Shay crouched, rolling onto the lowest shelf beside her, stretching across the jumble of tools. Tally looked around frantically for a place to hide, then wedged herself into a corner where two shelves didn't quite meet, the rifle hidden behind her. Her sneak suit's scales writhed, trying to fade into the shadows.
Across the room, Shay's suit was sprouting jagged lines to break up her outline. By the time the light steadied overhead, she was almost invisible.
But Tally was not. She looked down at herself. Sneak suits were designed for hiding in complex environments— jungles and forests and battle-wrecked cities, not in the corners of brightly lit rooms.
But it was too late to find another spot.
A man was stepping off the ladder.
He wasn't very scary.
He seemed to be an average late pretty, with the same gray hair and wrinkled hands as Tally's great- grandfathers. His face showed the usual signs of life-extension treatments: crinkly skin around the eyes, and veiny hands.
But he didn't seem calm or wise to Tally, the way crumblies had before she'd become a Special—just old. She realized that she could knock him cold without regret if she had to.
More nervous-making than the crumbly were the three little hovercams that floated above his head. They shadowed him as he strode unseeing past Tally toward one of the shelves. He reached to take something down, and the cameras shifted in the air, zipping in closer, like a rapt audience watching a magician's every movement, always staying focused on his hands. He ignored the cameras, as if he was used to their attentions.
Of course, Tally thought. The hovercams were part of the building's security system, but they weren't looking for intruders. They were designed to watch the staff, making sure nobody snuck off with any of the horrible old weapons stored here. They glided smoothly over his head, watching everything this historian—or museum curator, or whatever he was—did here in the Armory.
Tally relaxed a little. Some crumbly boffin who himself was under guard was a lot less threatening than the squad of Specials she'd been expecting.
He handled the objects delicately, and the care he took with them made her vaguely nauseous, as if he saw them as valuable works of art instead of killing machines.
Then suddenly the crumbly froze, a frown on his face. He checked a glowing palmbook in his hand, then started sifting through the objects one by one…
He'd noticed something missing.
Tally wondered if it was the rifle poking into her back. But it couldn't be: Shay had taken the weapon from the other side of the museum.
But then he picked up the biowarfare filter mask. Tally swallowed—she'd put it back in the wrong place.
His eyes slowly swept the room.
Somehow, he didn't see Tally wedged into her corner. The sneak suit must have melded her outline into the shadows on the wall, like an insect against a tree limb.
He carried the mask over to where Shay was hidden, his knees centimeters from her face. Tally was certain he'd notice all the objects she'd borrowed, but once the crumbly had put the mask back in its proper place, he nodded and turned around, a satisfied expression on his face.
Tally breathed a slow sigh of relief.
Then she saw the hovercam staring down at her.
It still floated just above the crumbly's head, but its little lens was no longer watching him. Either Tally's imagination was running wild, or it was pointed straight at her, slowly focusing and refocusing.
The crumbly walked back to where he'd started, but the camera stayed where it was, no longer interested in him. It drifted closer to Tally flitting back and forth, like some hummingbird unsure about a flower. The old man didn't notice its nervous little dance, but Tally's heart was pounding, her vision blurring as she struggled not to breathe.
The camera flew still closer, and past its flitting eye Tally saw Shay's form shifting. She'd also seen the little hovercam—things were about to get very tricky.
The camera stared at Tally, still unsure. Was it smart enough to know about sneak suits? Would it just chalk her up to a smudge on its lens?
Apparently, Shay wasn't waiting to find out. Her suit's camouflage had changed into the sleek black of armor. She pulled herself silently out into the open, pointed at the camera, and drew her finger across her throat.
Tally knew what she had to do.
In a single motion, she whipped the rifle from behind her back. It struck the hovercam with a crack, sending it flying across the museum, past the astonished crumbly's head, and careening into a wall. It dropped to the floor, stone-cold dead.
Instantly, a screaming alarm filled the room.
Shay burst into motion, running toward the ladder. Tally squeezed out of her corner and followed, ignoring the astonished crumbly's cries. But as Shay jumped for the ladder, a metal sheath snapped shut around it. She bounced back with a hollow clang, her suit cycling through a sequence of random colors from the impact.
Tally swept her eyes around the museum—there was no other way out.
One of the two remaining hovercams buzzed straight up to her face, and she smashed it with another blow from the rifle butt. She swung at the other one, but it shot away into a corner of the ceiling, like a nervous housefly trying not to get swatted.
'What are you doing here?' the crumbly shouted.
Shay ignored him, gesturing at the remaining hovercam. 'Kill that!' she ordered, her voice distorted by the sneak suit's mask, then spun back toward the shelves, riffling through them as fast as she could.
Tally grabbed the heaviest-looking object she could find—some sort of power hammer—and took aim. The camera was flitting back and forth in a panic, swinging its lens one way and then the other, trying to keep track of both her and Shay. Tally took a deep breath, watching the pattern of its movements for a moment, her mind racing through calculations…
The next time the hovercam's lens left her for Shay, she threw.
The hammer hit the camera dead center, and it dropped to the floor, sputtering like a dying bird. The crumbly jumped away from it, as if a wounded hovercam were the most dangerous thing in this museum of horrors.
'Be careful!' he shrieked. 'Don't you know where you are? This place is deadly!'
'No kidding,' Tally said, looking down at the rifle. Was it powerful enough to cut through metal? She took aim at the sheath that had covered the ladder, braced herself, and pulled the trigger…
It made a clicking sound.
Bubblehead, thought Tally. No one kept loaded guns in a museum. She wondered how long it would be before the ladder would open back up to reveal one of the evil machines from the shaft, fully awake and primed to kill.
Shay knelt in the middle of the museum, a small ceramic bottle clutched in her hands. She placed it on the floor and grabbed the rifle from Tally, lifting it over her head.
'No!' the crumbly cried as the rifle butt swung down, hitting the bottle with a dull thud. Shay raised the weapon for another swing.
'Are you crazy?' the crumbly yelled. 'Do you know what that is?'
'Actually, I do,' Shay said, and Tally could hear the smirk in her voice. The bottle was making its own beeping noise, the little red warning light on it flashing furiously.
The crumbly turned away and started climbing up the shelves behind him, throwing aside ancient weapons to clear space for his hands.
Tally turned to Shay, remembering not to use her name aloud. 'Why is that guy climbing the walls?
Shay didn't respond, but on the next swing of the rifle, Tally got her answer.
The bottle broke open, and a silvery liquid streamed from it, spreading out across the floor. The liquid flowed into many rivulets, stretching out like some hundred-legged spider after a long nap.
Shay hopped away from the spill, and Tally took a few steps back herself, unable to take her eyes from the mesmerizing sight.
The crumbly looked down and let out a horrible howl. 'You let it out? Are you insane?'
