Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon (45 page)

emmy did not talk much on the way over, and Claire maintained a careful position nearby. I looked out of portholes, trying to keep my mind clear of Claire’s power. Poor Remmy. I hated to do this to anyone, but it was hopefully for a very good cause. If the warning turned out to be real, I had no doubt Remmy would care about saving people more than how we got her there to do it.

From a distance, Callisto looked perfectly normal. It looked like a boat the size of a small city, with two pairs of biwings sticking off both sides, and the deck covered in trees and plants and little buildings. The rotor swung placidly over the scene, providing light and gravity and keeping the atmosphere in.

We set down so gently, I hardly felt the thump, and things still looked peaceful. If anything was weird, it was just how peaceful things looked. There were no dockworkers, and no one strolling around the park or farms.

“You’re right. Something is wrong,” Remmy whispered as we walked down the gangplank. I felt the same urge to keep my voice low, to not break the uncharacteristic hush.

I slid Archimedes down from my shoulder to my forearm. “Battle stations, then.” Ray and Claire nodded. She adjusted her grappling hook. He passed the Puppeteer poisoning orb to Remmy.

I squeezed the cold lump of Vera in my pouch, and tapped her again just to make sure. I’d have been much happier with her behind me right now.

The only movement that caught my eye when we stepped onto the main deck were butterflies. Still, I heard something. Or maybe Archimedes did. I pricked up his ears. One of us heard men’s voices, distant but shouting.

I pointed at the central staircase “There are people. They’re all downstairs. Let’s go.”

We tried to hurry and remain cautiously alert at the same time while crossing a space bigger than a football field. If anybody had been around to see us, no doubt we’d have looked ridiculous. Nobody was.

The yelling had descended to mostly grunts by the time we reached the stairs, and when we reached the main market corridor―well, the place didn’t look like a battlefield, but there was a lot more litter strewn in the halls. The most noticeable item of clutter was a broken automaton, one we weren’t responsible for.

Two men stood in the hallway, fists clenched. They’d reached the part of a brawl where they were woozy enough that swinging punches took time and conscious effort. Plainly, they weren’t very good at this, but from the bruises on their faces and scraped knuckles, they had been trying their best.

I thought I saw a face peeking over a window frame behind them. Otherwise, conspicuous abandonment ruled. What there really ought to have been and wasn’t were automatons lecturing these guys on their bad behavior and dishing out punishments.

Ray eyed the combatants professionally. “Should we stop them?”

Tempting, but… “No.” I shook my head. “First we find out what we’re getting into.”

“How?”

I gave my head a jerk, thankfully down the opposite direction from the punch drunk grownups. “We check out our local contacts in the dorms.”

We had to carry Remmy the first few steps. She’d frozen up in shock, staring open-mouthed at the abandoned marketplace.

Once we got down the first flight of stairs, the station stopped being abandoned. People sat on benches looking stunned, or talked in hushed voices in small groups.

A chorus of cheerfulness broke the dark mood.

“Good day, Mr. Carmike.”

“Nice to see you, Carmike.”

“Having a nice day, Willy?”

A man as generically brown haired and dapper as every other Rotor walked up the hall in our direction. As he passed, miserable people faked smiles and greetings. The moment he’d left them behind, their expressions tightened into terror.

The much-feared Mr. Carmike stopped in front of a young woman and tipped his hat at her. “Enjoying our new freedom, Polly?”

“It’s wonderful, Willy!” She faked a cheerful, enthusiastic expression pretty well. If she didn’t have her back so tightly to the wall she might leave a dent, it would be more convincing.

“I’d like to use that freedom to see you this evening, if I may.” From her terror, I’d have expected a cruel leer, but he looked and sounded like a courting gentleman from a 50s sitcom.

“I’m looking forward to it.” Criminy. She was too scared to come up with an excuse.

He looked so
normal
. He kept looking normal as he left Polly with a little bow, and strolled amicably up to us. Right about the time he got close enough to put his hands on his knees and bend forward to ask, “Aren’t you a curious group of youngsters?” the normal fell apart.

Up close, I could see the red Puppeteer tentacles twining up his neck, melded into his skin, and disappearing into his hair. His eyes glowed faintly white.

Erk.

Claire stepped in front of me, right in front of me, crowded up against me and Ray. She threaded her fingers together and gave him a grin that should have struck him blind. “New arrivals, Mr. Carmike. We’re heading downstairs to get properly dressed now.”

His eyes went glassy and unfocused. “I can’t imagine why. You’re perfect the way you are.” He sounded blissful, like a man in love, and stepped around us to walk off with an extra spring in his step―but also as if he’d completely forgotten us.

“And that may be why we’re not supposed to trust adults,” I croaked. Remmy held her shaking arms tightly wrapped around the Puppeteer poisoning orb. Ray just looked suspicious, scanning the hall in both directions like a good bodyguard.

We made a little more haste down to the children’s dorms. The automaton at the front desk seethed and pulsed with red tendrils, but Claire had her golden angel act turned up so high, I had to shield my eyes from her. The automaton didn’t even speak to us.

That left us free to follow the babbling voices and the sound of crying to the schoolrooms.

This corridor was packed. Here was where all the kids were hiding. Only a few talked to each other in small, anxious groups. Most stood or sat against the walls shell-shocked, doing nothing.

Some of them looked in our direction. Gertrude ran up the hall, skirts tugging at her legs, until she had to stop and wheeze in front of us. Apparently, corsets weren’t that easy to breathe in after all.

“Bad Penny…,” she said between pants, “Please tell me you’re here to save us.”

Michael lurked behind her, following but not willing to get too close. “…and not to gloat,” he added much more nervously.

“The former. Definitely the former,” I promised Gertrude. “How did this happen?”

Gertrude dropped into a crouch, hands gripping the sides of her head. She was about ten seconds from completely flipping out in panic. “I don’t know. The first we knew anything was wrong was when Miss Rattlebottom came and told us all schedules were canceled and we could do whatever we wanted. We started to throw a party, but then Millicent’s dad showed up to get her. He had that… stuff on him.”

Claire laid her gloved hand on Gertrude’s head, stroking back over her hair. Gertrude took a few deeper breaths, relaxing her grip on her temples. The story continued, faltering but not hysterical. “We went to ask Miss Rattlebottom about that, and saw that she’d been…”

“Taken over,” Claire supplied, when Gertrude didn’t want to say it.

“Millicent became hysterical, and one of those things crawled out of Miss Rattlebottom and jumped onto her. Then she acted like everything was fine. Since then, it’s gotten worse. We’ve had to cook our own food, because the automatons that aren’t taken over are too confused to do anything. They let you do whatever you want, except complain. When you complain, they take you.”

She shuddered. So did some of the other kids starting to gather around. So did more who were merely within earshot. Someone I couldn’t see started to cry.

I set my jaw, and held out my hand to Remmy. She dropped the modified Conqueror orb into it. I’d barely had time to get to know them, but these were my friends, and seeing them like this made me burn inside. Some of that anger edged my voice as I told Gertrude, “We’ll start with Miss Rattlebottom.”

Only my teammates had the strength to follow me out into the atrium, and I waved Ray and Claire back. Claire’s power especially would pollute the experiment.

“It is time for school, Bad Penny, but you will be happy to know that is now optional. You are free!” jabbered Miss Rattlebottom. The fleshy infestation had changed her voice, making it richer and happier, which would be great if a web of red tentacles didn’t crawl around every joint and into her mouth and eye sockets.

Witty rejoinder?

No. I shoved the orb against the biggest exposed mass of Puppeteer crud, right up under her chin. They turned grey. The grey shot through the whole network, until dark ash rained down out of her body.

“Bad Penny. You have been delinquent―” she lectured me metallically, until her body jerked and a grinding noise inside signaled her gears getting caught on powdered Puppeteer corpse.

I growled in satisfaction. Gasps and a cacophony of footsteps sounded behind me, and I turned around to face a crowd of awed teenagers.

Ray was still scowling. “It works, but it’s not safe. You have to get within attack range.” His fists clenched and unclenched at the whole idea.

“I can fix that,” volunteered Remmy.

We all looked at her.

“I can fit the device into a Conqueror deactivation pistol. Make a ray gun out of it.” She stood up to her full diminutive height, setting her shoulders and thrusting out her barely-there chin in defiance.

Nobody defied her. Personally, I was almost awed by how great a power Remmy had.

I looked up from her, and around at the crowd. “There’s only one of those guns left, but it’s here and I’m pretty sure where to find it. Does anyone know where the militia captain’s home is?”

“He’s been taken. All the important adults have been turned into meat puppets. Or disappeared,” said Aggie, peeking out from behind the second row. She held her goggles in her hands, twisting them nervously.

People yelped, and the crowd shook as someone forced their way through. A tall blonde, way too statuesque for a middle-schooler, shoved Gertrude and a boy I didn’t know aside to stand in front of me. Her skirts had been raggedly cut to her knees, and her corset left off, and her hair undone, hanging down nearly to her waist. Tear tracks covered her cheeks, and from her red eyes and cheeks they were fresh.

“I’ll take you there,” she growled. Sabrina. I recognized her. This was Donovan’s legendary fiancée, Sabrina.

“They took Donovan.” It came out in a rasp. Her fists clenched, vibrating with fury, and more tears bulged at the corners of her eyes. She stared down at the floor, and said through gritted teeth, “I threw a fit, and one of those things crawled out of a trash tube. He shoved me aside and started yelling, so it got him instead. He walked away and nobody’s seen him since. After the way I treated him, he still…”

I leaned close, and lowered my voice. “Lead us to the gun, and we’ll free him. We’ll free everyone.”

She stomped off up the stairs. Me, Ray, Claire, and Remmy rushed after her.

Sabrina made no attempt to be stealthy, but when we caught up, Claire fell in right beside her. In contrast to Sabrina’s furious trudge, Claire practically skipped…

No, she didn’t. That was her power. I tried to look everywhere but at Claire to avoid being sucked in. Like at the woman in a side hallway who stood with her hands on her hips, staring at illegible graffiti carved into the wooden wall paneling. She didn’t just have tentacles poking out of her collar. Two control squid, MY control squid, crawled across her shoulders, and another writhed in her hand.

When they’d been mine, they didn’t have little shining white eyes.

Neither they, nor the woman, reacted to us in any way. Ray, Remmy, and I crowded close behind Claire, letting her power make us invisible to Puppeteers.

Regular people saw us, but they had their own problems. We reached a door in a hallway that looked like any other to me. Sabrina grabbed the latch and shook it. Locked.

Ray gently placed his hands on her shoulders, and moved her aside, nodding his head in a brief but polite bow. Then he lifted his foot and kicked the door. The lock broke, slamming the door inward, and when it hit the inside wall, it fell off its hinges.

A middle-aged man walked out of a side room, buttoning up his shirt and shouting, “Don’t you understand? You’re free!” His visible chest, his neck, much of his head, and his forearms and the backs of his hands were all roped with fleshy red tentacles. A control squid crawled out of his collar as he yelled at us.

I didn’t even give Claire time to use her power. I pointed Archimedes at his chest. “Sleep! Sleep now! Sleep!”

He fell over like a statue, eyes closed by the time he hit the carpeted floor. The control squid curled up into a motionless ball. Another rolled out of his wrist cuff, also asleep.

We didn’t have to search for the strobe pistol. It hung on a rack over his bed below an old-fashioned tommy gun and a revolver. All mysterious, exotic weapons here.

As Remmy climbed up on the headboard to pull down the light gun, I asked, “Can you modify it while we walk? I want to get back to the dorms. I don’t want to find out they got swarmed with control squid the moment we left.”