Also why, after six weeks flat on my back with very little food and a burst of intense physical activity, I’m not even out of breath.
I insert the tiny pellet from my neck into Jumbo’s. Track me now, Commander Asshole.
Fresh jumpsuit from the stack under the sink. Shoes: Claire’s feet are too small; Jumbo’s much too large. I’ll work on shoes later. The big kid’s leather jacket might come in handy, though. The jacket hangs on me like a blanket, but I like the extra room in the sleeves.
There’s something I’m forgetting. I glance around the small room. The kill switch, that’s it. The screen got cracked in the melee, but the device still works. A number glows above the flashing green button. My number. I swipe my thumb over the display and the screen fills with numbers, hundreds of sequences representing every recruit on the base. I swipe again to return to my number, tap on it, and a map pops up showing my implant’s precise location. I zoom out and the screen fills with tiny, glowing green dots: the location of every implanted soldier in the entire base. Jackpot.
And checkmate. With a swipe of my thumb and a tap of my finger, I can highlight all the numbers. The button on the bottom of the device will light up. A final tap and every recruit neutralized, gone. I can practically stroll out.
I can—if I’m willing to step over several hundred corpses of innocent human beings, kids who are no less victims than I am, whose sole crime is the sin of hope. If the wage of sin is death, then virtue is a vice now: A defenseless, starving child lost in a wheat field is given shelter. A wounded soldier cries out for help behind a row of beer coolers. A little girl shot by mistake is delivered to her enemies in order to save her.
And I don’t know which is more inhuman: the alien beings that created this new world or the human being who considers, if only for an instant, pressing the green button.
Three large clumps of stationary dots hover on the right side of the screen: the sleeping. A dozen isolated individuals on the periphery: sentries. Two in the middle: mine in Jumbo’s neck, his in my mouth. Another three or four very close, on the same floor: the sick and injured. One floor down, the ICU, where only one green sphere glows. So: barracks, observation posts, hospital. A couple of the sentry dots are manning the magazine building. I won’t have to guess which two. I’ll know in a few minutes.
Come on, Razor, let’s go. I’ve got one last promise to keep.
Watching the gusher pour from the broken pipe.
69
“DO YOU PRAY?” Razor asked me after an exhausting night of chaseball, while he packed up the game board and pieces.
I shook my head. “Do you?”
“Damn right I do.” Nodding his head emphatically. “No atheists in foxholes.”
“My father was one.”
“A foxhole?”
“An atheist.”
“I know that, Ringer.”
“How did you know my father was an atheist?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then why did you ask if he was a foxhole?”
“I didn’t. It was a freaking—” He smiled. “Oh, I get it. I know what you’re doing. The disturbing thing to me is why. Like you’re not trying to be funny but trying to prove how superior you are. Or think you are. You’re not either. Funny or superior. Why don’t you pray?”
“I don’t like putting God on the spot.”
He picked up the queen and examined her face. “You ever checked her out? She is one scary-looking she-bitch.”
“I think she looks regal.”
“She looks like my third-grade teacher, a lot of man and very little wo.”
“What?”
“You know: heavy on the male, light on the fe.”
“She’s just fierce. A warrior queen.”
“My third-grade teacher?” He studied my face. Waiting. Waiting. “Sorry, tried that joke once. Epic fail.” He placed the piece in the box. “My grandma belonged to a prayer circle. You know what a prayer circle is?”
“Yes.”
“Really? I thought you were an atheist.”
“My father was an atheist. And why couldn’t an atheist know what a prayer circle is? Religious people know about evolution.”
“I know what it is. I’ve got it,” he said thoughtfully, dark, intense eyes still on my face. “You were, like, five or six and some relative remarked in a very positive way what a serious little girl you were, and from then on, you thought seriousness was attractive.”
“What happened in the prayer circle?” Attempting to get him back on track.
“Ha! So you don’t know what it is!” He set the box down and scooched farther onto the bed. His butt now touching my thigh. I eased my leg away. Subtly, I hoped. “I’ll tell you what happened. My grandma’s dog got sick. One of those purse dogs that bites everybody and lives about twenty-five years, biting people. So her petition had to do with God saving that mean little dog so it could bite more people. And half the old ladies in her group agreed and half didn’t, I’m not sure why, I mean a God who doesn’t like dogs wouldn’t be God, but anyway, there was this big debate about wasted prayer, which became an argument about if there could be such a thing as wasted prayer, which turned into a fight about the Holocaust. So in five minutes it went from a nippy old purse dog to the Holocaust.”
“So what happened? Did they pray for the dog?”
“No, they prayed for the souls of the Holocaust. Then the next day the dog died.” And now he was nodding thoughtfully. “Grandma prayed for him. Prayed every night. Told all us grandkids to pray, too. So I prayed for a dog that terrorized and hated me and gave me this.” He swung his leg onto the bed and pulled up his pants to expose his calf. “See the scar?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Well, it’s there.” He pushed down the pants leg but kept his foot on the bed. “So after it died, I said to Grandma, ‘I prayed really hard and Flubby still died. Does God hate me?’”
“What did she say?”
“Some BS about God wanting Flubby in heaven, which was impossible for my six-year-old brain to process. There are nippy old purse dogs in heaven? Isn’t heaven supposed to be a nice place? It bothered me for a long time. Like, every night, while I said my prayers, I couldn’t help but wonder if I even wanted to go to heaven and spend eternity with Flubby. So I decided he must be in hell. Otherwise, theology falls apart.”
He wrapped his long arms around his upraised knee, where he rested his chin and stared into space. He was back in a time when a little boy’s questions about prayer and God and heaven still mattered.
“I broke a cup once,” he went on. “Playing around in Mom’s china cabinet, part of her wedding set, this dainty little cup from a tea set. Didn’t totally break it. Dropped it on the floor and it cracked.”
“The floor?”
“No, not the floor. The cu—” His eyes widened in shock. “Did you just make the same . . . ?”
I shook my head. He pointed his finger at me. “Naw, I caught you! A moment of lighthearted levity from Ringer the warrior queen!”
“I joke all the time.”
“Right. But they’re so subtle that only smart people get them.”
“The cup,” I prodded him.
“So I’ve cracked Mom’s precious china. I put it back in the cabinet, turning its cracked side toward the back so maybe she won’t notice, even though I know it’s only a matter of time before she does and I’m dead meat. Know where I turn for help?”
I didn’t have to think hard. I knew where the story was going. “God.”
“God. I prayed for God to keep Mom away from that cup. Like, for the rest of her life. Or at least until I moved away to college. Then I prayed that he could heal the cup. He’s God, right? He can heal people—what’s a tiny freaking made-in-China cup? That was the optimal solution and that’s what he’s all about, optimal solutio
ns.”
“She found the cup.”
“You bet your ass she found the cup.”
“I’m surprised you still pray. After Flubby and the cup.”
He shook his head. “Not the point.”
“There’s a point?”
“If you’d let me finish the story—yes, there is a point. Here it is: After she found the cup and before I knew she’d found it, she replaced it. She ordered a new cup and threw away the old one. One Saturday morning—I guess I’d been praying for about a month—I went to the cabinet to prove the prayer circle wrong about wasted prayer, and I saw it.”
“The new cup,” I said. Razor nodded. “But you didn’t know your mom replaced it.”
He threw his hands into the air. “It’s a fucking miracle! What’s cracked has been uncracked! The broken made whole! God exists! I nearly crapped my pants.”
“The cup was healed,” I said slowly.
His dark eyes dug deep into mine. His hand fell to my knee. A squeeze. Then a tap.
Yes.
70
IN THE BATHROOM, the gush becomes a stream, the stream becomes a trickle, the trickle becomes an anemic dribble. The water slows and my heart quickens. My paranoia was getting the better of me. A decade passed while I waited for the water to be cut off: the go signal from Razor.
The hall outside is deserted. I already know that thanks to Claire’s tracking device. I also know exactly where I’m going.
Stairs. One flight down. One last promise. I pause long enough on the landing to slip Jumbo’s sidearm into the jacket pocket.
Then I slam through the door and hit the hall running. Straight ahead is the nurses’ station. I sprint straight toward it. The nurse pops out of her chair.
“Take cover!” I shout. “It’s going to blow!”
I swerve past the counter and race toward the swinging doors that lead to the ward.
“Hey!” she shouts. “You can’t go back there!”
Any day now, Razor.
She hits the lockdown button on her desk. It doesn’t matter. I hurtle into the doors at full speed and smash both off their hinges.
“Freeze!” she screams.
The entire length of the hallway remains; I won’t make it. I’ve been enhanced, but I can’t outrun a bullet. I skitter to a halt.
Razor, I’m serious. Now would be a very good time.
“Hands on your head! Now.” Struggling to catch her breath. “Good job. Now walk toward me, backward. Slow. Very slow, or I swear to God I’ll shoot you.”
I obey, shuffling toward the sound of her voice. She orders me to stop. I stop. I’m still, but the mechanisms inside me aren’t. Her position is fixed: I don’t have to see her to know exactly where she’s standing. The hub’s dispatched the managers of my muscular and nervous systems to execute the directive when called upon. I won’t have to think when the time comes. The hub will take over.
But I won’t owe my life entirely to the 12th System: It was my idea to grab Jumbo’s jacket.
And that reminds me:
“Shoes,” I murmur.
“What did you say?” Her voice is quivering.
“I need shoes. What size are you?”
“Huh?”
At the speed of light the hub’s signal fires. My body doesn’t move quite that fast, but double the speed that is probably necessary.
Right hand jams into Jumbo’s baggy sleeve, where I slipped the ten-inch knife, pivot to the left, then throw.
And down she goes.
I pull the knife from her neck, slide the bloody blade back into the left sleeve of the jacket, and check out her shoes. A pair of those white, thick-soled nurse’s shoes. A half size too big, but they’ll work.
At the end of the hallway, I step into the last room on the right. It’s dark, but my eyes have been enhanced: I can see her clearly in the bed, fast asleep. Or doped. I’ll have to determine which.
“Teacup? It’s me. Ringer.”
The thick, dark lashes flutter. I’m so jacked up by this point, I swear I can hear the tiny hairs thrumming the air.
She whispers something without opening her eyes. Too soft for the unenhanced to hear, but the auditory bots transmit the information to the hub, which relays it to the inferior colliculus, the hearing center of my brain.
“You’re dead.”
“Not anymore. And neither are you.”
71
THE WINDOW BESIDE the bed jiggles in its frame. The floor quivers. Bright orange light floods the room, winks out, then an earsplitting roar and a fine mist of plaster floating down from the ceiling. The sequence repeats. Then again. Then again.
Razor’s hit the magazine building.
“Teacup, we have to go.” I slide one hand behind her head and lift gently.
“Go where?”
“As far as we can.”
Bracing the back of her head with one hand, I hit her in the forehead with the heel of the other. The precise amount of force, no more, no less. Her body goes limp. I heave her out of the bed. Another blast as the ordnance in the magazine continues to detonate. I kick out the window. Bitter cold air crashes into the room. I sit on the sill facing the bed, cradling Teacup against my chest. My intent alerts the hub: I’m two stories above the ground. Reinforcements race to the bones and tendons in my feet, ankles, shins, knees, and pelvis.
We deploy.
I flip as we drop, like a cat falling off a countertop. We land safely, like a cat, except Teacup’s head bounces up on impact and smacks me hard under the chin. In front of us the hospital. Behind us the blazing ammunition storehouse. And to our right, exactly where Razor said it would be, the black Dodge M882.
I throw open the door, shove Teacup into the passenger seat, jump behind the wheel, and take off across the parking lot, cutting hard to the left to make the turn north toward the airfield. A siren screams. Floodlights blare. In the rearview mirrors, emergency vehicles race toward the burning magazine. The fire brigade will have a hard time of it since someone has shut down the pumping station.
Another hard left, and now straight ahead are the hulking bodies of the Black Hawks, glistening like the bodies of black beetles in the harsh light of the floods. I grip the wheel hard and take a deep breath. This is the trickiest part. If Razor couldn’t kidnap a pilot, we’re all screwed.
A hundred yards away, I see someone jump from one of the choppers’ holds. He’s wearing a heavy parka and toting an assault rifle. His face is partially obscured by the hood, but I’d know that smile anywhere.
I hop from the M882.
And Razor says, “Hi.”
“Where’s the pilot?” I ask.
He jerks his head toward the cockpit. “I got mine. Where’s yours?”
I pull Teacup from the truck and jump inside the chopper. A guy wearing nothing but a drab green T-shirt and a matching pair of boxer shorts sits behind the controls. Razor slides into the copilot seat beside him.
“Fire her up, Lieutenant Bob.” Razor grins at the pilot. “Oh. Manners. Ringer, Lieutenant Bob. Lieutenant Bob, Ringer.”
“There’s no way this is going to work,” Lieutenant Bob says. “They’ll come after us hard.”
“Yeah? What’s this?” Razor holds up a mass of tangled electrical wire.
The pilot shakes his head. So cold, his lips are turning blue. “I don’t know.”
“Neither do I, but I’m guessing they’re very important for the proper operation of a helicopter.”
“You don’t understand . . .”
Razor leans toward him and all his playfulness is gone. His deep-set eyes burn as if backlit and the coiled force I sensed from the beginning springs free with such ferocity, I actually flinch.
“Listen to me, you alien sonofabitch, you fire this mother-effing stick buddy up ASAP or I’m—”
The pilot shoves his hands into his lap and stares straight ahead. After getting one into the chopper undetected, my biggest concern was getting a pilot to cooperate. I lean forward, grab Bob by the wrist, and bend his pinky finger backward.
“I’ll break it,” I promise him.
“Go ahead!”
I break it. His teeth clamp down on his bottom lip. His legs jerk. His eyes swim with tears. That shouldn’t happen. I press my fingers against the back of his neck, then turn to Razor.
“He’s implanted. He isn’t one of them.”
“Yeah, well, who the hell are you?” the pilot squeals.
I pull the tracking device from my pocket. There’s the hospital and the magazine surrounded by a swarm of green dots. And there are three dots glowing on the airstrip.
“You cut yours out,” I say to Razor.
He’s nodding. “And left it under my pillow. That was the plan. Or was that the plan? Shit, Ringer, wasn’t that the plan?” A little panicky.
I drop the knife into my hand. “Hold him.”
Razor understands immediately. He grabs Lieutenant Bob and puts him in a headlock. Bob doesn’t put up much resistance. I worry now that he might go into shock. If he does, it’s over.
There isn’t much light and Razor can’t hold him perfectly still, so I tell Bob to chill or I might sever his spinal cord, adding paralysis to the problem of a broken finger. I pull out the pellet, toss it onto the tarmac, yank Bob’s head back, and whisper in his ear, “I’m not the enemy and I haven’t gone Dorothy. I’m just like you—”
“Only better,” Razor finishes. He glances through the window and says, “Uh, Ringer . . .”
I see them: The glow of headlights expanding like a pair of stars going supernova. “They’re coming, and when they get here, they will kill us,” I tell Bob. “You too. They won’t believe you and they will kill you.”
Bob stares into my face, tears of pain streaming down his.
“You have to trust me,” I say.
“Or she’ll break another finger,” Razor adds.
A deep, shuddering breath, shaking uncontrollably, cradling his wounded hand, blood trickling down his neck and soaking into the collar of his T-shirt. “It’s hopeless,” he whispers. “They’ll just shoot us down.”