Bounders Page 15
Marco catches my eye and nods. Yep. We have to win this.
“Lucy, we’ll start with you,” Waters says.
“Really?” she says. “Can’t someone else go first? Or, if I have to go first, do they really all have to watch? I mean, it’s not that I don’t love spectators. I’m an actress, you know. But I haven’t mastered this. Like, at all. And I really want a chance to practice before—”
“Lucy, get ready.” Waters waves around a mechanical device. “Gedney cooked up this clever measuring tool—a quantum caliper—to gauge your percentages. The clock starts in ten seconds.”
Lucy hops up and dashes to the center of the Ezone. A few seconds later the lights appear. At first she does nothing.
Come on, Lucy! Do it for the pod.
She raises her arms and reaches for the light. I’m impressed; she’s fast. She carves a huge circle of black around her. When Waters calls time, she has a good-size sphere of light.
“Nice work, Lucy,” he says. “You clocked in at twenty-three percent. Cole, come on up.”
Cole walks to the center of the Ezone. “Before I start, can we talk through strategy? I’m not sure how to begin.”
“You’ll get the hang of it,” Waters says. “This is all about practice.”
Cole shifts his weight from foot to foot. When Waters starts the clock, he throws his arms out by his sides. He waves his hands, brushing the light around him, but his sphere grows at an agonizingly slow pace.
“Okay, Cole, you got the first one under your belt,” Waters says. He checks the quantum caliper. “Four percent. Next time try not to think so much.”
Cole looks crestfallen. It’s one thing to disappoint yourself—another thing to disappoint your pod. I know all about that, thanks to the blast pack. When Cole slumps down next to me, I pat him on the back. “You’ll do better next time, for sure.”
“Jasper, you’re up,” Waters says.
Watching Cole brought on even more nerves. Lucy hit 23 percent. I have to beat that. I close my eyes and shake out my arms, waiting for Waters to start the clock.
As soon as he says go, I open my eyes and take stock. The light comes into focus, and I tap in, sensing what I’ll need. Then I’m off. I scoop the light as fast as I can. When I’ve gathered everything within arm’s reach, I pull light from across the room.
“Time,” Waters says. “Very nice, Jasper. Fifty-seven percent.”
Fifty-seven percent? Yeah. That rocks. I’m not klutzy at all with the gloves. In fact, somehow the gloves make me feel like I’m in total control.
“Dude, that was incredible,” Marco says. “How’d you do that superhero magnet move?”
I shrug. “Just tapped in, you know. To my inner source.”
Marco laughs. “Yeah, right, so easy.”
“Marco. It’s you,” Waters says.
Marco pushes up and crosses to the center. “Let’s get to it, then. Let me tap that inner source.”
As Marco grabs and pulls at the light, he scrunches his face up like he’s in pain. He definitely has an edge on Cole, but I can see his weakness. He’s trying too hard, like he has to force everything rather than finding the natural flow.
“Stop,” Waters says. “Excellent first try. Thirty-one percent.”
That’s good. And Marco shows promise. He’ll do better next time. That leaves only Mira.
Mira strides to the center of the Ezone. Again, she seems taller, or, I don’t know, maybe more elegant? Like I even know what that means. The word just popped into my brain when I looked at her.
Waters starts the clock, and Mira lifts her arms. Light races toward her. She isn’t grabbing the lights; she’s commanding them, beckoning them to her. Effortlessly. Her arms glide in wide scoops and falling arcs. Amid the sparkles, she dances.
And then she is still. Like before, she stands motionless in front of a large sphere of light.
Waters hasn’t called time.
Lucy looks at me with her eyebrows raised. I shake my head. What is Mira doing? Doesn’t she know her score affects the whole pod? Come on, Mira. Not this, too.
The seconds tick on.
“Time,” Waters says with a strange tone in his voice. It’s hard to describe—too quiet and a tad questioning.
The light before Mira vanishes, and her shoulders slump like something has been ripped from her. She walks past us toward the door of the Ezone and leans her forehead against the wall.
“Well?” Lucy asks.
“What?” Waters says in that strange tone.
“Duh. Her score,” Marco says.
Waters doesn’t respond. He simply stares at Mira.
Gedney shuffles out to meet Waters. When he reaches him, he grips Waters’s shoulder to steady himself.
“As I suspected.” Gedney says, reading the quantum caliper. “One hundred percent.”
14
“ONE HUNDRED PERCENT? I MEAN REALLY, one hundred percent?” Marco whispers. “How the heck did she do that?”
Cole, Marco, and I huddle in a corner of the boys’ dorm before breakfast.
“Don’t talk about it anymore,” Cole says. “My score is just too humiliating.”
“Come on,” I say. “You’ll nail it next time. Plus, no one can hack like you. No one.”
“Don’t call it that,” Cole says. “I’m just good with technology, okay?”
“What do you mean, don’t call it that?” Marco asks. “You’re the best hacker around, and you should be proud of it. Speaking of which, I’m not too bad of a thief.” He opens up his blast pack and pulls out a classified tech tablet, the kind Waters and all the officers carry.
“Where’d you get that?” I ask.
“A good thief never gives up his secrets,” Marco says. “Plus, the important thing now is we have it. So tonight Hack Man here can break into the system, and we can figure out more about you-know-who.”
“You mean the alien?” Cole asks.
Marco glances over his shoulder. “There’s a reason I didn’t say the word, Genius. Do you want everyone to know?”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Cole asks. “What if we get caught?”
“We won’t.” Marco looks around again and then shoves the tablet back into his pack. “We’ll do it later today after Ezone, right before they post the rankings. No one will notice we’re gone. Everyone will be too focused on their ranks.”
I eye Cole. He nods.
“Okay,” I say. “It’s settled. After Ezone. Just us. Now let’s get going, or we’ll be late for breakfast, and I heard they’re serving waffles.” I’ve been thinking about those waffles ever since the quantum ship ride, and there’s no way I’m going to miss them again. A whole stack of waffles with my name on them is waiting in the mess hall. With tons and tons of hot, gooey maple syrup.
Our showing the second day at Ezone is better than the first. Gedney explains (and Waters translates) how to use the gloves to sense the quantum field, push the replication atoms through the field, and bound to the destination. Then we practice everything but the very last step, the actual bounding.
When it’s time for testing, everyone improves except Mira, who has no room for improvement. She holds strong at one hundred percent. Even Cole manages to muster a double-digit score. If we can sort things out with the blast pack—boost my skills and get Mira to fly her leg of the relay—our pod will be a real force in the competition.
Our percentages improved so much, Waters lets us out early as a reward. We walk as a pod down to the sensory gym to kick around before dinner. Mira floats into the music room. Lucy and Cole jump on the trampolines. Marco hauls himself on top of the crossbars and stands.
“Hey, Jasper!” Marco calls. “Come on up. Let’s have a chicken fight.”
“No, thanks.” I wouldn’t stand a chance against Marco. Plus, it’s a good ten-foot drop. I take off my shoes and join Lucy and Cole on the tramps.
Lucy touches her toes in the air. “I used to take gymnastics, you know. I had the bes
t pike in the class. I wanted to keep it up, but my mother made me choose—drama or gymnastics. And my true calling is the screen.” She bounces even higher, splitting her legs out to the sides and waving her hands in a flourish.
She nods at Cole. “You try.”
“Uh, no,” Cole says as he jumps to her downbeat.
“Oh, please? Pretty please? It’s fun.” Lucy flashes Cole a dazzling smile. He turns eight shades of red. Cole has no idea how to handle Lucy. Not that I do. She keeps pressuring him until he shakes his head in exasperation.
“Fine,” he says. He scrunches up his face and takes half a dozen giant jumps. Then he hikes his legs high in the air . . . and crashes down on his butt.
I crack up. “Nice, dude. Great form.”
Lucy stifles her giggle. “You’ll do better next time.”
“There won’t be a next time,” Cole grumbles.
I take off down the row of trampolines, bouncing in long strides, and then launch for the ball pit. My body disappears into the beads.
Cole sits on the trampoline, and Lucy joins Marco on the crossbars. As we decompress from the day, Mira’s music dances into the gym. Her song is spirited and bright, like a music box.
“She can really play,” Marco says.
“Yeah,” Lucy says, “no kidding.”
“Hey, Maestro!” Marco shouts at me. “Why don’t you grab your clarinet? Join her for a duet?”
“I’ll pass,” I say. Why did I ever tell them about my clarinet?
We’re quiet, adrift in Mira’s music. I close my eyes and sink deeper into the pit. Maybe I doze. I don’t notice when the music stops. My eyes jerk open when the beads shift against my skin.
Mira’s long body slides into the pit. She submerges to her chin. Her golden hair fans out behind her, shimmering against the silver of the beads. She stretches, and our legs touch far beneath the surface. Her eyes are closed, but a lazy smile spreads across her lips.
I tense. Heat floods my face like a spotlight is trained on me. On us.
But I don’t move my leg. We stay in the pit—legs touching—for a long time.
“Okay, team, time to eat,” Lucy finally says. “And then time to find out how far we’ve risen in the rankings.”
I don’t want to move, but we don’t have much time to get rid of the girls and hack the classified tablet Marco stole. I ease out of the pit and hoist myself up onto the edge. My leg is warm where it touched Mira’s. I’m careful not to look at her. I join Cole and Marco by the crossbars.
“You and Mira, go ahead,” I say to Lucy. “We’ll meet you there. We have a guy thing to do.”
Lucy narrows her eyes to slits. “A guy thing?”
“Like my man says”—Marco swings his arm across my shoulder—“a guy thing.”
Cole shifts nervously behind us. If we don’t get the girls out soon, he’ll blow our cover.
“Trust me,” I say. “You don’t want to know.”
Lucy raises her eyebrows. Oops. That sounded way too intriguing.
“No, really,” I say. “It’s gross.”
Lucy crinkles her nose. “Gross, as in, bodily function gross?”
“Yeah,” Marco says, “something like that.”
“Come on, Mira, we’re outta here.” Lucy grabs Mira’s hand and starts for the door. “They’re posting the rankings at dinner. Don’t be late!”
Once the girls disappear down the hall, Marco slaps me five. “Bodily function? Good one.”
“What did she think you meant?” Cole asks.
“Who knows,” I say. “Sweat, farts, poop, something worse. Who cares as long as it scared them off?”
I lead Cole and Marco into the music room. Cole and I sit on the piano bench, and Marco plops down on a wobbly chair in the corner. He pulls the classified tablet from his pack and hands it to Cole.
Cole slides his fingers across the screen. “Most of this stuff is highly restricted. It’s not like I’m going to be able to bypass the security in the ten-minute window before we have to get back to the mess hall.”
“Just focus on the alien prisoner,” I say. “Find out how we can break into the cellblock.”
“Why?” Cole asks.
“So we can take a little field trip, Wiki, okay? Just do it,” Marco says.
“No way. I’m not breaking into the cellblock,” Cole says.
“Oh, come on,” Marco says. “No one’s told us jack about the alien. If we don’t find out for ourselves, we’ll never know.”
Cole looks at me.
“He’s right,” I say. “Plus, Earth Force has been waiting on us for twelve years—you know, to work the gloves we were born to master and stuff. What would they really do to us if we got caught?”
That logic seems to work on Cole. His brows point down in a V as he stares at the tablet. He taps in numbers and pages through screens at Mach speed. Every few seconds he mumbles to himself, “Hmmm. Okay. I see.”
Marco can’t take it anymore. “You see what? Clue us in here, Hack.”
Cole flashes his palm in Marco’s face. “Hold on a minute.”
Swipe, tap, scan, swipe, tap, scan. I peer over Cole’s shoulder, trying to make sense of the numbers on the screen. Time keeps ticking. We have to head out soon.
Cole flips the tablet over in his lap and sits up straight. “Okay. He’s held in Structure Eighteen, Cell Seven. I have an idea how we can pass through security. Now all we need is a plan to distract the duty guard long enough for us to get through the door.”
“Lucy,” Marco and I say at the same time.
“That’s what I was thinking, too,” Cole says. “Lucy can talk to anyone. But the more people who know our plan, the more likely we’ll get caught.”
“Yeah,” I say, “but I’m not sure we have a plan without Lucy. We have a few more minutes. See what you can find about the Incident at Bounding Base 51.”
“Oh, come on,” Marco says, “that theory is bogus. What could the alien prisoner possibly have to do with the Incident? Let’s use our time for something other than a shot in the dark.”
“Trust me,” I say. “I have a hunch.”
Cole runs his fingers across the tablet. He pages through screens, shaking his head. “There’s nothing. I told you, it’s restricted.”
Marco stands. We need to head out.
“Wait, wait, here’s a medical note,” Cole says. “It was written the day we arrived. The day you and Marco saw the alien in the med room.” Cole glances up at me with an annoyed face.
Dude, get over it. “Go on,” I say.
“It’s still in draft form, so it hasn’t been restricted yet.” Cole scans the note. His face is creased in concentration.
I lean forward, trying to read the medical note on the screen.
“These are lab results,” Cole says. “For blood type, there’s some weird code I’ve never seen before. But underneath, there’s a handwritten note.”
“Seriously, Fun Facts,” Marco says, “just spill it. What does the note say?”
The color drains from Cole’s face as he speaks. “Blood type matches samples recovered from the Incident at Bounding Base 51.”
A strange quiet eclipses the room. At first we don’t dare look at one another. We don’t want to admit just how huge the implications are. But when none of us can come up with a plausible, less horrible, less explosive explanation, we have to look at one another. It isn’t news you can bear alone.
“You mean,” Marco says, “the alien was there? At Bounding Base 51?”
I nod. “The Incident at Bounding Base 51 was no accident. That alien—or at least his buddies—caused the Incident.”
We stare at one another but say nothing. The connection between the alien and the Incident at Bounding Base 51 weighs us down. I mean, what is there to say, really? Nothing. Everything.
“The time . . . ,” Marco says.
We’re going to be late for dinner. Lucy is going to be furious. We race out of the sensory gym for the chute cube.
“Help! Help! Oh, thank goodness,” Meggi says when she sees us.
“What’s going on?” Marco asks.
Meggi looks at me when she answers. She’s still too embarrassed to look at Marco. Someone must have told her that the tofu strings were meant for her, not Florine.
“It’s Ryan,” she says. “He’s stuck in the chute.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Meggi tries to answer, but all she chokes out is a sob.
I rush inside the cube. “What’s going on?” I demand of Annette.
She seems oddly calm as she points at the blueprint of the space station. “There,” she says. “See the chute? Meggi and I made it through fine. But Ryan didn’t make it. As soon as I stepped out of the trough, all these alarms started sounding, and the trough sealed shut.”
A thick metal barrier has slid down where the trough opening used to be. I look at the blueprint of the space station. Where the incoming chute is supposed to connect to the structure, there’s a red blinking square indicating a malfunction.
“Cole!” I yell.
He appears beside me in the cube.
“See what you can find out in the systems.”
Cole pages through the screens. “Chute’s sealed, too. Good. At least we know he wasn’t launched into space. Okay, I’m pulling up a camera visual.”
A live view of the exterior flashes up on the screen. The chute has disconnected from the space station. It swings through space like a windsock, flopping this way and that, knocking against the space station structures.
“He’s in there?” I ask in horror.
Annette nods. Meggi stands beside her, sobbing.
Whoa. If the seal doesn’t hold, he’ll be sucked out of the tube and killed instantly.
My mind spins a mile a minute. “Marco, quick, find another route to that structure. Get help! Cole, check the systems, see if there’s a way to reverse the suction and pull him out. Do it!”
Marco dashes out of the cube at a full sprint. Cole hacks at the screen. Time stretches, and I feel useless. Meggi still sobs. I grab her hand.