The Limit (25 page)

“Shh!” Paige’s mouse voice squeaked with anxiety. “You guys. She has a gun!”

Crab Woman didn’t say anything. She just sat, tight-lipped, staring at her computer.

“What are you going to do with us once everyone leaves?” I asked, digging the tips of my fingers into the hard cement floor beneath me. “You won’t be able to let us stay in the workhouse, since we’d tell the other kids the truth. You’re planning to ship us off somewhere, aren’t you—to some juvenile detention center where everyone will think every word we speak is a lie.”

“That’s not fair!” said Jeffery.

Paige cried more loudly next to me.

“I bet they’ll split us up, too,” I said. “They’ll keep us in solitary confinement for a while, until they break us down so hard we won’t dare try to get our story out.”

“Dude, that’s so twisted!”

“That’s the best-case scenario. What do you bet a couple of us never make it to that juvie center?” I was getting so mad, the horror of what I was saying didn’t even register. “While we’re traveling there, one or more of us will be involved in some sort of tragic accident.”

The way Crab Woman sat watching her computer and completely ignoring us made me even angrier.

“No.” Paige’s soft voice came out surprisingly calm. “All they have to do is force us to stare at the lower-floor computers.”

Crab Woman shot a quick glance at us,
shifted slightly in her seat, and then refocused her attention on her computer. A wave of ice water gushed through my body. Paige was right. Crab Woman and Honey Lady planned to turn us into living zombies. We’d end up like Brock Reginald.

Looking up at Crab Woman, I slowly shook my head from side to side.

She sneaked another look at us. “Don’t worry. Everything is going to turn out just fine.”

“Fine for you, maybe!” I yelled. “But what about us?” The muscles in my legs tensed. It was all I could do to keep myself from launching across the room and attacking her.

She’d picked up the gun, though, and held it pointed at us. “Just sit still. Be quiet. All of you!”

Frustration ate me up from the inside. Help stood only a few dozen feet away, on the front lawn of this building, yet we were powerless to do anything other than sit and wait for our brains to get turned into mush.

CRAB WOMAN TURNED BACK TO THE
laptop screen, her fingers remaining tightly curled around the gun—although she lowered it to her lap.

She tapped a few buttons to turn up the volume of Kent Kearsley’s voice. “You’re with us live as authorities are entering the building. What we’re showing you now is the director of this facility, Sharlene Smoot, as she is opening the front doors and letting a small group of investigators inside.”

Let the lying begin.
Honey Lady could do it too. She’d sweet-talk the investigators onto her side within minutes.

“And now the doors slide shut,” said Kent Kearsley. “We will keep you informed of any further developments the instant they happen.”

Long minutes ticked away with no new reported developments. Crab Woman continued to watch, her eyes beginning to glaze over and her mouth stretching into a wide yawn every so often. Coop
shoulder-nudged me. We sat silently, watching as her head sank forward and then jerked back up fast. Clearing her throat, Crab Woman adjusted herself to sit up straight in her chair. With the gun lying across her thighs, she turned to the laptop. She must have brought up some sort of card game, because she kept mouthing words like “red ace” and “black seven.”

The game couldn’t have been much of a challenge. Her eyes began to droop.
Fall asleep! Come on!
Her head slid forward until her chin rested on her chest. I rolled onto the balls of my feet, in a crouch, ready to spring across the room and knock that gun out of her lap. Crab Woman’s head jerked up again. Still holding the gun, she popped out of the chair, shaking her head and wiggling her arms. In one sharp movement she turned to the shelves of overflow technology. Her eyes scanned them and fixed on a box on a middle shelf. A wide smile spread across her face. She reached into the box and brought out a squat tube with a mouthpiece, just like an asthma inhaler except . . .
Oh, no. Not that!
She pressed a few buttons, adjusting the dosage, brought the tube to her mouth, and sucked in a deep breath. It was a caffeine inhaler. I sank back down the couple of inches to the floor. Figures the workhouse would keep a supply of caffeine inhalers on-site. I didn’t think any of the adults here ever slept.

Crab Woman stretched and smiled even more broadly. She’d never fall asleep now. We had about two minutes before the caffeine kicked in. Two minutes before she became so totally aware and alert that we’d never be able to pull anything over on her.

“Paige,” I whispered. “Go tell her you need to use the bathroom. Make it sound like an emergency.”

“She’s got a gun!” Paige’s wobbly voice whispered back.

“No, look. She just set it down on the table. Start talking before you even get up. But get close to her. Just do it. You’ll be fine.”

Without questioning me further, Paige rose to her feet, using my shoulder to push herself up.

“Excuse me?” said Paige, barely loud enough for Crab Woman to hear. “I hate to bother you, but I really need a restroom.”

Coop spoke close to my ear. “What’s up, bro?”

“We’re the kings of the distraction technique. Remember?” I got my legs under me.

Crab Woman watched Paige closely as she inched toward the little table in the corner. “You can hold it,” her gravelly voice said.

“No, I can’t,” said Paige.

“What’s the plan?” asked Jeffery.

“There is no plan,” I whispered. “We’re just going to go.”

“Sit back down,” said Crab Woman to Paige. Without getting up Coop, Jeffery, and I slid toward the shelves.

“You don’t understand.” Paige stood within a few feet of Crab Woman now, crossing her legs and bouncing up and down. “I drank three big cups of orange juice for breakfast.”

Paige was a good actress. I found myself feeling bad for her.

Crab Woman’s lips crinkled. I could tell she was perplexed. She couldn’t let Paige out, but she also didn’t want a smelly mess locked up with us in this storage room for who knew how many more hours. Crab Woman’s attention was completely focused on Paige. That made us boys invisible. Staying as low to the floor as possible, Coop, Jeffery, and I darted around the first row of shelves. We crawled toward the other end of the room, where Paige stood with Crab Woman. At the end of the row, we slowly climbed to our feet. Coop carefully pulled a long green extension cord off a shelf, flashing me his goofy smile as he unwound it in his hands.

“Please! I’ll only be a minute.” Paige sounded desperate. “I’ll come right back. I promise. You can even come with me, if you want.”

“I can’t leave the others . . . hey!” Crab Woman had noticed. She’d probably looked to where we’d been sitting when she mentioned us. We jumped on the fleeting
moment of surprise. Jeffery reached through the open shelf and pushed a clunky monitor off the other side. Crab Woman screeched as shattered glass skittered across the floor. Coop and I sprang out from around the end of the shelf in time to see Paige knock the gun across the table an instant before Crab Woman grabbed it. Paige let out little
erp
s and squeals as she pushed the gun as far from Crab Woman as possible, first with her hand and then across the floor with her foot.

At the exact moment Crab Woman began to spring from her chair, I shoved her back into it, hard. Coop was quick to wrap the extension cord tight around her upper body. Jeffery pushed a couple more monitors off the shelf for good measure. One of them smashed down on top of the gun.

Jeffery’s face peered out from behind the far end of the row of shelves in time to see Coop and me tie off the cord. A smile jumped on his face, and he crossed the room to join the rest of us. “Now what?”

Paige tried the door handle. “We’re still locked in.”

“And you’ll
stay
locked in.” Crab Woman’s voice snapped.

“She opened it with an eye scan,” I said.

Instantly Crab Woman clamped her eyes tightly shut.

“Better tie down her legs, too,” said Coop. “I don’t want to get kicked.”

“Just stay back from her,” said Jeffery.

“We can’t,” said Paige. She bent down to hold one of Crab Woman’s legs tight to the chair. I held the other one, and Coop secured her with another long extension cord.

“Ready?” I asked Coop as I grabbed the chair underneath the seat.

“Let me help!” said Jeffery, stepping behind the chair. “We’re forcing her to get the eye scan, huh? Cool! But she entered a code into the keypad first.”

“I’ve got it,” said Paige. Good thing most Top Floors have amazing memories. Paige punched the code into the keypad as the guys and I lifted Crab Woman and her chair off the floor. Her mouth was squeezed as tightly closed as her eyes, but little protesting sounds still leaked out of her.

Grunting, we carried the chair a couple of feet to the scanner by the door.

“Up!” I said.

Bending our knees, we strained and got her eyes to the right height, grateful Crab Woman wasn’t very big.

“Paige!” I called. “Hurry!”

Paige reached around Coop and pried Crab Woman’s eye open, holding it long enough for the laser to scan it.

Swoosh.

The door opened. Freedom.

•   •   •

Crab Woman’s screams chased us until we closed the door to the emergency stairs. Our running footsteps boomed like thunder in the stairwell.

A man in a dark suit stood by Crab Woman’s desk, and another one sat working at her computer.

“We know the truth!” I yelled before we had even crossed the lobby. “The flash drive is real!”

The standing man narrowed his eyes, looking hard at us. “Who are you? What do you know about the flash drive?”

“We’re the ones who found the information. We made the download and smuggled it out.” He had to believe us.
Please—everyone can’t already be totally brainwashed by Honey Lady’s lies.

“You four made the flash drive?” he asked.

“Yes!” we all yelled at the same time.

“Hold on one second.” He lifted a two-way communication device to his mouth. “Peterson? Chault here. Yeah, I’ve got four kids with me who claim they’re responsible for the flash drive.”

A static-laced voice answered over the device. “Four? Three boys and a girl?”

“Affirmative.”

“That’s odd.” The speaker didn’t click off, but he was no longer talking to our lobby
man. “Sharlene, come over for a moment, please.” We heard some mumbled, laughing voices in the background. Honey Lady had schmoozed them all good. They were all on a friendly, first-name basis now, by the sound of it. Every last agent in this building had turned to cookie dough in her hands. “I thought you said the four in question were unavailable for interviews. You said they’d escaped early this morning and run away. We have a team out searching the city for them.”

Our lobby agent spoke. “Do you want me to send them back to Sharlene’s office?”

“Wait. I’ll come get them.” The transmission cut out. A few minutes later Agent Peterson walked out of the hall behind Crab Woman’s desk. With a sharp twitch of his hand he signaled us to follow him.

Half a dozen agents were wandering around the massive office Agent Peterson escorted us into.

“Where’s Honey Lady?” I asked.

Coop jabbed me in the side. “Smoot.”

“Where’s Miss Smoot?”

Peterson did a quick scan of the room. “Yes, where is Sharlene?”

“I thought she went with you,” said a female agent.

“No,” said Peterson. “Odd that she’d disappear right when I need her to confront our four key witnesses—in fact, now that I think about it, how did you four get inside? We have the perimeter of this building secured,
and I haven’t received a report of anyone trying to get in.”

“We never left!” I said. “We were being held hostage, hidden away in the basement. She didn’t want us to talk to you.”

“But why—if you are the pranksters, I’d think she’d want to see you punished. Unless . . .”

“Unless we’re telling the truth. The evidence on the flash drive is real!”

Peterson turned to another agent. “Find Smoot. Bring her back here. Now!”

The second agent nodded. “We’ll find her. It’s not like she can go anywhere. Like you just said, we’ve got the building surrounded.”

“Where does she think she can hide?” said Peterson. “Stupid of her to try.”

I noticed Jeffery edge his way behind the big desk in the middle of the room. He pulled out a drawer and rummaged inside before moving on to the next drawer. If one of the agents noticed, he could get in trouble. I tried to catch his eye, to signal him to knock it off, but he never looked up.

I eased over to the desk. “Jeffery, what are you doing?”

“I’m looking for my keys. I don’t want them to get confiscated when this room is sealed off as evidence.”

“Keys?”

“My PMC. Remember? Miss Smoot wouldn’t let me keep my own keys.”

Jeffery and I locked eyes over the desk.

“Your PMC.”

“She’s going to steal it!” said Jeffery.