Reboot (28 page)

He stopped. His eyes were focused intently on Callum, and I turned to see him pressed against the wall, his hand covering his nose and mouth. His whole body was shaking.

“Oh, Jesus. He’s been given shots, hasn’t he?” Tony asked.

“Yes. You—”

“Desmond, go get some rope,” he said, and the lanky guy hopped to his feet and scurried down the hallway. He emerged a moment later with two lengths of rope and headed for Callum.

“What are you doing?” I asked, jumping in front of him.

“Sit down,” Tony said to Callum. “Hands behind your back.”

Callum stepped forward like he was going to listen to this human, and I grabbed his arm, pulling him closer to me.

Desmond kept coming like he intended to push past me and I gave him a look like I dared him to try. Tony put his arm out to stop him.

“It’s for our safety,” Tony explained. “Under-sixties can’t be controlled on those crazy drugs HARC gives them.”

“It’s fine, Wren,” Callum said, running a hand down my arm before stepping closer to Desmond and Tony. Desmond gestured for him to sit and he slid down onto the floor behind the couch. He put his hands behind his back and Desmond began looping the rope around them.

“You’re in between rounds still, aren’t you?” Tony asked Addie.

“Yes.” She glanced at me. “I told them there might be an antidote? Or something to make him better?”

Desmond tightened the ropes on Callum’s wrists and moved down to bind his ankles. “There is one. We don’t have it, though.”

“Who has it?” I asked. “Is it at HARC?”

“Do you want to sit?” Tony asked, gesturing to the kitchen table. “Do you want some water or coffee or something?”

I paused. What was wrong with these humans? They seriously wanted to have water and coffee with a bunch of Reboots?

Addie started toward the table but I wasn’t leaving Callum tied up on the floor by himself while I had a cup of coffee. I sat down next to him and he gave me a small smile.

“I just want to know how to get the antidote.” I crossed my legs and met Tony’s eyes.

He actually looked sad for a moment and his sympathy made me uncomfortable. I didn’t know how to handle that look from most people, much less a human.

“It’s in the medical labs at HARC. There’s . . . no way. I’m sorry.”

There was no way for him.

“Don’t you have people on the inside?” Addie asked. “Like my dad?”

“I’m on the inside,” Tony said, leaning against the wall. “I’ve been a HARC guard for years.”

Adina gave him a confused look. “Where? I’ve never seen you.”

“I work up on the human floors, in the control rooms.” He turned to me. “But I can tell you there’s no way one of our guys can get the antidote out. We don’t have any people in medical and they search everyone before they leave.” He gave me that awful sympathetic look again. “I’m sorry.”

If he told me he was sorry one more time I’d snap his neck.

“That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll just have to break in and get it myself.”

Gabe laughed, cutting off when I turned to him. He swallowed. “Oh. You were serious.”

Tony and Desmond exchanged a confused look. Tony turned to me and seemed to consider his words carefully. “Hon, you were just in HARC for five years, yes?”

“Yes. Don’t call me hon.”

“My apologies. So if you were just there, you know the security. You
might
get in. And that is a very big
might
. But you would never get out.”

“What about in the middle of the night?” Addie asked. “Skeleton crew.”

“She’s still way outnumbered. And they’d just lock the doors. Cameras would see her.”

“We’ll find a way to cut the power,” I said.

“Backup generators,” Tony said. “They kick on in about a minute. You couldn’t do it in time.”

I clasped my hands together as a rock started to form in the bottom of my stomach. I didn’t care what they said. I was finding a way to get that antidote.

“A bomb,” I said. “What if we blew up a portion of the place? No one would miss it.”

Desmond snorted. “I do like that idea.”

“I don’t,” Addie said with a frown. “You might kill the Reboots.”

“Not to mention we’re a bit short on bombs here,” Tony said. “Listen, hon—sorry, Wren—if I thought there was a way you could do it, I would tell you. But there’s nothing you can do.” He let out a long sigh. “I mean, maybe if you had an army of Reboots. But failing that, I’ve got nothing.”

I froze, my eyes darting to Addie’s. We had the same thought.

“How many are in there?” I asked.

“There’s like a hundred and something.” She looked at Tony, her eyes flashing with excitement. “Right? A little over a hundred?”

“You mean in the Austin facility? Yeah, there’re about a hundred Reboots left there. But they’re not an army; they’re prisoners.”

I glanced at Callum, who had an eyebrow cocked, his expression disbelieving. I put my hand on his knee and gave it a gentle squeeze before facing Tony.

“Then we’ll go let them all out.”

I TURNED TO THE FRONT DOOR AS ANOTHER HUMAN ENTERED. They’d been coming in a steady stream for the last hour, and the kitchen was starting to get full. They were all gathered around Tony, and I could hear snatches of conversation as they debated whether or not to help me. They seemed torn between calling the plan “idiotic” or “genius.”

Tony and Desmond had stepped away as soon as I broached the idea of freeing all the Reboots in Austin. They’d had a heated argument in a back room, which ended with Desmond storming out, only to return with the first of the rebels.

The rebels were mostly men, but they varied in age. Some looked about sixteen or seventeen, like Gabe, while others were going gray. I’d thought Gabe was Tony’s son, but he didn’t call him Dad, and I’d heard Gabe tell Addie he grew up in the orphanage. I wasn’t sure what these people had in common, besides an obvious hatred of HARC and an odd urge to help Reboots.

They were a strange bunch.

Desmond caught me staring at them and his eyebrows lowered. He leaned against the kitchen wall, crossing one black boot over the other, and didn’t shy away when I met his gaze. He’d been the most vocal in his opposition to the rebels helping me—“I’m not dying for them” were his exact words—and I could see his point. Still, he was one of the humans in the room who didn’t seem the least bit scared of us, and I didn’t know what to make of that.

A short man stopped in front of me and Addie, planting his hands on his hips as he looked down at us.

“They took you while you were on assignment last night?” he asked Addie with half a smile.

“Yeah,” she said, shooting me a wary glance.

“Were you on First Street? Or was one of your cohorts?”

“Yeah,” she said in surprise. “I was sent there, but the assignment wasn’t home.”

The man chuckled. “Yep, that was me.” He lifted his arms in victory. “Slipped by ’em again!”

“You’re Henry?” Addie asked with a laugh.

“Sure am.” He grinned before heading into the kitchen to join the other rebels.

Addie watched him go. “These humans are weird.” She put her elbow on her knee and propped her head up on her hand. “But we can’t do it without them, you know.”

“We?” I asked, raising my eyebrows at her. We were still sitting on the floor behind the couch, Callum silent and motionless beside me.

“Please don’t tell me you think you can break into HARC all by yourself,” she said.

“I just didn’t realize you wanted to help.”

“My friends are all in there. Of course I want to help.” She squinted at the rebels in the kitchen. “I wish my dad had been able to come today. I would have liked to talk to him.”

“I doubt he could get out of Rosa.”

“Yeah.” She frowned slightly. “I can’t believe he works for HARC. I mean, I know he’s with the rebels, but still. It’s odd.”

“He didn’t last time you saw him?” I asked.

She snorted. “Definitely not. I haven’t seen him since I died six years ago, so I guess stuff changes, but he hated HARC. I died at home of KDH and after I Rebooted he kept me. Said he wasn’t letting HARC have me.”

“You’re kidding. For how long?” The parents who wanted to keep their Rebooted children were few and far between, although I wasn’t entirely surprised Leb was one of them.

“Just a couple weeks. I eventually got all this clarity and realized he couldn’t keep me hidden forever. They would have caught him. So one day when he went to work I just left. I went to the medical center and told them I was an orphan.”

That explained how Leb was able to work at HARC when he had a Reboot kid. They didn’t know.

A grunt from Callum made me turn. He was leaning against the back of the couch, staring vacantly at the wall. I wrapped my fingers around his arm and it took several seconds for him to blink and turn to look at me. His eyes didn’t focus quite right.

“You okay?” I asked. “Do you want some food?”

He didn’t respond. His eyes drifted from me to the humans and he snapped his teeth, letting out a low growl. I quickly pulled back my hand and scooted away when he began struggling against the ropes. The humans turned at the commotion and Tony stepped out of the crowd, hands on his hips.

“Why don’t you take him back to the bedroom?” he suggested. “He shouldn’t be in here with all of us.”

Addie grabbed for Callum’s bound feet and I hooked my arms under his shoulders. He twisted in our grasp and Addie took hurried steps toward the hallway at the back of the house, opening the second door on the right.

The room held nothing but a bed and a dresser. There was a small pile of clothes in the corner, and a few books on the dresser, but I didn’t see much Callum could damage if he thrashed around the room in an effort to escape the ropes.

We put him on the bed and Callum stopped struggling as I ran my hand up his forehead and into his hair. He gave me a faint smile before closing his eyes, and I wished I could crawl into the bed with him.

Addie slipped out of the room and Tony appeared in the doorway, gesturing for me to follow him. I stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind us.

“Here’s the thing,” he said quietly, taking a quick glance behind him at the humans in the kitchen. “You’ve got a lot of people in there who want to help you.”

I wouldn’t have guessed that from the conversations I’d heard, not to mention the way everyone was looking at me.

“But this sort of thing would be most effective if we had a couple weeks to plan,” he continued. “We could find the best way in and out, maybe try to get some of our people in key positions the night we do it. But . . .” He glanced at the bedroom door. “They don’t want me to tell you, but I don’t feel right about it.”

“Tell me what?” I asked, my stomach twisting into knots.

“The antidote has a window. If you wait too long, and he’s too far gone, it’s going to be useless.”

I swallowed down the lump in my throat, and when I spoke my voice sounded funny. “What’s the window? How long do I have?”

“You definitely don’t have a couple weeks,” he said. “Which is why they didn’t want me to tell you. I’d say you’re probably within the acceptable range, but you don’t have a lot of time. How long has he been like this?”

“He started feeling weird and shaking three days ago, I think. But he just started blacking out and losing it yesterday.”

Tony winced, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah. You don’t have a lot of time.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know. This is a new program; the medical team is still figuring it out themselves. They’re letting some of them run the course to see what happens, and it’s not good news. But I’d say . . . maybe not more than a day. You might have more, but it’s risky.”

I pressed a hand to the wall because the world had started to sway a little and I was worried I’d fall over. “So we’d need to go tonight.”

“Yes.”

I closed my eyes briefly. “What is the point of this? Is HARC trying to get rid of us?”

“Oh no. They need you guys. But they need you as aggressive, mindless soldiers. They’re not getting that, particularly from the Under-sixties. This is the solution. Or it will be, if they ever get it to work right.”

They needed more of me, basically. Me, with a lot less free will. I took a deep breath and nodded at Tony. “Okay. I’m going tonight, whether you help me or not. You can tell them that.”

A smile twitched the edge of his mouth. “Yeah, I figured.”

He turned to go and I grabbed a corner of his shirt, making him stop. I crossed my arms over my chest and tried my best not to look at him suspiciously, but I was pretty sure I failed.

“Why are you freeing Reboots?” I asked. “What’s wrong with you?”

He laughed, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Yes. You’ve been getting Reboots out and just letting them go, right?”

“We have been, yes. It was really the only solution.”

“Solution to what?”

“To getting rid of HARC. To actually have a shot at equal shares of food and medicine and everything HARC gives to the folks on the other side of the wall because they think we’re a lost cause. We have no chance against HARC with all of you on their side.”

“But HARC is keeping you safe,” I said, the mantra I’d heard a hundred times during my five years as a Reboot. “From us, from the viruses, from criminals . . .”

“Debatable,” Tony said, lifting an eyebrow. “They might have started out like that, but they’re certainly not doing that anymore. Most of those criminals”—he rolled his eyes when he said the word—“you went after were one of us. Or were just people who wanted to do something crazy like, I don’t know, keep their eight-year-old kid who died and came back to life. Everyone bought into this line HARC fed us about you all being these soulless creatures. Most humans have never even talked to a Reboot.”

He did have a point. The majority of humans only saw us when we were on assignment, when we were hunting them down. We were rarely allowed to say one word to them.

“Come on,” Tony said, jerking his head toward the kitchen. “If we’re going to do this tonight we need to start planning.”

I pushed open the bedroom door a sliver, but Callum was still, his eyes closed. I wanted to stay with him, but Tony was right. I couldn’t just bust into HARC and hope for the best. We needed a plan.