The Rendering (17 page)
Authors: Joel Naftali
“If we can damage that uplink—” I started.
“Oh, no,” Jamie said, her eyes wide. Her father was next in line.
We were too late.
“Next!” Roach called. And the soldiers shoved Jamie’s dad into the machine.
The door shimmered. The booth hummed.
And he was gone.
“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” Jamie said under her breath.
“Next!” Roach called.
They pushed Jamie’s mother into the machine, and the door shimmered again.
“Noooooooo!”
Jamie yelled as the booth digitized her mother.
The soldiers heard her. They looked up and saw the grate.
They sprang toward us.
An instant after the missile launched, a soda vending machine flew over Cosmo’s head. It smashed into the missile and exploded into shrapnel and sugar water. Smoke billowed through the corridor, hiding the skunks.
Larkspur appeared at the end of the hallway, from where he’d thrown the soda machine. He grabbed Cosmo and Poppy, put one under each arm, and ran back toward the Cray room.
“You should’ve said, ‘Have a Coke and a smile,’ ” Cosmo said from under Larkspur’s arm.
“I told you to get Poppy,” Larkspur said. “Not to play around with those droids.”
“Not his fault,” Poppy said.
“You should know better.” Larkspur dropped Poppy and Cosmo on the ground of the Cray room a little harder than necessary. “Both of you.”
They stood up and wiped themselves off. “Something happened,” Poppy said. “We lost power.”
“What?”
“We were doing fine; then we lost power.”
Larkspur checked his wrist display. “It’s starting. What Dr. Solomon warned us about. Dissolving into a bundle of information.”
“You didn’t feel it?” Poppy asked.
“Not yet. The suit has its own power source, so I can last longer than you. A little longer. Time to go.”
Larkspur grabbed the uplink and flickered out of existence.
But the uplink stayed behind.
Big problem.
In a moment, Larkspur rematerialized. The other two skunks stared at him.
“Don’t say it,” Cosmo said. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“We can’t do it. We can digitize ourselves, and a little extra, like our gear. But I can’t digitize the uplink. It exceeds my capacity.”
“I told you not to say it.”
“So how do we get out of here?” Poppy asked. “And how do we get an uplink to Dr. Solomon?”
And the connection died.
“Great,” Cosmo said.
“I don’t care if I
am
reverting to pure information.” Poppy smiled her scary smile. “These colors don’t run.”
“You’re not in color,” Cosmo said. “You’re black and white.”
“This isn’t about running,” Larkspur told her. “We don’t have time to play around. We have a duty to Dr. Solomon, we need to help the chi—”
CHUNG CHUNG CHUNG CHUNG CHUNG
.
Larkspur stopped talking, and they all looked down the hallway.
The droids were back. And they’d brought friends.
The soldiers ripped the grate off the wall and grabbed us.
I’d go into detail about how they pulled us from the ventilation shaft as we tried to scramble away, but why bother? The truth is, they were soldiers and we were kids. We never had a chance.
“Bring them here,” Roach said.
The soldiers shoved us forward.
Hund glowered at me. “How’s your leg?”
Too scared to say anything clever—or even anything stupid, for that matter—I just stared at him.
He pulled his knife. “Remember this? My favorite blade?”
I swallowed hard.
Hund stepped closer and grabbed the front of my shirt. Then he lifted me three feet into the air.
I heard Jamie yell, “Let him go!”
Pretty impressive. I didn’t feel like yelling anything except “Mommy!”
“I could do that,” Hund said, and shook me. “Or I could snap him in half.”
“Make him give you the Resloc first,” Roach said.
“Gimme,” Hund snarled at me.
“Um—” I swallowed. “I—I don’t know w-what that is.”
“The place where you downloaded a copy of the Protocol,” Roach said. “Oh, yes, very clever. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”
“I d-don’t know what you’re t-talking about,” I stammered.
And I didn’t. Maybe if I hadn’t been so bone-deep terrified, I’d have realized he meant the skunks. That was where the Protocol had been downloaded. But at that moment, I could barely remember how to breathe.
“Don’t play with me, boy,” Hund said.
He stared into my eyes, and I could see my reflection in his implanted yellow lens, and I looked scared.
He tightened his grip on me and brought his blade closer, and everything started to go black. I guess I was about to faint.
“I have it!” Jamie shouted. They all turned to her. “Don’t hurt him. I know the Resloc.”
“And who are
you
?” Hund sneered.
“I’m the girl who knows the Resloc number: 21c07lr84-84.”
Roach cocked his head when she rattled off the numbers. “A child with a
brain
. How unusual.” He tapped a few keys, then nodded in satisfaction. “You downloaded the Protocol into the test animals?”
“I guess,” I said.
“A pity the animals were incinerated.” He turned to Hund. “Everything is going perfectly. The scans were flawless; the first stage is complete. The digitization of a neighborhood. Next comes a small city, then a state. And then”—he smiled his freaky smile—“perfect order. Perfect logic.”
“Stage one is complete?” Hund asked.
“Indeed. And nothing can—”
“Then it’s time for my payment.” Hund tossed me to the floor and I fell on my butt. “My upgrades.”
“Patience, Commander.”
“I want those—”
“I’ll activate the upgrades when we return to base.”
The soldier holding Jamie grabbed me, too. “What should I do with these two?”
“Toss them into the mix,” Roach said, nodding at the scanning booth.
“Together?”
“Oh, yes. Quite an interesting experiment. Finish the ones in the queue; then add the children. They’ll be our last two uploads.”
They scanned in the last few people. I’ll skip over the crying, the screaming, the pleading. Then the soldier holding me and Jamie started dragging us forward, toward the scanning booth.
Jamie caught my eye and mouthed,
One, two … three!
At exactly the same time, we both shoved and tugged and kicked and pulled, trying to get away.
No good. The soldier just scoffed and tossed us into the machine.
A moment later, the door shimmered closed.
Pitch-black. Not even a hint of light. And we were about to be scanned into Roach’s world.
“Jamie?” I said.
“Right here,” she answered, and took my hand.
The machine started to hum.
CHUNG CHUNG CHUNG CHUNG CHUNG:
a dozen security droids advanced in a phalanx.
Poppy cartwheeled behind them and tore through armor with her crowbar while Cosmo blasted away with his stun guns. In a moment, four of the security droids were smoldering
wrecks, but the rest kept attacking with mindless ferocity.
Then Poppy fuzzed, and a mini-missile exploded behind her shoulder. And when Cosmo fuzzed, too, a robot arm smashed him across the hall.
Larkspur stepped in to protect them from an electronic pulse, which shorted his circuitry. “We have to disengage!” he yelled, head-butting a droid into smithereens. “The children need us.”
“Without the uplink?” Cosmo asked as he fired a volley of ball bearings.
“We have no other choice,” Larkspur said.
“Not me,” Poppy said. “I don’t run from—”
As a missile flung her backward, she fuzzed again—her edges frayed even more. Another power-down. Another step closer to dissolving
“Jack in!” Larkspur roared. “The children are in danger, and this isn’t a fight we can win.”
The security droids launched a barrage of missiles.
Poppy dodged, Cosmo fired countermeasures, and Larkspur shrugged off the impact … but one missile struck home.
Direct hit on the uplink: the missile blasted it into a charred husk.
Completely destroyed. Now there were only
two
uplinks, and Roach had both.
Cold. Dark. The scent of fear. The feel of Jamie’s hand in mine. The sound of the machine humming. The end of everything.
And then, from outside the scanning machine, a familiar voice: “Now
this
is a fight we can win.”
The darkness seemed to brighten.
“Cosmo,” Jamie whispered. Then she yelled, “We’re in here! Cut the power!”
I heard the sharp whistle of Poppy’s chain, and the humming stopped with a sudden
crackle-ffzt
. Then someone screamed and thudded heavily to the ground.
“You threatened the children,” Larkspur said, his deep voice suddenly unfriendly. “That was a mistake.”
Gunfire sparked and a guard screamed. Bullets ricocheted and something exploded:
FWOOOM
.
Cosmo laughed. “You call
that
a grenade? No, no.
This
is a grenade.”
FWOOOOOOM!
For about two minutes, screaming and gunfire and explosions echoed in the auditorium. Sounded like a full-scale war out there. Instead of being the last place on earth I wanted to be, the scanning booth suddenly seemed like a nice, safe hideout.
Then we heard Roach’s voice: “Terminate encounter. Evacuate.”
“No!” Hund yelled. “I can beat them.”
“Perhaps,” Roach said. “But I won’t risk it. We have work to do. Evacuate.”
A loud rumble came from all around us, and the booth trembled and shook. Felt like the auditorium walls were collapsing and the roof was falling in. Then the rumble grew fainter, moving away—Roach’s evacuation vehicle—and a second later, the door opened.
Cosmo.
Jamie burst out and gave him a big hug. “Cosmo!”
“Owwwww!” he said.
“We have to get my paren—” Jamie started. Then she saw him, all his burns and cuts. And the other two skunks looked even worse. “We have to get you all to a hospital.”
“A hospital can’t help us,” Larkspur said. “Only the uplink
can help us. Only the uplink can save Dr. Solomon.”
“So where
is
it?”
The skunks looked glum standing there, backlit by the fires burning on the floor and the daylight streaming through the demolished ceiling.
“We lost it in the cross fire,” Cosmo said. “We failed.”
“How are we supposed to get an uplink now?” I asked in a whiny voice. “You’ll revert, and my aunt’ll fade into the Net. We’re not just gonna stumble on an uplink. Unless …”
I stepped aside and gestured with a sort of triumphant flourish. There, behind the scanning machine, was the uplink I’d seen earlier.
Poppy’s ears perked and Cosmo cheered and tossed me about ten feet into the air. Luckily, he caught me, too.
Larkspur grabbed the uplink. “Let’s get this to Dr. Solomon without delay.”
“To her where?” I asked. “She’s in the Net.”
“Jamie’s laptop is the best conduit, synchronized with the—” Larkspur stopped. “Where
is
the laptop?”
“Um,” I said. “Still in Jamie’s bedroom.”
He nodded. “Then let’s have a Coke and smile.”
I looked at him.
“What
?”
“Cosmo told me I should say that.” His metal brow furrowed. “No?”
“No,” I said, and we headed outside.
Halfway to the auditorium doors, I noticed Jamie lagging behind, looking around the now-empty room at the wreckage and the flames.
Her eyes sad and her head bowed in grief.
Maybe her mom and dad worked too many hours; maybe they gave her too many
things
and not enough time. Maybe they hardly saw her and didn’t really know her—maybe they even called her princess sometimes.
But they loved her. And they were all the family she had.
Except me.
I stood beside her. “I’m sorry.”
She nodded, biting her lip.
“I promise …”
“What?”
“We’ll get them back. With the skunks on our side … we’ll get them back.”
“Yeah,” she said.
I hope she believed me. But the truth was I wasn’t so sure myself.
I didn’t say anything else; I just walked beside her back to her house. The streets were empty. The town looked like a ghost town. The skunks kept watch from rooftops and
telephone poles, but we walked straight to Jamie’s house, and nobody tried to stop us.
I paused outside her front door, thinking about the family who’d lived there before Jamie. When I was a little kid, I used to spy on them with my aunt’s binoculars, especially at dinnertime. Watching them together talking and laughing like the McCheerfuls from Planet Perfect, I’d feel a hot bubble of envy in my stomach.