by Caryn Lix
Was it possible the same bizarre phenomenon that gave these kids their powers and abilities did something to their minds? That wasn’t fair, obviously—there were people on Earth with similar powers who lived perfectly normal lives, many of them never even realizing they had special abilities. Scientists guessed as much as 1 percent of the population might be anomalies. I didn’t know any of them, but you heard about them all the time in news reports and history books. Besides, it wasn’t like I knew much of anyone. We moved around too much, and I was too busy training to get involved in typical teen pursuits.
But it did seem like the strongest powers manifested in the worst criminals. And if my encounter in the alley hadn’t made me buy that theory, last night had convinced me. Their behavior hadn’t been human at all. It seemed like they were stalking me from behind their bars.
Enough, Kenzie. They can’t use their powers. The chips embedded in their arms were nearly impossible to remove without a surgical procedure. Tendrils on the inhibition chips literally wound themselves around nerves and pressure points in a prisoner’s body. The chips didn’t cause any distress unless you messed with them. Removing them without medical supervision and anesthetic, though? I shuddered. Even if the prisoners somehow got their hands on a sharp object, it would be like slicing directly through your body’s pain sensors.
The tablet in my lap toned, making me jump. I glanced down and saw it was asking a series of multiple-choice questions about Othello. Of course, not having heard a word of the lecture, I didn’t have a clue about the answers. I hesitated a moment before closing the video. Just a quick break to go online. I checked my social networking sites—no messages, which probably meant my Earth friends had given up on me. I smiled ruefully. I always said I’d keep in touch, and I always meant to. One of these days I’d manage it.
I skimmed through the highlights of Thursday night’s Knicks game, shaking my head at the disaster of a loss. A superstitious urge made me think that maybe if I managed to catch a game live, my team would have better luck. But the last time I’d tried to watch in the common area, Noah had moaned and complained so loudly I gave up, relinquished the vidscreens to him for his games, and retreated to my quarters to watch in solitude. Watching alone was boring, so before long I was browsing Mecha Dream Girl fanfics instead. I felt more connected to the online Dream Girl fan community than I did to any kids in the real world anyway.
With a sigh, I returned to school. Othello beckoned, but I decided to call up an old history lecture instead. It took a few minutes to find the one I wanted, because I hadn’t paid much attention to it the first time around either. I liked math, computer sciences, and physics. Other than that, school was pretty much a waste of time, all that learning and memorizing of useless dates and facts. Give me a practical training camp any day.
Right now, though, I wanted something specific, and I was sure I’d heard it just a few days ago. Sure enough, I found a history lecture titled “Unit Three, Lesson Seven: The Probes.” I skimmed through the introduction until the camera zoomed in on a shot of a sleek black device covered in small spikes. I let the sound come in full.
“. . . almost fifty years now since the devices appeared,” said the lecturer, a man with a pleasant and serious British accent. Why did they always give history lectures to people with British accents? “Eight of them simultaneously broke atmosphere in various locations around the globe, including one device in Antarctica, which remained undiscovered for nearly a decade. Naturally, people panicked, considering it the first sign of an attack. However, the rudimentary global satellites available at the time confirmed that no further objects remained in Earth’s vicinity, although many found that less than comforting given that the same satellites had offered no warning of the devices’ approach in the first place. The generally accepted theory accredits these probes to an alien intelligence, as they resemble no technology we’ve ever seen on Earth. They seemed to emit some sort of signal, which many have interpreted as an attempt at communication. However, Earth’s best scientists were unable to make any sense of the message, nor understand the technology behind it.”
I skimmed ahead. The screen view switched to a grainy shot of a young girl with electricity arcing between her fingers, and I slowed it again. “The next generation, however, began to show signs of the probes’ influence. The area’s children, dubbed ‘anomalies’ by the populace, manifested signs of abnormal powers and abilities. Doctors and scientists alike were at a loss to explain these abilities, or what caused them. In fact, to this day, we don’t know what specifically caused the reaction. An effort to trace family lines proved futile in many cases, but geneticists had enough success to believe the probes had a direct influence on the birth of those with unusual abilities.
“At first, no one was sure what to do with the anomalies. Although some of them evinced very powerful and dangerous abilities, human rights activists pointed out that to judge each by biology rather than their individual actions mirrored the worst atrocities of human history. Eventually authorities registered all anomalies but accorded them—provided they declared their powers and did not use them illegally—full freedoms due as government citizens, although corporations were permitted to enforce their own rules about offering citizenship to so-called anomalies. Perhaps it was to be expected that this led to a certain amount of prejudice and conflict. . . .”
I ground the video to a halt. I remembered the rest anyway. When some of the anomalies grew up and confused themselves with supervillains, Omnistellar, which had long since taken over most of the world’s law enforcement, built two prisons: Sanctuary, for young offenders, and Carcerem, a work camp on the moon. Both prisons removed very dangerous people from the general population and kept the world safe for those with and without powers. Since Sanctuary’s inception a dozen years ago, almost a hundred prisoners had passed through its cells, most going on to Carcerem, the adult prison, although a few were deemed rehabilitated and released into society.
And yes, there was prejudice. There had been throughout human history. Lots of people believed it was harder to get corporate citizenship with anomalous powers, and that left the various world governments, with their minimal funding and pathetic subsidies, to absorb anomalies. I’d heard rumors that to become corporate citizens, a lot of anomalies moved to the colonies on Mars and Jupiter’s moons: corporate-owned facilities where most people didn’t venture because of the harsh living conditions and brutal work schedules. It wasn’t fair, and I knew that . . . but given my own encounters with the worst that anomalies had to offer, I understood the need for registration. You couldn’t just let superpowered people roam around in secret, because you couldn’t guess what they might do.
Reassured, I blanked my tablet. Sanctuary was not only necessary, it was humane. It was the best possible way to deal with an impossible situation. And if Omnistellar wanted to increase drills because the fiftieth anniversary of the probes was coming up, well, so what? Let them do it. Whatever Sanctuary threw at me, I’d be ready.
FIVE
MY DAD WAS SCHEDULED TO leave the next morning for a training exercise on Earth. Jonathan was going to assist him, and Noah was joining them for a week of shore leave. I’d known about that for a while but of course I’d assumed my dad would be coming home, not remaining on Earth and sending someone to take his place. I stayed up late that night, waiting for my parents to call—to say they’d reconsidered, that they’d bonded over the drill, maybe even that thinking of me made them want to give things another try. But they didn’t, and the next morning, Dad, Jonathan, and Noah headed for Earth, right on schedule.
Dad hugged me extra tight before boarding the shuttle. Jonathan and Noah hovered in the background, both meticulously avoiding my eyes. “I’ll see you soon,” Dad promised, squeezing my hand. “And I’ll call you the second Omnistellar releases me from the compound.”
“Okay,” I said, a bit too loudly. I really wanted to return to the illusion that everything was normal. “Enjoy your tr
aining thing.”
Dad took the hint. He stepped back, nodded, and crossed the room to Mom. The two of them spoke quietly. She clasped her hands behind her back, and he fidgeted with the strap of his bag. They had never been particularly affectionate, but this was painful even for them. I suddenly wondered how much they had in common, really, other than their fierce loyalty to Omnistellar. They’d met at a training camp, and 90 percent of their conversations revolved around work and patriotism. Had I ever heard them discuss music, or movies, or even their favorite food?
It seemed to take forever to launch, but eventually I stood at the window watching the shuttle’s small silver mass descend to Earth. I swallowed a sudden lump in my throat, and Mom came up behind me and laid a hand on my shoulder. I layered mine over hers. “Do you think . . . ?” I began, but couldn’t quite find a way to finish.
Mom sighed. “I don’t know, honey. This has been a long time coming. Your dad and I just lost touch somewhere.”
Tears blurred my vision. “Do you hate each other?”
“Kenzie. No. We love each other. It’s just . . . sometimes, that’s not enough.”
Suddenly I became aware of Rita in the background, studiously ignoring us, much more interested in her tablet than anything there could possibly warrant. I cleared my throat and stepped away from Mom. “Is the new schedule ready?” With only three of us on Sanctuary for the next four days, I’d have to pick up the work of a full guard, and we’d all take double shifts.
Mom hesitated. “Yes. Kenzie . . .”
“I’m fine,” I said, more sharply than I’d intended. I closed my eyes and forced a smile. This wasn’t Mom’s fault. I knew that. But she was here, and it would be much too easy to blame her. I lowered my voice. “Let’s just get through the next few days, okay? We can talk about it more later.” To be honest, there was still a part of me that thought Dad would spend a few days on Earth, miss us—miss me—enough to realize the error of his ways, and come home with Jonathan and Noah. Logically I knew that probably wouldn’t happen, but until that possibility was ruled out, well . . .
“Okay, honey,” said Mom softly. “We’ll talk about it later.”
I fled from the understanding in her eyes.
Since Sanctuary ran the prison, the company rarely replaced guards on shore leave or external assignments. Sometimes there was even talk of eliminating human guards entirely, but then some sort of emergency would call for human intervention. Three of us were more than capable of running the place, although it made for a grueling schedule.
Usually I hated it when anyone went off station, let alone three at once, but I was grateful for the constant occupation over the next several days. Mom, whether by design or not, covered the night watches, alternating day shifts with Rita. That meant she was effectively never home. Me, I took double my shift, working through the day and rushing to catch up on schoolwork on my breaks. It left me zero time to think about my parents, which was exactly what I needed. On the rare instances when my path crossed Mom’s, we treated each other with a polite civility foreign to both of us, but the longer this went on, the harder the pattern was to break. It got to the point where I was counting down the minutes until the shuttle returned from Earth and I knew for sure, one way or another, whether Dad was coming with it.
A lot of my shifts involved busywork and downtime. A few nights before the shuttle was due back, I pulled files on the prisoners in sector 5. They were pretty much what I expected: murderers, thugs, and thieves. I’d never really looked at the prisoners’ rap sheets before, and it made for interesting reading, filling up the little empty time I had. As I’d suspected, a lot of them were in for violent crimes—like, just for example, choking someone in an alley. Some were in for smaller things, minor instances of theft that almost seemed too petty to warrant a prison sentence. But in every case, Omnistellar judges had deemed the psychological makeup of the offender, combined with their tremendous power, a danger to society. I spared a moment of gratitude for the company. This was why they existed. They were thorough, careful, ready to do whatever it took to protect society, with far more meticulousness than any judge or jury in the old system. And as Mom constantly reminded me, no one was more dangerous than an uncontrolled anomaly. I could still picture her face when I told her about the girl in the alley: the sheer terror in her eyes, quickly swallowed by her more professional demeanor. That one brief slip, more than anything, convinced me how much danger I’d been in. I still didn’t know why that girl let me live, but I didn’t want to tempt fate a second time.
For instance, by heading into the prison?
Ironically enough, though, I was probably safer on Sanctuary than on Earth. We knew exactly where our anomalies were here, and their chips prevented them from using their powers. With that in mind, I found the files on my friends from the other night. Their crimes ran the gamut from theft to murder to corporate espionage. Danshov’s pyrokinetics had almost leveled a city block. His roommate, Hu of the “see you soon,” had incredible speed and a twin sister with some sort of weird ability to fuse with electronics. I also found a Mia Browne, who I suspected was the Irish girl Hu had declared my enemy. Her power was invisibility—and she’d been arrested on multiple charges of terrorism. I blinked at that, realizing that she, for one, would never see the outside of a prison cell again in her life.
Their powers brought to mind old comic books I used to read before I discovered Japanese manga. We had a perfect trio of villains.
Rita came on duty a few minutes later. “Reading prison files?” she asked with a grin.
I flushed, and blanked my screen. “I just got curious.”
“We all do. Bit of advice: don’t think of them as people.”
“What are they, then, animals?” But when I thought back to the other night, that comparison didn’t seem too far off.
Still, Rita shook her head. “They’re human, obviously. But if you start thinking of them as individuals, things get messy. Consider them a horde. Aside from your mom and maybe Jonathan, none of us has much to do with those kids down there. Our job is to keep them safe from each other and Earth safe from them. That’s as far as we need to think. Nothing else matters: not what they’ve done or who they are. Don’t let yourself get bogged down.”
She had a point. I nodded, remembering stories my mom read me as a child, cautionary tales of people who befriended anomalies and paid the price. They hadn’t been horror stories, of course, and she’d always read them with me cuddled safe in her arms. They were more like modern fairy tales. They were a bit over the top, but I remembered them, so I guess they served their purpose.
As Rita took her place at her console, I debated between finishing some homework or heading to the gym to shoot hoops. Suddenly she straightened up. “What the hell?” she muttered.
Oh God, what now? I jumped to my feet and rushed to her side. “What is it?” Please not another drill—not when we were so short-staffed, and right on the heels of the last one. Fiftieth anniversary or not, Sanctuary wouldn’t be that cruel, would it?
“A distress signal.” She pulled the screen off the console so it hovered in front of our faces. “Looks like a merchant ship. Really weak. If it were a few kilometers in either direction, we wouldn’t even see it.”
I frowned. Merchant ships traveled between Mars and off-world space stations, sometimes even from the farthest colonies on Jupiter’s moons, but we rarely saw them. The approved merchant approach to Earth deliberately avoided any stationary satellites, especially Sanctuary. “You’d better contact Omnistellar, right?”
“I’m trying. Something’s interfering with our communications.”
Warning bells went off in my head. “Another sim?”
“Not necessarily. Even though the distress signal seems weak, it’s operating on all frequencies. It might be blocking our comms.”
“It’s not supposed to do that.”
“No, it’s not.” She caught my expression and shook her head. “You wanna check the c
ode?”
She seemed half-condescending, like she was mocking my instinct to pull code at the least provocation, but I did it anyway, experiencing a strange sense of déjà vu. No flashing red foreign loops were interfering with the comms this time, though. “I don’t see anything,” I said dubiously, “but . . .”
“Well, we can’t abandon them. Call your mom.”
My hands shook as I triggered my wrist comm with a thought, not trusting ship comms to wake Mom if she’d fallen asleep. It was probably exactly what Rita had said: a merchant ship distress call, its signal elevated to such a height that it interfered with our signal. But coming on the heels of Dad’s departure, Trace’s comments about the probes’ fiftieth anniversary, and Hu’s ominous threat . . . There was something about the situation I didn’t like.
In less than a minute, Mom stood over Rita, arms folded, lips pursed, glaring at the distress signal on the screen. Her eyes narrowed to slits as she pondered the situation.
“Commander,” Rita prodded. “Regulations state—”
“I know,” Mom replied sharply. “Protocol is to contact Earth and, failing that, provide assistance whenever possible. But we also have a responsibility to maintain security on the prison.”
“Well,” I said slowly, hating myself as I spoke but knowing I couldn’t willingly abandon a whole ship full of innocent people, “I guess what it comes down to is, does it really make that much of a difference to have one extra person around? I know protocol says three guards need to stay on the station at all times, but these are unique circumstances. Rita can check out the beacon, then either tow them in or contact Earth for help once she blocks their distress call. You and I can take care of things here.”
Rita leveled an accusatory finger in my direction. “I make all the difference in the world, chica,” she announced, before grudgingly adding, “but you’re not wrong. If there’s a full-scale prison break, one gun won’t mean the difference between security and disaster.”