What happened next would haunt Emily for the rest of her life. Like a scene from an old horror movie, birds of all shapes and sizes swarmed from the trees, from the fountain at the park’s center, from the benches and the surrounding neighborhoods to attack en masse. They swooped and dove with raucous caws and high-pitched shrieks. Talons struck her head and pulled her hair as she batted the creatures away. She took refuge in the sedan. Oliver followed, swatting away birds as he came.
“I told them not to go straight on!” he cried. “What are they thinking, going after a bird-projector in the middle of a city park? Idiots!”
Emily was still shaking from the encounter. Wide-eyed, she peered out the window at the swarms of birds, like a furious black cloud of feathered razors. Between them, she could just see the other sedans pulling out into the street again, still in pursuit.
The agent with them skidded back into the car with scratches on his cheeks and his toupee askew. “After him, after him!” he yelled at the driver as birds pummeled against the car windows. “He’s gone down that street! After him!”
“It’s too late,” Oliver said, more to himself than anyone else. “He broke through the perimeter. They won’t find him again.”
In the end, of course, he was right. They drove up and down the neighborhood streets for almost two hours after that. While they saw many, many birds hovering around the place, they never caught another glimpse of Hawk West. What’s more, whenever any of the agents tried to exit their vehicles, the birds would dive-bomb again with angry cries. Emily had never seen the creatures be so territorial before.
Oliver’s temper smoldered until they finally returned to the local GCA office for the night. No sooner had they left him and Emily in a private office than he let loose all of his pent up rage in a magnificent tantrum.
“We might all be going home if they had only exercised patience. But no. ‘If we catch him, we can force him to take us to the others,’” he mimicked in a whiny imitation of the agent from earlier. “Do they honestly think Hawk would betray his siblings when he’s already gone through so much to get them away from Prometheus? Idiots! Morons! Imbeciles! Why are you just sitting there with that stupid look on your face?”
Emily sat up straight when she realized that his wrath had turned upon her. “I’m sorry,” she said, still dazed from the bird encounter. “How should I look? You’re right, of course. It would’ve been better to follow him back secretly instead of trying to catch him and force information from him.”
Oliver snapped his mouth shut, apparently thunderstruck that she would agree with him.
She ruined the effect by adding, “At least they were able to bring his relative in for questioning.”
His expression twisted into deprecating skepticism. “He’s not going to know where Hawk came from or where he was going. He’s not going to know anything, and if it comes out that the GCA had him under surveillance without a warrant, he’ll end up suing, and winning. So what good comes from them bringing the relative in? Hmm? Nothing. This whole excursion was completely destroyed by a bunch of overzealous government stooges not knowing when to hang back and be subtle!”
He let out another frustrated cry and threw himself into an over-stuffed armchair to sulk.
Emily couldn’t blame him. It had been a devastating afternoon and evening. With a heavy sigh she stood and strolled over to pick up the abused book that lay upon the floor. It was a memoir of a former president, one she had been required to read for one of her undergraduate classes. She mindlessly glanced over a couple of pages before she closed the book and settled it back on the low table.
The door opened, and the agent from earlier entered with a perturbed expression. “We’ve got rooms prepared for you both upstairs if you want to get settled for the night.”
“What’d you find out from Paul Reynolds?” Oliver asked sarcastically.
The man’s eyes narrowed, but he admitted, “He claims he didn’t know the kid, that he only stopped him to make sure he wasn’t up to any mischief. They’ve had vandalism in the neighborhood lately.”
“But he’s related to Hawk,” Emily said.
“Cousin-once-removed isn’t close enough to prove they knew one another,” he said. “It’s ridiculous, but our hands are tied.”
“And you lost track of Hawk completely?” Emily asked, since Oliver was too busy being torn between frustration at their failure and smugness that he had been correct.
The agent shook his head in disbelief. “We had that place crawling with surveillance, and somehow he managed to slip beneath it and beyond. We think he and the other three are hiding at another house in the same neighborhood, but we can’t exactly go door to door looking for a thirteen-year-old.”
“Why not?” she asked.
He looked flabbergasted by this question, but it was Oliver who answered. “For the same reason they’ve only broadcasted the disappearance of the younger two children: it would draw too much attention to the situation. If they go door to door looking for Hawk, word will get out that he’s missing. Some aspiring journalist might feel the necessity of reporting it. Then it comes out that there were four children, not two, that disappeared, and the public learns about the Wests and how they were confiscated from their parents by the government. And while that confiscation was completely legal, the general public does not like to hear about children being taken away from parents, regardless of the situation.”
“So…” said Emily slowly, “it’s a matter of information control. It seems rather inefficient, though.”
“Rather,” Oliver echoed with more than a tinge of sarcasm.
The GCA agent had nothing to add to this. Instead, he gruffly pointed them out the door. “We may still need you yet,” he said as he led them down the hallway to the stairs. “Our people are going over all the local hotel and attraction records to see if there were any reports of four children at any of them.”
Oliver openly scoffed. “Forget it. They’re long gone. Or what, did you think they’ve checked into a suite at the Bellagio and are down on the casino floor playing the slots, waiting for you to find them? Don’t be ridiculous.”
Article II, Section 2
Regroup
July 3, 9:42pm pdt, The Bellagio, Las Vegas
Hawk anxiously tapped three times on the hotel room door. He had spent the last two hours wandering through the honeycomb of underground malls and shops that connected the major casinos along the strip, making certain that he hadn’t acquired a tail of any sort. He had circled through several different neighborhoods before that, so by now he was sure he hadn’t been followed. Concern over whether anything had happened to his younger siblings during his absence, though, had gnawed on him the whole time. It only heightened as he waited for someone to answer the door.
The locks clicked, and the door was thrown open. Before Hawk could enter, Hummer latched onto his arm and dragged him inside.
“What on earth took you so long?” he cried.
Hawk glanced from his concerned face to the bedroom, where Honey and Happy both stared from atop one of the beds. The sheets had been stripped and tied together in sturdy knots.
“I ran into some complications,” he said vaguely. “Did you figure out your escape route?”
Honey scrambled from the bed with Happy hot on her heels. Together they joined their older brothers in the front room of the suite. “What happened?” Honey asked. “We thought for sure you got caught.”
“I almost did,” said Hawk. “Sit down. I’ll tell you everything, and then we can decide what we’re going to do, where we’re going to go next.”
Obediently they settled on the sofa in front of him. Hawk told the story of his afternoon adventures, of his brief exchange with Paul Reynolds, of how a swarm of government agents had interrupted it, of how he had escaped and wandered the city until he knew for certain that it was safe for him to return here.
“So Cousin Paul said to look up Altair? What does that mean?” Honey asked.
>
“It’s a star in the constellation Aquila,” Hawk said. “It forms part of the Summer Triangle, along with Vega and Deneb. Other than that, I don’t know.”
“Aquila is the eagle, isn’t it?” Hummer asked. “Eagles are really symbolic. I mean, the bald eagle represents our country, but it was chosen as a representation of liberty. Back in the days before the financial restructuring, the three branches of government used to be depicted as a triple-headed eagle, with one head representing each branch. Eagles also represented war in Greek mythology—I think the eagle was an important bird to both Ares and Athena.”
“No, the owl was Athena’s bird,” Honey said knowingly. “The eagle was Zeus’s bird. Wasn’t it an eagle that pecked out the titan Prometheus’s liver every day for eternity?”
A slow smile spread across Hawk’s face. “Yeah. Prometheus was punished for acting against the will of the gods. He was saved by Heracles, though.”
“We don’t have to draw out the myth that far,” said Hummer with a negligent wave. “Let’s just leave it at the spot where Prometheus is chained to a wall and getting his liver pecked out.” They could all appreciate that symbolism.
“Try to remember that all of this is purely speculation,” Hawk said, though. “We were given the word ‘Altair,’ not anything specifically about an eagle.” The other three children exchanged a glance that conveyed their conviction that an eagle would somehow tie into their search. Hawk ignored this in favor of pursuing another pressing subject. “We have another problem to consider before we decide what we’re going to do next. The agents that tried to stop me back at the park had a Prometheus kid with them—took me forever to remember his name. Hummer, do you remember Oliver from last year?”
Honey and Happy turned expectant eyes to discover a dismayed expression upon their brother’s face. “Oliver?” Hummer repeated with a loud groan. “Oliver, as in second-place-in-the-mechanics-exhibition Oliver?”
Hawk nodded. “That’s him. He was there with his handler, getting out of one of the black sedans.”
“Who’s Oliver?” Honey asked. “And why would they bring him along to try to catch you?”
Hawk exchanged a knowing glance with Hummer. “They didn’t bring him along to catch me,” he said. “They brought him along to catch you and Happy. He’s a null-projector.”
Contrary to his expectations, she perked with interest.
“Don’t look like that, Honey. You won’t have any effect on him. Quincy told me last year that Prometheus has used Oliver to settle issues with projectors before. He’s completely unaffected by them.”
Her bright expression never waned, though. “What’s he like? How old is he? Is he nice?”
“He’s my age,” said Hummer, “and he’s stingy and arrogant because he comes from Prom-A. Trust me, Honey, you don’t want to meet him.”
“I do,” she countered. “You don’t know what it’s like, having everyone obey your every whim. I kind of want to see what it’s like when someone else isn’t bound by what I say.”
“If I’d known Honey had this much of an obsession with null-projectors, I would’ve invited Quincy to come along with us,” Hawk said to Hummer. “Didn’t you go to Prom-A last March, Honey? I’d think you would’ve met Oliver then.”
A dark expression fell over her face. “I didn’t interact with the Prom-A kids,” she said shortly. The details of her trip the previous spring had never been fully disclosed, and Hawk had determined not to prod her about it so long as she didn’t want to talk. Now seemed like a good enough time to ask, though.
“Why not?” He posed the question tentatively, with just enough reluctance that Honey could feel comfortable brushing it off.
Happy nestled closer to her, and she put a protective arm around him. “They told me that if I set a foot out of line, they wouldn’t bring Happy back from wherever they’d taken him,” she said quietly, “so I didn’t set a foot out of line. I guess they were concerned that I might turn the Prom-A kids into a rebellious little mob.”
“Then why did they take you on the trip at all?” Hummer asked. “At Prom-F we’re not allowed to go on class trips until we’re twelve.”
“The age limit at Prom-B is ten, but I guess none of their ten-year-olds were capable of talking a senator into taking bribes he didn’t want so that he could be pinned under thumbs he was trying to avoid,” said Honey.
A long silence followed. “You did that?” Hawk asked.
“What choice did I have?” Honey bitterly replied, and she hugged Happy closer. He watched his two older brothers curiously.
Hummer shifted uncomfortably, but Hawk stepped forward and patted his sister’s head. “Thanks,” he said.
“What for?”
“For trusting us to get you out, for not trying anything on your own.”
Honey’s brows arched. “I was giving you another month before I told my handler to drive Happy and me to the nearest airport and put us on a plane to Timbuktu.”
“Speaking of planes to Timbuktu,” said Hummer to interrupt the dangerously sentimental atmosphere, “where are we going next? And if there are already people watching for us, how are we supposed to get out of Las Vegas?”
“We can plan the escape once we know where we’re going,” said Hawk. “Since tomorrow’s a holiday, it’ll be easier to blend in with the tourists in the city, but it might be more difficult to get out. We can look at planes, trains, buses, and such. I kind of feel like we need to be smuggled, so we might have to find a moving van or a cargo transport and hide among the luggage. Any ideas?”
“I don’t want to be smuggled,” said Honey.
“There’ll be Prometheus goons watching the rails and the highways. Airport security would be a nightmare to navigate through. I don’t see that we have many other options.”
“There’s a helicopter tour that goes over to the Grand Canyon,” said Hummer, and he fingered one of the informational brochures that the hotel had provided on its end table.
“But it comes right back,” said Hawk.
Hummer’s grin broadened. “Not this one. It stops and you get to walk around the rim. They have an arrangement with the local Indian tribe.”
“So you’re saying we helicopter over and jump ship in Arizona?”
“We can hitchhike from there to the nearest town,” said Hummer.
Hawk hesitated. “I don’t know…”
“Do you have a better idea?”
Before he could answer this, though, Happy broke his long silence to say, “Helicopter!”
And thanks to his enthusiasm, the idea appealed to everyone.
Article II, Section 3
Give and Take
July 4, 8:15am pdt, GCA Regional Office, Las Vegas
Emily knocked on Oliver’s door. It was strange to spend the night in a government office building, and even stranger that said government office building had dormitories for people to stay overnight. How often were they used?
Rather, how many prospective Prometheus candidates had they housed in the past?
She had not slept well on the lumpy bed, and she was wearing the same clothes for the third day in a row, so her mood teetered somewhere between glowering and dismal.
Oliver didn’t respond to her summons.
She knocked again and called through the wood, “Oliver Henry Dunn, if you don’t open this door I’m going to come in and draw a mustache on your sleeping face.”
Something within dropped on the floor with a loud thud. Three seconds later a baleful Oliver, still pajama-clad, opened the door to glare at her. “Are those the only clothes you own?” he asked acerbically.
Emily rather liked the morning. It was the only time she had yet caught Oliver looking so disheveled. “Give me a break,” she said. “Unlike you, I wasn’t given the option to pack for this trip. They just yanked me off a train and tossed me on the airplane with you.”
“And that’s your excuse? You’re starting to smell.”
She wrinkled her
nose. After finding a dozen pinfeathers and speckles of bird-droppings on her blouse last night, she’d hand-washed it in the sink. Lack of an iron had rendered it a wrinkled mess, but there wouldn’t be any accumulated body odor left in the fabric. She’d had a spit-bath too with a washrag, but there was nothing to be done for her hair except brush the tangles out. Through clenched teeth that were more of a grimace than the smile she intended, she said, “Believe me, if I had any other option, I would take it. These are the only clothes I have.”
He glanced up and down her person, as though looking for any other criticism he could point out. “Pathetic,” he muttered and left the doorway to retreat back into his room. She followed him nonchalantly.
“How’d you sleep last night? Any nightmares of bird attacks?”
He glanced over his shoulder but didn’t favor either of her questions with an answer. Neither did he tell her to be silent.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said, and though she was certain she heard him murmur something about how that must have been a miracle, she continued. “If Hawk West is a bird-projector, why didn’t they get another bird-projector to deal with him? I mean, that storm of wings and feathers last night was horrific. If someone else had been able to talk to the birds, we could have canceled out Hawk’s effect on them, right?”
“In theory,” Oliver said as he slicked back his dark hair with a comb at the sink. “Unfortunately, in practice, it’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because Hawk’s the only bird-projector that Prometheus has any record of.” He looked at her surprised reflection in the mirror and rolled his eyes. “Weren’t you paying attention when Principal Gates explained about projectors? Only five percent of Prometheus students can project at all. Out of six-hundred students, give or take, that makes about thirty who have the ability. Two-thirds of those project on humans in some form or another. Have you followed me so far? Of the animal projectors, most of them project onto mammals, like cats or dogs. There are a couple who can project onto rodents, but it seems like the further a creature is from human, the less likely that any projection can occur. Right now, Hawk is the only bird-projector on record. There’s a boy at Prom-C who can project on insects, and another at Prom-A that’s currently getting tested for fish-projection. It’s very rare, all right?”
A Boy Called Hawk (Annals of Altair Book 1) Page 12
