Infinity Base Read online

  “She’s going to be able to breathe in there, right?” Eric said, hovering over me.

  “Yes. The top is full of vents. See?” I looked, but I didn’t see anything. She was attaching seat-belt-like straps over my shoulders and across my thighs.

  “Iz allride,” I slurred at Eric. I tried to make the “OK” sign like in scuba diving but my fingers slipped. Dani pushed my hand into the pod, then flipped a switch near my head.

  Was it me falling asleep, or was the padding around me suddenly getting . . . thicker? Softer? I could feel it inflating around the form of my body to hold me into place. I tried to turn my head and couldn’t.

  Above me, the outline of Dani was growing fuzzy. Her voice floated down to me as if from a great distance. “You know, you were wrong about what you said before.”

  “Whaaa?” I asked. I think.

  “If you’d done what I said yesterday,” she whispered, “they’d have you all by now, just as they planned. Our chances were never very good, Gillian, but at least this way, there’s still some hope.”

  I didn’t have the energy to respond. Could barely even nod. And the last words I heard were:

  “You’re the reason you’re all still alive.”

  2

  BACKUP

  I OPENED MY EYES TO DIMNESS. NOT COMPLETE BLACKNESS, LIKE THE inside of the padded pod, but the gray-blue darkness of night. I was still in my utility suit, lying on a nicely made bed in what seemed to be a perfectly normal bedroom. I could see the outlines of furniture, pictures on the walls, heavy curtains drawn tight shut over windows . . . and two figures huddled on the floor near the door, their utility suits glinting even in the gloom.

  “She’s up.” I heard a whisper, and one of the suited people turned to me. “Gillian, get down here.” It was Savannah.

  I sat up, then felt a wave of dizziness wash over me. I put my hand to my head. “Owww . . .”

  “Shh.” I think that was Eric. He beckoned to me and I slumped to the floor, then crawled over. “What’s going on?” My head was pounding. And how were they up before me? Didn’t they get tranquilized, too? “Where are we?”

  “Dani’s house. Listen.” Savannah pressed her ear against the door.

  “. . . Will not, under any circumstances, do anything to further threaten my children’s safety.”

  Mom! She was awake! And she did not sound happy.

  “Now give me back my phone.”

  “Dr. Seagret, I respect your position. Please try to understand mine. I’m risking my life to have you here. Believe me when I say that calling the police is not going to get you a result that will help your ex-husband or Nate.”

  “You sound just like him,” Mom replied. “Sam.”

  “Well, then. Ask yourself: Was he right?”

  Mom didn’t say anything for a long moment. We all crouched there on the floor, listening.

  I realized I needed to go to the bathroom. And get a drink of water. And possibly throw up. “Um, guys?” I wavered a little bit on my heels. “I don’t . . .” Oh, no, there it was. The bile rose in my throat and I gagged.

  “She’s puking,” said Eric, hopping back. “Yuck, get the garbage can. Quick!” Savannah reached for something in the darkness, but she wasn’t quick enough, and I fell on my hands and knees, retching on the carpet.

  A moment later, the door burst open, bathing the triangle of carpet where we sat in harsh yellow light. I could see my mother silhouetted on the threshold with Dani right behind her.

  “Gillian, sweetie.” Mom knelt beside me and put her arm around my shoulders. I was too sick to protest and just leaned in to her, coughing a little. She handed me a tissue, which was when I realized that she was dressed in an Omega City utility suit, too. My mother. I was so confused. And my head hurt.

  “It’s the tranquilizer,” Dani said.

  “You think?” Mom snapped at her.

  “I’ll get her some water.” Dani looked at the floor. “And some . . . carpet cleaner.”

  Mom stroked my hair. “Poor baby,” she murmured, and for a second, I did feel small again, lying on her lap while she cuddled me. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d sat that way. Since she’d come back to town, I wouldn’t let her near me. Was it back in the woods, when Dad had made us all live off grid to protect us from Them? No . . . then she was always comforting Eric, who freaked out every time he found bugs in the tent or spiders in his boots. . . .

  Another surge of nausea rocked my body. This time I made it to the trash can.

  “Shhh,” said Mom, rubbing my back. “I’m so sorry she did this to you, honey. That was not okay.”

  Well, at least we agreed on one thing. But there was a whole list of not-okay we had to go over.

  Dani returned with a glass of water and a wad of wet paper towels. “I’ve decided I don’t really care about the carpet,” she said. “Since I’m moving out, anyway.”

  “Just sip,” said Mom to me. She held the glass for me, and I took an obedient sip. “I felt sick when I woke up, too. It’ll pass in a few minutes.”

  “Where is Howard?” I asked, my voice raspy.

  “Still out,” said Eric.

  “I have him in the other room,” Dani explained. “He was so upset, I gave him a bigger dose than the rest of you.”

  “You did what?”

  She shrugged a single shoulder. “He fought me.”

  I sat up in a panic. And we’d all been out cold and couldn’t help him! “You had no right to—”

  “Exactly,” interrupted Mom. “Just as I’ve been telling her.” She squeezed my shoulder. “Honey, just sit here for a few minutes. You don’t want to be sick again.”

  There were a lot of things I didn’t want, and though vomiting was pretty high up there on the list, making sure Howard hadn’t been hurt was well above it. I pushed myself off Mom and ignored the sour, roiling feeling in my tummy.

  “I feel fine.” I gingerly stood and started out the door with Mom right on my heels.

  The bedroom door led out to an eat-in kitchen. I shuffled out, blinking slowly as I got my bearings. Dani’s house resembled all the other Guidant model homes, though much more lived-in than the one they’d given us during our visit. It still had all the sleek, computerized appliances and the corporate beige color scheme, but the furniture looked like it came from my grandparents’ old house, and there were goofy magnets on the fridge and strange, geometric shapes cluttering up the window ledges and the corkboard over the kitchen counter.

  Beyond the kitchen I could see a pair of wide glass double doors leading into what might have been a living room, or an office, or both. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were crammed with thick textbooks, periodicals, and binders marked with neatly stenciled labels like “Test Flights 1983–1989” and “Launch Manual 3118.” There was a sofa, a few old-fashioned-looking chairs, some antique end tables and lamps, and a bunch of framed photographs on all the walls and side tables.

  I peered closer at the pictures. Most appeared to be Dani as a child or a teenager. In many, she was posing with an older, dark-skinned woman that was most likely her mother. There were pictures of them in front of Christmas trees and building sand castles on a beach, at fancy parties and in front of the Eiffel Tower. In one black-and-white portrait, Dani’s mother—very young—stood in cap and gown with a diploma. In a grainy color photo, she wore an impressive bouffant hairdo and posed in front of some NASA ship I’m sure Howard would be able to recognize on sight.

  None of the pictures showed Dr. Underberg.

  “Where’s Howard?” I asked.

  “In my bedroom,” said Dani, pointing. “Sleeping.”

  I still needed to see. I pushed the door open and headed inside. The room was dim, with tiny slivers of amber light from the streetlamp outside sifting through the edges of the tightly drawn curtains and reflecting off the silver surface of Howard’s utility suit. He was laid out on his back on the bed, and he was, as Dani had promised, fast asleep.

  “Howard?�
� I asked.

  “You should leave him alone until he wakes up,” said Dani from the threshold.

  I should have left him alone long before this. Before his brother got kidnapped and he got tranquilized and we all got trapped here in Dani’s weird retro town house.

  Howard began to stir. His eyelids fluttered open and he focused on me. I braced myself, expecting more rage.

  “Where’s Nate?” he whispered.

  My heart sank. This was worse than Howard being angry at me. “I don’t know yet.”

  Howard nodded miserably and his eyes drifted shut.

  Mom’s hands landed on my shoulders and she steered me out of the room and toward the kitchen table. “Let’s get some food in you,” she said gently. “It’ll settle your stomach.”

  I sincerely doubted that, but I let her guide me into a chair. The others were circling the table as well. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Really?” said Mom. “The way I heard it, all you’ve eaten in twenty-four hours is some freeze-dried ice cream. Now sit. I have no idea what you kids have been up to, but a grown-up is here now, and you’re going to listen.” I glanced up to see her staring pointedly at Dani as if she, too, were a kid in need of parental guidance.

  “Yes, Mom,” said Eric, and flopped into a chair.

  “Yes, Mrs. Dr. S,” said Sav, following suit.

  Dani placed a pot of chicken soup, a sleeve of saltine crackers, and a bunch of bowls and spoons on the table, and began ladling out servings. I took a sniff. Canned.

  Just like Dad used to make after he burned dinner.

  This time the lump in my throat wasn’t vomit.

  “Now,” said Mom, standing at the end of the table. “You kids will have to excuse me and Dani, but we were in the middle of a private conversation, and I want to finish it while you’re eating—”

  “No, you weren’t,” mumbled Eric.

  “Excuse me?” she asked.

  “No, you weren’t in a private conversation, Mom. We heard everything.” He slumped in his seat, his shoulders hunched. “I don’t know what you think you’re protecting us from, either. Is there anything bad going on that we don’t know about? You’d still be a Popsicle if it wasn’t for us. We’re all in the same boat. Dad and Nate have been kidnapped, this place is crawling with Shepherds, and we can’t even call the cops.”

  Mom stared at him. I stared at him, too. Who would have thought mama’s boy Eric over there would disagree with any of her ideas?

  “Eric’s right,” I said. “If you leave us out of the loop, we’re just going to get even more frightened than we already are.”

  “More like you’ll just come up with your own scheme,” Mom replied, eyeing me shrewdly. “You think I don’t know how you guys operate? Fine. We’ll talk here. On one condition.”

  “What?”

  “This is not a democracy. There will be no voting. I am your mother, and you will do as I say.” She looked at Savannah. “You, too.”

  We three looked at one another.

  I thought about what Dani had said to me right before I’d passed out—that if we hadn’t kept pushing and searching and fighting, we might all be dead right now. I thought about those lonely hypothermic transport pods, and wondered what had happened to Dad and Nate. They weren’t dead, right? Just . . . in stasis, like Mom and that chimp.

  “But . . . ,” I began in a small voice, “you do want to save Dad, right?”

  “Oh, honey!” cried Mom. “Of course I do!”

  Some tiny knot inside me relaxed at her words.

  “And Nate, of course. But I want to do it without putting anyone else in danger. This isn’t a game. These people—these Shepherds—have proved they’re dangerous. I know that better than anyone.”

  “What happened when they caught you?” Savannah asked.

  Mom bit her lip for a second. “We were in the self-driving car. The one that was supposed to take us back to our van. And it just . . . stopped. It wouldn’t go; it wouldn’t answer any of our commands. And then the doors wouldn’t unlock. We tried calling someone, but neither of us could get a signal on our cell phones. Can you believe it? At Guidant, where you think reception would be amazing. That’s what made me worry.”

  “Worry what?” Savannah asked.

  Mom looked sheepish. “Worry that it was something more than the car just being broken. I was married to Sam Seagret for over a decade. Some things rub off.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nate was totally calm, I have to hand it to him. I could see the guy Sam had written about, helping you kids when you were stuck in Omega City.” Mom smiled at the memory. “He kicked the window out of the car, then climbed out. It was pretty cool. He was helping me when some people came out of nowhere. They shot him with something, and he went right down.”

  More tranquilizers. I saw how quickly it had dropped the chimpanzee. I wondered if there was a bigger dose in those darts than I’d gotten from Dani.

  “I screamed—for a second I thought they’d shot him with, you know, a gun or something. So I went into my purse and I pepper-sprayed them.”

  “Wow!” cried Savannah. “Good going, Mrs. Dr. S!”

  I goggled at my mother with newfound appreciation. I didn’t even know she carried pepper spray in her purse. She certainly hadn’t before she’d moved out. Elana had mentioned that my mother had put up a fight. I wondered how many Shepherds she’d taken down.

  “Well, it didn’t work. More guys came at me and that’s pretty much the last thing I remember.”

  I hugged myself and tucked my chin into my chest. They’d never even gotten off the Guidant campus. While we’d been tubing, and having dinner with Elana and Anton and Dani—while we’d been cracking codes and exploring the Shepherds’ secret island base—all that time, they’d been captured. Was that the Shepherds’ plan for us? Kidnap us the moment we tried to leave? Or did they always intend to capture us? Had we narrowly missed them yesterday morning when we gave our car the wrong address, then sneaked off in a pair of kayaks for the unmarked island in the middle of Eureka Cove?

  “Until I woke up here, in this ridiculous outfit, with four kids passed out all around me,” Mom finished. “And now Dani says she’s not working for the Shepherds anymore, and wants to help us escape and find your father and Nate, and honestly, that’s about as far as we’ve gotten.”

  I frowned into my soup. That wasn’t very far. Did Dani even know where my father was?

  “Now, from what Dani has told me, the reason we were all brought here was to be held as hostages, correct?”

  “Sort of,” said Dani. “Elana wanted to recruit Dr. Seagret—the other Dr. Seagret—into the Shepherds. “Your father is one of Dr. Underberg’s biggest fans. His biggest cheerleader. You children are the only people who have seen him in decades, and it immediately became clear to us that he holds you in high regard, too.”

  “Because he was willing to take us into outer space with him?” Eric asked. “I just thought that was because he was crazy.”

  Dani went on. “He deeply, deeply cares about the few people in the world he loves. Elana believed that by getting you on her team, she’d sufficiently discourage Dr. Underberg from trying to wreck her plans.”

  “Why did she think that?” Eric asked.

  “Because it’s worked before,” Dani said softly.

  Oh. It worked with her. Dani and her mom. When Dr. Underberg had quarreled with the Shepherds and fled, he’d left Dani’s mother behind alone and pregnant. She’d remained a Shepherd and raised her daughter in the organization. And Dr. Underberg had disappeared.

  “Have you spoken to your father recently, Dani?” Mom asked.

  “Dr. Underberg,” Dani corrected. “It’s not like I . . . know him or anything. It’s been three days since I’ve gotten a message. But that’s not unusual. He goes dark often, especially when he’s worried that the Shepherds have located him.”

  “I’m pretty familiar with men like that,” Mom said drily.
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br />   “But he must know we didn’t get recruited, right?” I asked. “You told him, right?” Maybe that’s why he’d gone dark. He thought everyone had turned against him again.

  “It never came to that.” Dani shrugged. “Elana saw that your father wasn’t going to fall in line, and neither were any of you. And if you can’t join them, beat them.”

  “I think it’s the other way around—” Eric started to say. “Oh. Beat us.”

  “Right,” said Mom. “We were supposed to be hostages.”

  Dani shook her head. “Hostages implies that if Dr. Underberg does what Elana wants, she’ll let your dad and Nate go.”

  “She’s not going to let them go?” I asked. Mom already looked like she regretted letting us kids listen in on this.

  Dani met my eyes. “No. She’s going to use them as bait.”

  I was going to be sick again.

  3

  LAUNCH PLANS

  BAIT? TAKE IT FROM A GIRL WHO SPENT THE LAST TWO YEARS WITH A creek off her back porch—you never, ever wanted to be referred to as “bait.”

  My immediate thought was that we had to rescue them, but then again, wasn’t that how bait worked? To lure in the things you hadn’t caught yet? Things like us?

  Eric toyed with his spoon. Savannah nibbled a cracker. Both looked at me.

  And I had no idea what to say.

  Just then, Dani’s phone buzzed on the table. I nearly jumped out of my seat. Dani put her fingers to her lips and pressed a button.

  “Yes, Elana?”

  Elana’s voice drifted out, tiny and tinny, but still packing quite the punch. “I see you’re back home—”

  My mouth opened in a silent gasp. How did she know?

  “Yes,” Dani said, amazingly calm. “It was a very long day. I thought I’d get a few hours of sleep—”

  “Did you manage to complete their voice modeling settings? You also went to the guesthouse.”

  This time I shivered. Did she know everywhere Dani had gone?

  “Yes, I took the recordings and the personal effects.”

  I met Savannah’s eyes across the table. We were recorded? she mouthed at me. I just shrugged. Guidant apparently tracked everything. Being recorded seemed like small potatoes in a world where some of us had also been kidnapped and frozen.