by S. S. Segran
“Hey, what’s that?” he demanded.
The other youth spun around. “What?”
“Thought I saw Number Three pulling a face, but that might’ve been the lighting.”
“I’ll go check. You’re sure nothing’s off here?”
Kenzo shot him an irritated look. “I know this system, Jackson. Everything’s fine. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t second-guess me like that, especially with management watching.”
The other Counselor backed away in apology. Once he left to check on Number Three, Kenzo exhaled. Still using his back to block Arianna and Dr. Nate’s view of his target monitor, he raced through ways to hide Piper’s unfolding results. The one he might be able to swing was duplicating the image of another SONE’s data and saving it as hers. Then he’d need some time to take a few others’ results and splice them into the first one to make it unique.
But there’s such a short window after the session’s done before the results are sent out, he thought, sweat slicking his palms. The room was suddenly too hot, even with all the cooling units. How am I supposed to do this?
He glanced up from the monitors at Piper. You’re impervious, like me. No, not impervious. The software picked you up. Which means you’ve started to break free from the mind-warping. The weight of the realization hit him and his heart did somersaults. I’m not alone. I’m not alone. I’m not alone!
As the session came to a close, Kenzo softly called out to the Counselor who’d approached him earlier. The youth trotted over. “Yeah?”
“Could you head out and see if Ms. Abdul and Dr. Nate are still there?”
“Um . . . sure. Why?”
Kenzo scrambled to put together a lie. “I—it’s—there’s something I’d like to discuss with them, but I can’t leave the workstation yet.”
The SONE looked about ready to tell him to do it himself, then seemed to remember that Kenzo was the head of their echelon. He stepped out of the room but poked his head back in only a moment later. “Just saw them at the far end of the hall, at the top of the stairs. I think they’re heading out for lunch. Want me to call them back?”
Kenzo was about to collapse in relief. “No! No, it’s alright. I’ll catch them later. Thanks.”
The rest of the Counselors helped the SONEs out of their seats, and as the youths filed out of the room, Kenzo caught Piper’s attention by clearing his throat as she neared the workstation. She looked at him, coolly lifting a brow. He gave a polite nod, holding her gaze for a second longer so he would be imprinted in her memory, then returned his attention to the monitors.
His hands were nearly a blur as he crafted a new brain pattern under Piper’s name, getting it done just in time for it to be dispatched with the others. He fell into the rolling chair behind him, sliding a hand through his hair.
You need to give yourself more credit, Igarashi, he thought. You’re actually kind of awesome.
* * *
“Ms. Abdul,” Dr. Nate declared, making the woman beside him jump as they headed toward the administrative building. “I would like to ’ave a meeting with that young man, the leader of the Counselors. Do make it ’appen.”
“Oh!” There was no mistaking how proud Arianna sounded. Dr. Nate made note of it. “Yes, for sure. When?”
“I’ll let you know. It will be . . . partly in celebration, and to get to know ’im more. But don’t let ’im know about it yet. I’d also like to ’ave a quick lunch with ’im today, just a short chit-chat.”
“Alright. I can arrange to have the conference room—”
“No, the cafeteria.”
Arianna’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? In front of other SONEs?”
“That’s precisely why I want to ’ave it there. Let them see what an example ’e is. It’s good to reward commitment publicly.”
As they stepped through the door of the administrative building, a short boy hurried up to them and passed Dr. Nate a folder filled with a several papers before scurrying away.
“What . . .” Arianna started.
“I ’ope you won’t mind,” Dr. Nate said, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. “I asked one of your urchins to gather Mr. Igarashi’s file. I’m curious about the boy.”
There was a pause before Arianna spoke. “They don’t have clearance to access those kinds of documents.”
“Don’t worry. I gave the green light.”
He could sense Arianna seething about the way he had gone around her, but he approved of how she held her tongue. He opened the file and scanned the pages as they turned left, strolling down a long corridor with rows of doors on either side.
“Interesting,” he said. “So Mr. Igarashi was telling the truth about being interested in my work. It says ’ere that the boy was studying in the field of neuroscience before we acquired ’im, specializing in cognition and memory.”
“Of course he was telling the truth,” Arianna said. “What reason would he have to lie?”
Someone’s very attached, Dr. Nate observed. His finger slid down the edge of the documents as he read on. “Japanese-American, top of all ’is classes, perfect physical ’ealth but PTSD from . . . goodness. What a mess. Murdered father, and a mother ’oo may as well be dead in ’er condition. Awful. But I’ve seen other SONEs dealt worse ’ands.”
His eyes caught a date on one of the papers. “Mm, looks like Mr. Igarashi will be turning nineteen before the New Year. And come January, ’e would’ve been with us for two years. Amazing. Ah, what’s this? Ren Igarashi . . . the cousin?”
“Yes,” Arianna said. “She was also studying neuroscience in the same university. They’d received hordes of scholarships.”
“They sound like prodigies.”
“You could say that. But they are more than just their minds. Ren is a very, very sweet girl. A social butterfly. And Kenzo is a beacon of light despite all his suffering. They’ve both had it rough but with the repurposing, they’ve adapted well. And truthfully, while all the SONEs are wonderful, these two are models. Hard-working, kind, go-getters.”
“We only picked the best of the best, Ms. Abdul. I’m not surprised.” Dr. Nate snapped the folder shut and tucked in under his arm. “I’ll look into the rest of this later. I ’ave a video conference to attend.”
He marched into one of the empty offices without waiting for a response. As he got himself set up for his meeting, he thought, Mr. Igarashi, you and I may possibly do some wonderful work for the new world once this is all over and we return to the surface.
“So . . . is anyone else seeing the Eye of Sauron, or is it just me?” Kody asked.
“No.” Mariah hung back at the top of the knoll. “I see it too.”
Deverell gently pushed the friends forward. “That gargantuan tower, my endearing pop culture know-it-alls, is a solar receiver. But it does feel a bit Tolkien-esque, mm?”
“You could say that,” Mariah agreed. “I guess that makes Kody and me Frodo and Sam.”
“Who am I, then? Gandalf?”
“Gollum.”
Deverell snorted a laugh. “Out with you.”
Kody settled on the grass and removed a pair of binoculars from his pack, handing them over to Mariah, then zoomed in his vision toward the site. If they went by the knowledge they’d gathered so far, it was safe to assume that the New Zealand Sanctuary lay beneath the solar plant a mile away from the hill they had claimed as their operating base. The station, located on Cape Runaway beside Whangaparaoa Bay, was owned by a subsidiary of Phoenix. While scoping out the place online, Deverell had explained that it supplied thermal energy for merchant power to the electricity grid.
“How does this actually work?” Kody asked. A small pang flared inside him; if Aari had gone with them, he would have prattled on about the station’s functions without prompting.
At that moment, Kody wanted nothing more than for his friends to be in one place where they could laugh together, be together, face their fate together.
Deverell sat on Ko
dy’s other side and indicated the circular rows of tilted mirrors. “See those? The mirrors are driven by software to move and track the sun and reflect its light to the top of the tower. That way, they can concentrate light onto our friend Sauron, a.k.a the receiver.”
“There’s so many of them,” Mariah said. “At least a thousand, I think. And they all move?”
“Yeah. And the tower transfers the thermal energy to those big tanks next to it containing molten salt.”
“Molten . . . salt?”
“It’s used as a medium to store heat. Helps to keep the plant generating electricity for a while when there’s no sunlight. Gareth and I once dumped a good bit in an old aquarium filled with water. Know what happened?”
Kody and Mariah shook their heads.
Deverell grinned roguishly. “It exploded. A proper one with a bang, water flying, glass blowing up everywhere—the whole works.”
“What I would give to see that firsthand,” Kody lamented. He struggled to remember what he’d learned during his science classes, sifting through hazy memories from what felt like a lifetime ago. “So it’s a, uh, chemical reaction?”
“Basically. When the hot molten salt comes in contact with water, it heats it up so fast that the water goes from liquid to a high-pressure steam in the blink of an eye. In turn, it creates shockwaves and explosions. Quite dangerous, but lots of fun to see.”
Kody rested his chin on a fist. “Would it be bad if I said I’m learning more out here than I sometimes do in school?”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Deverell said. “I’ll also pretend I’m not pleased that you proclaimed you’ve learned something from me.”
“Hey, Kody?” Mariah said, peering through the binoculars. “Could use another set of eyes here.”
He hadn’t realized that he’d retracted his vision back to normal and hurriedly zoomed in. “Sorry.”
They scanned the site in silence. The air was perfectly still and smelled of the mud flats exposed by the receding morning tide, forcing Kody to breathe through his mouth. His nose was sensitive enough to pungent smells even without activating his sensory abilities.
There was scarcely a soul around. A couple of wooden buildings, most likely storage and administration, lay to the left on the outskirts of the mirrors. A main road ran between the hills and the site, with only two tracks splitting off toward the solar station.
“This might be harder than we thought,” Kody said. “There’s nothing there that looks like an entrance to the Sanctuary.”
Deverell, who’d produced a monocular for himself, made popping sounds with his lips. “Hm. Maybe we should head down and sniff about.”
“With our luck, someone will probably jump out just as we get there,” Mariah muttered. “I’d feel safer staying put.”
As it turned out, though, there was still no sign of life when noon came by. Mariah’s face twisted. “Are you kidding me? What is this? Every other site has people around. And guards. Why are they so cool about it here?”
Kody retracted himself from his abilities to give his eyes a break. “Y’know, I don’t think I wanna look this particular gift horse in the mouth.”
“It is quite common for these stations to be remotely monitored,” Deverell said. “If Phoenix positioned a bunch of their security personnel here, it would likely raise a few eyebrows.”
“Bet they’ve got a butt-load of guards inside the Sanctuary to make up for it.” Kody scooped out a few bananas from his backpack and tossed a couple to Mariah and Deverell before taking one for himself.
As they ate, he kept watch on the site. His free hand absently reached for the staff resting beside him. It was strange—he hadn’t had the weapon for long, a month at the most, but now he felt as naked without it as he did when he forgot his phone or wallet. It had become an extension of him, filling him with the same sense of security he had experienced when practicing with an old bo at the Lodge.
He thought back warmly to the group’s most recent stay in Dema-Ki. Nal had helped him fashion his staff, and Akol had trained him personally. After witnessing the way the older youth had swooped in to save the friends from rabid wolves the previous year, Kody could think of no one better to teach him the ways of his weapon.
Movement at the site below made him hit pause on his reminiscing. A young man in a black uniform emerged from one of the two small buildings, a handgun on his hip. Though Kody had long grown accustomed to his abilities, he was still amazed now and then. With his telescopic vision activated, he could see every detail about the guard with intense clarity. The traces of bristle on his pale face, the fine brown hair that passed the earlobes, a loose thread on the collar of his shirt.
“Eleven o’clock,” Kody said.
Mariah and Deverell picked up their eyepieces as the guard headed toward the shed facing the team. He pushed through the flimsy-looking door, and Kody saw the glint of a closed steel entrance in the shadows. Then the shed door started to swing shut.
“’Riah!” he hissed. “Can you hold the door open, or is it out of your reach?”
She rose to her knees. “Let me try.”
Her back arched stiffly as she focused, and to Kody’s delight the door remained half open. The guard, facing away, didn’t notice. Kody watched closely as he swiped a card over a scanner and punched in a code, committing the movement of the guard’s finger to memory.
When the steel entrance opened, allowing the man to enter, Mariah let the outer door shut. Kody pulled out his phone and replayed the guard’s strokes on the keypad. “The code to the Sanctuary is 1106, but without an access card it won’t do us any good.”
Deverell bounced to his feet and stuck a small device in his ear. “Suppose I’m up, then.”
Mariah looked up at him, concern drawing lines on her face. “You sure you don’t want us to come along? You’re pretty much going in blind. You might need some backup.”
“Nah, I’ll be fine.”
“Be careful of the cameras,” Kody said. “There aren’t many, but still.”
“I know. I saw a couple around the Eye of Sauron, and one right above the shed door.” Deverell smiled at them, then took off at a lope. With his long legs, he reached the bottom of the hill in no time. He skulked and weaved past rolls of fencing and empty wooden crates into the open site with exceptional ease, making it abundantly clear that it was not his first time infiltrating enemy territory.
“It’s like he’s taking a walk in a park,” Mariah said, sharing in Kody’s musing. She removed a radio from her bag and pressed a button. “Dev, can you hear me?”
The Sentry’s voice came over the speaker. “Perfectly.”
“Everything looks good from up here.”
“Alright. I’ll be laying in wait behind the shed. Out.”
“I wish we were the ones going in,” Kody moaned once Mariah had put the radio down. “I feel useless.”
“Oh, we could totally do it,” she said. “But Dev is literally made for this. If it was us, we’d have to sneak in past whoever’s on the other side of the door, then try to get our hands on uniforms the SONEs are wearing while hoping they don’t realize we’re not one of them. And then we’d probably have to go looking in areas that are off-limits to find Jag. Having Dev with us just streamlines things.”
“I guess.”
Mariah tapped the toe of her sneaker against his ankle. “Hey, come on. Infiltration into places like this isn’t really our job. We’re supposed to stop Reyor. It’s always been that. The Sentries are here to help us, remember? It’s like . . . we’re the placekickers, and they’re the linebackers.”
Kody emitted a mock gasp of astonishment. “Oh, em, gee. Did you just use football terms?”
“Har har. It’s what I get for having best friends who used to play.”
“Man, seems like that was forever ago.”
“Do you miss it?”
Kody tried to push her foot away, but she dodged his grip and tapped his ankle harder. “What
,” he said, “you mean football? School?”
“Everything.”
“I dunno. I think I’ve always been the type to ride along with whatever’s happening. Like, oh, I’m in school? Okay. Oh, now I’m part of a prophecy with my friends? Weird, but alright, let’s go.”
“If I remember correctly,” Mariah said, “you were one of the outspoken voices who said they wanted to escape Dema-Ki when we were first taken in.”
He shushed her before falling silent for a few moments. “Sometimes, when I think about it too much, it feels like someone’s jerked me by the collar and I’m having an out-of-body experience. It sinks in just how crazy and dangerous this whole thing is. When that happens, I sort of wanna back out.”
“Me too. Life doesn’t always go the way you expect it to, but even this is a bit extreme.”
Kody finally caught Mariah’s foot and waggled it to and fro. She yanked it away, tucking it safely under her, and stuck her tongue out at him. He did the same, then reclined on his hands. “What about you? Do you miss the old life?”
She quietly studied a small scar on her inner elbow before answering. “I do. I miss the normality of it all, the safety of routines. And I knew who I was—a student trying to figure out her future, who didn’t have to worry about anything except grades and chores.”
“You kinda said the same thing back in Tanzania, about not knowing how you fit into . . . what did you call it? The whole ‘saving-the-world dynamic’?”
Mariah’s cheeks reddened. “I regret mentioning it. It’s not a good look, airing out my insecurities like that.”
“Don’t,” Kody said. “Aren’t people always saying this the age we’re supposed to figure out who we are?”
“But this is different.”
“Yeah . . . yeah, it is.”
The shed door opened, interrupting them. The same guard who had strolled in earlier tromped out. He’d only taken a few steps when Kody’s heightened hearing picked up a whistle. The guard froze, hand snapping to his hip. Warily, he drew his pistol and rounded the building, disappearing from sight. A few minutes later, he reappeared, a jovial bounce in his step.
