“Shut up. You are such a pooper scooper.” I jump out with that brilliant insult.
She reaches into the back of the truck and pulls out the two mechanical bows we bought at Walmart. We’re too young to legally buy guns, but they let us have these killer bows, thanks to the magic of Seppie’s credit cards.
She sticks one of the accompanying quiver things in her belt. I do the same. Then, carrying the bow beneath her arm, she stomps over to my side of the truck.
“You ready?”
“You look like the female Rambo.”
“Who the hell is Rambo?”
“He’s this warrior guy from the eighties.”
She presses her lips together and then says, “You are as peculiar and as obscure as Lyle. Don’t try to deny it.”
“It’s why you love us. We just make you feel more normal.”
We stomp through the snow, over to the emergency fire door. Using the lock destroyer that China gave me earlier, I fry the door open.
“Brilliant.” Seppie nods approvingly.
“Thanks.”
I turn the doorknob as she says, “You really think I seem all badass?”
“Oh, absolutely one hundred percent badass.”
I hold the door open for her and she smiles and says, “I’ve always wanted to be badass.”
The gym smells like Febreze and basketball trainers and polish. Our wet shoes squelch across the floor.
“Thank God the custodian left the lights on in here,” Seppie says, “because it would be so freaky if it were dark.”
“We would just turn the lights on.” I adjust the bow.
“Oh. Right.”
We stand in the center of the gym, on the red center court line where they do all the basketball tip-offs, where I land my tumbling run at halftime.
“It’s creepy being in here alone.” Seppie shudders, then stands up all straight. “Waiting for aliens. It’s so quiet. Sometimes, when we’re cheering, I want everyone to just shut up, for it to be silent, but now … Well, I could use a good, riotous basketball crowd right now.”
I touch her arm. She jumps.
“You don’t have to do this with me, you know.”
Her hands go to her hips. “What kind of friend would I be if I made you rescue your mom all alone?”
“A sane friend?”
She snorts. “True.” She weaves her arm around mine. “I’m not leaving you. I am an official badass. Got it?”
Something sticks in my throat. “Got it.”
We wait.
We wait.
We wait some more.
“You think they’ll see the note?” she asks.
“They’ll see it.”
“Do you think waiting in the center of the gym is a good idea? Should we go put our backs up against the bleachers?”
Ack. “Yeah,” I say, because suddenly the thought of being surrounded by aliens seems really plausible. “It’s stupid to wait out here. We need to be strategic.”
We hustle over to the bleachers. They’re wooden, all folded up right now. When they’re stacked on top of each other like this, they’re probably fifteen feet high. We stand beneath them, silent for a few minutes. My mind races with scenarios that get more terrifying with every minute that passes.
“I hate waiting,” Seppie says.
“I know.”
“Your mom is going to be okay.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You think the aliens will—”
“Seppie. I am so sorry, and I know this is going to sound mean, and I don’t want to sound mean, because I love you and you are the best friend and base anyone could ever want, but could we not talk for a minute?”
“Of course,” she says, and presses her lips together like she is holding stuff back. But she can’t do it, and she goes, “Why?”
I lift my hand to stop her. I whisper, “I think I hear something.”
“What?”
“Aliens.”
“You hear the aliens?”
“Sh-h-h…”
“What are they saying?” she asks, voice hushed now.
There’s no time to tell her, just time to order, “Get out your bow! Now!”
It’s freaking Dakota Dunham again, now also known as Acid Tongue Boy. He skims across the ceiling, darting through the metal girders and straight at us. He comes across as barely human. He’s not any human. He spits.
I shove Seppie sideways. The acid splashes against the wood bleachers, right where her stomach was. It hisses, eating through the old wood.
“Crap! Crap!” Seppie fumbles with her bow, voice rising. “Was that the acid? Did he really just spit acid?”
“Totally acid.”
“Damn, I wish you could do that.”
“It would be handy.”
Dakota takes another run at us. I pull the compound bow up to my shoulder, trying to remember all the hunting lessons my dad taught me. Steady. Let the pulleys do the work. Aim.
The arrow soars and hits him in the ankle. He squeals and tumbles, head over heels in the air, smacking down in the center of the room.
“I am so not into this kind of alien.” Seppie rocks backwards into me. “Even if he was a hottie, like, three days ago.”
“We can’t all be cute and cuddly like me.” I put my bow down at my side. “If I am an official alien, that is. Still confused about that.”
“You can actually shoot that?” she says, motioning toward the bow.
“My dad taught me when we went hunting.”
She nods. Her eyes glaze over a little. “You never told me.”
“It was sort of a secret from Mom, because she was always so antiweapon, antifighting, which makes no sense at all now. Plus, it’s not exactly cool, knowing how to shoot a compound bow. It doesn’t fit with the cheerleader image.”
Dakota moves a little bit. Seppie takes a step forward. I touch her arm with my free hand. “Do not go near him.”
As if to prove my statement, he sits up and glares at us. He yanks out the arrow, hobbling up to a standing position.
“Crap,” Seppie mutters.
“You need to think of a better swear.”
She’s shaking, but says, “Are we going to have to shoot him again? Because he’s looking pissed.”
I bring the bow back up, get out another arrow. “I know. I know. Watch out for his spit, okay?”
“Okay.”
Dakota limps forward. One step. Another. He stares me down. He is an alien. I am an alien. He is a freak. I am a freak. And he is alive, and that means he’s dangerous.
Another step.
My hand trembles.
“Mana!”
I aim.
Something smacks into him from the side. I twitch my hand. There’s still an arrow there. I didn’t shoot him. Something else did. And not with an arrow. A gun.
Men in Black swarm inside the gym. There have got to be ten of them, at least. Two capture Dakota, haul out a cell phone, just like China did so many days ago, and disappear. So Men in Black and acid aliens are not allies. Good to know.
Seppie staggers backwards and hits the bleachers.
“Holy shit,” she whispers.
“Much better swear.”
She doesn’t answer, just stares. I stare, too. A final man comes in. He has his hand on a woman’s arm, hurrying her along. It’s my mom. My mom!
Joy surges through me, and I let it sit there in my heart for a second before I start frantically surveying her, checking to see if she looks obviously hurt. I want to run to her and hug her, yank her out of that guy’s hand. It’s so hard to be cautious, but as I look her over she just seems pale. There are circles under her eyes, like someone dipped their thumb in charcoal eye shadow and just fingerprinted it on there.
“Mom.”
I start forward, but Seppie grabs my arm, holding me back. “They’ve got guns. Remember the plan.”
“Whatever.” I shrug off the plan and run across the gym floor. Love and relief fill me.
/>
Mom gasps and yells, “Stop. Mana. Don’t come closer.”
I slip on the gym floor, which is wet from all the shoe slush. “What?”
“They’ll shoot you.”
The man holding her arm nods.
Stopping, I look from one man to a woman next to him to another man. They all have the same intense, take-no-prisoners expression, so I cross my arms. “Fine.”
One of the men steps forward.
“How do I know you won’t kill us?” I demand.
“You don’t.”
“Great.”
He smiles a slow, crooked smile. Then he shrugs.
“You are no Will Smith,” I say.
“We’re nothing like that stupid movie.”
I cock my head. “Really? So you don’t have any morals at all?”
“Of course we do.” He gestures toward my mother. “It’s you all that have it wrong.”
“Right.”
Seppie scoots up toward me. Her hands raise in the air. “No shooting, okay? Nice human cheerleader here. Does not want to be shot.” When she gets to me, she says, out of the corner of her mouth, “Can we cut with the talking?”
I try to keep her a little behind me, where it is safer by, like, two millimeters. “No.” I bend over and pull up my sock, then I make a big deal of adjusting the bow on my back, plucking at the arrows.
“Please tell me you didn’t actually bring it, Mana,” Mom says.
The man next to her glares at her but doesn’t hit her or anything. I take that as a good sign, and also as a sign that I don’t have to murder him. Yet. “Mom, I had to. I had to get you back.”
“This is bigger than me, Mana.”
I nod. “I know.”
I put my hand in my oversized pocket and pull out a Coke can and the tiny chip.
“It’s so tiny. So easily destroyed,” I say.
I count to three.
One.
Two.
Three.
Nobody moves.
I take a deep breath and nod. Seppie twitches next to me. I can’t read her mind, but I don’t need to. We are connected, in this together, best friends for life, which may not actually be for very long. I flip the pop-top of the can. The carbonation makes it all sizzle, threatening to foam over. Just a little jiggle and things could get messy. Instead, I take a sip. It will make me look casual, like I am just so confident that I can take a moment and hydrate.
Mom gasps. “Mana! Don’t!”
The man holding her clamps his hand over her mouth. She bites it. He swears and adjusts accordingly, while blood drips down to the floor. Wow. I hope she’s up to date on her hepatitis vaccinations and everything, because yuck. Contagion much?
I try to ignore all that and just talk. “If the point is to make sure the chip doesn’t get into the wrong hands, it seems like it might be a good thing for me to just destroy it, right? Then nobody would be after it anymore. Everyone would stay alive. Good aliens would be able to go on acting like humans. And the bad aliens could keep on mutilating and abducting in exchange for technology, right? And humans could just keep on keeping on, all oblivious.” I take another sip. The Man in Black closest to me—the leader, the one who actually talked?—his finger twitches on his gun. I can see his shirt move when he inhales.
I meet Mom’s gaze.
“But that’s not really your goal, is it?” I take another sip. Coke is tasting pretty good right now, sweet good in the middle of all the bitter bad. My mom never lets me have it. She’s never let me have any caffeine. I suddenly realize that was all bull. You can’t be allergic to caffeine, can you? What does it do? Raise your heart rate? Maybe that’s what she didn’t want. Maybe raising my pulse makes me hear aliens? Or maybe being near the chip is doing that? Maybe the caffeine makes me stronger, too, more acrobatic. There are so many questions that I need answers to.
“Miss?” The closest Man in Black reaches out his hand, the hand that isn’t holding the gun. “Why don’t you give me that chip and I’ll give you your mother?”
“Are you going to destroy it?”
He nods. “Of course.”
Seppie blinks hard, once. That’s our code. It means he’s lying. She’s so good at reading people, but to be honest, I kind of figured this one out already.
“Send my mom over first,” I say.
“Under no circumstances,” he answers.
“Listen. I’m not an idiot. We’re completely surrounded. You have guns trained on us. We’re, what? Two girls? Two cheerleaders? What are we going to do? Escape with our pom-poms and bows? Dematerialize in the middle of a toe touch? Get real, okay?”
He raises an eyebrow like some sort of cool, unemotional villain in one of Lyle’s graphic novels.
“Fine,” I say, tipping the Coke can. “I’ll destroy it now, then.”
I tilt the can more. Someone gasps. I move my chip hand under the can, right in the path of where the soda will flow out.
“Fine,” the Man in Black with the twitchy gun finger says. He snarls a little. He turns to the one touching my mother. “Let her go.”
He lets go.
Mom scurries across the floor toward us.
I move the chip out of the way and spill a little Coke on the floor. Everyone stops. The entire gym is still.
“Oops.” I bob my head from side to side like a total ditz. “My bad.”
Seppie makes a guffaw sort of noise. Mom starts across the gym again. She moves past the Man in Black and says, “Excuse me, Jacob.”
He nods.
My head is buzzing hard and funny. It’s like the whole thing is vibrating. It must be the caffeine. I am absolutely wired.
My mother gets to my side, which is exactly where a mom is supposed to be. I hug her. She’s soft and strong and smells like snow. She sniffs in my hair and murmurs, “Oh, honey…”
As much as I don’t want to, I pull away a little bit. “It will be okay.”
Her voice is a warning. “Mana, we cannot give them the chip. The moment you hand it over, they will kill me, and probably you and Seppie as well, but that’s not what matters. My partner and I have only just determined that this chip is really a device that activates a weapon that will kill humans indiscriminately. That’s what it’s for. It’s part of a—”
The Man in Black, the one in charge, holds out his hand, interrupting her. “The chip?”
“Everyone? All humans?” I blurt out, horrified. “Just randomly.”
“The chip,” the Man in Black insists.
This is it. The moment. This is all me, and everything that happens next will be because I decided to do what I am about to do. Nobody can catch me if I dismount poorly, if I make the wrong choice. All the responsibility is mine. So, for one more second, I glance at the metal circle in my hand. I glance at the Coke can. There’s no choice. I drop the chip into the hole you drink out of and I toss the can to the lead Man in Black. “Catch.”
The moment I do it, the gym explodes with activity, but to me it’s all slow motion. Men in Black are diving for the Coke. They’re lifting off their heels. They leap. They lunge. Their faces are twisted with determination. Other Men in Black are aiming at us. Gunfire rocks the place in a slow rumble, a roar. Seppie screams. My poor, sick-looking mom grabs for a bow. Both of them will be too late to defend themselves.
A bullet hits Mom. She staggers back. Blood leaks through her coat.
I hold up my arms. My fingers splay out. They vibrate and buzz. I scream. It’s a noise louder than a gunshot. It’s a feeling bigger than a caffeine buzz. My hands agitate with some sort of power that whips across the gym like a bluish-white wind, and suddenly everyone, everything, except for my mother and Seppie and me, drops to the floor.
Bullets clatter harmlessly onto the court. The Men in Black splat down. Their faces smash into the wood. Blood comes out of some of their noses. The lights that hang from the rafters drop and shatter all around us, but somehow, miraculously, none of the glass hits us. Nothing hits us. There’
s a three-foot circle all around us and nothing gets in—no bullets, no men, no glass. Silence takes over. Just silence.
“Holy crap,” Seppie says after a couple seconds.
A basketball net loses its hold on the backboard and flutters to the ground.
“Did I…? Did I just…?” I lower my hands, shaking, and freaking scared to death of what just happened, what I just did.
Terror twists Seppie’s face. The door to the gym opens up. Mom, wobbling and unstable, tries to lift the bow, but she’s too weak from whatever they’ve been doing to her, and the bullet. I wrap her up in my arms and then think better of it and try to get to the wound, to stop the bleeding. Finding it, I use a hat to apply pressure. The blood still leaks through my fingers.
“You need to sit down,” I tell her.
“If I sit I won’t get up, honey,” she says, proving she is the toughest woman ever.
Panic surges through me, but my voice is calm as I order Seppie, “We need to get the car and get her to a hospital.”
Just then China leaps into the room, with Lyle following behind him. They’re both holding machine guns. Lyle has a machine gun!
Another net falls.
In a split second, China takes in the scene. He gazes across the gym at me and Mom … and smiles. “She had caffeine, didn’t she?”
“Yes…” Mom nods, falters.
She really has always known—always known I was something different. And China? He knew, too. He must have always known. The secret he’s been guarding has to do with me.
“The device?” he asks.
“She put it in a Coke can,” Mom says. China hauls in a breath, leans against the wall. “She was saving…”
I wrap my free arm around her just before she passes out. I catch her, the way everyone has always been catching me.
CHAPTER 20
Before he leaves, China and I stand outside the hospital emergency room entrance. They are already working on my mom. I pace back and forth, back and forth, but China is motionless, just observing everything. He gives me a tiny flashlight, kind of like the one that lasered through the locks. Only this one has a laser that kills.
“Just in case,” he says. “I don’t want you to … It’s not like you’ll need it. Not now that the chip is gone, but … I can trust a cheerleader with this, right?”