His words triggered Crystal’s warning again. Soulless little sociopaths who had nothing but themselves to care about. “How can you not care about your parents?” she asked.
The question had a surprising effect: Oliver stiffened and bared his teeth in the first display of open wrath she had yet seen from him. “What do we care about people who sold us the first chance they got? We don’t have parents anymore. Prometheus is all there is for any of us.”
A chill ran down Emily’s spine. “Sold you?” He had spoken the words callously, but her mind refused to grasp their meaning. This was not an age of child slavery or trafficking. The very concept was foreign.
“The Prometheus Institute officially adopts all of its students,” Oliver said with a lofty tilt of his chin. “In order to do that, they compensate the parents monetarily. Don’t look so shocked. It’s perfectly legal, and we’re better off without them anyway. Only Prometheus can raise us to our full potential.”
“But…” said Emily. “I mean… of course Prometheus has the resources to help you learn and grow, but… you… you don’t have any contact with your parents at all?”
“We don’t have parents,” said Oliver firmly. “The Prometheus Institute is the only parent we need.”
It was tragic to hear those words from a ten-year-old. Emily hadn’t always gotten along well with her parents, but she would never dream of cutting off all contact with them, or of them doing the same to her. Parents were a part of life, an important part of developmental growth in children. Suddenly Crystal’s warning had a lot more force behind it. Why would Prometheus intentionally create a circumstance that undermined the emotional health of its students?
“Don’t look so pitiful,” Oliver said. “It’s annoying, for one thing, and for another, I’m glad my parents sold me off. They wouldn’t have known what to do with me. They’re probably a lot happier without me, too, so it’s a win-win for both of us. And if you’re going to continue to mope, then you can just leave and do it elsewhere. I have work to do here.”
“Oliver,” Emily began in a sympathetic voice.
“Seriously, get out. I don’t need you to practice your little child psychology methods on me right now, or ever.” From the deathly tone of his voice, he was not joking.
She raised her hands defensively. “All right, all right. I won’t say another word on the subject. But if these kids didn’t run away to find their parents, why did they run away, and where could they possibly go? They might be little geniuses, but they’re still only kids, right?”
He let loose an irritated sigh. “I’m trying to figure that out. I’d probably have a lot easier time if you’d quit interrupting with your useless, incessant questions.”
“You had all that time I was looking over the letters. What did you find then?”
He hesitated. His attention flitted to the computer screen and back. “She did go to New York and DC that week. I recall a group of Prom-B kids visiting sometime back in March, so she must have been with them.”
“Did anything unusual happen on that trip?”
“Not according to the official itinerary.”
“So maybe something happened before she left? Or after? Or maybe she just got tired of not being able to see her older brothers.”
Oliver didn’t immediately answer. At first, Emily thought that he was done talking to her. Maybe he was frustrated with the whole thing and didn’t want to discuss it anymore.
When he did speak, the somberness of his voice caught her off-guard. Gone was his customary sarcasm, replaced with a quiet pensiveness that seemed much more fitting on him.
“Whatever it was, it wasn’t trivial. Hawk and Hummer have caused millions in damages here and have broken who knows how many laws. I don’t know what’ll happen to them when we bring them back, what sort of punishment they’ll face, but they wouldn’t take so many risks over a triviality. From what I can tell of her so far, Honey would’ve understood that much. She wouldn’t have reached out to them over anything insignificant.”
Emily studied him, mindful of his inability to meet her eyes. “You never met her—Honey, that is—but you recognized Hawk and Hummer from their files. Did you know them?”
An array of emotions crossed his face before he instinctively schooled it into his customary aloofness. “Prom-F hosted the Institute’s yearly exhibition last fall,” he said. “Hummer’s in my same age division, and we both had entries in the mechanics exhibition. His won highest honors.” There was a note of bitterness in his voice as he conceded that last detail.
“Oh, so you’re rivals,” said Emily knowingly.
His eyes narrowed into a venomous scowl. “No. I’m the hunter, and he’s the prey. He may have beaten me once, but it won’t happen again.”
Article I, Section 6
Research and Development
July 3, 8:03am mdt, Prom-F
Emily rapped sharply on the door of Oliver’s assigned dorm room. Principal Gates had appeared the night before at 7:30 and, much to Oliver’s annoyance, ended their research for the evening. After a quiet dinner, Emily and Oliver were shown to a couple of empty rooms in the dormitory that stood behind the main school building. Crystal and Todd were staying there as well, just across the hall. Principal Gates wanted them on hand for consultation about the habits of Honey and Happy, and also so that they could resume their posts when the two lost lambs were brought back into the Prometheus Institute’s fold.
The very presence of Crystal and Todd raised a curious question: where were the child-life counselors (yes, yes, handlers) for Hawk and Hummer? Couldn’t they give just as much or more insight into the whole scheme, not to mention some necessary insight into the personalities of those older children?
When she whispered that question to Crystal, though, the woman frowned darkly and said she had seen neither hide nor hair of either of them.
Emily asked Oliver too before he went to bed. His response was a narrow-eyed scowl and a door in her face.
Maybe he’d been overtired.
The Institute had kindly provided her with some overnight accessories—a toothbrush, floss, and so forth—but no change of clothes. Thus, Emily was forced to wear the same slacks and blouse she had come in. She did her best to look professional, but she felt frayed at the edges. Sleeping in a foreign place with foreign accoutrements had always had that effect on her, though, ever since she was very young.
As she knocked on Oliver’s door, she kept her ears open for movement within. She heard nothing, and there was no response to her summons.
“If that little brat went down to breakfast without me,” she muttered under her breath.
She tried the knob and was surprised to discover it open. Oliver seemed like the sort to keep his door locked whether he was there or away.
Her first cursory glance told her that the room was empty. Just as she was about to storm down to the breakfast hall, a movement on the bed caught her attention. The blankets there were piled in a high bundle, what she had assumed to be a haphazard mess left by Oliver when he woke up. Her second glance showed her error. He was still there, sleeping in a curled ball beneath the covers.
Stealthily she crept forward and pulled the blanket back. In sleep Oliver looked perfectly innocent, a guileless child instead of the sarcastic, superior little snot she’d met the previous day. If only he looked that cute when he was awake!
“Aw,” she murmured instinctively.
The noise, slight though it was, caused his brows to furrow together in their customary scowl, and the next moment, brown eyes blinked sleepily up at her.
Embarrassed at being caught hovering over him, Emily switched to the sweetly brusque tone she’d used on him the day before. “Hey genius, it’s after eight. Get up and get dressed so that we can have breakfast and get back to work.”
Oliver recoiled, horrified at her presence in his room. “What do you think you’re doing in here?” he cried as he pulled his covers to his chest like the shy maiden of a melod
rama. “How dare you!”
“You didn’t answer when I knocked,” she said glibly. “I thought you’d already gone down without me. Besides, if you don’t want people to get in shouldn’t you lock your door?”
“Oh, did I not see the lock on the door?” Oliver asked sarcastically.
Emily twisted around to look at the doorknob, which was, as he had implied, completely devoid of any locking mechanism. “But…” she said in confusion, “I thought there was a keyhole on the other side…”
“There is a keyhole,” said Oliver, “but the doors can only be locked through the central computer system, and then opened from the outside.”
“My room had a lock.”
“No one’s worried about you getting stolen during the middle of the night.”
“And who’d want to steal you?”
An odd, hurt look flashed across Oliver’s face, and for the briefest instant Emily thought that she’d gone too far. He banished that expression the next moment with a haughty sniff and an upturned nose, though.
“You were assigned a handler’s room,” he said. “You’re an adult, so obviously they give you different amenities than they give the students.”
“Like a lock on the door?” Emily guessed.
“Like a lock on the door that you can control,” Oliver corrected.
“Fine. That still doesn’t change the fact that it’s after eight, you’re still in bed, and I’m starving. Get up and get dressed, would you?”
“Get out and I will,” Oliver said, in a tone that implied that his tardiness was entirely Emily’s fault. She brushed it off and followed his request.
At the door, though, she paused to tell him, “If you’re not ready in five minutes, I’m coming back in to see what’s taking so long.”
“It takes longer than five minutes to get ready,” Oliver cried.
“Not for a little boy it shouldn’t. Who are you trying to impress?” Without waiting for an answer, she shut the door, perfectly aware that he was glowering at her back.
Unlike Emily, Oliver had not been pulled from a train and tossed onto an airplane headed for Prom-F. He had come from his home at Prom-A prepared for an overnight journey. He emerged within the allotted time, his pale face washed, his dark hair slicked back with water, and a fresh set of clothing on his wiry little frame.
Emily tried not to begrudge him that change of clothing, really she did.
“What’s your plan of attack for today?” she asked as they ambled down the hallway toward the stairs.
At first he didn’t answer, but then a grudging response emerged, almost as though it had escaped against his will. “I want to talk to some of the other Prom-F kids, see if Hawk or Hummer said or did anything suspicious over the last couple of weeks.”
“You think they might’ve confided in one of their friends?”
“I doubt it. Hawk is kind of a loner, plays very close to the vest. It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking at any given time. Hummer’s different—very affable, outgoing, makes friends easily and such, but I always felt like that was kind of a façade.”
“In what way?”
Oliver clenched and unclenched his hands, as though steeling himself against her continued questions. “He just put off that vibe, all right? Like what you saw on the surface wasn’t the whole story. I was only acquainted with them for a couple of weeks, but they both seemed very… I don’t know, deep. Now could you please refrain from asking any more idiotic questions before we’ve even had breakfast?”
Emily obediently pursed her lips. They descended together to the cafeteria, where several groups of children were already eating. Emily spotted Crystal across the room next to a sour-faced Todd. She waved a polite hello, and they warily returned the gesture.
The atmosphere of the wide room could best be described as somber. Children huddled together, speaking in hushed whispers to one another if at all, while their handlers sat nervously next to them. Emily and Oliver were the recipients of multiple sidelong glances as they made their way through the cafeteria line to receive their breakfast. Oliver ignored it, but Emily felt more than conspicuous.
“Bacon?” said the cafeteria worker across from her, and that single word brought her attention back to the task at hand.
Emily frowned at the two strips the hair-net-bedecked woman offered. “That doesn’t look like tofurkey bacon.”
The woman snorted. “You’re new.”
Was it so obvious, thought a bristling Emily, but her umbrage turned to shock as the woman continued.
“This is the real deal, cut straight from the belly of the pig.”
“It must have cost a fortune,” Emily cried, her gaze fixed upon the pile of bacon strips in the warming pan.
“A pretty penny indeed,” said the woman. “Now do you want it or not?”
She’d only had real bacon once, ages and ages ago in her youth, at a friend’s house. Her father was a strict vegetarian and her mother ate animal products only sparingly, but even if that hadn’t been the case, meats other than chicken and fish were horrifically high-priced thanks to a built-in tax meant to offset the animal destruction they mandated. No one ate meat, because they couldn’t afford it.
Oliver jostled her with his elbow, impatient at her hesitation.
“Yes, please,” she said. Anticipation thrilled through her as the woman deposited the two strips on her tray. Next she collected a serving of scrambled eggs, some whole-wheat toast, and a box of soymilk. This latter item she held up to Oliver. “They don’t have the real deal here?”
“Milk exploits cows,” said Oliver, but upon seeing her confused expression, he further elaborated, “A study released a few years ago showed that the growth hormones added to real milk can retard brain function. The results are highly contested, but the soy lobby has a lot of clout with the GCA, so all GCA entities and affiliates use soymilk in their vending machines and cafeterias.”
Emily shrugged and replaced the box on her tray. She’d drunk soymilk all her life, but she thought it was odd that the cafeteria would have real bacon but not real milk. So she said as much. “If the soy lobby has so much clout with the GCA, shouldn’t we be eating tofurkey bacon instead of the real stuff?”
Oliver grabbed a box of orange juice and skirted around her. “That would make the pork lobbyists complain,” he said, and Emily gathered that they must have a lot of clout with the GCA as well.
The dairy lobbyists needed to step up their game.
“Hey,” she said to Oliver’s retreating back, “Crystal and Todd are over there. Let’s go…” Her voice trailed off as he veered the opposite direction. “Or not,” Emily muttered. She paused, torn between abandoning her willful charge to wherever he chose to sit or following him around like she was supposed to. When he stopped to talk to a cute young girl, Emily’s mind was made up. Ten-year-olds didn’t know the first thing about flirting, but it would be awfully fun to watch him be all awkward and uncomfortable.
He had already seated himself at the table by the time Emily arrived. The girl looked like she might be a year or two older than he was. Her mocha-colored skin testified of an ancestry other than European, but Emily couldn’t tell from a glance what that ancestry was. It was probably a mix.
So Oliver liked older girls, she thought with amusement, but her fantasy shattered when she joined them at the table.
“Who’s your friend?” she asked knowingly.
Oliver rolled his eyes. “Quincy, this is my new handler. She’s an idiot.”
“She’ll get along well with mine, then,” Quincy said with a nod to the man across the table. “Say hello, Dominic.”
Dominic wore the same cynical expression that Emily had seen on both Crystal and Todd. “Hello,” he said, but it was more sarcastic than sincere.
A practiced smile leapt to Emily’s face. “I’m Emily,” she said pleasantly. “So you’re Quincy? I’ve heard about you.”
Quincy frowned, and Oliver shot Emily a disapproving glance. “Han
dlers aren’t supposed to talk to any students but their assigned one. Why don’t you eat your bacon?”
Emily’s gaze darted over to Dominic. “Is that true?”
“Yup,” he said.
Duly rebuked, she snapped her mouth shut and turned her attention to her plate. Next to her, Oliver started up a conversation with his tablemate. “So what really happened with Hawk and Hummer?” he asked.
Emily was crestfallen. He had sat by Quincy to get information from her, and not because of a bashful schoolboy crush. Too bad. She pushed her plastic fork through her eggs as she shamelessly eavesdropped.
“You tell me,” Quincy said in a guarded voice. “We’ve all been under lockdown for the past two days.”
Oliver tilted his head, skeptical of her ignorance. “You don’t know anything?”
“I know Hawk and his brother escaped. Everything else I’ve heard is hearsay.”
“You were good friends with Hawk, weren’t you?”
She didn’t immediately answer, and Emily couldn’t decide if the annoyed expression that crossed her face was because of his question or its answer. There was something decidedly complex in the way Quincy’s eyes darted about.
“Hawk kept everyone at a distance,” she said at last, “but I guess I was as good a friend to him as he had. Aside from Hummer, of course. Those two were as thick as thieves.”
“What an apt analogy for two little criminals,” Dominic said from the other side of the table.
“Shut up,” Quincy told him with a venomous glance. To Emily’s amazement, he obeyed.
“So did Hawk ever talk about leaving Prometheus?” Oliver pressed.
“If he had, they would’ve had him on a watch list and he never would’ve escaped,” Quincy replied with contempt. “I think it’s my turn to ask you a question now. What are you doing here, Oliver?”
“I’m supposed to help bring back Hawk and Hummer. Principal Gates said you were too close to the situation.”
A Boy Called Hawk (Annals of Altair Book 1) Page 7