She froze.
We stared at each other for just an instant, and then her hands—which had been running through my hair—jumped to my throat.
But she didn’t have time. There wasn’t much strength left in me, but I smashed my fist into her armpit. The system sheared, her artificial heart too close to the power supply.
She dropped like a stone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I ran down the stark white halls, trying to orient myself. I hadn’t seen them take me to this room, so I had no real idea where I was.
An alarm was sounding again, small red bulbs flashing on and off about every fifty feet, but I had yet to see anyone.
I turned a corner, and then another. Every hallway looked the same.
I flung a door open, hoping to find something I recognized, but it was just full of boxes. The next one had dozens of what looked like computer servers, a million flashing lights and glowing cables, but I didn’t know enough about technology to be sure.
Someone was at the end of the hallway, and for a moment I thought it was Becky, but no—it was a Ms. Vaughn. I turned and ran the other way.
Nothing was familiar—or, rather, everything was familiar. It all looked the same, every hall and every door.
I turned a corner and was almost bowled over by Becky.
“Bense!” She grabbed me in a bear hug, and I pushed her back, pointing down the hall at Ms. Vaughn.
“It’ll have to wait,” I said, holding her hand as we ran.
“It’ll be worth it.”
She steered me through the halls—the maps had shown us how to get to the control room from the cell block, so she knew where she was.
I had bare feet—so did she—and pain shot up my heels and calves as I pounded down the hard tile floors. I hurt everywhere; even holding Becky’s hand was difficult. I was in no condition for another fight.
“Up here,” Becky shouted, and she led me down a long hall, narrow enough that we had to run single file. Becky was in front, and I ran behind her, glancing over my shoulder at the fast-approaching Ms. Vaughn.
Becky slowed to a stop, turning back to me with a quick confused look. The door was there, but it was just a regular wooden door, like all the others. She tried it. It was locked.
Ms. Vaughn was about forty yards away.
Becky shouted off the count. “One, two, three—”
Together we crashed into the door, and reeled back. It had hardly budged.
A second Ms. Vaughn appeared behind the first. And then an Iceman.
Becky and I tried the door again, and I heard a splinter, but it held fast.
“You’re not getting in there,” the front Ms. Vaughn said, raising her Taser and approaching cautiously.
There was a scream down the hall—loud and angry. Both Ms. Vaughns turned just in time to see Curtis slam a rusty pick into Iceman’s back. The android collapsed forward, instantly dead.
Carrie and Shelly appeared behind Curtis.
“Go!” Shelly yelled. “We’ll take care of these.”
Becky was grinning as our eyes met. We counted down again and then slammed our shoulders into the door, shattering the wood frame around the knob and falling into the room. I tried to jump to my feet and stumbled, colliding with a tall computer bank.
Becky was faster than me, throwing her back against the cracked door and shoving it closed.
The room was exactly how Birdman had drawn it. Tall computers—sleeker and stranger than any I’d ever seen—lined the walls. There was an audible hum, low and deep, and it seemed to come from everywhere, all at once.
Two men sat at the end of the room in swivel chairs that faced a thousand square screens. In the center of the screens—just as Birdman drew—was the large curved window. It bowed into the room, between and in the middle of the action. There was only darkness on the other side.
Neither of the men turned around.
“Bense,” Becky said, drawing my attention back to the door.
There was a loud splintering crack as an android tried to come in after us. I leapt against the broken door, but it was a losing battle. Ms. Vaughn was too strong.
“Wait,” Becky said, jumping to the side, to the computer banks. She put her weight against the first one—six feet tall and narrow like a filing cabinet. Just as Ms. Vaughn hit again, the computer tipped, sliding diagonally across the door.
“She’ll just knock it over,” I said, but Becky had turned to the two men.
“Call her off,” Becky shouted to them. “Or that thing falls.”
They continued to stare at their computers, seemingly oblivious to us.
Becky stepped back to me.
I waited for Ms. Vaughn, for the door to shake and the computer to fall. But it didn’t come.
One of the men turned around. It wasn’t Iceman. He was old.
“Well?” he said.
I stammered, looking down at Becky. She took my hand.
“Let them go,” I said. “All of them.”
“Or what?”
I knew his voice. It was the man who’d interrogated me, the man who’d laughed as Becky was being tortured.
I looked at her hand for the first time. There was a jagged scar between two knuckles, now mostly healed and pink.
The man laughed. “You thought we were hurting a duplicate, but you were wrong.”
“Who are you?”
“The truth,” he said, “is that your little tirade about not believing it was her is what gave us the idea to send the duplicate in today. It didn’t work, obviously, but you must admit it was a good idea.”
Becky stepped to a computer, scowling at the man. “What button should I push first?”
“That depends on who you want to kill,” he said, supremely confident.
He still hadn’t stood up. He knew we were unarmed and weak.
“Don’t forget that every one of your friends has an intensely delicate piece of technology in their brains. Smashing things—knocking over that computer, for example—could make you a mass murderer.”
“I’d hate to take that title away from you,” I said.
His mouth wasn’t quite matching up with his words. It was like he was a bad animatronic. Maybe one of the first androids?
“Who are you?” I asked again.
“Who do you think I am?” he said loudly. “I’m God! I make life. I control it.”
Becky shook her head and walked toward him. I followed.
“You destroy more than you create,” I said.
“We’ve just been practicing,” the old man said. “Getting better all the time. But things have finally started moving.”
I looked at the screens as we approached, finally able to make out the small images. There were faces, landscapes—
“Each one of these is a dupe?” I said, pointing at the tiny monitors.
“Yes,” he said. “We have quite a few. More than you thought?”
I stared. Becky’s hand gripped mine a little tighter as we began to pick out things we knew—a glimpse of the front of the fort, a hallway in the school, Gabby’s face talking directly toward a camera. But there were others—adults in houses, or cars, or on streets.
“Who are they?” Becky whispered.
I felt nauseated. This was bigger than I’d imagined.
I thought of the president’s daughters. “Why are you replacing real people?”