Shards

by F. J. R. Titchenell

  “What the hell was that?” Haley breathed.

  “I need to use your phone,” I said.

  She narrowed her eyes at me, still waiting for a real answer, but handed it over without argument.

  I flipped through it to Ben’s number. Whatever was wrong with me, whatever role he might have in it, I could still tell when there was progress to be made, real help to be had.

  Room 12. Now.

  —Mina

  The message sent, I handed the phone back and headed for the other door, away from the janitor who would still be upset with me. There was something defiant in the way Haley followed me, precisely matching every step. I didn’t try to stop her.

  8.

  Some Scum, Hold the Villainy

  Ben

  Every Thursday was Pizza Day in the Prospero High School cafeteria. Not just the standard cafeteria-grade fare—real pizza brought in from Fulci’s, the second-best pizza place in town. They only brought in a limited number of pizzas, which meant there was always a rush to get an early spot in the lunch line.

  I ran out of gym class as quickly as I could and made fourth in line.

  The only problem with this was that the third person in line was Madison Holland.

  She was a nice girl, a smart girl, a very pretty girl. She was also a very pushy girl. She seemed to find me whenever I had any free time at school and oftentimes after, finding me at the Soda Fountain of Youth or posting public messages for me online. I’d talked to Haley about her after the first week. Though she looked a little annoyed when I told her what Madison had been doing, she also looked unsurprised. She told me that Madison had gone out with a lot of guys in school and gotten rid of them just as quickly, but was otherwise harmless.

  Harmless. Right.

  “So you got any plans for homecoming?” she asked.

  “I was gonna check out the carnival and the game,” I said.

  She laughed. “You mean the annual Prospero High School Football Team Slaughter?”

  I laughed back. I’d heard stories of how legendarily bad Prospero’s team was, but since Haley would be cheering, I’d promised I’d go.

  “What I meant was, do you have any plans for after homecoming?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Go home probably. I’ve never been much for dances.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Well, if you don’t want to go to the dance, Patrick’s throwing a party. Nothing big, just some good friends, good music, and there’ll probably be some beer.”

  I knew she was holding back in an effort to try to talk me into going. Haley and Kevin were regulars at Patrick’s parties and had told me how loud they usually wound up getting.

  Still, it could be fun.

  We got our pizza and began to walk back to Kevin and Haley’s usual table. I couldn’t see Haley anywhere yet.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “Do that. You’ll have a good time, I guarantee it,” she said.

  “Do I need to ask Patrick to get an invite?” I asked.

  “You got my invitation,” she said, playfully punching me in the shoulder.

  “That’ll be fine?” I asked.

  “That’s as good as, if not better, than his. Patrick and I used to go out. He lets me do pretty much anything I want because he thinks it’ll get him to third base again,” she said casually.

  I choked. She giggled.

  At that moment, my cell phone vibrated. Thank God.

  “I gotta take this,” I said, ready to pick up the message even if it was spam.

  Room 12. Now.

  —Mina

  Room 12 was located in a small cul-de-sac of classrooms that were about as physically far from the crowd in the cafeteria as you could get without leaving school grounds. The windows were covered in a collage of class projects (a variety of civics, economics, and psychology from what I could see), making it nearly impossible to see inside.

  I tried the door. It was locked.

  I knocked. The door opened maybe an inch. A foot below my line of sight, a curious, nervous eye looked through.

  “What’s the password?” he growled.

  I said, “I’m here to see Mina.”

  “Not the password.” The door slammed shut. Mina hadn’t told me anything about a password.

  I knocked again. Again, the door opened about an inch. That eye looking through the crack.

  “What’s the password?” he growled again.

  I grabbed the door handle and pulled. The gatekeeper tried to fight, to pull the door shut, but I was much stronger. I pulled the door with all my might, swinging it open and spilling the tiny little nerd out into the hallway. He scrambled on all fours, looking up at me as if I’d just murdered his pet hamster.

  “Sorry,” I said, offering to help him up.

  “You can’t do that!” he squealed, scrambling to his feet and into the classroom. “He didn’t have the password, he can’t be here!”

  Unlike most classrooms, this one was set up around a half-dozen round tables instead of desks, with a few comfortable chairs and couches along the walls. Though there were only about fifteen kids in the room, the noise level rivaled the cafeteria’s. Most of this came from one particularly raucous table of Magic card players, slamming down their spells theatrically as they cast them and announced at the top of their lungs their superiority. The rest of the noise came from a few boys who ran around the edges of the room, throwing paper airplanes at each other. Hyperactive. There were some pockets of peace, like the two senior boys who sat on one of the couches holding hands, or the sophomore girl who sat staring intently at her sketchpad.

  If this had been the cafeteria, all eyes would have been on me when I entered. Instead, everyone kept pretty much to their own business. I spotted the table that Mina, Aldo, and an uncomfortable-looking Haley sat at, and started toward them.

  “Excuse me?” a calm voice called.

  I looked to the teacher’s desk at my side. The gatekeeper I’d knocked down stood beside a pretty teacher in her mid-20s. She motioned me to her. The placard on her desk read:

  MS. LAURIE CRAVEN.

  “He didn’t use the password!” the boy protested.

  “He doesn’t need the password, Cayden, this classroom is open to everyone,” she said pleasantly. Cayden looked scandalized and stormed off.

  “You’re new here, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Guilty as charged,” I said, laying on the charm extra thick in the hopes of getting to see Mina sooner.

  “Well then, since I’m sure you’re tired of formal welcomes by now, I will skip that step and get to the point. I open up this classroom for anyone who wants to have their lunch in a safe refuge, free of any conflict or persecution. You do understand the need for there to be a safe zone like this, don’t you?” she asked.

  “Very much so, ma’am,” I said.

  “Good,” she said. “I don’t need to tell you how difficult high school can be under the best of circumstances, and most of the people who come here aren’t in the best of circumstances. This room provides them an environment where they can feel free to be themselves for an hour a day. Do you understand?”

  Her pleasant smile and tone of voice never wavered, but it was impossible to ignore the faint threat in her words.

  “Entirely,” I said.

  “Very good. Then all I ask is that, while in here, you observe all school rules, leave any conflicts outside, and treat everyone with the respect they deserve. If you can abide by those conditions, you are welcome here anytime you’d like,” she said.

  “I don’t think that’ll be a problem, ma’am,” I said, meaning every word.

  “I don’t think so either,” she said earnestly, letting me go.

  I went to Mina’s table.

  I grabbed a seat and was met with an odd mix of reactions; Mina looked as focused and grave as ever, Haley looked like I’d just ridden in on a white horse to rescue her from a dragon, and Aldo smiled up at me, laughing at my discomfort in t
his room.

  “Like our little hideaway, Ben?” he asked.

  Ducking beneath one of the hyperactives as he leapt by to catch one of the airplanes, I said, “I feel like I just walked into the Mos Eisley Cantina.”

  He looked over his shoulder nervously. “Don’t say that too loud around here; someone’s bound to correct you on the cantina’s real name, and in a much less friendly way than me.”

  “Thanks for the safety tip,” I said. I looked to Mina. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s nothing too out of the ordinary, but it is a useful break we need to take advantage of,” Mina started.

  “Not too out of the ordinary?” Haley repeated. “You don’t consider getting a death threat out of the ordinary?”

  “Death threats,” Mina corrected. “And no, I don’t. I get them all the time.”

  It took a second for all the words to sink in. I let them work their way through my brain, checking out every word, making sure I’d heard each one correctly. Once I realized that I had indeed heard everything correctly, I responded with all the restraint I could.

  “WHAT?”

  The room fell silent, all eyes on us.

  Aldo stood up. “We’re all right, just having a bit of a disagreement about who shot first!”

  That seemed enough of an explanation to bring the room back to its previous level of activity, even if it did briefly start a chant of “go Team Greedo!” from the Magic table.

  “You’re getting death threats?” I asked, still trying to wrap my head around what she had said.

  “Yes,” Mina replied.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about these?” I asked.

  “They never came up,” Mina said without any irony.

  Ever since the school year had started, I could tell that she had been holding back on me. She was hardly even speaking to me outside of gym and our are-we-still-human check-ins lately, and I still wasn’t entirely satisfied that her reasons were scheduling-related. I knew her well enough to understand that what she was saying now at least made sense to her. The threats hadn’t come up, so she hadn’t mentioned them. I knew that getting angry with her would do no good, but it just felt so easy.

  Take a breath. Relax. See what you can make out of this.

  “What kind of threats?” I asked.

  She slid a wet envelope across the table to me. I opened it, pulled out the soggy newspaper clippings. One an obituary of a youth pastor named Bradford Park from a newspaper in Tampa, the other a brief article about how the man, described as perfectly friendly and healthy, had been shot multiple times by the police after he had threatened to set his live-in girlfriend on fire. Probable suicide by cop. The picture that accompanied the article was of a man in his mid-20s, a surfer bum with spiked hair, tattoos and one of the friendliest smiles you could imagine.

  That note, written in the margin, Guess who I’m saving for last?

  It sent a chill up my spine.

  “Who’s Bradford Park?” I asked.

  “I told you once that there were people in Prospero who knew about Splinters, who fought them before me. He was one of them,” she said.

  “He’s not the only one, is he?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “All told, eight previous hunters from Prospero have been killed in a series of accidents or unexplained suicides. Given that all of these fatalities have occurred since we rescued Haley from the Warehouse, it is likely that these killings are a retaliatory act.”

  That made a frightening amount of sense. It also brought up an unsettling question. “From the Splinters or Slivers?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Slivers?” Aldo asked.

  “Later,” I said.

  “So does that mean we’re all in danger? That by wanting to fight them we’ve put ourselves on, like, some sort of death list?” Haley asked.

  “I don’t know, but I don’t think so,” Mina said. “All of those who have been killed so far were members of the old organization, Splinter hunters from before the Network.”

  “Are there any out there still left who we could ask for help?” Haley asked.

  “Or warn at least?” Aldo added. “God knows I’d want to know if I was on some kind of ‘death list.’”

  Haley glared at him. Aldo looked defensive. “What? I liked it! It’s a good term!”

  Haley’s glare softened, her defenses dropping enough for her to playfully stick out her tongue at Aldo.

  Mina spoke up. “Most of these people have done everything possible to stay off the grid once they left Prospero. Contacting them can be incredibly difficult.”

  “We have to try,” I said. “Aldo’s right, they do need to be warned, at the very least.”

  “Those arrangements have already been made,” Mina said.

  Once again, she’d done something without keeping me informed. Sensing my anger, she quickly added, “I apologize for not telling you about any of this sooner, Ben. I didn’t say anything about the death threats because I do get them all the time. It’s the Splinters’ way of keeping me on my toes, and if you haven’t noticed, I’m still alive. As for the hunters, I kept you in the dark on them because I have to keep everyone in the dark on them. I’ve made promises to these people, promises long before I ever knew you, to keep their secrets safe. You of all people should understand the importance of a promise.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I do,” I admitted.

  She nodded. “As soon as I knew what was going on for sure, I set about contacting them through the agreed-upon channels. Anonymous contact is a time-consuming process, but it is being made.”

  That was something, at least.

  “You said something about a break? How you got something useful out of the last threat?” I asked.

  Her eyes brightened, some. “This one was put in my gym locker, during or very shortly after class. They set off the sprinklers, getting the note wet, and placed it inside with the otherwise dry contents of my backpack. They were here during the brief few minutes that the sprinkler had been set off. Whoever’s been making these threats, whoever has been killing the hunters, is likely here, at school.”

  Now it was my turn to be skeptical. “Are you sure? There’s no way anyone else could have gotten in from outside?”

  “Not a chance,” Aldo said. “There are no exterior windows in either of the locker rooms and the side entrance has been blocked off by stalled construction since last spring—the school’s gotten a lot of crap from the fire marshal about that. The only way into the gym would have been through the front doors.”

  “And we would have seen it,” I said. I tried to remember if I’d seen anyone come into the gym while we were playing volleyball.

  “And it’s probably a boy. Or maybe a teacher,” Haley added. With our attention turned to her, she quickly added, “A girl wouldn’t have needed a distraction to get in, right? She could just walk right in there, look like she belongs and plant the note, so it’s probably gotta be a boy or a teacher, right?”

  “Good deduction,” Mina said. Haley smiled, proud.

  “So they’re at school, what does that give us?” I asked.

  “They’re at school, and they’re probably a very recent replacement,” Mina said. “I’ve never received threats quite like this before. These are too creative. Too personal. This is someone new.”

  “Someone who’s traveled to Tampa recently?” I suggested.

  Mina shook her head. “They could be using the portals we saw in the Warehouse to perform the executions. The travel wouldn’t have to be noticeable.”

  “So we have someone at school, who was taken recently, probably right after we rescued Haley, who might be wet right now unless they know how to use a towel, and is probably a boy or a teacher. That doesn’t narrow it down much,” I said.

  “Well, there is a way we can narrow it down further,” Mina suggested a bit hesitantly.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Mina looked first to Haley, then to me.
>
  “I need you to talk to Courtney Haddad.”

  9.

  New Assets and Other Necessary Evils

  Mina

  He would want me to destroy it.

  No number of years could have made me uncertain of that. Never mind that the card contained nothing but a sequence of numbers, uncrackable without prior knowledge of our system of twelve randomly rotating book codes. Never mind that all it translated to was a time and date, a set of unmarked geographic coordinates, and the words “bring the new boy.”

  The Old Man would consider even that much information a perilous exposure, and he would expect me to burn the card itself as soon as my eyes recorded it.

  It wasn’t the nest full of fluffy baby birds on the front wishing “Happy Seventeenth Birthday to a Very Special Girl” that made me keep it intact in my bag’s inner lining. The prepackaged sentiment was almost as wasted as the crate of my favorite chocolate protein bars currently rotting in the school dumpster with Dad’s card still attached, or my mother’s fantasy that the replacement smartphone and case of nicely sharp luxury fountain pens she’d bought me would be used for social and academic purposes respectively.

  I tried to pretend I was keeping the card because it was a harmless way to annoy The Old Man. He certainly deserved that. The truth was that I didn’t trust the recordings of my eyes anymore. I wanted to be able to go back and touch it if I started to doubt that it had ever really been there.

  My birthday, the day of the Homecoming carnival, was a pretty good one for me—hardly any hallucinations at all after I left home in the morning and found the card under the seat of my bike. Yet I did end up touching it several times, always with relief and an irritating dose of guilt, as I coordinated the counselor’s office surveillance operation.

  All Prospero High students are scheduled for a mandatory checkup meeting with the counselor once every two months, more often in some problem cases. If anyone had shown sudden behavioral changes, they would show in the counselor’s records. And if students were being replaced by Splinters with particular priorities, like the job of threatening me, rather than simply to blend in and live stolen lives, some behavioral changes were likely to show.