by Joel Naftali
“So what do we do?”
“Spring it.”
MR. NOBODY
Back at the truck, Jamie asked, “So what do we do?”
“I’ve altered your school records,” my aunt said, “and generated several counterfeit airline tickets in your name.”
“Um,” Jamie said. “Why?”
“To establish that you’ve been visiting your uncle Charles and aunt Simone for the past four days.”
“But those VIRUS soldiers saw me.”
“No. They saw your twin sister.”
“Is your circuitry all right?” Jamie asked. “I don’t have a sister.”
“The records now show that you do.”
“Oh!” I said. “Those are the documents you were fixing?”
“Indeed. And they reveal that Jamie’s sister was scanned into Roach’s domain with her parents. You are clear, Jamie. You are not being sought by any agency. I arranged for a plane ticket to your aunt and uncle’s house. You will stay with them.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Live with your family. Enroll in a new school.” I don’t know if I imagined it, but the next thing my aunt said sounded just like the old Auntie M. “You can get your life back, Jamie.”
“But … we’re gonna rescue my parents, right?”
“My calculations indicate a 3.08 percent chance of success.”
“Three percent?”
“And even if the skunks download the data, we cannot reconstitute the minds in the foreseeable future. The research will take months, or perhaps years, before—”
“Fine! I get it!” Jamie bit her lower lip. “What about VIRUS? What about Roach? What about the dragonfly? You need it for research.”
“You can control the dragonfly from a remote location.”
“Roach took my parents and destroyed my town. He’s got plans for the rest of the country and I—I’m not running away.”
Auntie M ignored her. “Unfortunately, Douglas, I cannot do the same for you. Instead, I deleted all digital evidence of you and assembled a new identity. You will live with the skunks, if they survive tonight’s conflict. You will aid them with human interaction, and they will attempt to protect you.”
That’s the thing about my aunt now—sometimes she sounds cold. She talked about the skunks’ survival like it was no big deal. She estimated a 3 percent chance of success and didn’t break the news gently. And she ignored Jamie when she said she didn’t want to live with her aunt and uncle.
At first, you might think she’s sort of mean. She’s not. She has feelings just like you and me. But she’s also part computer. She can’t always express her emotions that well.
Thank you for your understanding, Douglas. I do attempt to communicate in an emotionally appropriate fashion.
You’re welcome.
Anyway, that was that. Jamie would live with her aunt and uncle, and I’d live under a new identity with the skunks. We’d probably be hundreds of miles apart. Maybe thousands.
“I’m not running away,” Jamie said again.
“My calculations indicate that—”
Jamie cut her connection to Auntie M.
“Well, that was rude,” I said.
“I’ll apologize later.” She booted up the dragonfly. “Maybe.”
“What’re you doing?” I asked.
“Showing your aunt how useful I am. If Roach has any surprises planned, I’ll warn the skunks.”
She guided the dragonfly into Roach’s domain—easy now that she knew the way. She started rooting deep into the underlying digital structure, looking for anything that might help the skunks.
“Where are they?” I asked. “Can you bring them up on-screen?”
“Sure.” She jiggled the dragonfly and tapped a few keys.
And we saw the skunks on the laptop’s monitor.
“Oh, no,” Jamie said. “They can’t be …”
We looked closer.
“Are they … dead?” she whispered.
ON THE GRID
The skunks knew they were walking into a trap, but they didn’t have any choice. In minutes, Roach would download the information on his server to his virtual domain. He’d never be this vulnerable again—and they’d lose their best chance to save all the scanned people.
So they traced the cables to the center of Roach’s headquarters.
“Skunk ’em!” Cosmo yelled as they burst into the upper level of a underground bunker.
“Skunk ’em?” Poppy said, kicking the guards into the far wall.
“Yeah,” Cosmo said. “That’s our battle cry.”
“How about ‘rarin’ to rummmmble!’?”
“Pardon me for interrupting,” Larkspur said. “But we have a server to download and destroy.”
He smashed through a set of double doors and led the other skunks into a room the size of an airplane hangar—where they stopped short.
The good news: they found the server.
The bad news: they also found a dozen biodroids, two dozen soldiers, and three dozen security drones.
Oh, and Commander Hund.
Upgraded. Enhanced. Augmented.
And pointing a weapon the size of a La-Z-Boy, with three barrels and laser targeting and—Well, actually, the thing reminded me of a carapace rifle in Arsenal Five.
“You’re too late,” Hund said. “We transferred the data an hour ago.”
Cosmo dove sideways and drew his gun, but Hund was faster.
He pulled the trigger and hit Cosmo dead center. The impact smashed Cosmo into the blast wall that had slammed shut behind the skunks, and he slid to the floor unconscious, his fur smoldering.
Hund sneered and dropped his carapace rifle. “I won’t be needing this.”
Poppy sprang toward him. In one-to-one unarmed combat—and at full power—almost nothing can stand against her. Not even Hund. At least, not before his biodigital upgrades.
But now? Roach had turned him into a superpowered killing machine.
Poppy arced through the air and kicked Hund in the neck, hard enough to dent steel—but Hund just grabbed her ankle and threw her directly upward. She smashed into the ceiling at approximately 120 miles per hour.
Then she fell to the floor and stayed down.
“If I were at full power …,” Larkspur growled. He swung, but Hund caught his fist and started pushing Larkspur backward.
“I’d still win,” Hund said.
He shoved Larkspur against the wall and pulled his knife. Not the same knife, though—even that had been upgraded.
He sliced through one of the cables in Larkspur’s armor, and Larkspur crumpled.
Then Hund looked at the three motionless skunks.
“Dr. Roach,” he said, nudging Cosmo’s body with his foot, “your upgrades are more than adequate.”
Roach entered from a concealed observation deck in the corner. “Precisely as I told you.”
“With my upgrades, and the weapons from the Center, we could beat an army.”
“Armies are the past, Commander. I care about the future.” Roach rubbed his hands together. “Our workforce is busy expanding my virtual domain. Soon we’ll be digitizing new subjects every day, reformatting and replicating them. The next step in human evolution. Streams of data flowing through electronic pathways, without the animal urges, the stinking fleshy—”
After a minute of that, Hund interrupted: “What should I do with the skunk-things?”
The manic gleam in Roach’s eyes brightened. “They’re a fascinating anomaly, the most advanced biodigital life-forms I’ve ever seen.” He tapped at a command console, and a web of glowing lines appeared on the floor. “Toss them onto the grid.”
Hund dragged the semiconscious skunks across the room.
“Skunk ’em,” Cosmo muttered. “Dunk ’em.”
“Junk ’em,” Poppy moaned back.
Hund tossed them onto the grid and they fell silent.
Yet not completely motionless. The automatic-
repair mechanism on Larkspur’s suit sprang to life, welding his broken cable, working slowly and steadily, a tiny repair-bot shuttling inaudibly away.
Completely unnoticed.
Roach tapped at his keypad, and a nightmare dentist’s drill slid from a metal housing near the grid and pointed at the skunks.
“Are you digitizing them?” Hund asked.
“Dissecting them,” Roach said. “Taking them apart one line of code at a time.”
“Will that destroy them?”
“Perhaps. If they survive, I’ll reformat them—into loyal drones.”
He flicked a switch and rays of blue light shot from the machine and pulsed around the skunks, growing brighter as the machine started to thrum loudly.
OFF THE CLIFF
“Are they … dead?” Jamie whispered.
Like I had any idea. “Check out Hund,” I said.
He seemed kinda the same—huge and scary—and yet completely different. His implanted lens covered more of his face, and cables flexed beneath his skin. Looked like he’d gotten those biodigital upgrades he’d wanted.
I guess if Roach could create biodroids by splicing together genetically altered animals and military hardware, he could really do a job on a guy who was already a totally deadly mercenary fighter.
“Hund, version 2.0,” I said. “That’s all we need.”
“Shut up! Look at the skunks, they’re not moving. Look at them!”
I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to admit how bad things were.
But I did. I looked.
And things were very, very bad.
All three skunks, battered and bleeding, lay slumped at Hund’s feet while Roach tapped commands into a keypad nearby. A machine with a huge swiveling arm—that nightmare dentist’s drill, tipped with laser scalpels and titanium pincers—hovered over the skunks.
They’d lost. They’d just … lost.
Which meant we all lost. Because without the skunks, nobody could fight VIRUS.
Nobody could stop them. Even after what they did to my aunt, and Jamie’s parents—and all my neighbors, all my friends.
Nobody could stop them.
I stared at the screen, seeing the skunks helpless under Roach’s machine and Hund upgraded into an invincible monster. And sure I’m a kid, but I’m not dumb: I knew that sometimes the bad guys won—maybe more than sometimes.
I watched the news. I knew that.
But I’d been scared to death for two days: I’d been bombed and handcuffed and chased by killers. I’d been shot and tear-gassed and I’d lost my home and family.
And I’d been terrified the whole time. I’d felt sharp jolts of adrenaline, but also a soul-deadening fear, the kind that makes thinking impossible. Because you don’t want to think; you just want to curl into a ball.
Well, watching that screen, I reached the end of my fear, and like Wile E. Coyote hitting the edge of a cliff, I just kept on running.
I left Jamie outside—she must’ve thought I wanted to be alone to cry—and climbed into the truck. I adjusted the driver’s seat. I didn’t know much about driving, but I’d logged hundreds of hours on Xtreme Racer 500.
And I didn’t care anymore.
So I turned the key and stomped on the accelerator. The engine roared, but I didn’t move an inch.
I heard Jamie yell, “Bug!”
I stomped harder. Still nothing. Then I remembered the emergency brake.
I popped the brake and the truck shot forward.
They were a mile away. At this speed, that wouldn’t take a minute.
SHARE THE STEALTH
The cornstalks blocked my view through the windshield.
I pressed harder on the accelerator, speeding blindly forward. The corn whirred past and flattened under the truck, and everything seemed okay.
Until a wall of corrugated steel loomed in front of me. A huge round grain bin.
I stomped on the brakes, but couldn’t stop. I screamed and—
C R A SHED
into the wall.
And kept going. I smashed through and the seat belt slammed into me, and the front of the truck fell about ten feet, pointing almost straight down, into some kind of huge pit.
Well. That never happened on Xtreme Racer 500.
Then, with a screeee, the truck tore loose and started falling, still pointing straight down. I hadn’t driven into a pit; I’d driven into a huge vertical shaft—and the truck dove toward the bottom.
Lucky for me, the shaft didn’t end abruptly. Instead—
And lucky for you, you were wearing a seat belt.
That message brought to you by the Auntie M Safety Council.
Anyway, the shaft narrowed and slowly squeezed the truck to a halt.
When I finally remembered how to breathe, and trusted my legs to stop trembling, I climbed from the back of the truck, not quite sure what to expect, given how incredibly loud my stealth rescue mission turned out.
Fortunately, the worst of the noise coincided with the loud thrum of the dissection machine. And even more fortunately, when I climbed down a nearby maintenance ladder and opened the first door, I saw the skunks.
But not fortunately at all, they were still lying motionless on the grid. And Roach and Hund and a bunch of VIRUS soldiers were standing around, watching.
I guess I was feeling kinda crazy.
I shoved a wheeled tool cart toward the middle of the room, then ran the other direction, toward Roach. I didn’t have a plan to stop him; I just figured I’d try to mess up whatever he was doing.
I ran fast and low, hoping all the soldiers would watch the tool cart roll across the floor. And it might’ve worked, except for one tiny detail: Commander Hund.
He was standing right next to Roach. Looming there, massive and deadly, his implanted lens scanning his surroundings.
And sure enough, in a flash, he’d grabbed me.
“You’re a glutton for punishment,” he said, and smiled his freaky smile.
“Not now, Hund!” Roach said. “I need you to keep the skunks on the grid.”
Hund tossed me to one of his soldiers and looked at the skunks. Poppy and Cosmo were semiconscious and crawling toward the edge of the grid. So Hund kicked them back to the middle and sneered at Larkspur, who was curled tight in the center of the grid.
Larkspur looked like he’d given up, but really he was just waiting for his suit to finish repairing itself.
Still, what was he gonna do then? Hund had already beaten him. How could Larkspur save the day with Hund standing there?
That didn’t occur to me until later, though. Nothing occurred to me right then—no thoughts, no plans, just a white-hot anger.
I started screaming at them. Swearing and shouting.
Fascinated by the dissection of the skunks, Roach bent over his monitor, his eyes bright, his fingers tapping, his tongue flicking between his lips. So I screamed even louder, just to distract him.
Not too bright, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do.
He finally turned to the soldier holding me and said, “Shut him up.”
The soldier put a gun to my head.
You know what?
That shut me up.
But I didn’t get any less angry.
In fact, I got even angrier. I was helpless again, and I hated that. I hated Hund and Roach with a burning intensity. I stood there shaking with rage as the blue light zapped the skunks, dissecting them.
I found myself staring at Hund’s huge gun, the one he’d dropped on the floor. I imagined I had a carapace rifle in my hand—
And something clicked.
In my head.
Across the room, a red light flashed on Hund’s gun.
I focused on the light. I focused on the redness and my anger. The flashing got quicker and quicker. Then I heard a beep, a soft alarm.
Hund cocked his head. With his augmented hearing, he localized the sound in an instant. He grunted and stalked over to his gun. It must’ve weighed two
hundred pounds, but he lifted it effortlessly, opened a console, and checked the readout.
The beeping came faster and louder. Beep beep beep BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE …
The soldier clenching my arm took a step backward. Then another. He knew something was wrong.
I heard a few soldiers mutter. Then one called, “Commander?”
The beeping changed to a buzz. Stopping and starting, like a short circuit. Zzzt. Zt. Zzzzt. Zzzzzzzzzt. Zt.
Then silence. Which sounded almost worse. Then sparks started shooting from the gun’s console.
Someone yelled, “RUN!”
The soldier shoved me across the room and dashed for the exit.
In a sudden explosive lunge, Larkspur—his suit finally repaired—yanked the other skunks off the dissection grid, keeping his armored body between them and the sparking gun.
And me? I scrambled toward the door I’d entered through when the buzzing changed to a whine.
Hund hurled the gun across the room. “Evac! Evac!” he bellowed. “Roach—the evac pod!”
Roach slammed a button on his console and an evacuation pod burst from beneath the floor. Roach jumped into the pod, followed by Hund and a handful of soldiers, and the entry hatch slammed shut.
Meanwhile, I was racing toward the access tunnel. No idea why. I wasn’t really thinking, just retracing my steps, I guess. I sprinted to the military truck—still wedged nose down in that huge shaft—and crawled in the back.
I flopped down, breathing hard … and realized how stupid I’d been. What was I gonna do, fly the truck outta there?
Which was when the gun exploded.
I’LL TAKE THAT AS A YES
Plumes of burning air poured up the ventilation shaft like lava erupting from a volcano, and pounded into the truck. Or maybe not like lava from a volcano, maybe like gunpowder in a barrel. Because instead of being incinerated, the truck shook and shuddered … then blasted from the ventilation shaft.
Straight into the air. Hundreds of feet into the air.
That was when I tumbled out the back.
So this is what happened: the gun went haywire, and I hid in the truck. Then a tremendous BOOM rocked the world, with flames and heat, and the truck jolted back and forth and finally turned upside down.