38

Oliver’s eyes are muddled behind his glasses, not the way they should be.

I’m going to be sick. I want to run and find Charlie and vomit bile and mucus on his shiny black boots. He told his other men to get to their ships, but he left Oliver. He was going to leave him here to die.

“Drop it,” Oliver says, pointing his copper at Beechy’s forehead, “or I’ll shoot.” The words sound like someone planted them in his head; like he’s a machine reciting letters.

Beechy’s nostrils flare, but he lets his gun clatter onto the metal. There are two of us, and we can handle Oliver. But I have to try reasoning with him first.

“Oliver, please put the gun down.”

He doesn’t say anything. But he turns the copper on me, and I flinch.

“Drop your weapon,” he says. He’s staring at me, but it’s like he’s staring right through me.

My voice shakes when I tell him, “Charlie left you here, Oliver. You know the bomb’s gonna go off, right? He left you to die.”

A flicker of worry touches his eyes. Then it’s gone. “Drop your weapons” is all he says.

“Clementine, there isn’t time,” Beechy says.

“I know,” I say. We have to overpower him, but I’m not ready yet. Oliver is still here, underneath the injection and all the lies. I can still reach him.

“Oliver, please.” I want to wrap my arms around him, but I’m afraid he’ll try to kill me. “We’re not trying to mess things up, I swear. We’re trying to save everyone.”

Oliver flips a switch on the copper, taking it off stun. “I’m giving you ten seconds to get out of here. Ten, nine, eight—”

Beechy slams his fist into Oliver’s hand, knocking the gun away and setting it off at the same time. An orange beam strikes somewhere behind me. I duck and gasp.

Oliver snarls and struggles against Beechy, trying to push us out of the escape pod.

“Help me,” Beechy says.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Oliver.

I ram into him. He loses his balance. We grab his arms and pull him until all three of us are out of the smaller transport, back in the narrow passage of the hovercraft.

“I’ll secure him,” Beechy says, grabbing both of his arms. I press flat against the wall to let him pull Oliver past me. “Get in there and check out the control panel. I’ll be right back.”

“Please don’t hurt him,” I say. Oliver’s been hurt too many times because of me.

“I’ll try not to.”

I swallow hard and move into the escape pod. I hit a button that shuts the doors behind me, putting one more barrier between me and Charlie. Just in case.

I scan the transport. There’s a complicated panel of buttons and a screen before the pilot chair in front of me, and a window on the wall. It’s steamed over, but the word K-I-M-O on the top of the panel tells me I’m in the right place. The bomb must be connected to this transport, maybe above me or below me, or jutting out from one of the sides.

I slip into the pilot seat and wipe two fingers across the control screen, hoping it’s a touch screen. Words pop up:

PROJECT KIMO

1:38:17

ENTER DEACTIVATION CODE

The 17 drops to 16, and then to 15 and to 14, and all the air goes out of my lungs. It’s showing me how much time is left until the bomb goes off. One hour thirty-eight minutes and twelve seconds.

My hands tremble as I touch ENTER DEACTIVATION CODE. A blank bar pops up with a blinking cursor and a keypad with letters and numbers and math symbols below it.

This is it. Either Fred gave me the code that’ll turn the bomb off, or I won’t be able to stop it.

I tuck the curls behind my ear, trying to ignore how fast my heart is beating. I have to focus.

Fred said to use Yate’s Equation. But did he mean type in the problem, or the solution?

I try the solution. I memorized it, but I go through the steps in my head to double-check the answer. When I’m sure it’s correct, I type it in:

674837.475

A fierce tremor runs through the ship, shaking the transport. I clutch the arm of my chair with one hand. I touch ENTER on the keypad with the other.

A red bar replaces the blank one:

ACCESS DENIED

No, no, no. It didn’t work. This has to work.

The red bar goes away, and I press ENTER DEACTIVATION CODE again. This time I type out Yate’s full equation, all sixty characters of it.

ACCESS DENIED

The doors slide open behind me. “Is it working?” Beechy asks.

I shake my head. I try the solution again, my fingers flying across the screen. There’s blood on them from the cut on my aching jaw and the one on my shoulder, but I don’t care.

ACCESS DENIED

I don’t know what to do.

“Charlie must’ve switched the code,” I say. “It’s gonna go off. We can’t stop it.”

I’m fighting back tears again. Grady’s going to get blown to bits, and so is that girl, Nellie—I don’t like her but she doesn’t deserve to die—and so are all the kids in the camps, and the adults up there too; all the people Charlie doesn’t think he needs anymore. And the trees and the grass and the shacks and the animals. It’s all going to be gone.

And so am I. Charlie isn’t going to welcome me back to the Core; he’s going to shoot me if I go back there. I’m going to splinter, shatter, explode into dust. So will Logan and Beechy and Oliver and everyone I care about in the entire world.

We are going to run out of time.

“There’s still one more option,” Beechy says. His voice shakes, and I can’t look at his face. “We could fly the hovercraft away. We could get the bomb as far away as possible, so it wouldn’t cause as much damage. Hopefully, we’d have enough time to deploy the bomb and fly out of its range before it detonated. But regardless, it would screw up Charlie’s plan.”

I stare at the timer on the screen. The number is down to 1:32:57.

I run my fingers through my curls. I exhale; I inhale; I exhale.

Beechy’s plan would work. We could save everyone. And buy our friends more time to stop Charlie.

But I don’t know if we’d have time to deflect the bomb and save ourselves too.

I squeeze my eyes shut. I’m going to die either way. This is the best way to go, isn’t it? Saving the world.

But oh, how I wish we had more time.

I open my eyes and wipe my nose with the back of my hand. “Okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Mhm.”

Beechy places a hand on my shoulder. “You know we can’t tell the others, right?” he says, and I can tell he’s trying hard to keep his voice steady. “They’d try to stop us or come with us. We can’t do that to them.”

I nod, tight-lipped. The thought of leaving Logan without saying good-bye and never seeing him again, not even for a moment, makes my chest and my heart hurt so bad I might explode and shatter into a billion shards of glass.

But this is the only way to save him.

*   *   *

Back in the corridor near the cargo lift, Oliver’s thrashing in one of the passenger seats. Beechy tied him down with wires he must’ve found in some compartment, but they don’t look like they’ll hold him much longer.

“Can you try to secure him better?” Beechy asks, ducking his head to hurry down the passage to the main cockpit. “I’m gonna get us out of here.”

I nod, glancing at the sealed door to the cargo lift. I don’t like that we’re taking Oliver with us, but we can’t open that door without risking getting shot by someone still outside, or letting Logan and Sandy find out what we’re doing. I have to be okay with it.

But I hate it. I hate it.

Oliver’s spewing words in his seat, though I don’t really hear what he’s saying. His voice grates in my brain. There’s no way I can listen to it.

I move to the wall of compartments beside him, not looking at him. It’s full of cubbies with wires and tools and kits inside. I open another compartment and find folded blankets. Grabbing one, I rip off a strip I hope will be thick enough.

When I turn to him, Oliver’s eyes shoot daggers at me. “I knew they were right about you,” he mutters. “Completely Unstable.”

I jam the gag into his mouth. My hands shake as I work the fabric between his teeth.

The gag goes too far back. He chokes.

“I’m sorry.” I gasp, fumbling to loosen it.

Oliver’s teeth snap and cut my finger.

“Ouch!” A dot of blood appears on my pinky. Beneath my feet, the ship’s rumbling picks up, and an engine whir starts.

“Might want to buckle in, Clementine!” Beechy shouts from the cockpit.

Oliver thrashes in his wires, trying to spit the fabric out of his mouth. I reach to tie it off, but he shakes his head so fast I can’t catch it. He isn’t going to cooperate.

I scan the blue cubbies for something that might help me. The rumbling makes me lose my balance; I clutch the wall.

My eyes fall on a small, clear kit in one of the compartments with bandages and tiny red bottles inside it. A medikit. I get the compartment and then the kit open, and fumble through the medicine bottles. Sleeping pills might do the trick. But there are none. There are painkillers for mild to severe injuries, and tiny bots for reading blood pressure, but no sleeping pills.

I’m about to scream in agitation when I notice the kit behind this one. A small, square container with a few thin syringes inside, wrapped in plastic.

The ship shakes, and I hold on to the cubby door. A loud noise like suction rattles through the hold. My feet slide beneath me as Beechy lifts us off the deck. I grip the cubby tighter.

I glance at Oliver. He’s half free of the wires.

My fingers stretch and take the first syringe they find. Lettering on the plastic reads SLUMBER INJECTION.

I rip off the plastic and roll the thin, white syringe over in my palm while with the other hand I try to keep from falling. Oliver screams behind me. He spits the gag out all the way.

The ship turns and throws me sideways, against the wall. I cough and suck in air. My wounded jaw is on fire again.

With a grip on the corner of the compartments, I ignore the pain and heave myself to Oliver. His wild eyes look ready to kill me. If I wait two more seconds, he’ll get his hands loose enough to do it. He’s almost there.

I don’t want to hurt him. I want to make him better, but I can’t, I can’t.

I steady his thrashing head with a hand and punch the needle into his neck. My thumb on the plunger, I press until it’s all the way down, and all the liquid is inside Oliver’s jugular.

It sets his body seizing.

No, no, no. I panic. Did I give him the wrong thing?

I remove the needle, snatch the plastic covering, and reread the lettering: SLUMBER INJECTION. Unless they mismarked it, I didn’t screw up. This must be what it does.

I run my fingers through my hair, waiting and waiting for confirmation.

A moment later, he falls limp.

I press a hand to his wrist to check for a pulse. Relief seeps through me. He’s still alive, still breathing. But his neck is bleeding.

The ship tilts as I reach for the medikit. I hit the wall again and cry out. I struggle to unscrew a small vial of disinfectant and dab it on a bandage. When the ship evens out, I slap it onto his neck wound, hoping that’ll do the trick. If he dies because of me, I will never, ever forgive myself.

“I need your help!” Beechy calls.

“I’m coming.” I scramble to my feet, grab another strip of bandage for my still-stinging jaw, and shove the medikit and its contents back into a compartment.