She never thought she’d hear the day when Rusty told someone to be polite.
“I bet she told you she’s a genius too?” Hadlock asked, looking at Amber for confirmation.
“Over and over,” Amber told him with a shake of her head.
“Rusty, why don’t you tell them who found the plans for that submarine,” Hadlock pressed, his hands still fiddling with wires and pulling things apart.
It was as if the boy were never at rest.
“You didn’t build that?” Ty asked in disappointment, just as Brynn asked, “What’s a submarine?”
“Oh no, she built it all right,” Hadlock corrected. “But she wasn’t clever enough to come up with the idea of it.”
“So you did that?” Amber asked the boy, looking impressed.
“I hacked into the files in A1 and found all sorts of technology they just never bothered to introduce on our planet,” Hadlock said conspiratorially. “Those selfish A.I.s have been sitting on a heap of transportation devices, weapons, and recreational technology and I’m about to blow it all wide open.”
“Information is power,” Rusty said with mock gusto.
“Exactly,” Hadlock agreed, pointing over his shoulder at the girl who was making fun of him and barely skipping a beat as he continued to rewire the device in his hands.
“What are you making?” Amber asked the boy, looking over his shoulder at the small round object he held.
“It’s a pinch,” he said, opening his mouth to explain further before Rusty cut him off with a silencing look. “Oh sorry, don’t want them to think I’m smarter than you huh?” he asked. “You know she’s good at building things, but when it comes to actual technology, I’m the one you want guiding you through that maze of a facility.”
“We’ll keep that in mind,” Rusty said with a roll of her eyes, leading the group out of the room and back down the stairs. “He’s such a pain,” she told them over her shoulder; solidifying to Brynn the fact that Rusty definitely didn’t realize what a pain she was most of the time. “We just keep him around because he’s the only person who can hack into A1. Though now that we have Ty, maybe I can get rid of him,” she added, shooting Ty a wide smile that he returned before looking down at the ground sheepishly.
Brynn glared at the exchange but didn’t say anything.
“I’m hoping Rift will get back soon so I can show you guys the video,” Rusty said excitedly. “I can’t wait to see your face when you see… well… your face on the screen,” she told Brynn before stopping in her tracks, almost running into a young girl in front of her.
If Brynn wasn’t sure that they were in the main headquarters of the group specifically trying to take down the Workers, she’d swear they had just run into one.
The girl appeared to be around thirteen years old, with long platinum blonde hair that ended at her lower back. Her skin was pale and her large eyes were a blue so faint that they almost appeared light grey. She looked, to Brynn, exactly like one of the Workers from her nightmares. The fact that she was now glaring at Brynn didn’t do anything to discourage the resemblance.
“Great,” the girl said angrily, her lip curling up on her otherwise angelic face. “You finally find her and she’s from Moron Town.”
“Devey!” Rusty said indignantly, apparently forgetting the many times she’d called Halcyonites idiots. “They’re standing right there.”
“They probably can’t even understand what I’m saying anyway,” the girl spat, turning on her heel and flying up the stairs so lightly that Brynn couldn’t even hear her footsteps. She was like a wisp of smoke, so small, light, and fast that if you blinked you might miss her.
“She seems great,” Amber said sarcastically.
“That’s Devey,” Rusty answered, not bothering to apologize for her friend’s behavior. “She’s our medic.”
“So why is everyone here so… angry?” Brynn asked hesitantly.
She already knew that the people of Panurgic didn’t like her or her friends simply because they’d been born on Halcyon and had been given an easy life. But what she couldn’t understand, was the way everyone seemed to interact with each other. They were sarcastic and teasing all the time. It was like living in a house with a bunch of brothers and sisters who always fought.
“When you’re stuck with a bunch of socially awkward geniuses, things get tense,” Rusty said, though it sounded like she didn’t count herself as one of the “socially awkward” ones.
Rusty continued to show them around the old wooden house that looked very much like the boarding house they were pretending it was. The orphans of all different ages that populated the space were their most convincing asset, and Brynn wondered how there could really be that many people on Panurgic who were both orphans and geniuses. It didn’t seem like a likely combination, though Rusty quickly pointed out that the circumstances on Panurgic were a veritable breeding ground for that combination.
It wasn’t long after their tour that the group heard the front door open. Rusty sprang to her feet from the living room where the group had been discussing possible plans, and rushed to the house’s entrance to meet Rift.
He was an older man, and it was very obvious to Brynn that he had not had an easy life. His skin was a dark chocolate brown and his short brown curly hair seemed to be graying much too early for his age. He couldn’t have been more than thirty five. He had a kind but tired face that had seen too much hardship and his movements were weary.
“How was your trip to… where did you go this time? Halcyon or Arcadian?” Rift asked Rusty in a deep gravelly voice.
He looked at her the way a father would look at a daughter and it was confirmation that the residents of this fake boarding house did, in fact, function like a family.
“I found someone that I think you’re really going to want to meet,” Rusty said excitedly, looking over at Brynn and wearing the proudest smile she had ever seen.
Rift followed her line of sight and his dark brown eyes grew wide when he saw her. A small smile came to his face as he looked back at Rusty.
“You found her?” he said in complete disbelief and suddenly, Brynn wished she really was as important as these people seemed to think. She wished that she had done something to earn their respect, until one sentence changed everything.
“Where was she?” Rift asked, and Rusty stopped for a moment, not answering him right away. She looked down at the ground in silence, her bright red hair hiding her face from Brynn’s sight. “Rusty?” Rift asked again, this time slowly with a slight suspicion in his voice. “Where did you find her?”
“Halcyon,” Rusty answered finally, sounding ashamed.
Rift was silent for a moment, looking from Rusty to Brynn, then back again as his face fell.
“I should have known,” he said angrily, storming out of the room and down the hallway, Rusty running after him. “I shouldn’t have waited for Rachel’s generation to set everything in motion just in case this happened,” he shouted, making it easy for Brynn and her friends to listen in to the conversation even after Rift slammed the door.
“Rift they’re different!” Rusty insisted, her voice muffled behind the door.
Left alone in the living room, every set of eyes turned to Brynn slowly and she tried to ignore the burning in her cheeks. She couldn’t tell if she was angry or embarrassed but suddenly, the only thing she did know, was that the only people in the world who could help her find answers, didn’t want her.
Chapter 14: Unwanted
If standing in a silent room was an uncomfortable thing to do, standing in a once silent room surrounded by your friends and the shouts of the leader of a rebellion who really didn’t want you there, was a completely different level of uncomfortable. Rusty and Rift could be heard arguing down the hallway and all Brynn wanted to do right at that moment, was turn around and run away.
She looked down at her brown canvas pants and fitted long sleeved cream shirt. The clothes were worn and distressed in a way that peo
ple on Halcyon would think was stylish. On Panurgic, however, it just showed how hard someone had worked while wearing them.
Brynn knew that she and her friends didn’t fit in with people who had worked so hard for everything they had, but she was slightly indignant that Rift wouldn’t even give her a chance to prove herself.
“Rift, you don’t understand,” Rusty was shouting, actually surprising Brynn with how intently she was standing up for her.
For someone who acted like she didn’t really like Brynn or her friends, she was definitely putting up quite a fight on their behalf.
“They aren’t like everyone else. They came with me because they wanted to help. I didn’t drag them here against their will.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Rift countered in his deep booming voice.
With the authority he projected, it was easy to see how he had come to lead a rebellion.
“They’re useless to us. Do you really think anyone from Halcyon will be able to do what we have to do? They can’t handle hardship, Rusty. They’ll cave the second they see an A.I.,” he insisted, again using the word that Brynn didn’t understand; not that she’d admit that to Rusty or Rift now. She didn’t want to risk sounding even more ignorant than they already thought she was.
“They’ve seen them,” Rusty finally shouted, silencing Rift for the first time since his outburst. “They’ve been inside A1 and they’ve seen Eris face to face,” she went on, sounding more confident now. “And they escaped and lived to talk about it.”
There was silence on the other side of the door for a long time and Brynn desperately wanted to know what Rift was thinking.
“Do you really think they’re up for it?” he asked slowly.
“I wouldn’t have brought them here if I didn’t,” Rusty assured him.
She began to say something else but Brynn’s eavesdropping was cut off by the sound of Ty’s voice in her ear.
“We should just leave,” he said, making Brynn jump with how close to her he suddenly was.
He grasped her arm in his strong hand and stood just inches from her, blocking everyone else from her view.
“That arrogant man obviously doesn’t want us here and we’d get further without him anyway. This whole operation is a complete waste of our time. Look around you, Brynn. These people are barely holding it together, there’s no way they could help us.”
“Ty we can’t just leave,” Brynn said quietly, looking around the room at her friends who were intently listening to the conversation going on behind closed doors.
Everyone except for Jonah.
Jonah was staring straight at Brynn and shaking his head, trying to get a message across silently.
Had he heard what Ty said? Jonah was already convinced that Ty wasn’t really there to help out their mission. He was just there to bring Brynn home as soon as he found an opportunity to put doubt into her mind. As much as she hated to admit it, Jonah’s theory was looking less and less crazy the more Ty spoke.
“We came to Panurgic, Brynn. We did what we were supposed to do to get answers and now that we’re at a dead end, we need to go back home and regroup,” Ty went on and as he spoke, Jonah shot Brynn an I told you so look.
“Are you guys okay?” a small angelic voice asked from the entrance to the living room.
The little wisp of a girl Rusty had called Devey stood there, smiling at the group and looking like the perfect little hostess.
Brynn looked suspiciously at the girl who, not moments before, had glared at her and called her a moron.
“We don’t need your help kid,” Amber said icily, obviously not ready to forgive the last encounter they’d had with her.
“Oh,” she answered shyly, sounding heartbroken by Amber’s statement.
The change in her attitude was so sudden that even Amber looked sorry for her words.
“I mean we just…” she began, trying to find a way to remove the look of complete sadness that had washed over the fragile girl’s face. “We just don’t need anything right now. But thank you for asking?” Amber finished weakly.
It was amazing the things a cute, innocent, childlike face could make you do. Amber looked around the room pleadingly at her friends, begging for some help with making the little girl with odd mood swings smile again.
“Your name’s Devey, right?” Bennett asked, trying to salvage the situation.
“No,” the girl said in bewilderment. “My name’s Cambria.”
“Don’t confuse them too much Cam, their brains might explode,” said a sour voice from the top of the stairs.
Brynn looked up and could have sworn, just for a moment, that she had entered one of her nightmares again. Nothing she was seeing seemed to make sense.
The girl at the top of the stairs looked exactly the same as the one standing in the living room. They both had the long platinum blonde hair, pale skin, and big, practically see-through eyes. They were both petite and about thirteen years old and the light grey work clothes they wore only solidified the fact that they seemed almost transparent. The only difference between the two girls, was the fact that Devey wore a scowl while Cambria had a look of innocent curiosity.
“Excuse me, but… what?” Brynn finally said, looking between the two girls in complete bewilderment. “What’s going on?”
She looked around the room quickly to make sure her friends were as confused as she was, fearing that maybe her mind had finally unraveled itself and she was nuts. Luckily, everyone else was staring at the two girls in shock.
“We’re twins,” Cambria explained, as if the words were supposed to make perfect sense to the group.
“They don’t understand what that is Cam. They’re from Halcyon,” Devey said in annoyance. “Twins are brothers or sisters that are born at the same time,” she explained slowly, as if the explanation process were beneath her. “Sometimes they look different and sometimes they look the same. We’re not supposed to have them in the test environment but somehow our fabricated DNA got messed up and now there are two of us.”
Brynn thought this over for a moment. It seemed far-fetched to her that two people could look exactly the same. The idea that this was some sort of mix up in the human creation bay made more sense but the fact that Devey appeared to think this was a normal occurrence outside of the testing environment seemed like a complete lie.
“Twins?” Brynn repeated, trying the word on for size.
“It happens a lot in… natural human creation,” Cambria said quietly, her meek voice different from her sister’s commanding presence. “They were able to somehow suppress it in our worlds,” she went on, gesturing to herself and Brynn to indicate Halcyon and Panurgic, “but our DNA sample got messed up and here we are.”
“Does Eris know?” Brynn asked, thinking that if Eris was unaware of this little anomaly they could use it to their advantage when trying to take her down.
“Of course she does,” Devey said, sounding like she thought Brynn was brain damaged. “Do you think she really lets anything slip by her?”
“What about all of this?” Brynn countered, pointing to the house where their ‘secret’ operation was held.
“We’ve been avoiding Eris for a long time,” Devey answered with venom in her voice. “If we want to hide from her, we can. We’re good at what we do. Which is why we don’t need pampered little…”
“Devey,” Rift said in a deep and threatening voice, instantly silencing the girl.
Brynn hadn’t even heard Rusty and Rift stop fighting, and she definitely hadn’t heard them enter the living room again. Her attention had been so focused on the girl at the top of the stairs that she had completely missed whatever decision Rusty and Rift had come to.
“Rift, you’re not seriously going to let them stay, are you?” Devey asked, sounding more like a whiney teenager and less like a member of a top secret rebellion. “They’re worse than useless! They’ll bring us all down with them. They’re dangerous!”
“That’s enough,” he said
with a note of finality.
Devey opened her mouth to speak but thought better of it and instead huffed away quickly, her stomping footsteps echoing through the house until the slam of a door could be heard.
“Sorry about her,” Cambria said softly.
It was amazing to see two people who looked exactly the same acting so differently. It took Brynn a minute to remember that she wasn’t angry at Cambria, it was Devey who was totally unreasonable.
“She doesn’t realize how she comes off,” the girl explained, making excuses for her sister as she ran upstairs to join her. “It was nice to meet you all,” she called over her shoulder sweetly.
Brynn wanted to turn to Ty and ask him if that entire experience had been as bizarre as she thought. She wanted to joke with Amber about everything that had just happened. But as it stood, Rift was in the room, looking like he might actually have a calm and reasonable conversation with them and the last thing Brynn wanted to look like was a brainless teenager who joked around all the time. So instead she straightened her shoulders and looked Rift in the eyes, waiting for him to speak first.
“I’m sorry for my outburst,” Rift began after a moment of silence. “But you have to understand my hesitation to let you join us. We’ve been working under the assumption that Rachel’s generation would be someone experienced. Someone who would be able to help us.”
“What makes you think I can’t help you?” Brynn asked, slightly annoyed that the older man was underestimating her so much. “Have you been inside A1?” she asked, already knowing the answer before he opened his mouth to speak.
“No,” he answered stoically.
“Have you been face to face with Eris? Have you navigated the endless white hallways? Do you have to dream about all of the horrible things Eris does to people you love every night?” Brynn said, not realizing how loudly she had been talking until she stopped and the group was instantly engulfed in an uncomfortable silence.
She looked around at her mute friends. Most of them looked at the ground though she couldn’t tell if they felt sorry for her or if they were embarrassed by Brynn’s sudden outburst towards the frightening man.
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