Fallout (Lois Lane) (18 page)

SkepticGirl1:
I will. I promise . . .

SmallvilleGuy:
What?

SkepticGirl1:
That I’ll be as careful as I can.

SmallvilleGuy:
Not comforting.

SkepticGirl1:
We all have our flaws. Yours is being a mystery. And a worrier. By tomorrow night everything will be back to normal.

Except I didn’t know what our chats would be like after this. This situation might change everything between us. And Dad probably still had those military school brochures handy, if the plan crashed and burned.

But SmallvilleGuy couldn’t see any of that.

I had to keep pretending. Everything was fine between us. Just fine.

SkepticGirl1:
Unless, of course, I’m a brainless hive mind zombie hooked up to some kind of devil robotron in the basement of a secret lab. Then I’ll have to take a rain check.

SmallvilleGuy:
Not funny.

SkepticGirl1:
Hilarious, right? Talk tomorrow. Wish us luck.

But he didn’t. He didn’t have time to. I logged off first, not able to fake it anymore.

He’d declined to lend his hand and come to my aid. That meant I didn’t know exactly how tomorrow would play out, how the plan would go. If it would work.

Operation Save the
Scoop
and Destroy the Hydra.

I finished my pizza and typed SmallvilleGuy the message that I’d said I would—another just in case—describing how I envisioned the disruption inside and outside the simulation. I did it understanding that he wouldn’t risk showing up in whatever the real-sim was the lab guys were running. Understanding that he wouldn’t, but hoping that he would.

No one would ever know I had that hope but the two of us. It seemed harmless enough to hold on to it. In the meantime, I’d have to make my disruption outside the real-sim that much more effective.

I waited until Mom and Dad would be sound asleep and dreaming before I tiptoed downstairs to the study. The key was still hidden behind the picture frame with our family photo. I slipped the bug back into its spot, then removed the small cylinder of a prism flare.

I crept back upstairs and went to bed, but I didn’t sleep much more than a wink. I couldn’t stop thinking.

The problem with having friends was that you might lose them. Or they might get hurt.

CHAPTER 23

I hid behind my locker door
to swap out my history book and notebook the next morning. Part one of the new plan wasn’t so different than the one I had on my first day. Sort of. If I squinted and looked at it sideways.

I was supposed to keep a low profile at school, faithfully attending morning classes—so I wasn’t risking a call home that would screw things up.

My intention was to fly so far under the radar that I avoided anyone’s detection until after my trip to the lab. I was making like a stealth student (instead of a stealth bomber), and would try to keep my distance from the other
Scoop
ers as much as possible too. I’d purposely structured the plan so that if it failed—
please don’t let it fail—
any blame would rest squarely with me.

So in one of the brief moments when I was at an easily-pinned-down-and-accosted location like my locker, Maddy showed up right next to me, vibrating with nervous energy. Her band T-shirt today was even more meta than the norm. The hot pink graffiti font on the gray shirt proclaimed My New Band Name.

They hadn’t been on the playlist either.

Before I could ask about it or Maddy could so much as say hello, Principal Butler oozed over and stopped beside us. He was wearing the most self-satisfied version of his oily smile that I had seen yet. His suit today must have cost a month’s salary, a faint blue pinstripe and a salmon tie, both in fabrics that shouted designer label.

“Miss Lane,” he said, “I was surprised to get your note. Apology accepted. With this change of heart, I think you may do all right here after all.”

Maddy’s jaw dropped open, but thankfully she didn’t say anything. I had neglected to fill the crew in on my apologetic smoke screen.

“Me too. Thanks for . . . ” I swallowed.
Got to get out the words. Don’t want him to suspect you’re up to something.
“Thanks for being willing to do the bygones thing.”

“The slate is clean,” he said.

It seemed like the conversation should be over, but he lingered, unfortunately.

Maddy continued to gape at our exchange, although there was no indication he noticed she was there.

Good. Better if he forgot Maddy was associated with me. This truce was destined to be short-lived, whether by implosion or explosion.

But I needed it to hold for now.

“Was there something else?” I asked, chipper.

“Your dad wasn’t angry at me that you got in trouble, was he?” he asked.

“Only at me, so you’re safe,” I said. “You really sold him on the school. And how much you care about the students.”

A soft snort came from Maddy’s general vicinity.

“Glad to hear it,” Principal Butler said. He meant it too. His self-satisfaction spiked, his shark-like quality in full effect. “I’d love to take him out for dinner—your whole family—welcome you to Metropolis.”

Nightmare.

“I’ll tell Dad. But we better get to class now,” I said, shutting my locker door on the conversation. “Don’t want to be late.”

“Now that’s model student behavior,” Butler said, beaming.

ARGH, no. Don’t say anything, don’t say anything.

The bell for first period rang and I pasted on a frozen smile and grabbed Maddy’s arm, towing her away.

My smile stayed frozen when we ran smack into the Warheads. This time it was Maddy who did the pulling, tugging me over by the lockers to give them plenty of room to pass.

Anavi was in the middle of the pack, her face as smoothly blank as the rest, and . . . and . . . and . . .

Devin was behind her. Wearing black. Facial expression schooled into submission.

He gave every appearance of being assimilated. It was his role in the plan.

That didn’t make it any easier to watch.

Especially since I was no longer convinced that my attempt would succeed at breaking the Hydra’s neural bonds—not without SmallvilleGuy’s participation. Devin was in real danger. We all were.

I couldn’t wave away a surge of doubt. What if Devin’s bland expression wasn’t an act, but legitimately blank like the rest because they had him? Brain, line, and sinker. We should have worked out a signal.

He didn’t even seem to notice Maddy and me. If the other Warheads did, they didn’t bother to stop and mock. They glided past like slimy eels swimming toward their shark master, stopping only to greet Butler by lifting their hands in small waves as they moved by him too.

Even Butler looked uncomfortable at the sight of them.

They couldn’t really get Devin so quickly, right? Part of the reason I hadn’t fought harder against his suggestion was because with Anavi it had taken days.

Before Butler could turn and come after us for more awkward chitchat, I said, “Let’s go,” and started walking.

“I hope gamer boy knows what he’s doing with them,” Maddy said.

“Me too,” I said. There was no way to determine if Devin was acting or not, not without blowing our entire plan.

And the plan
had
to work. I had to make sure it worked. Not just for Anavi’s sake, but to protect Devin too.

*

I rattled through my morning classes like a runaway subway train, the same worries rumbling through my mind again and again. And again.

First Anavi, and now Devin? I needed to know if he was faking it or not.

No matter what Devin said last night about it not being my fault, he would never have gotten involved, never have become a target in the first place, if it wasn’t for me.

You don’t know that
. That was what SmallvilleGuy would say, and he might be right. Devin was smart, into tech, a skilled
Worlds
player,
and
in the Warheads’ comp sci class. Just like Anavi. Maybe he would have become a target for them anyway.

But, even so, I sped things along. And I’d allowed him to volunteer to take this risk.

It’s my fault, one way or another. I can’t fail.

I waited outside the cafeteria before lunch to catch Devin. If I could, I wanted to go into the next few hours comforted by the knowledge that he
was
faking, that they hadn’t managed to steal into his mind. To steal his mind.

When I spotted him, he wasn’t alone, but with Anavi and another boy who was one of them. This was the best shot I’d get to talk to him.

“Devin, got a sec?” I asked.

All three angled their heads to regard me at the same moment, and the stranger’s face split into a slow, mocking grin. Anavi’s did too.

But Devin’s reaction was delayed. He shook his head before smirking.

“Devin?” I asked.

He took a step toward me. Anavi and the boy were frowning, and I saw a few more Warheads coming toward us from up the hall. The trio and I were also blocking the entrance the cafeteria, but I stayed put and ignored the grumbles of the students around us.

“Devin, you good?” I asked softly.

He blinked, and for a single moment, he was there with me. It was the difference between someone looking past you and someone
seeing
you. “I can’t fight,” he said. “Too strong. You can’t help.” But he added a wink. That gave me hope that he was still fooling them.

For his ears only, I said, “Oh, I’m definitely helping. Hang on.”

The other Warheads reached us, a small army in black that was more intimidating than Devin’s inhuman troops in the game.

“Don’t worry,” I said, raising my voice. “He’s all yours.”

“Maybe you are . . .”

“. . . wising up.”

“He is ours.”

“You’re just lucky we don’t want you.”

“You are persistent at bothering us,” Anavi said, but there was something in her tone that almost sounded like it could be regret.

The telltale push against my mind began, but Devin tossed a dark “Learn to fear us” at me and turned to the cafeteria doors. The others snicker-laughed, but they followed him.

I had to assume he was still sticking with the plan.

I migrated through the cafeteria to the back corner, and Anavi’s old table. A shy boy with floppy hair had taken my spot, so I sat at the end closest to the sprawling main floor—where I could keep an eye on the Warheads until it was time to leave. While I was sending a text to the taxi service, the chair beside mine scraped back and Maddy joined me.

If I was going to be a master of stealth, I’d have to get way better at hiding out in the open.

“Devin’s creeping me out,” Maddy said. “He is acting, right?”

“I think so,” I said.

We watched the Warheads’ table. Each member of the group, Devin included, had on a holoset and made the same barely visible movements of their heads or shoulders, the same occasional slight murmurs from their lips.

“Don’t worry,” I said, and I didn’t know if I was trying to convince Maddy or myself. “Everything will be back to normal soon. The plan will work.” Not that I believed in normal, strictly speaking. And I’d be a whole lot more confident if SmallvilleGuy wasn’t going to be MIA.

“So . . .” Maddy lifted her hand to brush back a crimson strand of hair from her cheek, ducking her chin. “About what you asked me before?”

“Before?” I tried my best to focus on Maddy, but the Warheads were powering down and removing their holosets. Their hands rose to pluck them off, and they placed the earpieces in front of themselves along the table.

Their eyelids fluttered, then closed. Devin’s shut last.

Maddy was focused on the surface of our table, not seeing any of the holoset drama play out.

She said, “You know, when you asked about the bands, my shirts . . . why none of them were on the playlist?”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

I looked back across the room. The Warheads had gone completely silent, a table-wide point of stillness in the bustling cafeteria. Like they were engaging in some bizarre exercise in lunch-table meditation.

“I make them,” Maddy said. “The shirts. I make up the band names. They’re bands I wish I could be in.”

I wanted to respond to her, but I couldn’t manage to speak. Because, surrounded by the meditating Warheads, Devin rose to his feet with a jerking motion, as if his limbs were outside his own control.

His hand jerked in that same way, his fingers rising until they were at his temple. I’d seen enough salutes to recognize one in progress.

I was looking dead at him, and he at me. But instead of lowering it after the mocking salute, he moved his hand and pointed from his eyes to me.

The threat was obvious. As was the fact that he hadn’t been controlling his own motions.

The Warheads’ eyes popped open again, and those slow grins crept over their faces. Devin’s included.

So they knew I was watching. They couldn’t know the whole plan—no one except SmallvilleGuy and I did. For this very reason.

I shifted to face Maddy.

Maddy, who made up her own fake bands every day and designed shirts for them, because she wanted to be in one.

“I am so sorry that I can’t talk to you right now about what you just told me. I definitely will not tell anyone else, and I think you’re amazing,” I said. “But I have to get out of here. Try to stay away from the Warheads. We will talk later. After. Promise.”

Maddy said, “Go.”

James intercepted me halfway to the cafeteria doors. I had to pass the Warheads to get out, so I waved him closer.

“You’re my cover,” I said to James.

“All right,” he said, and I gave him credit for not arguing.

Suddenly, I
was
afraid of them. I was afraid my plan might not be enough, not if they could do what I was sure I’d just witnessed, reach out to minds
and
control bodies. Not if they had Devin. What kind of experiment was this going to turn out to be?

Witnessing the details of their interactions at the lab would reveal all. What was the lab boss planning to use this linked consciousness for? Why was the researcher so disturbed by it?

James must have seen my attention flick to the Warheads’ table—or been a good enough journalist to figure out it was them I was avoiding even if he’d missed Devin’s salute—because he moved so that he was between them and me.

“Now what?” he asked.

“We walk fast,” I said.

And we did. I didn’t even risk a backward look to see if they’d noticed me leaving.

Only when James and I were outside the cafeteria did I stop and breathe again.

“What’s going on with Devin?” James asked. “I didn’t really believe what you said about Anavi. Or what he said they’d been doing. Not completely. But now he . . . doesn’t seem like himself.”

It was more important than ever that I do this next part alone, without compromising any of the others more than I already had. The plan was in motion, and I had to stick with it.

Next stop, Advanced Research Laboratories for my meeting with Dirtbag Jenkins, CEO. Or, more precisely, to skip out on it and find Project Hydra.

“You should learn not to doubt, James. I’m sure Maddy will explain everything to you.”

“Why can’t you?”

I was already striding toward the exit at the end of the hall. “Me? Because I have to go. You know I’ve got somewhere to be.”

I’d see them again later.

Depending, that was, on how things unfolded from here on out.