Anomaly

by Tonya Kuper

  I could only nod.

  The tiniest of smiles tugged at my mother’s lips, there for a second and gone the next. “No,” she said. “I don’t have that problem.”

  “Mom…”

  “Let me finish,” she said. “After our escape, we slowly assembled those like us, Oculi who didn’t want to be controlled and manipulated, and planned to take down the Consortium, knowing it would take time to do so.”

  Mom paused. She shoved off the couch with the help of her cane. “Something to drink?” She couldn’t sit for too long without having to move, due to the pain in her leg.

  My head swimming in new information about a life I never knew my parents had, I hadn’t noticed I was already following Mom without question.

  I grabbed myself orange juice and Mom topped off her coffee. “Will you get that for me?” she said, pointing to a small wooden box on a high shelf. I retrieved it and placed it on the kitchen island.

  We stood across from each other. Mom took a long gulp of coffee and sighed. “Shortly after we escaped from the lab, I found out I was pregnant with Nick. Before we were married.”

  This was a surprise. From what Mom had told Nick and me, Nick was a honeymoon baby. With everything else she was revealing to me, though, I shouldn’t have been shocked.

  Mom filled the silence. “I guess you could say Nick was a pleasant surprise.”

  “You didn’t plan on having children?”

  “No,” she said. “Your dad and I didn’t think it was safe. But then Nick came along, and he was so healthy and happy. And so were we. We discovered a joy unlike any we’d known. Parenthood changed us.” She took another sip of coffee and avoided looking at me.

  I sipped my OJ and tried to swallow.

  “When Nick was a normal baby with absolutely no side effects, we eventually made the decision to have other children. We wanted a family and thought, if we stayed away from the Consortium, we would be safe to do so.”

  I slid my shaking hands from my cup into my lap. “And?” Deep inside, I already knew the answer. Something happened with Nick.

  “After we had Nick, we met with other Oculi like ourselves, trying to fly under the Consortium radar. As we moved around the country, homeschooling you guys, we slowly helped form what is now the Resistance, and—”

  “Wait.” I coughed, nearly choking on a swig of juice. “What do you mean by we?”

  Mom swirled her coffee again. “Your dad and I, along with several others.”

  “What others?”

  Mom slipped the lid off the box and pulled out a few pictures. Laying the photos between us, she said, “These people.”

  I spread out the old photographs. Deanna and her daughter, Stella. Stella and I used to play when we were little. The Ross family. Their son was my brother’s age, his good friend, and I’d had a crush on him growing up. Mr. and Mrs. Davis. They were the grandparents we never had. The last time I saw any of these people was at Nick’s funeral more than two years ago. Nick had a role in this, bigger than I’d ever imagined. A drip of sweat rolled down the back of my neck.

  I peeked up at Mom. “They’re all Oculi?”

  Mom took another sip and nodded. “They all helped us start what is now the Resistance. None of us wanted to be controlled by the Consortium.”

  Even the family friends, who visited us all over the country, were a part of it. It was overwhelming—everything right in front of me, but I’d never seen it. I didn’t know what to say or to think.

  I thoughtlessly took another sip, and Mom continued. “The Resistance grew, as did the Consortium and their efforts to obtain power. About twelve years ago, we found out their plans to eliminate Anomalies altogether, and that pushed the Resistance to organize, to mobilize. Things at home were fine. Nick and you knew nothing about what your dad really did on his business trips, which was to help organize the Resistance efforts…until your brother turned seventeen and we found out he had Oculi abilities. Then he died.”

  She twisted her lips, seemed to ponder something. “Once we moved here, your dad spent a lot of time in the Denver Resistance Hub. The Council, which is exactly what it sounds like, decided they needed to get someone on the inside of the Consortium, and who better than someone who’d started there in the first place?”

  The orange juice soured on my tongue. “Dad.”

  “Yes, your father has gone undercover into the Consortium to spy and report back to the Resistance. But, as you know, we haven’t heard from him in a while. At all. We don’t even know if he’s still alive at this point.” She kept her eyes on the coffee mug.

  I refused to believe my dad was dead. For the first time, I was starting to understand my family’s past and our future. Neither were fairy tales.

  Mom cleared her throat, pulling my attention back to her. “When Nick was a toddler, we thought we were in the clear. Eventually we had you, then Eli. Your dad and I didn’t want to raise our kids in a Hub, so we took turns training at the biggest Hub in Denver and moved our family regularly to avoid the Consortium. Since your dad and I took it upon ourselves to train Oculi, we exhausted our abilities. We can no longer Push or Retract.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes tight.

  I’d been right. She didn’t have abilities. Neither of them did. But they had in the beginning.

  It would take time—years, probably—for me to be able to process the multiple knowledge bombs Mom had just dropped in my lap. I mean, my entire life had been built upon lie after lie. I hated her for that. And on the heels of that burning hate was a pain that cleaved straight through the heart of me.

  But I wouldn’t dwell on my emotions. They wouldn’t help me to process this information. These feelings wouldn’t help me assess anything. Events had been set into motion before I was even born. Those were the elements I focused on.

  I needed to know what I was supposed to be training for. “What is the Resistance’s cause?” Whatever it was, was it worth risking my life?

  8.

  Reid

  I

  turned the corner in just enough time to hear Josie’s question to her mom. I could answer that one. “The cause? Our lives and every Planck life on Earth.”

  Josie whipped around on the stool to face me. She should’ve looked tired, but she didn’t—every part of her was awake, seeing most of her world as it really was for the first time.

  Mrs. Harper’s cold eyes swept over me. “Reid.” The resemblance between her and Josie was uncanny, but Josie’s face was much warmer, brimming with just a tad less hatred.

  “Mrs. Harper.” I saluted her. “We need to move your family. Our cover has been blown—there’s a leak. We were attacked in the park last night.”

  She snagged her cane, shoved off the stool, and wobbled. I started toward her, but she held up a hand. “I’m fine.” She positioned the cane under her more securely and straightened.

  Josie’s mom shuffled to the back hall leading to the garage. “Eli is still asleep. Is your partner outside to take over safety surveillance?” I gave her a deep nod. “Follow me, then.” She opened a closet and shoved aside several jackets. She moved her hand along the back wall and a panel slid open, revealing a second door with a keypad. Mrs. Harper placed her hand over it. I caught the flickering blue light of a retinal scan as she leaned her face toward the panel. High tech.

  The partition opened.

  “Close the door to the closet,” Mrs. Harper said.

  In the darkness, only the blue from the panel illuminated our faces and maybe a foot or two into the corridor.

  Josie flipped on the flashlight app on her phone. “I can’t see anything, Mom.”

  “That’s the point. What can’t be ‘seen’ can’t be Pushed or Retracted.”

  Josie and I followed her mom through the weird door into a sterile hall that reminded me of a hospital with its antiseptic smell, only all of the walls were blacked out.

  I thrust my arms forward to gauge the width of the hallway, which was four, maybe
five feet wide. The light from Josie’s phone made me think the ceiling was pretty high.

  Running lights appeared on the floor in an icy blue color that lit up the ground in a line. “That leads to a dummy panic room,” Mrs. Harper said. “You reach the end of the hallway, hit the panel with your hand, and it will open.”

  “A dummy panic room?” Josie looked at me questioningly. I just shrugged.

  Her mom swept by the two of us in the opposite direction, farther into the darkness until we butted up against a black wall. She bent and touched the ground, her palm flush against the floor. It activated another sensory panel. The black wall in front of us slid open.

  “Whoa.”

  Yeah. I kinda had to agree with Josie on that one. I’d seen a lot of high-tech security at the Hub, but this was surreal.

  It took Mrs. Harper a couple of seconds to reposition her cane and rise back to her feet. I took a step toward her, and in the dim light of Josie’s phone, I saw her mother’s features harden. Okay, I won’t help you up. Apparently Josie knew better than to offer. I probably should’ve learned my lesson when I’d tried to help her in the kitchen.

  “Where are we going?” Josie asked. Although she was already following her mom.

  Mrs. Harper stepped into the elevator—I was able to discern that much when I followed Josie into the tight space—and she didn’t look at either of us as she pushed a button and the doors closed.

  “Mom, where are we going?”

  “Down.”

  Uh, this was Florida. Between being at sea level and the low water table, a subterranean basement? Um, not so likely a scenario. As if reading my mind, Mrs. Harper glanced over her shoulder. “Amazing what a couple of good Pushes can do, isn’t it?”

  I grunted more than responded. If Josie could take this all in stride, so could I.

  Josie made a sputtering sound, like her thoughts were moving too quickly for her to speak them. So maybe she wasn’t quite as cool about all of this as she seemed.

  I couldn’t imagine how she was feeling at the moment. She had to be second-guessing everything—including her mom, who was just as impersonal as she had been two years ago, if not more so.

  Once we hit the bottom, the elevator doors dinged open and Mrs. Harper slipped a series of switches on the wall, lighting a pristine white room. High-tech communication devices, several computers, machines, and a dozen surveillance televisions lined one wall. The rest of the sterile room was a science lab. Bottles, jugs, containers, microscopes, an assortment of various science-looking machines. Josie’s face said everything I was feeling—complete disbelief. This was under their house? A heavy metal door anchored the opposite end of the room, with shelves to the side of it.

  “This is your lab,” Josie accused.

  “It is…among other things.” Mrs. Harper shook her head. “The space off the family room, the other ‘lab’ that you’re used to seeing me use, that’s just for show. It’s a decoy.”

  Right. Decoy lab. Dummy panic room. There was a friggin’ labyrinth of tunnels and spaces running under this house. And, really, had I expected anything else? A person didn’t maintain her anonymity, manage to break away from SI, form the Resistance, and keep off the radar without some serious precautionary measures.

  I took stock of the room, imagining what I would have to Push or Retract to maintain the integrity of it. If one didn’t know it was here and couldn’t observe it, then it was virtually indiscoverable. I wanted to believe that, but…

  Josie headed to the shelves and held up a box. “Mom? Hair dye.” Well, since she could no longer Push or Retract, Mrs. Harper would have to change her looks the old-fashioned way. I crossed the room and watched Josie’s hands move quickly through the shelves. Stacks of money, clothes, and a lock box labeled Documents. One shelf was entirely filled with medical supplies like IV bags, syringes, boxes of bandages, and multicolored bottles of medication. I opened the small closet door next to the shelves, revealing various guns and ammunition.

  I turned to Josie, and her gaze settled past me to the weapons. “This is for a fast getaway, isn’t it, Mom?”

  “Yes. The door at the far corner of the room opens to an escape tunnel. Two passages. One opens into the shed at the back of the house. The other will take you into the drainage system and let you move beneath the streets.”

  Drainage system? This was Southwest Florida. Something told me any underground water or sewer lines would be cramped, or have components of the reptile variety. Anomaly or not, I wasn’t about to drag Josie into alligator-infested waters.

  “Mrs. Harper, this safe house, how secure is it?”

  A smile so much like her daughter’s tilted her mouth for a moment. “My husband designed the space. It’s state-of-the-art technology. It’ll open for Josie or Eli, or me. Nothing else will get through those doors. It’s thirty-six inches of solid steel reinforced with two feet of concrete. The air and water circulation systems are self-contained and close-circuited.” She pointed to something in the far corner of the lab that looked like a pool filter. “This is your safe zone in the event of an attack on this house.” She gestured to a panel beside the door from which we’d entered. It had a big red button beside it, with a glass shield covering it. “Hit that, and this place goes on lockdown. It can sustain four people for four months.”

  I had no intention of holing up in here. Maybe in a pinch, but when it came to the Consortium, no amount of steel or concrete would keep them out—not indefinitely. I got that the space wasn’t “visible” and therefore couldn’t be Pushed or Retracted, but that wasn’t good enough for me.

  “We should leave here,” I told Mrs. Harper. I still wasn’t certain if that Consortium thug in the park had been following Josie or me. “We’ll go off the grid, head west. Once Josie has mastered her abilities—”

  “No,” Mrs. Harper said.

  Huh? Maybe I wasn’t explaining the situation correctly. “Ma’am, the Hub may be compromised. This house may be compromised.”

  She shook her head. “I need to stay, and I need Josie to stay with me. This isn’t up for discussion.”

  A whole bunch of swear words rattled in my head. It was a good thing thinking words didn’t Push them out of my mouth.

  “You have a problem with that, Reid?” she asked, taunting, pulling rank.

  Hell yeah, I had about a hundred problems with that.

  Josie’s gaze darted between us. I could tell she didn’t really grasp everything that was going on, but she was definitely cueing in to our body language. Me, I was pissed. My hands had clenched into fists and, without meaning to, I’d shifted my weight to the balls of my feet. Mrs. Harper? She looked like she was about to sit down for High Tea. All calm and sweet. Except for her eyes—they were glacial.

  “Mrs. Harper,” I said in the calmest voice I could manage. “I respectfully request that you rescind that decision.”

  “Um, Mom, what about the Consortium?”

  “We are now in a position where we’re just as strong as the Consortium.”

  Josie moved so she was standing in front of me, a buffer between her mother and me. “But I thought the Consortium held important offices, and—”

  “And now we do, too,” she said to Josie. “In six days, the vice president will present you your physics award before his presidency campaign speech. The VP is a part of the Resistance. I need you to make a delivery to him.”

  What the hell? If the Consortium had even a hunch about the VP being in the Resistance, that would put Josie in direct danger. Josie’s face twisted with confusion and hurt.

  My hands balled into fists at my sides. No way would I let Josie be more of a target than she already was.

  “Let me do it instead. Whatever her role is…let me take her place.”

  Both their heads snapped to me. Mrs. Harper seemed surprised.

  “No. It needs to be Josie.” Mrs. Harper moved to a stainless steel panel. She punched in a couple of buttons, and it opened with a hiss. “This is the
serum.” She extended a short vial filled with an opaque yellow liquid. “When you accept your award next week, you need to slide this into Vice President Taylor’s hand.”

  “What does it do?” Josie asked.

  “It’s the key to preserving Oculi abilities and neural function so degeneration doesn’t occur.”

  I couldn’t stop my gasp of surprise. There, in the palm of her hand, was the cure. The key to continuing to use my powers. My mouth watered, I wanted it so badly. I muttered a curse, disgusted with myself. Josie’s mom watched me carefully. Yeah, she was weighing my reaction, but whether I passed whatever test she’d just pulled or not, I didn’t know. The thing was, I believed in our existence as it was intended to be—finite, limited. If we started manipulating ourselves to prolong our abilities, we were no better than the Consortium. We’d be abusing the very laws we were tasked to uphold, and I wouldn’t do that. There was a balance in the system, and this would disrupt that status quo. And if it fell into the wrong hands…

  “You should destroy that,” I said.

  Mrs. Harper nodded. “Probably. But that decision is neither yours nor mine to make.”

  I still didn’t know how I felt about anyone having this “cure.” But she was right. There were a great many things above my station as an Operative. I had pretty high rank in the Hub, but that didn’t mean I knew the true logistics of what we were up against. And if it came down to an all-out war between the Consortium and us, well, the Resistance would need every advantage.

  “Why can’t the VP just Push some of this stuff for himself?” Josie asked.

  An excellent question. And exactly what I wanted to know.

  Mrs. Harper slid the serum to me. “Try and Push this, Reid.”

  I concentrated on the vial, on the viscous liquid it contained. I envisioned the healing properties of the serum. I focused and…nothing.

  “It’s a form of gene therapy, isn’t it, Mom?”

  Mrs. Harper’s icy visage warmed by a couple of degrees. “Yes.”

  “Mind filling me in?” I said. I considered myself intelligent enough, but in the presence of these brainiacs, I might as well have been a preschooler.