by John Conroe
Granted, it was taken during a training exercise in the desert and Caeco’s hair was buzzed short in a military-grade crew cut. Not to mention that her dull gray combat fatigues looked little like anything these girls wore. But it was the best picture she had, mostly because she’d taken it herself.
Caeco had always been one of her projects. Fresh off her first successful assignments, she’d been tasked with overseeing security for the Beastiarius project. Caeco had been just a tiny baby at the time, but still fascinating to watch grow into what should have been the perfect agent.
So far, the handful of students she’d talked to all agreed that the girl in question was very pretty and stylish, with cute hair, and wouldn’t be caught dead in those clothes.
Still, she was here, Clay at her back, and Machete had been a very well-trained agent. She didn’t think he’d grab the wrong girl and risk punishment for not following orders unless he felt sure he had Caeco. But the fact that everyone said she’d gone with him without struggle didn’t sound like the Caeco that Miseri knew so well. Absently, she rubbed the ear that had taken the squeal of feedback or whatever that brain-spearing sound had been.
A tall, lanky boy in a green hoodie with shaggy black hair moved passed her and Clay, four hotdogs clutched in his two hands. He disappeared into the crowd of kids like a fish slipping through weeds. Something about him bothered her for a moment, but she let the feeling simmer while she continued to look for her quarry.
It took ten more feet of fighting through clowning kids trying to ape for the camera for it to hit her. The tall kid hadn’t even glanced her way. A television crew at a rinky-dink school like this, and every kid was either hamming it up or at least staring at her and Clay. But that kid had kept his head down and eyes averted. In her considerable experience, only someone with something to hide would do that. Or someone to hide.
Chapter 25 – Declan
I hustled back to Rory and Caeco, glad for once that kids automatically moved out of my way. I have alternated for years between liking the fact that I can move through the halls or packed stadium crowds easily to hating the idea that so many of my peers fear me.
Middleton scored as I climbed the stepped bleachers, and up ahead of me, I could see that Caeco was soaking everything in. Her brown eyes looked black under the harsh lighting, glinting a little as she watched the game with a vision that no doubt saw more than I could. At the same time, her head was tilted a little as she listened.
I reached their position and handed out the dogs, keeping one for myself. I stayed standing, making sure my body was between her and the concession area.
“We got trouble,” I said.
“What’s an onside kick?” she asked at almost the same time.
“Middleton would kick the ball to us, but attempt to recover it first, keeping possession and getting another crack at our end zone. Why?” Rory explained around a mouthful of hotdog.
“I can pick up the coaches’ conversations on their headsets,” she replied. My face must have matched Rory’s incredulous expression because she explained before we could ask. “My nannites can pick up wireless information at short ranges.”
Rory immediately turned and yelled out as loud as he could “WATCH THE ONSIDE KICK!”
He managed to do it during one of those ultra-rare moments in crowds when the noise is less than a dull roar. As a result, heads spun to look at us, but a few people nodded and even one of the players appeared to hear him. That one moved over to speak in Coach Manson’s ear.
“Listen, there’s a television reporter here, and she’s asking about the girl that got grabbed by the federal agent,” I said, not liking the level of attention we had drawn.
“Really? Is she hot?” Rory asked.
“She’s okay. Kinda old for you, though… maybe thirty, but she is blonde,” I replied.
“I got this,” he said, standing to his full height and puffing out his bony chest. I laughed despite my bad feeling about the reporter and completely forgot to mention the giant holding the camera.
“Maybe you should put your hood up and we could slide over a few more spots to put more bodies around us?” I suggested to Caeco. Her mouth full of Castlebury High concession stand processed-meat product, she just nodded, pulling up the hood of the big gray sweatshirt she had on. My hand rose to steady her as she stood up, as I would a normal girl, but she simply hopped up on the seat she had just been on and threaded a narrow path through the other teens like an Olympic gymnast on the balance beam. Right, supergirl… I forgot. I followed at a much slower and more awkward pace, catching my share of sidelong glares from my annoyed peers, although no one met my gaze head on. We settled on the far edge of the stands, a metal railing to our left side, the ground twenty feet below that. A much denser group of teen bodies now blocked us from sight of anyone not directly in front of our position. Below us was the social mosh pit of the football experience. Mostly middle school kids and a few freshmen, it was the hangout place to be for the younger kids, most of whom had no idea of the score or who we were even playing.
Out on the field, Middleton’s kicker stubbed the ball, puttering it just barely over the midfield line. But the alert receiving team snatched it up and started a run that left us on Middleton’s forty yard line. Trey and his cronies moved out to take over from a much better position than they had yet had this game.
“I think you might have just helped our team,” I said in Caeco’s ear. “What are they doing next?”
“Our coach is talking about something called a Ferrari F40?” she replied, frowning.
“Coach Manson is a car nut. He names all the plays after sports cars. I don’t know what any of the plays are. You’d have to ask your friend Micah,” I replied.
“Micah is not my friend,” she said. “He likes my new looks. That doesn’t make him my friend.”
“No, just makes him a horny teenaged boy,” I said.
“Yes. As a group, horny teenaged boys can be useful. They seem to lose all brain power in the presence of an attractive female. They will give up information, money, resources, even lie for a girl they are interested in.”
“You sound like a professor in a class,” I said.
She nodded. “I’m repeating what I was taught in one of my classes.”
“Wait, they taught you how to get boys to give you their lunch money?” I asked.
“Once they realized that the only viable subject of the project was female, they decided I would make an excellent infiltration specialist. Information retrieval, sabotage, supply line disruption… that sort of thing. So they taught me spycraft in addition to my combat training.”
“You’re pretty scary sometimes, you know that? Are you just using me for infiltration?”
“Oh, I’m scary? Says the boy who drinks tasers and juggles plasma balls for fun. And you friended me, remember? Even when I wasn’t so nice in return. So don’t go blaming me,” she replied, glancing at me with one raised eyebrow before looking back at the game.
“That’s right. You were kind of mean, weren’t you? How come? Wouldn’t your trainers want you to use a guy like me?”
She snorted. “Are you kidding? My trainers would jizz themselves over a guy like you. A computer witch? Able to extract and modify information and files with a thought. They would order me to sleep with you.”
I froze at the mental image that loaded itself into my mental movie theater when she said that, but she went on without appearing to notice my expression. “Just because they taught me something doesn’t mean I have to use it. I don’t like relying on others, so I didn’t want to have your help… at first.”
“What changed your mind?”
“You were weird,” she said.
“What?”
“You know what I mean. Right from the start, there was something odd about you. The whole hand on the engine thing, then diagnosing and fixing a problem that most mechanics would have trouble tracking down. Honestly, how’d you and your aunt stay hidden from
your own world so long?”
“Easy. I never helped anyone like that before. Anyone who wasn’t already in our circle, that is,” I answered. “But why would you accept help from a weirdo?”
“Because I’m a weirdo, ya freak. Other than Mother, everyone in the labs treated me as a thing, an experiment. Less than human. And as I got older and stronger, they started to be afraid of me. So it left me with a fuck off attitude toward people… normal people. You were obviously weird, and then I saw how most of the kids are afraid of you or avoid you, but you still have a group of friends and even the regular kids, the very ones that are scared of you, look to you for your skills. Corny as its gonna sound, it gave me hope that I could have that, too.”
“I don’t think that sounds corny,” I said, leaning close enough that our heads were in danger of bumping. “Hoping that one day, if you applied yourself, you could be a freak like me doesn’t sound corny at all.”
“You ass!” she said, blurring back as a resounding smack impacted my left shoulder. Owww. Okay, note to self: Do not tease the super soldier!
Rubbing my shoulder, I checked to see if she was really mad, but despite the glare she was giving me, her mouth kept twitching at the corners and her eyes were laughing.
A sudden thumping on the aluminum bleachers announced an incoming body, and we both glanced over to see Rory bounding awkwardly up the stands.
“Have no fear, mortals, Rory is here!” he said with a flourish.
“Hey Tessing! Sit your scrawny ass down!” a voice yelled from up behind us. Rory flumped down quickly, still grinning at both of us like he’d just won American Idol or something.
“Took care of that little problem. Casually bumped into her and then when she asked about Sarah Williams, I said I thought I’d seen you head to the girls bathrooms inside. I don’t think you’ll see her for a while,” he said with a smug look. “No worries. How’s the game?”
“Interesting, Rory, very interesting,” Caeco said with a smirk. “The football’s not bad either.”
“What? What do you mean? Hey, I missed something, didn’t I?” he asked, looking back and forth between us.
“Nah, Trey’s about to score again, I think,” I said, exchanging a smile with Caeco. Game indeed!
The gentle mist turned aggressive, becoming fat drops of cold rain, scattered at first, but rapidly building in tempo. I felt a tension in the back on the back of my head, like when you laugh too much. It was familiar, and it warned me that the weather was just getting started. The rest of the game was going to be miserable. The tingle that traveled to my fingertips told me that it might be cancelled altogether.
Caeco reached into the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie and pulled out a compact yellow umbrella that opened to reveal it was decorated with various cats. I gave her a raised eyebrow even as the three of us huddled under the too-small cover it provided.
“What? I was trained to be prepared. I’m surprised you don’t have one with little witches on it,” she said.
“Declan was never in the Boy Scouts, although he’s got the whole rub-two-sticks together thing beat by a mile for fire starting,” Rory said. “While you were in what? The Kill Scouts? Assassin’s Creedelos? Instead of Webelos.”
“How’d you know that? How did you know I was a Kill Scout?” Caeco asked, deadly serious. “You a spy, Tessing?”
He went white as a sheet, which was impressive because he’s normally pretty pale, and pulled back, but her hand shot out and grabbed his sweatshirt. Then she laughed, and I laughed, because the little tremor of information I was getting from her nannites had told me she was playing.
“Holy shit! I think I just crapped myself. When you grabbed me—I thought you were gonna off me or something,” Rory said in a rush. “Dude, don’t let me pick on her anymore! Not good for my heart.” He rubbed his chest to make the point.
A streak of actinic light lit up the stormy sky and four seconds later, the boom of thunder rolled over the crowd. A second flash of lightning struck, and the refs blew their whistles. The game announcer came on the sound system.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the officials have called a referees’ time out due to the lightning. The teams will head into the locker rooms and we ask you to please clear off the metal stands. If the storm passes by, play will recommence.”
The tingle in my fingertips now covered me head to toe, leaving me almost bouncing on my feet as we stood up to leave. Caeco appeared to be in a hurry.
“Come on, you two! Lightning’s no joke and these stands are giant lightning rods,” she said, frowning at us. We were moving with no particular haste.
“Relax. Nothing is gonna hit anywhere near us while Johnny Electric here is with us,” Rory said, nodding in my direction. I wasn’t paying much attention, instead watching the sky above us and smelling the ozone in the air. I like thunderstorms… scratch that. I love thunderstorms.
“Hey, O’Carroll, snap out of it! Focus on walking, buddy,” Rory said, clapping his hands to get my attention.
“He gets all drifty when there’s lightning,” I heard him say to Caeco, who was staring at me like I was a druggie on meth.
“I just like feeling the storm that’s all,” I replied, glancing at my feet before bounding past my little buddy. All three of us were on the gravel path, the rest of the crowd ahead of us, all moving toward the parking lots or the covered walkway outside the rear entrance to the school.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, local radar indicates the storm should pass over us in the next twenty minutes or so. As soon as it is considered safe, the referees will restart the game. Until then, we suggest you shelter in your vehicles or in the East gymnasium, which staff is opening.”
“Let’s head into the gym,” Rory suggested since we were already headed that way.
The East gym is the smaller of Castlebury’s two high school gyms, but it was big enough for most of the crowd to huddle inside. Let’s face it: Castlebury is really just a bedroom community for the Burlington and Essex Junction area. The whole population of the town could probably fit into both the gyms. So while it was a little crowded, it wasn’t bad. Frankly, most of the younger kids didn’t care if they were out on the field or inside; the social gathering of their friends was the only important factor. The adults all gravitated to each other, and the older kids formed circles. We were standing together, forming our own group, when Candace found us.
“Hey guys, what’s happening?” she asked. We all shrugged, not having a great deal of exciting news, so she went on. “Hey look, there’s a reporter!” she said, pointing.
Across the gym, standing just outside the boys’ locker room, the blonde reporter and her giant camera man were interviewing Trey Johnson. He was nodding at her question, looking at her photo, then looking out around the gym. His eyes found me and my companions, and a triumphant sneer spread across his features. He pointed our way and before we could move, the reporter’s head swiveled to us. Caeco froze, then darted behind my back and into the crowd. She shoved her way through the bodies, moving so fast, it was hard for me to catch up, even with the kids making way for me.
“What is it?”
“That’s Miseri… Agent Miseri! I’ve got to get out of here!” she said.
“Not that way! It’ll be blocked. The janitors always lock the doors on that side. Here, come with me,” I said, grabbing her hand and pulling her sideways into the door on my right. It would be the quickest way into the school proper, although I had never been through that particular door myself, seeing as it said Girls Locker Room in big letters across the wood. Still, I knew that it mirrored the boys locker room across the gym, both having access doors to the hallway outside the cafeteria.
Behind us, I saw Rory, who had no chance of keeping up, fall back and deliberately get in the way of the lady reporter and her giant, who had dropped his camera and started our way. The lady was speaking into her shirt sleeve as I slid into the locker room and immediately faced a dozen shocked faces.
Igno
ring the suddenly vocal and outraged cheerleaders, some of whom were changing out of wet uniforms and toweling off, I pulled Caeco past the lockers, the bathrooms, and the running showers where tantalizing glimpses of flesh almost distracted me, and then out into the hall.
We turned left toward the main entrance but down the hall, two black-uniformed men with rifles turned the corner and shouted when they saw us. We turned and bolted back the other way, deeper into the school. Despite my much longer legs, Caeco had pulled ahead of me almost instantly. She slowed slightly when she looked back. I sped up, reaching for reserves of speed I hadn’t had to access in years.
I don’t play organized sports a) because athletics are visible in local papers, television, and on the Internet, and b) most of my peers tend to fear and avoid me, including the coaches. Levi had me run with him, but it was a jog type run, not a flat-out sprint. But fear is a wonderful motivator and guys in black ops swat suits with assault rifles tend to scare me. I kept up… barely.
