“So that other kids don’t get any ideas?” Emily cynically asked. Prometheus appeared to espouse the concept of using ignorance as a tool to keep people in line, which seemed counterintuitive, given that all of the students there were child prodigies.
Oliver’s expression was grim, a silent affirmative.
She sighed and turned her attention to the highway beyond the car’s window. If the West children actually disappeared, Oliver would eventually be pulled back to Prom-A. At the very least, Emily would return in two months’ time, when her term as his handler ended. Only fifty-seven days to go, she thought grimly.
She hadn’t slept well the previous night, but she had washed her blouse again in the bathroom sink. It still needed ironing, but it was free from any garish graphics that might cause a person’s eyes to spontaneously bleed, so she was wearing it anyway.
In the front seat of the car, the two agents who were taking them to the airport looked crisp in their nice dark suits and starched shirts, and Emily positively hated them for it.
Next to her, Oliver’s digi-port chirped.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Email,” he said in a bored voice. “My teachers have probably graded the assignments I sent in last night.”
“How’d you do?” Emily asked. The dour look he shot her plainly communicated that he had done perfectly well, as usual, and that he didn’t need to read the teacher’s report to know as much. He probably never got anything less than perfect scores on his schoolwork, given his brilliant mind and arrogant personality.
Still, Oliver picked up the device and cycled through to read the incoming message.
The blood drained from his face as his eyes widened.
“What, did you get knocked half a percentage point?” Emily teased as she leaned over to glance at the email. That teasing mood vanished the moment her eyes flitted over the subject line and sender:
from: [email protected]
to: [email protected]
subject: How’s it going?
Hey, Oliver!
It was nice to see you the other night. Sorry I had to leave so quickly—it would have been nice to catch up. Also, I’m sorry about the birds—it’s kind of hard to direct them on who’s an enemy and who’s not. They pretty much make up their own minds when they see people coming at me, so they didn’t know any better than to go after you.
How are you enjoying your time away from Prom-A? Hummer and I have had a really good time so far. We met up with our little sister and brother, Honey and Happy, but then you probably already know that. I guess Prometheus is using you just like they were using Honey. Sorry about that. We all think it’s pretty awful of a huge government agency to force children into doing their bidding.
Last night, we got to watch fireworks. The stars in the sky were really bright, thanks to the altitude here. We were looking for Altair in the Summer Triangle—remember how you were telling us about it last year at the exhibition? We didn’t find it, but it would be great if we could.
Were you able to celebrate Independence Day in Las Vegas, or did they shut you up in a cell? It’s been so nice to walk around without people telling us what to do and where to go—it really was an independence day, if you catch my meaning. If you’re able to break away from your entourage, you’re welcome to join us sometime. We’ll all go star-gazing again.
Anyway, I hope that the next time we meet, it’ll be under better circumstances, without all those idiot goons around. Have fun on your Prometheus leash!
-Hawk
“What kind of a message is that?” Emily asked. “He’s acting like you guys are good old friends.”
A fierce scowl descended on Oliver’s face. “More importantly, he’s just told us where they are. Hey, you in the front!” The agent in the passenger seat turned and scowled at him. Oliver proffered his digi-port. “Our target’s just made contact,” he said. “Call it in.”
The man took the device and read over its contents. Then he lifted skeptical eyes to his partner, who was driving.
“Call it in,” the driver said grimly. “They’ll need to reset this kid’s flight itinerary, at the very least.”
“Isn’t this too obvious?” asked the other man. “If these runaways are so smart, why would they make a dumb move like contacting one of their classmates and giving away their location?”
The driver shrugged. In the back seat, Oliver scowled. “We’re not classmates. Prom-A is a thousand times superior to those monkeys at Prom-F!”
“He certainly writes like the two of you are chummy enough,” said the agent with a sneer.
Oliver unbuckled himself and leaned forward to snatch at the digital device, but the man moved it out of his reach. “Keep your seat belt on, kid,” he said as he flipped open his cell phone. The next moment, he was speaking rapidly to someone on the other end. “Yeah, this is Johnson. The Prometheus kid just got a message from our targets. It looks like they sent it from Flagstaff. Do you want me to… what? Oh, I see. Yeah, we’ll do that.”
He hung up and said to his partner, “Keep on to the airport. Soon as we drop off this kid, we can move on to more important business.”
During this interchange, Emily’s hackles kept bristling until she could finally not keep her mouth shut. “Hey,” she said sharply, “this kid has a name, and he can hear everything you’re saying! Would you like to stop treating him like he’s the one who made you people look like a bunch of incompetents the other night?”
Oliver stared at her in surprise while the driver scowled into the rearview. The agent in the passenger’s seat handed back Oliver’s digi-port with a condescending glare Emily’s way. “Peons should be seen, not heard,” he told her.
Emily started forward in her seat, ready to reach up and throttle the man, but Oliver laid a hand on her arm to restrain her. She looked at him in shock as he minutely shook his head. “I agree,” he drawled to the man in the front seat. “So why do you talk so much, peon?”
The agent laughed nastily. “You think you’re something, don’t you? Little genius, out for an adventure, precious teacher’s pet brought along to help school the runaways, are you?”
“Well,” Oliver replied with a steady voice, “if you people had bothered to listen to my advice rather than converging on Hawk West like a bunch of overzealous groupies, this case would already be closed. So yeah, I do think I’m something. I can read a situation a lot better than a whole pack of adults.”
“You didn’t even try to stop him, I noticed. You were probably in on it. You know, Prometheus flagged that email the minute it was sent to you—they’d already called our branch before I did. I imagine that you’ll have a lot of questions to answer when you get to Flagstaff.”
Oliver’s eyes slid over to Emily, whose temper had steadily risen throughout the conversation. “It’s obvious that Hawk sent me the email to bait me,” he said. “We’re playing cat and mouse. They’ll be heading out of Flagstaff as we speak, and chances are the GCA agents there are no more competent than you people are, so they’ll get away cleanly. You never did figure out where they stayed in Las Vegas or how they got out, did you?”
A muscle tightened along the man’s jaw. He turned to his partner and said, “Could you step on it? I’m closer and closer to strangling this little brat every second.”
Emily let loose a cry of outrage, but Oliver only smirked.
Article IV, Section 1
Dead End
July 5, 5:15pm mst, GCA regional office, Flagstaff
“Well, you were right,” said Emily. “They definitely fled the scene before we got here.”
Oliver said nothing to this. They had taken a short flight from Las Vegas to Flagstaff, and a car from the tiny airport to the University campus, where Hawk’s email had originated. The University had been oblivious that their system had been hacked to allow an email address to be set up, and none of the campus workers recalled seeing any children on the premises. Their search had led t
o the library, though, where several patrons had seen four kids amid the stacks. Oliver quickly discovered the nest of books in one corner of the library—mythology, astronomy, and comic books all neatly piled on an end table for some library assistant to come along and re-shelve them. He had puzzled over the books for some time.
“What on earth were they doing here?” Emily asked.
“Maybe just wasting time?” he replied.
When it became more than apparent that Hawk and his siblings were nowhere to be found, one of the local agents finally escorted Emily and Oliver back to the nearby GCA office, with only a slight detour for Oliver to run into the campus bookstore—to use the bathroom, he said, but he emerged with a bag tucked under his arm. When Emily asked him about it, he ignored her question and kept walking.
“Aren’t you supposed to stay with him at all times?” asked the agent who had followed Oliver into the bookstore in her stead.
Emily shrugged. “He doesn’t like me to hover around him all the time. I’m still trying to figure out how close I need to stick to him, but when he says he has to use the bathroom, I let him go alone. It’s kind of awkward for a girl to hang out around the boy’s bathroom door.”
“But that causes a breach in security,” the agent said.
Emily frowned. “I don’t think they’d let Oliver away from Prometheus if they were worried about him running off.”
An enigmatic expression crossed his face at that comment, and Emily puzzled over it until they had returned safely to the bland GCA offices. Now, she flopped down on a hard sofa and watched as Oliver muddled over the sack he had brought along. “What did you buy? Some advanced calculus textbook you wanted for a bedtime story?”
“No,” he said, and he flung the bag at her. “You’re an eyesore, that’s all. They didn’t have any steam irons there, though, so this’ll have to do.”
Curiosity eating at her, she peered into the bag and almost choked. He had bought another t-shirt. This one, instead of the garish Las Vegas décor of her last unsolicited gift, sported the picture of a squat, scowling lumberjack, the university mascot.
“Oh, thank you very much,” Emily said, trying to infuse some enthusiasm into her voice. How ironic would it be for an ivy-league graduate student to go around wearing a t-shirt that advertised a lesser state university in the middle of flyover country? The lumberjack was hardly an advocate of environmental issues.
“I’ll treasure it always,” she told Oliver.
“Ew,” he replied, his face contorted.
A knock on the door interrupted their conversation. Two somber GCA agents, a man and a woman, entered the room without being bidden.
“Hello, Oliver” said the woman with practiced kindness. “I’m Agent Marsh, and this is Agent Wilkes. We wanted to ask you a few questions.”
“About the Wests?” Oliver asked. “If I had to guess, I’d say that they left the city long before I arrived.”
The two agents exchanged a glance. “Yes. Actually, we wanted to start with the communication you received from them this afternoon. You know Hawk and Hummer from the Institute’s exhibition last October, is that correct?”
Oliver’s brow wrinkled in an apprehensive frown. “We met,” he said shortly.
“And do you recall a conversation you had with them about… star-gazing?” Agent Marsh asked.
He scoffed. “No. I don’t know what that rubbish was in his email. He was probably just trying to make it look like we were better friends than we are, maybe to get me sent back to Prom-A for the same reason they didn’t pull Quincy from Prom-F. I assure you that I’m not friends with Hawk or Hummer West.”
Marsh looked to Wilkes speculatively. “What do you know about Altair?” Wilkes asked with seeming disinterest.
It was an innocent enough question. When Emily turned to Oliver, though, she discovered a perturbed frown on his face. “It’s the alpha star of the constellation Aquila,” he said. “I haven’t really studied much astronomy, so I’m not sure what sort of answer you want from me. Does this have anything to do with the piles of books they left behind in the library?”
Neither agent addressed this question. Instead, “You haven’t heard the name used in any other context?” asked Wilkes.
“No,” said Oliver flatly. “What other context are you looking for?”
Again Marsh and Wilkes exchanged a glance. “We’re not really sure,” said Marsh lightly, sure proof that she was lying. “The Prometheus email filter flagged the message you received from Hawk for a few reasons, but one of those was its reference to Altair. We received a phone call this afternoon from someone very high up in the chain of command asking us to question you as soon as you arrived here.”
“Very high up?” Oliver echoed, perking, but from the mirror-image expression on both agents’ faces, neither of them had any intention of elaborating. “So Altair is code for something? And the Wests know what it is?”
“We don’t know,” said Marsh, “but if you happen to come across it anywhere, you will tell us, won’t you?”
“Oh, certainly,” he said with a quick little nod. Emily could tell that he was intrigued and desperately trying to hide it. She couldn’t blame him—she was fairly intrigued by the mystery as well.
If Agents Marsh and Wilkes noticed his interest, they made no signs. Marsh smiled politely and bid him a good evening. Wilkes nodded shortly before turning and following his partner through the door.
“What do you suppose that was about?” Emily asked when they were alone again.
“Where’s my digi-port?” Oliver asked in lieu of addressing her question. She handed him his messenger bag from where he had dropped it next to the couch, and he immediately extracted the tablet. Thirty seconds later, he had Hawk’s message on the screen.
“‘The stars in the sky were really bright, thanks to the altitude here,’” he murmured aloud. “‘We were looking for Altair in the Summer Triangle—remember how you were telling us about it last year at the exhibition? We didn’t find it, but it would be great if we could.’ What was he trying to say?”
“You didn’t talk to him at the exhibition?” Emily tentatively inquired.
A scoff escaped Oliver’s mouth. “No, not Hawk. I spoke with Hummer, briefly, but it was about mechanics, not astronomy. I don’t think I exchanged more than a cursory nod with Hawk. Quincy introduced us, but I had no interest in cavorting with imbeciles.”
Emily bit her lower lip. “Do you call them imbeciles just because they were assigned to Prom-F? Quincy’s there, and you don’t seem to have any particular dislike of her.”
“Quincy’s a null-projector,” he said negligently. “Actually, she’s only at Prom-F because of a fluke. She was originally at Prom-A.”
“Really? What happened?”
This question did not receive a favorable reaction. Oliver scowled deeply. “I don’t know,” he said. “Mind your own business.”
“Sorry,” said Emily, surprised by his sudden change in demeanor. “I didn’t mean to be nosy. I just didn’t realize that Prometheus had transfers between campuses. I thought once you were assigned, you stayed at that campus until you graduated. I guess not, though.”
For fully a minute, he did not respond. He seemed upset, but he finally schooled himself enough to grudgingly say, “It was a couple of years ago, and the transfer was abrupt. They do have transfers at Prometheus, but it’s usually because of disciplinary issues. There were some rumors that Quincy was being bullied, and other rumors that she was plotting with another student to run away, but those were ridiculous. Quincy’s not that stupid.”
Emily said nothing to this. Oliver had told her a few days previous that Prom-F had an isolated location specifically to discourage its students from any runaway attempts. For Quincy to be moved quickly from Prom-A to Prom-F pointed in that favor, and the fact that she had been “too close to the situation” with the Wests, as Principal Gates had put it, also upheld the theory that she was a potential flight risk. The one enc
ounter Emily had had with her showed a very jaded young girl.
“She’s different from Hawk and Hummer,” Emily said.
“That’s what I just told you,” said Oliver. “She’s not stupid.”
It wasn’t that, though. Emily frowned. “I think if she ever did have thoughts of running away, she’s already given up any hope of succeeding. And do you really think that Hawk and Hummer are stupid?”
If the unpleasant expression on his face was any indication, Oliver wanted to shout an unmitigated “Yes!” Unfortunately, the logical side of his brain interceded. “As far as intelligence goes,” he said grudgingly, “no, of course they’re not stupid. It’s their idealism, their nauseating optimism that they can do or accomplish anything they set their minds to that makes them stupid. Sooner or later, they’re going to crash in a fiery, burning heap, and they’ll have to live with the consequences of their idiotic dreams. I mean, the GCA is the highest funded government agency in the history of this nation, with the longest reach of any civil entity. Do they honestly think they’ll be able to outrun us forever? Quincy’s smart enough to know better. Hawk and Hummer obviously aren’t.”
Emily pulled her feet up underneath her and leaned against the arm of the sofa. “They’ve outrun us so far.”
“It’s only been five days,” said Oliver irritably.
“I think it’s amazing that they weren’t recovered in those first few hours,” she said. “I mean, sure, they disabled the campus at Prom-F, but they were able to sneak undetected into Prom-B and retrieve their little sister and brother, then get far away before anyone caught wind that they were even gone. What sort of security does Prom-B have, that they didn’t even notice two kids sneak in and four sneak back out?”
A Boy Called Hawk (Annals of Altair Book 1) Page 17
