Free Infinity Rises by S. Harrison Page B

find out what happened to your sister. Remember? You’re not backing out of our little agreement, are you?”
    “But . . . my classmates . . . ,” she stammers, peeling my hand away. Tears start rolling freely down her cheeks. I glance over my shoulder at them. Blondie drippy-mascara face is still sitting over there, rocking back and forth like a crazy person; bear hug boy is grunting like a warthog as he finally manages to pry himself from the stiff arms of that Drone; and the good-looking one with the brown hair is just sitting there, rubbing his shoulder and staring straight at me, like I’m the only one in the room.
    “They’ll be fine,” I say. “Now, let’s go.”
    I grab Otto by the wrist, but she wrenches her hand from my grip. “My classmates are dead!” she screeches.
    “What the hell are you talking about? They’re right there, and they all look alive and well to me.”
    “Not them! My other classmates!” she screeches. “Something happened out there in the training area. Ashley, Millie, Sherrie, and Karla. They’re all dead. Our teacher, Miss Cole, two soldiers, and a man named Colonel Brash, they were all . . . they were all murdered.”
    “What?” I ask, my attention suddenly piqued. “Tell me what happened.”
    “A military robot went haywire and killed them all,” Otto says, her fingers rubbing at her reddened eyes under the rims of her glasses. “Then those Drones attacked us, and now nothing is working, no one is coming to help us, and we’re trapped in here.”
    “Wait a second, Otto; let me get this straight. Are you telling me that . . . Simon Brash is dead ?”
    She nods through her tears, and I can’t help myself. I burst out laughing. “Ha-ha ha-ha ha! Oh man! Dammit! I would have given my left arm to see that!”
    I’m still snickering to myself when I notice Otto glaring at me. “It’s not funny, Infinity.”
    Even though I think it’s absolutely hilarious, I force myself to pull a straight face and put a hand on Otto’s shoulder. “I know it isn’t funny, and I’m sorry about your classmates. But listen to me; they’re dead. They’re not coming back, and we still have a deal that I’m gonna hold you to. Richard Blackstone is here; I’m certain of it, and I’m not leaving until I do what I came here to do. I need you to access the computer and clear me a path through any security doors and shut down any internal defenses they might have. I’ve never been here before, but it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to assume that it must be like a maze, so I also need you to access a map of the layout. Can you do that for me, Otto?”
    Her gaze drifts away from my face, her eyes darting from side to side in silent contemplation. When she turns back, her demeanor seems calmer, her expression blank and hard to read.
    “The computer is off-line, so there won’t be any automated defenses,” she mumbles. “We’re in our school uniforms, so any soldiers we run into probably won’t shoot us. And I memorized the layout from a 3-D map I saw earlier, so I can show you where Dr. Blackstone is most likely to be.”
    I smile at her. “Good.”
    “But I’m not doing anything until you help me get Percy, Dean, and the Professor out of the training area.”
    “What? Who the hell are they?” I blurt.
    “Three people survived the military robot, and they’re trapped in Dome Two. Help me get them out, and I’ll do anything you say.”
    I feel a fire burn inside. I grab Otto by the arm, and she winces with pain. “You’ll do what I say right now, or . . .”
    “Hey!” shouts the brown-haired boy as Otto jerks her arm away from me. He pushes out of his chair and strides across the room toward us. “Finn, what do you think you’re doing? Leave her alone!”
    “Keep out of this, boy,” I growl.
    “Whoa, calm down,” he says, holding up one hand in a futile gesture of peace. “We’ve all been through a lot in a really short space of time. But there’s