I know I walked down this hallway last night, but I must have been so tired or so absorbed with talking to everyone that I missed the maps. Huge rectangles of the black touch-panel material that’s outside our room doors are hung in ornate frames in several places in this hallway. They’re mostly dark, but I see one young guy tapping at one and realize what they are. When I lean in closer, the thin white lines make a map of the building. I touch my finger to it, and when it glows to life, I’m happy to see that it’s exactly the map I sketched in my head.
I don’t see any words on the map, and nothing to touch to bring them up. I lean in. “Kara?”
“Hello, Elias. How can I help you?”
This is so cool. “You know my voice now, too?”
“Of course, Elias. We’ve spoken a few times. What kind of intelligence system would I be if I couldn’t employ simple voice-recognition software to address you by name when you need my help?”
I grin. “Good point. Kara, where am I supposed to be for boot ca — er, orientation again? Could you show me where to go?” An uncertain, but excited, feeling bubbles inside me.
“Yes, Elias. You’ll go to the testing arena and report to the front desk there. It looks like Miss Grey, Miss Summers, and Mr. Suresh have already arrived.”
The pathway lights up on the map in green, and I memorize it: two left turns, a long hallway, and a slight right. Taking us into the ring of the building just outside of the dorms.
I don’t know why it never occurred to me before, but I’m damn good at this maps thing. Logistics, seeing patterns of things no one else sees easily — maybe that’s my thing.
“Would you like me to bring up the route on your cuff, Elias?”
“No, thanks, I’ve got it.” I think this feeling is confidence. It could be addictive.
Most of the other people walking these halls are headed in their own separate directions, rushing to different sections of the building for work. By the time I’ve taken the two left turns, the majority have disappeared behind doors to what are, I assume, offices and workplaces. I think of all the paperwork and records and press releases and mission controls, a different piece of which goes on behind each of these walls. Something within me clicks into place and hums with excitement at the thought of a Hub where I could do something calm, something useful. Something that really made a difference in the lives of everyone, not just in the lives of Supers. Under the right circumstances, I could like it here. Maybe I could like it here a lot.
I finally round the hallway that opens into this Hub’s testing arena. At the mouth of the room sits a large, round desk with a couple touchscreen tops that people in business clothes sit tapping away at. Above them, holoscreens hang in a wide circle, each displaying different information about the Hub — a map on one, the day’s testing area schedule on another, upcoming events on a third.
A girl with short dark hair looks up and smiles. “Welcome to the testing arena, Mr. VanDyne.” She stands and stretches out a hand.
“How did you…”
“You’ll get used to it.” She smiles warmly. “The building picks up your biosignal wherever you go, so we see you walking in. Looks like yours just uploaded to the system this morning. Take a look.” She motions to her table, and, on the map surrounding the Arena, there are names moving down each hallway.
“Incredible.” Just seeing that map, knowing that it’s possible to ensure everyone is accounted for and moving makes me feel calmer, steadier.
“Yeah, Kara’s pretty great. So…” She clicks my name on the map, and a whole new page comes up with a bunch of acronyms and numbers, followed by what looks like a schedule. “It looks like you’ll be with Gallagher today.” She presses her cuff to the screen on Gallagher’s name, then presses her finger to a spot just beneath her ear. She stares over my shoulder for a second and then starts talking. “Gallagher? Elias VanDyne is here for you.”
“Did you just talk on the phone?”
“It’s a biochip — automatically adjusts to the right volume and everything. We’ve only had them for a year or so, but aren’t they awesome? So much better than the old ones. The feedback from those knocked people out once or twice.” She smiles at me like I have any clue of what she’s talking about. Back home, we were still using our cuffs as phones.
“Guess it’s a spy thing,” I say, laughing.
She cocks her head and gives me an odd look, and then a guy strides up to the desk. The girl looks him up and down like he’s dessert.
“Hey, Gallagher,” she says breathily.
The guy’s only a couple inches shorter than me and about as thin. His hair sticks up every which way, and his eyes are large and deep brown. Compared to guys I’ve seen on TV and magazines, he’s nothing special. But he slides his arm around her waist, pulls her close, and says, “Hey, doll,” a few inches from her ear.
Her face lights up like she just won the lottery. But he removes his arm from around her just as quickly as he put it there, strides over to me, and shakes my hand with a strong grip. Just like that, I feel relaxed, like we’re already friends.
“Clay Gallagher. Pleased to meet you, Elias. I know it’s probably sounding old by now, but welcome to Clandestine Services. We’re happy to have you.”
The girl goes back behind the desk to her touchscreen with a dreamy sort of smile on her face. Gallagher I’m guessing is one or two years older than I am, but what I just saw proved that this is very different from Nelson High. Here, the teenagers work hard and flirt confidently. Here, they’re grownups. Responsible for themselves.
We walk toward the back of the testing arena. To my right, a kid flashes in and out of vision around walls and through the ropes of one of the obstacle courses. As I watch him, a girl with chin-length blonde hair steps from behind one of the walls, sticks out an arm, and catches him under the chin. His body falls to the mat, heavy, with a grunt.
She laughs. “I know you think you’re hot shit, Jones, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to stay on top of your atmospheric disturbance.”
Whoa.
There are a couple people sitting in front of holoscreens with glasses on, doing what I assume is some sort of field simulation. Near the back of the arena, there’s a huge glass case, about half the size of the dining room, with drains stretching over large parts of the bottom. For a second, it reminds me of the weird tanks where Fisk held Nora and Lia, but I shake my head and try to calm my suddenly speeding heart when I realize there’s almost no similarity. This is a cube, and the girls’ cells were more like cylinders. And, of course, filled with weird green goop and breathing tubes. This one’s empty except for one person covered head-to-toe in some kind of tight-fitting black fabric.
“Mind if we head over there?” Gallagher’s voice jolts me out of that horrible memory. “New girl just got here, and everyone’s kind of captivated.”
The person in the tank shuffles her feet, shaking out her arms like Merrin does when she picks up drumsticks. Merrin, Leni, and Daniel stand in the group of onlookers that rings the case.
I nudge Merrin with my elbow, and when she looks up at me, her face lights up, which stops my heart for just a second. “Oh, hey! You’re just in time.”
“What are we watching?”
“The Haylstorm. They’re all so excited.”
“Check it out,” Gallagher says. “I’ve never seen them flood this thing before.”
“Why’s she in a suit like that?” Now I can see that not only does she have a full black underwater suit on, but also a mask.
“The mask can pump oxygen directly to her,” Merrin explains. “Just in case.”
I barely know Hayley, but horror at what the “just in case” would be inside a flooded water tank grips me. “I hope she knows what she’s doing.”
Water bubbles up from the drains at the bottom of the tank, and it quickly reaches Hayley’s knees. When it starts to creep up over her thighs, some of the guys in white coats lean forward, and the crowd stops talking. It’s
like everyone is taking a collective deep breath.
Hayley raises her hands up above her head, and something in me knows it’s for dramatic effect. I get it, but I’m still annoyed that the girl is doing this when she could be about to drown.
Merrin grins and bounces on her heels. “Here she goes.”
Watching Merrin’s excitement, I really want to see if she can do it, too. It feels a little sick, watching a seventeen-year-old girl maybe-drown. But if everyone else is so damn confident that she won’t, I guess I should be, too.
Hayley’s hands plunge down into the water, and columns start to form below them. They get wider and wider and turn to the shape of a funnel. I crane my neck closer to see — I swear the floor where she’s clearing the water looks dry underneath.
Before I even realize what she’s done, the water’s moved up to create a space in the middle of the tank where Hayley stands, the top half of her still perfectly dry. The water’s still bubbling up from the floor, and she moves her hands continuously to keep it away from her. When it finally fills the tank, it’s a miraculous sight — clear blue with a cylinder of completely clear, perfectly dry space in the middle. And Hayley stands there, her arms once again over her head.
Everyone in the arena breaks into applause and whoops and cheers. She brings down the mask and smiles, something mischievous sparking behind her eyes. Then, arms still upheld, she starts to spin in a circle.
At first, I can only see the barest hint of a current as the water begins to make paths and trickles, little linear disturbances within itself. But then the water along the edges of the wall is spinning, and the water closer to Hayley spins, too. It’s become a giant cyclone, and it must be moving at twenty miles an hour. Then thirty, then forty. The glass walls of the tank start to rattle.
“Whoa,” Gallagher says, leaning in, his smile twisting up into something awed and utterly delighted.
Some red lights start to blink in the ceiling, and a siren blares. Hayley keeps spinning, but after a second, she hears it, too. She pulls the mask back up and drops her arms. The water stops abruptly, crashing all around her and soaking her head to toe. Once it settles down, she swims toward one of the walls, and a platform raises her up one side and down on the outside. The crowd of people applauds, and Hayley waves to us and smiles right before three or four adults in white coats surround her, all trying to ask her questions.
“You came in with her?” Gallagher asks us, his eyes still trained on Hayley.
“Sort of,” I say. “It’s a long story.”
“Wow. That’s…she’s incredible.”
“Anyway,” Merrin says, standing as tall as she can and staring at Gallagher expectantly. “What are we doing today?”
“Ah. Follow me to my office.” But he glances back at Hayley, as if reluctant to leave.
I raise my eyebrows and walk beside Merrin, nodding to Leni and Daniel, who join us.
“So you’re a student here?” I ask Gallagher as we walk to a small corner in the back of the room. My long strides let me catch up to him, and Merrin quickens her step keep. We arrive at another cell, but instead of glass walls, this one’s are white.
“Freshman. In college. I’ve been here a few months, but they don’t let you work in legit mission control for years.” He taps his fingers across the black panel at the door, making it glow to life.
“How can I help you, Mr. Gallagher?” Kara asks.
“Hey, Kara. I need to take profiles for these four kids who just came in for their appointments with me. Uh…VanDyne, Grey, Suresh, and Summers.” He looks at us. “Right?”
“That is correct,” Kara says. “I’ll take their profiles in the order you stated them.”
That makes me first. I cough. “Cool,” I say, walking up the three steps into the room. “What is it, exactly, that we’re doing?
He claps me on the back, smiling. “Just a biophysical profile. See what you’ve got.”
I walk into the cell, which is entirely opaque, mirrored white. “You cool?” Gallagher asks, and I nod. He ducks out and closes the door, and the totality of white surrounding me is almost blinding.
Kara’s voice echoes through the room. “Preparing for biophysical profile. Please stand perfectly still, Elias. Five. Four. Three. Two…”
The entire room goes dark.
TWELVE
Half a second later, one of the tiles glows red. It goes out, and a red light shines behind me. Then two more light up at the same time. Those go off and another four come on. They blink so quickly and randomly it’s like the room is spinning. My body doesn’t move, but I no longer know what is up, down, left or right. My eyes involuntarily dash from red tile to red tile until my head spins and all I want is to lie down. Then, as quickly as the flashing started, the entire room goes white. A bright blinding light emanates from the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and a buzzer sounds.
“Biophysical profile complete. Thank you, Elias.”
The door cracks open, and a very blurry Gallagher steps into the cell. I try to take some steps toward him, but the room’s still spinning and I definitely waver as I try to make my legs work together.
“Whoa! Hey, man. You look like you’ve never seen one of these before. You okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” I yank my glasses off and bring my hand to my head, pressing my thumb against one temple and my middle finger against the other. Out here, with no flashing lights, I feel like I’m on solid ground again. A couple of the other people passing by the cell catch a glimpse of my face and laugh.
“Must not have shut his eyes,” one woman says, and her friend laughs.
“You alright?” Merrin asks, concern in her face and her voice for the first time in days. “You look the same as you did when we first…left Nebraska.” She coughs and studies my face.
“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s nothing like that was. I’m just dizzy.”
“Okay,” Gallagher taps on his tablet and holds it against his chest, facing us. “Here’s what we’ve come up with.” Green beams shoot out from the tablet, zigzagging from the ground into a hologram of me. “Elias VanDyne. Seventeen years and eight months old. Height: six foot two. Weight: 170. Body fat percentage: eight. Body muscle percentage: fifty-three.” He raises his eyes and sweeps them down over my body. “Nice.”
Merrin grins, and I can’t help but feel pretty damn good about myself.
“Bone density, projected top speed, projected strength, blah blah blah — oh! Okay. Here’s the good stuff. Abilities. Manipulation of air: weak. Really?” I nod. “And…indestructability:”
Leni stares at me with furrowed eyebrows. “Elias?”
“Nora and Lia. They passed it to me. That transferability thing we all have, that allows us to combine Supers? They have it, too. They wanted to protect me, I guess.” And I still haven’t done a damn thing to help them.
Now Leni looks like she’s going to pass out.
Gallagher scratches the back of his neck. “I just can’t believe that’s all you can do. I thought you flew here… I even heard ‘supersonic.’ How did that happen with these abilities?”
I open my mouth to speak, but Merrin jumps in. “It’s a long story. Let me go in, and it’ll make a little more sense.”
Gallagher steps to the side and sweeps his arm out with a grand flourish. “Be my guest.”
She climbs the steps, and he taps the panel. “Kara, here comes Grey.”
“Hey!” I call after her. My stomach rolls, and I swallow the shaky feeling. She turns to look over her shoulder once she reaches the door. “Close your eyes. Tight.”
She gives me a slight smile, steadying me a little, and ducks in.
The process doesn’t last nearly as long for Merrin as it did for me. Or, at least, not as long as it seemed to. When it’s over, she practically hops back out of the cell and stares at the tablet over Gallagher’s shoulder.
I stand next to her. “Did you close your eyes?”
She gives a short laugh. “You know, I do
listen to you sometimes.”
Within a few seconds, Gallagher’s projected holo-Merrin onto the floor in front of us. “Okay. Merrin Grey. Sixteen years old. Height: five foot one. Weight: 102. Body fat percentage: nineteen. Body muscle percentage: twenty-three, etcetera, blah blah blah…”
I check Merrin’s face when he glosses over all that stuff, and just as I thought she would be, she’s glaring at him. She probably does want to know her projected top speed.
“Abilities: bodily density elimination. Wow.”
“She goes light,” I supply, feeling proud of her. I know she’s never thought her One was cool, but I always did. At least she could spy on stuff and float up to kiss me.
“It’s not complete elimination,” Merrin says with a wave of her hand. “I can control the float. It’s actually harder to float than it is not to float sometimes. I don’t think I would ever float away, but…”
“And that’s it?” Gallagher says, with the same dismissive tone that people must have been using around Merrin her whole life. The reason she has a complex that makes her want to run around left and right, risking her life.
Merrin looks down and scuffs the ground with her shoe. “Yeah. That’s all I can do. You know what, just scan Leni and Daniel so we can move on.”
Gallagher rolls his eyes the slightest bit, and I swear I hear him mutter something about “emo teens” while he’s setting up the cell for Leni.
Leni and Daniel do their thing, and Gallagher reads off their weird half-powers, too. His narrowed gaze darts between Merrin and me. “Okay…this is great, but I still don’t understand how you two flew supersonic from Nebraska to California and then from California to here. And how you two —” He motions to Leni and Daniel. “ — basically torched the entire arena in Biotech.”
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