by S. S. Segran
The man picked up after two rings. “Yes?”
Kenzo spoke in a murmur. “Hi. I don’t have a whole lot of information, but Ms. Abdul said it’s possible that the Heart is the Boss’s personal domain. It’s built under reclaimed land. There’s talk that it might be in the Mediterranean, but don’t bet on it. It’s definitely around water, though.”
“Earth is covered in a lot of water.”
“That’s exactly what I said. And apparently, even Dr. Nate doesn’t know exactly where it is. Everyone’s blindfolded or something when they’re taken there. I could still try to dig some more, but I’m not sure that’s smart. I’m only just starting to build a rep with him.”
“Don’t risk it. Anything else?”
“No. Just that the only people who probably know the Heart’s location is the Boss, and the Boss’s pilots.”
“Damn.”
“I’m sorry. I wish I had more to tell you.”
“Not your fault. They’d want to keep the Heart under lock and key. How many pilots?”
“However many you might need for two jets.”
“They’d want to keep the circle small. Maybe one pilot for each plane, plus a couple for backup?”
“I honestly couldn’t tell you. Sorry. Again.”
“You did good, kid. Get some rest. And remember—”
“Eyes forward. I know.”
Kenzo hung up and trudged to his room in one of the dormitories at a far end of the cavern. He was eager to fall into bed, but once he opened the door and stepped in, he immediately hurried to the vent in his bathroom, unscrewed it, and reached in. He felt around until his fingers brushed up against a slim pile of documents. He pulled out three manila folders, their names clear on the tabs: Piper Whittaker, Vernon Savoy, and Wai Nakanaela.
By the end of the assessment the day before, Kenzo had discovered two more SONEs who were close to breaking from their programming. As with Piper’s data, he’d falsified their results, then gotten his hands on their personnel folders from the administrative building and made copies. He’s also printed out their real test results—along with everyone else’s under the guise of doing due diligence as leader of the Counselors—and deleted any evidence from the system. The giant stack of documents was safely tucked away in the private desk of his dorm room.
With his door securely shut, Kenzo spread the papers around his quarters. By the end of it, he barely had space to move. Writing pad in hand, he began jotting notes, using Piper’s, Vernon’s, and Wai’s results as reference.
A few hours later, he went into the bathroom, put the lid of the toilet down, and plunked onto it. His vision was blurred and his mind was clouded from fatigue, but he still managed to pump his fist in tired victory.
There were others like the three he’d found, the ones he called his pioneer batch. Not as far along but, if left to their own devices, would possibly be where Piper, Vernon, and Wai were now in a few months’ time. The one thing they had in common was that they’d all reached the two-year mark since being repurposed, or were nearly there. Ren, unfortunately, was firmly in the cause despite nearing two years in the Sanctuary herself. Hurtful as it was to realize she would likely not break free, his thoughts turned to the CUBE. If he could get the pioneer batch inside and tinker around . . .
He shot upright. Stuffing the papers back into the vent, he carved a path through the mess in his room and darted out of the dorm into Eden directly ahead, then cut left toward a long brick building with murals of George Washington, Socrates and Lenin on its walls. He paused at the door tucked against Lenin’s face, glowering at it, then entered onto a landing. Stairs to his immediate left took him down to an extended hallway with rooms on either side. He opened one and stepped in.
He hated the CUBE with every fiber of his being. To take helpless kids and toy with their minds like they’re nothing but pieces of a puzzle; to rip away their wishes and dreams and replace them with the agenda of messed up adults . . . I hope Victor and his people tear this whole operation down. I hope the monsters in charge of all this burn for what they’ve done.
He took stock of the small, polished room and headed over to a counter at the other end. The CUBE had mostly one type of chamber, one that was capable of repurposing a single person at a time. The other type, which was larger and had a capacity of twenty, was where the assessments had been conducted.
Kenzo opened one of the compartments above the counter, revealing a sleek monitor. He tapped the screen a few times, pulling up the program he’d used the day before, and played with the settings until he got what he wanted before reaching into another compartment and pulling out a teal skullcap studded with electrodes.
Dr. Nate, being an ardent researcher and experimenter, had several versions of different kinds of mind-warping devices scattered throughout the CUBE. Kenzo had lost track of the negligible distinctions between them during his orientation into the Counselor echelon, but he knew that this one was called the neural encoder optogenetics unit, or NEO. To avoid brain tissue damage, it utilized photons in the near-infrared range that penetrated the skull without being invasive.
He synced the skullcap to the program on screen, then placed it on his head. The software measured cortical potential, where specific brainwave patterns were expected to fall within a range of acceptable upper and lower limits. The higher the data points, the greater the likelihood of a Steward breaking free of their repurposing. On the other hand, the lower they were, the more the Steward became detached from their emotions, which held the very real and very dangerous possibility of dissociation.
Those in the Vanguard echelon had been specifically altered to have their data points fall just below the middle of the safe zone—enough to allow them to make harsh calls but not enough to turn psychopathic. Kenzo had known there was a reason he’d never felt at ease around the Vanguards. After handling their assessments, everything made sense.
On the screen, five patterns were being graphed on the horizontal bar with color-coded dots: alpha, beta, delta, theta, and gamma waves; standard brainwave patterns. The program also measured a sixth factor that indicated the overall status of each individual’s neural programming. Kenzo’s appeared perfectly in the safe zone.
I don’t understand. Why aren’t the real results showing? What do I have that makes me so different?
He wanted so desperately to find out, but he wasn’t here to uncover that mystery. The digital clock at the bottom corner of the screen read three-thirty in the morning. He had two and a half hours to meddle around, leaving him time afterward for a short nap before starting a whole new day in the mobius strip of rote Sanctuary life.
“Alright, Igarashi,” he muttered, cracking his knuckles. “Time to start figuring out how to unplug the people from the Matrix.” He exhaled through his nose in somber amusement. “Except here, NEO is my enemy.”
“What exactly are we looking for, Nageau?” Tikina asked, flipping through the pages of a centuries-old journal.
“Any and all mention of our home island.” He stood over a crateful of well-preserved parchments resting on the table. “More specifically, its location.”
“My love, if we had anything in our records that indicated where the island was located, it would have been mounted front and center in the temple long ago.”
“I agree. But”—he nodded at the various books and letters preciously stored in the cellar of the Elders’ assembly neyra—“perhaps there is a clue, a hint that was missed. Something written, but not direct enough to capture much attention.”
Tikina returned the journal to its slot and perused the shelves a few minutes longer. “If only that awful fire had not taken place on the ship,” she lamented, “we would still have the charts to lead us to the place of our ancestral home. Sometimes I wonder if that really was an accident, or if it was fate firmly telling our people to move forward and not look back.”
“If it is the latter and Reyor has in fact raised the island,” Nageau said, “then there may w
ell be a reckoning on the horizon.”
“I think there will be a reckoning regardless. Evil cannot be ignored.” Tikina gave him a feeble smile. “It was not that long ago that we were down here with Magèo, helping him search these very same records for mention of the Tree of Life.”
“And we found it,” Nageau said, smiling back. “Just like we will find something about our home island.”
Tikina’s heart ached a little at the determination in his bright blue eyes. He was trying so hard to keep faith even as the light grew dimmer every day. Turning to the books, she secretly wondered what would happen if they failed and Reyor took complete rein of mankind’s destiny.
* * *
Ashack tracked the footprints in the snow, following their trail through the forest. He found a girl kneeling by a bush, carefully plucking its last leaves before the winter freeze claimed them and tucking them inside her closed-lid basket.
As she stood and turned, he stepped into view. She gasped, nearly dropping her haul. “Elder Ashack!” She placed a fist over her heart and dipped her head. “I did not know you were here.”
He folded his arms. “Nal. We must speak.”
She eyed him, then clasped her hands in front of her, holding the basket’s handle. “Of course. How may I be of help?”
“You have been spending much time with Hutar.”
“Yes, I see to him in between my apprenticeship responsibilities with Magèo, as I was tasked to do. I encourage him to open up more and build upon the rehabilitation the Elders started with him before he fled the village.”
“What have you been telling him?”
She frowned, clenching the handle tighter. “I only try to get him to share more about what hap—”
“I mean, what have you been telling him about the Chosen Ones?”
Nal’s lips flattened. “Nothing.”
Ashack dropped his brows low. The girl held his gaze before hers flickered away. “Nal,” he growled.
“I want him to heal,” she said, not looking back at him. “He can be good. He has the capacity but not enough selfless guidance. If I just keep at it, my being by his side and showing more kindness—”
“I do not care about that, or what the nature of your relationship is. I want to know what you have told him about the Chosen Ones.”
“Nothing. He knows nothing.”
Ashack stepped toward her, uncrossing his arms with a finger raised. “Do not lie to me. Our ancestors’ prophecy is unfolding at this very moment and if you let your emotions meddle, it will disrupt everything in the most grievous way. It may already have.”
Her mask cracked ever so slightly at his words. Guilt and anguish started to emerge from the fractures. She backed away, shaking her head. “I do not remember the details, Elder Ashack. We speak about many things. He wants to know what our brethren think about him, about what has been happening with—with all that he missed when he was gone.”
Ashack pulled in a seething breath, quelling the urge to shake her until she stopped dodging around his question. Why is she holding on so stubbornly? How did Hutar manage to charm such a bright mind? She knows better than to protect him!
“You are treading a dangerous path,” he cautioned. “You said he is not getting enough selfless guidance and seem to have taken it upon yourself to fill this supposed void. But you cannot be so blind to the fact that what you are doing right now is, at its core, selfish. Selfishness out of misplaced loyalty or a need to protect him; or selfishness out of fear of consequences. Wherever you are coming from, you know what the end result is. I can see that you have the truth, so all you are doing is lying to yourself.”
“What do you think Hutar has done?” she cried. “What can he do? He has guards that never take their eyes off him! They probe the novasphere to ensure he does not reach out to anyone telepathically!”
“I have my hunches about that as well. If you can be honest with me, then I will be able to discern where to go from here.”
Still gripping the basket, Nal slumped against a tree and slid down, eyes screwed shut. “He can be good,” she whispered. “I believe it. I may have made mistakes but I am not a fool who puts her hopes in wishful ideas.”
Ashack crouched in front of her. “Nal, what have you told him?”
She opened her eyes a fraction. “I suppose . . . everything. At least, everything that I know. You must understand, Elder Ashack, he was curious about how far the Chosen Ones had gotten in their training. He seemed genuinely interested in their progress and how they have been faring in the outside world and—”
“And in doing so you possibly endangered—repeatedly—the only people capable of stopping the darkness that has descended on our world.”
“That was not my intention! Please, please, know that as the truth. The last thing I wanted was to put the Chosen Ones in harm’s way.” Nal hugged the basket to her chest. “Are you truly considering the idea that he somehow met the harbinger after fleeing with Aesròn? How could that even be possible? There are billions of people who live out there. In such a vast space, in the short time he was gone, how could the harbinger have sought him out?”
“That is what I am trying to learn. Believe it or not, I really would prefer it if my suspicion bears no weight. But I must be certain.”
Nal hesitated. “I do not think Hutar did anything with the knowledge he received. He has been under close watch since the beginning.”
“And yet, you do not sound so sure about his innocence now.”
She glanced away. Ashack got up, mind racing to figure out his next move. He had one more question, but he already suspected the answer. “Where did you get your information from?”
Nal clawed her fingers through her black-and-ginger hair, hands trembling. “Sometimes, Magèo . . . Magèo and I talk. About everything and nothing. When he speaks with the Elders, he might share with me some details about—”
Ashack cursed, slamming his fist into the trunk above her head. She winced as the force of the impact shook needles and snow loose. “Please do not be angry with him,” she begged. “You know how he is, with his mumblings and eccentricity. He works through his thoughts with me.”
“And he probably does so in confidence, even if he never said it outright,” Ashack snapped. “Which you then violate for a boy who had no qualms about nearly killing ten people in one fell swoop!”
“He protected Elder Nageau from his closest ally!” she protested.
“A good act. I admire his commitment.”
Nal climbed to her feet, discreetly wiping at her eyes. “If that is quite all, Elder Ashack, I have to get this haul back to my mentor.”
“Go. But you are not to see Hutar again.”
As she hurried away, Ashack rested his forehead against the tree, suddenly feeling weak and sick to his stomach. He wanted to be angry, so angry that his bones would burn. But the voice of reason—taking on the intonation of his mate—intercepted him, talking him down, injecting a sliver of sympathy when he least wanted it. He pushed away from the tree, rubbing his face.
Nal is smart, and caring, though severely lacking experience that only age can give. Her kindness is her strength, but it has been unchecked and it might have been the reason the Chosen Ones have had to fight so hard every step of the way against Reyor. And why Jag was taken from us.
He tipped his head back, scowling at the gray clouds through the trees. Magèo, you fool. And Nageau, we did it your way. Look at what it cost us.
Turning, he headed back in the direction he’d come. All he had left to do now was find out how the information was getting from Hutar to Reyor, and do it without raising suspicion and spooking his prey. The harbinger still had no presence in the novasphere, so outright telepathy between them was impossible. And as far as he was aware, Hutar did not have the ability to communicate in such a manner. Still, he’d learned how to conceal his presence in the novasphere; perhaps he’d unlocked telepathy and kept it hidden, hence the Elders ensuring that his guards che
cked in on him in the novasphere. Hutar had been a cunning adversary before he left Dema-Ki, calculating and detail-oriented, leaving nothing to chance. There was no reason to assume he was no longer those things.
Ashack knew he could not present any of this to the rest of the Council without infallible proof, which meant he still had his work cut out for him.
* * *
Nal ran, basket hitting the side of her thigh with every stride as she cut a trail through the snow back to the valley. The overcast sky plunged the forest into darkness. She adjusted her vision, making everything brighter, and pushed on even as thick flakes descended in harried formation. Her face tingled, becoming numb from the cold.
By the time she reached the incline leading up to the eastern end of Dema-Ki, the snow had accumulated to her knees. She climbed up the slope and caught her breath at the top, chest heaving, blood pumping, perspiration rolling down her temples and neck despite the chill. Through the trees just ahead, a shadow appeared from behind the restored youth center, bundled from head to toe.
“Nal?” Huyani called. “Goodness, what are you doing out here? Come inside!”
That was the last thing she wanted to do, but Nal knew she needed to get out of the storm before her teeth broke from their incessant chattering. Huyani guided her into the warm building, toward the newly-added firepit below a smoke chute. A few other youths were already huddled around it, sharing blankets and sipping steaming beverages from clay mugs. They smiled kindly in greeting and scooted to make space for her.
“No, it is quite alright,” she said softly, then turned to Huyani who was combing snowflakes out of her long hair. “Do you know where Hutar is currently?”
Huyani gave her a puzzled look. “Why? You have already given him his midday meal.”
“Well, yes. See, I—actually he needs—there is—” Nal held up her hand, laughing forcefully to cover her stutter. “I have to ask him something. It is important.”
“Akol is on shift today. He mentioned that Hutar is supposed to be fixing a few fractured beams at the school, but that is at the other side of the village. You cannot go out in that storm right now.”