Watcher

by AJ Eversley

  “Coleman has gathered all the humans in the center of the city and caged them like animals,” a young male operative said. I hadn’t noticed him before. His tall lean body stood rigid at the front of the room. His sandy blond hair had been shaved down to barely anything, and his bright green eyes were alive as he spoke, despite the sour look on his face. I noticed his name badge across his shirt said Max Murray. It was Murray’s son.

  “Carbons surround the city, but these aren’t the same Carbons that you’ve seen before; they’ve been modified. The Bots roam the streets looking for stragglers, but most have come willingly. Coleman made sure they all knew what happened in Cytos. He streamed video of the destruction across the city, and they don’t want that for themselves.” He walked over to the screen and tapped it twice. “This is the video we received two days ago.”

  The screens lit up, and a young man stood before us. His black hair was slick with sweat, and blood dripped from his brow as his narrow eyes scanned the room around him.

  “Please, can anyone hear this? We need help! He’s taken everyone. They're all gone! He’ll come for me too, I know it!” The man looked behind him, and we heard something coming in the background. “The key is in the stars, that’s all she told me. It’s in the stars! You must hurry!”

  The screen went black, and there was silence.

  “What does it mean?” Kyle asked.

  “We don’t know,” Max said.

  Chapter 40

  There was quiet beneath the sparkling sky above as we all sat around the blazing fire in the center of camp. Glasses in hand, we toasted those we left behind. Each person spoke the name of those they had lost for one last final farewell.

  “For Ethan,” Tenason choked out, tears in his eyes as he took a swig.

  “For Kane and Brent,” Kyle said and drank.

  “For my parents and brother,” Kenzie almost whispered beside me.

  “My dad,” I whispered and took a drink.

  I mourned him a long time ago. This time, it wasn’t the same. This time, it hurt more. I’d lost my childhood hero, and then man who I thought sacrificed his life for me.

  I didn’t lose him to death, I lost him through betrayal. I was angry more than sad. How could he? How could he betray my mother and me like that? I wished my mom was here to make sense of it all, to help me understand how this could happen. But she wasn’t, and ultimately my father was to blame for that too.

  I threw my glass into the fire; blue flames sparked back at me. I stood to leave, and Kenzie stood with me, but I shook my head. He saw from the look in my eyes that I needed to be alone so he sat back down.

  I walked over to the wall of pods and climbed up to the tiny slit in the wall that was my bed. I slid into my space and lay down on my back. There was barely enough room to move, and the safety harness dug into my back. I wouldn’t sleep tonight anyway so I didn’t secure it.

  As I readjusted, trying to get comfortable, something else dug into my leg. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the necklace my father gave me—my mother’s necklace.

  The light from the campfire bounces off the diamonds that filled each point, with one final cluster filling the center. It was beautiful and ordinary all at the same time.

  My mother used to wear it every day. I never saw her take it off. I remembered playing with it when I was little, lying in bed as she read me a story. It would dangle from her neck, and I’d make it swing like a pendulum.

  I wondered how my dad even found it. I was sure she was wearing it the day she died, and we never saw her after that. I wasn’t even able to properly bury her.

  I went back once, but there was just rubble and dust; she was gone.

  As I traced the pendant with my thumb, it hit me.

  I sat up so fast that I smacked my head on the low ceiling.

  It was a star.

  The pendant was a star!

  I rubbed my forehead and groaned as I tried to put it together.

  My dad said something when he gave it to me. What was it?

  The memories jumbled together, and I couldn’t decipher one from the next. It was like one big crossword.

  Then, it became clear.

  “The stars are the key,” he said. I’d heard that before. Not from my dad or even in the video, but another time, after the explosion.

  My mother had said the same thing!

  Only it wasn’t my mother. She was dead. It was the delusions of a dying girl. My mind was playing tricks on me.

  But the guy in the video had said the same thing. And that wasn’t a dream.

  What if there was a connection with the video Max showed us and this star? The man in the video said the key was in the stars. That couldn’t just be a coincidence.

  I had no idea what this meant, or even if it meant anything at all, but I had to tell Murray and the others. I climbed down the ladder and found Kenzie at the bottom of the stairs. I suspected he came to check on me.

  “Can we talk somewhere?” I asked.

  He motioned to the bench in the corner. Everyone still sat by the fire so we were alone. We sat and were silent for a moment. I wasn’t sure where to start.

  “Before my dad died, he gave me something. And I think it was some sort of hint or clue.” I pulled out the necklace.

  Kenzie’s face went white. His eyes widened as he stared at the necklace.

  “Where did you get that?” he demanded.

  “Uh, my dad gave it to me, but it was my mother’s,” I said. “Are you okay?” I placed my hand on his hand, but he pulled away. He stood and paced.

  “No, it can’t be—but she could’ve been—no, it’s just a coincidence,” he rambled on to himself.

  “Kenzie, what’s wrong? Sit down.”

  He stopped in front of me, eyes wide with a look of shock on his face. He reached into his pocket and pulled something out. It was a key chain, and at the end of it was the same star pendant as my mother’s necklace.

  I grabbed it and held them side by side. They were identical.

  “Where did you—” I said.

  “Just before the war, when I was at Sub 9. A lady gave it to me. She told me it’d keep me safe.” He sat back down. “I’ve kept it ever since, but I never knew who the lady was. And I never saw her again.” He looked at me, studying my face.

  I knew what he was thinking.

  “No, it couldn’t have been my mom,” I said. “She had nothing to do with Sub 9. It was someone else. This is just a fluke.”

  He shook his head. “You look just like her,” he said.

  I covered my face with my hands. Did she know what my father was doing all along? Was she also working for Sub 9? I wondered if she knew what they had planned. I prayed she didn’t.

  Kenzie stopped pacing and took my hands away from my face.

  This wasn’t a coincidence.

  This must be the reason I’d felt a pull toward Kenzie since I met him. And I knew he felt it too.

  ~

  Neither of us had any idea what the star pendants meant, but we needed to tell Murray and the others.

  We gathered everyone back in the control room and explained everything.

  “There has to be a connection to what we saw in the video,” Kyle said as he began pacing.

  “But what? And why these two?” Murray asked, mostly to himself.

  “I could analyze the pendants, sir. See if there are any clues?” Sam suggested. He hadn’t left the control room since we arrived.

  We handed him the pendants, and he went to work.

  “Well, they are made of solid white gold, maybe twenty-four carats, good quality. Diamonds, I can’t tell the exact quality, but they look flawless.” He flipped it over. “There seems to be a small engraving here, it looks like an S? Oh! For Sawyer, I presume.” He smiled at his detective skills.

  He flipped over the other. “This one has an M! For…Mom? Money? Man?”

  “Mackenzie,” Kenzie said. “It’s my full name.”

  “Right
, that would make sense,” Sam said, getting back to work.

  I stared at Kenzie in shock. “How would she know your name?” I asked. He shrugged. He didn’t know either.

  “There is something else here,” Sam said, and we turned our attention back to him. “There’s a little button or something, but I can’t quite get it.” He grabbed a pin nearby and used it to poke at the pendant. There was a click, and then the pendant fell to the ground with a soft clank.

  “Oops,” Sam said as he bent down to pick it up. The pendant had come loose from the chain and something small fell out of the clasp. Sam held it under the lamp and examined it. “I think it’s a microchip of some sort,” he exclaimed, rushing to his computer station.

  We were right behind him as he placed the chip in the adapter and put it into the hard drive. The computer blinked, and a folder popped up. One item was inside the unnamed folder. Sam opened it.

  My mom’s face popped up on the screen, and I gasped. “Sweetheart, I need you to listen to me. I don’t have much time.” Her shoulder-length dark hair shined like I remembered. “Your father is being used. We’ve been trying to fight it, but I fear he will not be himself for much longer.” She leaned in closer to the screen. “They will take over everyone, everything, just to get it back. The only way to stop them is to first shut it down. The stars are the key.”

  She took a deep breath. “Before he was fully controlled, your dad put in a fail-safe. I know you can do it; he will keep you safe. There is another person they will protect. Find him and the stars are the key. I love you.”

  The screen went blank.

  I was silent. My dad was being used? Coleman was controlling him, and I let it happen. I let him die right in front of me.

  I took a seat, heavy with grief. I let him die.

  Nobody spoke a word as they all looked at me.

  “A key for what?” Kyle asked. “And why the hell did she think they’d keep you safe?” he questioned, pointing to Kenzie. “I’m assuming you are the other one she is talking about?”

  Kenzie looked at Murray, and he nodded. He told the others who he was, and what his connection to Coleman was all along. He left out the part about what his new arm could do—for now.

  After he’d finished, Kyle stopped pacing, and his face was bright red with anger. He was furious.

  “You mean to tell me we’ve had a traitor in our midst this whole time? And you all knew?” he yelled.

  “I didn’t know,” Sam piped up and then sat back down.

  “He isn’t a traitor to us,” Murray said. “If he was, Coleman would’ve dropped a bomb on this camp already.”

  “You’d take his side, being a traitor yourself,” Kyle said.

  “That’s enough,” Murray growled.

  Kyle wasn’t satisfied. “I’m clearly the only one here not playing double sides,” he mumbled.

  “I’m not either,” Sam piped up again and then sat back down.

  “We still don’t know what the keys are for,” Murray said.

  “I may know,” Sam said excitedly. “While you were all, uh, discussing, I opened the other pendant, and there’s another microchip. Your mom must have thought it best to keep them apart in case one of you, you know, died or something.” He chuckled awkwardly.

  Sam pointed to his screen where another unnamed folder was opened. He clicked it, and a single picture popped up. It looked like a giant computer hard drive with large cables coming out of it everywhere, and it was lit up like a Christmas tree.

  “That must be the mainframe,” Max suggested, walking up behind me. I didn’t see him come in. “Looks complicated.”

  “Helpful,” I mumbled. He glared back at me, and his eyes shifted between Murray and Kyle before he leaned over Sam’s shoulder to get a better look. Surrounded by all the cables and wires were two slots shaped just like the star pendants.

  So we knew what it was and what to use to turn it off. The question was where was it?

  Chapter 41

  Sleep eluded me as I tossed and turned restlessly in the tiny space. I decided it was unlikely I’d get much more sleep, and I headed down toward the fire pit as the sun was rising.

  Kenzie was sitting there when I arrived, and he looked like he’d had about as much sleep as I had. Chevy was curled up by his feet, enjoying the warmth of the fire as Kenzie petted his head.

  “Couldn’t sleep either?” I asked, stifling a yawn. I plopped down beside him.

  “I keep having…dreams. Only they don’t come when I’m sleeping. They’re like visions I can’t control.” He wiped his hands over his face. “The farther away from Coleman I get, the more things I begin to remember, and the more confusing it gets.”

  “What exactly are you remembering?”

  “Well, for instance, I could draw out every inch of this place on a map for you, but I haven’t even been everywhere yet. It’s like I’ve seen this place before, or like I’ve been here, but I don’t remember it.” He shook his head and took a deep breath.

  I placed my hand on his back and felt him shaking.

  He turned to face me. “I think Coleman knew about this camp. I think he showed it to me before. It’s like he wiped my memory, and now it’s all slowly coming back.”

  “Do you think we’re in danger here?” I asked. If Coleman knew where we were, then we couldn’t be safe for long.

  “I think we’re safe for now. He needs us, but he won’t come after us until he is sure he can beat us. But he will come, that we can be certain of,” he said.

  “Then we better hurry and find a way to stop him,” I suggested, trying to smile. The only question was how?

  ~

  We had keyed in on a few locations that could hold the amount of energy Sam thought they needed to power something as large as the mainframe, but we weren’t sure which location Coleman was using.

  Murray and Kyle leaned over a table full of maps of Kuros, circling all the locations that might house what we’re looking for. They crossed out those we could definitively rule out.

  Max eyed them from the other side of the room. He didn’t look happy, not that he ever had. His body was stiff, always ridged as if he was bracing himself for a fight. I was noticing he didn’t have the best relationship with his dad, and I suspected he was jealous of Kyle. Kyle hadn’t come to grips with everything, but things were going back to normal as he and Murray worked together to solve this riddle.

  Once we had created a short list, we moved to Phase Two.

  This was where Murray’s special operatives would come in handy. Max explained to us that the operatives used the Link system to send in ghost projections of themselves, like we had seen earlier. This way they could search through the city without as much risk as sending in an actual human, but there was still a risk. If their ghost projections were injured, they would feel every bit of the pain here. They wouldn’t be physically wounded, but a severe enough injury could send the body into shock, which could induce a heart attack and even death.

  Doc was on standby, as was Adam, in case we ran into any new challenges for which we might need his expertise.

  We waited until it was dark outside in hopes of being more invisible. The Carbons would sense us right away, but being projections and not real humans, we were harder to find. We still had to move fast.

  The plan was simple. We’d have three teams in the top three locations we thought could be Coleman’s hideout, and a set of operatives located in the opposite areas to create a distraction.

  The first location was a ten-story building in the heart of the city that used to be a bank. The building was set up with state-of-the-art technology to keep funds in place. We hadn’t used physical money for years as everything was done on the Link system, which required a lot of power to run, so this was a hot spot.

  The second location was a former hospital, built to sustain a power surge and still operate at full capacity. It was the largest of the three buildings, but only two stories high. This was the least likely location g
iven that it had so many windows and access points, but we figured we should check it anyway to be safe.

  We weren’t positive what the last location was. We saw a large power spike in a small, unassuming building that we thought was used to house an independent tech corporation. The numbers didn’t match up, which was why we were checking it out.

  Each location was set up with two guys. One would take the lead, and the other would scout and direct the lead, or, if needed, cause a distraction. The ghost projections could do a little more than the average human, such as walk through walls and doors. They couldn’t, however, go through anything steel or metal. We’d lose the Link and be offline for no less than thirty minutes, so the scouts had to direct carefully.

  ~

  The first two decoy operatives began, heading to the far end of the city center across from the trapped humans. They were detected by the Carbons right away. They ran away from the buildings we planned to look at first, and sure enough the Carbons followed. Not all of them, but a good chunk. These Carbons were the only ones who could detect the projections, and the only ones who could ruin this mission.

  Meanwhile, the first group was in place. They had linked themselves outside the bank tower and were able to sneak in undetected. They began their search first in the basement and made their way up. Kyle stood behind this group, searching on the screens for anything they might’ve missed.

  The second group linked in as well, but they were detected. The hospital was much closer to the city center where they were holding the humans. Sam stood behind these operatives as they navigated their way through. Much to his dismay, Sam wasn’t allowed in this time, so he’d taken on the role as team lead.

  “Okay, in through the front doors there. Perfect! There are two Carbons on your tail, take a left here and a right just after the nurse’s station, and you may lose them,” he directed. An operative looked back at him, wondering why he was being directed, but Murray shook his head, and the operative continued to take directions from Sam.