“Speth?” Kel asked, taking up a tactical spot near the room’s main door.
Then I saw it. It was almost exactly the thing Margot said wouldn’t exist. Along one curve of wall, there was a break in the shelves and servers. An enormous metal box with a red lever labeled MAIN POWER. Turning it off wouldn’t be enough, but destroying it might. Without electricity coursing through the cables, we could chop them to bits, and how could they reprint them without their precious WiFi? The tether would be cut. The WiFi would melt away. This was what I had been looking for.
I sprinted to the lever, my heart full, my body flooded with relief and anticipation. But just as quickly, my resolve wavered. The food printers wouldn’t work without the WiFi, either. How would people eat? Beecher’s dad had worried everyone would starve.
My face crumpled. The system had us all backed into a corner. Small yellow lights pulsed all around the room as the servers ingested words and spat bills into the ether, but there was no way to stop it without potentially risking the lives of everyone we knew.
I felt the words long caught in my throat, and the silence and servitude that closed in around us. Silas Rog had laid out his plan for me, and I was not alone. He would do the same to everyone like me.
My resolve rekindled. It would be better to starve.
I pulled the lever as hard as I could. The room’s persistent hum stuttered and pitched down for just a moment. The yellow lights began to strobe, then returned to their previous blinking state. The hum redoubled and filled the room with a rising whine. From the interleaved rings of shelves, silver batteries began to kick on. Small blue pinpricks of light flicked to life and illuminated each NanoLion? logo. The room turned cold blue with that light, and my body seemed to freeze in it, as the WiFi continued on.
“Enough,” a voice echoed above me. It was Rog. This was no voice through an intercom; he was actually here. “These batteries will last for months. Everyone will remain connected. You will stop—now!”
But I would not stop.
“Everyone is going to know you’re a fraud!” Henri shouted.
“Slander,” Rog shot back.
Henri was looking upward. Did he see Rog?
“You think people are going to fall for your mind-reading machines?” Henri cried out.
“What matters,” Rog said, “is the Law.” I could hear his smile. “If the Law proclaims them accurate, they are accurate.”
“Look,” Kel whispered, looking up with her eyes.
Rog stood on a low-railed platform jutting out two stories above us. He was flanked by the brothers who had killed Sam, and beside him stood Saretha. She was bleary-eyed, but she stood obediently at Rog’s side with a weak, admiring smile. Had he medicated her? Was she seeing something different than we were? I forced my eyes away from Saretha and scanned the room, frantically seeking some way to shut everything down.
“I see little point in making promises. But, consider—” Rog interrupted himself to gesture to the brothers to get down on the floor and find me “—generations of your family indentured. Generations.”
Saretha barely reacted. I moved deeper into the room, where the shelves of servers formed long, curving passageways. I began to unplug whatever I could find. I knew it made little difference—I might set them back an hour or a day, but the overall effort was futile. The smart thing would have been to flee.
“You think you have the right to change things? You will cause traffic crashes and hospital deaths, and old people will be unable to obtain medicine,” Rog warned. “The poor won’t be able to print food.”
He was trying to chip away at my conscience, which only made me angrier. A real alternative might have stopped me, but he’d shown his hand. We would all be imprisoned within months with his fake “improvements.” What kind of life would that be? And I was willing to bet Rog wouldn’t let himself starve. There were other ways to eat.
“You will be held accountable, and in the end, you will accomplish nothing. You cannot turn off the power!”
His voice grew more strained. He was concerned. He had no idea how much this boosted me. Without meaning to, he’d let me know I could do real damage. The question was: How?
A guard burst through a door on my left, and at once Kel had him on the ground, unconscious. She now had a pistol in her hand.
It took only a second for her to draw on Rog. Rog moved to the edge of the platform, unconcerned, and scowled down, giving Kel a clear shot. Kel pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. She looked more closely at the gun as Rog laughed from above, his face a waggling pixelation of glee.
“Fingerprint keyed,” Kel said with disgust, tossing the weapon aside.
Henri and Margot were set upon next. The guards tussled and fought with them.
Rog spotted me and pointed down a manicured finger. “There,” he called, eager to have me caught.
Another guard appeared. Kel took him out with ease. I ducked down farther, hiding from Rog’s view, desperate for ideas. The guards were coming in with weapons, but they weren’t shooting at us. Rog still wanted us alive.
Then I froze. Ahead of me, beyond a curved shelf of servers, I saw the indigo brother. His thick features turned to me, looking ghastly in the cold-charged battery light. He smiled. Then Kel was on him from nowhere, pulling him down by the neck and assaulting him with blows from her long limbs. I futilely pulled out another wire or two, but my efforts were pathetic.
“Speth!” Kel shouted, still struggling with the massive brother.
Behind me, the maroon brother was stalking up the aisle, his face flushed and determined. Lit by the blue battery light, his ruddy cheeks looked almost black and splotchy.
I whipped out the only thing I had that resembled a weapon—my grapple hook. He pulled a gun. He had a clear shot, and with dread, I realized I was about to die.
“Stop!” Rog warned. The maroon brother startled, and then his brow narrowed. The room hummed with the sound of a thousand NanoLion? batteries keeping the WiFi powered. Did Rog really want me alive this badly?
“Aim carefully,” Rog said slowly, his eyes wide.
Suddenly I realized that he didn’t want me alive at all. He feared what would happen to the batteries—those stupid, volatile NanoLion? batteries!
At once, they turned to targets in my mind. I didn’t care how dangerous it would be to hit them. It didn’t matter anymore—Rog would see me dead or worse if he caught me.
The maroon brother had to aim perfectly—he had to hit me, and nothing else. All I had to do was hit any one of a dozen battery packs near him. But I only had one shot.
I pulled the trigger. The line shot out, and its sharp spear zipped by the brute’s head. I let go of the gun; I couldn’t be connected by that wire when it hit. I ducked and averted my eyes from the coming explosion. The maroon brother made a small, fearful noise, but then he laughed.