A Rumor of Real Irish Tea (Annals of Altair Book 2)

by Kate Stradling

  “Ivers,” said Oliver. “She’ll get mad if you go snooping in her food, though.”

  “I wasn’t going to.” Emily pettishly set the box aside. The next one read AEM, which she took to indicate Alyson. The final box had Emily’s initials on it—EJB, she noticed with annoyance. Where exactly had he learned her middle name? She hadn’t used it on her internship applications.

  She decided to forgive him when she saw the contents, though. Nestled within were half a grapefruit, two triangles of whole-wheat toast with a side of marmalade, two eggs sunny-side-up, and four—yes, four, she realized with growing excitement—slices of real, honest-to-goodness bacon. A set of plastic utensils was included, along with a folded paper napkin. It was like the dream breakfast she had never dared hope for.

  “Isn’t there anything to drink?” Oliver asked.

  Emily pulled out a smaller bag nestled within the larger one and removed the contents: two bottles of orange juice, one regular soymilk, and one chocolate soymilk. This last item was labeled with Alyson’s initials, but none of the others were marked.

  Oliver immediately grabbed an orange juice and cracked it open to take a swig. Emily thought she ought to take the other orange juice, but she wanted the soymilk. As a couple of voices sounded in the hallway outside, she hastily set the soymilk in front of her own box and sat down. She didn’t go so far as to open it, but she sincerely hoped that Quincy would not demand it from her.

  Quincy was the first to appear in the doorway. She spared a suspicious glance at Emily as she joined them at the small round table. Her hand immediately shot out to snag the second orange juice from the center where it sat next to Alyson’s chocolate soymilk.

  “Did you want a regular soymilk?” Emily asked, eaten with guilt for her own stinginess.

  “You’re not supposed to talk to her,” said Oliver mechanically.

  “I hate soymilk,” said Quincy with venom, and Emily wasn’t sure whether it was directed at her or the drink. Either way, she got to keep her beverage of choice.

  Ben and Alyson were not far behind. A nervous, twittering laugh from Alyson announced their presence as they arrived, strongly reminiscent of how Principal Lee’s assistant Michelle had acted only a couple nights ago. Emily looked at Ben dubiously. How did he have that effect on women? It wasn’t as though he was devilishly handsome or excessively witty.

  “I see we’ve got everything distributed properly,” he said when he saw the table. “Sorry if I got any of the orders wrong, but I did have only limited resources to work with. I heard you only drink chocolate soymilk, Alyson, so I got one of those for you.”

  Alyson turned a delicate shade of red, flattered by his pointed attention. “The regular kind tastes so foul,” she said as she slid into the last open chair.

  Emily wryly took a gulp of her “foul” drink and watched with tempered interest as both Quincy and Alyson opened their boxes. Alyson was by far more vocal in expressing her thanks.

  “Oatmeal and fresh fruit salad! It’s been so long since I’ve had a decent bowl of oatmeal!” She might have stopped there, but a tentative glance toward Ben showed him smiling pleasantly back at her. Emboldened, she continued, “The stuff they sometimes serve at Prom-F is all over-cooked and has the consistency of glue. This bowl looks wonderful! With brown sugar and butter and everything, even! And the cantaloupe and honeydew look so good! How did you know to get this for me?”

  Couldn’t she see that smile on his face was fake? Or was she so desperate for male attention that she overlooked that detail?

  “I just took a wild guess,” he said, and he neatly averted his eyes toward the window.

  It wasn’t any wild guess. Even if Quincy didn’t make loud exclamations like her handler, the sudden glow to her eyes when she opened her breakfast box testified that she had received an appealing meal as well. In fact, the only one who had expressed discontent was Oliver. Emily turned to discover him in the midst of dipping one sausage link in the extra syrup from his pancakes.

  Surprise jolted through her. He wasn’t upset at all. He just didn’t want to express thanks to the likes of Ben Birchard.

  Her attention shifted to her own meal. The grapefruit, toast, and eggs made a familiar trio—she had ordered that particular combination any number of times over the past four or five years before she came to Prometheus. The bacon was a new addition, but if bacon weren’t beyond her price range, she might have eaten it every day of the week.

  How had Ben known that? She raised suspicious eyes to his face, but he was still patently avoiding anyone’s gaze.

  “Thanks, Birchard.” This quiet expression of gratitude came from Quincy, who had picked up a large, sugary scone from her box.

  “I know you don’t really like eggs,” Ben said, “but you need to eat a couple bites at least—you don’t have any other protein in there.”

  “That’s right, Quincy,” said Alyson encouragingly. “Make sure you eat everything that Mr. Birchard was nice enough to bring you.”

  Quincy made a face at her handler and defiantly bit into the scone. Oliver, meanwhile, was fixated on sopping up syrup with pieces of his pancakes. Ben took the momentary lull in conversation as a cue to leave.

  “Now that everyone has what they need, I’ll be on my way. If you have any particular wishes for lunch, let me know. The GCA is footing the bill, after all.”

  He was out the door with a cavalier wave. On impulse, Emily bolted after him. “Wait,” she called as he moved to the elevator. If there was a car there waiting for him, she was going to throw a fit.

  Ben turned curious eyes on her. “Let me guess,” he said. “Turkey on rye, extra mustard, hold the mayo, with lettuce, tomatoes, alfalfa sprouts, and avocado if they have it.”

  “How do you do that?” Emily asked. He’d brought her a turkey sandwich the other night, but she hadn’t realized then how specific the selection was to her tastes. “Have you been stalking us all for the last five years?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Ben said in all innocence.

  Emily pointed back toward the kitchenette and spoke in a fierce whisper. “Half a grapefruit, whole-grain toast, and two eggs sunny-side up. I’ve ordered that a hundred times. Not the bacon—that was too expensive.”

  He shrugged, his hands in his pockets. “It’s fascinating how extensive the GCA is in their background checks. It’s even more fascinating the amount of information the government stores on any one individual. Try buying things with cash in the future instead of using your bank card. Although, they do have plans in the works to track individual bills, so even that won’t be safe for much longer.”

  “So you just… went and looked up our preferences?” asked Emily, feeling somehow violated.

  “The information was there to look up,” he said, with no regrets in sight.

  “And what about the bacon?” she pressed. She’d never purchased such a luxury item before.

  “Ah,” said Ben knowingly. “That was a tip from the Prom-F lunch lady. She said you were almost in tears one morning because she offered you bacon. She remembers your face quite well, actually.”

  Behind him, the elevator chimed and the doors slid open. Emily gaped as he waved a cheery farewell and got into the car. The doors slid shut again.

  “He really is a terrible gossip,” she muttered when she had gathered her wits again.

  Back in the kitchenette, Alyson raised jealous eyes to glare as Emily returned to her seat. Emily felt like telling her to put a sock in it, that she wasn’t trying to flirt with the ever-so-charming Mr. Birchard. Instead, she focused on her breakfast.

  “I’m missing a slice of bacon.” She turned accusing eyes on Oliver.

  He grinned and crunched down on the last half of the missing slice.

  “Pest,” said Emily. “You don’t have anything worth stealing in your box.”

  “I have syrup,” Oliver replied, and he waved the extra little vat enticingly. “It’s re-e-e-eally good with bacon. It’s really good
with everything,” he added with a studious little frown.

  So Ben had known about Oliver’s love of syrup. Had Prom-F ever served it in the times they were there? She couldn’t recall. Perhaps it had been a staple of Prom-A breakfasts, though.

  She obligingly dipped a slice of bacon in the syrup, much to Oliver’s shock. “That is really good,” she agreed. “Oh, don’t get your panties in a twist. I’m not going to take any more of your precious syrup.”

  “I don’t wear panties!” Oliver cried in outrage.

  She couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up, and only the sudden recollection that they had an audience stopped her from remarking on his unfortunate choice of words. He remembered Quincy and her handler at that very same moment, because a deep blush descended upon him as he turned his eyes on them.

  “What?” he asked belligerently.

  Quincy said nothing. Alyson nervously looked around the room and homed in on the television mounted in one corner.

  “Shall we have a look at the news?” She hurried to switch the screen on to NPNN.

  Emily inwardly groaned.

  “It’s Veronica Porcher,” said Alyson eagerly. “I just love her.”

  The beautiful newscaster’s face did indeed fill the screen. Quincy and Oliver looked away with indifference, but their attention snapped back as Alyson turned up the volume.

  “There’s been a bizarre new twist in the kidnappings of Maddie and Alex North,” Veronica reported with a solemn expression. “Residents here in Phoenix, Arizona have reported multiple sightings of the pair, but in a strange development it seems the two are always in the company of another pair of boys. Surveillance videos show the foursome at a local shopping center”—the video cut to a grainy camera shot and what appeared to be four children, though their faces were not at all discernible—“and police worry that what they originally thought to be two kidnappings in fact involves four or more children, and that they are now looking at a kidnapping ring. The identity of the two older boys remains a mystery, though police sketch artists have released these pictures based on eyewitness accounts.”

  Two rough sketches of Hawk and Hummer West flashed up on screen. The nose was too big on Hummer, and the forehead too narrow on Hawk, almost as though the pictures were intentionally inaccurate.

  Veronica’s report continued. “Anyone who sees these children out on the streets is encouraged to call the national hotline, but police have asked concerned citizens not to approach. It still remains uncertain who is behind these kidnappings, but the children have behaved as though they were under constant surveillance, and any interference may cause them harm.”

  “Then why broadcast their information all over the national news?” Emily asked sarcastically.

  Oliver and Quincy both turned inquiring eyes on her.

  “No, I’m serious,” she said. “If there really were some nefarious kidnapper lurking in the shadows and he was going to hurt these children if people try to approach them, wouldn’t having their faces on the national news make him even more likely to do something? I mean, what kidnapper sends his victims out into public, anyway? Who actually believes any of this?”

  “Are you questioning the journalistic integrity of Veronica Porcher?” asked Alyson with a tremulous voice.

  Emily flung an angry hand toward the screen. “You know that story’s false. Hawk and Hummer escaped from Prom-F, and they broke Honey and Happy out of Prom-B. Oliver and Quincy were sent here to recover them. There were never any kidnappers. I know the public has to be told something,” she added self-consciously under Alyson’s reproachful glare, “but couldn’t they have come up with a better story than that?”

  “They didn’t have that many options,” Oliver said. “They’d already reported Honey and Happy as kidnapping victims. They couldn’t exactly report Hawk and Hummer as the kidnappers, because that would draw all sorts of questions: where did these pint-sized miscreants come from? Why wasn’t it readily apparent who they were to begin with? Wouldn’t their parents or teachers have reported them missing as well? And then there’s the problem of facial similarities—when you see them all together it’s obvious they’re related. Those sketches were terrible, though. No one’s going to see those on the news and think it was one big family outing like they would if they used pictures instead.”

  “It’s easier to create a villain,” said Quincy. “This way, if anyone does try to help Hawk and Hummer, they’ll be pegged as the kidnapper. It identifies them to the public and cuts them off from receiving any help.”

  “Except that they have Honey with them,” Oliver said.

  “But even Honey’s projections wear off,” Quincy countered. “They’ll have to be a whole lot more careful about where they go and who they talk to, because the public now knows to look for four kids instead of two.”

  Oliver tacitly conceded that point.

  Emily, though, still fixated on the terrible story. “But the report itself makes no sense. No kidnapper in his right mind would march his victims out where everyone could see them.”

  “Unless he’s just that twisted,” said Quincy with a wry smile. “Look, it doesn’t really matter what Veronica reports, just that she reports it. The more often she repeats a story, the firmer it gets rooted into her viewers’ brains. They’re not even going to think to question the details. Look at my idiot handler if you want proof of that.”

  They all simultaneously turned to Alyson, who stood next to the television with a horrified expression on her face. “I… I like Veronica,” she said fiercely.

  “But you have to admit there are holes in the story she’s reporting,” said Emily.

  “Of course there are holes. She’s reading what they tell her to. It’s not her fault.”

  “Give me a couple weeks, and I’ll have her nicely deprogrammed,” Quincy said to Oliver. “It takes at least that long to reset the neural pathways when they’ve had so many repeated exposures.”

  “So you two knew that Veronica Porcher was a projector?” Emily asked.

  “Everyone knows that she graduated from Prom-C,” said Oliver. “Principal Carter likes to brag about it, even though he wasn’t even principal there when she attended.”

  “I never saw what the big fuss was about her,” said Quincy. “Hit the mute button and she’s just a pair of red lips and big hair.”

  “I like her,” Alyson insisted, but she seemed less sure of herself. Emily supposed it was upsetting to discover that a long-time favorite personality was nothing but a sham made possible by a fluke of genetics. She’d be upset herself if not for her three weeks in confinement with Oliver in the next cell over. In that time, she’d come to thoroughly despise Veronica Porcher and every other NPNN reporter.

  How many more of them were projectors? Or was Veronica the only one?

  The government so rarely did things in small degrees, but projectors were not all that common. It seemed unlikely that too many of them aspired to be news reporters. Unless the Prometheus Institute chose its students’ career paths for them—which wouldn’t have surprised her in the least at this point—the likelihood of another projector on the national news did seem slim. Besides that, Veronica had done most if not all of the reporting on the kidnapping of Maddie and Alex North. If there had been another projector available, surely they would have split the duties.

  Or not. At this point, Emily had absolutely no clue how her government ran things.

  XV

  Misguided Projection

  August 1, 12:07pm mst, GCA Regional Office, Central Phoenix

  The four were left on their own for the morning. Quincy and Oliver had homework, and Alyson stubbornly insisted on watching the news. Emily retired to the small sofa in the corner with a presidential memoir she had found on a sparsely populated bookshelf. She soon abandoned it in favor of staring out the window.

  The scorching Phoenix sun seemed like it could melt the cars on the street below. Pedestrians were few and far between, though a few bicyclists did
brave the heat. When Ben Birchard’s head poked out of a cab, Emily perked with interest. He had a brown paper bag with him—lunch, she sincerely hoped.

  He jogged across the hot pavement toward the building and out of sight. Emily turned from the window and pretended to read the memoir on her lap. The elevator down the hall chimed and Ben appeared, sack in one hand and a thick manila file in the other.

  “I’ve brought lunch,” he announced as he set both items on the table.

  Alyson flipped off the television and scampered to his side with a nervous laugh. “You shouldn’t have.” Ben smiled at her, which triggered more fluttering eyelashes.

  Emily scowled.

  “I hope you didn’t get me anything with pickles,” said Oliver. “I hate pickles.”

  “I got you pickle loaf smothered with extra pickles and pickle relish on the side,” Ben said as he fished around in the bag. “Enjoy.” He handed a wrapped sandwich to Oliver, who opened it to reveal a cheeseburger. The boy thoroughly examined every layer.

  Ben, meanwhile, continued to hand out the contents of his sack like Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. “For Quincy, another burger. I hope you like sauerkraut, Miss Alyson, because I went out on a limb and bought you a Reuben.”

  “My favorite!” Alyson received the sandwich with worshipful eyes. Emily and Oliver each suppressed a gag, but for entirely different reasons.

  “And for Ms. Brent.” Ben handed her the final packet with a murmured, “I hope it’s to your liking.”

  She made a mental note to order something new the next time she went to a deli. Much as she loved turkey on rye, she did not like someone else anticipating her order.

  To her astonishment, however, the proffered sandwich was not turkey on rye. She unwrapped, instead, a ham-and-cheese on toasted sourdough. Lettuce, tomato, and extra mustard completed the creation. She lifted curious, confused eyes to her benefactor.

  Ben was in the midst of receiving Alyson’s extended gratitude “Reubens are so expensive that I only get to treat myself once a year, but I haven’t had one since my internship started because they don’t ever get corned beef up at Prom-F! Thank you so much!”. In the midst of this exuberant speech, he ventured a wry glance toward Emily in the corner.