A Boy Called Hawk (Annals of Altair Book 1)

by Kate Stradling

  Out of all the information he had dumped on her, her mind latched on to one single thought. “Wow. I’m really glad Hawk isn’t an insect-projector.” She shuddered at the possibility of a million flies and gnats and whatnot attacking last night instead of a flock of birds. “Then again,” she added, “what would you guys have called him instead of Hawk? Humbug?”

  Oliver’s expression shifted into scornful disbelief. “No, idiot. He didn’t get his nickname from Prometheus. Hawk and Hummer called themselves that, before they even came to the Institute. The same goes for Honey and Happy.”

  Emily’s mouth rounded. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “You hadn’t thought of that, when Hawk was addressing his initial emails to Honey and signing his nickname like she should know it even though they’d been separated when they were enrolled at Prometheus?” he asked sarcastically.

  “All right, all right,” said Emily. “You don’t have to be mean about it. How long before you’re dressed? I want to go get some breakfast.”

  “I want you to go get some new clothes,” said Oliver.

  “Where? Does the GCA have gift shops in its local offices? Maybe in the basement?”

  He arched his brows at her sass. “Okay, obviously not,” he said in much the same tones she had used. “I guess you’ll have to go on stinking. Now could you get out so that I can get dressed like you asked me to, or are you going to stand there and watch like a pervert?”

  Emily made a face. “I don’t think even a pervert would want to watch you, little boy. You’re not that cute,” she said, and she turned on her heel and left the room, her nose held high.

  She closed the door firmly behind her and immediately performed a sniff-test under one arm. Beneath the smell of bar soap, there was an odor, much to her eternal disappointment. A spare stick of deodorant would have done her good.

  Between her wrinkled blouse and her disheveled trousers, she felt like a wreck. She’d long since abandoned her trouser socks, but going barefoot in shoes made her feet feel grimy. Emily liked to be clean and tidy. Instead she was haggard, with only her meticulously smoothed ponytail to comfort her.

  Oliver soon emerged, nicely dressed in a fresh shirt and pants.

  “How many changes of clothing did you stuff in that suitcase?” Emily asked him jealously.

  “Five,” he said, “plus pajamas. It’s never taken me longer than five days to resolve an incident.”

  “How many have you dealt with?” she asked.

  He shot her a sidelong glance as they walked down the hallway toward the stairs. “You have my file. Haven’t you finished reading it yet?”

  A guilty blush stole across her face. “I keep meaning to,” she said in a low voice, “but I kind of wanted to get to know you in person first instead of going off what other people have written about you. I guess,” she added to his strangely wide-eyed stare, “since I’ve had plenty of time with you already to cement your character as a pompous, sarcastic little boy, I should probably resort back to the file, shouldn’t I?”

  He scoffed, but the customary sound was somehow missing its usual edge. He wasn’t looking at her anymore either.

  “Does that surprise you?” Emily asked instinctively. “That I haven’t read your file yet, I mean?”

  “That’s what the handler’s supposed to do,” said Oliver. “Read the file, take care of the kid as needs be, report back anything out of the ordinary.”

  Emily scratched the back of her head in a meek gesture. “I guess I really missed out on my training, didn’t I? Kind of makes you wonder why they stuck me on that plane with you instead of just reassigning me out and sending your old handler.”

  “Jerome had already been reassigned, that’s why,” said Oliver. “Once a new handler’s been assigned, they don’t look back. It was your dumb luck that you happened to be assigned to me for your first job, and right when some catastrophe hit. Or my dumb luck, more like,” he added in a low mutter.

  She intentionally ruffled his nicely combed hair. “You don’t have dumb luck, Oliver. Nothing about you is dumb—you wouldn’t stand for it.” When he glowered at her, she returned the expression with a sunny smile.

  They entered the small GCA break room together. They had been instructed the night before to come here for breakfast, but the prospect didn’t look at all appealing. A couple of agents sat together eating, but most of the tables were empty. Vending machines lined one wall, and a microwave stood next to these, testament that no freshly prepared meal would cross their path this morning. Certainly no bacon, Emily thought with a wistful sigh.

  As she cycled through the selection of yogurts, fruits, and cold cereals, she vaguely listened to the news broadcasting from a television mounted on one wall. Like a good little government agency, the GCA break room kept the station on NPNN, and Emily recognized the morning anchor’s calm voice.

  It was just like at home, except that it wasn’t at all.

  The report caught her attention.

  “It’s been four days since the disappearance of little Maddie and Alex North, the sister and brother who were stolen from their parents’ home near Seattle in the early hours of July 1. After exhaustive searches and many leads, investigators still have not found their whereabouts. It was originally feared that their abductors had turned north and crossed the border into Canada, but newly discovered evidence shows that they went south, through Oregon and into California. Residents of the southwestern states, California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, are asked to keep an eye out for these two children. Federal investigators are now offering a reward for any information that leads to their safe return.”

  “They should’ve offered a reward to begin with,” said Emily.

  “It gums up the hotline,” Oliver replied as he extracted a box of soymilk from the vending machine bin. “Too many people call in tips with the hope of free money. I think they wanted to play the sympathy angle first before they really fired up the general public. But the reward will just make my job harder.”

  “It’s still your job, then?” Emily asked.

  He glared.

  “What? You couldn’t really do anything against Hawk last night. What’s anyone supposed to do against a kid who can summon a thousand birds to fend off anyone who gets near him?”

  “Get rid of the birds, I imagine,” said Oliver sourly.

  “But how?” asked Emily.

  “Project a sonic frequency that drives them away. Honestly, I’m shocked that no one bothered to think of that when they were planning their stakeout yesterday. But then, you’re all a bunch of idiots anyway.”

  She bristled. “Hey, I might be an idiot, but don’t group me in with them. I didn’t plan that stakeout, and I was on your side for waiting and following Hawk back to the others instead of going after him head-on. It’s not my fault that there was no sonic-frequency thingy to deal with the birds.”

  Oliver shrugged. “I don’t think they realized that he could do something like that,” he said the next moment, though he sounded like the admission pained him.

  “How could they not know? Has he never done something like that before?”

  He rolled his eyes. “If he had, they would’ve been better prepared. Prometheus pays too little attention to the students it should probably focus on the most. The higher-ups have a line of thinking that’s something like, ‘Hawk West can talk to birds? So what? What good is that?’ And then they only do a cursory amount of research and never come to understand the full extent of his abilities because they don’t see any particular use for them. In their eyes, he might as well be a non-projector, like ninety-five percent of their students are.”

  “I see,” said Emily. “So they underestimated him.”

  “Obviously,” Oliver said with a long-suffering huff.

  He was being rather chatty this morning, she thought, but when they sat down to eat breakfast, he said not a word. Emily had already pushed her luck as far as conversation went. Plus she was practically starvi
ng. She turned her attention on her food and stopped worrying about talk.

  Vending machine fare was hardly nutritional and ultimately unsatisfying, but she ate every last bite. As she was contemplating seconds, the two agents at the other table got up and left.

  Oliver quietly sipped his soymilk, either lost in his own thoughts or else entirely engrossed in the morning weather report that blared from the television. The door to the break room opened again.

  “Emily Brent?” said the man who stood there.

  Emily practically jumped from her chair. “Yes? I’m Emily Brent.” Next to her, Oliver scoffed derisively at her enthusiasm.

  “This just arrived for you by courier.” The newcomer held out a large brown package. She scurried forward in confusion, wondering who could have sent her something here, at a random GCA office so far from where she normally was.

  The box was excessively heavy; she nearly dropped it in surprise. The man grunted, probably in an attempt to mask a scornful laugh, and shut the door. Oliver pretended not to be curious, his head turned toward the television, but his eyes flitted toward Emily at the door.

  She lugged the box back to their small table and, with the plastic knife she had used to spread cream cheese on her stale bagel, she cut through the packing tape to view the contents within. On the very top sat a letter on clean white paper, with the Prometheus Institute letterhead emblazoned across its surface.

  “‘Dear Miss Brent,’” Emily read aloud as she picked up the page, “‘in light of recent events and the prolonged nature of your charge’s assignment away from the campus here at Prometheus-A, we have taken the liberty of forwarding Oliver’s books, class work, and homework for the next three weeks.’ Three weeks!” she cried. “This feels like a year’s worth of college text books! What kinds of things are they making you study?”

  “The usual—anatomy, calculus, microbiology,” said Oliver in a bored voice. He had returned his attention to the news, uninterested in schoolwork.

  Regardless of his apathy, Emily continued to read the letter aloud. “‘Please make certain that Oliver completes his assignments in a timely manner. A digital portfolio has been included for the submission of all of his work.’ Is that what this thing is?” she asked, picking up a flat gadget from among the items within. Oliver snatched it from her hands before she could really look at it.

  “Nice!” he said. “It’s a new one!”

  “Were you expecting a used one?” Emily asked as she craned to get a glimpse of the confiscated object. Digital portfolios were glorified computers, in her opinion. They were highly expensive and ridiculously lightweight, and when properly connected, they had instant access to every public database on the internet. She’d seen them in commercials, but most people got by just as well with a laptop or desktop without having to invest their life savings in the more elite technology. The machines were supposed to be very popular overseas, though.

  “Most of the time we get hand-me-downs,” said Oliver as he pressed the button to turn on the device. Its screen flared to life, and he made an unpleasant face. “It’s already been programmed with my school assignments.”

  “That’s the reason it was sent,” said Emily with very little sympathy. “Are they just being over-cautious, or do they really think it’s going to take three weeks to find our little prison escapees?”

  Oliver shot her a disapproving glare. “You’re going to get yourself fired if you talk like that.”

  “And you wouldn’t care a bit,” Emily said. The Prometheus Institute wasn’t a prison, of course, but the West children must have viewed it as one, given the nature of their egress and the fact that they were now being pursued by scores of government agents. They were just like prison escapees, on the run from the law and doing everything in their power to keep from going back.

  The desperate expression on Hawk West’s face flashed before her eyes in an unpleasant memory. He had been both terrified and utterly determined to avoid capture. That he had succeeded only convinced her that his return—and the return of his siblings—might not come to pass without a significant investment of time and manpower. Emily did not relish the idea of chasing after them for three more days, let alone three weeks.

  Oliver was too busy playing with his new toy. She turned her attention back to the letter she had only half-read. It continued smoothly,

  We will expect a verbal weekly report regarding Oliver’s progress both academically and in association to his liaison task with Prometheus-F. Please contact us promptly. All contact information should already be programmed in your GCA-issued cell phone.

  Emily paused to fish that object from one pocket. She had been warned that the phone was only to be used for Prometheus business, but she had had no Prometheus business since that call on the train two days ago. The phone’s battery was half gone and would need to be recharged in another day or two.

  Unfortunately, the charger was sitting on the countertop of her studio apartment in New York, and from the looks of things, she wasn’t going back there any time soon. Emily bit her lower lip in frustration and continued reading the letter.

  Along with the books, we have included a per diem exclusively budgeted for Oliver’s food and clothing. Please see that he eats regular, well-balanced meals and that he has all the necessities. Any signs of neglect in your duties will be reflected upon in your GCA personnel file.

  She fished around the box and discovered a brown bank envelop. Pulling open the flap, she glanced down at the contents and nearly choked. Several hundred ameros stared back at her.

  “Oliver’s per diem?” she muttered in disbelief. “And what the heck am I supposed to do, eat air?” She glanced over the rest of the letter to see whether it made any reference to her needs.

  It didn’t. Of course. The entire letter revolved around Oliver, Oliver, and Oliver, combined with threats if Oliver wasn’t properly cared for.

  Her two years with the GCA were supposed to have a paycheck attached to them even though they were formally “volunteer work,” but it would be another two or three weeks before she received anything. She would have to check her bank balance to see whether she had enough to cover travel and wardrobe expenses for herself.

  “All right,” Emily grumbled. “Looks like I’m supposed to be your tutor, your clothier, your lunch wagon, and your personal assistant. I’m surprised they didn’t include a roll of toilet paper in here so I could wipe your bottom for you too.”

  Oliver looked up from his digital portfolio, a horrified expression on his face.

  “I’m kidding,” Emily said. “I know you can wipe your own bottom, and even if you couldn’t there’s no way I’d do it for you.”

  His mouth twisted in a sneer. “What’s gotten you into such a snit?”

  She turned the letter toward him. “Look at the list of things I’m supposed to do for you. It’s like I’m your nanny—or worse, your mother. I mean, not only do I have to make a weekly phone call to assure them that you’re still breathing, but I also have to record anything ‘noteworthy,’ as they put it—like I’m supposed to know what that means—in your personal file. Plus, I have to make sure you brush your teeth and bathe regularly and have clean clothes and nice meals, and if you fail to turn in your homework on time, that’s going to be my fault somehow. You’d better do it all, buster.”

  Oliver’s brows shot up. “Who are you to be ordering me around?”

  “Just the idiot who’s stuck tagging alongside you because you’re not an adult yet,” said Emily cynically. “You know,” she added on sudden impulse, “I could’ve done my GCA volunteer work at a hundred different venues. I did my undergrad session in the children’s ward of a hospital. I could’ve gone to public schools, private schools, daycares, anything, but I just had to apply for the super-elite Prometheus Institute, thinking that it would somehow be beneficial to my future. Is this really all there is?”

  He scowled at her.

  “No offense,” she said. “You’re a cute enough k
id when you’re asleep and unguarded, but most of the time you’re an outright pill. If that were the only unfortunate circumstance I had to put up with, I’d be fine, but the adults don’t even acknowledge me as a living, breathing human being. Here I got tossed out on the road with you, without the slightest bit of warning and no clothes, and they don’t even have the decency to forward me a little money to cover my expenses. Everything’s for you. Oliver, Oliver, Oliver, Oliver, Oliver.”

  “This is about clothes?” he asked flatly.

  “You told me yourself that I stink! I’m a very tidy person. I don’t like to stink!”

  Oliver shrugged and turned his attention back to his digital portfolio.

  “What assignments do you have to do today?” Emily asked.

  “A lot of reading, a spelling test, and a book report on Jude the Obscure.”

  “Did you ever finish reading it?”

  “Don’t need to. I skimmed the ending.”

  “Oliver!”

  He flipped the cover on his portfolio and tucked it protectively under one arm. “I need to get a bag to carry this in,” he said. “Maybe something like the one you have.”

  Emily glanced down to her messenger bag. “Why don’t I just carry it for you? I am your personal pack mule, after all.”

  “I can carry my own things,” he said stiffly.