Willful Machines (10 page)

A
fter Nico disappeared into his room, we tried to get Nevermore back on her feet, but she wouldn't budge. A few minutes later she lost power altogether. Curfew had already passed, so we couldn't run outside to get her. I thought about asking Ray if he'd leave his post to rescue her, but then I decided against it. I'd asked him to bend enough rules for one night, and he still had to help Bex get back to the girls' wing. Nevermore could survive for one night out in the open. I'd grab her first thing in the morning and assess the damage then.

But how much did I care that I'd potentially destroyed the machine I'd slaved over for months? Pretty much not at all. Once Bex had gone, I lay on my bed with my heart singing corny pop songs and my puck splashing the messages Nico had just sent across my ceiling. As it turned out, he
had
, in fact, said yes. The two of us had a date, or something, for tomorrow night.

In robotics the next day I discovered I hadn't damaged Nevermore so badly after all. Dr. Singh, on one of her rare
forays away from her smoking corner, trundled up to me a few minutes into class. “What happened to her?” she rasped. “She's soaking wet.”

“I crashed her last night, and then she wouldn't get up again, so I had to leave her outside until morning.”

“Not ruined, I hope.”

“Her battery was dislodged. An easy fix. I've just about got it.”

She nodded. Her face appeared even grayer than usual today. Circles darkened the undersides of her eyes. She'd looked the same a month ago, after the attack on the Statue of Liberty. And now the consciousness she'd created had just announced she'd strike again in two days' time. More than ever, I hoped Bex wouldn't follow through on her threat to hound Dr. Singh for an interview.

I closed Nevermore's hinged rib cage, pulled her feathered skin back together, and set her on the worktable. “Wake up, Nevermore.”

The bird twitched a few times as she rebooted. Then she sprang to life.

“Good work.” Dr. Singh turned her wheelchair around. “But maybe you should rethink those after-dark test flights.” She rolled away.

After reestablishing my puck's network connection with Nevermore, I cleared some space on my worktable, and my puck projected her video feed there. As the robot's gaze darted from spot to spot, the image on the table switched from the
concrete floor to the ear of the kid working next to me to the mucky, leaf-strewn glass ceiling.

So far so good. Now to test the controls. I moved my hand to the right.

The machine didn't respond. She just stayed in idle mode, her body making those small, nervous movements that gave her the appearance of a real raven.

“Nevermore, extend your wings.”

Again, the bird ignored me.

I kept on trying gestures and verbal instructions. None of them worked. Maybe something else had broken inside her last night, something I'd missed.

Then, when I'd almost run out of commands, I paused. The projection on the worktable had come to rest on one thing: me. I looked over at Nevermore. She'd stopped her birdlike movements. Her eyes, shiny like two polished black pebbles, had fastened on my face. I stood up from my stool. The eyes followed me. A shiver scurried down my back.

“Go to sleep, Nevermore.”

She didn't obey my command. She just watched me. Even though her birdlike behavior had stopped, she somehow seemed more alive now than ever.

The next second was an explosion of noise and black feathers.

Nevermore flew at me. I threw my arms in front of my face. Her talons hooked into my blazer and shirt, piercing my skin,
as she bit my wrist hard. I stumbled backward, toppled over a worktable, and landed on it with a crash. I flailed at Nevermore, but none of my swings seemed to connect. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. The sharp edges of tools and robot components stabbed into my back. Sounds filled my ears: the thrashing of Nevermore's wings and, farther away, the clatter of equipment falling to the floor, the shouts of other students.

Then,
THWACK.
Nevermore was gone. My lungs started working again. I unclenched my eyes. Trumbull stood over me, a gun in one hand, his other clenched in a fist. The raven skidded across the concrete floor, the other students falling over themselves to get out of her way.

“Are you all right, sir?”

I couldn't find breath to answer. My eyes jumped from point to point, just like my robot's had a few moments ago. I saw a bright slash of red on my wrist. The other kids crawling under the worktables for cover. Nevermore lying near the far wall, a pile of black feathers. Dr. Singh in her wheelchair in the middle of the room, her eyes on the raven, her gray face stunned into slackness. I knew what she must be thinking:
Not again.

“Sir! Are you all right?”

Inside my blazer, Gremlin had grown warm and started to purr. It was part of his program: whenever my heart rate rose above a certain level, he did that to comfort me.

“Don't ‘sir' me,” I panted.

Across the room, Nevermore still lay in the same spot on the floor. But now her shiny eyes had opened again.

“Trumbull!”

Another rush of black wings. Nevermore launched herself at me. I had no doubt now: I was her target. Trumbull vaulted over the table, between me and the robot, and met her with a second blow. This one didn't knock her down, though. She circled up to the glass ceiling as if regrouping for another strike.

Trumbull grabbed me by my lapels and shoved me under the worktable, where two other students already huddled. “Everybody stay down!” he roared.

Dr. Singh didn't seem to hear him. She was still out in the open, still watching Nevermore with a dull expression on her face.

A clap jolted the room: Trumbull's gun. One of the panes of glass in the ceiling shattered. Shards rained down, splashing the floor and the tables and even Dr. Singh. She barely blinked. Meanwhile, Nevermore pulled in her wings and spiraled toward the floor. She banked hard and came at us low and fast—maybe calculating that staying close to the bystanders in the room would keep Trumbull from firing his gun again.

It didn't. He let off a second shot. Nevermore dodged to the side. The bullet hissed past Dr. Singh and shattered another pane of glass, this one in the far wall. I knew Trumbull's job description: to protect my life, period. If anyone else got caught
in the line of fire while he did what he had to do to keep me safe, he'd consider that an unfortunate but acceptable loss.

Nevermore wheeled around for another strike. Trumbull took aim. I lunged out from under the table, sprinted across the room, and tackled Dr. Singh, wheelchair and all. A third blast seemed to explode inches above our heads. Her chair tipped and crashed, spilling her onto the concrete. The two of us sprawled side by side, shards of glass crunching underneath us.

“What the hell are you doing, sir?” Trumbull bellowed. “I said stay down!”

The raven was still bearing down on me. Three more shots erupted in quick succession. I threw my arms over my head.

But the collision never came. At the very last second Nevermore veered upward, slotted herself through the hole in the glass ceiling, and became just another bird in the sky.

Trumbull knelt down next to me. “Are you hurt, sir?”

I brought my hand to my heaving chest. “I don't think so.”

“I'll help you up.”

“No, I'm okay,” I panted. “Help Dr. Singh.”

I staggered to my feet, doing my best to stay clear of the broken glass, and straightened my glasses. Trumbull righted Dr. Singh's wheelchair and lifted her into it. A second Secret Service agent, the one who patrolled the school grounds, had arrived by then. He helped too. The other kids had started crawling out from under the worktables, all of them with crooked ties and “what the hell just happened” expressions on their faces.

“I assume you didn't program your robot to do that,” Trumbull said, his voice back to its regular low growl.

I shook my head.

“Do you have any idea why that happened?”

“I don't know. It was like somebody else was controlling her.”

“Dr. Singh?” Trumbull turned to her. “Is it possible someone hacked the robot over the local network?”

She jerked her hand away from her dancing-god pendant, fumbled for her pack of Camels, cleared her throat. “It's possible, I suppose,” she croaked. “I'll check the network log for signs of unusual activity. It would help us even more if we could locate the machine itself and do an examination.”

Frowning, Trumbull regarded the hole in the ceiling through his sunglasses. “Let me know if you find anything, ma'am.” He turned away to mutter into his puck. Already I regretted bringing up the possibility of somebody else taking over Nevermore. Now Trumbull would go way overboard, tightening security, watching me like a hawk, making my life a living hell. Sure, what had just happened had freaked me out plenty, but as the initial shock started to wear off, my mind went straight to one crucial question: Would I still get to see Nico tonight?

Trumbull whisked me back to my room. I took my second shower of the day and put on fresh clothes. All the while, I messaged back and forth with Bex. News of the attack had spread like wildfire through the school. She'd started barraging me
with messages seconds after I'd stepped through my door.

It was Charlotte
, she said, once I'd given her a recap.
I just know it. Remember the threats she made yesterday? It's retaliation for that stupid amendment! It has to be!

I wasn't so sure, though. Yesterday's message had promised an act of retribution even more dramatic than the Statue of Liberty attack. Causing one small robot to bite the First Son's wrist—that didn't seem nearly splashy enough. And anyway, it was supposed to happen on Thursday, which was still two days away.

After I'd cleaned myself up, Trumbull sat me down for a more comprehensive grilling. He wanted to know all about Nevermore and what might've made her go psycho like that. By then he'd called in a special task force to search for her, but so far they'd had no luck. I'd tried to connect with her on my puck again too, but she'd vanished from the network. This time when I talked to Trumbull, I tried to downplay the theory that someone had hijacked Nevermore. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if maybe it
had
just been a malfunction. I came across stories on the Supernet every day about machines that glitched in similarly spectacular ways.

The interrogation lasted until well after the start of lunch. For the first time ever, I'd actually been looking forward to English, and I'd missed it.

“I'll have someone bring up a tray from the dining hall,” Trumbull said when he'd finished.

“Uh-uh.” I stood. “I'm going to the dining hall myself, like a normal person.”

“Sir—”

“Don't call me that.”

“It isn't safe for you to leave right now.”

I pointed at the window. “You expect me to stay here and stare at a stone wall for the rest of the day?”

“You were just attacked—”

“I already explained to you, Trumbull: we don't even know it
was
an attack. It could've just been a weird bug.”

“Until we're certain, we have to assume the worst. Especially with all the other terrorist activity lately.”

“But even assuming the worst, am I really going to be that much safer here than in another part of the exact same building? And isn't my education important? Just let me go to my classes. Please.”

He crossed his gigantic arms over his gigantic chest and fixed me with that silent stare of his for about ten seconds. “All right. No leaving the building, though.”

That I could deal with. But if he made me miss the rest of my classes today, I'd have no chance at all of meeting up with Nico tonight.

Most kids had already sat down with their food by the time I reached the dining hall. I grabbed a tray, loaded it with a few of the less repulsive options, and scanned the room. At the corner table where Nico, Bex, and I had sat yesterday, I spotted
a mountain of food and, behind it, a huge mass of curly bronze hair. I headed over, my heart thumping. It appeared Nico had taken a double helping of today's special: Pimiento and Spam Casserole. Bex sat across from him, picking at her undressed salad and watching him with a troubled expression.

“You made it,” Nico said, the bright red pimiento stuck between his teeth only slightly diminishing the wattage of his grin. “I was hoping.”

Bex grabbed my wrist to inspect my battle wound. “I still can't believe what happened. Nobody else can either. You're the talk of the school, you know.”

I glanced around the dining hall. Sure enough, five different people hurried to look away as soon as I turned in their direction.

“What's everybody saying?” I asked.

“Just that your robot went berserk and tried to kill you.”

“
And
that you saved Dr. Singh's life,” Nico added. “The guy sitting next to me last period was messaging with one of the kids who was there. It sounded pretty intense.”

Bex frowned at me. “You didn't tell me that part. Is it true?”

“I don't know if I saved her life exactly.” In fact, up until then, I'd thought of that part of the story as more embarrassing than anything else—sort of like my misguided attempt to rescue Nico yesterday. It hadn't even occurred to me that people might find my actions courageous. I shrugged and modulated my voice for maximum modesty. “But, yeah, I guess I sort of pushed her out of the line of fire.”

“You realize, of course, this makes you a hero,” Nico said.

“No, it doesn't.” By then my ears had turned scorching hot. I'd always thought of myself more as the opposite of a hero. Not a coward, exactly. Just too indecisive and analytical and locked inside my own head to do anything remotely bold enough to merit hero status. If anything, it was Nico who struck me as the hero type.