Eleanor ignored her. They’d taken her handcuffs off, but there were guards both inside and outside the tent. Eleanor still hadn’t figured out where they had taken Uncle Jack, Luke, and the others. She assumed Finn and Betty were here somewhere as well, and probably Finn’s dad.
“You got heart, Eleanor,” Hobbes said. “Probably more than anyone gives you credit for. I admire it.”
Eleanor smirked. “You can’t good-cop me when you already bad-copped me. It doesn’t work that way.”
“I’m not a good cop or a bad cop.”
“Then what are you?”
He looked up at a spot somewhere over Eleanor’s left shoulder, as if he was thinking about it. “I suppose you could call me a . . . planetary patriot. Like you.”
Eleanor bristled. “We are nothing alike.”
“I think you’d be surprised how similar we are.”
“I doubt that.”
“Eleanor,” her mom said. “Please, you don’t understand. Just—”
“Dr. Perry.” Hobbes held up a hand. “I’ll do the talking.”
“Yes, you will,” Eleanor said. “Because I sure won’t.”
Hobbes lowered his raised hand to the table and drummed the metal with his fingertips. “Fine. I’ll do the talking. But you’re going to listen.”
Eleanor shrugged. “Doesn’t look like I’m going anywhere.”
“I have a daughter,” Hobbes said. “Mariah. She’s a little older than you. She likes computers, and she might be as stubborn as me. Come to think of it, you two would probably get along.” He leaned back in his chair. “Do you know what you’re supposed to do if someone tries to mug you? Has your uncle ever taught you?”
The question caught Eleanor off guard, and she answered, “No.”
“For some people,” Hobbes said, “like me, your first impulse is to refuse to give them what they want. You fight back. But that’s not always the smart thing to do, because you don’t know what they’re capable of. Maybe they have a gun. In that case, fighting back could get you killed, when you could’ve just handed over your wallet and walked away. You might be broke, but you’re alive.”
Eleanor wondered where he was going with this.
“Now, I have never in my life backed away from a fight,” he continued. “Someone tries to mug me, chances are good I can take them down whether they’re armed or not. That’s if I’m alone. But let’s say I have Mariah with me. . . .”
He paused.
Eleanor waited.
“That changes things for me,” he said. “Now I have to ask myself whether I can
risk fighting back. The mugger is an unknown. Unpredictable. In that situation, I’m more likely to ignore my first impulse and hand over my wallet, rather than jeopardize my daughter.”
“Okay,” Eleanor said.
Now Hobbes leaned in toward her. “That alien world up there? It’s a mugger. It stepped out of the shadows, and it’s demanding that we hand over our wallet. And no one knows what it’s capable of. We don’t know if it has a gun.” He paused again. “If it were just me we were talking about? I’d be right there with you, fighting this thing until it bugged out back to wherever it came from. But I have Mariah with me. So you know what? I’m going to give it my wallet. That alien world might leave us broke, but we’ll be alive.”
“Alive?” Eleanor said. “The world is freezing over—”
“Humans have survived ice ages before,” Hobbes said.
“Not like this,” Eleanor said. “This ice age will never end. Not as long as that planet is pulling our world out of orbit and bleeding it dry.”
“Unless,” Hobbes said, “the mugger disappears back into the shadows after it gets what it wants. What if the rogue world just moves on?” He tipped his head and gave Eleanor a knowing look. “Face it. You don’t know what’s going to happen any better than anyone else.”
“That’s not true,” Eleanor said. “I’ve seen what they do. If we don’t stop this, we won’t survive. I’ve seen the dead planets they leave behind. Hundreds of them. Thousands—”
“Even if you’re telling the truth, it’s a risk we can’t take. We can’t provoke the alien world until we know more.”
“What more could we possibly hope to know?”
“That’s where you come in. I need you to open up that ship. We need to find out what’s inside it, and see if the mugger is armed.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit . . . threatening?” Eleanor asked.
“We won’t do anything to attack the ship,” he said. “If you can do what Watkins can do, then you can convince the ship that we mean it no harm.”
“You’re putting a lot of faith in my ability.”
“I’m aware of that,” he said. “But based on what you’ve managed to accomplish up to this point, I don’t think that faith is misplaced.”
Eleanor shrugged. “Why not just ask Watkins to do it?”
“Because I lost faith in him a long time ago. He’s a scientist with his head stuck up his algorithms. We need to pivot our strategy to something . . . tactical. Diplomatic. That’s why the UN assigned me to Watkins in the first place.”
“To keep an eye on him?”
Hobbes nodded.
“Where is Watkins now?”
“In a holding cell with the others.”
“I’ll need his help.”
“I can’t allow that.”
“I can’t do it without him.”
Hobbes let out a sigh of irritation. “Why not?”
“It would be hard for you to understand,” Eleanor said. “But I’ll try to explain. Did Watkins ever tell you about his zooid hypothesis?”
Hobbes nodded.
“Well, the ship’s intelligence is strong. Much stronger than me. Watkins and I need to work together to defeat it. That’s the only way.”
“How do you know?”
“We already faced it together in the Himalayas.”
Eleanor’s mother let out a little gasp.
“What happened?” Hobbes asked after a moment.
“The ship took control of the Master Concentrator, but we were able to fight it off and shut the Concentrator down. The ship’s intelligence escaped and came back here.”
“I see,” Hobbes said.
He rose to his feet and paced around the tent, arms folded. Eleanor watched him, trying to figure out how much leverage she had. He needed her, so that put her in the position to bargain. But she wasn’t sure how far she could push him. He was like the unpredictable mugger he had described.
On the other hand, Hobbes was giving Eleanor the opportunity to get close to the ship. Once she was connected to it, he would probably have no way of knowing what she was doing. Perhaps she could pretend to cooperate with him while sticking to the original plan. For that to work, she would still need Watkins.
Hobbes returned to the table. “Here is my problem,” he said. “I can control you, but I can’t control him.”
“You think you can control me?” Eleanor said.
“I know I can. But Watkins, on the other hand, is an unknown.” He turned to the guards. “Take them to the holding cell until I figure this out.”
“I’m not doing anything unless we do this my way,” Eleanor said, even as soldiers lifted her out of the chair and forced her toward the exit of the tent. “And there’s nothing you can do about that.”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” he said, and just as the soldiers prodded Eleanor outside and the door was closing, he added, “Why don’t you ask your mom?”
The encampment surrounded her with commotion. She thought her mom wanted to say something to her, but before she could, the soldiers pushed them both along, down the rows of tents, until they came to one of the larger ones. Inside it, Eleanor saw Uncle Jack, Luke, Finn, Betty, everyone. Even Dr. Powers and Julian. And they were in a cell.
The guards marched Eleanor and her mom to a door in the cage, which one of the soldiers unlocked and opened, while the others held their weapons drawn. Eleanor’s mom went in first, and then Eleanor followed her. The door closed behind them with a loud clang.
“Well, looks like the whole band is back together,” Luke said.
Eleanor glanced at everyone in the cell with her, feeling something different for each of them, from anger to relief. “At least no one is hurt,” she said.
“I wouldn’t say that.” Finn looked at his dad, and Eleanor noticed the purple bruising of a black eye against his brown skin.
“What happened?” Eleanor asked.
“I picked a fight I couldn’t win,” Dr. Powers said, glancing at the guards. “But I’d do it again.”
“I’ll be there to help next time,” Julian said.
“A fight over what?” Eleanor asked. “With who?”
“With Hobbes. Over the shooting down of a civilian plane with my son on board.” Dr. Powers’s jaw muscles rippled with anger. “I thought I was doing the right thing, signing on with you, Watkins. I didn’t realize . . .”
“Neither did I,” Watkins said.
The cell was the size of a large room, with a row of cots and sleeping bags, a sink, and a thick canvas floor. Outside the cell, in a corner of the tent, stood a blue portable toilet. Eleanor didn’t like the thought of using it.
“So what did Hobbes want with you?” Uncle Jack asked.
“He wants her to help him appease these . . . aliens,” Eleanor’s mom said. “And I think we should do what he says.”
Eleanor snapped at her. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sweetie—”
“Don’t call me that. I’m not your sweetie anymore.” Eleanor turned to Uncle Jack. “Hobbes says he can make me do whatever he wants. But he’s nothing more than a bully, and I’ve dealt with bullies before.”
“What does he want you to do?” Watkins asked.
“He wants me to convince the ship and the rogue world that we mean them no harm. He wants me to open up the ship.”
“Why?” Finn asked. “Does he want to meet some pissed-off aliens?”
“Maybe,” Eleanor said. “He thinks if we give these aliens what they want, they’ll just go back to where they came from. And he wants me to trick the ship into trusting us or something.”
“He wants you to be his spy,” Watkins said.
“Actually, he wants you, too,” Eleanor said. “But he’s afraid of what you might do if he lets you near the ship.”
Watkins chuckled. “That is very astute of him.”
“Eleanor, listen to me.” Her mom stepped closer to her and tried to reach out a hand toward h
er hair. “You—”
“Don’t touch me,” Eleanor said.
Her mom withdrew her hand and frowned. “Look, I don’t expect you to understand right now, but one day you’ll—”
“What day would that be?” Eleanor said. “Because if it’s after the earth freezes over and dies, I don’t think it will matter much to either of us.”
“Eleanor,” Finn said. “Could we talk—over there?” He nodded toward a cot in one corner of the cage.
Eleanor didn’t know what he would want to talk to about in that moment, but she nodded, and they stepped aside. The others moved away to give them what privacy they could in the small space and started up their own conversations. Watkins, Dr. Von Albrecht, Dr. Powers, and Julian seemed to be conferring about the alien ship, while Uncle Jack tried to speak with Eleanor’s mom. Betty and Luke said nothing, watching the others.
“There’s something you need to know,” Finn whispered to her. “About your mom.”
“I think I know everything I need to know. She lied to me. She tricked me into getting into her car, and then she turned me over to Hobbes.” Eleanor shook her head. “You know, it was hard for me to trust Badri, after what happened with Amaru in Peru. But I did. And it turns out, I should have been worried about trusting my own mom.”
“It’s funny you should mention Badri. She would say your mom did the brave thing.”
Eleanor leaned away from him. “Brave thing? What are you even talking about?”
“She made her choice knowing what the consequences would be. She knew you’d probably hate her.”
“And yet she did it anyway.”
“Exactly. But you don’t know why.”
“Do you?”
He nodded. Then he leaned in closer, and whispered even more quietly. “I overheard your mom talking with my dad. And the thing is . . . Hobbes said he would kill your uncle if your mom didn’t help bring you in.”
“He—” The cage seemed to collapse around Eleanor, shrinking until she couldn’t breathe. “Hobbes said that?”
“More or less. He told her that was the only way he would guarantee your uncle Jack’s safety.”
The Rogue World Page 17