“But these robots didn’t become killers,” Ava said. “The only killer robots were the ones the humans designed.”
“Of course you’d think that,” Eryn said with a snort. “You’re a robot! And you were getting information left behind by robots! What you found out from that wire—it’s, like, robot propaganda! Implanted straight into your head!”
“Wait, Eryn,” Nick said, putting his hand on his sister’s arm. “Even when we went into the room restricted to humans, and we read the papers—which I’m pretty sure were left behind by humans—even that said humans were the ones who made the killer robots. They weren’t created by other robots.”
“But how do we know who actually wrote those papers?” Eryn asked. “How do we know those weren’t faked by some enemy robots? Like Lida Mae’s family?”
“Uh, because they told us to kill robots?” Nick asked.
Eryn threw out her arms in a despairing gesture, knocking Nick’s hand away.
“How do we know they aren’t trying to get us to kill the robots who are on our side, and then there’ll be no one left to defend us?” Eryn asked. “We do know there are different kinds of robots. We believe that, Ava believes that—but the papers say that all robots eventually go bad, even the good ones. Because they can change their programming. And that’s why humans can’t keep robots around. That’s what those papers told us!”
Does Eryn realize she’s kind of arguing in circles? Ava wondered. No robot would argue so illogically.
Maybe Eryn did realize she’d stopped making sense. She brought her fists to her forehead, and pressed hard, rocking slightly. She looked like someone banging her head against a wall.
“Ugh, we’re back to the same question as before,” she said. “How do we know anything? What can we believe? Who can we trust?”
“You can trust me,” Nick said. “And Mom and Dad. And we can trust Ava. We know that.”
Ava really did like Nick. He was a great brother and a great stepbrother.
But Eryn didn’t nod and smile and agree, Oh, you’re right. We can totally trust Ava.
Instead Eryn cut her eyes toward Nick, a motion that Eryn must have assumed Ava wouldn’t see. Eryn evidently hadn’t figured out that Ava’s peripheral vision was enhanced just like her night vision.
But Ava didn’t need any help at all to read the unspoken message in Eryn’s eyes. She was clearly trying to tell Nick: No, we can’t trust Ava.
Maybe Eryn didn’t even trust her parents anymore.
Maybe she’d lost the ability to trust any robot, ever again.
THIRTY-FOUR
Nick
Nick walked between Eryn and Ava as they reached the last part of the cave. The two girls might as well have each grabbed one of Nick’s arms and pulled him in opposite directions—that’s how torn he felt between them. He wished he could take each of them aside and whisper one of Mom’s smarmy school-psychologist sayings, something like, Can’t we all just get along?
Eryn would be furious to see Nick talking to Ava privately.
And if he said something to Eryn, Eryn would just whisper back, Don’t you think Ava can hear every word we’re saying? Don’t you think someone who tampered with her eyesight probably tampered with her hearing, too? How long do you think Ava has been eavesdropping on us? And maybe Jackson did too. How can we possibly trust them?
Nick kind of wondered himself if Ava and Jackson had upgraded their hearing. But he wasn’t going to ask and make Eryn even more paranoid.
Because he really did believe they could still trust Ava. Maybe Lida Mae, too. And definitely Mom and Dad.
In spite of everything, he still believed there were trustworthy robots.
The huge, open mouth of the cave stretched before them. Past the rock walls of the cave, Nick could barely see anything outside but a giant wall of blowing snow. Stray ice pellets slammed against his face, making him wince.
But Ava gave a sigh of what sounded like relief and said, “Oh, good, we can still see the line of the adults’ footprints in the snow. Everything didn’t blow away. Looks like they went back toward the shed. . . .”
“See, Eryn, it helps us that Ava enhanced her vision,” Nick said.
Eryn didn’t answer. But maybe she couldn’t hear him over the roar of the wind.
“Let’s hold on to one another, so no one gets lost,” Ava said, and at least Eryn didn’t argue with that.
Nick grabbed Ava’s elbow and Eryn grabbed his, and Ava started leading them up the hill.
“Do you see . . . three sets of footprints . . . or four?” Nick shouted at Ava. The wind tore the words from his mouth.
“I think four,” Ava shouted back. “But it looks like everyone went into the shed and then Lida Mae left again, all by herself. . . .”
Nick felt a chill that had nothing to do with the snow and ice pellets or the brutal wind.
“Come on!” he yelled over his shoulder to Eryn. “Let’s hurry!”
He struggled against the wind, struggled not to fall on the slippery snow, struggled to keep a hold on Eryn and Ava. But finally they reached a point where he could see the shed looming ahead of them. It was so shadowed by the snow that Nick wondered if he might have walked right past it if Ava hadn’t been leading the way. Fighting the wind and snow, she pulled back the door, and Nick and Eryn stepped in alongside her. It took Nick and Ava both tugging on the door to get it to shut again. When Nick turned around, he could see that Eryn had already pulled out her flashlight and was shining it around the shed’s dim interior. The hastily assembled shed really wasn’t much of a match for blizzard-force winds: drifts of snow had blown in through the cracks on all sides.
“I thought Ava said our parents came in here and—” Nick began.
Eryn let her flashlight beam linger on three mounds on the opposite side of the shed.
“Is that . . . Mom?” Nick said. “Dad? Brenda?”
In the flashlight beam he could see the glint of Brenda’s long reddish hair. Dad’s wild curls and a section of Mom’s sensible dark-blue parka hood peeked out from the other two mounds. But none of the three adults answered. None of them moved. None of them even seemed to be breathing.
“They’re not dead,” Ava gasped. “They’re not. They’re just . . . shut down.”
“What’s the difference?” Eryn asked.
Before Ava could answer, the door behind them began to shake.
THIRTY-FIVE
Jackson
Jackson had fought his way to within a mile of the campsite when Dad suddenly began shouting.
“I’m shutting down again! Have to shut—”
“Dad?” Jackson called. “DAD?”
He had to scream over the wailing wind—maybe Dad just didn’t hear him. Maybe Dad did, and Jackson couldn’t hear his answer.
Jackson looked back. Dad’s eyes were closed. He was slumped against Jackson’s neck, and if Jackson hadn’t bent forward, Dad’s body might have slipped to the ground. Dad had stopped holding on.
He was totally unconscious once again.
“Okay, back to the sack-of-potatoes approach,” Jackson said, maneuvering Dad’s body so he was balanced over Jackson’s shoulder once more. But Dad’s head thumped against Jackson’s waist this time. Jackson could look down and see the sag of Dad’s jawline, the slit of his eyelids revealing only a hint of his dark eyes.
“Why did you shut down now?” Jackson asked, even though clearly Dad wasn’t going to answer. Jackson kept reasoning things out even as he went back to running toward the campsite. “We’re in the nature preserve, so this time you wouldn’t have shut down to avoid the robot network. We’re safe here. We . . .”
Distantly, over the sound of his own voice and the wailing wind, Jackson could hear a thumping sound. It almost sounded like . . .
Helicopter blades? Jackson thought, so jolted that he almost stumbled over a random rock and had to slow down for a moment.
Why would there be a helicopter near the nature preserve, espec
ially during a blizzard? Who would risk that?
Jackson could think of no explanation on his own. Mentally he reached toward the files of thoughts and memories he’d acquired from his father’s mind. As soon as he opened the files, he felt a ping in his brain. It was a sensation he’d never felt before, but somehow it reminded him of opening a laptop in a public place and instantly getting a query about linking to the Internet.
Oh no, Jackson thought, understanding and horror catching up with him at the same speed. Someone’s brought the robot network into the nature preserve. And because I’ve got Dad’s links copied in my mind, it’s trying to connect with me, too.
The robot network was asking Jackson to reveal everything he knew. Everything about his family.
THIRTY-SIX
Eryn
“Don’t let anyone in!” Eryn screamed. But Ava was already pushing the door open. The wind caught it, and it banged back against the side of the shed.
Lida Mae—the robot Lida Mae—stood outside in the blowing snow. She was still dressed in her old-fashioned clothes, with her Little House on the Prairie boots, her long dress over long johns, her homespun coat and knit cap. Her braids whipped around behind her in the wind.
But now she also held the wooden handles of a wheelbarrow.
Eryn shoved her way past Ava, to block Lida Mae from entering the shed.
“We’re here now!” Eryn screamed at Lida Mae. “We’re protecting the grown-ups! So you can’t carry out your plot to . . . to . . .”
Eryn couldn’t say the rest of what she’d been thinking: to take our parents away and bury them somewhere we’d never find them. . . .
“I was going to wheel them back into the cave so they don’t freeze to death while they’re . . . unconscious,” Lida Mae said.
“Oh,” Eryn said, sagging in the doorway.
Could she believe anything Lida Mae said? Could she trust her?
Nick dug his elbow into Eryn’s side, nudging her out of the way. It was a nudge that seemed to say, Are you crazy? He was clearly trying to remind her that if Lida Mae really were a killer robot, it would make more sense to play dumb and innocent. To trick her, so they could escape.
Except, maybe that wasn’t what Nick was trying to say. Maybe Eryn didn’t even understand her own brother.
Eryn was sick of pretending and playing games and trying to be subtle and sneaky. If someone was going to kill her, she’d go to her death asking direct questions.
“You know the grown-ups are robots, don’t you?” she asked Lida Mae. “You’ve known all along.”
“Of course,” Lida Mae said.
“And now we know that you’re a robot too,” Eryn said. “Even if you don’t look like one.”
“I wanted you to find out,” Lida Mae said. “Ultimately. I was working up to that. Now, would you mind helping . . . ?”
She gestured at the wheelbarrow and at the three grown-ups slumped at the back of the shed.
“Can you get that through the door?” Nick asked.
Lida Mae angled the wheelbarrow into the doorway. Only the front part fit.
She’s blocking our exit, Eryn thought. She has us trapped. She could do anything to us now. . . .
Ava and Nick bent over Brenda, ready to pick her up and bring her over to the wheelbarrow.
“Eryn, we need your help,” Nick said.
Eryn gave up and slid her hands under Brenda’s back. Together the three kids eased her into the wheelbarrow wedged into the doorway.
“I reckon it’ll take all four of us to lift your dad,” Lida Mae said.
She scrambled over and around the wheelbarrow, and Eryn thought, Nick and I could get past that too. If we had to. We’re okay. For now.
Quickly the kids eased Dad and Mom into the wheelbarrow alongside Brenda. The three bodies slumped in a snowy heap as though they had no bones.
Well, they don’t, Eryn thought rebelliously. No real bones, no real skin, no real blood vessels or hearts . . .
She didn’t know how she could think that one moment and then worry the next, Are they going to be okay? Mommy? Daddy? What if Ava and Lida Mae are lying to us, and my parents really are . . . dead?
Eryn hoped the wind and the snow made it so that no one looked at her closely enough to see her eyes tearing up. She blinked hard. If anybody asked, she could just say that her eyes were wet and her nose was running because of the cold.
“We’ll get to the cave faster if somebody helps me push the wheelbarrow,” Lida Mae shouted. “And the other two of you can hold on to the sides and help guide it. . . .”
Nick and Lida Mae scrambled over the wheelbarrow and back out into the wind and blowing snow. They each grabbed a wooden handle.
“Help us push it out of the doorway!” Ava yelled at Eryn.
Ava already had her hand on the right side of the wheelbarrow, just inches from Brenda’s porcelain-like face. Why did Eryn feel like she was just a moment behind everyone else?
Because I’m thinking more, Eryn wanted to protest. Because I’m still trying to figure out . . . everything.
But she bent down and shoved at the left side of the wheelbarrow. Grunting and slipping and sliding around, the four kids managed to ease the wheelbarrow out of the doorway and into the open, pointed downhill.
“You two have to keep us from hitting any trees,” Nick shouted at Ava and Eryn, as though he were totally into cooperating with Lida Mae and Ava.
Team Robot, Eryn thought.
Snow-blinded—and maybe a little tear-blinded, too—Eryn could barely see the trees ahead of them. She kept her hand on the wheelbarrow but let Ava do all the steering.
“Go right!” Ava called back to Nick and Lida Mae. “Now left . . .”
It’s okay, Eryn told herself. Once we’re back in the cave and I can see again, I’ll . . . I’ll . . .
“Jackson!” Ava cried. “You’re back!”
It was a long moment before Eryn saw her stepbrother emerge from the blowing snow, between the trees. He had his father slung over his shoulder, but he was speeding along at a pace Eryn couldn’t have managed on a clear track, in running shoes, carrying nothing.
Ava let go of the wheelbarrow and started to throw her arms around her brother. But Jackson jerked away from her hug.
“No time for that,” Jackson gasped. “I have to shut myself down. Take care of Dad.”
Lifting his father’s body as though it were no heavier than a snowflake, Jackson eased Michael into the wheelbarrow with the other grown-ups.
“What are you talking about?” Ava screamed at him.
“The . . . the robot network,” Jackson struggled to say. “It’s here now too. In the nature preserve. Dad shut himself down to avoid it. I . . . I know everything that Dad ever knew—too hard to explain how. But now the robot network is scouting for me, too. I’ve been fighting it off for the past mile. I can’t . . . can’t do that anymore.”
He started to reach for the back of his own neck, as if there were some sort of on/off switch there. But Ava slapped his hand down.
“No!” she screamed. “Keep fighting! We need you awake! It’s our only chance!”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Ava
Ava was surprised at herself. She didn’t hit people. She didn’t scream. She wasn’t designed or programmed to take control.
But who knows what I’m capable of when I stop thinking about my design or programming? she wondered.
It would be so much fun to explore that. If she managed to survive the next hour of her life.
“We need everything you know and everything I know and everything Lida Mae knows,” Ava shouted at Jackson. She saw Eryn squint suspiciously at her. “And probably everything Eryn and Nick know too . . .”
“I—I—” Jackson began.
“Can’t you hear?” Ava yelled at him. “The people from the robot network—the leaders of the world outside this nature preserve—they aren’t just reaching for your mind. They’re coming here to find us!”
&nb
sp; Jackson’s eyes widened.
“In helicopters,” he said, as if he had just now put that together. “I’ve been concentrating so hard on keeping them out of my head . . . I didn’t think. . . . I couldn’t think. . . .”
Eryn, Nick, and Lida Mae all tilted their heads as if they were listening hard.
“You two hear helicopters?” Eryn asked accusingly. “How?”
Ava let out a silent sigh.
“Enhanced hearing,” she admitted. “Jackson and I both improved our hearing, too.”
Eryn scowled, but Nick muttered, “Eryn, that helps us. Gives us time to prepare. . . .”
“How can we prepare when the robots are always going to know more than us?” Eryn demanded. “Because they can know everything anyone knows . . .”
Her voice trailed off hopelessly. Ava wondered if her stepsister was just going to sit down in the snow and cry.
Nick moved over and put his arm around Eryn.
“Eryn, we’ve got this,” he murmured. “We’re a team. And we’ve got enhanced robots on our side!”
Ava could tell by her stepsister’s expression that she was thinking, I’m not on any team with robots.
Maybe she was also thinking, What if the robots who are against us are enhanced too? Enhanced more?
Or maybe that was just what Ava was thinking.
“First thing, let’s get down into that cave,” Lida Mae said. “We’ll feel better once we’re out of this cold and get some hot food in our bellies. I know right where to go to build a fire. . . .”
She picked up her side of the wheelbarrow handle and looked pointedly at Nick. Jackson seemed to shake himself.
“Oh, if we’ve got to hurry . . . ,” he began. “Everyone step aside. I’ll take care of the wheelbarrow.”
He lifted it up and away from Lida Mae without even flexing a muscle. Then he took off racing down the hill, propelling the wheelbarrow ahead of him as easily as if he were carrying a marshmallow—not the combined weight of Mom, Dad, Denise, and Donald in a large wheelbarrow. Jackson’s stride was so sure-footed and effortless, even a mountain goat would have looked clumsy beside him.