by L. J. Hatton
Warden Nye didn’t say it, but I had a feeling that he’d had a hand in convincing the proper authorities that they didn’t need to investigate any further. I no longer needed proof that the man had protected me; the evidence was there between the lines, and I felt a disturbing twinge of gratitude.
“If you’re wanting me to do something like that . . . I didn’t mean to do it. I don’t think I could on purpose. So if that’s what you want, I’ll find another way to get to my sisters.”
“There are plenty of my fellow wardens who wouldn’t give you the choice,” Nye said.
“They’re not you,” I said confidently, but I still looked for any hint that he might have a hound’s collar stashed within reach.
“No, they aren’t. I’m on the other side of the rift. We know the creatures—whatever they are and whatever their intent—return on a regular basis. Some take this as evidence that the Medusae are keeping tabs on their handiwork and that we’ll wake up one day to a full-scale attack with the touched fighting for our enemies.”
“Only because we’d be fighting against the people who kept us chained and put locks on our gifts.”
“One of the larger reasons I don’t favor the preferred methods of—”
“Capture? Kidnapping? Forced labor?”
“Mandated relocation and service,” Nye said. “Euphemisms make things neater.”
“But they don’t make them better.”
He ignored my final jab and continued.
“In my command, we’ve been tracking the genetic shifts in the population,” he said. “Like the repeat visits from off-world, most of those findings have been classified, but I’ll make an exception considering your unique perspective on the subject. Humanity is changing, far faster than a normal evolutionary jump. We can’t predict it. We can’t slow it down. We definitely can’t stop or reverse it. That has a great many people on both sides of the issue scared. The Centers were supposedly built to alleviate those fears, which was why I needed to be in a position to control one of them, and then you came along and destroyed it.”
“Arcineaux did that.”
“True, but you did eliminate Arcineaux’s home base, and you recently proved yourself capable of bringing down an aerial installation, too.”
So he did know about the Mile.
“What do you expect me to do? Apologize and hope that makes the other wardens not afraid of people like me?”
“No. I want to know if you could do it again.”
CHAPTER 26
Warden Nye’s timing for bringing me to the Commission building had been deliberate. As usual, he was running a long game and already planning moves far into the future, while I was distracted by the immediate danger of being inside enemy territory. Testing my resolve and my nerves had nothing to do with it; he wanted me there for the recruitment presentation.
“You’ve been playing a role since before you knew the difference between fantasy and reality,” he said. “I’ve seen you change your voice and your posture by degrees without prompting, and I know that you were able to fool several members of my staff while at the Center before I found out that you were there. You can do this.”
He offered me a silver jacket with the name Ellie stitched on the front.
“No way,” I said. “Forget it.”
“It’s a jacket, not a bag of thirty silver coins for betraying your friends,” he said. “All prospects wear silvers. How is this any different from the clothes Birch gave you?”
Simple. Birch had been protecting me from Nye and his peers, not asking me to stand beside them in rank.
“Think of it as an act-two wardrobe change,” the warden said.
I didn’t like the sound of that. If he had this story planned out to its end, we’d still have three more acts to go.
Relenting, I slipped the jacket over my arms. It was so new that it still had its metallic shine. Birch’s silvers had turned gray with use and age. The ones that Nye gave me were a promise of service, given with the intent of showing them off proudly for all to see.
I, Penelope Roma, Celestine child of Magnus and Iva, do solemnly swear to uphold the ideals of the Commission for Planetary Security. To defend the human race if called upon to do so. To faithfully fulfill my promise . . .
. . . to betray my family and everything I stand for in the name of maybe saving some of them.
If my father had seen me in that office, he would have disowned me. The father who raised me, anyway. I realized with another pang that I didn’t know how the real Magnus Roma would react. And that feeling came undergirded with a niggling voice I recognized as my better sense. I’d tried to tune her out since the moment I sat down with Nye on the Diamond Zephyr, but she kept breaking through to warn me that he was keeping me in line and in his pocket with chains of words and locks made of promises that I couldn’t make him keep. He’d told me as much while I was on the Center—his methods of control were passive when he didn’t have to put on airs for his fellow wardens.
“Pay attention,” Nye instructed me as he straightened my jacket to Commission regulations. I stood there and let him mold me into the lie he wanted me to inhabit. “Ellie comes from a Commission family, so act like it. Stand up straight and make eye contact if a superior addresses you. The tour guide won’t show off any of the sensitive areas, but that doesn’t mean the information she has to share won’t be important. You can’t afford to get distracted by anything—or anyone—that you see during the presentation.”
“You mean Nim.”
I was going to walk into a slideshow, and my sister was going to be in one of the pictures; he thought giving me advance notice would stop me from turning the building into a pile of demolished cinder block.
“I mean anything or anyone.” Warden Nye handed me my lanyard from his desk. “Althea Dodge is not a good person, Penelope. She doesn’t do good things, and she has no remorse for that.”
“Do you?” I asked.
“I’ve never claimed to be a good man, and I regret that more often than I’d like to admit.” He answered without hesitation or flinching.
“Is she as bad as Arcineaux?”
“To the final bone in her body. I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you that my dearly departed adversary was the sort of man who could rationalize the suffering of those he deemed less than human.”
I nodded, and Nye started giving me details I’d never asked for, as though I was the only one he could speak to honestly and this was a poison he wanted to get out of his system.
“Arcineaux was tasked with picking up where your father left off. Since Iva was declared a failure, our superiors turned from the idea of robotic soldiers to that of engineered ones. They didn’t care how he got results so long as the results appeared and fell in their favor. So he chose to . . . how shall I put this?”
“Experiment on?” I suggested.
“He chose to work with the sort of people society had already relegated to the fringes, where they wouldn’t be missed if they disappeared.”
Most of his trials had been unmitigated disasters, according to Nye—Wren wasn’t kidding when he said he’d been one of the lucky ones. Winnie and Birch could count themselves among that number, too. The Commission had turned Arsenic loose with a uniform, immunity, and no one to answer to.
“A few years ago, Arcineaux’s tests yielded a male anomaly. Not a healer, per se, but he could regrow tissue. Sometimes flawlessly, other times with complications. Brain tissue, spinal tissue—and you really don’t want me going into the specifics of how that knowledge was gained.”
I could imagine. Winnie and Birch hadn’t marked up their own skin.
“Arcineaux became the first test subject for the next phase, even though he didn’t volunteer in the usual sense. The dead don’t get to vote.”
“You mean they restarted his heart?”
“And gave the boy control over his movements. Bringing him to the Mile was a field test, I imagine.”
That was why he
had so many scars. This mystery boy closed the wounds Arcineaux had suffered when the Center fell, but not perfectly. Then he restarted the man’s heart to see if he’d come back to life. The worst part was that the boy had succeeded.
“The goal is to raise an army from the bodies of the touched, one that can’t be subverted by ties to the Medusae if we ever go to war,” Nye said.
It was the science of madmen given full autonomy, and Warden Dodge was on board one hundred percent.
“Giving that woman her own Center is only going to make her bolder,” Nye told me.
It didn’t matter if it was true or not; I needed the excuses he was giving me to hate Warden Dodge enough to destroy her facility at all costs. There would be personnel at the Center, along with the eager young recruits who still didn’t know the truth about the Commission, and I couldn’t guarantee they’d all make it out alive.
Weighing possible deaths as numbers on a balance sheet was supposed to make these kinds of decisions easier, but it didn’t. Turning them into tally marks made me think of myself as a different kind of monster—one who should have felt at home in silver skin and security lanyards.
I joined the group I was willing to sacrifice in the room where I’d started, cringing at the looks we got from families and kids who were there on school trips for a different kind of tour. They’d be getting the basic jaunt around the grounds, full of statues and plaques, with a chirpy guide who wanted them to leave believing that everything was awesome because the Commission existed. I was an exhibit in my silver jacket, something for parents to point at and encourage their children to strive for.
“Where do you keep the dead aliens?” a teenage boy jokingly asked as we were ushered off into the section of the building with the lowest level of security clearance.
I heard a child’s voice ask, “Why are the aliens dead?” before the doors shut between us, and I bit my lip to keep from smiling. Children always asked the right questions, even when they weren’t at The Show. There was still hope in that.
Away from the entrance areas, all pretense of following the public statutes concerning tech dissolved. While the outside world had stagnated, here all those years’ worth of progress had been celebrated and cultivated, putting the Commission that far ahead of the curve. The walls and floors turned lab-room white, and the rugs disappeared completely. Screens made of lasers and motion sensors replaced conventional computers, allowing users to put their hands inside and work with 3-D models in real time.
“Isn’t this amazing?” asked the guy who’d been behind me in line. The stitching on his jacket named him Lawrence.
“That’s one word for it,” I said.
“I could just die,” a girl announced enthusiastically. Callie, according to her silvers. “Couldn’t you just die?”
“I hope not.”
I wasn’t sure how that translated into an insult, but that’s how she took it.
Our guide walked us to the mouth of a hallway and stopped.
“And now, maybe you’d all like a peek at where you’ll be working if you’re chosen for the program.”
She clicked a remote in her hand. The lights switched off, making way for a holographic relay that overlaid the blank walls, floor, and ceiling with dynamic images of another building’s inside structure. Not exactly the slideshow I’d been expecting.
“Your assignment is part of an experimental class of facilities that we’ve dubbed Centers,” our guide said.
Naming things was not the Commission’s greatest strength.
“What’s inside is state of the art and completely classified, so I’ll have to ask that you all put your phones away until we’re finished here.”
The Commission wasn’t supposed to have the power to classify anything. That was the military’s job.
“This new facility wasn’t supposed to be operational for another six months, but due to the recent loss of our prototype, we’ve moved up its dedication.”
She made no mention of that prototype being the kind of airborne battle platform that would have been at home in a space opera, or that its purpose was to re-create the conditions of the Great Illusion so the Commission could breed their own Medusae for study and experimentation . . . unless she meant the Ground Center was the prototype. Either way, the new recruits weren’t getting the whole story—probably because they were smart enough to run back out the door if they knew what was really going on before they were so deeply entrenched in the lies that they could no longer find the exits.
Our guide clicked her remote, and we were surrounded by fish and sea grass, viewing the new Center from the outside. Warden Dodge’s insistence on taking possession of Nim made perfect sense; her Center was underwater.
“Its unique location leaves it naturally protected, and it’s undetectable from the surface, so there won’t be any need to convince the local population that they aren’t in danger due to its proximity.”
But they were in danger, according to Warden Nye. Experiments were no good without test subjects, and all cities came with their own overlooked populations of homeless and runaways.
The hologram painting the hallway around us changed again, bringing us closer to the Center so we could see the details. Divers worked on the outer shell with acetylene torches; others cleared coral and underwater plants to make room for expansion. Shadowy figures at the corner of my eye ferried crates and boxes. Each of these wore the same black suits as those who had attacked the train and the Mile, with shining rings around their wrists and ankles. A collar encircled each of their throats. Hydrokinetic hounds being used as forced labor.
“How are they breathing?” asked a guy on the other side of the group. I couldn’t see his name, but he was poking at the nearest hydro with his finger.
“This is where we get into the material covered by the nondisclosure agreement you signed,” the guide said. “Should you be selected for placement in the Center, you will be working with individuals afflicted by a condition we call hydrokinesis.”
The group broke into whispers as everyone here discovered that they were being courted by an organization that had deceived them. It had always been official policy that the touched were myths spawned by the Great Illusion, and any rumors of resulting elemental powers were mass hysteria.
“Calm down, calm down.” The guide patted the air with her hands. “I know it’s a shock, but hydrokinesis and its associated afflictions have been kept quiet for the sake of public safety.”
A hand went up.
“Are they dangerous?” its owner asked.
“Absolutely not. This isn’t a comic book. We don’t have superheroes and villains facing off in the streets. The hydros assigned to the Center are contained with the implements you see on their wrists and ankles. These implements allow them to function within the confines of a closed society where their misfortune can be used for mutual benefit. It’s not a contagious condition, and there’s hardly any difference in their cognitive abilities from yours. You’ll find many of them are quite bright, and thankful for the opportunities afforded by our relocation programs.”
The recruits bought every last word. Not one other hand went up to question what they were seeing with their own eyes, so I put up mine.
“Yes?” the guide asked.
“Do those collars mean that they’re hounds?” I asked.
She actually laughed. A condescending “you poor thing” kind of sound.
“Despite the existence of people with seemingly extraordinary abilities, hounds are an urban myth. It’s not a word we use.”
Warden Files must not have gotten that memo.
“So they can leave if they want to?” I asked.
The guide shifted uncomfortably. These were not questions she was trained to field, and she definitely lacked the finesse to improvise.
“We’ve determined that the safest course of action is for them to stay where they’re best engaged.”
I put my hand up again, but she ignored me. She clicked her r
emote and brought us back inside the Sea Center.
“If we move away from the outer hull, you’ll see a glimpse or two of the research facilities being built. The unique properties of an underwater environment afford us opportunities that can’t be found anywhere else on the planet. You’ll be offered the chance to complete dive certification, which we highly recommend, but it isn’t a requirement for the program.”
The hologram turned, taking us into a wide-open space with a balcony and a curved viewing window overlooking several smaller facilities out beyond the main building. There were no gyros involved, but the layout wasn’t much different from the facility Nye had run. We were looking out through the equivalent of the Aerie, which had been the apex of the Aerial Center and the spot where Nye threatened to drop me over the edge.
“This is the control deck,” our guide said, “probably everyone’s favorite. It’s where all the fun stuff happens. It’s also where we’ll be meeting the Center’s supervisor: Warden Althea Dodge.”
The girls around me started twittering about how Warden Dodge was such an amazing woman. She’d been their inspiration, the reason they wanted to join the Commission.
“Warden Dodge is a very busy woman these days, but she’s provided us with this prerecorded welcome to tide you over until we actually make the trip to the Center.”
The guide clicked her remote once again, and Warden Dodge appeared in the middle of our group.
“Congratulations, all of you, on reaching the top stage of the program. You’ve beat out some of the best students in the nation to get here, and that wasn’t easy. Don’t feel bad if you think you’re falling behind the people standing with you today. Final determinations haven’t been made, and they won’t be until your last evaluations, which will take place here at the Center in two days.”
An alarming cheer went up with that announcement, but it was muffled by the rushing blood in my ears and the dangerous intonation of heavenly fire in my chest. While my fellow silvers were focused on Potato-Face, my attention had drifted, trying to pick out points of interest in the room around her.