by Jacob Gowans
“I am the Queen!” she shouted to them.
They roared back at her.
“I AM THE QUEEN!”
“Queen!” they shouted. “QUEEN!”
Then she began to talk. And they listened and obeyed.
* * * * *
In her hotel suite, the Queen impatiently waited for the Hall of Records official to call and confirm her access to the Berhane belongings. Three tedious days later, the call finally came. In the sitting room of her suite, she had three coms on a coffee table all hooked up to a voice transformer and microphone. The Queen answered the one that rang, speaking into the microphone, transformer dial set to elderly female, South African accent.
“Hello, Mokobeng Juvenile Detention Facility, how may I help you?”
“Hi. This is Tabatha from Johannesburg Hall of Records calling. We’re reviewing paperwork submitted for Samuel Berhane. We need to confirm his presence in your facility and also confirm that his power of attorney is being held by one Mrs. Kathy Treze. Can you connect me to someone who can help me please?”
“One moment, please,” the Queen answered as she transferred the call to a second com and changed the voice to a middle-aged male dialect. “Good afternoon, this is Mahonri Kaiser, Superintendent.”
The Queen happily confirmed all the queries that Tabatha asked, then hung up. An hour later, the third com rang, granting her access to the belongings of Samuel Berhane, Jr. The time and effort spent had paid off. She hurried downstairs to the hotel garage, jumped on her bike, and sped through the city until she reached the Hall. After checking in at the front desk, she was led by a guard into the archives where an employee met her among stacks and stacks of shelves. Her nametag read: Assistant Archivist.
“Mrs. Treze, you got here quickly!” Tabatha, the archivist, said as she shook hands with the Queen.
“I don’t waste time,” the Queen answered politely. “Please show me the way.”
The archivist smiled. “We don’t store the belongings here. We have a contract with several storage facilities in the city. The belongings you’re looking for are in one of them.”
The Queen checked her temper. “I’ll be grateful for the information.”
Another hour later, the Queen stopped at a row of storage units. Using the key given to her by the office, she opened Sammy’s storage unit. A musty smell greeted her. The unit hadn’t been opened in over two years. Whoever had done the boxing and organizing had done a meticulous job. Placing her large, empty duffel bag on the ground, the Queen began opening boxes. She had specific items to look for: pictures, videos, and other records. When she found them, she placed them in the bag and searched on. After an hour’s work, she looked into the bag, satisfied with her haul.
Carefully, s
he cleaned her mess, restoring items back to their original boxes. She picked up a t-shirt. It had a cartoon character on the front, but she had no clue which one. Sammy’s shirt. She put the cloth to her nose and inhaled deeply. His scent was faint, but there. She sniffed it again, cradling the cloth. Then she twisted the cloth in her hands, imagining that it was dripping with his blood.
Things will be much different when we meet next time, Sammy.
20. Hunt
Friday August 2, 2086
Sammy awoke on the floor of Charlie Squadron’s cruiser caked in mud. The taste of dirt and algae and something else—something terribly bitter—was strong in his mouth.
“He’s awake,” Dinsmore reported.
“Thank goodness,” Anna said. “Turn this thing around and go back to the penthouse.”
“What about the hospital?” Al asked.
“The penthouse,” Anna repeated. “I’m not risking our squadron being reassigned.”
Sammy coughed thickly and spat out whatever muck was still caking his tongue. “What happened?” he asked as he sat up.
“You were about two seconds from death,” Anna told him, “that’s what. We had to suck mud out of your windpipe and do a lung flush. You’re lucky Kolomiyets and Garrett know how to act fast. What do you have to say for yourself?”
Sammy felt like his head was still full of mud. “Can I take a shower?”
Half of the squadron was in the cruiser with him, gathered around watching. All of them laughed at his response. Anna silenced them with a withering glance.
Minutes later, Sammy was back in the bayside penthouse suite while the rest of the squadron met up at the restaurant on the bottom floor of the hotel. As the team left Sammy, Juraschek made a wisecrack about how Sammy had already eaten a big dinner in the cave. Sammy smiled playfully, but he didn’t really find the joke funny.
Once alone, he went into the bathroom, stripped off his crusty clothes, and sat on the floor of the shower. As the water turned the dried dirt on his skin back into mud, he relived those horrific minutes in the cave. I thought I was going to die. He soaked in the running water and tried to count how many times in the last couple years he’d been certain his death was imminent. How many more times can I cheat death? he wondered. When he finally felt clean, he exited the bathroom wrapped in his towel, naked from the waist up. His clothing was in his bag, which he’d forgotten to take into the bathroom with him.
“Aren’t you supposed to be a genius, Berhane?” Anna asked him when he stepped out.
Her unannounced presence startled him enough that he scrambled to keep the towel clutched over his private parts. He stood in the doorframe clutching the cloth, wondering if his honcho’s question had been rhetorical. She sat across the room in one of the large leather chairs, powering off her holo-tab as if she’d been working on it while waiting for him to come out. No other sounds came from the suite, which led Sammy to believe the others were still eating downstairs.
“Because I’ve been told you are a genius. I was told you have the anomalies of both a Tensai and a Psion. But I find it difficult to see why somebody with Anomaly Eleven would choose to take pictures of a dead family during a mudslide!”
“I was—!”
Her stare burned into him, shutting him up. “If you’d died, I would have lost this mission and probably my job. I can’t even think of an adjective negative enough to describe the quality of your decision! Maybe all the crap you went through in CAG territory has given you some kind of delusion that you think you’re immune to—”
“I don’t think—”
“SHUT UP when I’m chewing you out. If you ever do something like that again, I will have you transferred off my squad and pull every favor I have to get you sent to the most horrific outpost on the planet. I don’t care if you’re a rising star in our ranks. I don’t care that Commander Byron personally recommended you to Charlie. I care about my team’s safety first and my job performance second. I wasn’t born with gifts like yours. I earned what I have through busting my non-existent balls. I will not tolerate idiocy. Are we clear?”
Sammy lowered his eyes. “Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes . . . honcho?”
Anna glowered at him. “Yes. Ma’am.”
“Er, yes, ma’am.”
“Good,” she finished. She looked him up and down, as if she finally noticed he was nearly naked. “Glad you’re alive and thank you for the pictures. Now work with Juraschek and Wang to figure out the family’s identity.”
Not long after Anna left, Wang and Juraschek returned. “How bad was it?” Juraschek asked. “Did she threaten to cut off your manhood and mail it to an all-female nudist colony of cannibals?”
“She threatened to kick me off the team.”
“Oh, psh! She must not have been that mad if that’s all she threatened. Don’t get too down. You did get the pictures. That’s why we sometimes call her the Wicked Witch of the North.”
“Right,” Sammy agreed, “but I think I pronounce ‘witch’ a little differently than you.”
Nikotai launched the computer and showed Sammy how to work the software.
“The program’s going to take longer than usual,” h
e explained. “Eyes are closed. Discoloration creates color mismatches. Length of time they’ve been dead can cause bloating. We may have to do manual comparisons. Too bad you couldn’t get a fingerprint or DNA sample.” Despite Nikotai’s straight face, Sammy knew he was joking.
“How many Ultras are there?” Sammy asked. “Counting both the Alpha and Beta programs.”
“About ninety or a hundred. What makes you ask?”
Sammy shrugged. “Curious.”
“We have almost a hundred and twenty Tensais,” Juraschek added. “Of course, we’re easier to spot. Excellent performances on standardized exams and aptitude tests make it so. Psions and Ultras pose bigger problems. Not in your case. Police report a strange event; Byron’s tracking programs pick up on it almost immediately. Easy-peasy. But lots of Psions may never display their ability. And since the Constitution forbids DNA mapping until the age of eighteen and only by consent, we can’t screen people at birth. It’s the same thing with Ultras. There are probably many more Ultras out there who are too lazy to ever find out, wasting their lives away in gaming or couch-potatoeing or whatever. Add that to all those people who turn the NWG down. . . . ”
Sammy turned away from the screen to look at Justice. “People don’t turn the NWG down.”
“Sure they do.”
“When I was recruited, Commander Byron told me that no one has ever turned him down. He said they’d have to take a pill. Who’d want to do that?”
Justice and Nikotai exchanged a look of mirth. “Of course he told you that. The truth is that many people turn him down for the pill. More than you’d think. Lots of Tensais turn down the government, too. The jobs out there for academics, private researchers, and think-tankers pay more—a lot more—than what we get.”
“Ultras turn it down, too,” Wang added, “but we have to sign a contract that forbids us from competing in sports after age fifteen.”
“Byron wouldn’t lie to me,” Sammy said.
“He’s not perfect,” Justice said. “And that’s okay. You aren’t, either, so don’t impose that standard on him. His job was to convince you to join. He said what he needed to say in order to do that. You don’t really believe that in the twenty or thirty years he’s been recruiting no one has turned him down, do you?”
It made Sammy feel foolish, but the answer in his head was yes. He believed Byron. Justice seemed to know Sammy’s thoughts.
“Sammy, my cousin, Loyal, has Anomaly Fourteen. He turned Byron down and he takes the pill. He was almost fourteen when it happened—about six or seven years ago. His parents don’t believe in war and violence. They basically told Byron to get lost.”
Sammy saw the truth in Justice’s eyes. “Whatever,” was all he could think of to say.
The computer beeped.
“Matches!” Wang announced.
“That’s over a thousand people,” Sammy said as he stared at the lists on screen.
“Not done yet.” Nikotai typed with uncanny efficiency. “Now we’ll see if any of these John and Jane Does are married. And between those couples, which has kids that match the ages of ours?”
“Twenty-three for Mr. Doe,” Juraschek read off the screen. “Nineteen for Mrs. Doe. That’s not too bad.”
For thirty minutes Sammy, Nikotai, and Justice examined the holo-screens projected into the air in front of them.
“This has got to be them,” Juraschek announced. “Magnus and Annya Petursson. The computer also lists an address, make and model of the family vehicle, and—”
“They own a boat,” Nikotai announced. “Holy crud.”
“Anna, come in,” Justice said.
Anna’s voice cut over the radio. “What’s up?”
“We have a possible I.D. on that family. They own a boat.”
“Contact the Coast Guard. Tell them to start aerial and water searches for anything close to that boat’s description, but not to approach it. Dinsmore and Garrett, start picking everyone up so we can meet at the penthouse.”
In under an hour, Charlie Squadron convened in the posh apartment. Anna didn’t waste time getting to business. “Right now we’re operating under the assumption that our targets have commandeered the Petursson vehicle and driven it into Akureyri. If that’s the case, they are most likely either on the family boat or at the house. Dinsmore estimates the bodies had been dead for about fifty hours, so there’s a good chance our targets are in place to make their attempt at getting off this rock. Until further notice, we will separate into three teams.
“Team one stays on patrol around the outside of the city, just in case we’re wrong about the Petursson family. Team two patrols the skies over the water with Dinsmore and Garrett. Team three will converge on the residence and secure it. Keep in mind the possibility that the victims are one piece of the puzzle, and that the targets may have splintered off into groups.
“Kolomiyets will honcho the first team. With him are Brizendine and Hyävrinen to circle the city. I’ll be flying in team two with Dinsmore and Garrett. Yazzie, Cheng, and Avery will go with us. We’ll be watching the water. Juraschek is the third team honcho with Berhane, Byron, Maru, and Wang. Justice, don’t be stupid about securing the Petursson residence. Get it done, do it safe. Any questions or comments?”
The squadron split up. Justice went into the bedroom of the suite with his holo-tablet so he could analyze the residential layout and house blueprints. The other four, Al, Sammy, Nikotai, and Avni, sat in the main room chatting and playing cards while they waited. Most of the discussion revolved around Sammy and the mudslide. He wasn’t eager to talk about what had happened, but felt forced to. These were his new comrades, his new friends. He feared that by not sharing the intimate information they asked he might ruin his chances of fitting in with them. A twinge of guilt hit him when he realized that a part of him wished he were back at headquarters hanging out with his friends rather than with his new team. He looked to Al as his role model. If Al could fit in with Charlie Squadron after only a few months, Sammy knew he could do it, too.
But he’s four years older than me, he reminded himself. What if graduating is the wrong choice?
He tried to stay involved in his squadron’s conversation, but kept slipping back to second-guessing himself. After an hour of playing poker and spades, Justice returned and saved Sammy from any more chatting by asking him to have a word alone. Sammy excused himself and followed his pseudo-honcho to the back room.
“One Tensai to another, I wanted to get your thoughts on this plan. I hope to be a honcho of my own squadron someday, so I have to make the most of these opportunities.” His holo-tablet projected a three-dimensional image of a section of a neighborhood in Akureyri. “You’re looking at Urðargil.”
Justice expanded the view of the area and centered it onto a horseshoe-shaped street. Dozens of houses lined the outside of the horseshoe and several more formed an inner loop. “That wild word is the street name. The targets’ victim owned the house with the orange-ish roof here. I’m thinking we stake out the place for eight to ten hours. See what we observe. If everything seems normal, we move in. If we catch something fishy, we call in backup and do it as a full squadron.”
The house with the orange roof had a fenced-in backyard, but beyond the yard was an open country of fields and hills. Perfect for surveillance.
“Yeah, I’m thinking the same thing you are, kid,” Justice said. The title rankled Sammy. “Hide out in the hills and we should have a great view of the house’s backside. Park two people in that area, another one keeping an eye on the front. The last two will canvas the neighborhood and ask if anyone has seen any suspicious activity.”
“That will look obvious, won’t it? Two Alphas walking around?”
Justice clenched his jaw and rolled his eyes around the room. “Yeah,” then he grinned, “but I got an idea.”
Justice explained the plan to the team, and everyone pitched in with the preparations. They spent the evening going over contingencies and then went to bed earl
y to rest up for the next day. Early in the morning, they went to work. Justice and Nikotai took the watch in the hills to the west of the house, hidden under camouflage with binoculars and radio. Avni Maru, undercover in jogging gear, stayed in a parked car around the corner, away enough that she couldn’t be spotted from any windows in the house with the orange roof. Al and Sammy were dressed as two religious missionaries: white shirts, black slacks, name tags, and backpacks. Instead of pamphlets or books, they carried weapons and other gear that might be useful.
“I look stupid,” Sammy said. “Who is Elder Marbury?”
Al smiled. “Hey, you know what Jesus said? ‘I came not to bring peace, but a sword.’”
Sammy laughed. “Did he really say that?”
Once surveillance was in place, Sammy and Al began knocking on doors around the circle. It was a Saturday. The weather was warm and humid, but not unbearably so. Most of the residents were home, but wanted nothing to do with Sammy and Al until they forcefully explained that they were undercover agents canvassing the area for signs of any suspicious activity. Not long past noon, they had visited every house in the neighborhood except the house where the targets were suspected to be staying.
“Still no sign of anything?” Al asked Justice over the com.
“Nothing. That house is as dead as my pet gerbil that tried to pick a fight with my dog.”
“Should we knock on the door to keep up our cover?”
Justice didn’t answer right away. Sammy wondered if his honcho was consulting the Magic 8-Ball for an answer.
“Yeah, let’s go for it,” Justice said. “Avni, go for a run around the block and be in position as soon as they ring the doorbell.”
“Copy that,” she answered.