Hours later I perched on a green molded-plastic chair in a hospital waiting room with my knees drawn into my chest and my arms wrapped around my legs and my puck, a cheap one I’d bought in a convenience store across the road, hovering a foot in front of my face. I’d stared at the puck’s little screen for so long my eyes had gone blurry. Mostly pretending to watch the frenzied coverage of the crisis at Inverness Prep. In reality, just waiting.
Gremlin sidled around the back of my neck, pulled on my lobe, and released a concerned whine. I stroked his fur. “At least you made it back to me, huh?”
He’d materialized on my knee less than half an hour after I’d made my escape. I’d been sitting in the back of an ambulance just inside the school’s front gate, letting a doctor sew up my shoulder and watching Inverness Prep’s burning spires collapse one by one, and suddenly there he was. Still drenched from his plunge in the lake, his little joints squeaking after the long climb back up the cliff face, but otherwise intact.
No word from Nico, though.
As soon as I’d sat down in this waiting room, I’d set up an anonymous puck account and sent a message addressed to Th1neEverm0re. I’d told myself I shouldn’t expect an answer right away, and then I’d spent the next hour pacing back and forth across the linoleum with the puck practically glued to my nose anyway. At one point Bex, who’d come with me to the hospital, had asked, “What’s that in your hand?” I’d looked down and seen a silver raven tiepin. Not mine, but Nico’s. I had a dim memory of stuffing it into my blazer pocket after he’d given it to me down in the tunnels—once again, I’d failed to return it—but I had no idea how long I’d been clutching it.
Now, to pass the time, I looked up the line from Hamlet Nico’s puck handle referred to. It came from Hamlet’s love letter to Ophelia, which ended with the words, “Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him, HAMLET.” Miss Remnant had told us what Hamlet meant by the phrase “this machine”: his own body. The choice of words struck me. Hundreds of years ago, I imagined, Shakespeare had already figured out what we really were: just machines. (Why “just”? Nico would say.) “I’m yours,” Hamlet was telling Ophelia, “for as long as my body belongs to me.” But what about after? I wanted to know. What then?
Outside the window, the sun had come up, stuffing the clouds with light. They still hung thick, but at least the rain had stopped for a while. Bex sat next to me, stroking her earlobe and watching the news on her own new puck. On my other side sat Ray, his arms crossed, one of his legs bouncing up and down like a jackhammer. True, he enjoyed breaking the rules every once in a while, but even he had a limit, and at that moment we were breaking a lot of rules. For one thing, I wasn’t supposed to be here. Dad believed Ray had me hidden away in a safe house, where I’d stay until the Secret Service had confirmed the terrorist threat had passed. I’d spoken to Dad briefly on Ray’s puck before we’d left Inverness Prep. He’d seemed happy to see me alive—for a second I’d thought he might break down all over again—but part of me still wondered if he’d been in on the conspiracy too. I didn’t think so. On the wall in Stroud’s office, I hadn’t seen the wise-movie-dad persona my father always presented to cameras. I’d seen true grief. At least I thought I had, and now I wanted to find out for sure. Which was one of the reasons I’d come here.
Trumbull appeared at the door, his arm in a sling, his head bandaged, his sunglasses failing to conceal one blackened eye. His injuries had proven less serious than I’d thought. A broken humerus, some head trauma, assorted scrapes and bruises. I’d asked Ray to take me to him when we’d first arrived, and I’d found him awake in bed. Right off the bat he’d wanted to know why I was at the hospital instead of the safe house—typical Trumbull—but then I’d told him the whole story of the past few days, including the truth about Nico and my suspicions about Stroud, and explained what I wanted to do. “I know it’s asking a lot,” I’d said, “especially now. But can you make some calls to your connections in the Service?”
In the end, he’d insisted on dragging his battered body out of bed so he could help me himself.
“It’s time,” he said now. “But we need to hurry. Your father’s plane touched down a few minutes ago. He’s on his way to the safe house.”
“I’ll be quick.”
Bex gave me a shove for encouragement. “Good luck, buddy,” Ray said. I followed Trumbull down the corridor, past a nurse bent over a counter doling out pills into little cups and a frowning old man trudging behind a walker. Aside from them, the hospital still appeared mostly asleep. We came to a door flanked by two men with the usual grim faces and huge shoulders and gun-shaped bulges under their jackets. Trumbull’s brothers in arms.
“I appreciate this, fellas,” he told them.
“Do you mind staying outside?” I said. “I think I should do this alone.”
“I’ll be right here, sir.”
One of the guards pulled the door open. I went in. A single bed occupied the center of the room, with several tall machines standing on either side like sentinels. Heavy curtains, shut as tightly as the ones in Dr. Singh’s apartment, kept out most of the gloomy daylight. Dr. Singh’s eyes opened and followed me as I crossed to the foot of the bed, but she didn’t speak. Her face looked grayer than ever—like a marble sculpture of a person rather than the real thing.
“I’m sorry for bothering you,” I said. “I know you just got out of surgery a few hours ago. But this is important. Your life might depend on it.”
She released a dry, feeble wheeze—more the suggestion of a laugh than an actual laugh—as if to say that wasn’t a very strong inducement to her at the moment.
“Mine too.”
Her laughter stopped. The fingers of her right hand tapped on the bedsheet, wishing for a cigarette to hold.
“I figured out who the Prime Mover is.”
Her eyebrows lifted.
“Stroud.”
“You’re certain?” she croaked.
“Pretty much.”
“Why would he?—”
“I’m not sure. I don’t have all the answers yet. Which is why I need your help. You told me a lot last night. Now I need to know more.”
Her fingers went tap-tap-tap. Now that the doctors had pulled her back from death’s doorstep, I half wondered if she’d pretend her confession last night had never happened, the same way she’d done with the incident on the terrace. But then she nodded at my puck. “Would you power that thing down, please?”
“Of course.” The puck’s rotors snapped inward as my hand closed around it. I opened my mouth to speak to it, but before I did, a pang went through me. What if Nico tried to message me? Then I’d just have to answer him later. “Shut down, puck.” To Dr. Singh, I said, “See? It’s just me now.”
“That doesn’t make this much easier.”
I sat down on a chair near her bed. “I don’t hate you, Dr. Singh.”
She released another syllable of bitter laughter. “May I have a drink of water?”
A plastic cup stood on a small table next to her. I brought it to her lips. She swallowed, coughed, nodded that she’d had enough.
“So Stroud was giving the orders all along,” she said.
“Is it really that surprising?”
“I suppose not. That man always did terrify me.”
“Not half as much as he terrified me, I’d bet.”
She shook her head. “After the accident, when he invited me to teach at Inverness Prep, I thought he was doing it to show he didn’t hold Ruth’s death against me. But it was just the opposite. Waring must’ve shown him the footage I showed you. Stroud must’ve despised me.”
I set down the cup. “Please, Dr. Singh. We don’t have much time. I need to ask you a few questions.”
“Go ahead. But I told you most of what I know already.”
“Why was Waring working for Stroud?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe he was being blackmailed, like me. Maybe he was getting paid a lot of money. Or maybe he’d bought into whatever crazy plan Stroud had come up with.”
“What do you think the plan was? You told me about the Not2B. What’s that?”
“Again, no idea. Any other questions?”
I slid forward in my chair. My eyes dropped to the watch on my wrist, the hands frozen at 9:19. Next to the watch, on the back of my hand, “Th1neEverm0re” had turned into a barely readable smudge. An ache went through me. “Why create Nico, Dr. Singh? Couldn’t Stroud and Waring have carried out their attack with the Spiders?”
“I always figured using an actual 2B in the attack was supposed to stir up more fear in the public.”
“But why make him gay? Why make me . . .?” I bit my lip.
“I’m sorry, Lee. I don’t know.”
I nodded.
“Did Nico survive?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.”
She closed her eyes.
“But he didn’t betray me, Dr. Singh. He betrayed Charlotte instead. That confused me before, but now I think I understand. It was you, wasn’t it? You altered Nico’s personality so he wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Yes. I knew Waring would find out what I’d done eventually. I knew I might even die for it. But I was past caring by then. When that Spider stormed into my room yesterday and sliced me open, I figured my gambit must’ve worked. Or at least I hoped it had.”
“That was brave, what you did.”
Again she let out a bitter, wheezelike laugh. “Please. Brave would’ve been refusing to build Nico in the first place. Brave would’ve been telling someone what was happening. I was too much of a coward to take a real stand. But at least I did something. It wasn’t easy, with Waring constantly watching over my shoulder, but I managed to sneak in small alterations here and there. Made Nico less obedient. Increased his will to live.” Her eyes flicked to me. “And his capacity for love.”
I glanced down. My finger pads had turned white and waxy where I’d touched Nico’s chest cavity. I prodded the tips of my fingers with my thumbnail, feeling the needles of pain, as if to verify that Nico’s heat had been real. I wished I could pull the puck out of my pocket and check it, but I forced myself not to. “We have to make them pay, Dr. Singh.”
“And how are we going to do that?”
“For a start, I need you to give me the address of that secret lab in the woods.”
“They’ll probably have it cleared out and scrubbed clean by now.”
“What other leads do we have, though? We have to try.”
“Even if there’s something there, who’s to say I didn’t just orchestrate the whole thing myself? Maybe I became unhinged after Charlotte’s death, turned into a terrorist, blew up Waring’s house, and blackmailed him into helping me with the other attacks. Doesn’t that story sound much more plausible? That’s what everyone will think, Lee.”
“We’ll figure something out. Don’t worry. I’ll stand by you no matter what.”
Her head dropped back on her pillow. She gazed up at the ceiling. “People will find out about everything else, too. That Ruth’s death was my fault.”
I put my hand on her arm. She flinched at my touch. “We have to do this,” I said. “I think you know that. You’re a good person, Dr. Singh.”
“What could possibly give you that idea?”
“Nico. You made him. And not only that, he told me about the messages Charlotte sent him. How they filled him with hope. You wrote those, didn’t you? That hopefulness must’ve come from somewhere.”
She gave her head a small shake. The ghost of a smile appeared on her lips. “I never spoke to Nico directly. I couldn’t. We knew he’d see me at Inverness, and we couldn’t have him recognizing me from the lab. Those messages were my only way of communicating with him. It’s true, I did like writing them. I liked imagining the kind of person Charlotte might’ve become if she’d survived. Strong. Courageous. Like you said, hopeful. But the hopefulness wasn’t real. I was faking it.”
“Maybe that’s okay. Maybe hope is like free will: a necessary illusion.”
“Maybe.” The smile faded again. Her eyes drifted back to the ceiling. I knew exactly where her mind had gone, because my mind had spent plenty of time there too. She was staring into a deep abyss and trying to decide whether to let herself fall into it.
“Please, Dr. Singh. The address.”
Her fingers went tap-tap-tap against the sheets.
Behind me, the door flew open. Two Secret Service agents swept into the room. Without a word, they made a lap around the space, checking it out. One of them spoke into his puck.
“Oh no.” I stood. “Not now.”
Dad entered next, flanked by two more agents. “Lee, what in God’s name is going on here?”