The lights from the Hive look like bright, shimmering explosions. I turn away from him, and I start to run.
part 3
chapter 11
When I jog into the darkened alley next to Simutech, the first thing I see are four parked floaters, then fidgety bodies dressed head-to-toe in black. Lana’s whisper is full of relief: “There she is!”
“Tess!” Ling runs to greet me, hugging me hard. Her face is flushed, eyes bright and alive. “I was worried. Did something happen at Abel’s?”
I shake my head, speaking in between gulps of air. “No. . . . Just took . . . longer to get here . . . than I thought.”
“Tess!” Benji high-fives me while Lana squeezes my shoulder, wide-eyed with excitement. Like Naz and Ling, pieces of sleek equipment hang from the harnesses they’re wearing, including long loops of slim rope.
“Hey,” I greet them breathlessly.
“Here.” Ling hands me the protective gear everyone’s already wearing. “Quick, put this on.”
I strap on shin, knee, and elbow guards. When I’m done, Ling gives me a shiny black comm. I slip it into my ear and hear a tinny voice. “Tess.”
“Achilles, hey,” I say. “Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear.” It’s comforting to know Achilles will be able to both hear and see us, thanks to the loading dock’s hacked security streams.
“Rockwood.” Naz hands me a thick belt with gray and red things about the size of apples strapped to it. I notice everyone else already has one on. Naz points to the gray things first. “Smoke bombs. Hold your breath, pull the pin here, chuck it a few feet, get down. Nonlethal, just a basic get-out-of-jail-free card.” Next she points to the red things. “Grenades. Pull the pin here, throw as hard as you can, and take cover. These babies are serious explosives, okay? Only use them if you’re actually in danger.” She points back to the smoke bombs. “Someone sneezes, I throw one of these. The smoke should let us split safely.”
“Tess, don’t use any of that unless you have to,” Achilles says. “We blow a smoke bomb tonight, there’ll be fifty Quicks on this entrance tomorrow.”
Ling clears her throat. “Tess, you’ll be my second-in-command—”
“What?” Naz gapes.
“She’s the expert, Naz.”
“But I’m always your second!” Naz exclaims bitterly.
“Not tonight,” Ling says firmly. “If anything happens to me, Tess is in charge, got it?”
Lana, Benji, and I all nod. Naz spits on the ground sourly, then mutters something Ling takes as acceptance.
“This is it,” Ling says with a quick, sharp exhale. “Do or die.” She hands something black and misshapen to each of us. It’s a stretchy mask with holes for the eyes and mouth. The skull area is hard and inflexible, like a helmet. I pull it on, then start at the sight of four masked people staring back at me. Kudzu’s familiar faces are gone.
“From now on, code names only,” Ling says, and I quickly remind myself who’s who. Ling: Samurai. Benji: Monkey. Lana: Angel. Naz: Pitbull. Achilles: Spike. And I’m Storm. Ling’s eyes meet mine. “Ready?”
We’ve come too far for me to ruin everything now. Besides, even if Hunter is working for Simutech—which I still don’t know for sure—that won’t affect what we’re about to do. I just wish I hadn’t mentioned Kudzu. I find the tip of my warrior necklace, cool against the hollow of my throat, and press it once for good luck. “Ready.”
In single file, we creep around the corner of the alley until we’re all out in the narrow street at the back of Simutech. Ling first, then Lana, me, Benji, and Naz. Ahead of us, the street continues on for another hundred feet to a plaza. I glimpse the tumbling water of a lone fountain catching yellow streetlight. Behind us, the street disappears into blackness.
The entrance to the loading dock is only twenty feet ahead. Beyond it, moonlight catches the glass windows of Simutech in small square pools of silver.
In the darkness, the Quicks’ red eyes burn as they swivel left and right. They look even more threatening than in the holos; they’re so real. My heart is thumping so hard, I’m afraid they can hear it.
Achilles’ voice comes through our comms. “You’re almost in the Quicks’ range. . . . Almost.” We creep forward some more. “Okay, stop.”
Still in single file, we freeze like statues. Time passes achingly slowly as the robots’ red eyes swing back and forth over us. Just as I think Achilles must have missed the one-minute-and-twenty-three-second window, I hear his calm voice in my comm. “Go.”
We scamper forward a few feet. I picture us in the narrow white river Achilles showed us back at Milkwood.
“Stop.”
The Quicks’ gaze starts passing back and forth over us, unseeing. I’m enormously relieved to be proven right.
We keep moving like this, a few feet forward, freezing, then another few feet and freezing again. The plan is to slide past the Quick on the far left, the one closest to us. As we keep inching closer to it, I expect to feel fear, but instead my confidence surges. This is the best the Trust can do to guard their precious artilect? Ling is only a few feet away from the Quick on the far left. One more spurt of movement, and we’ll be past it.
A shriek of laughter cuts my cockiness short.
The Quick on the far left whips its head around so fast I don’t even see it move.
Behind me, I can hear two girls coming out of the alley.
“He was looking at you—”
A giggly squeal of outrage. “No, he wasn’t!”
I am rooted to the spot. It’s as if the terrifying Quick is staring straight at us. If it identifies the girls as a threat, its vision will change to infrared, and we’ll become as clear as day to the machine. I hear the girls tottering up the darkened narrow street, away from us. If they have seen us or the Quicks, they don’t care. Their laughter bounces off the silent buildings as their footsteps recede.
The Quick closest to us resumes its scanning. For a second my insides relax, until I hear Achilles. “Guys. Don’t move.” His whisper is masking low-level panic. “The scans aren’t in the same pattern as before. Now you’re always going to be in one of the Quicks’ line of vision. Don’t say anything back to me,” he adds in a hurry. “You’re too close, they’ll probably hear you.”
We stay frozen. A minute passes. Then two. Panic simmers inside me. On more than a few occasions in the Badlands, I’d been followed by a marauding gang of unsavories, so I’d grown adept at melting into shadows to hide. But I’d never had to stay this still for this long.
More minutes pass. My left arm is raised at a 45-degree angle from my body. It starts to ache. Then hurt. Then it starts to feel like knives are slicing it open. My whole body screams for movement.
“Good work, guys, just stay there. We’re trying to think of something,” Achilles says, sounding more worried. What can he possibly do?
I hear a small scuffle. Without moving my head, I slide my eyes to the ground. The noise belongs to something the size of a football. It’s an enormous black rat.
Eden is free of pests and invasive species, but Simutech still clones rats to use for experiments. This one must have escaped. But it’s no ordinary rat. This is a cloning experiment gone bad. I know because the rat has three heads.
Two heads, with separate pairs of beady eyes and twitching noses, jostle for space on the end of its thick neck. And a third head grows out of its back, around where its shoulder blades are. It is, without a doubt, the most disgusting thing I have ever seen. And I ate pourriture for an entire year.
The three-headed beast scampers forward, then stops, then comes closer still. The Quick ignores it. Doubtless it is programmed to ignore things like this. The rat stops at Lana’s boot, all three noses sniffing it excitedly. In front of me, I can see her breathing getting quicker.
Don’t move, Lana.
The rat moves past Lana’s boot, and I momentarily relax. Until it stops at my boot. Then crawls up onto it.
Every instinct I possess
wants to kick the disgusting thing off me as fast as I can. I scream at it silently in my head. Get off me! Get off me!
“Hang in there, Storm, don’t move,” Achilles warns. “It’s probably going to leave you alone in a second.”
The six-eyed rat begins climbing up my leg. I can feel it through the fabric of my pants, about the weight of a puppy. It is at my kneecaps. It is on my thigh, clinging to my pants with its sharp little rat feet.
A wave of raw disgust surges inside me and I almost wretch. Please don’t be sick, please . . .
The rat crawls up to my stomach. It is like a giant, deformed baby, coming for my face.
“Don’t blame me, you’re the one who lost it!”
“Shut up! It must be back at the restaurant—”
The girls! The Quick whips its head around, training its vision in their direction.
I can hear them behind me, giggling as they head back into the alley.
We all remain frozen. Even the rat.
The Quick starts moving its head again. Is it back in the old pattern? I can’t tell.
And then I hear the sweetest word I have ever heard any human utter. “Go.”
Silently, we shoot forward the final few feet, safely past the Quicks.
As soon as we’re through, one swift flick of my knife sends the rat arcing up off me, like a nightmarish shooting star. I give myself a second to clear my head and shake out my aching limbs. Then I gesture for the others to follow me.
Silent as ghosts, we make our way past the yawning, empty loading dock. No lights are on—a good sign. When we reach the open kitchen window, barely visible six floors up, Lana slips the rope from her torso. Benji hands her what I think is a sleek little sub, the size of a hamster. Lana fits the end of our rope into an opening in its back, then tests it to make sure it’s tight. Glancing up at the window, Lana presses some buttons in its back, then rests it against the wall in front of us.
“Spike?” Benji says softly. “We’re ready.”
“Great. I’m about to loop the security stream. Remember, you’ve got a fifteen-minute window before the real stream kicks back in. Ready?”
“Ready.” Gone are the goofy, grinning blondes I’d met in Kudzu’s backyard. In their place are athletes ready for their star turn.
“Okay. Cut. Go.”
Lana takes her hand away, and the little sub whizzes up the glass wall. I watch as it zips all the way to the window ledge, carrying the rope. When it reaches the ledge, it stops. I hear a very faint high buzz. The rope shivers a little, and a fine powder falls around us. Lana tugs on the rope. It’s secure. She grins. “I’m going up.”
She’s up that rope as quick as can be. Before I’ve even finished pulling on the roping gloves Benji hands me, Lana is at the darkened window, hooking her leg to slip silently inside. A few seconds later, she gives the okay sign.
Ling follows, then Naz. Now it’s my turn.
Benji smiles reassuringly. “Just like we practiced.”
I nod. Just like hunting for prairie chickens, but with a rope instead of rocks. I just wasn’t expecting it to be so high. Six stories seem like sixty when you have to physically pull yourself up them, alone, on the outside of a building. I grit my teeth and start to climb. One hand over the other. Just like in the backyard.
Don’t look down, I warn myself grimly.
We assemble in the entrance to the kitchen. I inch the door open to reveal a wide, empty hallway lit in low, overhead light. Opposite us is a water cooler, a potted palm tree, and a cart filled with what looks like pieces of human skin. Speckled blue floors, sedate gray walls. I remember this. . . . I can picture my mom here so clearly it hurts—rushing over to clutch my arm, breathless over the day’s new discovery. Her scent: spicy orange soap. I can smell it.
“I am famished.”
“Should we order noodles?”
Two men. They round the corner, coming toward us. I just have time to see their faces before I pull the kitchen door shut. I recognize the first one instantly. Frog. The bald man with the turned-down mouth who designed the Quicks. He looks stronger than I remember but maybe I’m just scared of him seeing us. I don’t recognize the other guy, Noodles: a tall, skinny man with scraggly pale hair.
“If we keep working like this,” I hear Frog say clearly, “we’ll turn into noodles.”
We wait in the kitchen, still as statues, as they walk by. I really didn’t think anyone would be here this late on a Sunday.
“Ah, you’re finally coming around to the possibility of transmogrification.” Noodles’ voice starts to fade. “You’re really an open-minded guy.”
“I’m working on a project that’s a theoretical impossibility.” Frog’s voice is faint now, muffled by distance. “I have to be.”
And then they’re gone. We wait for a good ten seconds, then crack the door open again. Nothing.
I’ve already told everyone exactly where to go. Exit and go right, then at the end of the hallway, we go left down a long corridor, all the way to Innovation Lab C on the other end of the building.
Ling points to the end of the hallway and mouths, “Naz.”
A look of irritation flashes in Naz’s eyes, but nevertheless, she obeys. Her rubber-soled boots make no noise as she runs lightly to the end of the hallway. At the corner, she glances down the left-hand corridor. She turns back to us and nods.
Our shoes make only the slightest scuffles as we hightail it down the empty corridor, past a series of departments and offices: Exoskeleton, Sensors & Actuators, Motion & Manipulation, Biorobotics & Cybernetics. By day, this building is busy with jargon-filled chatter, furrowed brows on brainy scientists, and overwhelmed assistants balancing coffees and reports. By night, it is unnervingly quiet. But I know this already. I’ve been here at this hour before.
A year ago. Before I left for the Badlands. Before everything changed. . . .
“Tess!”
I spun around, a mess of blond hair and nerves. “Howie!”
The young engineer smiled at me eagerly. “Are you looking for your mom? I think she left for the day.”
“Oh—yes.” I stumbled, toying with the chunky rings on my fingers. “She’s usually still here now.”
Howie nodded, fingering the collar of his lab coat a little nervously. “You must hardly ever see her.”
No. I never see her. And when I do it’s just a monologue about Magnus. Like last night—three hours on how poor, poor Magnus was having trouble creating feelings. Three hours on how Magnus should be as emotional as a teenager now.
Why do you need to make a teenager, Mom? I’m right here.
“It must be hard,” Howie added. His tone was concerned and kind. I’d always liked Howie. And I could tell he liked me.
“Well, I guess . . . I guess I better go.”
“Okay, Tess. You look very nice, by the way.”
“Thanks.” I smiled, smoothing down the short silk ruffles of Izzy’s favorite skirt. “Oh—I left my comm in my mom’s office. Would you mind?”
He glanced at the locked office door. “I can’t, Tess.”
“But it’s just her office.”
“No, really, I can’t.”
I pout and flutter my eyelashes at him. “Oh, c’mon,” I wheedle, mimicking Izzy as best I can.
An amusing level of conflict twisted up his face, but still he shook his head. “I want to. I do. But it’s against company policy.”
“But I have to comm my mom and let her know where I am. She worries. And if she finds out you didn’t help me . . .” I close the distance between us. “She trusts you, Howie. I trust you, too.”
I put my hand on his arm and smiled up at him hopefully. He stared at my hand, then at me, somewhere between turned on and terrified. “All right. Just this once.” He hurried over to Mom’s door. “Our security system—the Liamond system—can be confusing.” He was babbling, not noticing that I watched him punch in the code: 624687. Later I would work out this spelled Magnus, making it even easier to r
emember.
“Thanks, Howie.” I let my voice take on just the slightest edge of huskiness. “You’re really a sweet guy.”
A hint of pale pink blush filled his smooth cheeks. His voice faltered. “Good night, Tess.”
I waited until he had rounded the corner, shoes squeaking on the speckled blue floor, before I opened the door to Mom’s expansive, messy office. Closing it, locking it. Leaning against it.
My eyes narrowed as they sported what I was here for. What Howie was too junior to know was in here, or else he would never, ever have allowed me inside.
“Tess.”
“Hello, Magnus.”
The memory throws me. I falter. Lana, Benji and Naz crash into me like life-sized dominoes.
Naz curses me under her breath.
We have to keep moving.
We race down the corridor. The windows on our right allow us to see straight into the large, industrial room next door that we’d already seen back at Milkwood. Innovation Lab C. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, BY ORDER OF THE TRUST floats over the reinforced double doors. A swab reader blinks next to them
Just to be sure we’re alone, Naz runs to the end of the corridor and peeks down the hallway that doglegs off to the left, past some more potted palms nestled in the corner. Coast must be clear, for she doubles back.
Ling glances from the swab reader to me. I knew I’d have to do this. But standing here before it, about to incriminate both Abel and myself, I hesitate, just for moment. Then I pass the swab over the reader.
A smoothly modulated female voice says, “Welcome, Dr. Rockwood,” and the doors disappear.
The air inside the Innovation Lab is cooler than the rest of building. A low hum of invisible filters underscores everything.
“Monkey, Angel, guard the entrance,” Ling instructs quietly. “Pitbull, Storm, and I will get the mirror matter.”
Benji and Lana nod in unison, quickly squeezing each other’s hands before taking up positions that offer views of the corridor outside, through the long windows.
“Where is it?” Naz asks, dark eyes darting every which way.
“Over here.” I motion for them to follow.
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