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

by Kate Stradling

  “Psst!”

  Her attention shifted away from the screen to the source of this noise, a rather annoyed Oliver. He scowled at her, and then glanced quickly over his shoulder, as if to ask, “What on earth are you staring at?”

  She tipped her chin, mutely prodding him to turn and look for himself.

  Reluctantly he did. The scowl deepened as he pinned his gaze back on her. Emily expected him to make some sarcastic comment about how nosy she was. Instead, he picked up his notebook and moved to sit next to her on the couch.

  His eyes narrowed in a challenging “What of it?” glare.

  Emily shook herself from her stupor and returned her gaze to the computer screen. There really was nothing of interest with the sound off, and yet her eyes remained glued there, watching and waiting. Oliver was the same, though he tried to be more subtle about it. Every five seconds or so, he’d at least glance down at his schoolwork.

  A loud ringing cracked the silent atmosphere. Emily and Oliver jumped and averted their eyes. Ben tore off the headphones and stood to retrieve his cell phone from his pocket.

  “Ben Birchard,” he said shortly, then he paused to listen to the voice on the other side. A number of emotions crossed his face: shock, disbelief, and a brief flash of humor, among others.

  “I—I’m sorry,” he said after a moment, as though having trouble finding the correct thing to say. “Could you… could you repeat that?” And then, with an apologetic wave toward Emily and Oliver, he strolled out the open door into the hallway beyond. His voice floated in as he retreated up the corridor. “You’re serious? Yes, I know it’s hardly something to joke about. Yes, I’ll tell her immediately. Thank you for calling.”

  There was a slight pause, followed by a knock on a door. Emily exchanged a bewildered glance with Oliver, but then movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention.

  “Look!” she hissed, and she pointed at the computer screen. Ben had joined the meeting.

  Oliver launched out of his seat, scrambling to the computer. He unceremoniously disconnected the headphones.

  “…just called to my attention,” Ben was saying. “Again, I do apologize for the intrusion.”

  Principal Jones had already stood from her seat. “Please excuse me,” she said to her colleagues. “This should only take a minute.” Then, she and Ben stepped outside the room.

  “Oliver!” Emily whispered with an anxious glance at the door. “Connect the headphones again! What if they come back here?”

  “Check the door,” he said, his eyes still glued to the screen.

  Emily hesitated only briefly before complying. A cautious peek out the door into the hallway showed her Ben Birchard and Genevieve Jones a stone’s throw down the corridor, just outside of what was presumably the conference room on the computer screen. He was speaking to her in a low voice. She did a double-take and then pinned him with a stare.

  From the computer speakers, which Oliver had blissfully turned down, the conversation from the conference room continued.

  “If it’s Birchard, something important has happened,” said Principal Gates. “He always seems to know everything that happens before anyone else, but he wouldn’t intrude like that if it wasn’t something major.”

  “I wonder what little incident has caught his attention this time,” said a woman. Emily reasoned that it must be Prom-D’s Annemarie Legrand. Out in the hallway, Ben spoke with animated gestures.

  No idea, he seemed say. I don’t know anything more than I’ve just told you.

  “Let’s hope it’s nothing like the incident that brought us here,” said a man on the computer screen.

  Principal Jones shook her head, and then abruptly swung the conference room door inward. Emily could have sworn that Ben glanced her direction before he followed his boss inside. She cringed away from the door and returned her attention to the computer screen alone.

  “My deepest apologies,” Principal Jones said to the others as she took her seat again. “Sit down, Birchard.”

  “Some sort of trouble?” Principal Lee asked as Ben took a chair midway between Maggie and Michelle.

  “Oh, quite a lot of it,” replied Principal Jones, “but I’d rather not say anything until the report’s been confirmed. Which it will be soon if it has any substance. Now where were we before this unfortunate interruption?”

  “We were discussing our options for a null-projector to neutralize the younger Wests,” said General Stone. “For the fifth time since yesterday,” he added, and there was a note of impatience in his voice.

  Emily should have made Oliver restore the sound to the headphones and return to his seat. Morally and ethically neither of them should have eavesdropped on this meeting. It was difficult to put into practice what she agreed with in theory, though, especially since the subject at hand had to do with Oliver’s fate. As Oliver’s fate was tied to her own, she guiltily held her peace.

  “I still maintain that Cedric is too young to be sent away from the safety of the Prometheus campuses,” Principal Carter said disagreeably. “Send him from one campus to another for on-site jobs, fine, but set him out in the world? He’s only seven.”

  “You’re just worried he’ll end up here with the other two,” Principal Legrand said. “Then you’d have nothing but a few low-level projectors to brag about.”

  “Which is more than you’ve got at Prom-D,” he sneered.

  “Enough,” General Stone interjected. At a single word he captured the attention of the whole room. “Now is hardly the time to indulge in friendly rivalries. We have a situation that has gone on far too long. I’m inclined to agree with Principal Carter. Cedric is too young and too impressionable to be handed the task of retrieving the truants. He might identify more with them than with us.”

  “His null-projection is still hit-or-miss, too,” said Principal Lee in a flat voice. “With a projector like Happy West, we can’t take any chances.”

  “They’re worried about Happy?” Emily hissed to Oliver. “Honey’s the menace.”

  Oliver irritably shushed her.

  “However you look at it, Oliver is still the best fit for the job,” said Principal Jones. “Quincy is too old and the focus of her null-projection is too narrow.”

  “Don’t forget that she was friends with Hawk and Hummer,” Principal Gates said. “According to her last handler’s reports, she wouldn’t want to catch them.”

  “Since when does anything these children want come into play here?” General Stone asked in an icy voice. “Our job is to use the resources we have at our disposal to recover the ones that we’ve lost.”

  “Then why aren’t we using any of the nulls under your authority?” Principal Legrand asked peevishly. “You have more than any of us, and yet you hoard them.”

  “Mine are all security risks, as well you know,” General Stone said. “They’re an absolute last resort.”

  “Which we’re fast coming to,” said Principal Jones.

  Everyone glanced suspiciously at her. “Something you’d like to share, Genevieve?” Principal Carter asked, a nasty catch to his voice.

  Before she could reply, a phone rang. General Stone extracted a small black cell from his pocket and answered it. “This is General Stone,” he said rigidly.

  “That’ll probably be it,” Principal Jones told her colleagues. They all turned to watch with interest. Emily and Oliver, too, kept their attention riveted on the stern military man.

  General Stone’s face hardened into an unreadable mask as he listened to the voice on the other end. Two minutes passed in complete silence. At long last, “Understood,” he said curtly, and he ended the call. The cell phone was carefully placed back into his pocket. Then, with a sweeping glance at the other occupants of the table, he announced, “Your truants just ambushed a GCA office in Central Phoenix. They stole a series of files from the main computer system and drove off in a government car.”

  “They got away?” cried Principal Carter.

  “If
they’re in a company car, they should be easy enough to catch,” said Principal Lee. “The GPS will tell us their exact location.”

  “The car’s already been recovered,” said General Stone, his voice hard, “along with its driver, a bewildered paralegal who couldn’t remember anything beyond her morning walk to work and an incredible urge to eat breakfast at a local waffle house. That’s where she was headed when they pulled her over. Incidentally,” he added, “that same waffle house figured in several reports to our national hotline this morning: little Maddie and Alex North were seen eating breakfast there by no less than eight concerned citizens, only fifteen minutes before the ambush. The drive-time with morning traffic is at least that long.”

  “How…?” began Principal Gates.

  General Stone slammed his palms down on the table. “They know we’re using the hotline to track their movements. They turned it around on us with false reports and used it to empty that office of its off-hours agents.”

  “How did they get into the main computer system?” asked Principal Jones. She alone of all of them had maintained her composure throughout the whole. The content of Ben Birchard’s mysterious call was no longer so mysterious.

  “Through the accounting department,” said General Stone slowly, so as to regain control of his emotions. “The supervisor was issued passwords so that they could file their month-end reports, per protocol. These children”—he pronounced that word with utmost contempt—“exploited our system for their own purposes. We’re lucky that they didn’t cause more damage than they did. We’re lucky that they didn’t have any more time than they did. They are an absolute menace, and we cannot waste any more time in reining them back in.”

  The five principals exchanged nervous glances.

  “Thus far,” General Stone said, “the GCA has been content to take a passive approach to recovering these children, as though they had all the time in the world to quietly slip a noose around the bull’s neck and pull it tight. I was against that. I have said before and I’ll say it again now: we need to be more aggressive. Our number one priority is to get these children off the streets and away from the public eye before they can cause any more damage.”

  “We send Oliver, then,” said Principal Jones.

  “Agreed,” said Principal Lee. “The only way you’re going to get close enough for a full assault is if you neutralize the projections from Honey and Happy. Honey’s easy enough: give the men earplugs and you’re done. For Happy, you need a high-level null projector. Oliver’s your only choice.”

  “Hmm,” said General Stone absentmindedly. “The girl, what’s her name?”

  Principal Gates leaned forward. “Quincy? Her null-projection is only a few feet, too narrow to be of any use in an aggressive assault.”

  “But you said she was friends with the older boys. We may be able to use her.”

  “You’re going to choose Quincy over Oliver?” Principal Carter asked in disbelief.

  General Stone leveled a hard stare at him. “I didn’t realize I had to choose.”

  “You’re taking them both?” said Principal Jones, finally moved from her superior calm.

  “Yes,” he said. “Quincy, and Oliver, and… you.” Astonished silence enveloped the room as he turned and pointed directly at none other than Ben Birchard.

  Ben squeaked. “Me?”

  “If I’m not mistaken, you knew about this little ambush before even I did,” General Stone said. “From what I’ve heard, you’ve got your finger on the pulse of everything that happens in the Prometheus network and the GCA. I can put a man of your resources to good use. Congratulations,” he added dryly. “You’ve just been promoted. You’re no longer Principal Jones’s assistant—you’re mine.”

  Ben didn’t look at all pleased by this announcement. His wary eyes shifted almost hopefully in Genevieve’s direction, but her unmoving posture testified that there was nothing she could do.

  General Stone didn’t seem to care one way or the other. “Carter,” he said, and the Prometheus-C principal jumped. “Contact your people at NPNN and have them release the story we discussed yesterday.”

  Principal Carter’s head bobbed in mute, terrified agreement. Emily wondered what story they were talking about, but since it was about to broadcast on NPNN, she’d find out soon enough. NPNN was the only channel the GCA offices ever showed, and that was where she would spend the next several days—or weeks—if this excursion was anything like the last one.

  “No more tiptoeing around these little monsters,” said General Stone, and the steeliness of his voice showed that he meant every last word. “We do it my way, and we’ll have it sewn up in a matter of days.”

  “That’s what they said the last time,” Emily muttered under her breath. Next to her, Oliver grunted.

  The headphones were quickly reconnected and both Emily and Oliver retreated back to the couch before Ben returned. They looked up innocently when he entered from the hallway. His expression was deadpan, but Emily had the sneaking suspicion that they hadn’t fooled him at all.

  He said not a word to either of them. Instead, he crossed to his desk, where he typed a couple of words into a prompt and closed the surveillance window.

  From the hall sounded the austere click of heels against the tile floor. Every ominous tap had Emily sitting up a fraction of an inch taller, as though her doom approached in a pair of expensive designer pumps.

  Genevieve Jones crossed the threshold, as severe up close as she had sounded through the computer’s speakers. Everything about her was neat as a pin, from her crease-free business suit to her perfectly smoothed hair in its immaculately arranged chignon. To someone such as Emily, she was both awe-inspiring and terrifying.

  Luckily, she had no attention to spare for an insignificant handler. “Oliver,” she said to her former student, a subdued warmth to her voice, “I trust you’ve been well since we last met?”

  Oliver glowered. “How could I be well when they’ve enrolled me here at Prom-F? Is this my punishment for trying to help?”

  “The situation is atypical,” said Principal Jones, but Emily noticed that she made no attempts at an apology. “You were transferred to Prom-F in order to assist in the recovery of our four truants. Since the Wests are still out there, your records are still here.”

  “So once the Wests are caught and brought back, I’ll get transferred back to Prom-A?” Oliver asked.

  “That’s right,” said Principal Jones a little too easily. Was she telling the truth, or only saying what Oliver wanted to hear? “They’ve decided to give you a second chance, Oliver. You’re being sent out again, to Phoenix this time. We need you to do your very best, do you understand?”

  He nodded.

  “Good. And you’ll be glad to hear that you’re not going alone this time.”

  He didn’t go alone last time, Emily thought in annoyance.

  “Who else is coming?” Oliver asked, his grudging curiosity so well feigned that Emily would have sworn it was genuine if she didn’t know better.

  “They’re sending Quincy along too. You two will need to work together and do everything the grown-ups ask. You do understand that, don’t you? The only way I can get your records transferred back to Prom-A is if you cooperate and bring the Wests home.”

  “Understood,” said Oliver.

  Principal Jones smiled a very controlled smile. “I’m sending Birchard with you as well,” she said, as though the addition of her personal assistant had been her idea. “He’ll report your progress directly back to me, and we’ll see what we can do to get this mess cleared up. Now, you have twenty minutes to pack your bag. Is that enough time?”

  “I’ll do it in ten,” said Oliver, and he snapped his notebook shut. “Thanks, Genevieve.” He passed her to the hallway.

  Emily followed, but, to her astonishment, Principal Jones caught her by the sleeve.

  “A second chance like this is extremely rare,” the austere woman said in a low, ominous voice. “See th
at you don’t squander it, Ms. Brent.”

  “I won’t,” Emily whispered. “Thank you.” Upon the release of her sleeve, she fled from the office.

  Oliver had actually paused halfway down the hall to wait for her. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” said Emily, desperately trying to smooth her frayed nerves. “Let’s hurry to get your bag packed.”

  His nose lifted in a sneer. “Worry about your own. It was your lack of preparation last time that got us into so much trouble.”

  She opened her mouth to make a sharp retort—it wasn’t her fault she’d been dragged away without any advance notice—but then she realized that the words would be wasted. Oliver knew all the details of their previous excursion. For whatever reason, he was needling her. Perhaps it was a childish attempt to settle his own frayed nerves.

  “This time will be different,” she promised, her voice quiet.

  “It has to be,” said Oliver with a solemn frown. “My future depends on it.”

  XII

  Real Irish Tea

  July 31, 9:35am mst, Phoenix, AZ

  “Is this safe house still safe?” Happy asked with a wary look up and down the quiet residential street.

  “None of the local birds have noticed anything out of the ordinary,” Hawk said. “That’s about all we can ask at the moment.”

  “Do you think Hummer and Honey got here okay?”

  “If they’re not here yet, they will be soon,” he said reassuringly, even though he wasn’t certain he spoke the truth. That was the part of the plan he disliked the most, where they ditched the car and split up. But Hummer had insisted that two groups of two children were less obvious than one group of four. They would draw less attention, especially since the general public was being programmed to look for Maddie and Alex North together, not separately.

  “What about Revere?” asked Happy.

  Hawk pointed to a scraggly tree outside their rental house. “He’s already here. Should I have him go look for Hummer and Honey?”