A Rumor of Real Irish Tea (Annals of Altair Book 2)

by Kate Stradling

“So what got you shipped back here?” asked Quincy.

  Oliver thrust one thumb toward Emily. “I already told you, my idiot handler.”

  “It’s true,” said Emily. “It’s all my fault.”

  “You’re not supposed to talk to her, idiot.”

  “Then where’s her handler so I have someone I can talk to?” Emily argued.

  Quincy tipped her head toward the other side of the room. “Dominic gets transferred in two days,” she said to Oliver, though she was obviously answering Emily’s question. “He’s not being so vigilant anymore, seems to think I can’t cause him any real trouble at this point. I was thinking a little surprise was in order, sort of like a send-off present. She gonna tattle on me?” She slid a meaningful glance in Emily’s direction.

  “Doubtful,” said Oliver.

  “As long as it doesn’t involve backing up the plumbing in the handlers’ dorms, I don’t really care,” said Emily to the ceiling. She probably should have shown some loyalty to her fellow handler, but Dominic had been a sour-faced pill on their one and only meeting.

  “I’ll have to try that some time, too,” Quincy said thoughtfully, much to Emily’s dismay.

  “Is everyone here a complete delinquent?” Oliver asked. “I just caught my roommate and his cronies plotting their escape, and here you are planning to ambush your handler. What gives?”

  Quincy’s eyes lit up with sheer delight. “Hawk and Hummer escaped, that’s what gives. They proved it could be done—not just escape from Prom-F, but from the GCA itself. No one thought they’d last this long. And while the admins are running around clamping down on our activities, we’re free to dream about the possibilities. The very fact that you’re sitting here in total failure of your mission is the beacon of hope that everyone has been looking for.”

  “So glad to oblige,” said Oliver, deadpan.

  “The GCA’s still looking for them,” Emily said to the table, pretending like she was only speaking her thoughts aloud rather than joining the conversation.

  “They’ll be found and punished, Quincy,” Oliver said. “Don’t you think that’s too much of a risk to take?”

  She stepped back and scrutinized him, an odd disinterest in her eyes. “Do you know what happens to the kids that graduate from Prom-F?”

  He scowled. “No.”

  “Yeah, neither does anybody else.” She thumped one hand against the table for emphasis and walked away.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Emily asked, bewildered.

  Oliver, though, mutely shook his head. His eyes remained fixed on Quincy’s retreating form, even after she had rejoined her handler.

  IV

  A Little Monkey Business

  July 28, 12:54pm mst, Phoenix, AZ

  “Couldn’t we have picked a cooler day to come to the zoo?”

  Hawk West shifted his eyes from the flamingo enclosure in front of him to his younger brother beside him.

  Hummer continued his complaint. “It’s, what, five hundred degrees out today? The railings are hot enough to burn you, the sun is beating down, and we’re all sweating buckets. Why today, of all days?”

  “There’s a chance of thunderstorms this afternoon,” Hawk said with a half-hearted shrug.

  “Not a cloud in the sky,” Hummer retorted.

  “Blame Happy, then. He’s the one who wanted to come so badly.”

  Hummer made a disgruntled noise and nervously shuffled his feet. A couple yards down the line, their little brother broke his mesmerized gaze away from the flock of pink birds to look apologetically at the pair. A row of tourists behind him did the same.

  “Aw… it’s… not so bad,” said Hummer under that collective remorseful gaze.

  “What’s not?” Honey West poked her nose between the pair. She pinned a suspicious stare on Hummer. “Were you picking on Happy again?”

  “No!” he cried.

  “He was complaining about the heat,” said Hawk. “What’s up, Honey?”

  “Our group’s headed toward the monkey village. Happy, you want to see the monkeys?”

  The six-year-old’s face lit up. He jogged forward eagerly, followed by the row of tourists behind him.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Hummer to the sky. “We’re not conspicuous at all here.”

  “The rest of you should go see the giraffes,” Honey told the tourists bluntly. They all paused in confusion, unwittingly conflicted by the words of one human-projector and the emotions of another. “Go on,” she said. “Happy, tell them how great the giraffes are.”

  He beamed, and that mute response was enough for the cluster of tagalongs to resolve their indecision. Even as they changed their direction, though, Honey cried a sudden, “Wait!”

  The tourists halted. Hawk, Hummer, and Happy all turned quizzical eyes upon her, but she ignored them.

  “How many of you work for the GCA?” she asked the tourists. “Raise your hands.”

  Two men’s hands shot into the air. They looked at one another in alarm before retracting their arms again guiltily. Hawk hissed and Hummer groaned.

  “You two need to go feed the lions,” Honey said, addressing the pair of agents. “Buy a turkey sandwich at the snack shop first and put the meat in your pockets, then climb over the railings into the pen—”

  “Honey!” cried Hawk.

  “What?” she said in a low voice. “They’ll come to their senses before they get near any lions. Probably.”

  “We don’t command people to their doom in this family,” he said.

  “Fine.” She heaved a sigh of long-suffering. “You guys go see the giraffes too. Count the number of spots on the whole herd, and forget that you saw us here. Happy, you want them to go see the giraffes, don’t you?”

  Happy nodded. “They’re really neat!” he said.

  The sound of his voice sealed the deal. Everyone within hearing range suddenly swiveled in the direction of the giraffe enclosure, including Hawk and Hummer. Honey snagged their elbows. “Monkeys,” she said.

  “Why doesn’t he affect you like he affects us?” Hummer asked as they turned the opposite direction.

  “He does,” said Honey. “I’m just more used to fighting it.”

  “Sorry,” said Happy remorsefully.

  Honey, though, put an arm around his shoulders. “I’m not. I’m glad you’re my little brother. Now let’s go see some monkeys, okay? Hawk, Hummer, don’t get too far separated from the group, or you’ll attract attention,” she said over her shoulder as she urged Happy forward.

  “Bit late for that,” Hummer muttered, but he picked up his pace all the same.

  “The group,” as Honey called it, was a collection of children from a local public elementary school. Thanks to her wiles, the four Wests had crashed their field trip. The teachers and guides had turned a blind eye on their extra “students,” and the crowd of children had provided a decent cover for the four truants. An average visitor to the zoo was far more inclined to stare at the animals than to study a herd of kids.

  It wasn’t the average visitors they had to worry about, though.

  Hawk scanned the trees for Revere. Ordinarily he could sense his presence with ease, but the zoo provided a safe haven not only for the exotic birds on display, but also for flocks of native species. Finding one raven in the chatter that buzzed in Hawk’s mind was much like trying to find a friend in a crowd solely by the sound of his voice. Revere was on lookout with several of his fellow ravens, and the faithful bird would raise a commotion if he saw anything suspicious. Extensive as this network of surveillance was, though, it couldn’t stop undercover GCA agents from milling with the rest of the zoo visitors.

  “You going in to see the monkeys?” Hummer’s abrupt question drew Hawk back from his search. They had arrived at the monkey village, where the grade-schoolers filed in with great anticipation. Happy was in their midst, his eager eyes the biggest of them all.

  “I dunno. I guess I should make sure Happy doesn’t start some sort of joyous stamp
ede or something.”

  “Happy’s the only one who can stop himself,” Hummer said logically. “If something like that really did happen, you’d just end up getting caught up in the fervor with everyone else. He’s really excited about these monkeys.”

  “Just like he was really excited about the lions, and the tigers, and the rhino, and the giraffes—”

  “Yeah, yeah” said Hummer. “You can’t blame him. It’s not like he ever saw any of that at Prom-B.”

  Hawk shoved his hands into his pockets with a bitter frown. “No. They just promised to let him go and then reneged.”

  Honey had disclosed that detail almost a week after their arrival in Phoenix. Happy’s grade and the two years above had won a school-wide loyalty contest back in May. The prize had been a very rare and coveted field trip to the Seattle zoo. Under normal circumstances, the younger grades were not allowed to go on field trips, so this was an even bigger honor for them. When the time came for the children to board the bus, though, Happy was not with them. He had conveniently slept through that morning’s wake-up call and was left behind.

  “His handler drugged his dinner the night before, under Principal Lee’s orders,” Honey said in complete disgust. “They couldn’t let a little projector out among the public, could they? He didn’t wake up until after the buses had left, and he spent the whole day heartbroken. Everyone spent the whole day heartbroken. It was the worst day ever.”

  Once Happy realized that his newfound freedom with his brothers and sister could include a trip to the zoo, the idea had stuck in his head—and an idea stuck in Happy’s head was an idea stuck in everyone’s head. After three successive nights dreaming of hippos and elephant enclosures, Hawk had finally declared that they were going to the zoo once and for all.

  And here they were.

  “You go on,” he told Hummer. “Make sure Honey and Happy don’t wander off or draw too much attention to themselves. I’ll catch up in a minute.”

  Hummer hesitated but then shrugged off his misgivings. He trotted into the monkey village, certain that his older brother would follow soon enough.

  Hawk finally spotted Revere perched in a palo verde among a cluster of ravens. The brief contact of their minds made the great black bird turn one beady eye toward his young master, as if to ask, “Did you need me?”

  “Keep an eye out,” Hawk said. “Honey just sent a couple bad guys to the giraffes. Watch out for anything else suspicious.”

  Revere didn’t need the reminder. He had become their lookout wherever they went, even when socializing with his own kind. His very presence helped to ease some of the paranoia that was second nature to Hawk.

  It had been a rough few weeks. After their run-in with Oliver’s handler in Flagstaff, the Wests had escaped to Phoenix and, rather than move on, they had worked on blending into the general population. Because they had no set destination to get to, this city was as good a place to hunker down as any. In addition to being a widely sprawled metropolis, the greater Phoenix area was adjacent to several Indian reservations, thus offering the children some options for egress if their situation became too dire.

  Upon arrival they assigned each other certain responsibilities: Hawk was in charge of surveillance, Hummer was in charge of research, Honey was in charge of finances, and Happy was in charge of crowd control. In that first week, after some efforts in convincing Hummer and Honey to work together, they rented a series of houses, apartments, offices, and hotel rooms across the city. The amount of money they had spent so far was astronomical, but Honey could collect it back in a matter of hours on a crowded street.

  Any qualms about begging—especially Hummer’s—had gone by the wayside. Like Las Vegas, Phoenix had a federally mandated curfew of ten o’clock, and the kids had to be off the streets or risk capture by local law enforcement or GCA agents on the prowl. Establishing the network of safe locations seemed to be the logical solution.

  They moved from one place to the next as they saw fit. Some were furnished, and others were empty. They didn’t remain in one neighborhood for more than a night or two, and they made concerted efforts not to draw attention from the locals. This was an age of distrust, though, where neighbors tended to mind their own business in hopes that others would do the same. Once the sun set, it was easy to wander into the new location without anyone noticing their arrival.

  Daytime presented its own set of problems. Sometimes they stayed indoors, but there wasn’t much to do in an unfurnished apartment or an abandoned warehouse. When they did venture out, they had to stay among crowds—the GCA apparently had reservations about tranquilizing small children in front of a large audience—but there were only a limited number of places they could go. Because the schools ran year-round, four children could not simply wander the streets at will. They ended up loitering in public libraries or tagging along after field trip groups, like today. In the afternoons or evenings, they often found a public pool, where a few extra kids raised no eyebrows for the families there.

  The whole process had become exhausting, though. The fake kidnapping reports on NPNN had become more frequent, and the reward had been upped a couple of times, which increased the chance that Honey and Happy would be recognized as Maddie and Alex North. So far no well-meaning strangers had approached them, but someone had called in a report of their location. As best as Hawk could figure, it had taken the GCA a week, more or less, to home in on them in Phoenix.

  They made no overt attempts to recover the kids, however. Instead, a few low-level agents would begin to shadow them sometime during the day. Honey invariably discovered them and more often than not left them trussed up somewhere—usually with Hummer’s ever-present duct tape—after she picked their brains on everything they had been instructed. The agents never knew much, though. The GCA was merely using them as surveillance in much the same way that Hawk used the birds around him.

  It made him nervous. They were hanging back, watching and waiting until the right moment to strike.

  It was much like a game of chess. Their end goal was obvious, but they needed to get all their pieces in the right places before they went in for the kill, so to speak. So far, the only pieces Hawk and his siblings had discovered were pawns.

  Who were the stronger players, then? Presumably Oliver had been neutralized as a threat to the truants. They had done everything they could to cast his loyalties into question, and the government was notoriously untrusting. There were at least two other null-projectors the GCA could call upon for help from among the Prometheus students. There were probably a few more who had graduated from the Institute already, too. If that was the case, those would pose even more of a threat, because the Wests knew nothing about who they were or where they would come from.

  The GCA would have to rely on null-projection at some point, though. Tranquilizer darts might take Honey and Happy out of service for a few hours, but when they woke up, they would project their captors into a world of regret. With Oliver out of the picture, the only other null-projector Hawk could identify on sight was Quincy.

  She had never talked about her ability except to say that it was localized to herself and those around her, a radius of five to seven feet at most. The subject angered her for some reason that she had never disclosed. Hawk suspected that it had contributed to her transfer to Prom-F, but she never talked about that either. Quincy had been more like a caged bird than any other kid he knew.

  He felt guilty every time he thought about her and everyone else left behind. There was no way they could all escape together, but he and Hummer deliberately created a whole mess of chaos when they left. The students at Prom-F would be suffering for it as a result now, through increased restrictions and higher surveillance.

  If the escape had only concerned Hawk and Hummer, they might have tried to get a few others out with them. The whole plan had been concocted for Honey and Happy, though. Bringing along anyone else—especially a null-projector like Quincy—would have undermined their purpose.


  Still, he was pretty sure she would slug him if they ever met again. Which they wouldn’t, he reminded himself as he joined his younger siblings. Not if he had any say in the matter, at least. He hoped, for his sake as well as hers, that the GCA left Quincy out of their plans entirely.

  V

  The Man in the Gray Suit

  July 30, 10:32am mdt, Prometheus-F

  Emily liked the observation room for Oliver’s second period. Even though it had the same taupe walls and industrial-grade furniture as all the other observations rooms, it had an added amenity: a window to the outside world. All the classrooms had windows to let in natural light, but the attached observation rooms usually only had the one large pane of glass that allowed handlers to watch their students. Children assigned to desks did not provide a lot of entertainment.

  She was supposed to use her time in the observation room for work-related activities, but there was only so much she could do. She had already watched the orientation videos—a bunch of lies and propaganda that made her job seem like the greatest opportunity of the century, she thought, and it was thanks to Oliver’s presence in the next room that she thought that. Naturally Prometheus used human-projectors to indoctrinate their incoming workforce.

  She was also supposed to stay up-to-date on the contents of Oliver’s file, but she had long since discounted that information as irrelevant to the little boy in her charge.

  And, of course, there was that issue of a weekly report, but Crystal had already explained how to accomplish that one.

  “You just insert your student’s name into a template: ‘Lucy is progressing with her studies. She has completed all her homework for this week and has been eating well at all her meals.’ That’s all they really want to know. Make sure to switch the information around a little each week so it doesn’t sound like a template, and voila! You have your report done in five minutes, and the rest of the week to stew over how much longer you have to suffer through this job.”