Hollowgirl (28 page)

CLAIR EMERGED FROM
the office feeling a mixture of excitement and nervousness. This was it. They had to take the exit now or the hostages would die. They couldn't afford any mistakes.

When they arrived at the staging area, people had gathered in two orderly groups, awaiting word to move out. The first, Dylan Linwood and the core members of WHOLE and RADICAL, plus Jesse, Ronnie, and Tash, were
standing in front of a hole in the wall that hadn't been there before. It opened onto a long, cylindrical space that reminded Clair of the submarine she had taken part of the way to New York, only its interior was brightly lit and gleamed with a mirror finish. This was the glitch-mobile, awaiting its passengers. It would attempt to deliver that cohort right into the heart of the exit chamber, following the reference point Evan Bartelme and Zep had given them.

The other group consisted of Libby, Zep, and the Unimprovables, with a contingent of Yetis for good measure. Their plan was to attack the VIA building from the outside.

All wore green glitch-suits. All looked prepared but nervous, just like her. All reacted with surprise when Clair walked with Kari into the center of the room. Allison nodded once, her hands clasped tightly under her chin, but said nothing.

Jesse looked particularly flustered, as though the ground had just been pulled out from under him.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“What do you think?” she snapped. “I'm not missing this.”

“But . . .” He looked at Kari, then back at Clair. “How . . . ?”

“Doesn't matter,” said Kari. “It's time.”

Clair turned her back on him and went to stand by
the Unimprovables. There had never been any question which group she would join. This had started with Libby and Zep. That was how it had to end.

“You shouldn't be here,” Jesse bumped her.

“You've made that very clear. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“It's not that. You are . . . were sick. I couldn't bear losing you. Not again.”

“Join the club,” she said, relenting a little. If
that
was his problem, she could totally understand. “You watch your back and I'll watch mine.”

Then she was being hugged by Libby and wrestled affectionately by Zep. If her word hadn't convinced them that she was fit again, those well-meaning physical assaults did the job. Tilly Kozlova saluted her, and the rest of the Unimprovables cheered. She felt buoyed by their enthusiasm, even as the reality of her situation was truly beginning to sink in. She was about to walk into battle without knowing how her suit worked and with none of the training the others had received. Did she really think it would be that easy?

“Do as you're told for a change,” said Libby, reading her nervousness as she would an open book, “and you'll be fine.”

Clair nodded and took a deep breath.

“Just because Clair's here,” said Evan, “doesn't mean the plan has changed.”

“I agree,” said Jesse.

“Too late if it has,” said Dylan Linwood. “Masks down!”

One by one, people covered their faces, turning them into a small army of anonymous soldiers. The suits were bulky at shoulders and thighs, and heavy down the back. The mask was claustrophobic even with lenses doing the seeing for her.

“Entangling,” said Jesse via his augs. Clair didn't know what that meant until suddenly she could hear everyone else as if along a series of plastic tubes. The suits were now connected via glitches. At the small of her back, her generator began to hum.

“Keep the chatter to a minimum,” said Kari. “Only talk this way in an emergency.”

Through her augs, she sent to Clair, “Are you okay?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Don't be afraid to take it slow. Our job is to raise hell and watch each other's backs. Your battery should keep up if you're careful, but there's an ordinary pistol in your thigh compartment in case you run dry, and the suit doubles as armor in all the critical spots. Try not to get shot this time.”

She bared her teeth in a grin Kari couldn't see. “Don't worry. I've learned my lesson.”

“Okay. Get behind Tilly and do what she does. Your suits will go to the same destination. You'll be in the second wave. Libby is leading the first.”

Clair nodded and took position. She was glad she wasn't leading. It would be crazy if she was. She was just grateful to be there, even though her heart was racing. She could pretend to be brave for Kari, but behind that front she saw muzzle flashes and the face of Clair One looming out of remembered darkness.

She touched her chest, where parts of her former self were keeping her upright.

This is for you.

“Okay . . . go!” said Dylan Linwood, and her helmet filled with the sound of people moving. WHOLE double-timed into the glitch-mobile, which closed behind them with an electric snap, the hole simply shrinking down to a point and vanishing as though it had never been there.

The Unimprovables were moving too. Tilly stepped forward and a tall, rectangular outline appeared in front of her. Clair could hear the whining of her battery as it worked its strange magic on the air, creating a subtle warp that was little more than a heat wave: a door-shaped glitch in the reality of the Yard. Tilly backed up a step, tensed, and then jumped forward.

With a
twist
Tilly vanished. The door vanished too, along with everyone else in the first wave.

The second wave stepped forward, Clair with them, slower than the others but recognizing what she needed to do. There was a
PORTAL
option in her lenses. She selected it and the doorway appeared, slightly to her left. She
stepped back to reorient herself, accidentally treading on the toes of someone in the third wave as she did so. The charge on her suit was at 75 percent and rising.

She was about to jump when Jesse's voice came through the entangled suits.

“We're here at the target. It's empty.”

It was so strange to think that he had traveled all that way—from central Australia to New York—in the blink of an eye. Usually it would have taken minutes. Now Clair knew how her grandparents must have felt when d-mat was invented.

“No sign of the exit,” said Evan.

“The Air says we're in Cuba, not New York,” said Ronnie.

“Could it be a duplicate?” asked Tash.

“It must be,” said Jesse. “They've confused the Yard so it takes us to the wrong place. We should get out of here in case it's a trap.”

“Proceed as planned,” said Kari to Team Clair. “Second wave, come on through. We need you.”

Clair could hear the echoes of gunfire through her entanglement with Kari's suit. The first wave was fighting in New York, which was proof that they at least were in the right place. There was no way the hollowmen could have made an entirely new Manhattan, after all.

On either side of her the Yetis and Unimprovables were moving. She put her head down and leapt through an imaginary door.

NEW YORK WAS
a city everyone had reference points for, and Clair knew this particular part of it well. The VIA building loomed over her like an angular black monolith, much larger than it had been in the real world. It bore the scars of Q's attack plus a new one, a gaping wound in one corner, two-thirds up the eastern side.

Clair's attention was immediately caught by it, but then chips of concrete sprayed around her feet and something flicked past her ear with a high-pitched snarl. Someone was shooting at her! She ducked and ran for cover behind a mound of rubble, heart pounding furiously. Adrenaline seized her in its familiar grip. Time seemed to slow to a vivid crawl.

She was on the plaza next to the VIA building, where a crowd had once gathered to welcome her. Someone had shot at her then, too.

Dropping to one knee, she selected options from the menu. Camouflage, definitely. Glitch-gun, okay. The glove of her suit twitched and suddenly she was armed. She rebuked herself for not having done that before leaving. Holding a gun felt much more reliable than using her empty hand and creating bullets out of thin air.

“Clair, move!”

She whipped around at Libby's warning, then leapt
spread-eagled to her left. A massive fist came down, crushing bricks to powder right where she had been kneeling. Her eye tracked up along an arm as thick as a tree trunk to a biceps that could have lifted a small house. It was connected to a body as large as that very same house, mounted on legs easily a yard across. At the top of this mountain of flesh was a head that looked ridiculously small in comparison but had to be twice as big as an ordinary person's. The mountain was clad in armored black from head to foot.

Clair blinked up in surprise.
Prize giant.
That was what they were called. Supposedly they were illegal, but there were stories about covert wrestling matches and wrestlers who couldn't change back to their normal forms. And now one of them was standing in front of her, pulling its fist back with surprising speed and getting ready to swing at her again.

Clearly someone else had been tinkering with the rules.

She raised her glitch-gun and aimed for the giant's face. Deep craters appeared in one massive shoulder, but they didn't slow him or her down at all. The punch came close enough for Clair to feel the wind of it, or perhaps that was the giant's shout of frustration. She scrambled backward out of reach and selected the opposite type of weapon, thinking she could blow it to bits rather than chop at it piecemeal.

But the giant's eyes didn't track to follow her. The
camouflage was working, and had been working ever since she had switched it on, she realized now. The giant had simply targeted her messy arrival, and she had moved from that location.

She backed off farther, trying not to disturb any rocks or make any sounds that might give her away. As the giant dove into the pile of rubble and began throwing it in all directions, she turned and ran for cover elsewhere.

Zep—according to her suit's heads-up display—waved for her and she changed course to join him. A line of bullets fired by a drone crossed her path a split second before the drone blew out of the sky with a small explosion. Zep caught her and pulled her down next to him behind another pile of rubble. Squeezing his arm in thanks, she rolled over and looked out over the battlefield.

The prize giant was one of four guarding the entrance to the VIA building. A fifth lay dead at their feet, its head exploded messily from the inside. Around them danced figures in green and gray, and around
them
were black-clad hollowmen. People constantly ripped in, fired at each other, and then ripped elsewhere, creating a mad dance that was one-half subtly ordered, like a ballet choreographed by maniacs, and one-half utterly chaotic. The air hummed with glitches, constantly tearing reality into new shapes.

Clair had never seen anything like it.

One of the hollowmen ran past. Clair took a shot at it. An
explosion tore the figure apart, leaving nothing but shreds of black behind. No blood. No flesh or bone. Just cloth.

“Seriously?” she said, staring at the settling tangles in disbelief, wondering if the person in the suit could have ripped away that fast.

“Yeah, they're
literally
hollow now,” said Zep.

“Link two identical suits, one of them empty,” Kari explained over the entanglement. “Move one and the other moves too.”

“That is such a cheat,” said Libby. “Why didn't we think of it?”

“Keep the chatter down,” said Dylan Linwood on the other side of the world. “We're trying again.”

Duplicate exit chambers, prize giants, and hollow glitch-suits. There was a lot Teams WHOLE and RADICAL hadn't thought of, but that didn't mean the battle was remotely lost.

Clair tapped Zep on the shoulder and pointed. The dead prize giant would make good cover from which they could fire at the others, if they could only get there safely. Perhaps, she thought, they could come around the square and cut back in from the left. . . .

Zep nodded, took her hand, and pulled her through a shimmering doorway that appeared in front of them—

Twist.

She blinked, disoriented. But of course: Why run when you could rip?

She fired twice at the two nearest prize giants, then took Zep by the arm and jumped him back where they had been. Only then did she stop and look to see whether they had hit anything.

The second prize giant was falling, dead. The third just looked angrier than ever.

Bullets threw up chips of stone right next to her head. She ducked, and Zep pulled her to a safer patch of rubble, where they took a moment to get their bearings. Her suit showed her where the rest of Team Clair was, even though they weren't visible to the naked eye. Libby was with Kari and one of the Yetis directly opposite the entrance to the VIA building, coordinating the attack and sniping at the hollow hollowmen. Two of them blew apart into flapping rags and were instantly replaced elsewhere, firing at the source of the weapons blast that had “killed” them. Kari and the others jumped away in time to avoid a counterattack.

“Another dud,” said Jesse over the entangled suits. “Now we're in Toronto.”

“Third time's a charm,” said Clair, hoping they would turn up soon. She and the others weren't making much progress. Any moment now Wallace might realize that they were intended as a distraction, not the main attack, and turn his attention inward.

She watched two Yetis take on one of the prize giants, ripping in under its swinging arms and attacking from
both sides. They ripped away again before it could get a grip on them. It sagged slowly forward, bleeding copiously from several points, and fell facedown onto the ground.

“Watch this,” bumped Zep. He jumped directly above one of the two remaining prize giants. His suit kept him hanging there long enough to fire three times downward, directly into its head. It dropped like a stone, head a shattered ruin, and he jumped back with a soft “Yesss!”

Clair nudged him with her hip and bumped him: “Be careful.”

“What do you mean? This is just like gaming. All those hours practicing instead of writing essays weren't wasted after all.”

She smiled despite her concern, feeling safer with him at her side than she would have alone.

“How's your charge?” she asked. Hers was at eighty percent.

“Oh yeah. Low,” he bumped back. “Better not do that again.”

Reality twitched, and suddenly there were four more prize giants standing in front of the exit. Sixteen more ordinary-sized figures also joined the fray, firing into likely hiding spaces and moving out to take control of the plaza. Wallace could presumably make as many as he needed, farmed from Kingdon's volunteers.

Someone gasped in Clair's ears. One of the Unimprovables went down. Libby bent over the fallen figure, then
jumped quickly away as hollowmen targeted the spilling blood.

“Did everyone see that?” she said over the entanglement. “Got her in the head. The suit couldn't bring her back. So don't take any unnecessary chances.”

Dead is dead,
thought Clair. That was one rule they couldn't break.

“Strike three,” said Jesse. “We're having no luck at our end. Can anyone think of a reason?”

“It's not the colored light trick,” said Ronnie. “We've tried that.”

Clair looked up at the building.

“Do we know
exactly
how Clair One died?” she asked. “Because I'm staring at a great big hole that wasn't there before, and if Clair One did that, Wallace's office might not even exist anymore.”