Dangerous (28 page)

against the cave wall. The force was enough to crack his armor.

He immediately filled in the holes, sealing it up.

He stood up, back on the attack. He was too good at the

close game. I retreated and uprooted a stalagmite, thereby un-

doing thousands of years of slow work with one moment of vio-

lence. I kind of hated myself as I threw it at him, striking him

in the chest. One of his blades snapped off. Rock beats scissors.

He grew a new blade.

Attacking, he got me on my arm, but I kicked his legs out

from under him. I picked him up by a leg and slammed his

body against the ground three times before he flipped out of my

grasp. One of his blades and a large piece of armor fell off. He

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formed it anew.

I saw his glance flick to the corner, where he had a stash of

food. He was running out of fuel.

My skin was covered with welts and screaming with pain. I

screamed back and flew at him. When he sliced at me, I grabbed

the blade and broke it off in my hand. My palm was bleeding,

the pain was as intense as if I’d been stabbed clean through.

He formed another blade, and I broke it off again. I got

ahold of his leg and slammed him against the ground then at-

tacked his armor, clawing off whole sections. He tried to crawl

away, but I held him fast. And he kept forming more. And more.

The hollows underneath his eyes were sunken, the whites of his

eyes yellowed.

He didn’t have anything left to draw from. But he kept at it.

I tore off his chest armor and he made more.

“Stop it!” I yelled. “Stop! Just give up!”

I got my fingers into the hole in his armor around his eyes

and broke it off his face. He gasped. I pulled, and the armor

cracked all down his front, weak as shale rock. For the first time,

no new havoc skin grew.

“‘The yellow leaf,’” he mumbled, his head lolling back and

forth. “‘The yellow leaf . . .’”

“What?” I said.

He tried to sit up but thumped back. More armor splin-

tered and fell away. Jacques was gaunt. His T-shirt sagged, stick-

ing with sweat to his shaking body. His skin was mottled, dried

up in patches. I stumbled backward, feeling as if I’d just opened

a closet door and discovered a monster. The nanite-enhanced

bacteria had run out of fuel to grow more armor and so pulled

from his own muscles, bones, and skin. He took a shuddering

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breath and his eyes rolled, staring at the cave wall but not seeing.

He moaned.

“Jacques, why?” I whispered.

He flopped onto his side and looked at the food in the corner.

If he ate, would he recover as quickly as he’d broken down? I didn’t

think I could fight him again. My body felt like grated cheese. I

wiped wetness from my cheeks and realized I’d been crying.

The bags were heavy with soda and energy bars. I drizzled

soda into his mouth, and he gulped softly. Then I tore off a

chunk of a bar and stuck it in his mouth, eating the rest myself.

I picked up my iron bar, intending to guard him in case that

much food could bring him back to action, but he seemed un-

able to chew. And I apparently wasn’t able to stand. I collapsed,

my body trembling as if I were freezing cold.

Jacques whimpered, a sound like Luther’s baby sister used

to make when falling asleep. I crumpled forward, huddled on

the cave floor, washed over with ache. The pain in my hand was

louder now that I was still to listen to it, a shrieking that seemed

almost audible.

The bite of energy bar settled throughout my body and

brought a small, hopeful satisfaction, so I crawled over and fell

onto the bags. I ate another bar and drank a soda, wishing it

were water. The carbonation irritated my sensitive tongue and

went down like a swarm of bees.

“Jacques,” I croaked, holding out a bar. “Jacques, can you

eat? If you . . . if you promise not to stab me anymore . . .”

He turned his head away, mouth closed. I didn’t have the

strength to insist. I thumped back down into the mound of

wrappers and kept eating. When I felt strong again, I would

carry Jacques out to the police and tell them . . . what? Not to

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feed him? To put him in a cell too thick to cut?

I was wondering over this, trying to imagine what solution

Wilder could come up with, when I heard a noise at the cave’s

entrance and rolled over, expecting to see Luther.

“Hello, Miss Brown,” said Howell.

She was wearing a brown canvas shirt, pants, and shoes,

as if trying to be a caricature of an explorer. Dragon crawled

through the tunnel behind her, followed by three security guys

I thought of as the triplets: Hairy, Scary, and Larry. Hairy was

the one with the bushy beard, Scary had this wide-eyed stare,

and Larry’s name really was Larry. They never talked much.

Also, they weren’t really triplets.

“Jacques still has a tracker in his ankle?” I said thickly.

Howell nodded. “I couldn’t get to him when he was with

GT.” She crouched over him. “What happened?”

“He pulled all the energy out of his own body to make hav-

oc armor,” I said.

Howell felt Jacques’s pulse, and her eyes widened. I shiv-

ered. He wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead. The food in my

stomach felt heavy and foreign, and I glanced at the wrappers to

prove to myself that I hadn’t accidentally eaten rocks.

“Come here.” Howell’s voice was urgent. “I need you to

place your hand on his chest.”

Dread thumped into my chest, harder and louder than the

pain of my skin. I scooted away, my back to a rock wall.

“His heart has stopped,” she said. “He’s not coming back. In

moments, those nanites will reenter the token and it will leave

his body. If that token doesn’t bond with you, it will tear out of

his body and leave gravity—rise right up through the cave roof,

through the atmosphere and into space.”

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“What? How do you know that?”

“I know.”

“But—gravity? Nothing should—”

Howell spoke quickly. “I’ve spent years studying these.

That token will go straight through the rock ceiling like it went

through the skin of Jacques’s palm. Once it leaves Earth, its

momentum will keep it going. Retrieval might be impossible.”

Gone? A token gone, gone forever, don’t let it, don’t let it go—

“Good,” I said, but I could barely cough the word out it

was such a lie. Along with increased tolerance of cold and other

upgrades, the tokens came with an insistence of their own im-

portance. I knew I was just a wasp-stung caterpillar, but I still

felt an urgency to protect the tokens, as if they were babies or

puppies or something.

“I won’t lose any of them, I’ve worked so hard,” said Howell.

“Come here.”

I shook my head. I felt torn up inside and out—my nanite-

infused body wanted me to do it, and whatever was left of me

didn’t.

“Do you comprehend how precious and important these

are?” she said. “Losing a single token would be like . . . like los-

ing the Louvre. Or the Great Barrier Reef. Or Cairo.”

Howell hadn’t experienced the agony of the token rip-

ping through her body. I didn’t want the agony. I didn’t want

Jacques’s token. I didn’t want proof that he was dead—that I’d

helped kill him.

“Maisie—”

“No!”

Dragon picked me up. I pushed him away, sending him to

the ground.

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Hairy, Larry, and Scary approached, hands in fists.

“Really?” I said.

Dragon glanced back. Howell nodded. He and his guys

attacked.

I suppose it was good that I was slowed and tired with pain,

so when I backhanded the three guys at once, I didn’t crack

their skulls. From behind Dragon grabbed me around my waist,

picking me up. He was so much bigger than I was, I couldn’t

get away without hurting him. I elbowed him (gently) in the

face. He let go.

“Sorry,” I said. I didn’t want to break opera-humming Drag-

on’s nose.

“Maisie!” Howell’s voice had reached a new pitch of panic.

We all froze, watching as the token rose up through

Jacques’s chest. The skin didn’t split or crack, just lifted a little,

while the token, bright and teeming with nanites, crept up. The

atoms of the token must have been sliding between the atoms of

the skin, reconnecting with each other on the other side. Drag-

on tried to push me forward, and I knocked him away, my eyes

never leaving Jacques.

I imagined the token shooting up through the cave wall,

up into the night sky, propelled by its momentum on and on

forever, and the idea made my skin hurt worse. My own tokens

felt hot in my chest, my thoughts were slippery. I wanted to tell

myself it was okay, Jacques’s token didn’t matter, but I couldn’t

seem to grab hold of that thought. I was all ache and need and

fear, and the vague but fevered certainty that losing that token

would be very bad.

Howell trembled. “Maisie, please . . .”

It was almost out, one tip still sliding free of skin.

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“No,” I whispered.

The token freed itself from Jacques’s body, and Howell

snatched at it, desperate. She screamed in pain. It was entering

her palm. I thought it was bonding with her till I saw its tips ris-

ing out the back of her hand. I sucked in a breath.

Suddenly it was free, rising up so fast it seemed to be fall-

ing the wrong way, gravity working in reverse. In moments it

would be through the cave roof and into the sky. Lost. Gone.

Get it, save it, save it. Now!

I slammed my feet against the ground, jumping as high as

the cavern ceiling. I swung my arm, my fingertips barely swip-

ing at the cold, rubbery token. That was all it took—the barest

touch. It clung to my fingers. I was falling when it slid into my

palm. I tucked my arms against my chest, taking the fall as a

roll, slamming into the ground and up against a cave wall.

Now I was screaming. The crash hurt my wounded skin,

but that was nothing compared to the icy burn slicing through

my palm, up my arm. I clutched my sides and folded in half,

sobbing so hard I couldn’t close my mouth. I couldn’t see,

couldn’t hear, the sharpness exploding against my heart like a

bomb. It couldn’t have lasted long, but each second dragged me

along hollering in agony.

When it was over, I gasped, sat up, and wiped tears off

my cheeks. I was near Jacques. I looked at his gaunt face and

remembered—not the worst or the best. Just him. The way he

looked when he smiled, cheek dimples and bright-brown eyes.

How he could hit the high notes in a song. How he’d close his

eyes when taking the first sip of a soda.

I was leaning over myself, crying, and I noticed through

my shredded sleeves that the welts on my arms were gone. Even

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though taking a new token was healing my wounds, I felt alarm-

ingly weak, covered in paper-thin skin, built of gelatinous mus-

cles and straw bones. I looked at my chest, saw the brute token

had lightened, like the techno token. Jacques’s havoc token was

dark reddish-brown, a brand new brand. Bleep, bleep, bleep,

what had I done?

The brute token had been inside me for months, inde-

structibility my norm. Now those nanites were undoing their

work to let the new nanites take over.

I had never in all my life been so aware of my skin. So

much texture, entire ecosystems between my fingers, inside

my ears, between my eyelashes. I couldn’t see the new bacteria

growing now on my skin, but I felt prickly in a pleasant way.

“I’m hungry,” I whispered.

Dragon trolled through the food pile and handed me a

moon pie. His nose was bleeding, but he smiled.

“Thank you, Maisie,” Howell whispered. She was holding

her hand, her eyes closed. She’d never called me Maisie before.

Laelaps padded into the cavern, Luther crawling in after

him. Laelaps sniffed Jacques’s body and came to me, licking

my chin. Laelaps knew me. Maybe I was still essentially Maisie.

“Who?” Luther asked, pointing to our company.

“Howell, etc.,” I said.

“Isn’t she sort of evil?”

I threw up my hands. “Argh! Who isn’t anymore?”

Luther raised his hand with mock timidity. “Me,” he

mouthed. He pointed at me and mouthed, “you?” with a ques-

tioning look.

Laelaps was still licking me. I chose to believe that meant

I wasn’t evil yet.

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C h a p t e r 3 7

We checked Dad out of the hospital, loaded him into one

of Howell’s planes, and flew to HAL.

I had to ask, “Howell, did you gas our house?”

“No.”

“Did your guys chase us in cars with guns?”

“No.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll come back to Team Howell if you find my mom.”

“Done.”

“Okay.”