floor. I now had the answer to a question I’d never asked.
I now knew where the dados were made.
We stood above a sea of thousands of dado warriors. Shoulder to shoulder. Heel to toe. Row upon row upon perfect row. They were dressed in various uniforms. Some wore the green military-like uniforms with gold helmets from Quillan. Another whole section had on the deep red suits that showed them to be Ravinian guards. One huge section held dados that didn’t have uniforms, but instead were dressed in normal clothing that would easily allow them to blend in with the people of Second Earth.
There was more. I saw dados dressed as Batu warriors and Bedoowan knights. Some wore the rags that made them look like Flighters from Ibara. Maybe the most jarring of all was the section of klees. They actually made dado cats.
As with the helicopters, one whole section of floor was an assembly line that held hundreds of dados that were yet to be completed. There were more to come. Many more. I saw multiple rows of legs and arms and hands-all waiting to be used to create more robotic warriors.
The dados all had the same, blank expression. Many were still made in Mark’s image, but others branched out with different looks. The dados were looking more human than ever. But they weren’t. They were machines. They were Saint Dane’s army.
“This is what Antonio found,” I said with a dry mouth. “This is how they’re going to attack.”
Mark looked just as stunned as I felt. “There could be seventy thousand exiles, or seven hundred thousand. It won’t matter. They can’t stand up to this army.”
I went into brain lock. I didn’t know what to do. About the dados. About Halla. About the exiles. I didn’t even know what to do in the next second. I was frozen.
Wump!
A dull but powerful sound tore through the dead quiet. An instant later, a dado that had been creeping toward us along the catwalk fell off and plummeted to the factory floor. It looked like a mannequin because it was already dead. It hit, bounced, and crumbled like a doll. Mark and I both looked back in surprise to see Elli standing behind us with the gun I had dropped. She had it braced against her hip, her finger on the trigger.
She had dropped the dado with a single shot.
“Pick up your guns,” she commanded with confidence. “They know we’re here.”
Chapter 22
I don’t know what was more stunning: finding the vast army of dados, knowing that we had been discovered and were in for a fight, or seeing Elli with a rifle on her hip after having blown away a dado.
I think it was Elli.
“Move!” she barked.
Mark and I both jumped to the side of the narrow walkway as Elli unloaded again. She shot from the hip, literally. She held the weapon at waist level, the butt against her hip. The rifle let out another dull wump as it discharged. For a fleeting instant I thought I sensed the charged particle as it shot past us. Maybe I’m crazy, but I could swear the hair went up on the back of my neck, as if I had been brushed by static electricity. A second later another dado was blown off its feet. It landed square on its back on the metal walkway. Dead. Done. Lights out. Whatever.
Farther ahead on the catwalk, more dados in red Ravinian outfits appeared and sprinted toward us.
“Back to the roof,” I commanded.
We turned to run back the way we had come. Elli led the way, her rifle out and ready to fire again. Who knew? We got as far as the doorway that led back into the helicopter section of the factory when Elli pulled up.
“They must have seen us on the roof,” she gasped.
Sure enough, on the far side of the chopper factory, a dozen dados came flooding down the same ladder we had used to get down from the roof. We were trapped between two groups who were closing fast.
“Twenty-eight shots left,” Mark said coolly.
“What if there’s twenty-nine of them?” I asked.
“There’s twenty-nine thousand of them!” Mark exclaimed.
“Climb down,” Elli announced.
Without waiting for our opinions, Elli scrambled for a ladder no more than ten feet ahead of us that led down to the factory floor. She swung the rifle over her shoulder as if she had done it a thousand times before and quickly made her way down the ladder.
Mark looked at me with surprise, as if to ask, “Who woke her up?”
I shot past Mark and went for the ladder. The catwalk was high over the factory floor. The narrow ladder ran straight down with nothing around it but air. If we hadn’t been on the run, I’m not so sure I’d have been able to climb down as quickly as I was. One slip and it would be over. As much as I didn’t want to look down, this time I had to. We had to know if any bad boys were arriving below. I looked out over the sea of dados and my stomach flipped. It was like descending into a tank of piranhas. There were thousands of them. It was insanity. We were running away from a handful of dados toward an entire army. At least the army hadn’t been activated. I hoped that they were no more dangerous than statues.
My foot slipped off a rung. I had to clutch the sides of the thin, metal ladder or I would have fallen through. It was a dumb mistake. I was more worried about what we would find on the floor than about getting there safely. I had to force myself to look ahead and concentrate on my footing. One step at a time. Don’t worry about the dados. There would be time for that soon enough.
I met Elli on the ground, followed shortly after by Mark. We all had our guns out and ready. But ready for what?
“They’re coming down,” Mark announced.
A quick look up showed that the dados from the roof had reached the ladder and were coming after us. The dados already on the catwalk were getting closer. I was happy to see that they didn’t have weapons. At least they couldn’t take shots at us from the high ground.
“Are you okay?” Elli asked me. She was focused and in control.
“I’m fine,” I said, a little embarrassed. It made me realize that Elli wasn’t the frail old lady I thought she was. What’s that saying? “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”? Well, Elli was on her way.
“We’ve gotta find another way out of here,” Mark announced.
The two groups of dados were about to join up and descend on us. I looked around but there wasn’t an obvious way out. It became very clear, very fast, that there was only one thing to do.
“Needle in a haystack,” I declared.
Mark looked at the sea of dados and smiled. He got it. “Right.”
“What does that mean?” Elli asked.
“We’ll get lost in the dados,” I said. “C’mon.”
The three of us ran for the army. They may have been dados, but they looked like people. And there were thousands of them. Some even looked like Mark. My hope was to get far enough into the ranks so that the dados who were after us wouldn’t know which way we had gone. It seemed like the best way to buy a little time until we could find a way out of that factory. The three of us plunged into the line of robots, barely grazing them as we moved as quickly and quietly as we could without knocking any of them over. We all knew enough not to speak. That would have defeated the purpose and given us away. Without planning it, we relied on hand signals.
Mark was on my right. Elli on my left. I took the lead and motioned for Mark to start moving diagonally toward the right. We made our way along, one dado width apart from one another. We didn’t even have to duck down, because the dados were all at least a few inches taller than I was, and I was the tallest of the three of us. Still, I crouched a little, just in case. In seconds we were deep among the dados. I looked back to see if we were being followed. I was sure that we were, but they would have no way of tracking us. I didn’t relax, but we had bought a little breathing room.
Moving through the field of dados was one of the eeriest things I’d ever done. Dados weren’t human, but they
