“Does that surprise you?” he said. “We’ve been practicing since way back when we built that fort. We have a duplicate of every human in that town you were hiding in, and it never crossed your mind that we were trying to replace people? That was the whole point.”
Up close, the old man didn’t look real at all. His skin was obviously fake, like a Halloween mask.
“But why them?” I asked. “Why the president’s daughters?”
The other android was still facing the front, but he wasn’t doing anything. I wondered whether he could even move.
“What do you think?” the android said. “I want you two to really mull it over and try to think of a reason someone would want to control the president. Go ahead. I’ll wait.”
I peered into the black curved window. There was something on the other side. Just a shape out of the corner of my eye.
Becky reached out to touch the old man. He swatted at her hand, but he was awkward and jolting. He missed.
“Who controls you?” she asked.
I turned, looking for something. Something hard.
“What makes you think I’m not like the others? Like Ms. Vaughn?”
“You’re too believable.”
He laughed. “This is believable?”
“I mean your personality,” she said. She wasn’t afraid of him at all now, standing in front of the machine, touching his rubbery face and hands. “Ms. Vaughn and Iceman don’t have humans attached to them. That’s obvious.”
“And you think I do?” he said. He was ancient. Whatever artificial skin he once had was now a mess. These androids hadn’t been updated in decades. Maybe even a century.
“Nope,” I answered, and I pushed the second, motionless robot off his chair. He slumped to the floor without a twitch.
Becky looked confused, and the old man turned to me.
“Violence won’t solve anything,” he said, and laughed and gestured mechanically to Becky. “I heard her say that once.”
“Who are you?” I asked. “Are you the first?”
“Do I look like anything other than a puppet?” he said. He gestured at the other android on the floor. “We’re relics, from a time when this room was more necessary. Now it’s all controlled remotely. A neural link straight to Mr. Maxfield.” He laughed, as though he’d made a joke.
I picked up the chair the second man had been sitting in. It was heavy and unwieldy, but heavy was exactly what I wanted.
Becky touched my arm. “What are you doing?”
I nodded toward the curved window. “I can’t smash the computers, so I’m going to smash that.”
The old man swung at me, and Becky pushed him over onto his face. He flailed, trying to get up, and Becky jumped away from him. Ms. Vaughn banged on the door again.
“Count of three,” I announced, knowing someone was listening. “One, two, three.”
I crashed the chair into the glass, and it bounced off with barely a scuff mark. I slammed it again, with the same result.
“Bravo,” the old man said, finally rolling onto his back.
“Hey, Bense.” I felt Becky’s hand on my arm, and turned to her.
She held out the two dropped Tasers, the box cutter, and the broken powerhead. They’d all been gathered on a shelf.
The old man laughed. “What did I say about damaging the computers? I don’t think a Taser would be wise. And what will a box cutter do to a puppet?”
I set down the chair and picked up the powerhead. It was just the pipe and the bullet, the screwdriver having broken off in the hall.
I held the pipe to the glass.
“Hey, Becky,” I said. “Find me something pointy.”
The old man flailed at me again, but he was ancient and weak. He couldn’t even stand.
“Would a pen work?” Becky asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Oh,” she said. “Here. It came off when we moved the computer.” She handed me a three-inch-long screw.
I positioned the screw at the back of the powerhead. I tried not to let my nerves show, but I was afraid I was going to blow my hand off.
And then it appeared.
There was a face in the window, obscured in the dark liquid. The two eyes stared back at us, and a slit of a mouth, but that was the only thing recognizable about it. The skin was red and patchy—almost like a leopard but more subtle—and it was smooth and sleek like a fish.
“What is it?” Becky whispered.
Something appeared—a tentacle, or a hand. It pressed against the glass for a moment, and then flashed away into the darkness.
“What the hell are you?” I stammered, nervously and quickly bending down to grab the screw.
The voice came from the old man, as the face faded back into the darkness. “Perhaps your astronomer Carl Sagan said it best. ‘Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.’ You should consider yourselves lucky. This is a landmark moment in human discovery.”
The old man, his rubbery skin, tried to smile.
I placed the powerhead against the glass again, and repositioned the screw.
“I don’t care what you are,” I said. “But unless you release every single human under your control, and shut down all the androids, I’ll smash that glass and spill you all over the floor.”
The face appeared again, the words coming from the old man. “I’ve worked too long for you to destroy it now.”
“Tell that to the bullet,” I said.
“Look,” Becky said, pointing at one of the monitors. It was a security camera watching one of the underground halls. At least ten kids from the town ran past, all armed. Shelly and the others were taking over the complex.
The face disappeared, swirling out of sight. It was darting around inside the tank, agitated.
“Yes,” he snapped. “All that interrogation, and I should have simply waited. The missing students tunneled down a few hours ago. They’ve been causing me no end of problems. I can kill them all right now if you’d like.”
I tapped the powerhead on the glass, and the face flashed angrily again in the darkness.
“You think you’ve won, but you’re fools,” he screeched.
It reappeared, closer to the glass this time. I could see tiny teeth in its inhuman mouth, the rippling scales of its skin. It was grotesque.
“Do it,” Becky demanded. “Now.”
One by one the screens around us dimmed to black, and a moment later they turned back on, showing different images—live feeds from the security cameras. The students in the school were panicking, half their classmates seeming to drop dead beside them.
“The implants are disabled?” Becky asked, her voice quiet now.
“Yes,” the old man snapped, his voice bitter and snarling.
“And the security? The gates and all the locks?”
“You’re free to go!” he bellowed. “But know what you’ve done. The president thinks he has just witnessed both his daughters collapse and die, and when they try to resuscitate them—when they take them to the hospital and scan them and autopsy the bodies—they’ll know the truth.”
Becky seemed to tremble at the thought. “You did it,” she said.
“We didn’t start a war,” he answered. “We were merely observing. You’ve incited a worldwide panic.”