Oliver Invictus (Annals of Altair Book 3)

by Kate Stradling

  From what bits of conversation Oliver could pick up, they were blaming the heavy snowfall for sending their little grid offline.

  Rather than retreat back to his bed, he slipped out his door and shut it softly behind him, too tempted by the prospect for a moment of freedom. Stealthily he crept in the opposite direction, keeping to the shadowed side of the hall as he went.

  Security lights shone at intervals, but they were the anemic, power-saving models. A building upgrade a couple years back included a third-floor bridge to connect the dorms to the school proper. Oliver crept up the stairs and across the deserted glass tube, with full view of a snow-strewn campus beneath heavy, charcoal-colored clouds. Within the main building, he darted from shadow to shadow toward the administrative wing, watchful of anyone else who might be roaming the halls in the dead of night.

  He arrived without incident at Prom-F’s administrative offices.

  The lights in the corridor were on here, in their weaker modes, and voices floated toward him. He dashed into a darkened office and crouched low.

  “They’re still trying to find what caused the trip,” a man was saying. “It was something local.”

  “How long before we’re back to full power?” That was Principal Gates. He and his lackey strode past the office where Oliver hid, trailing remnants of snow behind them. It speckled the shoulders and back of Gates’s woolen coat, likely acquired in the trek from his private house on the school grounds.

  “A half-hour, maybe?” the lackey guessed. “It could just be a matter of finding a blown fuse. We could be up and running any minute now.”

  “And the students are all locked in their dorms?”

  “That was the first thing we reactivated when the backup generators came on line. It was a lapse of three to five seconds at most.”

  “What about the nulls?”

  The lackey hesitated. “There’s the guard outside their door.”

  “You didn’t reactivate their lock? Do it now. Don’t take any chances.”

  Gates split off into his own office, and the lackey spoke instructions into a handheld radio. “Fuller, can you reactivate the lock on the room where the nulls are staying? It’s in the handlers’ block of dorms.”

  Well, so much for getting back to his bed without notice.

  The lackey passed his hiding place, retracing his steps the way he had come while Oliver muddled over what to do.

  Here he was in the middle of the night, holed up in an administrator’s office and waiting to be found. He was, ironically enough, presented with the same circumstances his classmates had experienced last Monday during his absence: an unexpected and narrow window of opportunity with no viable options for getting away.

  He thought back on the only successful jailbreak from Prom-F, the incident that had brought him here five years ago. The students who had accomplished it, two brothers, had planned meticulously in advance, down to the smallest of details. They hadn’t waited for a window of opportunity, though. They had created it themselves.

  And they had done it in the middle of the summer. The winter snowstorm complicated matters all the more. Even if Oliver could locate keys to the select set of gas-electric hybrid vehicles on the grounds, even if he found the stored fuel, the limited access road would be clotted with snow. He wouldn’t make it more than a hundred yards beyond the fence. And it wasn’t as though Prom-F kept a supply of snow plows or snowmobiles.

  The ID chip in his hand would prevent him from getting very far anyway.

  If he was to be caught, though, he might as well go down in a blaze of glory. Hadn’t he told Principal Gates he wanted mayhem?

  The emergency exit system was still in place. Throwing an alarm was supposed to uncouple all the locks. The Prom-F students, if their Monday escapades were any indication, would take swift advantage of an alarm to create mischief. Oliver peeked out into the hall, saw that it was clear, and skulked back toward the lower-level classrooms. There was an alarm pull on the wall there, with a fire extinguisher next to it, ready and waiting for his use.

  Harried as his plan for mischief was, he’d take whatever weapon he could. His fellow students would present as much a danger to him as any administrator. On the reverse, if he was able to integrate into their ranks, the admins wouldn’t know who had flipped the alarm without checking security footage—and under the power-reduced circumstances, that coverage was likely limited.

  In his haste to get the deed done, he rounded a corner into darkness, only to collide with another body.

  “Oof!” His butt hit the floor. The other person sprawled back, and Oliver’s fast adjusting eyes quickly grasped who it was.

  Not-Emily. She was dressed in black, blending in with the shadows around her.

  “You—!” he started, but her hand shot forward to cover his mouth.

  “What are you doing out of bed, you crazy kid?” On swift legs she moved past him to check around the corner, whether their crash had drawn anyone’s attention.

  “I was about to pull the fire alarm,” he said.

  Her eyes widened—the whites gleamed in the dull light from the adjoining hall—and she immediately snatched him by the upper arm to drag him along with her. Oliver kept his mouth shut as they went, for the moment content to see what was going on in Not-Emily’s calculating mind. She was taking him toward Principal Gates’s office, but she didn’t walk like someone about to turn in a runaway. She was skulking as much as Oliver had been only moments before.

  Gates was on the phone. Not-Emily ducked into the office next to his, its door wide open.

  “It looks to be weather-related. We should be back on—hello? Hello, hello? Are you there?” Principal Gates swore and slammed his fist against his desktop. The phone rang, and he immediately picked up. “General, I think the storm is interfering with the signal. I’ll call you back when—hello?” He cursed again.

  Not-Emily eased the office door shut. She turned on Oliver.

  “Spill it, kid. Do you know how to hack the computer system here?”

  “What are you looking for?” he asked.

  “Student rosters. Building plans. Any information I can get.”

  “For who?”

  The window into the hallway provided scant light. In the semi-darkness, he could see the rebellion that flashed across her face. She wasn’t going to be forthright with him, and he had no reason to give courtesy he wouldn’t receive.

  “If you got this far, you must have had some plan to hack it yourself,” he said.

  Not-Emily scowled. “Who knows how long I have? Someone could catch us any minute now, and then we’re both dead.”

  He grinned. “Not me. They have to keep me alive or risk another episode with their rogue projector.”

  She jostled past him to the desk in the office, muttering something about self-satisfied little jerks meeting their comeuppance. Under her quick fingertips, the keyboard clicked and the computer screen flashed to life.

  Oliver twisted the monitor to face away from the hall window. Its blue-toned light bathed Not-Emily in an eerie glow as she worked. “So you do know what you’re doing, then?” he said.

  Her attention remained fixed on the screen. “I have a particular set of skills. Stand guard, would you?”

  He had already taken a post near the window, peering out at the deserted hall. “You’d better hurry. Gates’s lackey told him they would have the power up within half an hour, and probably sooner. You didn’t do anything to it, did you?”

  “I don’t start things. I only take advantage when they happen.” She slipped a silver necklace from beneath the collar of her black shirt and continued to type. A large teardrop pendant gleamed in the light from the hall.

  The power suddenly cut out again, only to whir back to life at full force a split-second later. The office lights blazed overhead. Oliver and Not-Emily both dove for cover beneath the desk. She curled up tight, but even so, there was barely room for Oliver to fit next to her.

  With power rest
ored, the full array of security cameras would be back online. The tiny space in which they were crammed was probably the only place they could remain unseen for long. But then, he wasn’t sure he could endure such close quarters with the impostor for long.

  “What now?” he asked.

  She deflected responsibility back to him. “Aren’t you supposed to be the genius?”

  “You should’ve let me pull the fire alarm,” Oliver said.

  “Most high-security buildings have a thirty- to sixty-second delay between when an alarm is pulled and when it actually sounds. It gives the security engineers enough time to assess whether there’s a real risk or an equipment malfunction. It’s also a good way to get yourself caught quickly, if that was your goal.”

  He clenched his jaw, annoyed at her superior tone. “How would you know if Prometheus had a delay?”

  “I don’t, but the measures to get on site match the profile. Think quick, kid. How do we get out of here unseen?”

  “We don’t. The office lights should turn off soon, but they’re motion-activated. So unless you have some sensor-deflecting blanket that can hide us from that and the security cameras out in the hall, we’re stuck.” A new, horrible thought occurred to him. “You don’t have your cell phone with you, do you?”

  Not-Emily scoffed. “It’s wrapped inside a sock back in my room.”

  “That’s just as bad,” Oliver hissed. “The phone checks at random whether you’re within the same vicinity, and it puts out an alert if you’re not.”

  “It’s fine,” she said dismissively. “They let me bring my wallet with me when they dragged me from my apartment. I have my mimic. It looks like a credit card,” she added before he could ask, “but it’s loaded with my ID chip’s info instead. If the phone sends out a signal, the mimic will ping it back that I’m right there. We have time to figure this out.”

  The overhead lights clicked off. “Where are the motion sensors?” Not-Emily asked.

  “By the door, at waist-level.”

  She grunted.

  “This is stupid,” Oliver said. “I’m just going to run for it. I’ll create a diversion, and you can head back to your room while they’re hunting me down.”

  “Because your diversion will magically disarm the security cameras between here and there,” she said sarcastically. “Thanks for the offered sacrifice, though. And here I thought you didn’t play well with substitutes.”

  “I don’t, but I know now that you’re not GCA, so that’s a point in your favor.”

  “You thought I was GCA?”

  She sounded appalled, much to Oliver’s amusement. “It was a theory. They love to play mind games.” He tipped his head out from underneath the desk, wondering how much clearance he had in the dark.

  “Don’t trip anything,” Not-Emily warned.

  “Obviously.” But as he lifted his head just above the level of the desk, something did trip—something blaring, blindingly loud, with a strobe light to accompany it.

  Not-Emily jerked him back under the desk, a rebuke on the tip of her tongue.

  Oliver wrenched away from her grip. “That wasn’t me! That’s the emergency alarm.” Prometheus ran fire drills once a year as part of their safety protocol. He wouldn’t mistake that sound anywhere. Scrambling out from his hiding place, he peered over the desk to the hallway in time to see Principal Gates bolt past the window.

  “Looks like someone else tripped the system. C’mon.”

  He didn’t wait for her to follow and didn’t care that the overhead light switched on with his movement. He pulled the door open and listened. Shouts echoed down the hallway from another wing. Oliver darted out, intent upon dashing for the dorms, but a hand grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him the opposite direction, straight into Principal Gates’s office.

  “What are you doing?” he cried. “Are you crazy?”

  “Keep watch,” Not-Emily said. “What do you want to bet Gates was already logged into the system?”

  At the computer, she pulled apart her teardrop pendant to reveal the end of a portable drive. She plugged the unit into an open port with a determined set to her mouth. Oliver hung upon the door, anxiety welling in his throat. The strobe lights and sirens fueled his distress. From afar, a loud bang punctuated the shouts, like someone beating down a metal door.

  “Hurry it up,” he cast over his shoulder, but she was too intent upon her task to pay him any heed. Someone darted through the adjoining corridor at the end of the hall. Oliver ducked back behind the door frame and watched through the slivered opening for any further sign of movement.

  Behind him, Not-Emily ripped her drive from the computer. “Let’s go,” she said, piecing the pendant back together. She slipped it under her shirt again as she sidled up next to him.

  Oliver raised one hand in warning. “Wait. Something’s going on out there. Check the window.”

  She obeyed, much to his surprise. The moment she peered through the blinds, though, she cursed. “Did they send the military? Is this a cleanse?” She darted for the door, grabbing Oliver as she passed. He didn’t question. They both sprinted down the hall as fast as they could run.

  White-clad soldiers stepped into view at the junction, their faces masked and their weapons at the ready. Oliver and Not-Emily pulled up short, even as one of the men leveled his gun to shoot.

  “Wait!” Not-Emily blurted, arms raised in a sign of surrender. “I’m an asset!”

  The soldier hesitated. Another motioned with his gun for one of his fellows to tend to her and Oliver. “Cuff ’em and take ’em outside. Have one of the techs scan her to make sure she’s telling the truth.”

  Before Oliver could question what was happening, someone had pulled a zip-tie around Not-Emily’s wrists and locked them in place. She motioned for him to put his hands together for the same treatment.

  “You’re military?” he asked, sick disbelief in the pit of his stomach. She had been working for General Stone all this time?

  “They’re not military,” she replied.

  “You ain’t kidding,” said the soldier who zipped Oliver’s wrists into tight restraint. “How’d you know, pretty lady?”

  She ignored the epithet. “I took a gamble. Just do what they say, Oliver. They could be our ticket out of here.”

  Further up the hall, a series of pop-pop-pops sounded. Oliver, looking that direction, was pulled off balance when someone shoved him toward the nearby stairwell. He stumbled but caught himself before he could fall.

  “Is it Altair?” he asked Not-Emily, his heart quickening.

  She didn’t bat an eyelash at mention of the subversive organization. “Not likely.”

  The message to the anonymous email address shot through his mind. “You guys are here for Button,” he blurted.

  “Button, button, who’s got the button?” one of their escorts said. He pushed through an emergency exit into the falling snow.

  Oliver, pajama-clad and with only socks upon his feet, could do nothing but follow into the freezing night.

  The front aspect of Prom-F’s campus teemed with hulking white shapes, tread-wheeled armored transports that could cut through difficult terrain. The soldiers led their captives to the nearest one, pushing them into the open hold, where a couple of techs monitored a small bay of screens.

  “We’ve got an asset here. Commander says to scan her to confirm.”

  Not-Emily presented her zip-tied hands. One of the techs produced a handheld device and ran it across the area where her ID chip would be. The device pinged.

  “She’s a match,” he said. Then, with a frown, he added, “According to this, you’re supposed to be in Milwaukee.”

  “I know. It’s a long story.”

  The tech shrugged and clipped the zip-tie from around her wrists. “Settle in the back there. If you interfere, we’ll kill you. And what about the kid?”

  “He’s a null,” said Not-Emily before Oliver could respond. “Broad spectrum, probably Level 4 or 5.” />
  “That’s the problem,” said the second tech. “Tranq him. Now.”

  Before Oliver could even think to protest, a quick hiss and the sting of a tranquilizer dart preceded an almost instantaneous descent into oblivion—a descent, unfortunately, that he remembered all too well.

  Chapter 8

  Splinters of Subversion

  Friday, February 22, 8:35 AM MST, in transit

  Awareness returned in degrees. First it was the rumbling of a rough road beneath him. Then it was the chill of his surroundings and a sense that he was one in a crowd. Only, the crowd seemed to be beneath him too, somehow.

  The rumbling stopped. A loud cluh-clunk introduced piercing sunlight and an icy gust of wind to the space around him. Oliver’s eyelids fluttered.

  “Everybody out! Keep in order!”

  He heard shuffling and voices, but as though through a fog. He could have sworn someone had clobbered his brain with a load of sludge. As the seconds ticked by, he managed to drag one eye open, only to find his face just shy of a battered sheet of metal.

  It was the ceiling of the transport. He was lying in a narrow, netted cargo area, elevated from the main floor where everyone else had passed the journey.

  “What about the null?” someone below asked.

  “I’ll stay with him until he wakes up,” said a woman.

  “Not alone. Hancock, stay with her. Escort them to a holding area when you come in.”

  Hancock answered an affirmative.

  “Are you going to leave the door open?” the woman asked. “We’ll freeze if you do.”

  “Shake the kid awake or carry him in, then.” Oliver turned his head as this speaker exited, a silhouette against blinding white light. The brightness was too much for his eyes. He squeezed them shut to alleviate the pain.

  “Hey, are you awake?” said the woman. “Oliver.”

  “You’re not Emily,” he muttered, irritated.

  “Looks like the little null is coming to,” said her guard.