Allison looked around. “We better assume we have some time.”
“So what now?”
“We need to give them something bigger than us to worry about.”
“Like?”
“Can you get us to the Ward without setting security on us?”
Zack smiled. “That I think I can do. It isn’t really that far into the restricted area. But let’s get inside first.” He nodded toward the entrance to the classroom building.
“Why?”
“I need a faculty washroom.” Allison stared at him and he laughed. “I know, should have thought of it before I left. But, considering that our mutual interference isn’t going to let you telekinese that pill out of me, I’ve decided to resort to more primitive methods.”
Allison found herself making a face when she realized what he meant.
“Come on,” Zack said, taking her arm. “They’ll be less suspicious if it looks like we’re making out or something.”
7:45 AM
John stopped working at the window in response to a knocking at the bathroom door. Macy’s voice came from beyond. “Hey in there, I need to use the bathroom.”
John glanced briefly at the vent he’d doctored. He waited until Macy pounded again. “Hey in there.”
After another pointed delay, John said, “I’m in the shower.” His voice carried a feigned irritation that didn’t show in his expression.
“Come on, this is an emergency. I’ve been waiting fifteen minutes.”
Another pointed pause.
“Hello?” Macy said.
John let out a sigh that again didn’t match his expression. “Let me grab a towel.” He stood up and reached in to the still running shower and shut off the water. The fog in the bathroom began to dissipate immediately with the breeze from the now-open window. John was still fully dressed, and he made no move for a towel.
“Ok,” John said. “The door’s open.”
Macy opened the door, rushing in and slamming it behind her. “Hey!” John said, “You could wait for me to get out of here—” He glanced again at the blinded camera.
“I said it was an emergency,” Macy replied as she went to the window. She looked at it and glanced at John. John nodded at her.
The window Macy faced had taken John nearly half an hour to open. The effort showed. The only tool he’d had to work with was a pair of nail clippers. With them, he’d unscrewed four small metal contacts from the window sash, pulling them and their connecting wires out from their mounts. Now, buried in those mounts were lengths of wire that John had earlier stolen from a lamp cord.
The ends of the four lengths of lamp cord led up to similar contacts in the window frame, preventing the circuit from being broken by having the window open.
Beyond the window was a screen. It was operable, but instead of sliding it open, John had laboriously cut a hole though it with the clippers.
Macy looked over his handiwork for a few moments, then she slowly pulled herself through the window. John waited a few moments for her to clear the space under the window, and then he followed.
Once his feet touched the ground outside, he reached through the screen and gingerly pulled the window shut again behind them. He’d anchored the wires firmly around the mounting screws, none came loose. Even so, when the window slid home, he exhaled with visible relief.
“Safe?” Macy whispered.
John nodded and said, “For the moment. There’s no visual surveillance beyond the roads and the immediate area around the security fences—” After a long pause, he said, “What does she think she’s doing?”
“Escaping, like us.”
John shook his head. “Macy, I ran the security for this place. I know where everything is, and I don’t know how she thinks she’s getting out of the middle of the complex.”
Macy shook her head. “We slipped out of the house easy enough—”
“We slipped out of an employee’s residence. The security on the students is much denser.” John looked off down a rank of backyards that marched off to a tall chain-link fence. “We also haven’t managed to slip anywhere yet.”
Macy followed his gaze. “Now what?”
“Get close to the airstrip without being seen.” John started moving across the backyards, keeping an eye to the windows. He whispered, mostly to himself, “Allie, please God, know what you’re doing.”
7:50 AM
Zack led her through the classroom building and Allison couldn’t help noticing the cameras that peppered every intersection. She told herself that it wasn’t time to be nervous yet, she hadn’t yet stepped out of the area that she was allowed. She hadn’t done anything that would set security on her. Not yet.
Zack led her up three flights of stairs and to a men’s room door. To her chagrin, Zack pushed her through the door. She had a brief wave of fear. She shook herself loose from Zack and said, in a shaky voice, “Don’t do that.”
Zack backed in the direction of the stalls. “What?”
Allison folded her arms across her chest and said. “Never yank me through another door.”
“Sorry. Look, wait there. I’m pretty sure that security doesn’t have this place monitored.”
Allison waited there, standing just on the inside of the men’s room door. She had to tell herself a number of times that Zack was not Chuck. The only things they had in common were age and gender.
Allison had to cover her face when Zack started retching.
Another way to get off their drug, Allison thought. Not something you’d want to do every day.
Allison wanted to think about something else, so she tried to feel out with her teek, experimentally, to find out how badly Zack’s presence was interfering with it. To her relief, she found that Zack’s presence wasn’t damping her ability at the moment.
That made her feel better, just using the sense was a liberating feeling. Wafer-like tiles separated by ephemeral grout, porcelain that felt like some iced pastry, and—
To Allison’s surprise, there was a blind spot to her teek sense. There was a roughly spherical patch almost ten feet in diameter blocking out part of the bathroom. Allison had to open her eyes and allow her other senses to leak in before she realized that the blind spot was centered on Zack.
So that’s how it works, Allison thought. She felt she could understand what Zack was talking about now, as far as interference went. She couldn’t affect anything in that dead area around Zack, and if she actually stood within that dead area, she would find her teek slogging through the same clay as it did last night. Having a visual picture made it much easier to understand.
And that must be why Jessica never attacked me directly, for all that she was trying to kill me.
Zack finished retching in the stall and stumbled out accompanied by a flushing sound. He went over to the sinks, muttering, “That’s not as easy as it looks.”
He turned on the water and began cupping water into his mouth and spitting it back into the sink. He didn’t bother taking off his gloves to do so.
“Are you all right?” Allison asked.
Zack nodded into the sink. “I hope that made a difference, I’d hate to do that for nothing.” He straightened up and looked into the mirror, wiping his mouth.
Allison looked at the stall. “Why didn’t you try this before?”
Zack’s smartass smile was back. “Aesthetic considerations aside— First, I have no idea if the drug’ll wear off in time to do any good. Unlike you, my talent’s all or nothing, I can’t ‘sort of’ levitate, any mental fog and I’m grounded. Second, doing that is real unsubtle. I figure I have one shot before they figure it out.”
Allison nodded, but she saw in Zack’s expression something else. She thought that there was at least one more reason he hadn’t made the attempt beforehand; he was scared, and he didn’t want to make the attempt alone. He’d probably been ready to try this for a long time. All he’d needed was someone to push him.
“Ok,” Allison said, “You’re go
ing to lead us to the Ward now.”
Zack nodded. “I just have to think about how we slip out of the student area.” He stood looking thoughtful for a moment. “How badly does my presence interfere with what you do?”
“I’m okay if you’re ten feet away from me and whatever I’m trying to do.”
“Hm… So tilting a camera isn’t a problem for you?”
“You have something in mind?”
“We don’t even have to leave the building until we’re into the green area.”
TWENTY EIGHT
NAVARRO COUNTY, TX: Wednesday November 3, 1999
8:00 AM
Jessica felt ill.
The whole set of goons had accompanied her to the glass-walled reception area to await Mr. Stone’s pleasure. During the wait, waves of nausea and dizziness enfolded her. She’d broken down what they’d drugged her with, but it still had an effect on her body.
She doubted that the orderlies would care how she felt, even if she told them. They were there to keep her under control. She doubted Fred was here with her well-being in mind.
To hell with all of them, Jessica thought as she grit her teeth against a rushing headache.
It seemed that the reception area had been in stasis for hours before the receptionist told them that Mr. Stone was ready.
Finally ready to meet his wayward child. She couldn’t manage even an ironic smile at the thought. The anger was too great. When she stood and checked the large chromed clock face above the desk, to see how long she’d been waiting for him, the clock told her that it had only been twenty minutes.
It had seemed much longer, and the distortion she felt in her time sense only deepened the emotions she felt.
Fred, the security man, led the way down the art-plastered hallway. The orderlies followed, stationed behind her. She kept her gaze fixed on the back of Fred’s neck. Paranormal sensations leaked into her awareness. She felt the ebb and flow of particles within his flesh, something like she’d imagine plankton in a swirling ocean current might look like.
The headache and the nausea weren’t dimming her abilities in the least. Her senses seemed to hone themselves on the pain. At that thought, she did manage a near-invisible smile.
Fred turned and held up his hand outside Mr. Stone’s door. “Wait here a moment.” She hated the reassuring tone in his voice.
He opened the massive door and slipped inside, leaving Jessica out here with the orderlies. The door shut slowly enough that Jessica could hear the beginning of an argument.
“…Mr. Stone I don’t think it’s a good idea to—”
The door cut off Fred’s voice, and the soundproofing was good enough that Jessica couldn’t even tell that anyone continued speaking; much less what they said after that.
However, she could guess. Stone liked to see kids alone, especially when he had some grand point to make. He liked captive audiences, and he didn’t like divided attention. Of course Fred wouldn’t like the idea of putting him alone with her, even if she was drugged.
Fred was right.
But, in the end, Fred wasn’t in charge. He opened the door a few minutes later, a disgusted expression on his face. He waved Jessica inside.
She walked in, and the door closed behind her, shutting her up alone with Mr. Stone.
8:05 AM
Allison and Zack didn’t talk once they left the bathroom. Zack had explained everything to her before they left the one area he was certain wasn’t bugged. Allison felt her heart racing as they wove their way through the classroom building.
The corridors were still mostly empty, though they now passed the occasional office where teachers were preparing classes. At one point they even passed one of the PRI faculty in the hall. The man greeted them in passing, and it took all of Allison’s self-control to return a “good morning” that didn’t sound like a panicked gasp.
They were still in the blue area, the place where they presumably had free rein. Zack had said that even if they were paying special attention to her movements, she would have to fall out of view for an extended time before security started worrying. Allison hoped that when security panicked, they’d have no idea where she was, and by the time they had an idea, they’d have other problems.
That was the theory anyway.
But what kept running through her mind was the fiasco she had started when she had gone home to try and save Mom. She hadn’t had the best of luck with impulsive schemes like this.
Great time for second thoughts, Allison chided herself. If I’m really lucky, Dad and Macy are already at the airstrip.
She could start doubting herself, but she couldn’t very well turn back now. No matter what happened, she had to stick this through to the end.
Together they made it to the stairwell Zack had told her about. It was one of the few interior transitions between security levels that didn’t have a permanent human observer stationed to it. Up the stairs were more classrooms, but down the stairs entered a green area that Zack said was storage and maintenance.
When they entered the stairwell, Allison felt a brief surge of panic, the same as when Zack had pulled her into the bathroom. She saw the concrete steps and froze. She stood there hyperventilating for a second, and when Zack touched her she almost screamed aloud.
Zack looked concerned, but he didn’t say anything, which meant he was still worried about microphones. Allison had to keep telling herself that this was a different stairway, and Zack was a different person. But only the conscious part of her mind seemed to agree with her. The rest of her body seemed to insist on having a panic attack.
She kept breathing deeply, waiting for the spike of a migraine, and waved Zack aside. What she was supposed to do next needed him to be more than ten feet away from her…
It took Zack a few moments to move. He seemed unwilling to leave her. The delay made Allison want to scream, but he finally did move, freeing her teek.
Feeling out into the stairwell drained the emotion, as if the act distanced her from the place. Feeling the insides of everything— the cinder-block, the metal railing, the concrete stairs— seemed to lessen the impact of the object. To her teek, the solid surface everything displayed was illusory.
After a few minutes, Allison had forgotten her distress and was concentrating, eyes closed, on groping for a camera that was out of view down the stairs.
Zack had told her two important things about this stairwell. First, the landing just inside the door, where they stood, was a blind spot. The other side of the solid fire door was covered by a camera, but on this side they had to go a half-flight in one direction or the other for a camera to see them.
Second, the cameras in here activated and panned based on motion sensors, which made sense in a little-traveled area. This meant that the cameras slept until activated, and if they were disabled before then, the guards monitoring wouldn’t know something was wrong until they actually checked the camera.
Of course, most people couldn’t get close enough to disable a camera without activating it. Allison didn’t have that restriction on her. She found it below her with her teek.
It was far enough away that sensing it took some concentration. But, that aside, it was easy to distinguish from the matter around it. She could feel the thin skin of the metal box, and the ephemeral electronics the skin protected, the skeletal armature mounting it to the cinder-block wall, and— most importantly, the threads of the camera’s wiring snaking through the armature and into the wall.
It wasn’t far enough away that pulling those wires free cost her any real mental effort.
She opened her eyes once she was confident that the camera below them was blind. “Come on,” she mouthed to Zack, and she started down. Zack followed closely as she stepped over the chain marking the separation of the blue and green areas.
The chain was deceptively innocuous. The only sign that it marked anything significant was the fact that a placard hung from it reading, “absolutely no admittance.”
Once the
y crossed that line, their margin for error had diminished to nothing. If any Prometheus guards came across them now, they would almost certainly face the same fate as Jessica had. Please, Dad, Macy, be there.
When they passed the landing below, the camera let them pass, blinded and inert. All she had to do was get them both past three more cameras and they would be outside again.
8:10 AM
Jessica sat wordlessly, staring at Mr. Stone. He had gone into a reprise of his vision for the new age of mankind, and how they were on the cusp of a Change greater than any one of them. Jessica didn’t really listen. All she could think of was how he loved to hear himself talk.
Stone walked back and forth in front of his desk, pausing to lean on his cane whenever he wanted to emphasize a point. For the first time she really noticed how his distant expression reminded her of her father.
“I understand how you might be hurt,” Stone said. “But just because we’ve found another Class III doesn’t mean we value you less. Everyone here is an integral part of the whole.”
Behind Stone, a small wisp of white smoke emerged from the phone and the intercom.
Stone was oblivious to it. He kept talking. “You can’t abandon our work here, not after how far we’ve come. I can’t understand how you can turn away from us when we’re on the cusp of a great awakening…”
“You don’t understand anything,” Jessica whispered coldly.
Stone stopped and looked at her. It was the first time he had looked directly at her since he’d started speaking. “What do you mean?”
Jessica stood, and for the first time noticed that when he leaned on the cane, she was as tall as he was. She could look him in the eye. It was surprising, as if the impression of size that Stone gave was as much a fraud as everything else about him.
“I’m not one of your disposable children.”
For the first time since she had first seen him, Howard Stone looked surprised. Then he looked angry. “None of my children are disposable—”
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