The Rendering (21 page)

“The dragonfly is localized to this machine. If I lose the laptop, I lose the dragonfly.”

“Stupid thing can’t even shoot,” I muttered.

Jamie tried to punch me, and that did the trick. We were loose, falling through the laundry chute.

“Ooooooof!”

We landed on a heap of laundry in the basement. A few seconds later, we were on our feet. We ran to the side window and squirmed out.

Fast, quiet, efficient. Pretty darn good.

Except for one tiny problem.

The soldiers were waiting for us, one of them watching the house with what must’ve been the thermal scope.

“Have a nice ride?” he asked.

The other soldiers grabbed us from behind.

Poppy’s tail lashed from side to side, a sure sign that she was angry. The freeze took the top of her body first, so she couldn’t even talk—and she could barely stay on her feet.

The cyberdroid writhed toward her like a mutant octopus, barbed beak opening wide. Closer, closer … then suddenly letting loose a tremendous squawk.

No one knows much about the inner life of cyberdroids, but I think that squawk was a laugh. If cyberdroids feel anything, that one was feeling evil amusement.

At least, until Cosmo finally pulled the trigger with his tongue.

Cosmo insists that his training as an elite commando prepared him for this moment. I say it was pure luck.

Either way, while the droid was squawking at Poppy, one Ping-Pong ball arced through the air and flew right down its throat.

The cyberdroid shut its beak, widened its eyes, and exploded.

Very messy.

“And that,” Cosmo said, “is why you shouldn’t take candy from strangers.”

Poppy, with the last bit of strength left in her legs, dragged the datalink to Cosmo. They focused for a second. Flickered.

And jacked out of there.

Handcuffed again.

This time, in the back of a military truck driving away from home, with Jamie beside me and three soldiers guarding us
like we were the FBI’s most wanted instead of two scared kids.

Of course, it’s possible we
were
the FBI’s most wanted.

“Where are you taking us?” Jamie asked over the engine noise.

The soldiers ignored her.

“You must be proud,” she said sarcastically. “Capturing two kids all by yourselves.”

“Jamie?” I whispered. “What are you doing?”

“And it only took five of you,” she said.

They still ignored her.

“Ixnay on the pissing them offnay!” I whispered. “They have guns.”

“Hey, Bug,” she said loudly. “Doesn’t that one look like Elmer Fudd?”

Well, I didn’t know her plan, but Jamie’s always two steps ahead of me. So I said, “More like the Tasmanian Devil.”

The guy smacked my head. “Shut up.”

“Or Dilbert,” Jamie said.

The guy smacked my head again. “Shut up.”

“Hey!” I said. “That wasn’t even me.”

Which led him to smack my head.

Jamie opened her mouth to say something and—fortunately for my head—the truck rolled to a stop.

“We here already?” Dilbert asked.

“Yeah,” a grizzled soldier said. “We’re five minutes into a twenty-minute trip, and we’re already there.”

“Oh,” Dilbert said.

“Keep an eye on the diaper brigade,” the grizzled guy told him. Then he turned toward the front and called, “Any trouble?”

The driver’s voice came back: “Just a routine stop.”

“The diaper brigade?” Jamie said. “Is that the best you can do?”

The soldiers ignored her, and we sat silently, rumbling down streets, turning and turning until I’d lost all sense of direction … and the truck stopped again.

“End of the line,” Dilbert said, drawing a finger across his throat.

Just trying to scare us, he didn’t know how right he was: with Roach hacked into the government systems, I expected the soldiers were delivering us right into Hund’s hands.

They dragged us off the back of the truck. I blinked in the sudden sunlight. I expected to be in a military compound or VIRUS’s command center.

Instead, we were looking at something very familiar.

Jamie’s house. We’d driven in a complete circle.

“What the—” the grizzled soldier said.

Then a metal-encased hand grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and tossed him into the truck. Hard. We heard a thump, then nothing.

Well, except two more thumps.

With all the soldiers in a pile, Larkspur turned to us. “You all right?”

Jamie showed him the handcuffs. “Except for these.”

He snapped them like paper chains.

“Hey, Jamie,” I said. “What was the plan, calling that guy Elmer Fudd?”

“No plan,” she said. “I was just mad.”

“Next time you want to express your feelings,” I said, “make sure it’s
you
getting smacked.”

“How long before they notice those soldiers are missing?” I asked.

“Fourteen minutes,” Larkspur said. He’s very precise.

He grabbed the uplink and we broke into the Coopers’ house down the street—because Jamie’s wasn’t safe anymore—and gathered in Mrs. Cooper’s home office. She’s the webmaster for a local company, and a real techie.

At least, she
was
, before Roach scanned her in.

Jamie turned on her laptop. “Did the information transfer go okay?” she asked Larkspur. “You got the data?”

“What data?” I asked.

“The
data.”

“Wait,” I said, staring at her. “You found Roach’s real-world address?”

“She sure did,” Larkspur said. “Dr. Solomon is scanning the files right now.”

Jamie flashed me a superior look. “Not bad for a dragonfly that can’t even shoot.”

I was gonna say something witty, but right then, images started blurring across the laptop screen and my aunt’s computerized voice said, “I’ve decoded the address.”

She’s not much for starting a conversation with
hello
these days.

Hello. I see no use in beginning a statement with a greeting instead of the pertinent information. Good-bye
.

Very funny.

Anyway, she said, “I know the location of Roach’s server. But there are two problems.”

“Before we get the bad news,” Jamie said, “where are Poppy and Cosmo?”

“That’s the first problem. They jacked out twenty minutes ago, and I’ve been keeping them in a buffer ever since, repairing the damage.”

“The damage?”

“See for yourselves.”

And with that, Poppy and Cosmo shimmered into existence through the uplink. For a second, I thought they looked okay: a little battered and bruised, but okay. Then I saw the bluish electric field—about the size of a dinner plate—shimmering in the middle of Cosmo’s stomach, and another one on Poppy’s back, between her shoulder blades.

“I’ve repaired them as well as possible,” my aunt said as the images on-screen dissolved and re-formed. “Yet complete recovery will take hours or days.”

“Great,” I said. “What’s the other problem?”

“As you know, we located Roach’s server site—”

Poppy perked up. “Then what’re we waiting for?” She spun a throwing star on her fuzzy forefinger. “I’ve got something here for Hund.”

“And we identified his time frame. Tonight he’s going to transfer everything from his server to his virtual domain, where his cyber security is impenetrable.”

“What does that mean for us?” I asked.

“If we don’t download the data
today,”
Jamie said, “and destroy his server, we’ll never get this chance again.”

“As a wise skunk once asked,” Poppy said, “what’re we waiting for?”

“You and Cosmo are not at full power,” Auntie M said. “And Larkspur and I discovered that Roach is developing a new technology to deploy biodigital weaponry.”

“Codenamed ‘Cypher,’ ” Larkspur said.

“We suspect Roach used the new tech to give Commander Hund some impressive biodigital upgrades. He’s a one-man army now.”

“RoboHund,” Cosmo said. “The Hundinator.”

“Without time to train,” my aunt said, “I don’t know if we can win this fight.”

Larkspur nodded slowly. “We don’t have any other options, do we?”

“You can run,” my aunt said. “You can hide. You can let the police and army fight Roach by themselves—and lose.”

For a moment, nobody said anything. We just looked at each other in Mrs. Cooper’s home office, in an empty house where the owners would never return.

“In that case,” I said, “we’ve got no choice at all. We’ll fight.”

I was back in the military truck, this time in the front seat between Cosmo and Jamie. Cosmo drove, trying not to jam my knees every time he shifted gears.

Ten blocks from the Coopers’ house, Poppy asked, “How are we doing for time?”

Jamie yipped and I yelped. “Would you not
do
that?” I said.

Poppy cocked one fuzzy ear. “Do what?”

“Appear as if by magic,” Jamie said, “hanging upside down from the roof, outside the passenger window.”

We’d been driving toward the highway, silent. Of course, I’d had a hundred questions—Where was Roach’s base? Did we have any chance of saving Jamie’s parents? Would Auntie M find another way to reanimate herself? How many more biodriods did Roach control? What were Hund’s upgrades? Where was I gonna live? What if we didn’t destroy this server today? Were we going to
survive
until tomorrow? Talking skunks?
Really?
Could we call someone in the government to help? Did we have any chance of beating Roach? How powerful was VIRUS?—and I’m sure Jamie had even more. But this was a big moment. We were leaving town.

Leaving forever. No one had said that was what we were doing, but they didn’t have to. There was nothing to come back to.

We’d lived there all our lives, more or less. The day before, we couldn’t wait to leave; it was such a small town, and so lame.

But that day? I felt a lump in my throat, and I’m pretty sure Jamie was blinking back tears. Because that lame small town was our home. And we’d never go home again.

So imagine that thoughtful silence broken by Poppy—who hadn’t been there a moment before—sticking her head in the window and asking, “How are we doing for time?”

“On schedule, as long as we don’t hit traffic,” Cosmo said. “Now get outta sight.”

She vanished. Just like we were going to do. Well, after destroying the server. And rescuing Jamie’s parents and all the other victims.

Jamie twisted in her seat and called out, “Is it safe to log on?”

From the back of the truck, where he was riding with Poppy, Larkspur answered, “Your satellite connection is secure.”

“Thanks.” She tapped a few keys.

“You’re all intact?” my aunt asked through the laptop speakers. “Jamie? Doug?”

“Intact?” I said. “Yeah, we’re okay.”

“Hold one moment while I fix on your position. Cosmo?”

“Here,” he said from the driver’s seat.

“This is your optimal approach to Roach’s server.” She rattled off some coordinates. “Any questions?”

“Nope,” Cosmo said. “Won’t be long now.”

“I have a question,” Jamie said. “Why didn’t the skunks travel digitally? They’d already be there.”

“Two reasons,” my aunt said, the screen a kaleidoscope of images. “First, my scans show that Roach created an ambush with dozens of new cyberdroids, which the skunks, in their current condition, would not survive.”

“Oh. And number two?”

“We needed to remove you and Doug from town.”

“Speaking of which,” Jamie said, “what should
we
do at Roach’s base while the skunks are downloading the data and destroying that server?”

“Keep yourself safe,” Auntie M said. “And far from the fighting.”

“But we can help! With the dragonfly and …” Jamie glanced at me. “Well, the dragonfly.”

Great. She couldn’t come up with any way I could help. I guess that made me the comic relief.

“Perhaps,” Auntie M said.

“They’re my
parents,”
Jamie said tightly. “I want to help. I need to help.”

“I will run simulations. Now I must withdraw, to finish the documents and prepare the transfer.”

“What documents?” I asked after my aunt logged off. “What transfer?”

“The transfer is how we’ll save everyone,” Jamie said. “Before the skunks destroy the server, they need to capture all that data, all the scanned minds.”

“Right, so we can reanimate everyone.”

She shrugged, like she didn’t care, but her voice caught a little. “Eventually. Once we get the technology.”

“And the documents?”

“No idea.”

I nodded slowly. “So the skunks break into Roach’s base, download that data, and destroy the server. Right?”

“Easy as three point one four one five nine!” Cosmo said cheerily.

“Huh?” I said.

“Easy as pi,” Jamie told me.

“Oh,” I said, like I knew what she meant.

We drove for hours alongside the biggest cornfield of all time. Corn everywhere, and no buildings except a few grain silos. Then Cosmo pulled off the road and ran over rows of cornstalks, crushing them under the wheels. Probably leaving an emoticon crop circle.

“You sure this is the right place?” I asked, hopping from the truck when he finally stopped.

“Yeah,” Jamie said. “This doesn’t look like a high-tech evil genius headquarters.”

Cosmo grinned. “That’s what makes it such a
good
high-tech evil genius headquarters.”

Larkspur came around the side of the truck. “The entrance is a mile to the north.” He pointed through the corn. “We’re just beyond Roach’s outer perimeter.”

“What’s his inner perimeter?” Cosmo asked. “Cucumbers?”

Larkspur ignored him. “We have to move fast, but we can get there in time.”

“Let’s do this,” Poppy said.

“ ‘Let’s do this’?” Cosmo echoed as they started off. “Isn’t that a little generic?”

“Wait!” Jamie said. “What about us?”

“Dr. Solomon will fill you in,” Larkspur said, and the three of them disappeared from sight.