Ambush (5 page)

I couldn't even see my fingers clearly, let alone any handwriting on a piece of paper.

A solution, however, occurred to me. About the same time I also became aware of another, equally pressing need. I knew about an old Earth saying: “Kill two birds with one stone.”

I crawled back to my wheelchair and pulled myself slowly up into a sitting position. I folded the piece of paper and tucked it down the front of my jumpsuit. Then I took a deep breath and yelled, “Hey, out there! Can you open the door?”

Within seconds, the door opened.

“What is it, kid?” the first security guy asked. “Scared of the dark?”

The other security guy laughed.

“Please,” I answered them both, “can you put the bolts back on my wheels? I … um … need to go to the bathroom.”

I guessed I'd been held prisoner in the storage room for less than a couple of hours. Still, it felt so good to be out under the dome that I already dreaded being put back into the darkness.

As the security guard pushed me away from the equipment area and past the laboratories toward the minidome living area, I looked around. Up, sideways, forward.

The dome was strangely hushed.

Usually scientists and techies would be walking around in twos or threes, discussing their work or trading gossip. Usually, above me, on the second-story platform that ringed the inside of the dome, somebody would be jogging. And most always, there would be at least one person on the higher telescope platform.

Now, nothing.

“Where is everybody?” I asked, shifting in my wheelchair and trying to see past the legs of the guy pushing me.

He put a big hand on my head and twisted it so I was looking straight ahead again. “No questions,” he said. “Eyes forward.”

Fear caused an icy lump in my throat. Why did the dome seem so empty? My voice croaked out a question. “Was everybody marched out of the dome?”

I pictured what it would be like for 200 scientists and techies to be forced outside the dome without space suits. The dome above protected us from a thin, frigid atmosphere of no oxygen and temperatures as low as minus 200 degrees Fahrenheit. People would crumple in seconds and die in minutes. And what if Mom and Dad had … ?

“Relax, kid,” the security guy said. “Jordan and Steven aren't that stupid. If they killed everybody here, they'd have nothing left to bargain with against the World United.”

That made me feel a little better. But not much. Not if the only reason Jordan and Steven let people live was as bargaining tools. What if the bargain didn't work? Would they start killing people then?

We passed through the open space where people usually relaxed in front of fake trees and a little park. Just beyond were the minidomes, clustered in the living area of the main dome.

“Were you in on this from the beginning?” I asked, still looking straight ahead. “When exactly was the beginning? Did Blaine Steven know from the first day he arrived on Mars that he might do this? Did you work for him from the first day? And—”

“You don't listen, do you? I said, no questions.”

“Four people are trapped in a cave-in. My dad is hurt. I don't know where my mom is. I need to ask questions. So do you. Like, why aren't you helping?”

“Enough.” He said it so angrily that I winced, waiting for him to hit the back of my head.

He didn't. Instead, he turned the wheelchair sharply into the first minidome of the living area.

Except for some decorations and photos from Earth, this minidome was no different from the one I lived in with Mom and Dad. It had two office-bedrooms with a common living space in the middle. In ours, we didn't use the second room as an office because that had become my bedroom. Another door at the back of the living space led to a small bathroom. It wasn't much. From what I've read about Earth homes, our minidome had less space in it than the size of two average bedrooms.

“This is the closest bathroom,” the guard growled as he stopped in front of the door. “And be grateful I'm taking you here.”

That told me plenty, that the takeover of the dome was so complete it didn't matter whose minidome we entered.

“It won't work,” I said. “It's not big enough.”

“Huh?”

“The only bathroom I can use in the dome is my own. It was made bigger to fit my wheelchair.”

Without a word, he turned my wheelchair and pushed it back out of the minidome. It wasn't difficult to tell he was grumpy about all of this.

Thirty seconds later we reached our minidome. I tried to block out my sadness and fear. It was so empty without Mom or Dad around. I had a plan and needed to follow it, no matter how little chance it would give Rawling and the others. Time was running out.

“You can close the door, but leave it unlocked,” the guard said, stopping in front of our bathroom. “You've got one minute. Anything longer, and I come busting in to make sure you're not trying anything.”

“Anything like what?” I asked. “Like running away and leaving my wheelchair behind?”

“One minute,” he said. “Those are my orders.”

“It's not enough time,” I said.

“Make it enough.”

“You try living in a wheelchair,” I said. “You'll find out why it isn't enough.”

He sighed. “Just go. If that's what it takes to make you quiet. Go, go, go.”

“One other thing,” I said.

“What!”

I pointed at a box in the corner of the dome. It held Flip and Flop, the koala-like animals that Ashley and I had rescued. As usual, they were asleep.

“Can you change their water?” I asked the guard. “When they wake up, they like fresh water in their dish.”

“Only if it gets you in and out of here as fast as possible.”

I smiled at him. Sweetly.

He didn't smile back.

I wheeled inside. The door shut. I rolled the wheelchair backward so the handles touched the door. I set the brake on my wheelchair. If he tried opening the door, at least I had it blocked.

Although the bathroom was bigger than the others in the dome, it still didn't have much room. Limited resources made it necessary to use all space as efficiently as possible. There was a shower with a sitting bench, a sink with a cabinet under it, and most importantly, a toilet.

Much as I wanted to take the security guy's advice and go, go, go, I reached inside the cabinet. It had shelves for toothpaste, shaving cream, and stuff like that. Beneath the shelves a few towels were stacked neatly.

I grabbed a few sleeping pills, hoping I'd have the chance to use them on the guards. Mom sometimes had migraine headaches and used them when she really needed to get to sleep. I leaned forward and slipped the pills into the top of my socks.

Then I took out the slip of paper and unrolled it. I'd been right. It was a note. But I never would have guessed the message.

The note wasn't signed. At least not with a name. The person who'd written it had drawn a tiny cross at the end of the message.

A cross like the one on the chain around my neck.

Ashley?

CHAPTER 11

Not enough time had passed before the storage room door opened again. It made me glad I had decided to wait until later in the night to use what I'd found in the bathroom.

There had been a robot pack under the towels. Like the one Ashley had used to control her robot. Dr. Jordan had ripped the plug out of my jumpsuit, but I didn't need that anymore. I had the robot pack hidden between my back and the wheelchair. Now I just needed to find time to control the robot body, and maybe I could help the hostages.

Midnight tonight. Don't go anywhere. Just wait.

“Take him,” Dr. Jordan said, standing outside. Light bounced from his glasses, so I couldn't see his eyes. The rest of his expression was unreadable.

Take me? Where? Did he somehow know what I'd found under the towels in the bathroom of my minidome?

I tried to keep my own face unreadable as the security guy stepped into the storage room and behind my wheelchair.

I made sure I leaned back in the wheelchair, as if I were so tired I didn't care. But that wasn't true. I did care very much. And for the first time all day, I had something to hope for.

The security guy pushed me down the corridor outside the storage room.

The dome above was as dark as the Martian night. On most evenings by this time, I would have gone up to the telescope. Until I'd discovered freedom away from the wheelchair by controlling the robot, the best illusion of freedom I found was gazing into the outer reaches of the solar system and beyond.

“About seven hours have passed,” I said to Dr. Jordan's back as the security guy pushed me. “It's not too late to help those people in the cave-in.” I had to keep trying. Rawling would if he were in my place.

Dr. Jordan didn't reply. He merely walked at a fast pace.

I could have kept up myself, just using my arms and pushing my wheels. But if I leaned forward, the security guy would have been able to see my lower back and what I had hidden there. So I remained sagged backward against the wheelchair and let them take me.

Soon enough I found out where we were headed.

To the dome entrance.

Where Mom and Dad stood, all alone, trapped in the air lock between the outer and inner doors of the dome.

“It's simple,” Dr. Jordan told me, hands behind his back as he stared through the clear, hard, plastic window into the air-lock chamber. “Tell me what I want, and I open the inner door. If not, I open the outer door….”

I fully understood Dr. Jordan's threat. The air lock stuck out of the dome like the tunnels that stuck out of igloos in photographs I'd seen of Earth's far north. The outer door at the end of the tunnel led directly to the surface of Mars. The inner door of the air lock was right in front of us. If someone wanted to go outside, they first opened the inner door and stepped into the air lock in a space suit. With the outer door closed, no oxygen was lost when the inner door opened. Once the inner door was closed, the outer door could be opened. The small amount of air inside the air lock would disappear, turning instantly into a puff of white vapor as the warm, moist, oxygen-filled air made contact with the Martian atmosphere.

But neither Mom nor Dad wore space suits. The only thing keeping them from the brutal cold and lack of oxygen was the outer door. Once it opened, they would live only as long as they could hold their breath.

“You should know from your Hammerhead experience,” Dr. Jordan said, “that I'm not bluffing.”

As he spoke, Mom and Dad walked toward the clear plastic window where I sat on this side.

Tears blurred my vision of them. Mom, with her short brown hair and concerned smile. Dad, with his square face and dark blond hair.

Mom pressed her fingers hard against the window as if she wanted to touch me. Dad stood beside her, arm around her shoulder. They were both shivering. A large bruise darkened the side of Dad's face.

I reached toward them, pressing the window with my fingers where Mom's hand was.

“Give me what I want!” Dr. Jordan ordered me. “Or you can watch them die.”

I didn't remove my eyes from Mom and Dad. “Do they know why you have them in there?” I asked.

“Of course. I gave them a chance first to tell me where you had it hidden. And they were as stubborn as you.”

“It's because I don't know what you want. Neither do they.” I wiped away a tear and tried to keep my voice from trembling. “Please don't do this.”

Dr. Jordan answered by reaching past me to put his hand on the button for the outer air-lock door.

Mom and Dad saw his action. Dad took his hand off Mom's shoulder and put his index finger of one hand across the index finger of his other hand to make the shape of a cross. I knew he was reminding me of all the things we'd talked about whenever I asked him questions about God. Like the conversation we'd had after Ashley died. When he'd told me that there are some things we'll never understand until we can go to heaven and ask God face-to-face. That the important thing was to trust in God.

Dad put his arm around Mom's shoulder again and held her tighter.

“I want your answer in five seconds,” Dr. Jordan said. He waited a beat and spoke a single word. “Five.”

Mom lifted a hand and pointed at her eye. Then she touched the left side of her chest. Then she pointed at me. Eye. Heart. Me.

“Four,” Dr. Jordan said calmly.

I love you.
That's what her sign language meant.

“Three.”

I quickly touched my eye and my chest above my heart and pointed back at them.

“Two.”

“Please don't do this,” I said. “Please.”

“One.”

I grabbed at his hand, but it was like trying to pull away a bar of iron.