A Boy Called Hawk (Annals of Altair Book 1)

by Kate Stradling

  “It’s a surprise,” said Honey. “You’re going to have so much fun!”

  Emily just couldn’t wait.

  Article IV, Section 4

  Unnecessary Baggage

  July 6, 10:39am mst, Flagstaff

  Hawk tried to remain completely silent during their walk back to the office building. Honey had everything under control and he didn’t want to interfere, but he also didn’t want to leave an impression on Oliver’s handler. The less she remembered about him after this incident, the better.

  Hummer was going to blow a gasket. Hawk thought it better that Oliver’s handler didn’t overhear this either, so on the final flight of steps before they reached their current hiding place, he motioned Honey to stall while he went on ahead. She nodded curtly and returned her attention back to her hostage.

  Worry ate at him as he slipped through the door into the abandoned office. Hummer stepped out of one of the rooms, with Happy on his heels.

  “We’ve got trouble,” said Hawk. “Oliver’s handler found Honey.”

  Happy surged forward in alarm, but Hummer grabbed him by the shirt. “So they’ve caught her? What are we going to—”

  “No, no,” Hawk interrupted before the six-year-old’s panic could overtake his rational thoughts. “Honey’s fine. She’s waiting outside with… Emily, I think it was.”

  “What?” As predicted, Hummer looked like he was ready to explode. “You brought her back here?”

  “She was alone,” said Hawk. “What were we supposed to do?”

  “If she’s a handler, she’s got a government-issued cell phone! Did you take it from her? Did you even think to throw it away before you brought her?”

  Hawk knew he’d forgotten something. His answer showed on his face, because Hummer scoffed in disgust and stalked forward. “I’ll get it. No, don’t come with me, Happy. Stay here with Hawk.” He disappeared into the outer hallway.

  An apprehensive Happy turned to his oldest brother.

  “Everything’s going to be fine,” Hawk said, even though he wasn’t sure of that himself.

  Hummer reappeared a moment later, a sleek black cell phone held carefully between two fingers, his arm outstretched as though he carried a dead rat instead of the latest in communication technology. He motioned the pair to silence, a needless gesture, and stepped quietly across the room and down the short hallway to one of the private offices. A few moments later, he returned without the cell, but with a roll of duct tape hanging from one wrist.

  “I’ve got it wrapped up in a blanket and sitting under all our other stuff,” he said grimly. “It’s a quarter to eleven right now, so we’ve got to keep it isolated until at least a quarter to one, and that’s assuming that no alarms were already tripped. Go get Honey in here so we can find out whether we’re about to be surrounded by a horde of government agents.”

  Hawk followed the order, too ashamed of his own negligence to begrudge his younger brother taking charge. He poked his head into the stairwell and motioned Honey to bring her hostage inside.

  “All right, Emily,” Honey said sweetly. “Everything’s ready for us. Let’s go!”

  Emily looked as though she was having the time of her life. That would change soon enough, Hawk thought as he held the door open.

  “I need you happy, Happy,” Honey called as she entered the front room, pulling the woman behind her. “I’ve brought a new friend, and we all need to be glad that she’s here, especially you.”

  Happy plastered a smile on his face and bounded forward.

  “This is Emily Brent,” said Honey as a general introduction. “She’s going to tell us everything she knows about Oliver and what he’s doing for Prometheus while Hummer plays a nice little game with her.”

  “What game?” Emily asked with interest.

  “The duct tape game,” cried Honey, and she smiled gleefully. “You’ll sit still, and Hummer will tape your hands and feet together with duct tape. It’s going to be so fun!”

  Hawk and Hummer exchanged a glance. For his part, Hawk was glad that Honey’s projection wasn’t aimed directly at him. Even just listening to her, he wanted to play the duct tape game as well. He couldn’t imagine what sort of thoughts possessed Emily, but her enthusiastic expression showed that Honey’s words had worked their charm to perfection.

  “Oliver’s ten, and he’s kind of a pill,” the handler began as she settled herself on the floor in front of Honey and Happy. To an objective observer, the scene looked like the start of a children’s story hour.

  “Wait, wait,” Hummer interrupted. “First things first, Honey. Does Prometheus know she’s missing?”

  Honey turned expectant eyes upon the woman and repeated this question.

  Emily frowned. “I’m not missing. I left to run a couple of errands. I told Agent Wilkes I was going, and Oliver’s just doing his homework right now anyway. I’m not going to be gone that long.”

  “Of course you’re not.” Honey patted the handler’s knee in reassurance. “Can you roll up your sleeves, please? It’s part of the game.”

  While Emily complied, Hummer stretched out the first piece of duct tape. “You probably didn’t know that all handlers’ cell phones are bugged, did you, Honey?” he said.

  Honey’s eyes widened.

  “I didn’t know that either,” said Emily with a frown.

  “The microphone is always on,” Hummer said, more to his sister than the handler. “It used to be that it could be turned on remotely at will, and people who didn’t want to be spied on would have to remove their batteries to shut it off. Then, someone came along with the bright idea of leaving the microphone on all the time and installing a mechanism to alert a central database when the battery gets pulled. There’s an internal device that’s always transmitting the mic’s recording, but only two hours are saved under normal circumstances. When an alert gets triggered on the phone or the person carrying it, the digital recording shifts over to an endless loop. Or, in the case of battery removal, it freezes and maintains the two hours prior to that moment.”

  “Why?” Emily asked in concern.

  “Put your hands behind your back, please, Emily,” said Honey. “Why do they do that, Hummer?”

  “So that the people in charge can know what happened prior to the alert,” he said as he wrapped duct tape firmly around Emily’s wrists. “And because they’re nosy and paranoid. Officially, they say it’s for law-keeping purposes. They’ve used it in kidnappings before. The phone itself has a GPS device, so they’ve been able to trace it to the victims and get recordings of the kidnappers. We studied all of this in my Technology & Communication class last semester. We even reverse-engineered an older version of the government cell phones. Legs now, Miss Emily.”

  “Put your ankles together, please,” Honey told her.

  Emily complied, and Hummer continued to explain. “So, from the moment you two met, the GCA has a recording of whatever conversations you had, Honey. If we’re lucky, no one’ll miss Emily here for another couple hours. If we’re not lucky…”

  “Isn’t there some way to destroy the mechanism?” asked Honey.

  Hummer shook his head. “The cell transmits to a remote database. It’s beyond our reach right now. We need to make sure that there’s dead silence around it for the next couple of hours at least. Even then, if she was only supposed to be gone for a short while, we might have people looking for her already, and the GPS in her phone will lead them straight here. Hawk? What should we do?”

  He had finished binding Emily’s legs tightly together and turned inquisitive eyes now to his older brother. Hawk had silently observed this discussion, but the way he started at Hummer’s question showed that his mind had wandered.

  “We have to move,” he said. “Honey, Happy, stay here with her and keep her calm. Hummer and I will get our stuff together. Honey, try to get as much information from her as possible. Ask her if she knows anything about Altair,” he added as an afterthought.

  As Hawk and
Hummer left the room together, Honey started her interrogation.

  “Do you think she’ll know anything?” Hummer asked.

  Hawk shrugged. “It’s worth a shot. The cell is in the same room as all our supplies?” Hummer nodded. “All right. Complete silence when we go in. I’ll pack up our necessities. I want you to memorize the cell’s list of contacts. If it’s government-issued, there might be something or someone useful in there. Got it?” Hummer nodded again, and together, they entered the small office.

  There wasn’t a lot to do in the way of packing. In preparation for a hasty retreat, the children had kept their belongings to a minimum and neatly arranged in duffel bags. Only a handful of items were out. These Hawk quickly stowed away while Hummer scrolled through the cell phone’s list of contacts. Neither of them spoke a word. Last of all, Hawk folded the blanket that had been used to muffle the cell’s microphone. As he placed it in one of the duffels, the phone in Hummer’s hand rang.

  Hawk’s eyes widened in alarm, but Hummer was quick to react. He bolted from the room, back to where Honey and Happy still sat with Emily. Through the open door, Hawk heard him say, “You’re going to answer this, but you’re not going to mention us at all.”

  Honey’s voice piped up. “It’s part of the game, Emily. Let’s pretend that you didn’t meet us at all, that you’re still out running your errands, can you do that?”

  Emily must have answered to the affirmative, because the next moment, Hawk heard her talking into the phone. He gathered up the three duffel bags and carried them to the doorway, where he overlooked his siblings all crouched around their hostage. Hummer held the phone to Emily’s ear while she talked, and Honey and Happy smiled up at her encouragingly. As she was making her excuses, Emily frequently smiled and nodded back at them.

  “I’ll be back very soon, sir. Yes, I’m sorry, sir. It was only a short errand. Oliver’s safe and sound at the office, and Agents Marsh and Wilkes promised that they’d watch him while I was gone. Yes, I understand. I’m sorry, sir. Yes, I’m sorry for sounding so cheerful, too. Thank you, sir. Goodbye.”

  Hummer pulled the phone from her ear while Honey made a quiet shushing noise to Emily, who grinned, self-satisfied with her impromptu performance. Hummer retreated past Hawk, back into the small office, and reemerged empty-handed to shut the door carefully behind him. He picked up one of the duffels and returned to his two younger siblings.

  “Does our two hours start over now?” Honey asked in disappointment.

  He shook his head. “I kept my thumb over the microphone until I picked up the call. It might’ve caught something, but it would’ve been muffled. They may have triggered an alert on her already, though, before they placed the call. We need to get out of here.”

  “They were just checking on me,” said Emily in a cheerful attempt at being helpful. “Someone noticed I wasn’t with Oliver.”

  Hummer rolled his eyes. “What does she think an alert is?” he asked the ceiling.

  “Hummer’s right,” said Hawk. “We’ve got to go. It’s naptime, Emily.”

  Their hostage’s face contorted into dismay, and Hawk shifted his eyes to discover a mirror-image expression on Happy’s face too. “Not for you,” he said to his little brother. “Just for Emily. Tell her she’s sleepy, Honey. The sooner we move locations, the better.”

  Honey ducked into the woman’s line of sight, concern emanating from her. “Aren’t you tired? Why don’t you lie down? Here, Hummer will pull your arms and legs together so that they’re more comfortable.”

  Hawk suppressed an incredulous laugh as Emily willingly rolled to her side in the perfect position, with her knees bent behind her so that her feet were near her hands. Hummer obliged by winding a length of duct tape between the ties at her ankles and the ones at her wrists. Then, for added good measure, he slapped a piece across her mouth.

  “There, isn’t that nice?” Honey cooed, and she brushed Emily’s hair from her forehead as though she were a child. “Now go to sleep. You’re going to have beautiful dreams. It’ll be so very nice, and you’re so very tired right now.”

  “Don’t overdo it,” Hawk said around an involuntary yawn.

  “Go to sleep, Emily,” Honey said with a wry glance at her three drooping brothers. “The rest of us will stay awake and watch over you.”

  Emily’s eyelids shut, and her breathing evened. Silence enveloped the room as her body relaxed and slipped into peaceful slumber.

  “Honey,” said Hummer after a long, tense moment, “you are absolutely terrifying.”

  The little girl smiled a brittle smile and climbed to her feet. “Let’s get out of here before anyone comes looking for her.”

  Article V

  Close Encounters

  July 6, 12:28pm mst, GCA regional office, Flagstaff

  Oliver glanced up at the clock for the fifth time in as many minutes. His mechanical pencil tapped a steady rhythm on the table as his annoyance intensified.

  Where was that infernal woman?

  Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t mind being without a handler. When Emily mentioned that she wanted to run a few errands, he had fully supported her decision, though perhaps not with the external enthusiasm that he actually felt. It wasn’t often that he had any time to himself. Back at Prom-A, he shared a dorm room with a needlessly chatty classmate who liked to brag about his great intellectual feats while Oliver ignored him, the arrogant little geek. When he wasn’t in his dorm room, he was being shadowed by handlers and teachers. Out here in the sticks, he had only Emily to worry about. He relished the quiet evenings and thought her going away during daylight hours would be twice as nice. He’d never had a handler do something so bold or stupid before.

  It had started out well enough, too. He’d completed half his homework in peace and quiet. That first half-hour had been bliss.

  Someone several states away had done a routine check on his and Emily’s locations at eleven o’clock, though, and discovered that their global-positioning signatures were outside the allotted distance of one another. It was a standard check, one that Prometheus ran two or three times a day. Handlers always had to be within a certain proximity of their charges, so it only made sense to check up on them, but of course Emily, that idiot, would choose the time of that routine check to be away on her little errand. The GCA phones had blared to life moments later, and Oliver was shortly thereafter joined at his little table by a surly-faced Agent Wilkes, who sullenly glared at him as though the entire situation was somehow his fault.

  Even after the higher-ups contacted Emily directly and verified both her location and that of Oliver, Agent Wilkes had remained. Much as Oliver disliked Emily—or any handler, for that matter—she generally did not stare in such a wholly resentful manner, and certainly not for a straight hour-and-a-half. His focus completely shattered under that unrelenting gaze.

  The clock on the wall ticked to the next minute, and Oliver’s patience snapped. “What is taking her so long?” he demanded. “Does it really take two hours to go buy a new pair of pants and a couple shirts?”

  “For some women it does,” said Wilkes. “Maybe she ran into a sale at her favorite store.”

  Oliver scoffed. “Well, I’m sick of sitting here waiting for her. Where’s the locator tool on this thing?” He flung himself away from the table and toward an agency computer that sat in the corner of the room.

  “You’d have to know her serial number to use it,” Wilkes warned, not bothering to tell the child he wasn’t allowed to access the tool. All the better for him, Oliver thought grimly. Prometheus kids weren’t technically supposed to know about the so-called “locator tool” that could be used to pinpoint the exact location of any GCA member in an instant, but they all did. Furthermore, the passwords that guarded the application weren’t usually that difficult to crack. Many mischief-minded students had used the locator to pull pranks on teachers and administrators on campus, usually while their handlers played unwitting accomplices to their crimes.
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br />   “I know her serial number,” Oliver said petulantly. He clicked the icon to bring up the tool, and a window flashed to the screen. “What’s the password?”

  Agent Wilkes made an irritated noise. “Move aside,” he said and, not bothering to wait for Oliver to comply, pushed him out of the way to tap a string of keys. The tool opened, a simple box-prompt demanding a government-issued serial number. “What’s her ID?”

  Oliver recited the string of letters and numbers he’d memorized off of Emily’s badge. Wilkes duly typed them in and a moment later, a map flashed up on the screen to show the pattern of streets in downtown Flagstaff. A red beacon pulsed right in the center.

  “She’s only a couple blocks away,” said Wilkes dismissively.

  Oliver frowned at the screen. “Is she on her way back? It looks like she’s in a building. Is that a store there? What on earth is she doing?”

  Wilkes had lost interest after the initial map appeared. He had even started to turn away, but Oliver’s questions called his attention back to the computer. “That’s not a store,” he said with a frown. “At least… No, I’m pretty sure that’s part of an industrial complex. We looked at that building for the GCA offices when we were moving locations last year. What is she doing?”

  “How long has she been there?” Oliver asked, and he clicked a small icon at the top of the screen. It brought up a sidebar that listed the global coordinates of the individual, taken every five minutes.

  “Two hours?” Oliver cried. “She’s been sitting in the same place for almost two hours?”

  Agent Wilkes uttered a mild oath and scrambled to grab the phone that sat next to the computer. He punched a couple buttons, and the instant that someone picked up, he said, “We may have a situation. It looks like the handler’s gone rogue.”