The Rendering (22 page)

Jamie and I stood there for a moment, watching the corn sway. Finally, we turned back to the truck, and Jamie grabbed her laptop and started to log on. Then she stopped and looked at me.

“Are you scared?” she asked.

“Scared?” I said. “Me? Why would I be scared? Because my aunt’s gone and I almost got gutted by Hund, blown up by a nuke, scanned into a nightmare, arrested, beaten, and killed?”

“I’m scared, too,” she said.

Far over the fields, the orange sun touched the horizon, and
the quiet evening darkened. The sky looked huge, and a warm wind tiptoed through the cornstalks. It was beautiful.

For a moment, it felt like everything would be okay.

But we knew the truth. We knew what was really going on.

In the hidden sectors of cyberspace and on secret training bases, VIRUS was gaining power. With Roach’s biodigital technology and Hund’s mercenary army, they sought nothing less than scanning in the world—digitizing minds and ruling them as programmer gods.

Roach developed new technologies every day—technologies to overthrow governments and destroy countries—and there was no one to stop him.

Except us. Two kids, three skunks, and my digital aunt.

Jamie bit her lip. “What if we can’t do this? Beat Roach, I mean. What if we can’t win?”

“I can’t even turn in my homework on time.” I leaned against the truck. “But you
always
win.”

“Me?”

“What’d you ever fail at?”

“Making friends.” She looked toward the sunset. “Before you.”

“That is so not true.”

She shook her head. “You’re always saying how ordinary you are. Why, because everyone likes you and you always fit in?”

“No, because—”

“If you hadn’t been my friend, I
never
would’ve fit in. You
were my … my passport. Once you liked me, suddenly I wasn’t just some strange little geek girl anymore. So … thanks.” She shrugged. “I wanted to say that.”

I mumbled something. I’m not really good with that sort of thing.

“C’mon,” she said, briskly logging on. “Let’s see what your aunt says.”

“No,” I said. “Listen …”

“You don’t have to say anything, Doug.”

“I know, but …” This time it was me who shrugged. “If I had to get stuck in this whole mess with anyone, I’m glad it was you.”

She started to answer. Then her laptop flashed a thousand pictures a second and she said, “Dr. Solomon?”

“Yes, Jamie?”

“How are the skunks?”

“Approaching Roach’s headquarters,” my aunt said. “Disabling the external security devices. They’ve overlooked a sensor.”

Remember those grain silos I mentioned earlier?

They weren’t silos.

They were outposts of VIRUS’s underground command center, disguised as corn silos and grain bins. They contained satellite communication devices, ventilation shafts, and, of course, security systems.

Security systems that could detect a field mouse at two hundred feet.

Good thing the skunks weren’t field mice. Cosmo knew security systems better than the people who’d designed them, and circumvented three layers of security without any trouble—except for one sensor.

“Wait,” Larkspur said, raising his hand.

Cosmo looked up from the motion detector he’d been dismantling. “Hm?”

“Message from Dr. Solomon. You missed the lepton sensor.”

“Patience, brasshopper,” Cosmo muttered. “I’ll get to the lepton sensor soon enough.”

Thirty seconds later, he’d defeated that one, too, and they slipped into a silo.

“That’s a lot of corn,” Poppy said, looking around.

Larkspur peeled back a sheet of corrugated metal, stepped inside the gap and tore a hole in the floor, then dug through seven feet of packed dirt, until he hit concrete. He sounded like a couple of jackhammers. Good thing Roach put all his trust in the sensors and hadn’t bothered with patrols.

Larkspur scooped away the concrete like it was wet sand,
tossing the chunks over his shoulder for Poppy and Cosmo to catch. After he’d dug a Larkspur-sized hole in the concrete, he turned to Poppy.

She grinned and dove—headfirst—inside, quiet and quick as a shadow sliding down a wall. She’s part Ninja. Nobody moves more quietly or hides better.

Cosmo and Larkspur followed and found themselves fifty feet underground, in the shadows of an access tunnel.

“I hate this,” Poppy said. “Skulking around like we’re afraid of Roach and his little soldiers.”

Well, she’s part Hog Stomper, too. They favor the direct approach.

“We’re not skulking,” Cosmo told her. “We’re
skunking.”

“You heard Dr. Solomon,” Larkspur reminded her. “We’re not at full power, and we’re attacking Roach in his strongest spot. Stealth is required.”

“Just point me toward the server and let me bust some heads.”

Cosmo pointed to a yellow cable running nearby. “Is that a q-res data line?”

“Looks like,” Larkspur said.

“Then let’s follow the yellow brick road.”

Larkspur nodded. “Should lead directly to the server.”

They followed the cable through an underground maze of access tunnels until they found the main trunk line.

“Not far now,” Cosmo said.

“This feels too easy.” Larkspur checked his wrist monitor. “Where are Roach’s defenses?”

The moment he said the last word, three figures emerged from the gloom ahead. Not security droids with robot arms but Roach’s pet biodroids, like that monkeybeast in the Center. Except these were
Biodroids: The Next Generation
.

Imagine a combat android, not
that
different from Larkspur. Now imagine an orc. A stinking, flesh-eating orc. Now imagine that the android and the orc have kids. A drooling, armored, rabid, gene-spliced cybernetic nightmare.

Cosmo shot from the hip and a sticky black liquid hosed down the nearest droid, which gave an earsplitting shriek of rage and fear and ran away.

“What is that stuff?” Poppy asked as she spun in the air and kneed the second droid in the face.

“Uncle Cosmo’s special sauce,” Cosmo said.

Poppy slammed the droid three times, lightning fast, with her crowbar. It went down hard and didn’t get back up.

Larkspur ducked a punch by the third droid and landed one of his own. The droid flew backward like it had been hit by a train. It smashed against the wall and fell to the ground.

“Have a Coke and a smile,” Larkspur said.

Cosmo rolled his eyes. “That’s only funny if you’re throwing a soda machine.”

“Oh,” Larkspur said. But you could tell he didn’t really get it.

Poppy looked down at the unconscious droids. “That was too easy.”

“You always think it’s too easy.” Cosmo holstered his gun. “Even if you
lose
, you think it was too easy.”

“No,” Larkspur said. “She’s right. Those droids weren’t operating anywhere near full capacity.”

“No?”

Larkspur consulted his monitor again. “More like ten percent of capacity. Roach is trying to draw us closer. Into a trap.”

“So what do we do?”

“Spring it.”

Back at the truck, Jamie asked, “So what do
we
do?”

“I’ve altered your school records,” my aunt said, “and generated several counterfeit airline tickets in your name.”

“Um,” Jamie said. “Why?”

“To establish that you’ve been visiting your uncle Charles and aunt Simone for the past four days.”

“But those VIRUS soldiers saw me.”

“No. They saw your twin sister.”

“Is your circuitry all right?” Jamie asked. “I don’t have a sister.”

“The records now show that you do.”

“Oh!” I said. “Those are the documents you were fixing?”

“Indeed. And they reveal that Jamie’s
sister
was scanned into Roach’s domain with her parents. You are clear, Jamie. You are not being sought by any agency. I arranged for a plane ticket to your aunt and uncle’s house. You will stay with them.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Live with your family. Enroll in a new school.” I don’t know if I imagined it, but the next thing my aunt said sounded just like the old Auntie M. “You can get your life back, Jamie.”

“But … we’re gonna rescue my parents, right?”

“My calculations indicate a 3.08 percent chance of success.”

“Three percent?”

“And even if the skunks download the data, we cannot reconstitute the minds in the foreseeable future. The research will take months, or perhaps years, before—”

“Fine! I get it!” Jamie bit her lower lip. “What about VIRUS? What about Roach? What about the dragonfly? You need it for research.”

“You can control the dragonfly from a remote location.”

“Roach took my parents and destroyed my town. He’s got plans for the rest of the country and I—I’m not running away.”

Auntie M ignored her. “Unfortunately, Douglas, I cannot do the same for you. Instead, I deleted all digital evidence of you and assembled a new identity. You will live with the skunks, if they survive tonight’s conflict. You will aid them with human interaction, and they will attempt to protect you.”

That’s the thing about my aunt now—sometimes she sounds cold. She talked about the skunks’ survival like it was no big deal. She estimated a 3 percent chance of success and didn’t break the news gently. And she ignored Jamie when she said she didn’t want to live with her aunt and uncle.

At first, you might think she’s sort of mean. She’s not. She has feelings just like you and me. But she’s also part computer. She can’t always express her emotions that well.

Thank you for your understanding, Douglas. I do attempt to communicate in an emotionally appropriate fashion
.

You’re welcome.

Anyway, that was that. Jamie would live with her aunt and uncle, and I’d live under a new identity with the skunks. We’d probably be hundreds of miles apart. Maybe thousands.

“I’m not running away,” Jamie said again.

“My calculations indicate that—”

Jamie cut her connection to Auntie M.

“Well, that was rude,” I said.

“I’ll apologize later.” She booted up the dragonfly. “Maybe.”

“What’re you doing?” I asked.

“Showing your aunt how useful I am. If Roach has any surprises planned, I’ll warn the skunks.”

She guided the dragonfly into Roach’s domain—easy now that she knew the way. She started rooting deep into the underlying digital structure, looking for anything that might help the skunks.

“Where are they?” I asked. “Can you bring them up on-screen?”

“Sure.” She jiggled the dragonfly and tapped a few keys.

And we saw the skunks on the laptop’s monitor.

“Oh, no,” Jamie said. “They can’t be …”

We looked closer.

“Are they … dead?” she whispered.

The skunks knew they were walking into a trap, but they didn’t have any choice. In minutes, Roach would download the information on his server to his virtual domain. He’d never be this vulnerable again—and they’d lose their best chance to save all the scanned people.

So they traced the cables to the center of Roach’s headquarters.

“Skunk ’em!” Cosmo yelled as they burst into the upper level of a underground bunker.

“Skunk ’em?” Poppy said, kicking the guards into the far wall.

“Yeah,” Cosmo said. “That’s our battle cry.”

“How about ‘rarin’ to rummmmble!’?”

“Pardon me for interrupting,” Larkspur said. “But we have a server to download and destroy.”

He smashed through a set of double doors and led the other skunks into a room the size of an airplane hangar—where they stopped short.

The good news: they found the server.

The bad news: they also found a dozen biodroids, two dozen soldiers, and three dozen security drones.

Oh, and Commander Hund.

Upgraded. Enhanced. Augmented.

And pointing a weapon the size of a La-Z-Boy, with three barrels and laser targeting and—Well, actually, the thing reminded me of a carapace rifle in
Arsenal Five
.

“You’re too late,” Hund said. “We transferred the data an hour ago.”

Cosmo dove sideways and drew his gun, but Hund was faster.

He pulled the trigger and hit Cosmo dead center. The impact smashed Cosmo into the blast wall that had slammed
shut behind the skunks, and he slid to the floor unconscious, his fur smoldering.

Hund sneered and dropped his carapace rifle. “I won’t be needing
this.”

Poppy sprang toward him. In one-to-one unarmed combat—and at full power—almost nothing can stand against her. Not even Hund. At least, not
before
his biodigital upgrades.

But now? Roach had turned him into a superpowered killing machine.

Poppy arced through the air and kicked Hund in the neck, hard enough to dent steel—but Hund just grabbed her ankle and threw her directly upward. She smashed into the ceiling at approximately 120 miles per hour.

Then she fell to the floor and stayed down.

“If I were at full power …,” Larkspur growled. He swung, but Hund caught his fist and started pushing Larkspur backward.

“I’d still win,” Hund said.

He shoved Larkspur against the wall and pulled his knife. Not the same knife, though—even
that
had been upgraded.

He sliced through one of the cables in Larkspur’s armor, and Larkspur crumpled.

Then Hund looked at the three motionless skunks.

“Dr. Roach,” he said, nudging Cosmo’s body with his foot, “your upgrades are more than adequate.”

Roach entered from a concealed observation deck in the corner. “Precisely as I told you.”

“With my upgrades, and the weapons from the Center, we could beat an
army.”

“Armies are the past, Commander. I care about the future.” Roach rubbed his hands together. “Our workforce is busy expanding my virtual domain. Soon we’ll be digitizing new subjects every day, reformatting and replicating them. The next step in human evolution. Streams of data flowing through electronic pathways, without the animal urges, the stinking fleshy—”