The idea made me exhale a bit, because it was, at least, an explanation for the reaction I’d had.
After he’d introduced himself to everyone, Piper looked around at us expectantly. “Well, you’re here to see the school and get a taste for what we do here,” he said, reminding me of the guys who played up the circuses before they took you in. He turned toward the school and then called over his shoulder, “It will be my honor to show you how our schools function. If you’ll follow me?”
Alexy brushed up against me, her face soft and glowing. “Isn’t he dreamy?” she asked softly. “No matter how many times I see him, he always gives me butterflies.”
I gave her a doubtful look, but was saved by Jace, who appeared on my other side.
“He’s creepy,” he muttered. “No one should look like that. And what’s with the smile?”
“No need to be jealous of someone who’s more handsome than you,” Alexy chanted in a singsong voice.
She skipped up the path behind Piper’s disappearing back. After a quick glance between the two of us, Jace and I followed.
31
The school looked different during the day, mostly because we could see the colors only hinted at during our night visit. The walls, of the entryway at least, were indeed a bright lemon yellow, mellowed only somewhat by the artwork covering them. Here, just inside the front door, I could see I’d been right about the floor as well, which was tiled in every color of the rainbow. It was a cheerful, clashing mess.
A young woman with two long braids of red hair woven with green-and-blue ribbon now sat behind the desk and row of teddy bears in the foyer. She looked up when we entered.
Her eyes, I noticed, brushed past Piper and went to Nathan.
“You’re here for your tour,” she said, rather than asked.
Nathan gave her a nod and an eager smile. “How are the children today? Are they ready for visitors?”
At that, she grinned. “Most of them are out on their morning break, as you saw on your way in, but there’s a couple of classes still going. They’ll be a little upset to have to pause lessons, but they do so enjoy when you visit.”
Nathan turned, gesturing for us to follow him down a corridor lined with lockers. Piper and Corona both fell in beside him, and they walked forward as a trio.
We walked after the leaders into a different hallway from the one Jace and I had been taken down the night before, this one taking us right through a set of double doors. This hallway also had displays, except these were what looked like assignments, though none had anything like grades. There was writing from what I expected were the students, accompanied by writing from someone else, most likely giving feedback.
The fact that the kids were encouraged to display so much of their work made me smile. The Sylvones had been proud of their kids, but they’d also been more interested in doing things which raised their social standing than in displaying schoolwork. We were constantly going to parties, picnics, and city events, and spending time networking with other families in our social circle. We’d been told, often, that we would rise if we knew the right people. They’d particularly encouraged us girls to meet “the right sort of boy,” stressing that the right marriage was critical to making something of yourself in the world.
It was why they’d been so disappointed—furious, even—when Henry got me pregnant. Talk about the wrong sort of boy.
Around us, I was starting to see proof that there was indeed another way to raise kids. A way which included love and pride and hard work. A way that celebrated the child, rather than showing off what a child could do for the parents.
I hadn’t been able to keep Hope long enough to see her off to school one day, or have any other part in raising her. But if I had, this was the way I would have wanted to do it.
We were passing rooms now, rooms with windows onto the hall we were in, rooms packed with children, despite what Nathan had said about there not being many kids at this particular school. I saw kids of all ages divided into classrooms, from the youngest class at around five or six years old to classrooms full of what had to be high school age children.
“Our kids,” Nathan said, throwing his hands out in both directions and turning in a slow circle, a wide smile on his face. “Some of my greatest accomplishments.”
“They’re training to eventually become operatives,” Corona confirmed. “But it’s important they understand why. We want them to know where they’ve come from, where our country has come from. That way, when they come into the organization, they’ll be equals. They’ll get to find their own place in the world, which is something the Burchard Regime would never have offered them.”
She looked into a classroom with very young kids, and her face grew soft and affectionate. “But we make sure they have an education first. It allows them to form their own thoughts and opinions and views of what they want their lives to become.”
“What are you teaching them?” Jace asked, and I could hear the jealousy in his voice.
We’d joked once about how he could teach me anything in the wild, and I could teach him anything about books. His education had been limited, due to his family’s situation, and though I found him to be an incredibly sharp and intelligent person, I thought he was also the sort of person who would have sucked up schooling like a sponge.
I also thought he probably felt that lack of opportunity pretty keenly.“Everything,” Nathan answered emphatically. “Math and science, of course, because those are real-world necessities.” He gestured toward a classroom, and I took a couple steps forward to see older kids looking into microscopes and a 3-D image of some sort of microscopic creature cast across the front of the room. It was enormous, taking up an entire wall, and I could see the teacher, who had gloves on, turning the object around and pointing to different aspects of it.
“You’ve seen how we encourage artistic exploration, but we also teach practical life skills,” he continued. “Sewing, cooking, welding, engineering, even farming. Things they would be able to use in the real world, if they were to go out into it to find a job. Things that can also be used here in our society.”
“Society?” I asked, confused.
Corona nodded. “You’ll find we’re more than just an organization, Robin. More than just a random grouping of people. And it all starts here.”
Ah. Back to the vagaries, then. I could certainly see where Zion and Alexy had learned that particular skill.
Continuing onward, we came to a room where the 3-D image at the front of the room was of a group of very strange men wearing white wigs, all gathered around a single desk, talking. They were moving as if they were real, completely lifelike. I stared at them, too shocked to know how to respond.
“Are those… Are those people moving?” Ant asked, eyes wide.
“That is so cool,” Gabby whispered from behind me.
“They are,” Nathan replied. “I don’t expect you’ve ever seen a holograph, have you? Only the very rich have them.”
“I grew up in a rich household, and I never saw anything like that,” I said.
Nathan gave me a slightly pitying look. “Only the very rich have them,” he repeated. “They’re restricted in their use, because the government believes they might be abused if they fell into the wrong hands. Personally, I think that’s ridiculous. To start with, they make wonderful educational tools for children of all ages.”
I watched, surprised, as the holographs started moving farther around the front of the room, carrying a large scroll of paper. They were dressed unlike anything I’d ever seen, in fancy coats and pants that only went as far as their knees. Whatever they were discussing, they seemed to be passionate about it.
“Who are those people?” I asked. “What are they talking about? What class is this?”
“History,” Nathan replied. “And those people are our founding fathers.”
“Our who?” Ant asked.
Nathan let out a heavy sigh and shook his head. “You’ll find we teach a
very different version of history here compared to what you had in your schools outside. The schools controlled by the Burchard Regime tend to be… selective in their course material. Your history lessons only went back about one hundred years, I expect. And from there jumped into ancient history… things like dinosaurs.”
He was right. I’d always thought that was just what history was, though, and said as much.
Again, Nathan sighed. “The problem with that, Robin, is it cuts out an entire section of our true history. Furthermore, if you attempted to find anything about what happened during that gap, you would come up empty-handed. The Burchard Regime doesn’t want people to know what happened during that missing time. It doesn’t want people to realize there’s anything other than what they’re offering. But that missing section is a very important part, and I make sure all of our students know the truth.”
At that moment, Jace shouldered past Nathan and plastered himself against the window, gasping.
“Rhea!” he shouted.
I looked up, confused and surprised, to see his sister sitting in front of us. I’d been so fascinated by the people in the moving pictures that I hadn’t looked at the students. Now that I did, I saw her in the middle of the room, equally fascinated by the holographs, a page of notes on the desk before her. She was talking out of the side of her mouth to the boy sitting next to her, and he was nodding, eyes also fixed on the moving pictures.
They were discussing the lesson, I thought. And she looked both happier and better fed than the last time I’d seen her. She looked somehow… brighter, as if all of her colors had become more distinct.
Despite Zion’s promises, this was also the first time we’d seen her since we arrived. True, she looked like she was doing just fine, but Jace was about to jump out of his skin trying to get to her. He knocked heavily on the window, muttering about having been kept from her when she was right here the entire time, and I worried for a moment he was going to break the window in his excitement.
Hearing the commotion, Rhea looked toward the window. Her jaw fell slack and she leapt to her feet, dashing between desks to the door. Flinging it open, she cannoned into Jace. The two of them tumbled to the ground like bear cubs, crying and laughing and talking too fast for me to pick out any words.
Everyone took a slight step back, some people looking confused, others smiling, a few of us finding tears swelling at the corners of our eyes.
“I take it they know each other?” Ant whispered, but I saw his humor hid a pain I knew too well: the pain of having been kept from your family, even for innocent reasons.
Just then, a man came running up, his face flushed with excitement.
“It worked,” he told Corona and Nathan without preamble. “We’ve just heard from Aurora. The breach at Asus did exactly what it was supposed to do. They’ve initiated the update and are making arrangements for the next cycle of execs. We’ve got our people in place. If we’re going to run the Artemis Protocol, now is the time.”
Based on the looks Corona and Nathan now wore, something big had just happened. Our tour of the school was at an end.
32
Instead of heading back to the Hall, we were hustled into an empty classroom with walls covered in cartoon books flying on wings made of their pages. Piper, I noticed, was not invited, though he made a graceful excuse about needing to make sure the children at recess came back inside on time for their classes.
Still, I hadn’t missed the fact that Nathan gave him a pointed glance that indicated a lack of invitation to our meeting. Evidently the Artemis Protocol went over even Piper’s head.
Jace was beside me, cheeks still wet with tears but a big smile on his face. He’d sent Rhea back to class with a solemn promise that he would see her at the end of class, or at the very latest the end of the day, and then hustled into the classroom with the rest of us.
I’d waited just long enough to see Rhea give him a narrow-eyed response before returning to her classroom, smiling. Rhea wasn’t one to be left behind—I knew that much from when I’d met her before.
If she wanted to be involved in Jace’s new life and adventures, we were going to have a hard time stopping her.
We all got into the room ahead of Nathan and Corona and then turned, expectant. The pair stepped inside the classroom, wearing nearly identical expressions of excitement and tension, and Nathan shut the door behind him.
“What’s going on?” I asked immediately. “Artemis Protocol? What does that mean? And who’s Aurora?”
“Sit down,” Corona said firmly. “Starting right now, we’re not going to have a lot of time before we have to move to the next step. Your group is going to be involved, which means you need to have at least a basic understanding of what’s going on. It’s easier if we start at the beginning. Please hold all questions until the end.”
Everyone perched on desks and chairs, a hum of nervous energy starting to circulate.
Nathan put a hand on Corona’s arm. When he started speaking, his voice was gentler than hers had been. Less intense. The spokesperson for the organization, indeed.
“What we’re building here is important,” he said quietly. “This isn’t just an organization, and it is certainly more than just some rich guy’s personal rebellion.” He cracked a smile, guessing it was what several people would be assuming. “We’ve been working on a couple of plans for many years, but we haven’t been able to move forward because we haven’t had the right people in place. Our numbers have been growing, but not quickly enough, which is why we went out of our way to start recruiting new members. Operation Hood. Operation Marion. Operation Tuck. They’ve all been run with one purpose: to bring new blood into the fold, so to speak. And they’ve worked.”
Operation Marion? Operation Tuck? Multiple missions and portals would go a long way toward filling up the other Little John cities Alexy had mentioned. Nathan may have only come in with a few contacts, but it seemed he’d been collecting people ever since, both as children and adults.
Tens of thousands might not even cover how many people they had. But why would they need so many?
Nathan must have seen me twitch, because he gave me a quick nod of acknowledgement—either to show he realized he had questions to answer or to indicate that he was glad I hadn’t asked—and then continued.
“The Artemis Protocol is something we’ve been planning since early in Little John’s history. We knew about the holding centers, of course. We knew they were kept as secure as possible. What we didn’t know was what would happen if that security was ever broken. How the Ministry would react, what processes would be set into motion, that sort of thing. I have enough experience with computers and software to know what I would have done, and what I thought they would do.”
I cracked a small smile at that. From what I’d heard from Nelson and the others, Nathan could hack his way into almost any computer system in existence.
“But we had no evidence as to whether they would do the same as I would. We worked hard, did our research, made contacts, and eventually figured out that they had a specific protocol in place for security breaches, especially those from an untraceable source. But we had no way of taking advantage of that. We needed certain things to come into play before we could break through that blockade.”
“What exactly are you trying to do? What does this have to do with breaking into the holding centers? What’s the goal?” I asked.
Nathan tipped his head in an acceptance of my interruption.
“We need to get into the computer systems of the holding centers,” he said simply. “It’s the easiest route into the computer systems of the Ministry Headquarters. And from there, into the computer systems of the Burchard Regime.”
There was dead silence. My friends and I stared at him, our mouths hanging open, too shocked to formulate any reasonable questions. The words refused to fit together or form anything that made any kind of sense.
It was Jace who finally spoke.
“What do you mean
, get into the computer systems of the holding centers?” he asked in a slightly strained voice.
“I mean we’re going to be invading their systems. The systems of each center. Specifically, to figure out what the Ministry is doing and, from there, what the government itself is doing,” Nathan answered, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.
After another long moment of silence, during which Corona checked her watch three times, Nelson finally started talking.
“So, you’re planning to break into the holding centers electronically?” she asked. “To attack their computer systems? Using what tools?”
Nathan looked somewhat relieved to have another tech asking the questions. He turned to her, his face growing slightly more pointed as he prepared to go into detail. “It’s too dangerous to leave an electronic trail. We’ve tried it before, and it hasn’t gone well for us. We once had to abandon an entire building we’d commandeered because they traced a signal we accidentally broadcast for five seconds. No matter how good we think we are, and we’re very good, the Ministry has more money, more manpower, and better tools. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes we made with that lost building, and what happened with the auction site.”
“I agree,” Nelson said. “Although, you didn’t know they would be able to reverse the hack and trace your people back to their point of operations.”
“We knew it was a possibility,” he answered. “We didn’t know they’d be able to do it so quickly. We bought some time in that situation because we were doing something they weren’t expecting. This time, we have to assume they’re expecting us to do that very thing.”
“What’s the move, then?” Abe asked. “If you’re not going to hack into their systems, how do you think you’re going to get in?”
“By hand, so to speak,” Nathan answered. “What your team did at Asus by going into the hospital triggered a very particular Ministry security protocol. They know someone violated their security, and though they don’t know who it was, courtesy of all the protections we put in place, they will suspect it was us. We’ve got a rather long history of making ourselves a thorn in their side, as you will have gathered when you were in the Authority’s compound.” He paused as if he’d just remembered something, and turned to Corona, frowning. “Did we ever debrief them on what they saw in there?”
The Child Thief 4: Little Lies Page 24
