Oliver Invictus (Annals of Altair Book 3)

by Kate Stradling

  On instinct, Oliver slipped into his sullen, surly routine. “Why should I be happy, idiot? You’re no different than any other waste of flesh they assign to me.” He stalked out of the principal’s office then, senses alert for whether they would call him back or allow her to follow. At this point, not knowing whether she was a plant from Prometheus or from somewhere else, his best option was to play dumb to the ruse—for his sake and the real Emily’s.

  Scrambling footsteps sounded behind him. She fell in step next to him, lengthening her stride to keep up. “So you’re… um…” she started. “Are we going to the library?”

  “Where else would we be going? If it’s between that and getting locked back in my room with Cedric, I’ll take the library any day of the week.”

  He thought about hanging back, making her lead the way, seeing just how ignorant of the school’s layout she was, but it would have been a mean and pointless trick. Besides, Oliver was used to leading his handlers around. He’d never been one to follow.

  She kept pace beside him, her eyes shifting to take in the details of the building. When they finally arrived at their destination—deserted, of course—Oliver flopped down in a hard-backed chair.

  Over the past five years, he had mentally cataloged Prom-F’s security measures—the obvious ones, at least. The library had seventeen cameras. Right now he and Not-Emily were visible to ten of them, and Oliver would bet that Gates and Stone were personally monitoring their interactions. Not-Emily remained standing. She transferred her weight from one foot to the other, her fingers interlaced and her thumbs aligned.

  “So, do you know why I’m here?” she asked.

  Oliver lolled his head back to stare at the ceiling. “Didn’t they tell you?”

  “A pair of GCA agents showed up at my apartment last night and escorted me straight to the airport. They said there was a situation, and that you were uncooperative. Don’t you think you should just cooperate with them, Oliver?”

  He lifted his head to stare directly at her. Her skittish eyes flicked toward one of the security cameras. She knew they were being watched as well.

  “Do you think I should cooperate?” he asked.

  “Well, I mean—” Her nervous laugh punctuated this non-starter. Emily had never laughed like that when she was nervous. She tended more toward worrying her lower lip.

  “Do you think I should cooperate?” Oliver asked again.

  “I don’t even know what’s going on,” she said. “But it’s not like it’s a matter of life and death. Is it?”

  He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “What if it is?”

  She brushed off the question. “All I know is that they’ve upended my life until it gets resolved. I have five class periods of delinquent high-schoolers who don’t do well with substitutes, and at this rate I have no clue how much damage they’ll cause before I get back to them.”

  Oliver sat back. “Well, I can’t really blame them. I don’t do well with substitutes either.”

  Surprise flickered across her face. Had she really thought she was getting away with this bait-and-switch? It was a risk, him letting her know he was onto her. The eavesdropping administrators, if they knew, would construe his comments as they pleased. If they didn’t, they might assume he was making an off-hand remark.

  “It would be best if you did what they want,” Not-Emily said. Her voice was flat, her attention fixed upon the carpet at her feet.

  Oliver counted it as a point against her. “Best for who? You don’t even know what the problem is.”

  The look on her face told him that she didn’t care. Another point lost.

  Movement caught the corner of his eyes. Maggie had entered the library, whether by Gates’s command or from her own curiosity. She tried to appear unassuming as she approached the pair, but in a deserted library, it was obvious that she had followed them.

  She sidled up to Not-Emily with a sly glance. “So, do you think you’ll be getting care packages from your mother like you did back when you were here before? She used to send them every month, didn’t she?”

  The woman frowned and returned this query with one of her own. “Does my mother know I’m here? I didn’t get the chance to tell anyone.”

  “You haven’t called her?”

  “They took away my cell phone. The tech who gave me this one said that it’s for official use only. Am I allowed to call my mother?”

  Maggie answered with a grunt, neither a confirmation nor a denial. She turned the conversation a different direction. “What was the name of that handler you were so friendly with when you first arrived?”

  “Are you talking about Crystal?” Oliver piped up before Not-Emily could say anything.

  Maggie scowled. “I thought you didn’t remember one handler from another.”

  “Everyone knew Crystal,” he said, which was mostly true. That particular handler had been through the wringer with a verbal projector at Prom-B. After coming to Prom-F, she let the kids in her charge get away with almost anything they wanted, simply grateful that they weren’t ordering her around against her will.

  “Yes, Crystal,” Maggie said with a harrumph. “Do you two still keep in touch?”

  “No.” Not-Emily didn’t bother to elaborate.

  Maggie opened her mouth, as though to make another inquiry, but she snapped it shut again.

  “Maybe you can tell me what this is all about,” suggested Not-Emily, “since no one else seems to want to enlighten me.”

  The look that flashed across Maggie’s face was one of annoyance. “Just do your job,” she said. “You should know it well enough. Just do what you did back when you were here before.”

  “But without the reports,” said Not-Emily.

  “Yes, without the reports,” Maggie sneered. She slinked away then, a disgruntled expression upon her face. Oliver tallied a point in Not-Emily’s favor. Maggie’s suspicious behavior lent itself more toward the fake handler being an Altair plant than a Prometheus one.

  Unless that was what the administrators wanted him to think.

  “Why no reports?” Not-Emily asked. He thought it odd that she would fixate on such a minor detail from the job.

  “Probably because I’m not in the Prom-F system anymore.” It was a reasonable guess. Cedric had received another batch of assignments with his breakfast, whereas Oliver had been ignored yet again.

  Not-Emily appeared mildly intrigued. “Why wouldn’t you be in the system?”

  Oliver suppressed a bitter laugh, which manifested in a snort instead. “Because once this whole situation gets resolved, they’re shipping me off to Prom-E. They were trying to ship me there when it started. You still think I should cooperate?”

  She didn’t answer. The squeamish look that crossed her face earned her another point in her favor, though.

  Chapter 6

  Biding Time

  Wednesday, February 20, 6:43 PM MST, Prom-F

  The cafeteria, usually buzzing with activity, had only a handful of students in it, and that handful was no happier to see Oliver now than they had been on Monday. Principal Gates had lengthened his leash enough to let him eat in rotation with the other students under lockdown. He entered the room with Not-Emily and a security guard on his heels.

  “Hey, Oliver! Can’t you do the rest of us a favor and off yourself?”

  The call came from a nearby table of boys. Oliver’s assigned security guard stood arms akimbo and glared, his expression menacing, but they all made rude gestures in return. They knew he wouldn’t leave Oliver’s side to discipline them, and they were already getting locked away in their dorms again after the meal. They had no more to lose in defiance than Oliver did.

  Not-Emily, taken off-guard by the harsh taunt, leaned in close. “Oliver, are you being bullied?”

  He scoffed. Her momentary concern reminded him so strongly of the real Emily that, for an instant, he had forgotten they were two different people.

  Accustomed to solitude among his
peers, he could sympathize with the glares they sent his direction. He sympathized all the more because General Stone had left an hour ago, and he had taken back with him the last three escapees to be recovered. The rest of the student body would consider this development a personal insult when they learned of it, if they hadn’t already, and they would lay the blame solely at Oliver’s doorstep.

  Which, logically speaking, was silly. The three boys, along with everyone else who had tried to escape, had put into action impromptu and ill-informed plans. They would have died out in the snow-strewn countryside, or else been discovered and returned. Few students had taken the time to think things through when the window for escape had appeared. They had acted irrationally, and they had failed because of it.

  The mastermind projector, though, she had chosen a different course.

  As he ate his dinner, Oliver muddled over the message sent over and over and over. Button is here. Prometheus F. It gave a simple who and where to its recipient, and even though most of the transmissions had been caught before they could leave Prom-F’s system, Principal Gates’s override had allowed a breach to occur.

  Was that breach worth anything? That remained yet to be seen.

  Not-Emily, bless her heart, was doing her best to fit in. She had a knack for adapting to a situation as though she were already familiar with it. Oliver still waffled between whether she was working for Prometheus or Altair, and he’d begun to consider the possibility of an unknown third party. She’d encouraged him to cooperate, but whether that was because she was loyal to the GCA or because she wanted to get away from them as quick as possible, he could not tell. He couldn’t ask her directly, either, not only because of the surveillance cameras, but because he was pretty sure she would lie either way.

  “You ruined everything, Null!” someone else called. One of the handlers shushed the unruly student.

  Oliver raised his voice to reply. “Seems to be my lot in life. If anyone wants to bash me over the head, you’re welcome to it.”

  “Everyone be quiet, or you’re all going back to your dorms,” said the security guard.

  “We’re all going back to our dorms regardless,” said Oliver. He turned his attention upon Not-Emily, careless of the guard’s scowl. “Did they give you a room? Handlers at least get some privacy after hours. Aside from the security cameras, I mean.”

  A furrow cut between the woman’s brows.

  “Did you remember to pack a toothbrush this time around?” he prodded, teasingly.

  She knew she hadn’t fooled him, so for him to ask her questions only Emily would understand was tantamount to rubbing salt in the wound. “I have a toothbrush,” she said, an irritated edge to her voice. “They gave one to me when I arrived.”

  “Nice,” he said.

  “Null-projectors should just die!” someone across the room declared.

  “That’s it,” cried the security guard. “Everybody back to their dorms, now.”

  The twenty or so handlers ushered their students to the door. When Oliver half-arose to follow, the guard motioned him to remain.

  “There’s ten minutes before the next rotation comes in. You can finish your dinner.”

  Oliver looked down at his bowl of soup and the hunk of bread next to it. He wasn’t all that hungry, but under lockdown it was best to eat when one could. For the moment, the administrators were pandering to what they thought he might want, but that could change in the blink of an eye.

  Thursday morning dawned with leaden gray clouds across the sky. The temperature outside had dropped about ten degrees, and all signs pointed to a coming storm. Not-Emily’s gaze strayed to every window they passed.

  “Worried that you’re going to get snowed in?” Oliver quipped.

  From the look on her face, he’d hit the nail on the head. She chose another avenue of conversation.

  “They told me last night that they need you to identify a projector for them. A dangerous projector, Oliver.”

  “Someone on par with Happy West,” he said with a helpful nod. “Or, well, with Happy West from five years ago. He was young enough then that he’s probably gotten even stronger by now. I pity the people wherever he ended up.”

  Not-Emily didn’t react to this remark. If she knew what he was talking about, she could only have learned about it from the administrators, or from his personal file.

  “Did they give you my personal file this time around?” he asked abruptly.

  “No.”

  Not-Emily was far more prone to blunt answers than the real Emily had been.

  “Lucky you,” said Oliver. “There was nothing in it worth reading anyway. And if this projector they want me to identify was really so dangerous, they’d all be dead. But they’re not.”

  She said nothing to this. They spent their morning in the library, in full view of the window and the roiling clouds beyond. Close to noon, fat, heavy snowflakes began to fall.

  “I’m supposed to be pumping you for information,” Not-Emily said.

  “And someone’s listening to our every word. I know.”

  “This is really inconvenient for me to be here.”

  “Take it up with Principal Gates. He’s the one who brought you.”

  “None of the administrators will listen to me. They seem to think you’ll spill your guts if I prod you hard enough.”

  “Depends on what you prod me with. Unless you mean my metaphorical guts. I don’t have any of those to spill, to you or anyone else.”

  She leaned forward and hissed, “Can’t you just give them what they want?”

  She wasn’t speaking low enough to escape Prom-F’s surveillance. Oliver wasn’t sure it was possible to speak that low, but she wasn’t really even trying, except for dramatic effect. “And get shipped to Prom-E all the sooner?” he asked.

  “Can’t you bargain to stay here?”

  “They’ll break their end of the deal the minute they have what they want. All nulls end up at Prom-E.”

  She really did lower her voice to a ghost of a whisper then, silent enough to impress even Oliver as he strained to hear her words. “What if you gave them the wrong projector?”

  He had considered this option, to open another window for mayhem at Prom-F at his own expense and that of a sacrificial lamb. He hadn’t expected the idea to come from anyone else, though.

  “That would just start this whole fiasco all over again,” he whispered back. “An hour or two isn’t enough to orchestrate an escape from this place, and that’s the longest I’d be gone before something in the security system triggered an alert. They’re probably monitoring the camera feeds remotely now. I guess if the projector was smart enough to wait a day or two it could work, but I don’t see that I should have to sacrifice myself on that possibility.”

  “Could you get a message to him? Her? Them?”

  Was she fishing for information?

  Oliver scowled. “No.”

  Not-Emily threw back her head in frustration. “You’re killin’ me here, kid!”

  “Literally or figuratively?” he asked.

  “Both!” She cradled her head against one hand, mussing the meticulous ponytail with tense fingers. Outside the snowfall thickened.

  “I am supposed to be in Milwaukee,” she finally declared, “not in the remote wilds of western Montana. I have a life. I have a job. And all of this projector/null-projector business is beyond anything I signed up for!”

  “What did you sign up for?” Oliver asked, for the moment careless of the seventeen security cameras and their ultra-sensitive microphones. He was curious what this outburst signaled. If she was Altair, surely she would hold steady to her course until the bitter end.

  “I signed up for teaching high school English. After everything I’d gone through—the schooling, the debt, the internship here—it seemed like an easy choice to make. I wasn’t ever supposed to see this place again. I wasn’t ever supposed to see you again, or any of the other kids I handled while I was here.”

 
; Almost he could see Emily Brent in her outburst. Almost he could believe his own memory to be mistaken.

  She was good, this Not-Emily. Almost he wondered if he’d gone insane while the rest of the world had moved forward in its proper sphere.

  But that was preposterous. And if he started questioning his own mind, he would never get anywhere in life.

  Chapter 7

  Perfect Storm

  Friday, February 22, 2:13 AM MST, Prom-F

  Oliver jolted awake, unsure what had caused that reaction. Darkness surrounded him, with Cedric’s rhythmic breath punctuating the thick shadows.

  And that was all he could hear.

  A low mechanical hum cut through the silence, so normal to his ears that Oliver typically disregarded it as white noise. The building’s power must have shut off, with a slight delay before the backup generators kicked in. Quietly he flipped off his covers and padded across the room to the window. A peek beyond the shade revealed more darkness. There was no moon tonight, and the cloud cover shut out any view of the stars. A handful of exterior lights shone feebly down on softly falling snow.

  Roughly three feet had fallen in the past fourteen hours.

  A building complex like Prom-F required an enormous amount of electricity. The backup generators would supply power to only the most essential elements: the heating system, some overhead lights, the emergency exit system, and the most basic security features. Prometheus’s emergency protocol configured all bedroom doors to unlock in a sudden loss of power, to allow escape in case of fire or another natural disaster. A student dorm would lock again when the power resumed, but Oliver wasn’t in a student dorm anymore.

  He tiptoed across the carpet to test the door.

  It was open.

  With utmost care he eased the handle down and peeked out into the hall. The guard wasn’t there. At the far end, where another corridor adjoined, the man stood with one of his fellows in a puddle of light. One of them was briefing the other about whatever had happened to the main power supply.