In Over Their Heads Read online

  So what? Jackson told himself. Just get back up. Just keep running. Just . . .

  Jackson looked down and saw a wire poking out of his torso.

  Can’t be anything too important if I’m still conscious, he thought. Splice it back together and go on!

  He tried to reach for the wire, but he couldn’t move his arms. The right one was pinned under his body, but the left one was still around Dad’s waist. It should have been free and clear and available. Unlike most of the rest of Jackson’s body, it didn’t even hurt.

  It just wouldn’t move. It was like it had become an inanimate object, not even connected to Jackson’s nervous system.

  Is that maybe what that broken wire is about? Jackson thought. Oh no—what if I’m completely paralyzed? What if I can’t move at all, can’t do anything to hide from the cops who are looking for me? What if . . . what if . . . what if . . .

  Jackson stopped being able to hear. He stopped being able to see. He stopped being able to think.

  And then he felt the internal whirring and zapping that could mean only one thing: His system was completely shutting down.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Nick

  We messed up, Nick thought. I messed up.

  Even as he walked deeper and deeper into the cave alongside Ava and Eryn, his mind scolded him: Why didn’t you and the girls grab Mom and Dad and Brenda and force them to come into the cave with you? And Lida Mae, too? How could you have let them all run out into the blizzard like that? Why didn’t you keep them safe? Why don’t you turn around and chase after them now—why don’t you rescue them?

  Each time he thought that, he countered himself: Because Ava said they’re fine out there in the cold. They’re not in any danger, like we would be. Lida Mae can take care of herself in the wilderness. And all the adults—they’re robots.

  But they were also his parents.

  Nick had never felt like this before. Until the first day he’d met his stepsiblings—and found out they were robots, setting off the cascade of other revelations—he’d had a pretty simple life. His biggest dilemmas had been things like How can I talk Mom or Dad into buying me a new lacrosse stick when they know I broke my old one goofing off and not listening to the coach? And Do I dare sneak in extra video game time when Mom thinks I’m doing homework? There had been the whole weirdness of Mom remarrying, but if the adults hadn’t been so secretive about Ava and Jackson, Nick would have just adjusted and gotten over it.

  For the first twelve years of his life, he’d never had to be anything but a normal, relatively obedient, relatively carefree kid.

  But now . . .

  Is it possible to break your own brain in half, second-guessing a decision you just made five minutes ago? A decision you could unmake at any moment?

  He thought about pulling Eryn aside—out of Ava’s earshot—and asking if she thought they should turn around. But he still hadn’t told her that Ava knew about the papers rustling in his coat pocket, so he felt weird even looking at Eryn right now.

  And, oh no—what are we going to do about these papers? Nick wondered. Should we have just told the grown-ups about them to begin with, and let them figure things out? Should we go back and do that now? Or as soon as the blizzard’s over?

  That is, if the grown-ups survived the blizzard . . .

  “Do you mind?” Eryn said.

  Nick realized she was talking to him.

  “Huh?” he said.

  “The flashlight,” Eryn said. “The way you’re making it bounce all around . . . I can’t see where I’m going. Can’t you hold it steady? Or . . . let me hold it?”

  Nick had kind of forgotten he was holding a flashlight. He’d forgotten Eryn didn’t have one. He’d forgotten everything but the questions in his own mind.

  “We’re walking on a flat trail,” Nick said. His voice came out sounding surly. “In a dark cave. There’s nothing to see.”

  How could his sister whine about what she could or couldn’t see at a time like this?

  Eryn cleared her throat, which was always a sign that she was annoyed.

  “That’s easy for you to say, when you’re holding the flashlight,” she said. “When you can see there aren’t any rocks to trip over in front of your feet.”

  “Here, Eryn,” Ava said in a gentle tone. She shifted her flashlight so the beam illuminated more of the path ahead of Eryn. “Why don’t you walk between Nick and me? We’ll let the beams overlap, and then you can see.”

  Eryn snorted—the kind of snort that said, Stop treating me like a little kid! Stop talking to me like I’m a cranky five-year-old! But she moved so the three of them could walk shoulder to shoulder, lined up.

  They’d taken only three or four more steps when Eryn burst out, “This isn’t working! Nick’s still making the light bounce, and—”

  “I am not!” Nick protested.

  “You don’t know what it’s like not having a flashlight in here!” Eryn said. “Not having any control, and having the darkness press in on you, and not knowing what’s happening to Mom and Dad out there . . .”

  Okay, it’s not really the flashlight making Eryn crazy, Nick thought. She’s freaking out about the same things I’m freaking out about.

  He was about to say, That’s it. Let’s turn around, but Ava spoke first.

  “Here,” she said, shoving her flashlight into Eryn’s hand, making the beam arc wildly. “We’ll take turns. I—” Ava stopped walking. She grabbed the flashlight back from Eryn and yanked it upward so the beam stretched toward a point on the wall far, far ahead. It was a spot she’d briefly illuminated a moment before, but this time Ava held the flashlight steady. “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?” Nick asked. As far as he could tell, she was peering at the same kind of endless rock they’d been passing all along.

  “On that door . . . ,” Ava muttered.

  She took off running. Nick and Eryn exchanged glances, then ran after her. Nick didn’t even try to keep the flashlight steady, but Eryn didn’t complain now.

  They caught up with Ava as she approached what did indeed seem to be a door.

  “Ava, chill,” Nick said, trying not to pant. “It’s just the door to the room we were in last night, the room where, uh . . .”

  “Yeah, see?” Eryn said, tugging on Nick’s arm so his flashlight beam illuminated the doorknob. “Remember the room with the broken desk, and nothing else to see? No need to go in there again, right?”

  Ava glanced back over her shoulder.

  “Eryn, I know about the papers you and Nick found in that room,” she said. “Jackson and I saw Nick hide them. We know what they say.”

  Nick was stunned that she could say this so flatly, as if it didn’t even matter anymore.

  Kind of nice of you to let me off the hook, though, he thought. Now I never have to tell Eryn I showed you the papers without asking her opinion first.

  But Ava had stopped looking at either of them.

  “This is not the door to the secret room we were in last night,” she said. “We passed that on the other side of the hallway a long time ago. And that door had a sign on it about how no robots were allowed in; it was for humans only. This one . . . this . . .”

  She started walking again, closer and closer to the door. Nick and Eryn crept behind her. After they’d taken about ten more steps, Ava reached back and put her hand on Nick’s flashlight, redirecting it. Now both flashlight beams were aimed toward the top part of the door, where Nick could just barely make out letters and words.

  The sign on this door said: FOR ROBOT ACCESS ONLY.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Eryn

  Ava reached for the doorknob.

  “No, don’t!” Eryn cried, pulling back on her stepsister’s arm. “You don’t know what’s in there!”

  “And this is how I’m going to find out,” Ava said.

  Eryn practically despised Ava for how calm she sounded, how robotically rational. It was almost evil that Ava could stay so unaffect
ed, while Eryn’s mind raced and her stomach churned and she could just feel her adrenaline levels spiking, as if her body thought she might need to run a marathon sometime in the next few seconds.

  “What if it’s a trick?” Nick asked. “Or a trap?”

  Ava barely paused. “It’s not like that other room, where humans could be sure that if they labeled the door ROBOTS NOT ALLOWED PAST THIS POINT, robots would have to obey in almost every circumstance,” she said. “Humans can disobey this sign anytime they want. They have free will.”

  “That’s why I think it could be a trap,” Nick said. “Because robots know that about humans.”

  “Sometimes STAY OUT! signs make us want to go into a place even more,” Eryn added.

  “True,” Ava said. “But I really am a robot. So I’m not worried.” She reached for the doorknob again, muttering to herself, “All these years thinking I was the same as a human . . . It’s different now that I know I’m not.”

  Eryn didn’t reach out to stop Ava this time. Neither did Nick.

  Ava turned the knob, and the door creaked open. Nick kicked at it as if he didn’t have the patience to wait for it to swing open on its own. The motion must have tripped some kind of sensor, because suddenly bright, beautiful light shone out of the room.

  “Light,” Eryn sighed, even as Nick cried, “Look for booby traps before anyone goes in!”

  “It’s fine,” Ava said. “It’s an empty room.”

  She stepped across the threshold. Eryn and Nick, less bold, just leaned their heads forward, looking in.

  It took Eryn a moment for her eyes to adjust, but then she could tell: This room was practically the twin of the room where they’d found the papers the night before. It had the same kind of forgettable black-and-white tile floor, the same kind of forgettable light gray walls. But the other room had had a desk positioned right in the middle of the floor—the desk where the papers were hidden.

  This room held no furniture at all.

  “There’s nothing here—let’s go on,” Eryn said anxiously.

  She didn’t know why it bothered her to see an empty room, but it did. Even the glaring light she’d longed for before was annoying to her now. Was it getting brighter? More overpowering? Could it blind her after so much darkness?

  Ava just kept walking, farther and farther into the room. She reached the back wall and tugged on something Eryn hadn’t noticed before, sticking out from the wall. A wire unspooled—a wire with a silver tip.

  “The way this is designed—it would fit into the data port in my neck,” Ava said, holding the wire up. She sounded like she was in a daze. Spellbound.

  “Ava, no,” Nick said. “That would be like . . . I don’t know, like taking candy from a stranger. You don’t know who left that wire there. You don’t know why. Maybe it was the humans who wanted to destroy robots. Maybe it would kill you.”

  “But this is what I’m programmed to do,” Ava said dreamily.

  She shrugged off her backpack and dropped it to the floor.

  And then she stuck the tip of the wire into her neck.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Ava

  “Ava!” Eryn and Nick both screamed, rushing toward her.

  Ava heard their cries as if they were miles away. Maybe it was only her enhanced hearing that let her hear them at all.

  “Should we just pull it out?” Nick asked.

  “What if that hurts her?” Eryn asked. “You know how you’re not supposed to pull a flash drive out of a computer without ejecting it first . . .”

  “I’m fine,” Ava told them. It sounded like she was talking underwater. But that didn’t worry her. She let herself sink down into a sitting position, leaning against the wall. “Everything’s fine. Let me see what this tells me.”

  Eryn and Nick kept hovering, but they didn’t reach down to yank the wire away. And then Ava stopped seeing them. Instead she saw a scene of a peaceful neighborhood. It had to be springtime in the image unfolding in her mind, because tulips and daffodils were just budding, and the trees were bursting with new green leaves. In front of one house, a man mowed his yard; beside another, a woman planted a garden. And somehow Ava knew that both of those people were robots. It was like the wire planted that notion in her brain without words, without effort.

  “Humans used to live with a lot of robots,” Ava told Eryn and Nick. “Just about any job humans wanted done—robots could do it for them.”

  Suddenly a row of tanks and Humvees thundered onto the quiet street. Soldiers in ragtag camouflage began firing on the man mowing the lawn, the woman planting the garden. They fired into houses; Ava saw a maid robot fall, a cook robot fall, a refrigerator-repairman robot fall.

  “Humans killed their robots!” Ava shrieked. “They killed all their peaceful, hardworking robots. . . .”

  “Ava, Ava—it was because robots were killing them, remember?” Nick said. “The soldier robots they created to fight their wars for them got out of control and started killing everyone! Humans had to fight back!”

  “But these robots never hurt anybody!” Ava protested. “They were faithful servants!”

  She could feel tears streaming down her face. It was too awful watching the deaths of so many innocents. Incredibly, a wounded maid robot managed to struggle back to her feet. Rather than hiding or trying to save her own life, she shoved her way out the front door of her house, out into the open of the achingly green lawn.

  “Please!” she called to the soldiers in their tanks and Humvees. “Please, I beg of you—stop! We mean no harm to anyone, neither robot nor human. We exist only to serve!”

  “Lying robot!” one of the soldiers screamed back at her. He trained his gun on her; everyone else in his Humvee did the same. They fired and fired and fired.

  The maid robot fell again. This time she didn’t get back up.

  “We know your kind are sneaky!” one of the soldiers yelled at her, at the whole neighborhood of dead and dying robots. “You can change your programming anytime you want . . . any of you can become killers!”

  Is that true? Ava wondered. She and Jackson had enhanced their sight and hearing, and they’d extended the storage capacity of their brains. But they’d never tinkered with their basic programming. Could they? Could any robot?

  I don’t want to be a killer, she thought with a shiver, watching more and more soldiers shooting more and more robots. But could I really change who I am? Could I be stronger? Wiser? Better?

  “Ava—what do you see happening now?” Eryn shouted at her.

  Ava didn’t answer. It was impossible to describe the carnage she was watching. So much killing. So much death.

  But then the scene changed. Now she was watching a small cluster of robots in a dark room.

  “We have to hide, or face total extinction,” a tall female robot said. “This isn’t a battle we can win. No human will listen to reason anymore. They’re all too afraid. They’ll never trust us again.”

  “But where?” a man asked. His voice was heavy with despair. “Humans are present on virtually every part of the planet. Are you proposing we build a rocket ship and secretly launch ourselves into outer space? We couldn’t hide that!”

  “I’m not talking about outer space,” the woman said. “I’m saying . . . let’s hide where they’re hiding. That would be the last place they’d look.”

  “What?” the man asked.

  The woman produced paper maps and diagrams and began spreading them out on a table.

  “Can’t you just do a data transfer for all of us?” one of the other men complained.

  “No,” the woman said. “The humans are tracking things like that, just like we’re tracking them. . . . Old-school is the only way to work this.”

  Ava realized that the maps on the table showed Mammoth Cave and the nature preserve around it.

  “They’re hiding frozen embryos here, for their future,” the woman said, pointing at the exact center of one of the maps. “They think that’s the only way to e
nsure their species continues after this war ends.”

  “You want to sneak in and destroy all their embryos, and replace them with robot parts, to rebuild us after the war?” one of the men said. “That’s exactly the kind of thing they accuse us of—”

  “No,” the woman said, showing a flash of anger. “I don’t want to destroy anyone or anything. I want an end to all this destruction. I want to leave their embryos alone, and let them start over fresh. And I want us to be able to start over fresh. I want to store the . . . the seeds of our future elsewhere in that same cave. It’s big—there’s room for humans and robots. That way we can monitor what they’re doing. Maybe add a few tweaks of our own. And then . . .”

  “You think one day we can once again coexist peacefully?” a man asked, his voice ringing with doubt.

  “I’m staking my life on it,” the woman said. “Who’s with me?”

  Slowly, thoughtfully, everyone sitting around the table raised a hand. Even the doubtful man.

  Ava watched months’ worth of planning and strategizing. The handful of robots met secretly in basements and closed-down businesses even as bombs and gunfire sounded around them. And then she saw them walking among the trees, slipping into Mammoth Cave through an entrance she’d never seen before. She saw them tinker ever so slightly with the plans the humans had left behind for new caretaker robots to bring back humanity.

  One of the changes left her sobbing all over again, when she finally understood what the humans had intended from the very beginning. What these robots were going to prevent.

  One of the changes added an imperative for what to do if robots ever found themselves in a gray room with a black-and-white floor and a wire hanging out of the wall.

  Is that a change that even I inherited? Ava wondered. Is that why I felt so strongly that I had to link to this wire?

  Then she saw the robots tinker with their own design, creating new robots who looked and acted less and less robotic, more and more like ordinary humans. Robots who, in fact, incorporated the backgrounds and memories of humans who had once lived near the cave.