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had , before Breakthrough moved in.
    “Do you really want to spend the rest of your life as Comrade Ovcharenko’s chew-toy?” Kylee asked with deadly mockery. “Or maybe you’d like to be part of the foundation of one of the new buildings?”
    “Nobody’d know,” Dylan said sulkily.
    He’s right about that at least, Spirit thought, looking around. It was the middle of the day, but the only sign of life was lights on in some of the stores, and the people in the pizzaria.
    Chris laughed as a sudden gust of wind made the others stagger. “Dyl, they always know. And what they don’t find out, they make up.”
    “Oh my god, I thought it was cold on campus!” Maddie Harris wailed. “I’m going to die out here! Where are we supposed to go?”
    “Town Library,” Kylee Williamson said briskly. “It’s this way.” She pointed and strode off. The others followed.
    Radial didn’t look any better from close up. The thought of pizza made Spirit’s mouth water, but—like Chris said—they’d know. After a minute or two, though, she was so cold she didn’t care about anything but getting out of the wind. She tucked her chin into her scarf. It didn’t seem to help.
    “Look!” Dylan said, pointing. He’d stopped, so it was either stop and look or trample him. Spirit looked.
    In the distance, the new Breakthrough Adventure Design Systems building was visible. Breakthrough made computer games: the building could have been dropped into any one of them and looked perfectly at home. It was a featureless cube of gray granite, and the top was crenellated like a medieval castle. There were flags flying from the walls, and each one had the Breakthrough logo on it—a black dragon coiled around a medieval tower. At first Spirit had thought it was right behind the Main Street buildings. Then she realized it couldn’t be. It was huge. Bigger than the largest Walmart Superstore that had ever roamed the Earth—just the parts she could see were a terrifyingly impressive amount of work to have accomplished in barely eight weeks. How had they built all that so fast? And in the dead of winter?
    “Just the building covers ten acres,” Dylan said excitedly. “The business park covers at least fifty. They’ve nicknamed it ‘The Fortress’—I was talking to one of the guys who’s going to work there, and Clark said it’s capable of being completely sealed off and locked down so nobody can get in from the outside—it’s completely self-contained—you could live in there for weeks! That’s why they put the outside walls up first, to hide the fact they’re digging massive cellars that go down for miles—”
    Clark. That’s Clark Howard, the Breakthrough codehead who tried to make trouble for Loch at the Sadie Hawkins Dance .
    “And it probably has its own nuclear power plant and an antigravity device and if they want to relocate it can fly,” Kylee said derisively. “Dylan, you are so full of bull.” Cold as it was out here, their first sight of The Fortress had stopped all of them in their tracks.
    “It’s got its own generators,” Dylan said, unabashed. “Solar panels instead of a regular roof. It’s like a whole city in there! Clark said they’d probably be able to sell electricity to the town once it’s up and running.”
    Spirit wasn’t sure how much of Dylan’s information was true and how much was pure fantasy. She was sure he was repeating what Clark had told him, for whatever that was worth—Clark Howard would say anything Breakthrough wanted him to, and every sentence would be calculated for maximum damage.
    They were still staring at The Fortress when a car—and not just any car, but a stretch-Humvee limo with a custom pearl-gray paint job—pulled up to the curb beside them and stopped. The back door opened.
    “It’s too cold to walk anywhere,” Teddy Rider said. “Hop in! I’ll give you a ride!”
    “Oh, wow, you’re about to save my life!” Maddie said enthusiastically. There was a