Probably shouldn’t try to answer that question.
“I am sorry, whether you believe it or not. So sorry that I felt like I had to tell you. We can call the whole thing done.” It was risky, but I couldn’t help adding, “You can leave Devin alone now too. Since this is over.”
“Can we?”
“I don’t know . . .”
“. . . if we can.”
“Or if we want to.”
“Look, I’m moving on and you should do the same,” I said, careful not to grit my teeth. “I just wanted to make things right with you. I want us to be friends.” And I went in for a hug for the capper.
If Maddy hadn’t already completed her task, then this was her moment. Her last chance to get the bug in place in the backpack.
Anavi took a few long moments to react to the hug. The Warheads weren’t used to random embraces.
I made sure my grip was firm. “I am sorry,” I said, lower.
I meant it. Just like I meant the part about being friends. I was determined to discover what Project Hydra was and end it—to find a way to bring Anavi back to herself.
Finally, Anavi grunted and the Warheads started talking.
“Let her go.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Get out of here.”
“Now.”
A press against my mind underscored the command, and I tightened my hold on Anavi in reflex. Thrown off balance, I needed something to hang on to. I’d forgotten about the threat of this.
But the pressure increased in response, shoving against my mind, longer than either of the previous times. I fought to think of the game, of teasing SmallvilleGuy, of that night in Kansas, of anything I could latch onto to try to ignore the pressure until I could get clear of them.
The problem was thinking at all. But I managed. Barely.
I was beyond grateful when Anavi’s hands came up between us and shoved me away. Anavi gave her head a shake, almost like she had in the classroom when she was fighting the Warheads’ intrusions in her own mind.
“Next time you will regret the consequences of your actions,” Anavi said.
“Yes, there’d . . .”
“. . . better not be . . .”
“. . . a next time.”
Anavi’s phrasing—“regret the consequences of your actions”—was like how she’d put things before she went all hive mind. The slip gave me hope she was in there somewhere, reachable.
But whatever of her had returned was gone again as quickly. Her face smoothed into a mask, and she shut the door to her locker. Without turning, she bent to pick up her backpack. And then she was moving away, down the hall with her pack animals, all of them in perfect sync once again.
I put my hand against the locker. “Did you get it in there?”
Maddy lifted her hands to dust them. “Yes, I got it in there. I thought you were about to ask her to run away with you, you took so long with the hugging.”
“Nice work,” I said, pasting on a smile in return.
“I don’t get that way they talk.” Maddy was watching the Warheads disappear up the hall. “How they always know what the other ones are going to say. What’s the deal with it, do you think?”
I shrugged. I didn’t want to lie to Maddy. And it wasn’t like I could explain everything yet.
Here was hoping the bug got us enough answers to end this.
*
By the time lunch period finally ended, I felt like my blood had been replaced with electricity. Over the course of the morning, the word had been circulated from Maddy to Devin to James that all of us would meet up in the library, in independent research room A, which Maddy had booked during her study period under the guise of watching a video about women factory workers in World War II for AP history.
If the others wanted to see and hear the bug show, they had to skip their first afternoon classes. I had the same study slot as Maddy, but I was supposed to stay in a different area of the library.
That was easy enough to deal with. The librarian only had us sign a sheet as we came in, and then got busy with the million other tasks that were her real job.
I rapped my knuckles on the door of room A, and it cracked a sliver. “Password?” came the whispered reply.
Maddy’s eyelinered eye was silhouetted in the shadow, a flickering black and white movie visible behind her projected on the wall.
“Let me in?” I had completely spaced the fact that Maddy had come up with a password code. She was getting into Independent Study: Cloak-and-Dagger in a major way.
“Password,” the reply came.
Over at her desk, the librarian was helping someone check out a stack of books, and the last thing I wanted was to draw her attention. I needed to activate the bug. But I couldn’t point this out to Maddy without prolonging the torture and exposure. Squinting, I recalled our earlier conversation about this.