Willful Machines (30 page)

I still hadn't caught a glimpse of Dr. Singh. In her wheelchair, she'd be hard to spot. A few police officers stood nearby,
apparently to watch over the civilians, but their attention, like everyone else's, was on the school. The helicopter had just come around for another pass. As it circled Inverness Prep's spires, people stared at it with tired eyes, like they'd watched the same thing for hours. I slipped out of the trees and into the crowd.

From within the shelter of my green vinyl hood, I glanced from side to side, doing my best to scan the throng without letting anyone see my face. I passed Mrs. Case, Stroud's secretary, her ordinarily neat gray hair unraveling from its bun, bending close to Miss Remnant, who kneaded her hands together like she'd just pumped sanitizer onto her palms. A little farther along, a pack of FUUWLs huddled together frowning at the school, probably thinking about all the study time they were missing. Then a face appeared that almost made me weep with relief. Not Dr. Singh's, but Bex's. She stood with a pad of paper and a pen she'd managed to find somewhere, scribbling away. Taking notes for a story, no doubt.

I put my hand on her forearm. She looked up. Right away her eyes bulged. Before she could make a sound, I pressed my finger to her mouth, shook my head, and pulled her back into the trees.

Once we'd reached cover, Bex shoved my chest hard, physical violence being her preferred means of showing affection. “I was afraid you were dead, Lee! Where have you been? Everyone's wondering what happened to you!”

I pulled back my hood. “Don't worry. I'm okay. But I've been away from school for the past few hours.”

“Where?”

“I'll explain in a minute. What's going on here? Why are you all out on the lawn?”

“We're waiting for buses to take us to a hotel for the night, last I heard. This day's been insane, Lee. It was like all the machines in school revolted. First the Spiders started attacking students. Then our pucks turned on us too—flying at us just like Nevermore did, driving us out of the school.”

“When did that happen?”

“Just after lunch.”

At exactly the same time the Spiders attacked me and Trumbull in the robotics lab. Maybe that explained why no cameras had picked up Nico's escape. “Listen,” I said, “the Spiders went after me and Trumbull, too. He was hurt, badly, and I think he might still be in—”

Bex shook her head. “He's okay. Well, not okay. I heard his injuries were pretty serious. But he's safe. When everything went haywire, Ray went looking for you two. He found Trumbull and managed to get him out. People are worried sick about you, though. They think you're still inside. These military guys got a team together to rescue you a few hours ago, but before they made it inside, a bunch of pucks appeared in the windows and Charlotte's voice came booming out of their speakers. It was the creepiest thing ever, Lee. She said she had hostages,
and if we didn't stay back she'd kill them. Ever since then she's been silent. Lee, what's going on? Is it Nico? Did he take you prisoner?”

I grabbed her arm. “You have to believe me, Bex, he's not the one to blame. It's true Charlotte sent him to capture me, but he didn't go along with her plan. He risked everything to get me to safety. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't be here talking to you now.”

A pained look crossed her face. She bit her lip. Her eyes retreated from mine. “Listen, Lee. You should know something. I told the Secret Service about him.”

I stumbled back a step, like Bex had just shoved me a second time. “How much?”

“That he's a 2B. That he's working for Charlotte. I didn't mention the part about you two being, you know, romantically involved, but I told them pretty much everything else.”

Outside our enclosure of trees, the helicopter had come around for another pass. The pounding made the ground under my feet seem to shake and sway. My head felt swimmy. I dropped to a crouch and put my hands on the wet dirt to steady myself. “How could you, Bex?”

“How was I supposed to know he was suddenly a good guy again?” She had to shout over the roar of the chopper. “I was worried about you! I wanted to help!”

The helicopter moved off. She bent down next to me.

“I'm sorry, Lee. I really thought I was doing the right thing.”

“I know. I probably would've told too.” But I couldn't meet her eyes as I said it. Those black clouds were massing over my head again. The world around me seemed to dim. I crouched there and stared at the ground while droplets from the trees landed on my head and snaked down my cheeks.
Don't do this now
, I ordered my brain.
Remember, you have a job to do. Now more than ever, you need to find Dr. Singh.

Which made me think of something else.

“You said ‘hostages.' Who else is supposed to be inside the school besides me?”

“Once they got us all out on the lawn and did a head count,” Bex said, “they found two other people missing: Headmaster Stroud and Dr. Singh. No one had seen either of them since before all this started.”

“I was trying to find her. She's the only one who might know how to stop this.” My voice faltered. I shook my head and sent more commands to my black-box brain.
Don't fall apart. Keep thinking of Nico.
I peered through the trees at the school, with the spotlights crawling over its prickly, plantlike spires. “I have to get in there, Bex. It's the only next step I can think of.”

“How about this for a next step,” she retorted. “
Tell someone
. Let these guys know you're okay.
They
can handle Charlotte.”

I shook my head and stood. “I can't. Charlotte's trying to hack into Nico's brain right now. She'll take him over like she took over Nevermore. Kill him probably. These soldiers won't care about that. There's no other option. If I don't reach
Dr. Singh and stop Charlotte in the next”—I glanced at my watch—“thirty-two minutes, he'll be dead.”

“But won't Charlotte spot you trying to get in just like she spotted the troops?”

“I won't be going in the same way they did.” My eyes slid back to the school's front lawn. “I have an idea.”

“And even if you make it inside, how do you expect to find Dr. Singh? That building's huge, and there'll be Spiders and pucks everywhere.”

“Last I saw her, she was leaving the robotics lab. She probably headed back to her apartment on the fourth floor. I'll try there first. Charlotte already sent six Spiders after us, which means there can't be more than three inside the building. Those aren't such bad odds. And as for the pucks, I guess I'll have to hope for the best.”

Bex crossed her arms and kicked the toe of her combat boot against a tree root. “I'm not saying this to raise your hopes or anything, but there's a rumor going around that some Cybernetic Defense Corps hackers managed to put most of the pucks out of commission using their antitheft self-destruct feature.”

“Most, but not all?”

“I don't think so.”

“Well, that's something.”

She scowled, arms still crossed.

“I have to do this, Bex. I'll be careful, I swear. Just promise me you won't say anything this time, okay?”

“On one condition.”

“Name it.”

“Let me come with you.”

“No, Bex, I need you out here. If I don't come back in an hour, tell the Secret Service what I've done. And tell them the rest of the truth about Nico, too. That he helped me. That they shouldn't hurt him. I know it might not make any difference, but I still want you to try. Can you do that?”

She nodded, frowning. “But for the record, I still think it's suicide what you're doing.”

“Then it'll be right up my alley.”

“Very funny.” She shoved me again, less violently this time. “Just be careful, Lee.”

I
crept back the way I'd come. As I went, I rehearsed my plan again and again in my head. Each time, it seemed like a worse idea. The rain had picked up by the time I reached the highway. I pulled on my hood and sprinted across the road. A couple of police cars had parked on either side of Inverness Prep's front gate, but the cops inside didn't seem to notice me. Safe among the trees again, I crashed through the undergrowth and clambered down the muddy riverbank to the river. My toes squished inside my dress shoes, which the cold, gluey sludge threatened to wrench off at any second.

The rain thudding against my hood now, I scanned the river. A few fallen tree limbs had washed up on the bank. One of them looked sturdier than the rest, and it still had lots of leaves. I tugged it free of the other branches and hauled one end into the water. Then I stood by the side of the waterway wiping the mud off my hands and trying to summon Kamikaze Lee. But even he seemed to have reservations about what I planned to do.

I stepped into the water. Cold stabbed through the sole of my foot. I ignored it and lurched in deeper. When the water reached my thighs, I took hold of the tree limb and pulled it farther into the river. The current tugged at my legs, urging me toward the tunnel under the highway and the semicircle of light at the far end, where the canal flowed onto campus. I imagined the waterfall beyond waiting to devour me.

I glanced in the other direction, into the forest. Nico must have found out by now about the Hollywood-scale standoff happening in front of the school. He wouldn't like my new plan one bit, but now it was my turn to protect him. Anyway, I wasn't completely defenseless: I still had the watch.

I took off my glasses and stowed them in my slicker. The world around me turned into a dark, smeared watercolor. While I was at it, I dug into my inside blazer pocket and drew out Gremlin.

“How about it, buddy?” I said, the icy water making my voice wobble. “Are you up for a swim?”

Gremlin blinked at the river doubtfully. He didn't have networking capabilities, which meant at least I wouldn't have to worry about Charlotte hijacking
him
once I'd made it into the school.

Enough stalling. I tucked Gremlin back in my pocket and eased my body into the fast-moving water until only my hooded head showed above the surface. With shaking hands, I grasped the gnarled tree limb. My legs relaxed. The current
caught. It swept the branch down the river toward the mouth of the tunnel, and me along with it. I held on tight and forced myself to keep moving air through my cold, cramping lungs. The water grew choppier as it funneled into the canal, as if straining against the stone walls on either side. The tree limb bucked and tossed. The roar of the river, magnified as it echoed off the walls, filled my head. Meanwhile, the lights of campus rushed toward me. I took a huge breath and pulled my head under. Tilting my face upward, I felt the ambient light shine down on my closed eyelids. The current quickened little by little, the water seeming to boil with anticipation as it got ready to throw itself over the cliff.

The light disappeared again. I'd made it under the building. I broke the surface and gasped for air, while at the same time flinging my legs outward, searching for a foothold. My feet couldn't find the bottom. The water was deeper than I'd thought. I flailed for the side of the canal and managed to grab on to the slimy stone. I let go of the tree limb. It raced toward the iron grill at the end of the canal and slammed into it. The limb twisted there in the rushing water, its branches crunching like the bones of a rodent in the jaws of a big, hungry beast. I shuddered and tore my eyes away.

I tried to heave myself up, my fingernails clawing at the slick stone. My thrashing feet still couldn't reach the bottom of the canal, so I didn't have any way to stabilize myself, and the current wouldn't stop dragging at my legs. I lunged forward
one last time, reaching for a seam in the flagstones. My fingers missed. I slid back. The river snatched me under again.

I hurtled toward the waterfall. My arms and legs flailed but didn't find anything to grab on to. The grate grinned at me like a devouring mouth. My body slammed into the iron bars to one side of the tree limb, knocking the air out of my lungs and launching my head clear through. I stuck there, the water smashing at me from behind, jamming me against the bars so hard I couldn't pull in new air. My body had gone numb. For all I knew, I had two broken legs underneath the roiling surface. The water smashed into white droplets as it thundered down to the lake, which lay spread out beneath me, blurry and peaceful and distant, a million miles away.
I don't want to die
, I thought, just like I had when Nico had jumped with me into the chasm.
I love Nico, and I have to protect him, and if I die, I can't do that, so I don't want to die.

My hands fumbled until they found the iron grill. It took all my strength to push my head out from between the bars. Then I crawled hand over hand to the left, while the whole weight of the river kept me flattened against that flimsy barrier. I made slow progress. My starving lungs managed only small sips of air. The stone walkway at the side of the canal came into focus little by little.