“No offense”—Drue coughed—“but maybe one of the suites would be a better place to hide.”
“We’re not hiding.” Ricardo grinned. “Trevone, you’re a genius.”
Trevone walked across the small room, past racks of cleaning supplies and extra bed linens, to a big silver hatch embedded in one wall. “This is where all the sheets get thrown so they can be cleaned. On the first floor.”
“You want us to jump down two floors?” Benny asked. “We’ll break our legs.”
Trevone frowned. “We could make a rope out of these extra sheets.”
“We don’t need to,” Hot Dog said. “Pinky, those files on the environmental systems I was looking at earlier.” She smirked. “Why don’t you just turn off the gravity?”
“Yes!” Drue shouted.
“Actually,” Benny said, grinning, “we should keep it off anywhere we aren’t. Let’s see how the aliens do when they’re trying to leap around in low g.”
Pinky laughed once. “Consider it done.”
There was a slight shift in the room as the artificial gravity dropped to practically nothing. Hot Dog looked around, and as she did, her blond curls drifted out from her head.
“I know we don’t have time for holo-selfies, but I wish we did,” she said as she walked toward the hatch Trevone was holding open.
Ricardo was the first down, followed by Benny. They floated slowly, the Taj trembling around them. A minute later, they were all standing in what Benny assumed was the laundry room—though based on the complicated-looking machines around him, it easily could have been some sort of futuristic laboratory. They didn’t exactly have places like this in the Drylands.
“Jasmine,” Ricardo said as Pinky turned the gravity back on in the room, “let’s see that map.”
“They’re filtering into the other floors,” she said, extending her HoloTek. “Spreading throughout the Taj in small groups now that they’ve found the stairwells.” She paused. “Oh, no. It looks like they’re in the basement level. They haven’t gotten to the door leading to the underground stairs, but they’ll get there eventually.”
“Let’s not blow up our way out yet,” Benny said. “We can still make it.”
“Okay,” Ricardo said. “There are six of them in the lobby, right by the staircase we need. We have nothing to fight with. We’d have to sneak past them somehow.”
“We need a distraction,” Trevone said.
Benny held up his left hand and pointed to the silver hoop around his wrist. “Well,” he said, thinking of how he’d tricked the two members of the Pit Crew standing in front of him into chasing a monster through the basement hallways so that he and his friends could access the very room they were now heading toward. “Some of us have done this before.”
Ricardo nodded, pointing to the blueprints. “From here, we’re a short sprint from the lobby. The hallway outside is still safe, at least.”
“We just have to get to the server room,” Jasmine said. “If we make it down the steps, we can blow the stairwell up behind us.”
“Mmmm,” Ramona said. “Secret server. Wonder what the hardware’s like.”
Jasmine shook her head. “Not the time, Ramona.”
“Everyone ready?” Ricardo asked.
They nodded, and then they were running again through the short hallway. When they got to the lobby door, they stood back as Benny tapped on his wrist. A duplicate of Benny appeared in front of them.
“When the door opens, the atmosphere will go,” Jasmine said, touching the side of her collar and preemptively turning on her force field helmet. The others followed her lead. “There’s a hole in the front of the Taj now.”
“Pinky,” Benny said, “I’m ready.”
He flattened himself against the wall as the door opened and the air changed around them. With a flick of his finger over the bracelet Elijah had given him, the holographic clone of himself darted into the resort’s lobby. One of the aliens saw it, and motioned to the others, chasing the fake Benny as he darted into the restaurant.
This was their chance.
Benny motioned to the others to move, and then tapped on his wrist again to bring the cloud of nanotech hologram-producing projectors back—the aliens could look for him forever in the restaurant, but they’d never find him now.
He paused for a split second in the doorway once everyone else was through. The black marble floors flecked with gold were now covered in dust and debris. The giant chrome doors that had once welcomed them to the Taj sat against a wall, partially melted and crumpled beneath a giant portrait of Elijah in a silver suit. A part of him wondered what the grinning man in the picture would say if he saw how unrecognizable his resort was becoming, but that was the least of Benny’s concerns at the moment. He followed the others as they made their way to the nearby stairwell, the doorway destroyed by Dr. Bale’s cannon. He carefully stepped over the bits of blasted door and onto the landing as his friends began to hurry down as fast as they could in the low gravity.
Pinky shouted a warning. “Faster! Move! They’re coming.”
Benny looked back at the doorway to the lobby, but he couldn’t make out any movement.
“Above you!” the AI yelled again in his collar.
And that’s when he saw them. A few floors up, two masked Alpha Maraudi soldiers leaned over the railing of the winding stairwell.
They’d been spotted.
“Go!” he shouted as one of them threw itself headfirst over the side of the stairwell. The two thick tentacles on its head grabbed railing after railing, propelling it toward them with a quickness Benny could barely believe, the other alien following close behind.
23.
The first alien landed on Ricardo, knocking him into Trevone, Ramona, and Jasmine, the five of them all tumbling down the stairs together. The other hit the steps in front of Drue, Hot Dog, and Benny. Metallic red armor covered its chest, shoulders, knees, elbows, and face. The rest of its body was protected by the same sort of chain mail–like cloth Benny had seen on the alien mother ship, the silver threads in constant motion, weaving in and out of loops and knots. The soldier towered three feet over them and arched its back as the six thin black tentacles on the back of its head wound together, forming a giant mallet. With a flick of its neck, the alien rammed this new weapon into Drue’s stomach, sending him flying up the stairs. Benny could hear him coughing through the comms, trying to catch his breath.
“Drue!” Hot Dog shouted.
Farther down the steps, Ricardo tackled the other Alpha Maraudi, both of them slamming into the wall. Benny spotted a flash of silver tipping the enemy’s tentacles.
“Everyone go,” Ricardo shouted. “I’ll handle this one. Get somewhere safe.”
He gritted his teeth as his fist smashed against the red rock covering the Maraudi’s mouth. “Ow!” he shouted afterward, shaking his hand.
The soldier in front of Benny turned to glance at Ricardo. Hot Dog took advantage of the moment. She jumped forward and planted a foot in the alien’s chain mail stomach, sending it tumbling down a few steps. She stumbled back from the force, but Benny caught her.
Two aliens separated them from their friends. There was no way they were getting past them—even if they jumped over the railing and tried to float the rest of the way down with the gravity off, those quick tentacles would surely grab them.
They only had one option. They had to get out of there—and that meant splitting up.
Trevone realized this, too.
“Get to safety,” he yelled through the comms. “We’ll regroup.”
“Pinky,” Benny said as Drue and Hot Dog followed him up the stairs, the alien close behind them. “What can you do for us?”
“Get back into the hallway you came from,” she said. “I can lock the door behind you and buy you a little bit of time.”
In a flash, they were back in the lobby. Six soldiers had come out of the restaurant and were now standing there, staring at Benny and his friends. Behind
them, the stairwell alien launched itself through the doorway using its tentacles.
Benny, Drue, and Hot Dog ran.
“I don’t guess there are any secret weapons in here that we should know about,” Hot Dog said.
“Pinky, where are the SR trainers?” Benny asked as they darted for the hallway door. “Do you have control of them?”
“Give me two seconds,” Pinky said.
It was actually four seconds later that three SR trainers shot through the lobby of the Taj. One pinned the stairwell alien against a wall, while the other two circled around the remaining forces. One of the Alpha Maraudi tossed something at the closest vehicle. In seconds, rock began to grow over it, and Benny saw it sputter and hit one of the lobby walls just as he crossed into the hallway and the door began to slide shut behind him and his friends.
Benny could hear heavy breathing through the comms in his helmet as they ran.
“Where are we going?” Drue asked.
“They’re sealing up the garage with rock to stop me from sending out any more Space Runners. I’m not sure how many you think are expendable, but I could try to crash a few through.”
“Don’t waste all our possible escape vehicles,” Drue said.
The Taj shook, and Benny stumbled into Drue as the Alpha Maraudi destroyed the door leading into the hallway. Aliens poured through the opening as the boys hit the floor.
Hot Dog pulled them to their feet. “This way!” she shouted as she made a sharp right into the next hallway. “I have an idea!”
Benny wasn’t sure where they were headed until Hot Dog was asking Pinky to open the door to the video game room.
“We’ll be trapped in there,” Drue said.
“Just trust me,” Hot Dog said.
He groaned, but went inside, Benny following close behind. Hot Dog lingered in the doorway.
“What are you doing?” Benny asked. “They’ll see you.”
“That’s the point!” she said, waving at someone in the hallway.
“Awesome,” Drue said. “We’re going to die.”
“Just listen to me,” she said. “Earlier, Benny and I were in here and it was so realistic that Benny couldn’t find the door out.”
“So?”
“So they could get lost in here, too,” Benny said, finally understanding.
“And this room is built to work with the antigravity systems sewn into our Taj space suits, remember? We can just float up top, wait for the coast to be clear, and sneak back out. Hidden by holograms.”
“Only one problem with that,” Benny said.
They both turned to Drue, who looked at each of them in confusion, then down at himself. “Oh, come on,” he muttered as he stared at the gleaming, expensive black suit he’d brought from home—one that didn’t have the antigravity tech from the Taj sewn into it. “You’re kidding me.”
“Come on, Benny,” Hot Dog replied. “Gimme a hand.”
She grabbed on to one of Drue’s arms. Benny grabbed the other.
“Pinky, make us float,” Hot Dog shouted.
And then they were shooting through the air until they were almost hitting the ceiling of the huge, rubber-covered room.
“Too bad the rest of the Taj doesn’t have this tech,” Benny said. “We could just fly everywhere.”
“I hate this, I hate this, I hate this,” Drue repeated as he dangled in the air. “If you drop me, I will never forgive you.”
“Stop jerking around so much and we won’t,” Hot Dog said. “Pinky, let them in. And then make it impossible for them to find the door!”
“I’m on it,” the AI responded.
Suddenly, the room below them was a lush jungle, a surging river cutting through the thick foliage. Huge birds in spectacular colors flapped across the sky. There was shaking in the trees, and Benny watched something brown and furry swing on a vine across the water.
And then the aliens were filtering inside, one of them brandishing Dr. Bale’s cannon. They moved carefully at first, their tentacles reaching out to touch the environment. It didn’t take long for them to realize that none of the trees were real, and then they were running through the forest, passing through the light-constructed trunks with ease, looking for the three EW-SCABers.
The door shut and disappeared behind them, until Benny wasn’t even sure where it was anymore.
“Okay, this is kind of great,” Drue whispered, watching the Alpha Maraudi run into the wall on the other side of the room, even though it looked—thanks to the projections—like the forest went on for miles.
The aliens began to look around at one another, tentacles gesticulating wildly.
“Pinky, get us out of here,” Hot Dog said.
“Finally. It feels like my arms are gonna be ripped off,” Drue said, still hanging between the two of them. Then he glanced at Hot Dog. “Good idea, by the way.”
She smirked. “Thanks.”
They floated down slowly, hidden by a holographic cloud, until their feet were once again on the floor. The door slid open and they bolted through. Once they were in the hallway again and the door was closed, Benny breathed a sigh of relief.
“Okay,” Hot Dog said. “That should keep them for a while.”
“Pinky, where are the others?” Benny asked.
“Ricardo managed to knock out the alien in the stairwell, but by the time they got down to the basement . . .” She paused. “The Alpha Maraudi found the server room. Ricardo’s group is hiding in the prototype storage room in the basement I showed you earlier. So far as I can tell, the aliens haven’t figured out that it exists.”
“And the stairs underground?” Benny asked.
“We collapsed the tunnel,” the AI said. “On Ricardo’s orders. I’m sorry.”
He let out a long breath, and then shook his head. “It was the right move. But we need to get down there and rejoin them.”
“Yeah,” Hot Dog said. “I don’t like being split up like this.”
“Uh, or standing out in the open,” Drue added, glancing around.
“There are a dozen Alpha Maraudi in the basement floor now,” Pinky said, “and more streaming into the lobby as we speak.”
“Too bad we only have one of those fancy bracelets,” Drue said. “I doubt we can distract them all with that.”
“Yeah,” Benny agreed, but his mind was wandering. He glanced back at the door leading to the video game room, thinking about all the hologram pranks he’d pulled in the caravan—and those he would have pulled if he’d had the right kind of equipment. Equipment like the Taj was full of. “Pinky!” he half shouted. “How many of you could you make at once?”
“It would depend on the location within the Taj, as well as—”
“Let’s say the lobby.”
The AI appeared beside them, shrugging. “Dozens. The lobby is full of holographic nanoprojectors.”
“What are you thinking?” Hot Dog asked.
“An army of Pinkys!” Drue said.
The AI looked at them for a second and grinned a little. Then she shifted, until she was a glowing copy of Benny.
“Or an army of you,” she said. Then she shifted again and was Drue. “All of you. They wouldn’t know who was real.”
“That is so weird,” Drue muttered.
“Is that what you had in mind?” the AI asked. “Because the nanoprojectors from other rooms can easily be flown in to help.”
Benny grinned. “That’d probably be enough to keep us hidden and get them to call a bunch of the aliens up to the first floor, right? We could clear out the basement that way.”
Drue cracked his knuckles. “Let’s do this.”
Hot Dog nodded. “Pinky, tell the others we’re on our way.”
As they started down the hall back toward the lobby, holograms of the three of them began to appear all around.
“I hate this,” Hot Dog said, eyeing one of the clones of her up ahead of them. “It’s so creepy.”
“I can’t even tell which ones are the re
al yous!” Drue said.
Benny looked at the entrance to the lobby in front of them. “I think it’s about to get weirder.”
By the time they burst out of the hallway, the lobby was overrun with copies of themselves, darting back and forth over the marble, in and out of the restaurant entrance, and up and down the hallways and stairwells, passing through the three rock blobs that had been Space Runners just minutes before. The Alpha Maraudi tried to stop them with their tentacles, but they went right through the beings made of light. Even the screens on the walls of the lobby were being utilized—Pinky had made them look as though the room extended forever, filled with an army of Drues, Bennys, and Hot Dogs.
“Holy whoa,” Benny said.
“This is making my brain hurt,” Drue said.
“It’s working,” Pinky said. “The aliens in the basement are headed up here. It seems like this is really freaking them out.”
“It’s freaking me out,” Hot Dog said.
They sidled up against one of the lobby walls and watched as Alpha Maraudi ran into the lobby from the nearby stairwell, trying to get a handle on the situation.
“Now’s your chance,” Pinky said. “Go!”
They bolted for the stairs, this time making it all the way down to the basement level without being stopped. Once they were there, they sprinted through the hallways as quickly as they could. At one point, Pinky ushered them into a research lab to avoid a passing alien. But it was working. The holograms had been such a perfect distraction that Benny could hardly believe they hadn’t thought of it before.
“Stay put just a bit longer,” Pinky said. “The hallway is almost clear and . . . Hmmm.”
“What is it?” Benny asked.
“I’m not sure. They’ve brought some kind of red, metallic orb into the lobby. I’m picking up a lot of energy coming off it and . . .”
There was a crackling in their comms. Benny and his friends looked at each other.
“Oh, no,” Hot Dog said. “They killed Pinky.”
“No,” the AI’s voice came again. “Well, not entirely. That was some sort of energy bomb. My servers are fine, but the holograms are not.” She sighed. “How many times am I going to lose my holographic body today?”
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