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glanced at each other. There had been sporadic power surges and generators starting up in the subbasements. But if there was power down here, they sure wouldn’t be running around in the dark.
    Angel kept punching the elevator call button—harder and faster—as if she were a wild animal, clawing at her cage to get out.
    At the far end of the library corridor, there came a tremendous clatter as the riveted door fell off its hinges.
    Emma touched Angel’s shoulder. “Don’t,” she whispered.
    Angel slowly nodded. She bonked her head against the elevator door and stayed there.
    Emma took the plasma torch from Angel’s grasp and turned to face the long passage.
    Ethan swallowed, but his throat was too dry for it to do any good.
    He couldn’t help it. He pressed the call button, as if the bazillion times Angel had tried weren’t enough to prove the thing wasn’t working.
    Ethan felt something as he touched the button. A connect in his mind. A spark. It was a little like the mental connection he could sometime make with his wasp I.C.E. Like the faint static whisper he’d heard in his head when they were in New Taos.
    The button lit. It dinged.
    Within the walls, motors stirred to life.
    The elevator doors parted. Angel almost fell inside.
    They all rushed in after her.
    Okay. The doors opened. But did this thing have power enough to work? Or would it take them up and get stuck? Or drop them back down? Ethan didn’t trust his luck today. Not that he had a choice.
    He and Emma pointed their weapons back down the passage … waiting for the doors to shut.
    Bobby stabbed the top button marked with a star. Angel punched the DOOR CLOSE button.
    At the far end of their light, Ethan could make out a monstrous shadow pulling its way toward them with long arms. It looked like it barely fit.
    Angel punched the DOOR CLOSE button with her fist hard enough to dent the panel.
    The elevator doors started to ease together … slowly … squealing and wailing.
    The robot must have seen, because it pulled its way faster up the passage, wrecking the shelves, crushing crystal books under its wheel.
    The doors shut.
    The elevator car jerked up.
    Ethan stood motionless. Not yet quite believing he was alive. Heart pounding.
    “Emma? Ethan? Come in,” Felix’s voice came overthe radio. “Breaking radio silence as ordered, sir. We found them.”
    Ethan could move again. He grabbed the radio and clicked open the channel. “We’re here,” he breathed out with a huge sigh. “Report, Felix.”
    “We’ve got Lee and Oliver, sir. They’re alive.”
    “Good,” Ethan said. “Everyone—get back up to the command center ASAP. Secure all doors behind you. Then weld them shut.”
    “Sir?” Felix asked.
    “We found things, too,” Ethan murmured. “And they’re also alive.”

   8   

THEY ALMOST GOT US
    E THAN WATCHED S ARA TEND TO B OBBY ’ S ARM .
    Bobby, Sara, Ethan, Madison, Lee, and Oliver were in one of the many rooms in the hospital wing of the base. The room had white and blue tiles on the walls and floor. Warm light glowed from fixtures in the corners.
    Sara sat next to Bobby on one of the three beds in the room.
    Her mother had been a doctor in Santa Blanca, and Sara had volunteered at the hospital after school. Of all of them, she had the only medical training.
    Ethan sat on the bed facing Sara and Bobby. Madisonsat on the bed next to him. Not too close. Not too far away either.
    Lee and Oliver had parked on the far bed, waiting to be debriefed.
    The rest of Sterling Squadron was busy elsewhere. After Ethan described their narrow escape from the robots, they’d all grabbed portable welders and run off to seal every subbasement entrance.
    Except Emma—she was in the Command Center to monitor the still-functioning security cameras on base. They had to track those renegade robots.
    Bobby winced and cried out as Sara straightened his arm, pulling it from the shoulder joint.
    “Hey!” he said.
    “You dislocated