Willful Machines (20 page)

When we got to the third-floor corridor, I peeked around the corner to check on Ray. He stood right where we'd last seen him, outside Nico's door. It looked like he'd fallen asleep standing up—something I'd seen him do a couple of times before. We returned to the boys' washroom—deserted this time—and peered out through the shower stall window. Outside, the downpour continued.

“We'll be soaked by the time we get back to your room,” I said. “What's Ray going to say when he sees me?”

“I have towels we can use to dry off. You can borrow some of my clothes.”

I liked the idea of wearing Nico's clothes. I imagined they'd carry some of his warmth with them.

“On the other hand,” Nico said, “climbing back won't be easy. Are you sure you're up for this? We can try to think of something else, Lee.”

I shook my head. “No way. Climbing over here—it was scary, but it felt good, too. Like I'd really done something, you know?” I slid open the window. “Let's go.”

We couldn't use our pucks to light our way this time—they couldn't fly reliably in rain this heavy—so we stuffed them into our pockets. We could still see by the school's exterior lights, although not as well. Nico crawled onto the branch. I scrabbled after him. My glasses filmed over with rain right away. I yanked them off and stowed them in my hoodie. Without them, everything farther than a few feet away became a blur, but at least I could make out the branch in front of me well enough. A gust of wind bustled through the tree. The limb underneath me shifted and tossed like a boat on rough water. My stomach dropped out of my body. Why had I insisted on doing this again?

“You okay?” Nico yelled.

I nodded. We made our way toward the trunk. The rain hissed down through the branches even harder now. I forced myself to keep my eyes on the tree limb in front of me and copy Nico's movements, like I had before. That helped.

Then something appeared in my peripheral vision: a
black shape, moving fast, straight at me. Along with that, a rushing sound, like the rain but louder. The thing rammed into my shoulder. I lost my balance and toppled forward, my chest and chin smashing against the rough, wet bark, my teeth clacking together. I flung my arms around the branch so I didn't slide off.

“You all right? What was that?”

Whatever it was had vanished. A falling tree branch? A bat? Or else . . . I didn't even want to think it.

“I don't know,” I shouted. I pushed myself up again. “But I'm okay.”

“We're almost to the trunk. Let's keep moving.”

It came at me again, from the other direction. Black, silky wings. Beady, glinting eyes. Nevermore. An image flashed through my mind: the watch Stroud had given me, sitting in my nightstand drawer. But I wouldn't have had time to use it anyway, because the next instant the raven cannoned into me. My fingers fumbled for something to hold on to. The slimy bark crumbled underneath them. I pitched to one side and fell.

“Lee!” Nico roared.

Another branch a few feet below caught me, slamming me in the belly and knocking the air out of my lungs. My body curled around it, but the thin branch couldn't support my weight. It snapped with a loud crack and collapsed. It didn't detach from the tree, though. I managed to hold on with both hands, feet kicking, fingers already slipping.

“Hang on, Lee!”

Nevermore had disappeared into the blackness again, but the sound of her wings pounded through the pulse of the rain. I tried to claw my way up the branch, but I only ended up slipping farther down. My fingers burned. My arms ached.

“I'm coming!”

A blurry shape appeared above me, straining to reach me with one blurry hand.

Nevermore got to me first. This time she stayed on me, her talons digging into my chest, piercing my skin. I shook my head from side to side—the best I could do since I couldn't knock her away with my hands—but she didn't budge.

“I've almost got you!” Nico shouted.

Nevermore's sharp beak drove into my shoulder. Pain knifed through my body. The branch slid through my fingers.

But I didn't fall. Something else barreled into me, something warm and strong. Nevermore disappeared. My face buried itself in wet, curly hair that smelled like rain and coconuts. Holding me tight with one arm, Nico bounced back and forth between the stone wall of the school and the trunk of the bare, black tree until he landed with a jolt on the grass. It all happened too fast for my brain to keep up.

“How did you—?”

Without waiting for me to finish, he tipped me against the tree and whirled away, his hair spraying raindrops. Nevermore was coming back: I still couldn't see her without my glasses,
but I could hear the relentless pounding of her wings. Nico launched himself into the air. He must've jumped at least ten feet. When his flip-flops smacked the ground again, he had the raven in his hands. For a second he crouched like a wolf over its dinner. Then he spun around and smashed the robot against the wall three times. Her outspread wings went limp. He dropped her to the ground. She released a few pops and crackles. Her wet feathers twitched.

All the strength drained from my legs. I sagged to the ground, my back still propped against the trunk. “How did you do that?” I finished, my voice shrunk to a whisper.

“I don't know,” he panted. “Adrenaline, I guess.”

“You jumped ten feet in the air, Nico.”

“No, I didn't.”

“I saw.”

“You don't have your glasses on. Maybe you saw wrong.”

Maybe he was right. Maybe all the excitement had left me confused. My brain felt sluggish, like an overloaded computer. Nico made some other excuse, but I stopped listening, because at that point I realized something else wasn't right. My heart hadn't stopped pounding yet, but I couldn't feel the familiar purr that should've been coming from my hoodie pocket. I reached inside, and my fingers closed around Gremlin's body. It felt heavier than usual. I grabbed my glasses from my hoodie's other pocket. Those had somehow survived the fall. I wiped them on my hoodie sleeve and put them on. The downpour had slackened
by then, so the lenses didn't immediately film over. In my palm, Gremlin lay on his back, his damp orange fur clinging to him, his head lolling to one side, his torso crushed.

“It's okay, Lee. We can fix him.” Nico squatted next to me and reached for Gremlin. A bright red gash sliced across his right palm.

“Nico, you hurt your—”

I stopped. Inside the cut, something glinted in the low light.

He glanced down and then started to snatch his hand away, but I'd already grabbed his wrist. Our eyes met. He twisted his hand against my grip. “Please don't, Lee.”

But I didn't let go. His eyes held mine a second longer, pleading, and then dropped to the ground. His arm relaxed. I pulled his hand closer.

The gash extended diagonally across Nico's palm, from the base of the index finger all the way to the wrist. Blood oozed from the wound, mixing with the rain that continued to fall.

“Look at that. Right along the life line.” He laughed, but it sounded flat and joyless, like no laugh I'd ever heard from him before.

Still holding his wrist with one hand, I put Gremlin back in my pocket and tugged the cut further open. Nico winced but didn't resist. Inside, his hand looked a lot like the innards of Nevermore: a rubbery, translucent material where the muscle of his thumb should've been, attached to a slender bone made of some bronze-colored metal alloy. My hands started to shake.
My body felt empty, hollowed out. I let go of his wrist and slumped against the tree.

“You're not real,” I whispered. “You're a robot.”

He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his yellow windbreaker, his broad shoulders hunched, his wet hair twisting down his forehead. “I
am
real. And I'm a robot.”

“A 2B?”

He nodded.

I heaved myself back to my feet, still clutching the trunk for balance. My hands hadn't stopped trembling. My breathing had grown shaky too. It was like the rest of my body already understood something my brain hadn't finished computing yet.

“I wasn't sent here to do you harm.”

I just shook my head. No words would come.

“Let me explain, Lee.”

He took a step toward me, reaching out again with his injured hand, and an image flared in my head: Charlotte grabbing Mom and snapping her neck. “Don't touch me,” I snarled. I lunged away from him and took off running across the muddy lawn, throwing glances over my shoulder, half expecting him to chase me down. But he just stood there watching me go.

My feet pounded down the steps to the canal. Hands still shaking, I picked the lock to the gate. It took me about three times longer than usual. Once I'd made it underneath the school and pulled the gate shut behind me, I slowed down. The thunder of the river bouncing off the stone walls seemed to
match the roaring chaos inside my head. I slouched sideways against the wall, slid to the floor, and pressed my head against the damp stone, feeling the vibration of the school in my skull. I stayed like that for a while, not thinking, just letting the flood of despair and confusion and anger boil and churn through me.

When I got back to my room, I dragged off my wet clothes, pausing only to draw Gremlin from my hoodie pocket and set him on the nightstand. Once I'd pulled on a dry T-shirt and boxers, I made a voice call to Ray on my puck. He sounded groggy when he answered. “Lee? What is it, buddy?”

“I'm back in my room,” I said. “You were sleeping. I didn't want to disturb you.”

“Oh, God. I'm so sorry. I'll be right there. You need anything?”

“No. I'm going to bed now.” I couldn't tell if my voice sounded normal, but even if it didn't, he seemed too flustered to notice.

I waved off all the lights in my room except the one in my puck. It hovered a few feet above me. By its light, I picked up Gremlin and pulled back the fur that covered his belly, revealing his body's caved-in metal casing. I opened his access panel—something I'd never done before. Usually I liked to snoop inside machines to understand their design and construction, but Gremlin had always been like a magic trick whose explanation I preferred not to know. Peering inside, I recognized Mom's precise, delicate handiwork—now smashed, unrepairable. I closed him back up, arranged him in a ball next to Mom's picture, and let him sleep.

S
leep didn't come for me, though. After Ray looked in on me and I told him good night, I burrowed under the covers and pulled a pillow over my head, like I was trying to bury myself. I wished I could really do that: claw my way deep under the ground, keep digging and digging until I was part of the earth and my body disintegrated and there was no more me left.

The air turned hot and stuffy around me. The rain ticked against my window. My brain paced around and around in the same small circle. There were plenty of questions I should've been asking myself. Did this mean Nico was working for Charlotte, just like Bex had suspected? Tomorrow was Thursday, the day Charlotte had said she'd retaliate against my father. Was I her target?

But the fact that I should probably fear for my safety barely registered. Right then, all I could think about was that I'd fallen in love with a simulation of a human being. Nico,
the handsome, charming, weird guy I'd thought I'd known, didn't really exist. And the feeling that someone finally gave a crap about me, that someone finally understood me, that I wasn't all alone in this ugly universe after all—that had been a simulation too.

The hours passed. After a while pale light started to filter under the covers. I ignored it. My puck's morning alarm went off. I ignored that, too. Then, something I couldn't ignore: a knock on my door.

“What is it?”

Trumbull stuck his head in. “Sorry to bother you, sir. Your friend Nico wants to talk to you.”

The sound of his name felt like ice water washing through my hollowed-out body.

“I'm sleeping.”

“He says it's important. He says it won't take long.”

My fingers, clutching the pillow over my head, loosened. If I told Trumbull to send Nico away, it would make him suspicious. And it might not stop Nico anyway. I'd seen what he could do last night. He might take more extreme measures, like snapping Trumbull's neck and then mine, or blowing up the whole school, or—maybe worst of all—telling Trumbull I was gay. At least if I talked to him, I might get some answers. I pushed away the covers and groped for my glasses. “Give me a minute.”

While I pulled on a pair of jeans, I caught a glimpse of
myself in the mirror. Pale, puffy face. Bluish circles under my eyes. My hands smarted, the palms scraped raw after clinging to the branch last night. The rest of me felt the same way: scraped raw, inside and out. I went over to the window and stared at the courtyard so I wouldn't have to look at him when he came in. The door clicked open and clicked shut again. I tensed, half expecting him to shove me out the window.
Go ahead
, part of me wanted to say. Gutless Lee or Kamikaze Lee, I didn't even know which.