First Song

by Blaise Corvin

  After a couple exploratory kicks, Noah calmed himself. Frustration had started welling in his stomach, but he suppressed it as best he could. While sparring like this, impatience would be a terrible enemy. Louis stood like an impassive wall, deftly blocking or evading everything Noah threw, letting him tire himself out. Noah had a strange feeling that Louis was using this opportunity to train too, but in a different way.

  Suddenly, Noah thought he saw an opening and took advantage. As Louis lazily punched at Noah’s face, the teen lowered his center of gravity and met the fist with his forehead before parrying the hand to the side, stutter-stepping to add to the misdirection. He darted in, aiming a left jab to his opponent’s ribs and a cross to his face. The plan had been to follow that combo with a nasty elbow, something he normally wouldn’t do while sparring because it could really hurt someone, and maybe snap kick away to create some room again.

  Instead, Noah felt strong hands firmly take hold of his arm and waist before the world went upside down. His back hit the mat with all his weight behind it, his lungs explosively exhaling. He closed his eyes and lay there a moment, questioning his life choices, his sanity, and getting his breath back.

  What did Louis just do? Now that Noah had been beaten, he knew that he’d been baited, but not exactly how he’d been thrown. If this had been a real fight, his opponent could have fallen with him to the ground, and that would have been bad. Granted Noah wasn’t playing for keeps right now, but he knew Louis wasn’t either. The thought of fighting the other man in a dark alley with knives was actually terrifying. The combination of being skilled in martial arts in this life, and having seen the deadly consequences of real violence in his past life, made the reality of this current skill gap very, very real.

  Noah could still last a bit longer, but he’d just gotten back from camp that day, and he’d been at the current Merriweather office location for a while now. Burgess’ motivation for immediately introducing Noah to Louis seemed strange, too. At least the time spent hadn’t been a waste, his skills had leveled, but it was time to throw in the towel. The young man painfully climbed to his feet.

  “I’ve had enough. I need to go home and see my parents,” Noah said. He sighed and put his hands up in surrender. This is my weakness, Noah realized. I had been relying on [Jack of All] so much that I only saw its benefits, not its limitations. I still haven’t able to level my core Listener archetype, so all my mundane skills are limited to max of level five.

  The truth was bitter. Even if I maxed all my mundane skills to five, getting better than that would probably require a lot of time and energy spent, like normal people. [Jack of All] is a shortcut but has that skill cap limitation. In fact, maybe being maxed out might even mean I start to learn skills more slowly than other people, or it might even actively resist me! That was a wild thought. Either way, he definitely needed to figure out how to level up his [Listener] status, class, archetype, whatever.

  He watched as Louis grabbed a towel and was handed a fat wad of bills from the other employees. The man accepted the money and nodded at Noah, his expression unreadable. Louis is incredibly talented at martial arts. With my current level of skills, I’ll never be able to beat him consistently.

  Burgess Goodrich stepped onto the mat and waved everyone away. “That’s enough, everyone. Back to work; playtime is over.” The man in the black suit stepped over to Noah and patted him on the back. He said, “We all have our limits, Noah. That’s why we work together.”

  Noah breathed in and let out a long sigh. Burgess’ idea of ramming home a point seemed a little overkill at this point, but he couldn’t deny the lessons he’d learned over the past couple weeks. An idea suddenly came to mind. He smiled. “You’re right, Boss.”

  ***

  Hours later, Noah opened up his new laptop with ten times more encryption than his previous computer had had. After having Chinese food with his parents and catching them up on his very fun and very normal Camp Firestarter experience, Noah went to his room and immediately employed the new encryption techniques taught to him by Yoko. A lot of it didn’t make sense to him, but he followed the instructions to the letter, using one of his five rooms of his [Memory Palace] to store the steps.

  Soon, he was back online without having to worry about Burgess or Interpol tracking his activity. A few minutes later, he found himself on a forum with twenty-three other members. He opened up a new thread to send a message to the other campers from Camp Firestarter, but he paused before typing.

  He thought about his own limitations, and not just with [Jack of All], but how his main source of strength had ended up being a weakness when meeting people who were actually better than him. He’d been closed off, isolated…and he didn’t have to be. These people are the best at what they do. Yoko has hacking. Carlo…I don’t even know all Carlo knows. Pietro knows physics and psychology. The other kids are all incredibly talented too.

  The Aelves were bound to have exceptional people, plus the orb-wielders. If Noah couldn’t beat a bunch of kid-geniuses, then he would have a much more difficult road against technologically advanced aliens wielding magic.

  But, Noah thought, what if our geniuses are on my side?

  He remembered his time on the front porch of the cabin with Pietro, and how it had felt when he told the Russian boy a little bit of his secrets. He also remembered how Yoko had convinced him that if anyone could understand what Noah was going through, it would be the members of camp Firestarter.

  Noah’s fingers moved, and he began typing.

  Hey, guys, I want to let you in on something. Maybe in time, I might feel comfortable telling you the whole story, but we’re not there yet. As it is, you will probably think I am a “doomsday prepper” or something.

  The fact is, I believe the world as we know it is going to drastically change within the next—

  Noah thought for a while, wondering how specific to actually get with his information. Some of the Firestarter kids would assume he believed in the possibility of a future economic collapse, or war, or a shift of the planet’s axis or something. He decided to remain vague to gauge his audience’s reaction first. He was opening up, but it was still premature to spill everything.

  –ten years or so. Imagine a world with no more electricity, where pressure only builds to a certain point, where the fundamental laws of physics have been warped. Humor me.

  Let’s have a thought exercise.

  Noah wrote, and edited, then deleted almost everything he’d written before writing some more. Finally, he had an email that he didn’t hate too much and hit send with a shaky finger. Now that he’d actually done it, he immediately felt ten times lighter.

  Only time would tell if he was making the right choice. Now he understood that even with all of his memories and a new life, he couldn’t do everything by himself. At some point, he would need to take some risks, to start trusting people. He’d just planted some seeds. Butterflies in his stomach made him jittery, feeling a weird combination of relief, hope, anxiety, and embarrassment.

  Baby steps, he thought, and wondered what Doc Broad would say.

  Chapter 19

  Noah really liked driving, so of course, between turning sixteen years old and the arrival of Shift, he knew that he would have less than three years to enjoy it. It was just his luck.

  In his past life, he’d been stuck with a crappy, beat-up old station wagon that he’d saved up to buy at the end of his junior year in high school. In this life, he’d bought exactly what he’d wanted after he’d gotten his driver’s license–an armored pickup truck.

  Unofficially probably the richest teen in the world, and officially a millionaire, Noah could have just about any flashy car he desired. But instead of a crazy sports car, or something that would turn heads, he’d gone a different direction. His heavy truck would be too expensive to purchase and run for the average person, but was still practical for his life. He didn’t have a bodyguard–it wasn’t necessary since most people didn’t even know he wa
s rich. But the closer the Shift came, the more Noah acknowledged how silly it would be to die from some freak accident after working so hard and so long to save everyone.

  Maybe he was his parents’ son after all. Through Noah’s interference, Clark and Lana Henson had acquired quite a bit of wealth of their own now, but they still lived in the same house that Noah had grown up in. He’d asked them about it before, and they’d looked at him like he’d grown another head. Noah had a suspicion that they’d already had everything they’d really needed before, and they continued to grow their wealth now as more of a game than anything. Both of them still worked the same jobs that they’d had in Noah’s past life.

  Noah smiled while thinking about his parents. Dorks, he thought fondly. He was nearing his destination, and turned onto a side road on the outskirts of town, winding further away from Steelton before approaching a guard shack. The guard on duty recognized him, but he still went through the motions of checking his ID and credentials. Good. Noah didn’t want the guards to get lazy.

  The thick gate opened, swinging ponderously upward, and Noah drove forward into a sprawling industrial complex. This area hadn’t existed, hadn’t been built in his previous life, but Steelton had been growing at an incredible rate. The influx of money and jobs into town had justified the construction of quite a few new developed areas over the years. At the very rear of this location, a few lines of warehouses stood, the last of them butting up against the base of a series of large, rocky hills.

  Noah owned all of them. In fact, he owned this entire industrial park.

  He turned his truck in between a couple warehouses and began making his way to his destination. Finally, he arrived and pulled up to the side of a warehouse before getting out. As usual, he reflexively [Listen]ed to notice if anything was out of the ordinary, but the coast was clear. Out the corner of his eye, Noah spotted one of the site’s security guards, employed by his own security company, Log Cabin Security Inc. He nodded to the guard.

  Remembering the name of his security company made him think of Doc as he walked around to a side entrance of the warehouse. A year earlier, his private investigators had confirmed that Christopher Broad had indeed disappeared around the same time that Noah had been born.

  History had changed. Doc’s family didn’t even own the cabin where Doc had been living and where Noah had learned about the stars. The building didn’t even exist until a couple years ago, and while Noah assumed that the Broads must have bought it soon after it’d been built in his past life, in this life, some other family owned it.

  Waiting until he’d been older to seriously look for Doc had been a mistake. Noah’s logic had admittedly made sense. Ten years ago, Doc would be too young to connect with, and probably not interested in talking to a kid. But now, less than three years from the Shift, a million things going on, and zero leads on what had happened to Doc, Noah didn’t even know what to do about his missing mentor.

  He absently checked his phone to see if his investigators had sent him any updates about Doc...nothing. Noah sighed. If his people couldn’t find anything, then he probably wouldn’t be able to either.

  Mysteries upon mysteries.

  Noah stepped up to the door and used a series of complex combinations to open the lock. None of his warehouses depended on electricity to function at a basic level. If everything he’d built over the last dozen years had used electronic locks, it would have been tragically ironic.

  The door opened, and Noah stepped through to a richly appointed lobby. Jamal Hendricks looked up from the report he was writing, a Log Cabin Security hat on his head and his Log Cabin Security jacket open in the front. “Hey, what’s up, Noah? You here to do some more secret hush-hush stuff?”

  “Something like that,” said Noah with a grin.

  Jamal grinned back and held out a clipboard. “Rules are rules. You should know, you made them for this place.”

  Noah nodded as he accepted the clipboard and wrote his name and the time. Then he handed the clipboard back with a copy of his ID. Jamal compared his name on the sheet to the one on the ID, then looked up Noah’s name and a picture in the hardcopy notebook of approved personnel. As someone preparing for the Shift, being friends with some of the most talented hackers in the world, and being a hacker himself, Noah didn’t trust digital records, at least not for something as important as this.

  Finally, Jamal nodded and handed Noah back his ID. “You’re good to go, like always.”

  “Thanks, Jamal. How is the baby?”

  “Jamal Junior is screaming a lot, but me and Kiera get breaks because her mom is helping out. You know, you’re invited over to meet him if you have a chance.”

  Noah held up a hand and pulled out his phone, making a note of it. “I will see if I can find time,” he said and meant it. Jamal had turned out to be a surprisingly important new addition to what he was beginning to think of his Steelton crew.

  Over a year earlier, when Noah had been fifteen, he’d run into Jamal at Lucy’s Diner, and the tall young man had really cut a striking figure, having filled out some. It wasn’t like Jamal had been small before, but he’d somehow gotten even more athletic-looking. On top of that, his hair had been buzzed, and he’d been wearing a Marines backpack.

  It turned out that Jamal had gone to college on his mysterious scholarship, but had decided he didn’t know what to major in and wanted a break from school. As a result, instead of wasting his scholarship money, Jamal had joined the Marines reserves. When Noah had bumped into him, Jamal had been back from boot camp, and about to start looking for a job. The new Marine had been planning to marry Kiera, his high school sweetheart.

  In his past life, Noah vaguely remembered that Jamal had died protecting strangers from bandits, or at least that was what he’d heard a year after the Shift. As recommendations for character go, it didn’t get much better than that. Noah had been in the process of growing his new security company anyway and had pulled Jamal aside before telling him about Log Cabin. Noah had said that he could just email the hiring manager, which had been true.

  Since then, Jamal had proven himself invaluable and had quickly become a sergeant in Log Cabin Security. It would be a shame when Jamal eventually got promoted to a high-level leadership role, because then he wouldn’t be assigned to just one location anymore. Noah really liked when the people he trusted most in Log Cabin were assigned to his most sensitive locations–like this one.

  The tall, muscular black man stretched, and Noah caught sight of his rifle propped against the wall. He chuckled and said, “Still waiting for a revolver?”

  “Yeah. It’s kind of ridiculous that they give me a machine gun in the Marines, but civilian-side, I can’t carry a pistol yet because I’m not 21. Lugging this thing around is a pain,” he said, jerking his thumb at the rifle.

  “Yeah, well, at least your company gave you one of those Ruger nine-millimeter carbines that break down, right? Don’t you have a case for it?” asked Noah. Jamal knew that Noah owned the warehouses, but didn’t know he owned Log Cabin. Noah never lied to any of his Steelton crew, but creative truth really helped avoid awkward issues sometimes.

  “Yes, but with the new baby and all, Kiera’s been freaking out. I think she’ll calm down eventually, but right now she wants it locked up when I’m not at work, and it costs a lot less for a pistol safe than a rifle safe. Money’s tight after the delivery, so it’s been a pain.”

  “Oh, I see.” Noah really did understand. He knew Kiera from high school, but back then she’d been Kiera White. A natural charmer and smart as a whip, she’d also been known for extreme emotional reactions to things that eventually blew over like nothing had ever happened. On top of that, the pregnancy had been difficult, and Kiera had been turning into a bit of a helicopter parent, hopefully not for too long. Actually, Noah amended, after the Shift, she won’t have a choice but to drop it.

  Out loud he said, “I can tell the folks at Log Cabin to hook you up with a bonus for a safe or something. You’
ve been a huge help here.”

  “Oh, that’s really nice of you, man, but you don’t need to worry about it.”

  “Nah, it’s fine.” Noah played with his phone. “I’m sending a message now.” He sent an email to the Log Cabin central office that read,

  Call Jamal Hendricks and organize the delivery of a company-bought rifle safe. Price doesn’t matter. Should not take more than a week. -N

  That taken care of, Noah nodded and began heading past the desk. Suddenly, Jamal said, “You know, you’re always doing that.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Solving problems.”

  Noah fully turned to face the guard–Charisma had tickled the back of his mind, telling him that the man had something to say. He waited patiently until Jamal said, “You know, the last time I was at Marines drill, I tried to tell Gunny about you. He flat out didn’t believe me.” The tall man paused, seeming to gather his thoughts. “A sixteen-year-old kid who owns multiple companies, at least that I know of and maybe a few I don’t, who is good enough to play college sports after high school, but just quit every sport at school after one season, and who I hear girls at school and around town constantly talking about...but doesn’t date.”

  Despite trying to suppress it, Noah could feel an awkward flush starting at the base of his neck. He schooled his expression, but Jamal wasn’t done yet. He continued, “On top of that you are a genius, and only go to school for fun. Your parents let you do whatever you want, and even teachers at school leave you alone. Almost everyone in town seems to know you, or know of you. I’ve seen you using gear or wearing stuff that half a year later comes out from some new company out of nowhere with a patent.”

  “I know a lot of people–” Noah began, but Jamal just kept talking.

  “When Log Cabin did special training for all employees a few months ago, and you came along, you outshot the instructors, with rifles and pistols. Then you threw knives. Who even does that?