Dangerous (30 page)

desk, but the screws burned holes straight through. I shielded

my eyes with my havocked arm, and just in time to feel the

pings of screws hit. The armor held.

I waited for him to reach into his bag for more ammo, then

I stood and threw two havoc knives, aiming for his legs. One

grazed his leg, the other stuck in a crate behind him.

He pulled it out, smiling. I’d just given him ammo that

could cut through my armor.

I started to run, but he shot the havoc knife. There was a

blinding streak of blue. The knife cut through the havoc armor

over Fido and stuck into the arm itself. In the second I paused

to look, Wilder must have scavenged my other knife, because

he shot again, slicing Fido clean off. The hand and forearm

that had felt like my own now dropped dead to the floor. Just a

few centimeters remained attached, looking like charred flesh.

Phantom pains pierced me.

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Shannon Hale

I dislodged the remainder of my arm and threw it back at

Wilder, too angry to think. Angry not just that Fido was broken,

but that
he’d
broken it. More than ever, I felt how every kiss had

made me vulnerable. I wasn’t a fierce warrior. I was a stupid girl

who let myself get duped.

He picked up the broken piece of Fido and shot it at me.

How fitting if it had torn right through my head and ended it

all, but his shot went wide. I couldn’t depend on the next one

missing me. I had to keep moving.

I switched my impact boots to hop, slammed my feet down,

and shot into the air.

“Whoa,” he said, and I knew he hadn’t been expecting

that. The Great and Powerful Thinker had never seen my

impact boots.

I grabbed a metal beam, grew a havoc hook over my right

arm, and using hand and hook swung from rafter to rafter. I

hefted myself up and quietly crawled through a few more raf-

ters, huddling in a recess of the ceiling. In his surprise, Wilder

had hesitated, so by the time he started to fire again, he’d lost

me. His thinker-tracking ability wasn’t exact, and the moonlight

of the windows didn’t reach this high. I prayed the lights were

off because the warehouse didn’t have power. If he could turn

them on, I’d be an easy target.

Blue streaks peppered the ceiling in sweeping arcs, lug

nuts and screws ripping through the metal roof. A couple hit

the back of my head with bruising power. On his next sweep,

something large struck my jaw. I swallowed a whimper of pain.

My blood tasted like a mouthful of quarters.

The blue shots slowed. Each strike thinned my armor, and

I had to layer new skin over the dents. I grew a blade in my

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Dangerous

havoc hook arm, turning it into a scythe—so sharp the edge was

made up of single molecules. It would cut off Wilder’s arm with

the gentlest nudge. It would slice through his ribs, right into his

heart. My arm trembled.

Wilder was almost under me now, walking as he peered

into the rafters to my right.

I switched my boots to impact and dropped ten meters

down behind him. Wilder started to turn. My blade arm was al-

ready lifted, my insides fiery with hatred. I could end Jonathan

Wilder. I brought my blade down—

And stopped, the blade millimeters from his neck.
I’m not

Jacques. I’m not Ruthless. I’m Maisie Danger Brown
. Instead, I

slapped him with the flat of the blade against his head.

He stumbled forward, turning to shoot at me as I ran away.

Something large struck me in my back, and I fell face-down. He

was shooting cut pipes now, the kind Mi-sun had put through

tank armor. My breath knocked out of me so hard, for a few sec-

onds I wasn’t sure I’d ever get it back. And when I did, I almost

wished I hadn’t. I
hurt
.

I ran again, growing more havoc skin over my back. He

struck again, this time in my right leg. I fell flat on my face as

another pipe flew just over my head.

Get up. Run, Maisie.

I switched my boots back to hop and scrambled to my feet.

The pain in my right leg was so bad my stomach twisted, want-

ing to retch. I slammed my left foot down and shot into the

air, pitching to one side. My armored head struck the roof as

I grabbed a rafter. I swung to a new position and clung there,

shaking. Whenever I lifted my arm, pain pierced my left side.

Broken ribs?

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Shannon Hale

Blue shot streaked around me, some hitting, but I stifled a

cry, holding my breath.

Attack, I told myself. Go attack.

Several of my bones were broken. My Fido arm was gone.

I felt cut in half, shattered, and defenseless. I’d had the chance

to kill him and I hadn’t.

“Come on, Maisie! This is a sorry game of hide-and-seek!”

The roof seemed to tilt, and I clung on, shutting my eyes,

too dizzy to see.

An image of Jacques hovered behind my lids, starved be-

neath his crumbling armor. Not gonna happen.

I’d come equipped with four camelbacks—those back-

packs made to carry water for long hikes, though mine were

filled with high-calorie energy drinks. I wore them against my

skin, under my armor.

I removed my mouth armor and put a straw in my mouth,

draining one of the camelbacks. My fingers and toes shivered.

Wilder was shooting the ceiling a few meters away. “Throw

some more of those homegrown knives, Maisie. That was a bril-

liant idea.”

I removed my scythe hook, hiding it up in the rafters out

of his reach. Apparently I couldn’t make myself use a lethal

weapon. Instead I grew an arm over Fido’s absence, ending in

a havoc fist.

I jumped down behind him and punched him in the head.

He turned to shoot, off-balance from my strike, and

missed as my boots shot me back in the air. My broken right leg

screamed at me, so I tucked it up, landing just on my left and

hitting Wilder again as I descended, a left-right punch. He shot,

but I was back in the air. I switched to impact while still arching

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Dangerous

over his head and then landed and stayed. He was expecting

another hop and aimed high. So while he shot over my shoulder,

I struck him in the face.

I’d hit Hairy a few times when he tutored me. Hairy could

take a punch. Wilder could not. He stumbled back.

I punched him again, getting him in the mouth. It felt re-

ally good. He fumbled for his bag of metal ammo, but I grew a

short blade and sliced the bag from his side, throwing it as far

as I could.

He faked left then dove right for a loose pipe. I kneed him

in the gut. It hurt my broken leg, but not as much as it hurt Wilder. He coughed and fell over, and I held his wrists together,

growing havoc handcuffs over them and sealing in his danger-

ous fingers. I kneed him again to slow him down so I could call

Howell—wait, he’d killed my phone.

How was I going to get him outside? I was hobbled, and

he was stronger. His weapon hands were encased in havoc, but

could he simply shoot them off? I grabbed his ankles, cuffing

those as well.

“Don’t you dare truss me up,” he said, still coughing from

my kick. “Cut me loose and let’s end this!”

“No.” I bounced on my left foot, my broken leg keeping me

from pacing. Could I risk leaving him alone while I went for

help? Could I drag him out on my own?

He muttered something in Russian.

“Translation?” I said.

He didn’t reply. He was rubbing his chin against his shoul-

der as if to scratch an itch, but he must have had a little pouch

there, because there was a rip and then he was holding some-

thing white in his teeth. I leaped for him, but he kicked me

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Shannon Hale

back, closed his lips over whatever it was, and chewed. His smile

was so wicked it made my knees shake.

“Never mess with the thinker,” he said. “I always have a

backup plan.”

Had his thinker-self found some drug that would increase

the power of his shooter-self? Any second the bands over his

hands might crack in an electric-blue burst. I took a step back

and grew a blade.

He lifted his cuffed hands, still smiling. I hopped behind a

pile of crates. I waited. No sound.

I peeked. Wilder was lying down. His hands were still

shielded. His eyes were closed.

“Wilder?”

He didn’t move. I stepped out.

“Wilder, are you playing possum?”

Blade forward, I walked to him and nudged his foot with

my armored boot. Really scientific, Maisie. Might as well poke

him with a stick.

“Wilder?” I said again. I knelt over him, releasing the ar-

mor from my fingers so I could search for a pulse at his neck, a

breath from his nose, any sign of life. Nothing.

Wilder was dead.

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My head felt thick, my body so buried in armor I seemed

to be falling into it, deep into nothing, away from life and move-

ment and toward numbness.

Wilder had gambled on some trick pill to make him more

powerful, but it had backfired and stopped his heart. My own

heart was going rapid fire.

I felt in his mouth to make sure his tongue wasn’t block-

ing his throat. But I was more robot than flesh, so I released the

havoc skin from my upper body. It clattered to the floor.

Maybe the trick was the pill made him seem dead. He’d

wake now that I was unarmored and vulnerable. I stood back.

He didn’t wake.

“Not like Ruthless,” I said and started chest compressions

with my one hand. If I could keep his heart pumping, his tokens

would stay put. I wouldn’t have to choose between losing them

and claiming them. I started to cry—a crazy-girl, bewildered

sobbing.

I winced with every press, afraid to feel his tokens rising,

angry that he would really die and put me through this, and

then laughing like a
loca
because I was in this nightmare again,

killing someone and trying to save him at the same time.

“Wilder!” I slapped him across the face. “Breathe!”

He didn’t breathe. I held my hand to his chest, about to

do more compressions, but stopped short. The skin of my hand

tingled. Was I was feeling the electricity of his tokens, nanites

zooming in, ready to abandon his body? If they came out, I

Shannon Hale

would have to fight that nanite-inspired urge to keep the tokens

safe. Last time I had lost that fight. I couldn’t bear the agony

again.

The pain of that decision seemed to throb in my crushed

leg, my broken ribs, building and tightening in my chest. I

leaned over him and gave him mouth-to-mouth. It was pointless.

Without compressions his heart would never restart. I wouldn’t

take his tokens, but I didn’t want them lost to outer space ei-

ther. And I didn’t want to let someone else die. I couldn’t face

Wilder’s ghost in my nightmares.

I breathed into his mouth. I breathed and breathed and

breathed—

Ow. OW! Fierce pain in my chest. I tried to push away

from Wilder, but it had already begun—his tokens, twisting to-

gether, white as light, rising from his chest and sinking directly

into mine. They were supposed to go through hands! No fair!

I grabbed the ends as they dug into me. That made the pain

even more brilliant, like reaching into my own gut and trying to

pull out my organs. The freezing heat ripped through my ster-

num and slammed against my heart with a force that knocked

me back and made me briefly blind and deaf to the world. My

whole chest was fiercely hot, then ice cold, then numb right be-

fore the explosion of pain. The other times seemed gentle to me

now. Wilder’s tokens burned, as if someone stuck his hand right

into my chest, like a bully might grab your shirt, and twisted my

heart and lungs in his fist. I wanted to die. I wanted to die, die,

die . . .

My broken ribs snapped back into place, my jaw straight-

ened, my left leg flamed, nanites fixing up their host body, heal-

ing my injuries while my chest was ravaged.

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Dangerous

No. I would not be responsible for another death. Wilder

did
not
get to haunt me alongside Ruth, Mi-sun, and Jacques.

Clawing my way free from the torture, seizing back my strength,

I put my hand on his chest and restarted compressions.

Strength roared through my muscles as the brute token lit

up inside me. I became more aware of Wilder’s body, the give

of his ribs beneath the heels of my hand. The ease with which

I could crack them, even push my hand straight through his

chest.

A heartbeat.

Maybe I just sensed my own heartbeat in my hand. I lay

my ear against his chest.

Two heartbeats, stuttered and unsure. A raised chest. A

breath.

First-aid training at boot camp had neglected to tell us

what to do once the CPR actually worked. Did I stop compres-