“Yes, ma’am,” we mumbled as they departed.
Howard looked right, left, and then into the darkness above our heads. “We’re turned around. We came farther inland, not out toward the beach. I bet we’re right about under the chimp habitat.”
Savannah cast me a worried glance. “I think we’re in big trouble. Like, really big trouble.”
“It’ll be okay,” I said, and toed the ground with my shoe. After all, I was still moving to Idaho. That was pretty much like being grounded, anyway.
“Can you get sent to jail for trespassing?” she asked. “I can’t believe how far this went. All I wanted was to hang out with you as much as I could before you moved away.”
“It’ll be okay,” I repeated, trying to convince myself as much as her. And it would. It should . . . once I explained to Dad what we’d learned about the Shepherds. Once we let Elana know about Anton and Dani.
As if my thoughts had summoned her, Dani Alcestis stepped out from behind the trucks. “Still here, huh? You guys are really bad at listening. Epically bad.”
“Help!” I screamed. “Help, it’s a Shepherd!”
The others joined in. “Help! Guards!”
Dani stood there serenely, arms crossed over her chest as we shouted. She was dry again, dressed in street clothes, her pretty lightened hair slicked back into a simple bun. She waited as our cries echoed through the chamber. “Are you done?”
The guards emerged from the inflatable enclosure, looking bewildered. I pointed at Dani. “She’s a Shepherd! I saw her. We saw everything. You have to call my dad. The Shepherds are running all kinds of creepy experiments on the island. They killed the bees. They’re trying to cause a panic! Please, you have to help us!”
The guard who’d been talking to us looked at Dani, seemingly baffled. “Miss Alcestis?”
Dani’s expression was one of boredom. “Don’t worry. I’ll handle it. Finish your tasks.”
We started shouting and pleading with the guards again, as all four climbed into the first cargo truck. We reached for the door handles as the truck’s engines turned over, rumbling so loud I felt the ground shake beneath my feet. We only stepped back as they zoomed off, so as not to get run over. Their red brake lights retreated into the distance, and the trembling of the earth subsided. I wondered at that moment if that was what I’d felt when we’d been hiding in the chimp habitat.
Defeated, I turned back to Dani.
“‘They killed the bees’? Is that seriously the best you could come up with? After all the time you’ve spent poking around here?”
“Well, you did,” said Savannah. “And you killed those chimps, too.”
Dani leaned in and glared at me. “I,” she said slowly, as if talking to an idiot, “told you”—she poked me in the chest—“to run.”
“They didn’t believe me,” I said sadly, ignoring her. “They never believe us.”
Dani groaned. “Are you kidding me?”
I glared up at her. “What’s your problem?”
“Gillian,” said Howard. “Don’t you get it? They believed you. They’re Shepherds, too.”
A sense of utter horror washed over me. My knees felt weak, and I stumbled back from our captor. “What? No. They knew exactly what happened on the phone with Dad and . . .” I trailed off.
Oh, no. Communication between here and the mainland is being monitored. I replayed every word out of the guard’s mouth on our trip here.
You have no idea how long we’ve been looking for you. Ever since they’d found our kayaks, no doubt.
It would have been easier if you hadn’t hung up on them before we figured out where you were going to meet. No wonder she’d said “them.”
This island was dangerous before the trespassers came. Those trespassers . . . were us.
She hadn’t lied. She’d just told us exactly what we’d wanted to hear.
Dani rapped me on the head with her knuckles. “Figured it out yet, Little Miss Know-It-All?”
“Hey!” Eric cried. “Back off, lady!”
To my surprise, she did just that, stepping back and giving us a once-over as she shook her head with pity. “What in the world did you think you were doing in the entomology center, playing with all the controls? This isn’t Omega City, you know. We can tell when you’re accessing our files. You should have just stayed away from this place. Played on the smart courts or gone boating, like I suggested.”
I straightened. “We did go boating. We kayaked right over here.”
“This isn’t a game, don’t you get that? And it’s certainly not for kids, whatever he might have led you to think.”
He? Did she mean Dad? “Well, if we can figure out what you’re up to, then Dad and Elana can, too. It must have killed you that Elana wanted someone like my father here at Eureka Cove. You Shepherds can’t hide much longer.”
“Oh, Elana wanted your father here, all right, but not for the reason you think.”
“What?” I asked.
Dani sighed. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do now. You’ve put me in a very difficult position. I don’t like the choices I’m going to have to make.”
Her words sent a chill down my spine. Was she going to hurt us? All my bluster fled. “Please,” I said. “Please, we just want to get back to my dad. We just want to go home.”
“‘Home?’” she scoffed. “‘Please?’ Do you think politeness gets you far with the Shepherds? Or being children? I read your father’s book. Fiona Smythe warned you. Underberg warned you. Yet here we are.” She shook her head. “This makes it all so much more complicated. What am I supposed to do, claim I’ve lost you?” Dani’s eyes flicked from one of us to the next, observing carefully, as if weighing our worth. Something beeped on her wrist.
“I’ll be right there,” she said into the band, then turned back to us. “Okay. Come with me. Now, or you’ll be sorry.”
Exchanging worried glances, we let Dani herd us to the door of the inflatable enclosure. It was shaped like a giant beached jellyfish, an amorphous white bubble banded by arcs of steel. She held open the door as if she were still our Guidant hostess and gestured for us to come inside.
“Do you like it?” she asked as we blinked in the sudden brightness. “It’s Guidant’s own design. A pop-up biostation. Able to be assembled and disassembled in less than three hours. Totally self-contained and solar-powered, not that we can charge it up down here.”
I squinted. It was like standing inside a seashell. White walls, as thin and as taut as sails, separated the station into oblong chambers. Dani led us down a narrow central corridor. The whole place hummed.
“Battery backups in case of power loss—or underground use—automatic air filters and water collection, not to mention sealing capabilities in case of a plague or biochemical attack.”
Was she kidnapping us or trying to sell us one? I took a quick glance in one of the rooms we passed and saw what looked like an operating table surrounded by a bank of brushed steel lockers.
“The floors, you will note, are made of the same customizable material as the smart courts.” She glanced meaningfully at our utility suits.
Our utility suits, which were invisible to their sensors. Wait a second. . . . I grabbed Savannah’s arm and squeezed. Was Dani saying what I thought she was saying?
Was she trying to help us escape?
All this time, I was sure that Dani was a Shepherd ringleader. And maybe she was, but she had also told us to run before. Maybe she was taking pity on us because we were kids or something. Maybe we still had a chance to escape. I’d messed up bad with those guards in the bee chamber. I didn’t want to risk getting it wrong again.
She led us into the last room at the end of the hall. “Of course, the problem with infrared sensors is that they rely on the presence of heat, which in an operation like ours, is not as common as it might otherwise be.” As soon as we were all over the threshold, she unfolded an accordion door and hooked it across the opening, closing all five
of us inside.
The room was small and sparse, and there was barely room for anything more than a computer terminal and an exam table. This one was topped with what looked like a large, inflatable blue mattress, covered with a sheet and riddled with wires.
Dani turned to face us, folding her hands in front of her. “Any questions, kids?”
“Are you serious?” Eric blurted.
“Eric,” I said in warning.
“No, Gills. We’ve been all over this island and we still don’t have any idea what’s going on. And she’s standing here making vague threats—”
“Mr. Seagret,” Dani broke in. “Did it ever occur to you that’s because anything other than vague means we’d all get ourselves killed? Thanks to your sister’s brilliant tattling up at the radio station, our entire operation is in danger.” She sighed. “Now, if you will excuse me, I’ve got some very important matters I need to see to.” She nodded at the table in our midst. “And so do you.”
With that, she slipped back through the opening of the chamber and left us alone, staring at one another in shock across the inflatable mattress.
“I don’t understand,” said Howard. “Right?”
“Yes,” Savannah assured him. “No one here does.”
“Is she . . .” Eric lifted his shoulders. “Is she trying to save our lives?”
“She’s definitely telling us to escape,” I said, looking down at my utility suit. “And I think she’s telling us how, but . . .” I put my hand on top of the mattress.
But instead of a taut, cushy surface, the sheet crumpled inward, as if the center of the mattress was hollow. And whatever was beneath the sheet felt . . .
Alive.
I shuddered. “There’s something in there.” And it was cold as ice.
“Take off the sheet,” said Savannah.
“No way.” I stepped back, stumbling over my feet until I hit the fabric wall. I did not want to know what was under there. My hand tingled where I’d touched it, frigid as a corpse.
“Eric,” Savannah said. “Take off the sheet.”
“You first,” Eric suggested.
Howard shook his head. “I’ll do it.” He pulled back the fabric.
Underneath was a chimpanzee.
20
UNDERCOVER
THE INSIDE OF THE MATTRESS WAS INDEED HOLLOW, AND FITTED TO HOLD the chimp’s body securely in place. I’d never seen a chimp laid out like that. It really did look like a naked, furry human. I mean—she did. This one was apparently a female. Thick gel pads covered the chimp’s legs and chest, and her head was fitted with a gel cap. An air mask covered her mouth, and wires and monitors were stuck to her head and chest.
“This is the chimp we saw captured.” Savannah reached out her hand and touched the animal. “She’s freezing.”
“How can you tell?” Eric asked.
“Because she feels cold,” Sav snapped.
“No, I mean, how do you know she’s the one . . .” Eric held up his hands and averted his eyes from the chimp’s nether regions. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
Howard turned on the computer screen as Savannah continued to examine the chimp. The gel pads spread across her body were, in fact, ice packs, like the kind you use for sore muscles, and the inflatable cushion she was lying in was also cold to the touch.
The display on-screen showed the chimp’s heart rate, breathing, and metabolic activity. There were two lines being traced. One in green, marked normal, and another one, in blue, marked experimental.
“I think,” Howard began slowly, “I think they have her in hibernation.”
“Cool!” said Eric. “They froze her! I thought they needed a tank or something for that.”
“Not cryogenic freezing, you dolt,” I said. “Hibernation. You know, like a bear in the winter.”
“Chimps don’t hibernate,” Savannah said.
“Neither do humans,” Howard pointed out. “But a lot of people are trying to find a way to put our bodies in a hibernation state for space travel. Basically, they induce medical hypothermia so we don’t need to breathe as much, or eat, or even move. It’s called torpor.”
“Hypothermia?” Savannah made a face. “Doesn’t that kill you?”
“If it happens on a mountain or something, then yes, sometimes. But if hypothermic torpor is induced in a hospital, under strict medical conditions, or on a spaceship . . .” Howard shrugged. “It’s only experimental at this point. We don’t know if we can do it for a long time without causing permanent brain damage, for instance. They still need to test it.”
Savannah straightened. “Wait. How would they test something like that? Would they put you in torpor or whatever, then thaw you out and, like, give you a test to see if your brain’s okay?”
Howard shrugged. “I guess.”
Savannah’s eyes got huge, and she hurriedly unzipped the pocket of her suit and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “Look! The intelligence tests I told you about in the chimp habitat.”
She showed me the papers. There was a column for test score, and a column called “duration.” One day, ten days, thirty days, fifty . . .
“What if they froze the chimps . . .”
“Put them in hypothermic torpor,” Howard corrected.
“What difference does it make?” she asked him.
“Fine,” he said. “What if they froze the monkeys . . .”
She glared at him, then went on. “Put them up in space for a while, then they thawed them out and gave them the tests again to see if they had brain damage.” She pulled out one sheet. “Look, this is her.” She pointed to an ID number at the top of the sheet, which matched the one on-screen. “She’s passed all the tests so far. So this one would be for . . .” Her face fell. “Oh. Bone density loss. That was always the last test.”
Right. The tanks full of flesh-eating beetles and the picked-clean skeletons. “You mean they’re going to kill her after this and test her bone density?”
Savannah pursed her lips. “Oh, no, they’re not.” She headed to the terminal controlling the monitors. “Howard, help me find how to turn it off.”
He held up his hands. “I have no idea.”
“Savannah,” I said, “we don’t have time for this. We have to get out of here.”
“Yeah,” she said. “We all have to get out of here.”
I looked down at the sleeping chimpanzee. “What are we going to do with a chimpanzee?”
“Take her back to the others.”
“They aren’t safe in that habitat,” I said.
“Well, it’s better than here!” She turned to my brother. “Can you help me figure this out?”
Eric looked at her, then nodded. “Okay.” He gave me a shrug. “She’s right, we can’t just leave her here.”
I shook my head in disbelief. There was no guarantee we could even get out, let alone help a half-frozen chimp. And we weren’t going back to the chimp habitat, anyway. We needed to get to the mainland and find my father. “The only way we can sneak out of here is with our utility suits. And we don’t have extras.”
“You heard Dani. They’re infrared sensors,” Savannah said. “If we get the chimp out while she’s still pretty cold, she won’t show up on their monitors.”
“You plan to carry her?” I asked. “She must weigh a hundred pounds.”
Savannah’s shoulders slumped. “Maybe we can sling her between us, or find a cart. . . .”
“I’ll carry her.” Eric looked up from his keyboard at our incredulous faces. “What? I’ve been working out all summer.” Then—wait, was that a blush on his face?—he turned back to the screen. “Look: initiate warming. That must be it, right?”
“Yes!” Savannah tapped the keys.
A message popped up on-screen.
This action will terminate hypothermic period. Do not disengage subject from cooling station until directed to do so.
Continue? YES/NO
“Uh-oh,” said Savannah. “I thought we could jus
t unplug her and run.”
Howard had pulled out a bunch of bungee cords and his carabiners. “Look, Eric. I bet I can rig up these cords and this sheet to sort of strap her to you.”
“That’s the least of our problems,” I said. “Remember what Dani told us. They found us in the beehive room because we were playing with the computers. They are monitoring everything. If we unplug her, they’ll know.”
Savannah considered this for a moment. “I don’t care.” She clicked the button.
The mattress began to hum and deflate. A new message popped up on the screen.
Please fold back cooling pads during deflation to prevent tangling. Disconnecting subject from station before warming period is complete will result in loss of data.
“Oh,” I said. “Is that all? Well, who cares about the Shepherds getting their stupid data? Let’s steal this chimp.”
Savannah pumped her fist in the air. “Yes!”
Quickly, the boys rigged some kind of sling to help Eric carry the chimp, while Savannah and I folded back the ice packs and removed her air mask. Her fur was soft, not as wiry as it looked, though her skin was still creepily cold to the touch. Someone had shaved patches of fur off her skin so the monitors could attach more smoothly, leaving weird bald spots all over her head and tummy. I winced as I peeled the monitors off her body, half expecting an alarm to sound as soon as the computer lost its input source.
Finally, she was free from the machine, but still ice-cold and unconscious. I supposed the unconscious part was good, though. Less poop flinging.
“Okay,” I said to Eric. “It’s now or never.”
It took all three of us to hoist the chimp onto Eric’s back. We tied her arms around Eric’s neck and positioned her legs around his waist, piggyback style. Then Howard wrapped the sheet around her and bungee-corded the whole thing together. By the time he was done, Eric looked like an enormous blue humpback.
“Good?” Howard asked.
Eric puffed and held up his thumb, but I noticed his face looked pained.
“Can you run like that?”
“Um . . .” He grunted and adjusted the load. “Let’s start with walking. And hope there’s an elevator.”
The Forbidden Fortress Page 17