Dangerous (11 page)

“Superhuman strength and invulnerability?” I said.

“Yeah. This is kinda awesome, isn’t it?” she whispered. “I

mean, unknown, dangerous, blah, blah, blah, but kinda—”

“Awesome,” I said, wiggling my Fido fingers.

Ruth nudged me with her shoulder. “Look at you, Two-

Arms. Look at
us
.”

I fought the temptation to hug her. I would not act like the

immature weirdo she already thought I was.

“I wish my psychopath sister would try to smack me now.”

Ruth laughed, standing to stretch. She didn’t stoop. She seemed

aware of her extraordinary height and shape, her long hair loose.

She was beautiful.

Dangerous

I walked over to Mi-sun, who had finally stopped shak-

ing. She picked up a lug nut and pointed her fingers at a two-

inch-thick plate of depleted uranium set up a hundred yards

away.
Crack!
Faster than I could track, the lug nut shot from her

hands, leaving an electric-blue trail and slicing clean through

the target.

“Not to brag, but I’m getting good,” she said.

“Yeah you are,” I said.

CRACK!

Between Howell’s cadre of PhDs, Wilder’s instincts, and

my techno-brain, we hypothesized that Mi-sun’s skin attracted

spare electrons and her token acted like a battery and stored

them. With a thought she could send the electrons from her

token down to the nerve endings in her hands and expel them

in bursts. When she was holding ammunition in those hands,

look out.

Jacques could cover his entire body in armor. He made a

shield that was impervious to Dragon’s gunfire, and Mi-sun’s

lug nuts could only dent it.

“We thought the bacteria died upon leaving his skin,” How-

ell explained, “but it looks like many remain in a dormant state

on the armor he discards. After about ten hours they wake up

and gorge themselves on the plastic, expelling nitrogen, hy-

drogen, oxygen, and carbon, effectively undoing the work that

they’d done.”

“So his stuff has a built-in recycling system,” I said.

“Here’s what’s left after two days.” Howell showed me a pe-

tri dish with a heap of shiny black dust. “Carbon. The rest of it

changed to gasses.”

Mi-sun squinted at the dust. “Where did that come from?”

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Shannon Hale

“From Jacques,” I said. “The bacteria build the plastic from

what he breathes, drinks, and eats.”

Ruth laughed. “Jacques, you’re eating all that black stuff?”

“So are you,” said Dragon. “Plants ‘eat’ carbon dioxide and

water, and then we eat plants. Or we eat animals that have eaten

plants. Besides vitamins and minerals, our food is just hydrocar-

bons.”

“I’ll stick to slushies,” said Mi-sun.

“Why don’t you do anything cool?” Jacques asked me.

“I make stuff. That’s cooler than being host to bacteria that

poop plastic,” I said.

“I’m
bleeping
amazing,” Jacques said, putting his fists on

his hips. “I’m Plastic Man.”

“That name’s taken.” Dad had a comics collection. I knew

these things.

“I’m Super Plastic,” said Jacques. “Super Man—”

“That one’s taken too,” I said.

“I KNOW!” Jacques said with a laugh. “I meant Super

Jacques—”

“Jack Havoc, Creator of Chaos,” I said.

“Be nice, you two,” Mi-sun said.

Ruth whispered to me, “Mi-sun is
so
bossy.”

“What about Wilder?” said Jacques.

“He’s the thinker, right?” I said. “He figured out what each

of us can do. Have you guys felt...um, weirdly tied to him lately?”

Jacques snorted, but Ruth and Mi-sun nodded. I fiddled

with Fido to hide my relief.

“Yeah, I’d like to test that out.” Wilder looked out over the

open brush. “Anyone want to play hide-and-seek?”

Howell gave us each an ATV to drive. Wilder had half an

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Dangerous

hour to hide. The four of us started at different points on the

compass, then we had to find him using instinct.

By then it was night. My ATV’s headlights lit up pale

circles on the ground, ghost eyes staring back. I’d been trying

not to think about Wilder with emotion ever since he weirded

out on me, and I’d done okay, except for that kissing relapse in

space. But now as I hunted him, wanting to win the game, the

barrier in my mind thinned. I wanted
him
.

The need to find him became an ache. Maybe if I got

there first. Maybe if I found him before the others were near, he

might look at me the way he used to—

A roar to my left startled me.

“Have you seen him?” Jacques shouted from his ATV.

“No,” I said. Go away, I thought. But he rode beside me.

It was creepy, not comforting, sensing Wilder out in the

dark. I found myself thinking about a species of caterpillar Lu-

ther and I had studied. A wasp stings the caterpillar to turn it

into its zombie slave. The caterpillar will spend the rest of its

life protecting the wasp’s larvae, neglecting to eat or rest or do

anything else until it dies. I wondered now if the caterpillar was

content in its zombification.

We spotted Wilder just as Mi-sun and Ruth came up be-

hind us. He was staring at a line of smoke on the distant high-

way, illuminated by a car’s headlights pointing up.

“Come on,” Wilder said.

As we sped over the bouncy terrain toward the asphalt

highway, I realized we weren’t just following Wilder—the four

of us had formed a web around him; Ruth in the lead, Jacques

and Mi-sun on his flanks, and I in the rear. The formation felt

natural, safe even. I was a part of something important.

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Shannon Hale

A livestock truck lay broken-backed on its side. Smoke crept

out of the engine. Cows were bawling. A passenger car was off

the road in a ditch, lights blindly staring at the sky.

Wilder yelled back at us, using nicknames. “Ruthless,

Havoc, help the people out of the cars before something blows

up. Peligrosa, Blue, get the animals out. Does anyone have a

phone?”

Personal phones had been forbidden at astronaut boot

camp, but technology was my department. I should have come

prepared.

“I’ll ride into town to get help,” Wilder said.

I watched Wilder go, and that safe-web feeling was torn.

We all looked at each other.

“Um,” said Ruth.

Jacques was staring after Wilder as if he would follow.

I pointed at the passenger car. “You two help them?”

Mi-sun and I went to the back of the trailer. The calls from

the cattle were forlorn and desperate. The door had twisted in

the crash. I grabbed a handful of gravel from the road.

“If you shoot these around the door at an angle, careful not

to hit the animals inside, maybe you can weaken the door till

it comes off.”

I ran back to the cab. The driver was conscious but woozy,

his forehead bleeding. He was belted in, the driver’s side up in

the tilted truck. I hauled myself on top and opened the door.

“I can’t reach the seat belt release,” I called to Jacques.

“Can you work your havoc magic and make something sharp

enough to cut with?”

His eyes widened as he thought about it, then on the tip

of his finger he formed havoc armor—that’s how I thought of

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Dangerous

it, anyway. It grew longer than his finger with a sharp edge. He

sliced through the seat belt and helped pull the guy out.

I thought I saw a phone lying against the passenger-side

door. I tried to lower myself in, but my hand slipped. I fell, my

impact causing the cab to roll a little more. The door above

me slammed shut, the crushed seat folded, and I found myself

curled up and pinned against the far side of the cab.

“And it’s not even a phone,” I said, pulling a tin of mints

from under my back. “Jacques! Ruth!”

The door behind me was smashed against the pavement,

the door above obscured by the bench. I heaved at the bench

with my legs. It barely budged.

My eyes stung. Smoke from the engine was drizzling into

the cab. Both doors closed, windows closed, glass intact, no

outlet. Pulling my shirt over my mouth, I took one last deep

breath, gagging on the tainted air. I reached up, thumping on

the windshield with my fist. My brain was firing, designing a

dozen different devices that could free me. If only I had the

materials and tools handy.

My legs shook, exhausted from pushing against the crum-

pled bench. How long until in panic I’d take a smoky breath

and suffocate?

Minutes seemed to pass. I was somehow still conscious,

unless there was no distinguishable difference between life and

death, which I found unlikely, not to mention anticlimactic.

Then I thought: smoke means fire. Fire plus gas means—

I twisted around and banged the windshield with my Fido

fist till the glass cracked.

The door ripped off above me and the bench went flying

out. I took Ruth’s hands and a moment later I was running away.

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Shannon Hale

Behind me, a sputtering explosion. The boom shoved me in the

back, heat whooshing past, knocking me to my knees. I took a

breath. The night air was hot and singed.

Ruth had carried the driver away, and he was lying near

the car’s dazed passengers—a woman and a boy.

Wilder roared up on his ATV. “The cattle?” he asked.

A loud moo in my ear made me jump. A cow was snuffling

my shoulder.

“Got it,” said Mi-sun.

We could see lights down the highway.

“The good guys will take over from here,” said Wilder.

“Wait . . .” The woman propped herself up on her elbows.

“Who are you kids?”

Wilder turned back, his helmet under his arm, his figure

dark and dramatic against the piercing headlight.

“We’re the Fireteam,” he said, as if this were a trailer for an

action movie. “Come on, let’s ride!” He revved his ATV and

zoomed off the road and into the open field. We ran for our

vehicles and followed, the white of sirens chasing us away.

With relief I fell into my position in Wilder’s web. It hadn’t

felt right when he was gone. It was like he was the nucleus,

and without him the four of us were spare electrons, bouncing

around without purpose.

He told us to keep our headlights off so no one could fol-

low. It was scary driving back in darkness, never sure when we

would hit a bump or a rut. Jacques kept himself armored. Ruth

hit a rock and fell off her ATV. She kicked it, sending it vaulting

into the air. It exploded.

“Nice,” said Jacques.

“Ruthless, calm down or—” Wilder started.

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Dangerous

“Shut up,” she said, and ran beside us all the way back.

I could hear the pounding of her feet off to my left. I was

thinking of the old warning—never make eye contact with a

predator. Running in the dark, Ruth seemed more animal than

person. I didn’t dare meet her eyes.

89

C h a p t e r 1 3

“How was it?” Howell asked as we entered the lab, Jacques

and Ruth making for the table with its never-ending supply of

snacks.

Wilder told Howell about the crash. “We need lifelike

training situations.”

“I got trapped in the truck’s cab for several minutes,” I said.

“There was smoke, and I think I held my breath the whole time.”

Wilder looked at me, and then he was shouting orders. The

doctors hooked us up to heart rate and oxygen monitors, Wilder

set the clock, and the five of us held our breath.

It got boring fast. No talking. Just sitting. Watching the

monitors. Five minutes. Ten minutes. I had to concentrate so I

wouldn’t breathe out of habit. Fifteen minutes.

Are we actually dead? I began to wonder. This is creepy.

I found it comforting to imagine I was a dolphin diving

into the blue—merely another mammal, not an alien freak.

Nineteen minutes.

I started to feel pressure in my chest, anxiety clawing at my

lungs. My eyes watered. At twenty minutes we all gasped.

“That’s not something you see everyday,” said Dragon.

“Their cells must be naturally oxygen rich,” Howell said.

“Like dolphins,” I said. “But . . . why?”

“I don’t know, but I’m sure we need to stay together and

keep preparing for . . .” Wilder scowled, rubbing his forehead.

“Whatever it is that we were made for.”

“Conquering the planet on behalf of a hostile alien force,”

Dangerous

Jacques mumbled.

“Or putting on shows for kiddie birthday parties!” I said

with a fake grin.

While they debated our mysterious purpose, Mi-sun wan-

dered over to the slushie machine. I noticed GT approach her,

and I went to a desk behind them, pretending to look at some

papers.

“Hey tiger, I brought you a present.” GT opened a small vel-

vet bag and poured silver rings onto the table. “Titanium, one

for each finger. You can wear your ammunition. How awesome

are you, huh?”

Mi-sun’s eyes widened and she took a loud, grating slurp