Word Puppets Read online

  The boys clattered down the stairs, pushing Wade in front of them.

  “See. It can go down steps by itself.” Piercing Boy slapped Wade on the back of the head, pushing him past eDawg’s shivering body. Wade looked at her with anguish written on his face; God in heaven, he really cared about Edie. His body tensed as if he was going to spin and punch Piercing Boy. She held his gaze and shook her head.

  Wade did a double-take, but he didn’t try anything stupid.

  Saskia limped after them, becoming more aware of the fatigue in her real body than she was of the puppet she manipulated. At the end of the hall, the boys disappeared around the corner; Wade’s face briefly shone like a ghost in the dark.

  Something scraped across stone. She forced herself into a run, stretching her front legs out and thrusting with her hind legs.

  By the time she reached the end of the hall, Skinny was dragging a piece of the wall closed behind him.

  Metta said, “Keep it open!”

  Saskia barked sharply, hurling herself at the crack. Dodging back and forth, she nipped at Skinny’s ankles. She had never wanted working teeth on eDawg as much as she did now.

  “Want me to shoot it?” MickyD said.

  “Nah.” Piercing Boy picked a flashlight off the floor. “We’ll just lock it up on this side of the wall.”

  Fear trembled down her spine before Saskia remembered that she was in a truck above ground. For the time being, she just needed to keep eDawg close to Wade until the cavalry arrived. Without her, they had no way of knowing where these kids were taking Wade.

  Against the far wall, Wade sat on the ground with his hands in his lap. MickyD stood over him, still holding the gun.

  Wade raised his head and leaned slightly toward her. His hand twitched as if he wanted to reach out.

  Skinny kicked her aside, pushing the stone wall shut. As the wall ground into place, eDawg missed a step. Great. The wall was blocking the signal. She jerked forward with an increasing delay in movement. Saskia slowed down, trying to mask her struggle to manipulate the puppet.

  She subveed, “I’m losing the signal. Can you get the truck closer?”

  “I’ll tell the driver.”

  Saskia crept toward Wade, keeping her head down and her body language as submissive as possible. Expecting MickyD to stop her, she crawled into Wade’s lap and collapsed.

  She could not feel the warmth of his body, but she could tell he was petting her by the way her harness shifted gently against her spine. “Shh. It’s okay. Good girl . . . ”

  What kind of boy tries to comfort a toy? She pressed her head into his side, wishing she could comfort her owner back, but the signal was too uncertain for specific movement.

  Wade pulled her up so her head rested on his shoulder. He whispered, “Record mode, on.”

  She pulled her head back to look at him. This close, she could see the circles under his eyes. And inside his eyes, she could see her own reflection—eDawg’s reflection. Wade whispered in her ear, as if he were Metta, “Tell my dad I’m sorry. It was an accident. The gun just went off. I shouldn’t have run away, I was just scared. I’m still scared . . . ”

  Saskia wanted to shush him, to tell him that other people were listening, but all she could do was stay in character. She pushed her snout against him, trying to nuzzle comfort into him.

  MickyD dragged Wade to his feet, tumbling eDawg onto the floor. “Move it.”

  Staggering after Wade, she followed the light, determined not to be left behind. She couldn’t leave Wade with these punks. He wasn’t safe. She wagged her tail to encourage him, not knowing if he could see her in the gloom. The corridor bent and twisted as if it were dodging other buildings or sewer pipes. She lost sight of her boy. After each step she took, she had to wait for the puppet to respond. The plodding pace made her want to scream.

  They were getting away.

  Her world went dark. The system locked, freezing her limbs in place.

  Hands grabbed her, her real body, helping her sit. Saskia winced at the bright light in the truck as her VR headset was pulled off. Patel leaned over her and she flinched at the sight of him. Saskia had forgotten that anyone except Metta was with her.

  “Are you all right?”

  Saskia nodded. Nothing around her seemed real. The lights were too bright; the lines were too sharp. The truck seemed crowded with people after the confines of the tunnel.

  Beyond the cables surrounding her, Cruise leaned toward Patel in a perfect aggressive line. “What is happening down there! Where is he?”

  Patel held her gaze, as if he needed an anchor to hold his temper. “We’re working on that, sir.”

  “Well, get her back online. Send her back!”

  Saskia wanted to tear the motion capture gear off and hurl it at him. “They’re too far underground; I don’t have a signal.”

  “So you’ve got no idea what’s happening down there!” Cruise virtually ignored her and continued to yell at Patel.

  Metta said, “We are proceeding to the best of our abilities.”

  “Bull. I’ll go in there myself.” Cruise strode to the door.

  Patel pushed past the cables to follow him. “I don’t recommend that.”

  “What do you recommend? Another puppet show?” He slammed out of the truck.

  Patel hesitated for a moment. He glanced at Saskia. “Metta is going to have the driver try to get above eDawg’s last position.” Then he followed Cruise, cursing quietly under his breath.

  As the truck rumbled forward, Metta let out an almost human sigh. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “It’s all right.”

  But, it wasn’t all right. Wade was missing, and even if she could get back to him, there was nothing she could do. The whole thing sucked. She had spent, what, twenty minutes with Wade? But she still felt her character’s loyalty to the boy as strongly as if she weren’t acting. She tried to relax as the truck rumbled forward, but the last half-hour kept replaying. None of it made sense.

  The truck stopped moving and Metta said, “We have a clean signal now.”

  The thought of dropping to all fours made her muscles ache. “You should take over.”

  “I—” Metta shook her head. “I’m not used to being bad at something, but you were right. It has to be you.”

  “Does it make a difference now?”

  “There are too many new variables. I don’t want to change anything. Unless you don’t feel like you can continue.”

  Saskia picked up the VR helmet. “Show must go on.” She pulled it down over her eyes.

  eDawg was still in the dark, and the corridor was silent around her. Rolling onto eDawg’s belly, she gathered her legs under herself and started down the corridor. She subveed to Metta. “Do you have any idea where we are?”

  “You’re under Burnside, close to the corner of Northeast Third. I think the kidnappers came out in the basement of a warehouse there. I’ve sent agents down, but they haven’t made visual contact, and the agents behind you are having difficulty getting through the wall.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” And just like that, she realized that she trusted Metta the way she would trust a good director.

  “Find Wade. Be ready to get him onto the ground.”

  “Yeah. About that. I’m knee-high. How do I can knock the kid down?”

  Saskia set off blindly down the hall, relying on her sense of balance.

  “I would suggest tripping him.” She must be imagining it, but she thought she heard hesitation in Metta’s voice.

  Saskia considered angle of impact and the physics of knocking Wade down, the way that she would run through a complicated piece of blocking. “Yeah. That could work. Good call.”

  Walking in virtual darkness seemed to take forever. When she finally reached the end of the corridor, she found another false wall. This one was partially open.

  She peeked around the corner. The ceiling sloped toward her, so that a human would have to walk bent over. A single light
bulb hung halfway across the room, casting harsh shadows among the old brick columns supporting the ceiling.

  She looked for some indication of where Wade might be. By instinct, she lowered her nose to the ground, which was beyond stupid, since she had no sense of smell and no audience.

  Metta said, “Hold still.”

  “What?”

  “The dust is scuffed here.” Metta highlighted the image on the screen, and a slight path in the dust on the ground showed. “Can you follow it?”

  “Keep it highlighted.” Saskia kept eDawg’s nose to the ground, and Metta lit the trail up like a yellow brick road. It wound along the side of the room until she came to a low break in the wall.

  “Ah . . . ” Metta whispered. “That’s how they got out.”

  Peering carefully through the hole, Saskia could not see any sign of the boys. “Do you want me to go through?”

  “Yes, we’re parked just outside then entrance now. I’ll send the team in the truck down, but—”

  Shouting and gunfire came at her from two places at once. Her mind reeled, caught between worlds. “That sounded—”

  “Shh. Stop. Play dead.”

  Saskia flattened eDawg against the dirty floor of the tunnel. In the distance, she could hear the boys’ voices. She waited, her heart pounding in her chest, for Metta to tell her what was happening. Lying down, she felt as if she were in two places at once. She heard the boys underground, but could also feel a vibration from the floor of the UPS truck, giving her a reminder of her real body.

  Metta whispered, “Listen carefully, but do not move or react. They are in the truck.”

  Saskia stopped breathing.

  “They attacked the agent driving and are in the front.”

  “How is that even possible? You’re the freaking FBI.”

  Metta’s voice was pained. “I made an error. There were two sets of stairs and our agents were on the wrong one.”

  “And you sent them all.”

  A human’s breath would have hitched here. Metta was only silent.

  Saskia closed her eyes and tried to become conscious of her real surroundings. The vibrations grew stronger, accompanied by a sense of motion. The truck was rolling forward again. It maddened her to lie on the ground without doing anything. She tried listening past her headset for sounds in the truck, but nothing was loud enough to be distinct. The truck was not that large, no bigger than a real UPS box truck, but her headset muffled everything. “I’m going to take off my VR headset.”

  “I don’t advise that.”

  Saskia tensed all of her muscles against the desire to move. “What should I do then, just lie here?”

  “We are in pursuit.”

  “They’re going to notice me eventually.”

  “Not necessarily. Two of them are in the cab of the truck. Only one is in the back and if you don’t move, I am hoping they will not notice that you are embedded in the rig.” Metta paused. “Do you want me to feed the image from my interface to your VR headset?”

  “Yeah, that’d be good.”

  The image on her headset changed. She saw the truck as if she sat at Metta’s desktop interface in the corner. Creepy.

  She could see why Metta hoped they wouldn’t notice her. The carapace of the rig masked her enough that it would be possible to think she was a modern art sculpture, all hard plastic and wires. From where MickyD leaned against the front wall of the truck, with his gun pointed loosely at Wade, it would be impossible to see the few points where her skin was exposed.

  Wade sat on the floor of the truck, with his arms wrapped around himself. He was staring at her body as if seeing a ghost, as if he knew exactly what this rig did and who she was.

  Her body, almost obscured by the rods and cables of the rig, lay on the floor like a marionette dog. She had a sudden urge to see if she could manipulate it like a puppet on a screen. Her left hand twitched before she could stifle the thought.

  MickyD glanced at the rig, and for a moment Saskia thought he hadn’t noticed her in the tangle of cables. But like a cartoon character, he did a double-take and pointed the gun at her.

  “Hey! There’s a chick back here.”

  Piercing Boy leaned through the small door between the cab and cargo area. “What are you talking about?”

  “Look.” He pointed the gun at her again, but the bulk of the rig was between her and Piercing Boy. Letting the gun drop for a moment, MickyD shoved a bunch of cables to the side.

  Piercing Boy ducked under the cables. “Who the hell are you?”

  Saskia sat up, watching herself move in third person. The rig shifted around her as if it were manipulating her. She pulled the VR headset off, and her point of view shifted violently.

  Piercing Boy loomed over her, closer than she expected. “I said, who are you?”

  “I’m Saskia Dorlan.” She paused, waiting for Metta to tell her what to do.

  “I don’t care about your freaking name, what are you doing here? What is this?”

  Shit. Without the VR headset, Metta could not secretly talk to her. She was cut off. Saskia’s stage instincts kicked in with adrenaline to spare. Spin it, girl. This is a stage show gone wrong, just find a way to end the scene. If you couldn’t hide a mistake, try to work it in. She didn’t even need to wholly convince them, just keep them off-balance long enough for Patel and the rest of the FBI to come to the rescue.

  “I’m one of the puppeteers on the show.” She smiled. “You guys are doing a great job.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Trying to mask her shaking fingers, Saskia started undoing the sensors on her arms. eDawg must be having a seizure. “Sorry. My bad. I just figured since the camera crew wasn’t here, you’d drop character.”

  The words came out of her mouth as if a prompter were standing offstage. Saskia turned her attention to the buckles on the legs. “I hate these reality shows, but it’s a living, right, Wade?” She looked at the boy, willing him to go along with it.

  He startled, visibly, but before either punk turned, Wade was nodding.

  Piercing Boy said, “What do you mean, reality show?”

  Saskia let her mouth drop. “Shit. You didn’t know? I thought you were actors, too.” She stood, dropping the leggings on the ground. Only her torso remained attached to the rig. “Oh hell no . . . you must be the contestants. The director is going to kill me. I just figured since you were here, he must . . . Look, if you could not say anything, I’d really appreciate it.” Without the VR headset on, she had no way of knowing if Metta would get the hint. Trying to keep her panic from showing, she glanced around. “Where’s the rest of the crew?”

  Piercing Boy screamed at her. “I want to know what’s going on, and I want to know now!”

  Saskia widened her eyes, leaning back to show apprehension. It took all her acting skill to keep from gibbering like an idiot. “Okay, okay. Just don’t say you got it from me. I don’t want to get fired. We’re shooting a new show called To Catch a Thief and I didn’t realize you weren’t briefed beforehand. Wade and I only met last week. Say, Wade, can you undo the strap on this for me?”

  She reached her arm behind her, as if there were a buckle there too. Wade levered himself off the ground, and slid past the cables. He was smaller than she thought. His every movement screamed of fear.

  Saskia kept babbling to distract the two punks. “It’s a great concept, because they can use my puppet to do the filming when they can’t work in a camera crew. Although, man, when you kicked the dog down the stairs, I thought I’d never get a clean shot again.” She laughed, as if she were sharing a joke in the green room, and stepped forward so she was between them and Wade. “So where’d they find you guys?”

  “Cruise hired—”

  The truck slammed to a stop.

  Saskia let the rig catch her, while MickyD and Piercing Boy tumbled backwards, tripping over cables. Wade slammed into her. She heard his breath wuff past her ear.

  Skinny leaned through th
e little door at the front of the truck. “The road’s blocked! What do I do?”

  Saskia’s breath caught in her throat; Piercing Boy had said, “Cruise hired . . . “ Wade’s father had sent these punks? Why?

  She looked over her shoulder at Wade, willing him to understand that help was on the way. “That’s the film crew.”

  He nodded, almost imperceptibly.

  “The director will probably want to reset for the last scene.”

  Piercing Boy scrambled to his feet. “I don’t like it when people screw with me—”

  The back door of the truck flew open. Patel bounded up the steps. His coat was gone and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up. He held a clipboard in one hand, his other hand was poised behind it as if he held a pen. “Babe! What are you doing to me?”

  Babe?

  She turned to face Patel, because that’s what she would do with a real director. But the thought of having a gun at her back made her scalp prickle with fear. Wade’s eyes were huge.

  Patel nodded at Wade, “Doing great, kid. Head out to wardrobe.”

  Patel’s back was too stiff; he didn’t have the relaxed confidence of a director. He moved like a cop.

  She heard MickyD’s weight shift.

  Saskia turned her head as MickyD leaned forward, raising the gun. She pushed Wade down, falling toward him as Metta yelled over the loudspeakers, “Get down!”

  Patel dropped the clipboard, bringing his gun out to cover MickyD.

  Wade hit the ground. The rig caught Saskia, suspending her.

  A gun fired.

  The sound ricocheted through the truck, and pain screamed through her back.

  Despite Saskia’s notes, her understudy botched his first scene as he overplayed the moment. Saskia fidgeted in the auditorium seat. She shouldn’t be in the audience, but she couldn’t even climb the ladder to the bridge.

  Her PDA vibrated in her pocket. Saskia eased out of her seat and slipped out the side door of the auditorium to answer it.

  “Saskia? This is Metta.”

  She sounded so human. It was easy to forget she was a machine. Heck, it was like talking to an old crew member long after a show wrapped. “The arraignment just ended. I figured you’d want to know.”