The Walls Have Eyes Read Free Page B

better job. So I need to see your bot now.” She hesitated. “Please? It’s very important.”
    Martin snorted. “Not to me.” He regretted this statement almost at once.
    â€œWell, isn’t that wonderful!” William snapped. “We ask you for help, and do you want to help us? No, you’d rather coddle a machine!”
    â€œI am too helping,” Martin said. “I’m going out there to find a new place for your school.”
    William rolled her eyes. “Oh, right.”
    Disappointment bubbled up in Martin’s throat, hot and thick. I knew it, he thought. I knew these geniuses didn’t need me around.
    â€œI get it,” he said bitterly. “Theo doesn’t need me along on this trip. No wonder she won’t tell me anything. She’s just gonna look after the defective kid and give me something to do, and I bet you all think I’ll just slow her down. Well, tell her thanks, but I don’t need a babysitter. I’ll be fine on my own.” He grabbed his knapsack and headed for the door.
    â€œWhat’s
wrong
with you?” William demanded, tagging after him down the hallway. “We’re all in danger here! Why do you have to make everything into a fight?”
    Martin didn’t have a good comeback for that, so he ignored it. He pushed through the double doors that opened onto the valley and walked out into the twilight. William stopped at the doors. As far as Martin was concerned, she might as well have stopped a million miles behind him.
    Loneliness swept through him. He didn’t know where to goor what to do. But Chip trotted beside him, ears pricked and tail wagging.
    Great, we’re going somewhere
, his dark eyes said.
You know best. What’s the plan?
    Martin thought about the people he loved. Cassie was happy with her school friends, and she had Rudy and Theo to look after her. His friends David and Matt probably whispered about how he had disappeared, but they didn’t need him. They had each other for company. He pictured Dad at his console with his freight bots, and Mom at the kitchen table. Mom, left all by herself. Of course! He had his plan.
    â€œWe’ll go rescue Mom,” Martin told Chip. “She hates it in that suburb, and she’d love it outside. Anyway, she shouldn’t be stuck with Dad anymore. She’d hate him if she knew what he did.”
    â€œWe’re in danger here every minute,” William yelled after him as he started off. “Every minute! You know that!”
    Martin turned and gave her a sarcastic wave good-bye. “Yeah, well, you’ve made it pretty obvious that I’m too dumb to know much of anything. But you’re the smartest person on the planet. You’ll be just fine.”

CHAPTER TWO
    Martin made good time on the trip home. “I’m getting better at hiking,” he told Chip. Besides, he knew exactly where he was going, and that certainty kept him walking late into the evening. Every day that passed was another day Mom spent trapped under the steel dome of Suburb HM1. Martin couldn’t wait to get her out of there.
    He made only one detour. He had left his favorite sweatshirt in his school backpack at the camp he had shared with Hertz, the blue-eyed outdoorsman bot who had tried to adopt Martin’s quest as his own. When Martin saw the high, bare knob of Hertz’s hill rising in the distance, he paused to consult with his dog.
    â€œIt’s chilly in the mornings. I could really use that sweatshirt. It’s not that far, and we could take a shortcut through the fields back to the packet line.”
    Chip crouched down and tucked his tail between his legs.
    â€œDon’t be silly!” Martin scolded. “Hertz can’t get you anymore. He’s nothing but a big wad of silver Jell-O. The reset chip is keeping him that way, and it’s not like he can do anything about it.”
    Martin headed to the high hill that