A Boy Called Hawk (Annals of Altair Book 1)

by Kate Stradling

  The man in the gray suit only grunted.

  His unhappy mood was contagious. Emily had already made up for lost time once that morning, and now through no fault of her own, she was going to be late again. At least her new employers couldn’t blame her for this.

  At long last, they drove into the less congested airport, but Emily’s relief turned to confusion as they bypassed the entrance to the main terminal.

  The man in the gray suit saw her expression. “You’ll be flying on a private jet. We’re able to bring you right out onto the tarmac.”

  She had never considered such a thing. Flying was expensive enough when wedged in with the masses on a commercial line. Only the really elite ever flew on private jets, and the cost of such a flight was astronomical, more money than she would see in this decade.

  The car passed several security checkpoints before it finally rolled out onto the tarmac of a tiny, private terminal. The jet that awaited them was relatively small, probably seating somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty people, providing that it was packed with seats. On its tail was emblazoned the crest of the Prometheus Institute, and its design was fluid and modern, none of this primitive, decades-old look of most commercial jets. Clearly no money had been spared in this purchase.

  She drew her eyes from the pristine jet to the figures at the base of its stairs. An austere woman in a black suit stood by the boy, Oliver Dunn, and they both watched the approaching car with identical expressions of disdain. Emily spared a glance toward the man in the gray suit, only to see him loosen his collar with one nervous finger. The car came to a complete stop, but when Emily reached for the door, the man stayed her hand, mutely shaking his head. The driver got out, crossed around the back, and opened the door for her.

  Emily stepped out to a sharp wind, and the man in the gray suit followed, guiding her toward the waiting pair.

  “You’re late,” said the austere woman.

  “Too many people on the road, as usual,” he replied.

  She didn’t acknowledge this, but instead turned to Emily. “You must be Emily Brent,” she said with a fake smile. “I’m Genevieve Jones, the principal of the Prometheus-A campus. I trust that you’ll take excellent care of our little Oliver, won’t you?”

  Emily eagerly shook her hand. Genevieve Jones was a well-known name among academic circles. A recommendation from her would open any university to the lucky individual that secured her good graces.

  “I’ll do my very best,” Emily promised, and she smiled kindly at ten-year-old Oliver.

  His left nostril lifted in a voiceless sneer, and he turned to hike up the stairs into the waiting plane.

  Taken aback, Emily looked to Ms. Jones, but the woman didn’t seem to think anything was out of the ordinary. “Someone will meet you in Great Falls to take you to Prometheus-F,” she said. “You’ll be briefed on your duties there. Have a good flight.” The latter phrase was more courtesy than sincerity. Emily obediently started up the stairs. One last, wistful glance over her shoulder showed her that the man in the gray suit had already returned to his car, and that Ms. Jones followed close behind him.

  The inside of the jet was not nearly as cramped as expected. Chairs faced one another with tables in between, like the dining car of a long-distance train rather than a jet-liner. Oliver already sat halfway back in the empty cabin. Emily took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and boldly settled into the seat across from him.

  She fixed a sunny smile to her face. “Hello, there.”

  He glanced up from the book he was reading, clearly annoyed.

  “I’m Emily,” she said.

  “I’m not an idiot,” he caustically replied.

  “Oh,” she said. “I don’t think anyone would ever say you were.”

  “And yet you feel the need to repeat your name when I heard it perfectly well down on the tarmac,” said Oliver. “Maybe you’re the idiot.” Then he returned his attention to his book.

  Not a sociable child, Emily thought as she reined in her instinctive temper. “What are you reading?” she asked. He lifted his eyes first, and then the book from the table so that she could see the name on its spine. “Jude the Obscure? That’s kind of heavy reading for a young kid like you, isn’t it?”

  From the way his lips pursed, he didn’t appreciate the reference to his age.

  “Is it something you have to read right now?” Emily asked. “I thought it would be nice if we could get to know each other, since we’re going to be together for a while.”

  “You’re new,” he said flatly.

  “Well, yeah, I guess I am. I just started my internship—you’re my first assignment as a child-life counselor. I’ve really been looking forward to meeting you, Oliver.”

  His dark eyes glared. “‘Child-life counselor’ is the Institute’s pointless, euphemistic code for a handler, and handlers are switched every two months like clockwork, so there’s no reason for us to get all chummy.” He pronounced that last word with disgust, his voice infused with such contempt that Emily was left quite speechless. As she struggled to regain her wits, Oliver returned his attention to his book.

  In the ensuing silence, the plane taxied out onto the runway. A voice on the intercom commanded for seat belts to be fastened, and a series of screens dropped from the ceiling to show the pre-flight safety video. Emily half-heartedly watched the cheerful flight attendant pantomime to the dubbed instructions. Obviously Oliver would be a difficult child if he refused even to communicate with his counselor—or handler, as he had called her. She couldn’t fathom spending the next two months with someone so hostile.

  Then again, she barely knew him. All of her child psychology classes told her that children needed attention, needed to be loved and coddled before they would open up to strangers. As the plane lifted into the air, Emily decided she wasn’t ready to give up. The first assignment of her internship couldn’t be a failure. The personal disappointment would be bad enough, but it wouldn’t look good on her record either, and there was no way she would let some upstart little kid ruin that.

  “So Oliver, other than reading, what do you like to do in your spare time?” she asked.

  He didn’t bother to lift his eyes from the page this time. “You honestly think I’m reading Jude the Obscure for fun? It’s assigned for my literature class.”

  “But you do like to read, don’t you?”

  “Who cares?”

  “I do,” said Emily. “I’d like to get to know more about you. I mean, like you said, we’ll only be together for two months, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a pleasant two months. It’s good to know more about the people we come into contact with, you know. Shall I tell you about myself?” He didn’t answer, but he didn’t object either, so Emily took that as encouragement to continue. “I’m twenty-five, an only child. My parents are both college professors out on the West Coast. I just finished my Master’s degree in child-psychology—”

  “From an ivy-league university, and now you have to work for the GCA for two years for debt forgiveness before you go on to pursue your doctorate and get a permanent job with some other government agency,” Oliver interrupted in a bored voice. “Do you think you’re somehow different from the other Prometheus handlers? You’re all cut from the same cloth, all idiot sycophants trying to climb as high as you can up the administrative ladder by boot-licking as many feet as you come into contact with.”

  “Wow,” said Emily for lack of anything better. “I think you’re the first ten-year-old I’ve ever heard use the word ‘sycophant.’”

  “That’s because you’re new,” said Oliver. “Now would you kindly shut up while I read about the plight of a poor uneducated worker in Victorian England?”

  She obediently closed her mouth. Genevieve Jones and the man in the gray suit had both failed to mention how long this flight would be. Emily was willing to bet that an uncomfortable eternity would pass between now and when they landed, though.

  Article I, Section 3

&
nbsp; The Chaos of Prom-F

  11:42am mdt, Great Falls, MT

  The airport adjacent to Great Falls was sparsely populated, and well could Emily understand it. Montana was smack in the middle of flyover country, and she couldn’t imagine anyone actually choosing to come here. At least it was summertime rather than bitter, frigid winter.

  A round-faced woman met them when they exited the plane. Her mousey brown hair was pulled into an unflattering bun and deep lines around her mouth gave the impression of a perpetual frown. That combined with her flabby chin and the budding mustache on her upper lip made for an unimpressive human specimen. Clearly they were no longer in New York, where image was everything.

  The woman extended a hand, which Emily shook much like she might shake a sock full of wet oatmeal. “Hello. I’m Margaret Lloyd from Prom-F. You can call me Maggie, if you’d like.”

  “Prom-eff?” Emily repeated in confusion.

  “Prometheus F campus,” Oliver said with utmost longsuffering.

  “Oh! Yes, of course.”

  “The car is this way,” said Maggie, and she gestured to the waiting vehicle some twenty paces away.

  “No kidding,” Oliver muttered.

  As they approached the dark sedan, Emily stopped short. “What sort of a car is that?” It looked heavier, bulkier than the models she was used to.

  “It’s an old gas-electric hybrid,” Maggie said. “We have a two-hour drive ahead of us, too far for a regular electric car to go without having to recharge.”

  “Is Prom-F that far removed? Why would they build it in such a remote location?”

  “Because it’s such a remote location,” Oliver said with thinly veiled annoyance. He climbed into the waiting vehicle ahead of Emily, who turned a frown upon Maggie.

  “The students at Prom-F benefit from their remote location,” said that woman delicately. “They don’t have the hustle of a nearby city and traffic to interfere with their studies.”

  “I see,” said Emily, even though she didn’t. “Anyway, you’d think that in this day and age they could build an eco-friendly electric car that could drive more than a hundred miles at a time.”

  Maggie smiled faintly but made no response. Instead, “They can,” said Oliver from the car. Emily turned in confusion to discover him leaning halfway out the door, glaring up at her.

  “If they can, why don’t they?” she asked.

  “Because then people would take long trips and use more energy than the government wants them to,” he replied. “Quit asking stupid questions and get in the car so we can get this over with.”

  She spared a startled glance toward Maggie, whose faint smile remained plastered on her face. Since no help was forthcoming from that direction, Emily obeyed her young charge’s command and climbed into the waiting hybrid.

  Maggie climbed into the driver’s seat. “Were you told anything about why we sent for you, Oliver?” she asked as she started the engine.

  “I assumed you were having trouble with one of your projectors,” he said. Emily frowned in confusion. He was called out because of a mechanical issue?

  Maggie forced a tittering laugh that, despite its intent, was entirely cheerless. “Yes, you might say that.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why you didn’t have Quincy deal with it. She’s still at Prom-F, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, Quincy’s still here. We’ve had a very chaotic past two days, though, and we thought it would be best if we had some outside perspective to look everything over. We’re so pleased that you could come.”

  From the way he rolled his eyes, Emily guessed that he didn’t share in that pleasure.

  Much to her annoyance, no further explanation of their purpose here was proffered. Instead Maggie lapsed into silence, her entire concentration on the road ahead, and Oliver buried his nose back in his book. Emily had no reading material except his file tucked safely in her messenger bag. It would be rude to take that out and pore over it right in front of him, so instead, she stared out the window at the passing scenery. It proved so boring that she soon nodded off.

  She was jarred awake when the car came to an abrupt halt. Wide-eyed, she peered through the front windshield at a very daunting set of wrought-iron gates. Maggie, her window down, was chatting with one security guard while another manually opened the gates for them to pass.

  “Why don’t they just flip the switch?” Oliver muttered.

  “Maybe they’re trying to save electricity,” said Emily.

  “The wiring here has short-circuited,” said Maggie from the driver’s seat, her expression matter-of-fact. The other guard had left to help his fellow. “It’s not high on our list of priorities to get fixed, but we’ll get to it eventually.”

  Did Prom-F perhaps have some sort of budget crisis, that it couldn’t afford to spend funds on basic mechanical fixes? She knew from what little information she could gather about the Prometheus Institute that of its five current locations, the F campus was the least prestigious (hence its location in western Montana). It made sense that the school’s governing board would allocate funds according to that hierarchy, but it seemed like they could spare a little extra cash to fix something so simple.

  They passed through the gates and onto extensive grounds. A wide swath of lawn led to a massive concrete-and-glass building. Its design was modern, identical to every other Prometheus campus, Emily knew, even though she had only seen pictures before. Beyond and to the right stood the dormitory where the students lived. Other outbuildings would be further on, their view blocked from sight by the main structure and the surrounding trees.

  There was surprisingly little activity on the grounds. It was early afternoon, and Emily had expected for there to be children at least visible, but they were probably in class right now. Maggie pulled to a stop in front of the main stairway, and Emily got out of the car, only to be struck again by that sense of unnatural stillness. When she looked to Oliver to see if, perhaps, this was normal for a Prometheus campus, she discovered a frown on his face as well. In her short acquaintance with him thus far he had always frowned, but this one was deeper, almost perplexed.

  Maggie huffed up the stairs ahead of them and held the door open. “I’ll let the principal know that you’ve arrived.”

  “Where’re the other students?” Oliver abruptly asked. His voice echoed in the vast, empty lobby.

  “In their dorms. Classes have been temporarily suspended.”

  For the first time all day, he looked intrigued. Maggie led them through the customary metal detectors that were the hallmark of every school, and then motioned them to a couple utilitarian sofas ahead. “You can wait there. I’ll go find Principal Gates.”

  Emily settled on one sofa. The cushion was shaped like a block of wood and hard as one too. She watched carefully as Oliver settled across from her. “What do you think happened here?” she asked in an unnecessary whisper.

  His expression was guarded. “They’ll tell us soon enough.”

  He was curious, she could tell, but he didn’t want to show it. Suddenly this trip seemed much more interesting than it had been mere moments before.

  They sat in silence. Oliver didn’t even pretend to read his book, but instead let his eyes wander around the glass and concrete that made up the interior décor. Several silk plants adorned the space and some abstract pictures hung on the wall, nothing in particular to distinguish this building as a school rather than an office or government agency. Emily’s private school had at least had a trophy case and a bulletin board of school activities on display at the entrance. In comparison, Prom-F seemed very cold, very impersonal.

  “Is it a lot like your campus?” she asked. “I haven’t been there yet.”

  “It’s identical,” said Oliver, more disinterested than annoyed, “except that our emergency exit signs work.”

  She followed his gaze to the signs common to any public building. Sure enough, they weren’t illuminated. “I guess since the doors are right in front of us, it d
oesn’t really matter.”

  Oliver shrugged and lapsed into silence again.

  A nearby door, marked as an entrance to the stairwell, opened and a reedy looking man stepped halfway through. His face was thin and lined, and he didn’t even bother with a smile as he beckoned the pair toward him.

  “Oliver, good to see you again,” he said.

  “Principal Gates,” Oliver answered as he passed by the man. Emily gaped at the utter lack of ceremony. Principal Lucian Gates was almost as well-known as his Prometheus-A counterpart, Genevieve Jones, and she had expected him to be just as courteous and formal. Instead he was harried and abrupt. He didn’t even acknowledge Emily, much to her annoyance. She might as well not have been there at all.

  “We’ll brief you upstairs,” Gates said to Oliver as he took the lead. “It’s only one flight up. Normally we wouldn’t take the stairs, but I was stuck in an elevator for three hours yesterday, so I’m avoiding those until our techs work out all the kinks.”

  “Kinks?” Emily echoed, and Oliver shot her a look that plainly told her to hold her tongue. A look that she ignored. “What kind of kinks can an elevator have?” Using the stairs was a good way to stay trim, but the man’s explanation was odd.

  He didn’t so much as glance her direction, but he did answer her question. “The elevator controls have short-circuited, and our techs are too busy tending to the computer network to worry about that.”

  “Did the network short-circuit as well?” Emily asked impertinently. That seemed to be their excuse for everything that didn’t work around here.

  Principal Gates grunted. “The network itself is mostly intact. It’s just… ailing at present.”

  “Viruses?” asked Oliver, his curiosity ever growing.

  “A few well-placed surprises, yes. The techs have found most of them already. They’re running a final sweep now before they give us the all-clear.” He ushered them through the fire door on the next landing and motioned to a room just off the hallway beyond. Next to the entrance, Maggie waited alongside a somber pair, a man and a woman. The woman was around Emily’s age, a cool brunette who seemed unusually anxious. The man was perhaps thirty years old, with black hair and an equally black scowl on his face.