by Tonya Kuper
Reid gathered both of my hands between his and pulled them up between our chests. “Hey, hey, hey. It’s okay. I know, I know.”
I swallowed and exhaled slowly. Turn the worry and fear into action, J. “I don’t like this. We need to find them.” I loosened my hands from his, sweeping loose strands of hair out of my face.
“I don’t, either. I’ll have my dad find them. Okay?”
Could we trust Harrison that much? I wasn’t sure, but he was probably my only way of getting help in finding my family. “Yeah.”
“We’ll grab something to eat, I’ll talk to Dad, then we’ll call it a night. When we wake up, we’ll get started on developing your skills with Cohen right away. Then we’ll look through the public records.”
If my family wasn’t in the Hub by the next afternoon, I’d go look for them myself. Then I’d be all kinds of ticked. Reid would probably object to that idea, so I wouldn’t say anything unless I had to. “Sounds good.”
“But first, let’s figure out what skills you need to master. Wanna get a glass of water from the kitchen, and I’ll work that knot out of your left shoulder while we brainstorm?”
I thrust my hand toward Reid. He tugged me behind him toward the kitchen. Figure out what skills I need to defend us from the Consortium and beat this traitor’s ass? Yes, please. This traitor messed with the wrong girl.
Reid
A knock on the door made Josie jump. I glanced at my phone. It was already seven. We’d been in her room for two hours. Crap. This would look bad, my being in her room this long. I didn’t need the Council breathing down my neck about my relationship with Josie. We could be kicked out of the Hub and I could be stripped of my trainer privileges, which was the opposite of what we wanted. Right now, we needed to be in the Hub where we had access to data and people, specifically, the mole.
And we still hadn’t eaten anything, which would mean more time we were together. “I got it.” I cracked the door and peeked into the hallway.
Cohen, my childhood friend, stared back at me, grinning. “Hey, man.”
I swung the door open. “Coe!” I pulled him in for a hug and he slapped my back.
Stepping back, I took a look at my friend. He’d hit the weights and made some gains for sure. His T-shirt pulled tight against his dark skin. Still had that friendly face, though.
Cohen sidestepped me and directed his attention to Josie, who now stood behind me. “You must be Josie. I’m Cohen, Reid’s friend and head trainer in the Hub.” I was damn proud of him for making head trainer recently. Cohen was a talented Oculi and a good guy.
Josie’s lips pulled tight in an unsure smile. “Nice to meet you.”
Cohen leaned toward us and pointed over his shoulder to the hallway. “Check out who joined us a couple of days ago.”
A tall white kid with wavy dark hair stood behind him—Zac Brown, the Vice President’s son. What the hell? He was in the media enough to be easily recognizable. He glanced our way and smiled. I followed the guy’s stare to Josie. Correction; he didn’t smile at us, he smiled at Josie. The dude better set his sights somewhere else.
Cohen clasped my shoulder. “I’m on VP Junior duty but thought maybe you might want to hang and give Josie the official tour.” He looked over my shoulder to Josie. “You know, check out your new digs.”
Cohen’s easy smile dissolved when his eyes met mine again. With his opposite hand, he saluted me with two fingers. My nerves calmed momentarily. By giving me that signal, Cohen let me know that he was aware that something was off.
Josie stepped through the doorway between the two of us. “Yeah, a tour would be good. I’d like to get comfortable with the layout.”
Cohen waited for Josie to descend a couple steps then turned back to me. “We need to talk.”
“Dude. Yeah.”
Cohen sauntered down the stairs behind Josie to Zac, who waited with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his pants. Zac watched Josie, his eyes examining her lower body. Nope. Nope. Nope. I was going to have to nip that in the bud.
I leaned down to Josie’s ear. “You can trust Cohen, but besides my dad, he’s the only one.” I inhaled the scent of her perfume I’d come to love. Gardenia.
Her slightly parted lips pressed into a line, then she nodded. “Got it.” She followed Cohen. Her courage gave my own a boost.
We started down the long hallway to the garage. “So,” Cohen said, twisting back to us. “Zac, this is Josie Harper and Reid Wentworth. You’ve heard who they are the last couple of days. This is Zac, Vice President Brown’s son.”
Yeah, Zac, captain of all douchebags. He talked a good game in the media as the VP’s son, but I wasn’t falling for his politician act. Besides, his dad had just disappeared on some mysterious vacation and then he showed up here? Weird coincidence. “What’s he doing here?”
“This is the safest place for Zac to train.”
“Yeah, putting everyone else here at a higher risk because he’s here.”
The upper-crust politician white boy paused and faced me. “My dad just wants me to receive proper training. I want to be treated like any other trainee while I’m here. We’re on the same side, you and me.”
Aware that Cohen, Josie, and the cameras were watching us, I decided to keep any insults quiet. “If you say so.”
Cohen and I tag-teamed giving info about the Hub to Josie and Zac, the newbies, as we trekked down the long hallway. The Hub used to be a military base, and I could see Josie making mental notes of where we were and what turns we made. It was a good idea for her to have a mental picture the place.
“The entire compound is shaped roughly like an upside-down letter T.” Cohen made the time-out sign with his hands. “The garage is on one end along with the Council corridor. At the opposite end, we have the living quarters, the Caf, and the Open, which is literally an open area inside the mountain. I guess you could say it’s kind of like our version of main street in a village—a gathering area, shops, stuff like that. Along the way, from one end to the other, there are the training rooms and the infirmary.”
Cohen led us up the stairs of the lookout tower in the garage. We stepped into a room full of screens, computers, buttons, and at least a dozen people. “Welcome to the Eye in the Sky—the control tower,” Cohen said. “This is where security is headquartered. The entrances are monitored from here, and this is where much of the communication is located.”
Screens covered an entire wall, all showing different pictures. Of the Hub. The secret “mine” entrance Josie and I had used. The door to the Council corridor. Doors I didn’t recognize.
“Why is there a camera aimed at the wall of the garage?” Josie asked.
Cohen pointed out the window to the wall Josie was talking about. “That’s the hangar. From the outside of the mountain no one can tell there is a door there. It will accommodate a chopper, a small airplane, that sort of thing. Reid’s dad personally owns the land on the other side of the mountain with a private, registered landing strip. It’s really just for show—that way no one suspects occasional flights around the area.”
Josie nodded. “Smart.”
Zac stepped closer to the wall of screens. “Are there cameras in the living quarters?”
“There aren’t cameras in personal spaces, public restrooms, or locker areas.” Cohen left the screens and crossed the room to the stairs. “The cameras can get old when you want to have a private talk or whatever, but they’re there for our security. You know, those who come and go, possible intruders, odd behavior, or if someone goes rogue.”
He was talking about what happened with Josie’s brother, who’d had an Oculi degradation. I looked to Josie as we descended the stairs to the main floor. She didn’t outwardly give a reaction to the mention of what happened with Nick, but I knew it didn’t go over her head.
We followed Cohen, but Josie’s eyes were everywhere but forward. She stared at the walls that sloped up to the top of the mountain. Her gaze flitted from the rows of vehicles t
o the locked weapons cage, back up to the Eye in the Sky above us.
“What do you think?”
Josie whirled around. “Heh. I don’t know. I kind of feel like I’m in a Marvel movie.”
“You mean, like this could be Batman’s second home?”
Josie laughed. “Batman is DC, not Marvel.”
“Whatever.”
“No. Not whatever.”
“You’re such a nerd.”
“Yes, I am. Thank you.” Her face broke into a giant grin.
“Hey.” I stepped closer. “Notice the exits in here. Lots of places to hide for the mole, but also for us, for you, if something goes south.”
Her green eyes grew darker by a shade. “Yeah. I’ve been taking mental notes. Also, where are Mom and Eli? I’m getting nervous. They’re not here, and still no word from anyone.”
I bumped my shoulder to hers and motioned with my head to follow the others. “I know. I’ll check on it.”
We backtracked down the longest and widest hall with rough, rocky walls. Some halls showed exposed rock, reminding us that we were indeed inside a mountain, while some were more industrial, with cement walls and iron thresholds.
We made our way to an area where enormous, numbered doors lined both sides of the hallway.
Cohen held door number five open for us, and we walked into a temperate forest. The floor was littered with dirt, grass, leaves, and small undergrowth. Josie ran her hand over the rough bark of an enormous walnut tree.
The forest reminded me of the first trees Josie Pushed in the warehouse back in Florida. The bright memory faded to gray as I recalled Santos living in the warehouse with me, helping me train Josie.
“Rooms one through five are special,” Cohen said, sticking close to the door.
Zac leaned against the tree. “You mean these are the rooms Oculi in the Hub go all Fight Club in?”
Cohen’s lips turned upward and he stifled a chuckle. “Naw, man. Check it out.” Cohen opened a box on the wall, revealing a digital touch screen. He tapped on the surface and everything around us was replaced with a busy city street and buildings. I watched Josie’s gaze follow the buildings up toward clouds moving across a blue sky. They were skyscrapers.
One corner of Josie’s mouth curled up slightly, her eyes wide in amazement. Ten bucks said she was trying to figure out how the room worked. Zac’s mouth fell open in disbelief.
“What. The. Hell,” Zac said, his head whipping around.
“It’s basically a hologram for training purposes,” Cohen said behind us. He was head trainer, so this was his job. I’d let him take the lead in here. “Obviously, the top of the buildings don’t really go through the ceiling. It’s all a picture, more or less.”
Our surroundings changed again. We were on top of a building, and rooftops spread out before us. We had a great view of a city.
Josie glanced to me. “So, it’s like the holodeck from Star Trek?”
“What?” I had no idea what she was talking about. I’d brushed up on Star Wars before training her, but knew nothing about Star Trek.
She turned to Cohen. “Or it’s like the X-Men Danger Room?” Excitement laced her voice.
Cohen stepped away from the wall, in between Zac and Josie, toward the edge of the building. “Yeah,” he chuckled. “Guess I hadn’t thought about it that way. But that’s exactly what it is. Holograms projected on real surfaces. This isn’t a real building under our feet. This is just an elevated, hollow concrete platform, that way it can feel and react like a real surface. We call it VR, or virtual reality training. Anyway, it’s about a seven-foot gap between this rooftop and the next. When we look over the edge of the building, it looks as if we’d fall to our death, ten to twenty floors to the street below, but really, it’s only about a three-foot drop. The hologram and your brain fill in the rest of the illusion. As a trainer, though, I can Push and Retract real obstacles to enhance the training session.”
The carefreeness left Cohen’s face and he turned to Zac. “If a Consortium agent was running after me, what would I need to do?”
“Jump,” Zac replied with not a second of hesitation. He stepped backward as far as he could until his back hit the wall. With one foot on the wall, he shoved off and sprinted. Jumping at the last second, he landed on the virtual rooftop of the next building. Turning to face Cohen and me, he said, “Like that?”
“That’s one way,” Cohen said.
Josie cleared her throat and grabbed our attention. She ran and Pushed a small bike-path bridge the moment her foot left the pretend building. I Retracted it and she Pushed it again. She needed practice with the unpredictable, so I Pushed a cinderblock wall just inside the edge of the other building. I could Retract it if she didn’t.
But as she sprinted to the other building, the cinderblocks didn’t disappear. They weren’t Retracted. They were blown backward, leaving broken pieces all over the ground. Like Josie had emitted an invisible blast of some kind.
Shock locked my legs, but intrigue and panic made my head spin.
She landed on her feet, but fell forward onto her hands, blocks scattered around her. Oculi didn’t do that. We Pushed, Retracted, or both. That seemed different somehow. Which meant Josie was different somehow.
This was potentially something big. I nonchalantly wiped my sweaty hands on my jeans and inhaled to slow my racing thoughts. If Josie was different than other Anomalies, that would make her even more desirable to the Consortium, and possibly as a weapon to the Council. The fear I had for Josie just multiplied two-fold.
Josie
I paused, crouched on all fours for a moment while I let the last few seconds sink in. I hadn’t Retracted the cinderblock wall. I’d used my personal shield. Well, in a way.
I was still getting used to the shield thing where I Pushed energy outside myself, creating an invisible field of protection. This was different than a shield, though. It reminded me of my confrontation with Santos and how I’d somehow made him fly backward. I thought I’d done the same thing again with the wall. This was more like a burst of energy from me to the point of my concentration. Electricity had pulsed through me in a way that left me feeling a bit woozy.
I stood, my legs wobbly, and examined the fallen wall, my hands on my hips. Zac stared at the shattered blocks.
Reid was suddenly at my side. “Josie?” He looked about as good as I felt.
Cohen made a beeline for me, not minding the so-called “space” between the pretend buildings where he’d fall to his death if they’d been real. “What was that?” His glance oscillated between me and the scattered cinderblocks.
Reid moved directly in front of me. “Josie. How did you do that?”
“I don’t know, really. I had a fleeting thought about it moving out of my way. That’s all.”
Cohen ran a hand over his buzzed black hair and down his neck. “Huh.” The black guy was the same height as Reid and super built. Like, Reid was muscular, but if they were in a video game, Cohen looked like he’d leveled up. He definitely made me feel safe, but more importantly, he made me feel welcomed. Some people just had a knack for that. “Okay. Well,” he said. He and Reid exchanged confused looks and shrugs.
Reid crossed his arms. “That’s, uh, never been done before, to my knowledge. Always an overachiever, Josie.” He wasn’t smiling or joking, though. In fact, I watched the muscle in his jaw twitch, something he did when he was nervous or thinking.
I got it. This wasn’t necessarily a good progression. It could attract attention I didn’t want.
Cohen shook his head, his eyes wide as he kept checking out the collapsed wall.
The door to the training room banged open and a tall white guy about my age bounded through the threshold, a Korean girl following behind him. As soon as he saw us, the guy halted abruptly and held his hand up to the girl. “Sorry if we’re interrupting, man. Didn’t know you’d already be in here.”
Cohen checked his watch. “You’re good. We’re a little ahead of sched
ule.”
The guy, sporting a Super Mario Bros T-shirt, moseyed over to the three of us, his long limbs loose and relaxed. The dark-haired girl watched me with apprehension as they approached.
The dude fist-bumped Cohen then lifted his chin to Zac and me. “Hey, I’m Chase. When not playing with reality, I game. The honeys love it.”
Cohen barked a laugh and Reid made a psh sound.
Chase reached his fist out to Reid. “Been a while, man.”
“Hey,” Reid said, as he bumped his knuckles to Chase’s.
It was kind of jarring to see people about my age in the Hub. I kept reminding myself that people of all ages, and even families, lived here. I forced a smile. “I’m Josie.”
The girl, who could’ve easily passed for a stunning Hollywood actress, bounced toward me with an extended hand. “I’m Kat Shin.” She shook my hand with a firm grip, exposing a toothpaste-commercial smile. “It’s so nice to meet you, Josie.” She seemed to glow from within, with flawless skin and her black hair in a trendy pixie cut that I could never pull off.
“You, too.”
Zac greeted Chase with a handshake. His stare lingered on Kat’s face a bit longer before he finally said, “Kat. It’s a pleasure.”