“If that’s true, then this whole swapping-drive thing is stupid, too,” Lulu said.
“What if we hijack a drop ship? Then we can put more bombs on it,” Sam said.
“I don’t believe we’d be able to do this,” Roger said.
Tito stood up. He walked over to the governor device on the counter, and he threw it across the room. It hit the wall, knocking the lesson board with our names on it to the floor.
“Fuck!” he cried. “Fuck, fuck, fuck! Holy shit. Stop talking. I have something to say.”
We all stopped. Even Roger seemed to pause in midair, all of us staring at the man who hadn’t said a word out loud for so long.
The shocked silence seemed to go on forever. It was one of those things, those significant moments that seemed to appear out of nowhere. I thought of my grandfather, of what he’d said when I’d asked him if my friend was ever going to speak again.
“Sometimes bad things happen, and there’s nothing you can do,” Grandpa Lewis had told me later after we’d learned about theaccident that had killed the twins’ grandfather and left Tito mute. “That’s one of life’s hardest lessons. Sometimes they’re not even accidents like this one was. We can’t know what happens next when it comes to stuff like that. Just know this one thing, Oliver: Time is a wrecking ball.”
I exchanged a look with Axel, and even he looked shocked. Ariceli moved to put her arm around Tito. He was shaking. He had tears on his face.
Shing!
“I swear to god, Roger,” Lulu said, “if you correct that boy for uttering his first words out loud in I don’t know how long…” She didn’t finish.
Roger retracted his stinger.
“Please,” Roger said, “tell us what you need to say, Oliver friend number twelve.”
“We can’t win.”
Nobody said anything. We waited for him to continue. His voice sounded perfectly normal for someone who never talked. He sounded just like Axel. Maybe slightly raspier.
“We can’t win because we’ve already lost. We’re the last ones left, right? Even if we pull off some miracle and kill them all and survive tomorrow, it won’t be a win. So we need to stoptryingto win.”
“Yeah?” his brother asked. “Then what do you suggest we do? Give up?”
“We keep focusing on all the bad shit they’re doing, right? These Persimmon assholes want us to upload all of the terrible things they’ve done and said. They want the carnage, the war crimes, the blood. How is that going to help anything? The same people who signed up for this shit aren’t going to care.”
“What else can we do?” Ariceli asked, her voice soft.
Tito had tears streaming down his face. “We did our best. We are only here right now because they’ve let us live. People were mad that they were fighting robots, so they gave us guns and made us thinkwe have a chance so we’d fight back. And we did because what other choice did we have? They know we want to live, so they let us live long enough to be entertaining to their customers. We’ve been dancing on their puppet strings this whole fucking time. We haven’t taken a single step with any agency. And when they’re done with all of this tomorrow, they’re going to toss us into the trash. There is no scenario here where we win. None.”
“I liked you better when you didn’t say anything,” Sam muttered.
I met the large man’s eyes. “So, what’s your suggestion?” I asked.
He held out his hands. “If we get all the information out there, they’ll bomb the shit out of us from orbit or whatever. If we run away and hide, they’ll bomb the shit out of us. If we try to fight all those guys tomorrow, we are paste. There’s no winning in this if we keep playing their game. So how do we hurt them the most on the way out? If you take survival off the table, what is left? We can’t win, but we sure as hell can make sure they don’t win, either.”
Nobody said anything for a long moment. Roger whirred and clicked.
Finally, it was Sam who answered. “If we’re not going to win no matter what, if we’re not going to play by their rules, thereissomething I want to do.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
He pulled his armored jacket off, revealing his tattered old T-shirt, the one that read, “Rhythm Mafia. Live from…” on the front. A huge smile cracked across his face.
Chapter 39
“That’s the stupidest idea I have ever heard in my life,” Lulu said. “What would be the point?”
“We’ve always wanted to play a live show,” Sam said.
