Prodigy

by Dave Kalstein

  “I’m still going to simulcast to the committee during the debate this evening. I’m going to present them with the entire story behind the five alumni murders and connect the dots for everyone to see. It won’t sink the bill immediately, but it will raise enough questions to at least delay the process and raise an investigation.”

  “Those are grave accusations to bring, Miss Saltzman,” said Goldsmith. “Without the other five former specimens, Stansbury supporters will tar and feather you as a bitter alumna. The school will bring up your abortion and make it seem as if you have an ax to grind, which, frankly, you do.”

  “I won’t be making my case alone, Mr. Goldsmith.”

  “Who are you going to find to…” Goldsmith’s voice trailed off when he saw that Stella was smiling at him. And then he understood why she spent the past half hour bringing them up to speed. Cooley got it too, and it washed away all of his exhaustion and fatigue, gave him a rush that he might be able to clear his name and help Stella get her vengeance on the school at the same time. He started to feel giddy and knew he would do anything to help her. The normally selfish Riley probably got bowled over with the same zealousness back when she recruited him. For the first time in Cooley’s life, he felt like he could be part of something great. He looked at Goldsmith, hoping to see the same fire, but there was nothing in the valedictorian’s eyes. Just a hollow stare, like all of his theories and assessments were finally failing him. Cooley could practically hear his mind grind the question out: twelve years of busting my ass, and now this lady wants me to rip it all down?

  He watched Stella lay a hand on Goldsmith’s shoulder, like she was transferring strength and will to him. Outside the wall of windows, Cooley saw that beautiful, terrifying view of San Angeles from twenty-three floors up. A black cord swung past the glass outside. For a split-second flash, he caught a glimpse of what looked like the heel of a boot. He jumped up and grabbed Stella and Goldsmith by their arms.

  “The kitchen,” Cooley hissed.

  “What?” Goldsmith said, suddenly snapped out of his trance, but Cooley was already hauling them across the living room and into the long hallway outside. There was a sudden explosion of glass and wind behind them, followed by the thumping of several sets of heavy feet landing on the wooden floor. Those digitized hums were now familiar to Cooley’s ears as they fled: the sound of three ThermaGuns locking onto their targets’ body heat patterns.

  * * *

  In the tower’s boys’ solarium on Level 9, Pete looked up at the vast array of Celestial Class spotlights that shone down on him and wondered if the artificial warmth on his face was going to give him the kind of golden tan the specimens all had. He heard a door open and close, followed by the clicking of footsteps getting closer: it was his coveted insider source. Instinctively, he moved out of the circle of light he was standing in and stepped into the dark shadows.

  “That’s one thing I love about you specimens,” he called out. “You’re always on time. They got pills for promptness?” The footsteps got closer, heels moving against marble. “This place is a trip. One huge tanning salon, right? I’d tell you these lights’ll give you skin cancer, but hey, you whippersnappers sure licked that one, didn’t you?” Pete watched Sadie step through the row of spotlights and into the shadow with him.

  “Yeah, we did.”

  “Well, I’m a whippersnapper myself Sadie, ’cause I’ve got the whole thing put together. Dig it: A bunch of former specimens were lined up as whistle-blowers for the opposition to the Stansbury grant proposal in the Senate Select Committee on Education today. The school found out and started knocking them off one by one. They wanted to pin it all on your boyfriend, but that’s not gonna happen, now that I’m…” He saw a single tear roll down Sadie’s cheek and stopped. “Hey, I just said that he’s gonna be all right, that I’m gonna—”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.” Her voice trembled just slightly.

  “I do. I’m right, sweetie. You know I am. That’s why you’re crying. Come on, I need your help. You said you’d give me a hand, right? I can’t do it without my star insider source. I’ll have you out of this place in half an hour and get you in touch with Senator Bloom and the cops. You’ll be a hero and—”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying!” she shouted so suddenly that Pete flinched, startled by the vehemence in her voice. It almost sounded like she was pleading with him to recant, like there was someone listening that she wanted him to make a good impression on. “Just say that I’m right, please! Please…”

  A beep echoed. The Celestial Class lights shifted ninety degrees, illuminating the two of them.

  “No, honey. I’m right. I know that for a fact, and I never even made—” A shot rang out, echoing in the chamber loud enough to make them both temporarily deaf. Pete looked at her hands, confused, but they were empty. He glanced up toward the ceiling but only saw the bright lights. He fell to the floor, a dark red hole in his chest that trickled at first and then poured forth into a stream of blood that formed a puddle around his crumpled body, inside the perfect circle of white illumination from above. “… the honor roll,” he said with his last breath.

  But Sadie didn’t hear. Her ears were still ringing from the gunshot, and she was deaf even to the sound of her own screaming as she ran from the solarium as fast as she could.

  * * *

  Cooley threw on the switches of all six burners on Stella’s industrial-grade gas-burning stove in her kitchen. The blue flames shot up fast, nearly singeing his eyebrows and sweaty locks of hair. He cranked the oven underneath up to 450 degrees. The smell of burnt banana bread that had been baking inside filled the room.

  “The space heater,” he shouted to Stella. “Turn it up all the way.”

  “What are you trying to…,” she started.

  “Cooley—,” Goldsmith cut in.

  “Just do it now!” he snapped. “How’d they find us? I thought this address was a secret!”

  Goldsmith realized something. “They traced my Tabula.”

  “Smash the fucking thing. Now.”

  “But Cooley—” Before he could finish, Cooley grabbed the Tabula from inside Goldsmith’s blazer, threw it to the floor, and smashed it under his heel. It splintered into hundreds of small, jagged pieces. “You idiot!” shouted Goldsmith. “We needed that for—”

  Cooley grabbed him by the tie and yanked him close. “Shut up,” he hissed, “and whine at me after I get us out of here alive.”

  Stella rushed over to the heater and flipped the switch on. Rows of bright orange coils lit up. The sudden rush of gas into the gleaming silver stove made a hissing noise, swallowing up the eerie silence that followed after the wall of windows in the living room imploded just moments before. The footsteps of the detail officers pounded around the apartment as they secured rooms. Goldsmith listened, feeling his sweat in the increasingly hot kitchen soak through his dress shirt, the buttoned-up collar clinging to his neck. His mind raced, trying to formulate a plan to buy them some time, but failed: the bombshell Stella dropped on them just minutes ago still resonated. Everything Camilla said that the administration would be worried about if he retired—fundamental flaws in the system becoming apparent, shortcomings in the med cycle, the constant maintenance of a pristine public image at all costs—was true. They were never going to let him quit the valedictorian’s job, any more than they let Stella quit when she was laid up in an infirmary bed. The compliments, the affirmation they showered down upon him that he needed in such a visceral way—it was that parental praise he always craved but never received—was all just lip service to keep him under their control. The whole time he was a pawn who mistook himself for a king. Stansbury hung that fake gold medal around his neck and played him for a fool.

  “Cooley,” he whispered. “I can talk to them. The headmaster said that—”

  “They’re not here to talk,” whispered Stella.

  “Targets are in the kitchen!” came a voice out in the corrido
r. Cooley, Stella, and Goldsmith crouched in the corner across from the flames of the stove. “Activate your coolant vests!” An earsplitting burst of noise cut through the apartment. An instant later sparks and flames flew, leaving the stove and space heater mangled, pierced with bullet holes. Smoke shot from the holes in the oven. The bullets missed: all of the burning-hot targets hid the body-heat patterns of three terrified human beings. The flames on the burner got irregular, rising up and down like the appliance was gasping for breath. The hissing sound got louder still. Goldsmith recognized the smell from chemistry labs over the years: propane.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said, panic creeping into his medicated voice. “The stove is leaking gas and—”

  “Stella, where can we go?” asked Cooley.

  “We’re twenty-three floors up,” she said, calm. “The front door is the only point of exit.” The hissing sound got stronger. One of the burners went out and the other flames rose higher still. Goldsmith stared at them, feeling paralyzed and terrified all at once, trying to muster up some of the bravery he felt earlier in the day. He tried to sound courageous, but knew his voice reeked of desperation.

  “I’m not staying put and getting burned to death, I’m—”

  “Freeze!” barked Officer Jackson from the kitchen’s doorway. He stepped inside, pointing a pistol in their direction. Goldsmith jumped up. “Freeze, Mr. Goldsmith!”

  Goldsmith pulled out the headmaster’s piece of parchment from his blazer and held it up for Jackson to see. “Stand down! I’ve got the authorization of—”

  “No!” shouted Cooley.

  Goldsmith, still holding out his official document, wondered why Cooley’s voice just went several octaves higher than he’d ever heard before. Then he saw Jackson aim the gun—at him. The barrel lit up and was followed by several thunderous claps along with the noise of shattering glass before he realized he was on the floor with a searing pain shooting through his left arm and shoulder. He looked up and saw the broken kitchen window and a hole in the wall where he once stood. It took him a moment to understand the pain was caused from bullets passing through his body. The surface of his skin flooded with warmth and he knew it was the feeling of his own blood.

  From his vantage point down on the linoleum, Goldsmith saw Officer Jackson aim at Stella and fire three times. She was thrown back against the wall and then to the floor from the force of the impact, bleeding from her legs and torso, her gray dress staining in large black spots. Goldsmith tried to stand up and, through the haze of pain, saw Cooley reach for something shiny on the counter. His arm moved so fast it blurred. Jackson went down coughing up blood, neat little geysers of red erupting from his neck, the blade of a carving knife embedded so deep in his skin that its glint was now invisible, the dull black handle jutting out like a morbid piece of jewelry. Cooley rushed over and grabbed Jackson’s gun from his shuddering hand before ripping the utility belt from his waist. He moved toward Stella. Goldsmith gritted his teeth together and helped him pull her to her feet, supporting her weight. Cooley pulled out two morphine Syrettes from Jackson’s belt and jabbed them into the dark stains on Stella’s dress.

  “You’ve got to help me carry her,” he said to Goldsmith. “I’ll shoot you up with this stuff when we’re out of here. Are you okay to move?”

  Goldsmith nodded, knowing the only reason why the pain wasn’t completely debilitating was because his body was still in shock. Footsteps pounded toward them over the sound of the stove’s hissing. “Cooley,” he whispered. “The stove … it’s gonna—”

  “I know.” He pulled Goldsmith and Stella out of the kitchen, pushing them around the corner. Shots rang out from the corridor behind them, interspersed with the rhythmic percussion of running men. Cooley aimed the gun at the stove, fired, and dove out of the way. There was an explosive roar and an overwhelming wave of heat as the propane stove went up in flames right in the path of the detail officers. At first the rumble left an awful silence, then gave way to frantic, panicked shouts, with some officers calling for an extinguisher. Fire had begun to spread through the apartment.

  The three of them reached the living room and saw the blown-out wall of windows as the high gusts rushed inside. The corridors from where they came were now makeshift wind tunnels that stoked the flames. Cooley left Goldsmith to support Stella and peered outside. He rushed back over and pulled them toward the edge. Another series of gunshots erupted, getting closer, a vase just a few feet away shattering, a line of holes appearing in the wall nearby. Cooley led Goldsmith and Stella to the window’s edge. He found his left arm hurt too much to lift. Stella mumbled something, but he couldn’t make it out.

  “Don’t look down,” he heard Cooley say. He felt the dry skin of Cooley’s hand in his and let himself be pulled toward the cliff outside the living room. When Goldsmith took another step forward, there was nowhere to plant his foot. Cold air and hard yellow rain hit his face and he felt his body shudder from impact one more time, thinking he had been shot again, but found that there were no more burning holes in him, just a bit of wind knocked from his lungs, which was slowly making its return. He opened his eyes and saw a glorious, horrifying sight: the largest metropolis on the planet, from the roof of a Stansbury security gyromobile hovering twenty-odd floors in the sky. The gyro hurtled downward from the sudden force of three bodies landing against it, tipping just a bit, but they didn’t tumble off—a practical application of centrifugal force, as taught in Stansbury’s Principles of Physics progression, Goldsmith thought—and then he felt Cooley’s hand pull him out into the thin air. He heard the crash of the gyro from which they had just leapt slam into the side of Stella’s apartment building as they somehow landed on another Stansbury gyro, hovering a few floors below. Their impact sent this one sailing down as well. The driver tried to right the vehicle but could not. Cooley pulled Goldsmith and Stella off the gyro’s roof and into the air once again and, although this time they were airborne for a few more seconds, they landed on something solid. Somewhere above them, the gyro smacked into a floating billboard that displayed the day’s stock market gains (incidentally, Panacetix had sent Stansbury’s publicly traded stock soaring up thirty-seven points in the day’s trading).

  The ground on which Goldsmith found himself lying was actually the artificial turf surface on the roof deck of one of San Angeles’s public schools. Small children no older than eleven years old rushed around them, hurling small red dodgeballs at each other, screaming, terror in their eyes. Goldsmith tried to blink away the fever dream, but it remained. Bolts of lightning illuminated the sky.

  “Y’all throw like girls!” shouted the children’s gym teacher, a beefy lug with a crew cut and a bright red face. “Wing those balls harder! Hey!” Goldsmith could hear the teacher’s voice more clearly now. The man must have been wondering why three bloodied bodies had just landed in the middle of his gym class. “Who do you people think you—”

  Cooley grabbed a dodgeball from one of the boys and flung it at Mr. Crew Cut. It nailed him square in the face and he went down, stunned. The students cheered. Cooley hauled Goldsmith up. The rain on Goldsmith’s face felt like the most refreshing shower he’d ever taken.

  “Hold on,” whispered Cooley, steadying him. “Just relax. You’re gonna be fine.” Goldsmith looked down at Cooley’s hands and saw the silver needle of a morphine Syrette. He felt a couple of pinpricks. A glow flowed through him. “Good,” he heard Cooley say. “The Stimulum you took yesterday for final exams is what’s keeping you lucid.” The pains in his arm and his side died down. Goldsmith’s world started to get crisp and clear again. Thunder rumbled, sending a shiver through him. It sounded just like the noise of Stansbury gyros slamming against the steel and glass sidings of skyscrapers.

  “What about … Stella?” he managed.

  She was leaning against the wall, holding her hand over the hole in her side. The bleeding was not profuse, but still steady and wet. “I need the coroner’s files … they were on my apar
tment’s computer.”

  “We can’t go back up there,” Cooley said.

  “And our only copies were on my Tabula, Cooley. The one you smashed. That’s what I was trying to tell you back in the kitchen. Why can’t you ever think things through? You always—”

  “Fuck you,” snapped Cooley. He shoved Goldsmith. “You’d be dead if I thought things through back there.”

  “Fuck you!” Goldsmith shoved him back, waiting for the med cycle to kick in and settle him down. “You’d be on your way to jail if I hadn’t been thinking for both of us this whole time!” That calming sensation never came. He just felt anger. He wondered if he had outgrown his standard dosage, whether that was even possible.

  “Please,” said Stella, swaying on her feet, the painkillers letting some strength come back into her voice. “I can hack the files off a computer connected to Stansbury’s network. One that’s inside the tower.” Goldsmith looked up and saw the gyros still hovering outside Stella’s apartment way up in the sky, smoke billowing out from the broken windows.

  Lighting cracked across the sky behind him. The detail gyros were starting to descend, getting closer, maybe drawing a bead on their location. “They’re coming,” Goldsmith said. “How are we going to get back to the tower in time?”

  Cooley pulled out Jackson’s Colt M-8 and cocked it. Steel grinded against steel as a bullet slid into the chamber.

  23

  Cooley led Goldsmith and Stella out of the service entrance of Public School # 239 and into the crowds and wranglers on West 465th Street. It was a nice part of town, with Starbucks outposts and Apple stores dotting every other block, along with plenty of families and strollers. To Goldsmith, the inside of the school looked strange, foreign, almost like a movie set. The hallways smelled thick, like several coats of soap were employed unsuccessfully in sterilizing the odor of all the grime and dirt tracked in from the city streets. He ran his fingers along the white brick walls as they jogged for the exit and saw large black and yellow block lettering that ran down the entire hallway that read (somewhat nonsensically, in Goldsmith’s opinion) GO KNIGHTS! The lockers were a garish shade of pumpkin orange. Everything seemed haphazardly thrown together and anachronistic, almost primitive. That he would have ended up in a school like this if he was not selected in the Stansbury lottery was not lost on him and, despite everything he had learned today, Goldsmith still wasn’t sure that he’d have given up the salvation he found inside the walls of the tower if someone offered him the choice.