Infinity Rises (13 page)

George slowly picks up his case and nods. “Yep, I can do that,” he mutters. The soldiers, clearly on edge, watch George like a hawk as he steps out of the elevator and disappears around the side of the silver tube.

“You two,” the soldier says, pointing at us, “go join your classmates.”

Otto and I walk out of the lift and around the elevator shaft to see Brent, Brody, Margaux, and Ryan standing inside the circular desk with three people who I’ve never seen before.

“Professor!” screeches Otto. She breaks into a run and embraces a tweed-suited old man, almost knocking him over and bumping into George, who’s kneeling by the emergency-power compartment in the floor.

“Now, now, Miss Otto,” the old man says, peeling her away from his waist. “Thank you for the sentiment, but let us behave with the appropriate decorum, shall we?”

Professor Francis doesn’t look very different from how I imagined him. The mousy brown-haired boy must be Dean, and the weary-looking guy with the red tie, thick sand-colored hair, and blood-spattered shirt has to be Percy, the tour guide. I bet he wishes more than anything that he’d called in sick this morning.

“Sorry, Professor. I’m just glad you’re alive. All of you.” Otto’s words are laden with relief as she smiles at Dean and Percy.

Percy smiles back, but it’s forced. There’s no joy in his eyes at all, just upturned lips marred by trauma. Dean doesn’t even seem to notice Otto. His twitchy eyes are vacant and distant, flitting past the edges of people’s faces as he sniffs and wipes at his blood-smeared nose.

“Where are Jennifer and Amy?” asks Otto.

“Unfortunately, we haven’t seen Miss Cheng or Miss Dee as of yet,” the Professor says, slowly shaking his head. “We can only hope that they have found somewhere safe to hide until this tragedy is over.”

I assume that he and Otto are talking about two more students. That’s all I need, two more kids to babysit. I’m starting to feel like I’m getting the short end of this deal. If they are hiding, I hope they continue to.

As per the soldier’s request, George twists the key in the hole in the floor, and every display shuts off at once, leaving only the tinted sun outside to dimly light our tired faces. The middle soldier in the group of three throws a brisk nod of thanks at George, and all of them move in a silent group toward the far glass wall near the front doors. There’s an awkward moment of silence. No one seems to know what to say. At least, not until Otto slings a satchel up over her head and does her best to look enthusiastic. “I got our phones and slates if . . . if anyone wants them?”

Margaux perks up immediately and pushes in between Dean and Brent, jabbing her hand into the satchel like a hungry horse nuzzling its food bag. “I need to call my mom and my dad and my mom’s lawyers and my dad’s lawyers and my manicurist and my hairstylist and DirtDish.com and anyone else who will listen. After I’ve sued this place for everything it’s worth . . . ,” Margaux says, wrenching a diamond-encrusted phone from the pouch, “I’ll be rich, and they’ll be sorry.”

“You’re already rich,” says Ryan.

“Then I’ll be richer,” Margaux says, stabbing at the phone with her finger. The screen lights up, but the momentary flash of joy on Margaux’s face quickly disappears. “No signal! What do you mean, no signal?”

“They don’t work, Margaux,” says Otto. “Communications are being jammed. Look.” Otto holds up her computer slate, and the holographic lines, bumps, and charts spring up from its surface again. Margaux looks at them, bewildered, either unable or just too frustrated to make any sense of them. Her eyes crease and fill with tears. She’s clearly emotionally exhausted, and something as meaningless as a disconnected phone has turned out to be her breaking point.

“Well, if it doesn’t work . . . ,” Margaux says, waving her phone right in Otto’s face, “then what freaking use is it?” With an exasperated shriek, Margaux hurls her phone clear across the room. It streaks toward the far glass wall in a tumbling blur and smacks square into one of the soldiers’ helmets with a dull thud. All of them turn, but only the middle soldier of the three holds up a hand and speaks.

“Miss, please calm down. I know this must be a traumatic experience for you, but I’m confident that once a sweep of the facility has been completed and cleared of any hostile forces, you’ll all be free to go. Trust me; everything is going to be alright.”

Margaux whimpers and covers her mouth with her hands. Tears spill down her cheeks. Brent steps forward and tries to console her with a hug. Everyone in the group looks at the two in their embrace. Compassion and a shared understanding for Margaux’s sorrow show clearly on everyone’s faces, except for that of strangely dead-eyed Dean, who’s gazing into nowhere, and Otto, who’s looking up at me, her frightened eyes wide with concern. I quickly look down at the computer slate resting on the palms of her hands and immediately see why. An enormous holographic power spike is jutting from the surface of the slate, and it’s moving very fast, skittering in a curving trajectory, heading directly toward the small red dot in the center.

The small, red dot . . . exactly where
we
are all standing.

There’s no time to warn the others as I spin and lunge at Otto.

As a flash of light illuminates the room and we fall toward the floor, the only thought searing through my mind is one of undiluted fear. Fear that the soldier’s comforting words were not only wrong . . . but could also be the last words that any of us would ever hear.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The blast punches into the room like a thunderclap, rupturing the front windows into glittering powder. The explosion itself doesn’t kill the three soldiers, not really. Neither do the spraying fragments of glass. It’s the air that does it. The invisible, expanding sphere of superheated gases hits the men like a concrete wall, sending their bodies flying backward as their internal organs are pelted into tattered meat by the shrapnel of their own shattered bones.

The shock wave reaches us in a violent rush of glass, concrete, wood, and metal. The base of the desk stays mostly intact—that’s what saves us—but parts of it fly off. A decent-size chunk catches me in the head as people tumble and splay all around me. Mouths are screwed into contorted shapes, hands and arms shield faces, and ears are thumped into deafness, but for that second, for that brief, destructive point in time, the only things that exist are the brutal noise and the percussive force. I don’t think or feel anything. There’s no fear, no confusion, no questions.

But when the broken pieces are settling, and the chaos fades, I know that those three things will fill every bewildered corner of our reeling minds.

There’s moaning and labored movement. “Wha . . . what happened?” asks a muted voice. I only barely hear it through the high-pitched tones warbling in my damaged ears, but it sounds like George. I rub my eyes and survey the room.

Dust and debris are strewn all over the tangle of people scattered around me. Otto is lying facedown beside me; her glasses, remarkably unbroken, are just a half a meter from her mop of frizzy brown hair. I push myself up onto my knees and press my palm to the side of my skull. There’s blood matted in my hair, but the dull throbbing warning tone in the back of my mind tells me that it’s not too bad. I crawl to Otto, move a broken section of desk from her legs, and turn her over onto her back. She groans and winces, her computer slate still safely cradled in the crook of her elbow.

Looking around, I can see that everyone in our little group seems to be intact. No appendages missing, no eyeballs hanging out of faces, no ears or noses sliced off. Ryan pushes up onto his elbows and looks in my direction. I should run; this is my chance to ditch everyone and go it alone, but something won’t let me. Something inside me is making me stay, holding me like a magnet to these people. Despite what I think or what I want to feel, I just can’t deny the intensely uncomfortable fact that . . . I’m beginning to care what happens to them.

“Help me get everyone out of here!” I shout. Ryan seems to get the message through the ringing he’s undoubtedly hearing, because he nods and rolls onto one knee, tugging at the shirt of a groaning Brody who’s lying on his side nearby. I snatch Otto’s glasses from the floor, wipe their dusty lenses on my equally dusty shirt, and slide them onto her nose. “C’mon, Bit,” I say, grabbing her under her arms. “We gotta go.”

Her eyes focus on mine, and she hooks an arm around my shoulder. “Infinity . . . ,” she says croakily, “you called me ‘Bit.’”

“Yeah, well . . . just shut up and move, would ya?”

I hoist her up, and she’s understandably a little shaky on her feet. She absentmindedly slips her slate into her satchel; then, still clearly in a daze, she crouches to retrieve two more slates from the floor. Ryan and Brody are helping the others, and soon Percy is up, the look on his face so serious that it could be a stone carving. The Professor is on all fours, muttering about his glasses as he searches through splinters of desk, and that weird Dean kid just sits there, his blank, twitchy expression from before the explosion completely unchanged.

“What the hell was that?” Brent squeaks as he scrambles to his feet.

“I don’t know,” I reply. “But if it happens again, we had better not be here.”

Ryan moves to look over the top of the desk. “Those three men, the soldiers . . . are they . . . ?”

I slowly shake my head. With little more than a solemn look, he turns away to clear a section of fallen ceiling panel from the chest of a prone, shallow-breathing George, who seems to be more than a little freaked out. I don’t blame him. I bet this is the last thing the mild-mannered technician expected to happen when he pulled on his coveralls this morning. Ryan, on the other hand, seems more jaded than the others. I imagine he’s experienced more actual life outside the golden walls of luxury than the rest of these privileged teenagers, but it’s still disturbing how quickly someone can become accustomed to death.

“Why is this happening to me?” Margaux screeches as she pushes up from the floor, dust-darkened tracks of tears lining her face.

“We need to go!” I shout, pointing at the gaping rectangular hole in the front of the building where the windows used to be.

“Toward the explosion?” asks Brent.

“Do you see any other way out of here?”

Brent looks pissed off, but after a quick scan of the two remaining glass walls, he knows there’s nothing to argue about. He takes Margaux’s hand, and they start toward the breach, but I reach out and hiss at them to stop. “Wait!”

Everyone freezes.

The ringing in my own ears has faded enough to hear the rat-tat-tat of automatic gunfire outside. Soldiers very rarely shoot at nothing, so whoever or whatever caused this must be in somebody’s sights, and it isn’t very long until a strange noise piques my interest. It’s a thudding sound, like heavy footsteps. And it’s heading in this direction.

Frowning with curiosity, I peer over what remains of the top of the desk, waiting to see whatever is making the weird tromping noise. “What is that?” I ask, glancing back at the group.

Dean is standing now, his eyes still vacant, but everyone else, including Otto, is rooted to the spot, staring wide-eyed toward the approaching sound, all of them wearing the same expression, like kittens cowering from a wild dog. It’s then that I realize . . . they all
know
that sound. It’s a sound that has paralyzed them with fear, a sound that’s getting louder and closer with every weighted thud. It’s so close now that I can feel each pounding beat shuddering through the floor. I turn back toward the gaping hole in the side of the building to see two huge, bulbous, army-green-colored legs step into view outside the empty window frame.

Even though I can only see it from the chest down, I still can’t believe my eyes. It’s a robot, and—oh my—what a robot it is.

I thought I had studied them all, but right now, I’m at a loss for words. I have no idea what kind of machine that is. I can hear the spacking sound of bullets hitting it all over, but for all the damage they’re doing, the soldiers might as well be firing peashooters. It could be a R.A.M., I suppose, but . . . they don’t make them that big. Do they?

Almost as if it were a choreographed maneuver, everyone except me and that Dean kid jerks at the knees, ducking down behind the desk at the same time. Percy tugs the weirdly dazed boy down by his sleeve and bats at the air, signaling me to drop out of sight, too. Wary, and yet still intrigued, I slowly lower behind the desk and peek out through a small hole in its base. I’ve ducked just in the nick of time; a laser beam suddenly streams into the room, spreading into a bright-green fan through the floating particles of dust. It’s projecting from the center of the robot’s chest, flitting over the debris as if it’s searching for something. Is the robot looking for us? Maybe it’s scanning for Otto’s slate? That power spike was heading straight for us, after all. If it fires another grenade or missile into this room, we’re done for . . . it’s over. And there’s nothing I can do except keep quiet and hope like hell that doesn’t happen.

Through the hole, I nervously watch the laser as it moves across the floor and over the body of a fallen soldier. It travels up the legs of his tattered uniform and over his hips, dipping into the gouges torn into the sunken curve of his blast-bared stomach. It sweeps across his blood-soaked chest and head, then switches direction and roves along his arm. The soldier’s corpse is apparently no more important to the robot’s scanner than the meaningless debris strewn around him. Suddenly the green fan of light snaps to a halt and begins to close, shrinking down and changing color from green to yellow before finally tightening into a bright-red beam, right in the center of the wide silver band wrapped around the dead soldier’s wrist.

His command module. The robot has found what it’s looking for.

The laser cuts off, and all of a sudden, there’s a new sound, horrible and unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. It’s a high-pitched squeal at first, but elevates quickly. Even with my palms pressed hard against my ears, the noise becomes so loud that it drills into my skull, filling my head and the whole room with a wailing scream. All around me everyone is doing the same, holding the sides of their heads as if they’re going to explode. Even Dean is wincing. The scream begins to crackle, and I can smell the ozone tang of electricity burning the air. Then, with a violently powerful, droning roar, the remaining glass walls of the room come alive with reflected light as an astonishing eruption of power is unleashed from the robot’s arm.

It takes everything I have to keep my eyes glued to the hole in the desk as I witness the soldier’s entire body being shredded into oblivion by the incredible force of the robot’s weapon. Pieces of the floor shatter and fly as his body is transformed from a human corpse into nothing more than a thick smear of human ingredients.

The brutal storm of gunfire thankfully ends, and I can hear my adrenalized heart pulsing in the depths of my ears. My breaths have become quick snorts, and my wide eyes are mirrored on the faces of everyone in the group. All of us are still grinding our hands into our ears.

That’s when I see it out of the corner of my eye: the glint of silver that makes my stomach tighten and lurch.

Wrapped around the tour guide’s left wrist . . . is another command module.

I hear the robot’s laser snap on, and I quickly peer through the hole in the desk. There, flitting across the floor, is an eerie green line of light . . . and it’s headed directly for us.

“Your wristband! Take it off!” I hiss. Percy’s hands drop from his ears, and his brow furrows in confusion.

“The robot is tracking the command modules!” I whisper-shout, jabbing my finger at his wrist. “Get rid of it! Now!”

Percy looks down at the silver band, and his eyes widen.

I quickly turn back and spy through the hole. The laser is now shining directly on the other side of the desk. I look over at Percy and growl at him through gritted teeth. “Hurry!” He immediately presses his thumb to the black stone on the band and whispers the word “Disconnect.” The wristband detaches and drops into his palm.

“George!” rasps Otto. “George has a module, too!”

I look over at George. He’s still lying there with a board resting on his leg, his eyes blinking slowly behind his glasses as he stares at the ceiling. Something obviously isn’t right with him. Otto scrambles across the floor toward him, lifts his hand, and hurriedly begins whispering to the deathly pale man.

“Take this thing off, George,” she insists. “You need to do it right now.”

Between shallow breaths he slowly nods, touches the stone, and faintly mumbles into it. With a soft click, it comes away from his wrist, and, in a panic, Otto tosses it to Percy as a thin beam of glowing green shines directly through the hole in the desk. It stops dead center on the two thick silver bands grasped in Percy’s palm and instantly turns bright red. The hellish, high-pitched squeal of the robot’s weapon fills the room again, and Margaux shrieks as Brody, Ryan, and the Professor scramble away from Percy like he has the plague.

“Throw them!” I yell over the noise. “Throw them now!”

Percy quickly stands and thrusts his hand high above his head. He’s panting like a dog on a hot summer’s day, terror contorting the edges of his eyes.

“Throw them!” bellows Ryan as the laser spreads green over the top of the desk and begins moving upward over Percy’s chest. But Percy doesn’t move. He’s frozen, petrified solid as the glowing green line dips in and out of the creases in his face. The sound of the robot’s weapon screeching gets louder as the fan of light narrows into yellow on Percy’s forearm. Like a possum blinded into paralysis by an oncoming car, Percy doesn’t move at all. In a few seconds, the top half of his body is going to be raw hamburger.

“Throw them!” I scream, but even I can’t hear myself over the intensity of the piercing noise.

The laser reaches Percy’s palm and sharpens into a beam as it turns a bright shade of scarlet red.

I have no idea how much time is left before Percy is turned into a bloody heap of remains, but I have to move . . .
now
. I leap up from the floor and lunge at his hand, and in one fluid movement, I snatch the modules from his palm, spin, and fling them wildly. The modules whip through the air and tumble all the way across the room. Purely by chance, my throw couldn’t be better; they clink against the leg of the robot and clatter on the path at its feet like a hand-delivered sacrifice. I dive at the ground and peer through the hole as the laser thankfully skims back across the floor, finds the modules, and immediately cuts off. The tense muscles in my shoulders grip my bones tightly as the sound of the screaming weapon wanes back into the blissful relative quiet of Percy’s heavy breathing and Margaux’s puppy-dog whimpers. With a surprisingly quick movement for such a massive machine, the robot lifts one of its huge legs and brings its foot pounding down on the wristbands with a loud, ground-shaking thump.

I watch as the seemingly satisfied giant robot slowly trudges off toward the shouts of the soldiers in the courtyard, no doubt drawn to the high number of modules gathered there. I can hear Brody gulp with relief. Percy leans his head back toward the ceiling and lets out a long guttural groan as he buckles onto his knees beside George.

George’s face is ashen. His chest has stopped moving.

I crawl over beside him, lift the board and two cracked computer slates from his leg, and there, sticking out of a blood-soaked rip in his coveralls, is the point of the screwdriver he slipped into his pocket barely twenty minutes ago. It’s skewered right through his leg, and judging by the amount of blood, it must have torn his femoral artery in two. I look into his blank, sunken eyes, and I know that he’s gone. With a wound like that . . . he didn’t stand a chance.