I am too stunned to be angry. Could he really mean this?
“Uh, okay,” I say.
“Meet me there tomorrow at seven p.m., Central Time,” he says. He pauses, and our eyes lock. Then he disappears.
5
Baldy
I should be ecstatic. I should be euphoric.
I made it into the Cube. I have a teammate with a drool-worthy physique. I should be jumping on my mattress and shrieking like a stupid girl at a Vex rock concert.
Instead I lie on my bed, watching sunlight inch across my ceiling. The Vex headset rests on the rumpled blanket a few inches from my fingertips.
“Mrow?” Riska, sitting on my chest, cocks his head at me.
I sigh and scratch him between the ears.
It’s too good to be true. That’s all there is to it.
People like Baldy don’t pick girls like me for a teammate. Not without a catch. There is going to be a catch. What could he want from me?
I could forget about the whole thing. Go back to being a student. Forget that I ever wanted to learn to use a gun.
I consider the option for exactly two seconds.
“I’m going back,” I whisper to Riska. “It’s probably stupid, but I’m going back.”
Riska purrs, kneading his claws against my chest.
“Sulan?” Mom knocks on my door. “Are you awake? It’s time for school.”
“Yeah, I’m up,” I call back. “Going to school now.” I drop the Vex set onto my head and flick it on.
Hank is waiting for me in the VHS quad when I arrive.
“Thank God,” she says. “You’re still alive. How did it go?”
“Of course I’m alive. I didn’t use any Touch last night. Not for the Meat Grinder.”
“You’re avoiding my question.” Hank puts her hands on her hips. “Did you make it in or not?”
I hesitate. Part of me wants to tell Hank everything, especially the strange circumstances surrounding Baldy. A larger part of me doesn’t want to deal with her skepticism.
“Yeah, I made it in.” I force a smile. “I’m a member.”
Hank’s face falls. She suppresses the expression almost immediately.
“Congratulations,” she says, doing a decent job of sounding sincere. She even smiles.
We stare at each other in silence, then start toward class.
“You, um, don’t look very happy,” Hank says.
“No, I’m happy. Just . . . surprised I got picked, I guess. I did okay in the Meat Grinder, but not great.”
“Well, tell me about your teammates.”
“Teammate, actually. Just me and this guy named Baldy.”
“You’re on a team with a guy named Baldy? Is he old or something?”
“He’s not old. Baldy is his code name.”
“What’s your code name?”
“Short Stuff.”
“You should have gone with Peewee.” Hank grins to take the sting out of her words.
I make a face at her. We arrive at our class. I spend all of applied physics staring blank-faced at the whiteboard as Dr. Curtis gives us a lecture on diffraction and surface structure.
What could Baldy want from me? If he’s looking for a fling, there are dozens of other girls to give him that.
No, he doesn’t want me for a fling. That would be too easy.
By the time we get to second period, quantitative genetics, I’ve realized that the only thing special about me is my brain. My math gift. My ability to manipulate numbers and equations in my head better than any calculator. I go to great lengths to hide the extent of my skill. Not even Hank knows how easy it is for me. It’s bad enough that I get stares at school for being Dr. Hom’s daughter, and teased by kids in the real-world.
What if Baldy is some sort of corporate spy? What if he knows about my talent?
What if he knows what I can do?
An elbow in the ribs jars me. I blink and turn to Hank, who gives me a look. I turn and see Dr. Nguyen, our professor, standing at the edge of my desk. There’s a glitter of triumph in his eyes. It occurs to me that he’s waiting for an answer to some question. For whatever reason, the man has never liked me.
“Since you obviously didn’t do last night’s homework, Miss Hom,” he says, “you have earned the privilege of writing a two-page research paper on mean internode length and the significance it plays in predicting contributions to phenotypes. I expect it on my desk tomorrow morning.”
He strides away like he’s just put me in checkmate. I’m too distracted to be annoyed.
We head to third period, Calculus 2. Hank tries to talk to me, but I can’t focus on her. If Baldy knows what I can do, he likely knows who my father is. And if he knows who my father is . . .
I stop dead in the corridor.
My father, Dr. Hom. World-famous geneticist. Director of Global Arms’s product-development lab. And me, his daughter. What if Baldy wants information on Dad’s work?
By the time school ends, I’ve convinced myself that Baldy is a corporate spy out to extort me for Global secrets. I go through the motions of dinner with Mom but use the excuse of Dr. Nguyen’s paper to get back into Vex. I arrive early to meet Hank at Café Blu. Lots of our classmates come here, too. The entire place is surrounded by a circular tank filled with tropical fish.
I make a cursory attempt to start homework, then give up and pull out my tablet and watch reruns of Merc, a reality competition with real mercs who compete for cash prizes. The show has been cancelled for nearly twenty years, but it still has a cult following. Some merc schools even use episodes for training purposes.
I watch an episode highlighting the best Morning Star and Black Ice fight scenes. Morning Star and Black Ice are the most famous of all Merc duos—they won the show five seasons in a row.
“What is going on with you?” Hank appears in Café Blu an hour later, tablets in hand. Hank always does homework with two tablets: one for reference and research, the other for notes and calculations.
“I’m nervous,” I say, flipping off my tablet.
“About Baldy?” She flops into the seat next to me.
“Yeah.”
“He’s already picked you. He can’t renege, can he?”
I shrug, not in the mood to share my long list of paranoid musings with her. “Guess I’ll find out. I meet with him in two hours.”
“Two hours? But I need help with calc. I don’t think we can get through everything in two hours. I have to get one hundred percent on our exam tomorrow. If I don’t, Billy could move into the top slot.”
Her eyes flick across the café, where Billy sits alone at a table. He immediately looks away, pretending that he wasn’t staring at Hank.
I check a sigh. I’ve spent the last three evenings helping Hank study derivatives and implicit differentiation, enough math to make a normal person vomit. But Hank never stops. She spends her days and nights obsessed with being the top student in our grade.
“If we don’t finish, I’ll come back after my meeting with Baldy.”
“What time will that be?”
“I don’t know.” For all I know, I could be back in five minutes. I have to know for sure what Baldy wants from me. If there’s even a sliver of a chance that I can learn how to fight, I have to take it—so long as the price isn’t too high.
“Send a query to my headset if I’m not here when you come back,” Hank says. “I don’t care what time it is.” She pauses, looking me up and down. “Hope your meeting goes well.” She actually sounds sincere. Still, Hank can never leave things hanging on a sentimental note. “Don’t get yourself killed,” she says. “I’ll never get another study partner as good as you.”
I laugh, relaxing for the first time all day; Hank has that effect on me sometimes.
An idea occurs to me, and I have to quell a sudden mischievous grin. Without a word, I get up from our table.
“Where are you going?” Hank asks. When she sees the direction I’m headed, her voice rises in panic.
“Sulan!”
I ignore her and slide into a chair at Billy’s table.
“Hey,” I say.
When he looks up from his tablet, his eyes are completely concealed by his bangs.
“Hey,” he replies.
“Are you doing homework?”
He shifts in his chair but doesn’t answer. He rests one hand on his tablet to conceal the screen, but it’s too late.
“Learn anything interesting from Collusion Underground today?” I ask.
He tilts his head, revealing two narrowed eyes. He studies me to discern if I’m making fun of him. I smile to show I’m not.
He leans forward eagerly. “There’s something big going down at Anderson Arms. There’s too much stuff on the newsfeed. When we get big dumps of intel, it usually means something is going on. We just have to filter through all the trash to figure out what’s real.”
By “we” I assume he means his team at Collusion Underground.
I could not care less about what Anderson Arms is doing. But my best friend has a crush on Billy, so it’s my job to act interested.
“What do you think is going on?” I say.
“I told you about the biodome rumors,” Billy says. “I’ve also heard they’re moving all their weapons manufacturing out to sea on a giant floating factory. Just an hour ago, an anonymous source sent me a report about Anderson Arms building a giant underground labyrinth.”
“Do you believe any of it?” It all sounds absurd to me.
“It’s not about believing or not believing,” Billy says. “It’s about drilling down through the rumors and propaganda to find the truth. All these reports lead me to believe they are building something, I’m just not sure what.” He leans forward another few inches. “You should see the rumors associated with William Anderson’s son. There are reports of him being given away at birth to a society of assassins in Asia for training, his real identity kept secret from him until he turned sixteen. Supposedly he’s quite deadly, though other sources say he faints at the sight of blood. Some say he likes to drink blood. Some say he’s taken a vow of chastity until marriage. Others say he’s a womanizer. Some people think he’s part alien. Yesterday I read that he has a boyfriend in some South American country. The day before that, I heard his sister was engaged to a South American warlord. See, there’s the South American theme. It may mean something.”
“Wow,” I say. “That’s some crazy stuff.”
Billy opens his mouth, clearly winding up to tell me more. I clear my throat to cut him off.
“Billy, I have a favor to ask you. It’s about Hank.”
Billy sits up straight, pushes his hair out of his eyes, and forgets all about conspiracy theories.
“What is it?” His gaze slides across the room.
Hank, hunched over her tablet, glares at me with the ferocity of a monsoon. When she sees Billy looking, she pretends to be absorbed in her homework.
She is going to be so mad at me for this, but it’s for her own good. Am I just supposed to sit around while the two of them continue to sneak covert glances at one another?
“You know Hank and I normally study together, right?”
“Yeah.” Billy manages to peel his eyes off her and look at me.
“Well, I’ve got something I need to do tonight, and Hank really needs a study partner to get ready for tomorrow’s calc test. Do you think you could study with her when I leave? She wanted to ask you herself, but she’s kind of shy around you because you’re so smart.”
Petrified glee steals over Billy’s features. “She really wanted to ask me for help?” he says, eyes wide.
“Totally,” I say. “Don’t tell her I told you that. Just act like you’re doing a favor for me.”
“Yeah, okay. I can do that.”
“Thanks, Billy.” I stand up. “Come on, just sit with us now.”
Billy gathers up his tablet, quickly navigating the screen away from Collusion Underground. I saunter back toward Hank with Billy in tow.
• • •
Watching Hank and Billy blush and stammer for the next two hours is a good distraction. As soon as I leave them for the Cube, my anxiety returns. I arrive at locker 266 with the Cloak snug on my pinkie finger and the Touch pills in my pocket.
The room is empty. I pace. A single lightbulb hangs from the ceiling. An old wooden bench bisects the center of the room. The walls are lined with battered metal lockers covered in flaking red paint.
Five minutes pass. Ten minutes. Fifteen.
I sit down on the bench, dejected. For all my pent-up anxiety, I am disappointed. I should have known this was too good to be true. Maybe Baldy isn’t a corporate spy, but apparently he isn’t serious about me as a partner, either.
I pull out the packet of Touch pills, letting the bright-green lozenges slide into my hand. I roll them back and forth on my palm. Touch was to be my savior. Too bad I’ll never get a chance to use it.
“What are those?”
My fingers snap shut over the pills. I jump to my feet in surprise.
Baldy stands in front of me, the lightbulb reflecting off the shiny dome of his head. My forehead isn’t even level with his chest.
“You . . . you came,” I say.
“Of course.” Baldy gives me a quizzical look. “You thought I was going to stand you up?”
“Maybe.”
He chuckles, studying me. “Why would you think that?”
“Why did you pick me?” The words burst from my mouth. “What do you want from me?”
“Want from you?”
“You must want something.” I square my shoulders, bracing myself. “It’s the only explanation. I was one of the smallest contestants at the Meat Grinder. I don’t have any skills. You did me a favor. So you must want something.”
A moment passes. And then, of all things, Baldy smiles at me.
It’s a nice smile. An affectionate smile. Not the least bit predatory. It takes me completely off guard.
“I knew I was going to like you when you took out that girl with the rock,” he says. He sits down on the bench, making himself comfortable. “Have you ever read Sun Tzu?”
I shake my head, wondering where this is going—and if he’s going to answer my question.
“Who’s Sun Tzu?” I ask.
“He’s a famous Chinese general who wrote the Art of War,” Baldy says. “In his book, he talks about standoff terrain. That’s fighting ground where neither party has the advantage, like the pylons over the quicksand. Tzu says that when facing an enemy in standoff terrain, the best strategy is to withdraw and lure your enemy after you—then strike as soon as you hit better terrain and have the advantage. That’s what you did.”
I did?
“You’re wrong about yourself,” Baldy says. “You may be petite, but you are clever enough to recognize a tactical advantage when it’s presented. That’s a quality lots of teams here could benefit from.”
His words make something blossom in my chest. It feels like hope, like pride. I could ace a hundred math tests and never feel like this. I hold his compliment close, marveling at it.
“But you are right,” Baldy continues. “I do want something from you.”
I stiffen, narrowing my eyes. “What?”
He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a flat gray device two inches square.
“Know what this is?” He holds it up.
I peer at it. “No. What is it?”
I tense, waiting for the sword to fall. For the price to be named. My time in the Cube could end in the next thirty seconds.
“This is a Cloak scanner,” he says. “Feds use it on sting operations.”
Panic surges in my throat. I shift, about to bolt for the door, but by then he’s already flicked the on switch. The device vibrates as he holds it in my direction.
“This is how I know you’re a minor,” he says. “You set off my scanner at the Meat Grinder. Here. Take a look.” He holds the device out to me.
I hesitate, then t
ake it. What’s his game? The scanner goes still in my hand.
“It doesn’t scan the avatar that holds it,” Baldy says. “Point it at me.”
I swing the scanner in an experimental arc past Baldy. I nearly drop it as it vibrates.
Baldy grins at my look of shock.
“You’re a—a minor?” I say.
“Yep.”
“But . . . how old are you?”
“Seventeen.” He rubs at his shaven head. “I’ve always looked older than I am, even when I was a kid. I knew I wouldn’t have trouble fitting in here. You, on the other hand, look like you’re twelve.”
“I’m sixteen. I do not look twelve.”
“Yes, you do. I’m surprised the bouncers didn’t flag you for a second check.” He grins again, revealing a dimple on each cheek, and I am struck by the dark blue of his eyes. “Guess you got them on a good day. Now that you’re a member, they won’t bother you.”
My mind struggles with these new puzzle pieces. I can’t fathom how they fit together.
“Where’s your Cloak?” I ask.
He pulls up his shirtsleeve. A simple leather cord encircles his wrist. I hold the scanner close to his wrist, and it nearly vibrates right out of my hand.
“I figured it would be in my best interest to form a team with other minors,” Baldy says. “A group of people with like interests can be useful to one another. You were the only other minor in the Meat Grinder.” His smile goes all the way to his eyes. “So you are right: I do want something from you. I want you to protect my secret. I, in turn, will protect yours. Deal?” He holds out his hand.
I feel a genuine smile creep across my face. Relief fills me from head to toe. All my paranoid hysteria, and it turns out Baldy is just another law-breaking kid like me.
“Deal.” I shake his hand, daring to meet his eyes. “Why did you choose this site, anyway?”
“My dad pays for merc training in the real-world.” He shrugs. “I don’t like playing on sites where everyone is souped up with Axcents. There’s no challenge in it.”
He’s a bored rich kid.
A bored rich kid with real-world merc training.
“What about you?” he asks. “Why did you choose the Cube? With that Cloak, you could have donned an Axcent and gone to any of the other clubs. No one would have thought twice about your age.”
The League Page 4