Tally knew what she had to do.
In a single motion, she whipped the rifle from behind her back. It struck the hovercam with a crack, sending it flying across the museum, past the astonished crumbly's head, and careening into a wall. It dropped to the floor, stone-cold dead.
Instantly, a screaming alarm filled the room.
Shay burst into motion, running toward the ladder. Tally squeezed out of her corner and followed, ignoring the astonished crumbly's cries. But as Shay jumped for the ladder, a metal sheath snapped shut around it. She bounced back with a hollow clang, her suit cycling through a sequence of random colors from the impact.
Tally swept her eyes around the museum—there was no other way out.
One of the two remaining hovercams buzzed straight up to her face, and she smashed it with another blow from the rifle butt. She swung at the other one, but it shot away into a corner of the ceiling, like a nervous housefly trying not to get swatted.
"What are you doing here?" the crumbly shouted.
Shay ignored him, gesturing at the remaining hovercam. "Kill that!" she ordered, her voice distorted by the sneak suit's mask, then spun back toward the shelves, riffling through them as fast as she could.
Tally grabbed the heaviest-looking object she could find—some sort of power hammer—and took aim. The camera was flitting back and forth in a panic, swinging its lens one way and then the other, trying to keep track of both her and Shay. Tally took a deep breath, watching the pattern of its movements for a moment, her mind racing through calculations…
The next time the hovercam's lens left her for Shay, she threw.
The hammer hit the camera dead center, and it dropped to the floor, sputtering like a dying bird. The crumbly jumped away from it, as if a wounded hovercam were the most dangerous thing in this museum of horrors.
"Be careful!" he shrieked. "Don't you know where you are? This place is deadly!"
"No kidding," Tally said, looking down at the rifle. Was it powerful enough to cut through metal? She took aim at the sheath that had covered the ladder, braced herself, and pulled the trigger…
It made a clicking sound.
Bubblehead, thought Tally. No one kept loaded guns in a museum. She wondered how long it would be before the ladder would open back up to reveal one of the evil machines from the shaft, fully awake and primed to kill.
Shay knelt in the middle of the museum, a small ceramic bottle clutched in her hands. She placed it on the floor and grabbed the rifle from Tally, lifting it over her head.
"No!" the crumbly cried as the rifle butt swung down, hitting the bottle with a dull thud. Shay raised the weapon for another swing.
"Are you crazy?" the crumbly yelled. "Do you know what that is?"
"Actually, I do," Shay said, and Tally could hear the smirk in her voice. The bottle was making its own beeping noise, the little red warning light on it flashing furiously.
The crumbly turned away and started climbing up the shelves behind him, throwing aside ancient weapons to clear space for his hands.
Tally turned to Shay, remembering not to use her name aloud. "Why is that guy climbing the walls?
Shay didn't respond, but on the next swing of the rifle, Tally got her answer.
The bottle broke open, and a silvery liquid streamed from it, spreading out across the floor. The liquid flowed into many rivulets, stretching out like some hundred-legged spider after a long nap.
Shay hopped away from the spill, and Tally took a few steps back herself, unable to take her eyes from the mesmerizing sight.
The crumbly looked down and let out a horrible howl. "You let it out? Are you insane?"
The liquid began to sizzle, and the smell of burning plastic filled the museum.
The alarm changed tone, and in one corner of the room a tiny door popped open, disgorging two little hoverdrones. Shay leaped toward them and whacked one with the rifle butt, sending it into the wall. The second dodged around her and let loose a spray of black foam at the silver liquid.
Shay's next swing choked the spray off. She leaped across the growing silver spider on the floor. "Get ready to jump."
"Jump where?"
"Down."
Tally looked at the floor again, and saw that the spilled liquid was sinking. The silvery spider was melting its way straight through the ceramic floor.
Even inside the cool of her sneak suit, Tally felt the heat from wild chemical reactions. The smell of burnt plastic and charred ceramic had become choking.
Tally took another step back. "What is that stuff?"
"It's hunger, in nano form. It eats pretty much everything, and makes more of itself."
Tally took another step back. "What stops it?"
"What am I, a historian?" Shay rubbed her feet in a patch of the black foam. "This stuff should help. Whoever runs this place probably has an emergency plan."
Tally looked up at the crumbly, who had reached the top shelf, his eyes wide with fear. She hoped that climbing the walls and panicking wasn't the whole plan.
The floor groaned underneath them, then cracked, and the center of the slivery spider dropped out of sight. Tally gawked for a moment, realizing that the nanos had eaten their way through the floor in less than a minute. Tendrils of silver remained behind, still spreading in all directions, still hungry.
"Down we go," Shay cried. She stepped gingerly to the edge of the hole, peered down, then cannonballed through.
Tally took a step forward.
"Wait!" the crumbly cried. "Don't leave me!"
She looked back—one of the tendrils had reached the shelf he was clinging to, and was swiftly spreading up into the jumble of ancient weapons and equipment.
Tally sighed, leaping up onto the shelf next to him. She whispered in his ear, "I'm saving you. But if you mess with me I'll feed you to that stuff!"
The voice distortion that hid her identity turned the words into a monstrous growl, and the man only whimpered. She prized his fingers from the shelf, balanced his weight across her shoulders, and jumped back down to an untouched part of the museum floor.
Smoke filled the room now, and the crumbly was coughing hard. It was as hot as a sauna, and it was dripping inside Tally's sneak suit, the first time she'd sweated since turning special.
Another section of the museum floor fell through with a crash, leaving a gaping view of the room below. The soccer field full of machines was ribboned with silver tendrils, one of the giant vehicles already half-consumed.
The Armory was fighting back against the hungry nanos in earnest now. Small flying craft filled the air, frantically spraying black foam. Shay hopped from machine to machine, whacking them with the rifle, helping the goo spread.
It was a long drop, but Tally didn't have much choice. The shelves had begun to tilt as the nanos consumed their bases.
She took a deep breath and jumped, the old man on her shoulders screaming the whole way down.
Landing atop one of the machines, she grunted under the crumbly's weight, then dropped to an untouched bit of floor. The hungry silver goo was close, but she managed to dance to a halt, grippy shoes squeaking like panicked mice.
Shay paused in her battle with the sprayer drones for a moment and pointed over Tally's head. "Watch out!"
Before Tally could even look up, she heard the creaking sound of another collapse. She hopped away, avoiding tendrils of silver and blotches of slippery-looking black foam. It was like some littlies' game of hopscotch, but with lethal consequences if she made a mistake.
Reaching the other end of the room, Tally heard more of the ceiling collapse behind her. The contents of the museum's shelves rained down on the construction machines, two of which had been turned into boiling masses of silver. The sprayer drones were trying to cover them with black foam.