Under Their Skin

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “We’re just kids,” Eryn said despairingly. “How are we supposed to know which theory is right? How would anybody know?”

  Nick glanced up from his own laptop. He’d been absentmindedly running his fingers through his hair as he read, so his dark hair stuck up almost as messily as Dad’s always did.

  Nick’s going to look just like Dad when he grows up, Eryn thought. He definitely got all his genes from Dad’s side.

  Then she remembered that Nick had come from a frozen embryo, and Dad was just a robot. He didn’t even have genes to pass down to Nick.

  Ugh, ugh, ugh, Eryn thought. They probably designed Dad and Mom to look like they were genetically related to us, just so we wouldn’t ask questions. . . .

  She realized she was missing Nick’s answer.

  “Huh?” she said.

  “Haven’t you gotten to this part yet?” Nick asked, pointing to something on his screen. “Where they explain that there are scientific tests people could do to find out about some of these hypotheses—like looking for volcanic ash in glaciers in Antarctica, or digging up corpses and doing autopsies.”

  Eryn fiddled with the latch sticking out of her laptop.

  “Don’t you think they should have already done those scientific tests?” she asked. “So when the first kids started asking questions—when we started asking questions—they could have presented us with evidence and proof and everything we needed to know? Since good old Dr. Grimaldi and Dr. Speck didn’t see fit to tell us? Why didn’t they just come out and tell us everything to begin with?”

  Nick kept staring at his laptop screen, but Eryn could tell he wasn’t reading anymore. His eyes had gone all unfocused and distant.

  “What if they wanted it to be humans, not robots, doing all those scientific tests?” Nick said. “Like, you know how Mom and Dad are always saying we have to do things for ourselves, instead of just having things handed to us. Like how I had to earn my own money for my new lacrosse stick, and Mom and Dad refused to pay for it?”

  Eryn snorted.

  “And you were lazy and took a whole year to earn enough?” she asked. “That was just about Mom and Dad trying to teach you a lesson. About responsibility, or whatever. This is about the fate of humanity. Why would anyone mess around with something so serious?”

  Nick sat up straight, as if he had to defend his argument.

  “I bet it is the same kind of thing,” he said. “I bet humans themselves ruined humanity, and it’s kind of like our generation has to earn back the right to live. I’m going to stop reading anything about volcanoes or other natural disasters.”

  “What if it’s a natural disaster that humans caused?” Eryn asked. “Aren’t we natural too?”

  Nick didn’t answer, because he was reading again. Eryn went back to reading too.

  Contaminated water supplies . . . maybe. Naturally occurring drought—I can skip that one, if Nick’s right. A second Ice Age caused by human activity, out-of-control genetically modified food . . .

  Beside her, Nick gasped.

  “Did you see this?” he asked, holding out his laptop toward her.

  Eryn leaned in.

  Highlighted on the screen was a section beginning:

  I am a janitor at one of the banks where frozen human embryos continue to be kept. I don’t know why humans went extinct, and unless I access others’ memory banks, I know nothing of the science involved in theories about the extinction. But because of my position, I was one of the first individuals activated at the end of the Great Pause.

  “The Great Pause?” Eryn repeated.

  “That’s what everyone keeps calling the time between the extinction and the birth of the first Snowflake,” Nick said. “Haven’t you noticed?”

  Eryn didn’t want to admit that she hadn’t.

  “Just checking,” she said, and kept reading.

  It was my job originally to make sure the embryo bank was clean and spotless and sterile before the arrival of the first embryos.

  “Wait, if it’s an embryo bank, weren’t the embryos there all along?” Eryn asked.

  “Keep going,” Nick said.

  Few realize that during the Great Pause the embryos were all stored in a top-secret location, not the current banks. So in those early days, before even the embryo scientists were awakened and activated, my embryo bank received shipment after shipment of automated frozen deliveries. One time I happened to see the GPS coordinates on one of the automated trucks making the delivery, showing where they were returning to for the next load. It was 37.1833 degrees north, 86.1000 degrees west.

  I am just a janitor, and no one has ever issued an all-call before for information that I possess. Nobody but my fellow janitors have ever asked to access anything in my private memory banks. So I apologize if I seem presumptuous even bringing this up. But I have always thought that if there is any secret information hidden somewhere about the humans’ last days—the previous humans’ last days—then it would be in the same location where the embryos were originally kept during the Great Pause. So I felt duty-bound to mention this now. I apologize if I have inconvenienced anyone.

  “He never even looked it up?” Eryn asked in amazement. “He never went there to check for himself?”

  “Doesn’t sound like it,” Nick said, shrugging. “It’s probably not in his programming to be curious.”

  “But where—” Eryn began.

  Almost without thinking about it, she opened a search engine and started typing in the GPS coordinates the janitor had given. Nick was a step ahead of her—he was copying and pasting the numbers.

  “It’s in Kentucky?” he muttered. “But—it looks like those coordinates are in the middle of nowhere! There’s nothing there!”

  “Of course it’d say there’s nothing there if it’s some top-secret headquarters,” Eryn said. She whirled around to face Mom’s bedroom. “Mom! Mom! We’ve got to go to Kentucky! Now!”

  FORTY

  Eryn might have well have said, “Can we go next summer? Can we go sometime before next winter?” Nick thought despairingly.

  As soon as Eryn asked, Mom promised to take them to check out the possibly secret location in Kentucky. But she said it would be about a six-hour trip, and it was already too late in the day to start traveling. The next day there was another bad storm forecast, and she said she didn’t want to get caught in ice and snow. The next day she said Eryn seemed feverish and shouldn’t be out and about.

  “Of course I’m feverish!” Eryn had complained. “I’m in danger of going extinct!”

  “Not helping,” Nick whispered.

  But they still had to wait another day.

  Mom usually insisted they had to go to school unless they had one foot in the grave, but this week she made no mention of sending them back to school. She stayed home too, but seemed to have a lot she needed to do in her bedroom.

  Eryn paced and ranted.

  Nick kept going back to the computer research. He read everything anyone had sent in response to Mom’s all-call, all the reasons humans might have all died out before, and might be doomed again. He asked Mom if they could go back to City Hall to watch the video of Dr. Grimaldi and Dr. Speck again. Mom sighed and said, “You don’t actually have to go anywhere. . . .”

  She picked up Nick’s laptop, held it close to her body for a moment, and handed it back to him.

  “Wireless transfer of selected sections of my memory,” she said. “You’ll see it in there labeled ‘Grimaldi-Speck video.’”

  Nick opened the file, and indeed, everything was there. At first he thought it was a slightly different video, filmed from a slightly different perspective. Then he realized it was just that this was from Mom’s viewpoint, and she’d been sitting at a different angle to the screen than Nick had.

  “This really is amazing,” Nick muttered to himself.


  “How can you stand watching that again and again and again?” Eryn asked. “Don’t you feel like giving up on Mom’s promises and walking to Kentucky ourselves?”

  “There might be clues in this we’ll need once we get to Kentucky,” Nick told her. “And—I’m looking for places the video might have been edited and spliced back together. Like if someone cut out the reason for the extinction.”

  “Oooh—I never thought of that!” Eryn said. She stopped her pacing and leaned over the back of the couch to look at the video herself. “Did you find any places where that happens?”

  “Not that I can tell,” Nick said. “It looks like they filmed this all in one take. So unless Dr. Speck and Dr. Grimaldi said what caused the extinction before they said hello or after they said good-bye, they never explained.”

  “Oh,” Eryn said, slumping down against the back of the couch. Then she perked up again. “Unless they had such advanced technology back then that they could edit things to make it look like it was all one take. So we really don’t know. Remember, they were ahead of things from the twenty-first century, since they took us ‘back’ to this time period.”

  “Yeah, that janitor even said there were automatic trucks at the end of the Great Pause,” Nick agreed.

  He wondered what those had been like. And what had happened to those trucks? Had they been melted down for scrap, like Michael said happened to the robot children who’d been twelve and younger? Or were they hidden somewhere? Was there maybe all sorts of advanced technology hidden in that secret headquarters in Kentucky?

  “I wish we had automatic trucks, so we didn’t need Mom to get us to Kentucky,” Eryn moaned. “Tomorrow. If Mom doesn’t get up first thing tomorrow morning ready to go to Kentucky, I really am going by myself. Even if there’s a blizzard. Even if I’m sick as a dog. Are you in?”

  Before Nick had a chance to answer, Mom came out of her bedroom.

  “It’s all arranged,” she said. “Michael’s picking up a rental van on his way home from work for us to use on our way to Kentucky. We’ll leave first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Finally!” Eryn exclaimed.

  But Nick said, “Why do we need a rental van? Why don’t we just use your car—or his?”

  He was thinking about the soundproofing in Michael’s car, about the way that would mean they wouldn’t have to be careful about what they said.

  Mom shook her head.

  “Our cars don’t have enough room,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Eryn asked. “You, me, Nick, maybe an overnight bag for each of us—how much room does that take?”

  “It’s not just the three of us—everyone’s going,” Mom said.

  “Everyone?” Nick repeated. He did not have a good feeling about this.

  “Sure,” Mom said. “The three of us. Michael. Dad. Brenda. And Ava and Jackson.”

  FORTY-ONE

  Eryn woke up in the middle of the night. Had she heard something? She tiptoed to her window, pushed aside the curtain, and looked out over the front yard. The eight-passenger van Michael had brought home was a hulking shadow in the driveway, a darker shape in the practically pitch-black night.

  Something moved inside the van.

  Eryn squinted. Was she imagining things? Was it just the reflection of a swaying branch in the van’s windows or mirrors?

  Her eyes adjusted. The darkness outside was not as complete as she’d thought. There was a little moonlight, and the snow still blanketing the ground gave off a dim glow, reflecting the moon’s.

  Someone was inside the van.

  Michael.

  As Eryn watched, her stepfather pressed his hands against the ceiling of the van, then against the frame above each door. He seemed to be pressing the upholstery into place, or perhaps sliding something underneath the upholstery.

  Soundproofing, Eryn thought. He’s adding soundproofing to that van, so no one can overhear what anyone says while we’re going to Kentucky.

  Eryn went back to bed and somehow managed to fall back to sleep.

  In the morning everyone was in a rush, Mom nagging Nick and Eryn at every turn: “Hurry up and finish your breakfast before the others get here!” “Did you clean up your dishes?” “Did you remember to pack your toothbrush?”

  Brenda, Ava, and Jackson arrived just as Eryn lugged her overnight bag down the stairs. The three of them stood awkwardly in the foyer. Ava and Jackson didn’t even put down their bags.

  “It must feel weird being here when Nick and I are here too,” Eryn said, dropping her own bag to the floor when she reached the last step. “Like we’ve invaded your territory.”

  Ava flashed her sweetest smile, and it seemed genuine.

  “Oh no, we don’t mind at all,” she said. “We don’t think that way.”

  Yeah, no wonder Michael’s worried that they don’t seem like actual human kids, Eryn thought.

  “Go ahead and take everything to the van,” Mom said, carrying a bag of her own out of her bedroom. She turned and shouted up the stairs, “Nick! Come on!”

  Dad arrived just as everyone was shoving bags into the back of the van.

  “I’m here for the grand adventure!” he cried, springing out of his car. “Aren’t we a great modern family? Spouses, ex-spouses, kids, and stepkids, all going on vacation together?”

  He’s not just saying that to remind Nick and me we’re supposed to get along with Ava and Jackson, Eryn thought. It was more like he was announcing that to the whole world, trying to provide a cover story for their trip.

  None of their neighbors were outside to hear him; in the still, frosty early-morning air, it was easy to believe that everyone in the neighborhood had decided to hibernate for the rest of the winter.

  But obviously the grown-ups think somebody could be listening; somebody could be suspicious and monitoring our conversation, Eryn thought, stepping out of the way as Dad added his bag to the ones in the van and slammed the back door.

  She flashed to her memory from the middle of the night of seeing Michael in the van, adding the soundproofing. That would make them safe from eavesdropping once they were in the van.

  But what if that wasn’t Michael I saw?

  The thought seared through her.

  It was so dark, and all I really saw was a shadowy figure—I just assumed it was Michael, she realized. Because that’s who I wanted it to be. What if it was someone completely different—an enemy? Someone might want to get rid of me and Nick because we know too much. And maybe someone knows about Ava and Jackson and would rather just get rid of them and Mom and Dad and Michael and Brenda in an “accident” rather than letting the rest of the world know how Michael broke the law. . . .

  What if Eryn had actually seen someone planting a bomb, not Michael trying to protect them?

  She’d had three days of thinking about humans going extinct; three days of hearing Nick tell her all the theories of all the robots in the world about how humans could have destroyed themselves. All of those thoughts and theories should make her a lot more wary and suspicious.

  “Eryn?” Mom said, and Eryn realized that the rest of her family—and Brenda, Ava, and Jackson—had already scrambled into the van and taken their seats. Eryn was the only one still standing in the driveway.

  What if there was a bomb and it was set to go off as soon as everyone got in the van and shut the door? What if it was just set on a timer—and Mom and Michael had said a million times they were planning to leave promptly at eight a.m.?

  Eryn glanced at her phone—it was three minutes until eight.

  “Everyone but Michael get out!” Eryn screamed. “Now!”

  All the robots—Mom, Dad, Michael, Brenda, Ava, and Jackson—instantly did exactly as Eryn said. Five of them scrambled out of the van; Michael stayed in the driver’s seat. But Nick stayed huddled in his corner of the far backseat. He just
glared at Eryn.

  “What is wrong with you?” he asked. “You’ve been dying to get to Kentucky for three days! Just get in and let’s go!”

  Eryn didn’t have time to argue with Nick. Not if it was already two minutes until eight. Every nerve in her body was screaming at her to run away from the van, but instead she dashed in and slammed the door.

  “Michael!” she yelled, even as she climbed over the seats to get back to Nick, to pull him out if necessary. “Is it safe to say anything we want in this van? Was that you I saw in it in the middle of the night . . .”

  Nick was still staring at her like she’d gone crazy, but Michael said in the calmest of voices, “That was me. And it should be safe, but let’s not test it unless we have to. I had to do such a rush job. . . .”

  Michael rolled down his window and leaned out.

  “Okay everyone, we’re fine,” he told the others. “Come on back in. Just a moment of stepsibling panic. Nothing out of the ordinary. Donald, I guess you bragged too soon about how easily stepfamilies get along.”

  Eryn slumped down, her body sagging over the seats.

  “What was that all about?” Nick muttered, still staring at her in dismay.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Eryn muttered back. “When I’m sure it’s safe.”

  But she’d seen how everyone but Nick had reacted so quickly when she’d screamed her command; she saw how cautiously they moved climbing back into the van.

  It wasn’t crazy to worry about bombs. It would be crazy not to worry about everything.

  FORTY-TWO

  They were barely out of Maywood when someone tapped Nick on the shoulder. It was Ava, turned around from the seat in front of him.