by R S Penney
Amanda spun around, frowning at her with tears glistening on her cheeks. “He told me you'd say that.” She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. “The world tempts us to sin. I can't…”
“Why is it a sin?”
“Unsupervised dating can lead to sex.”
Anna tossed her head back, rolling her eyes at the heavens. “Companion forbid it!” she said. “You might actually get to experience a little pleasure!”
She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. Mocking the girl would only make it harder to crack through that shell of indoctrination. Once again, she had spoken without thinking. “What do you think of me, Amanda?”
“What do you mean?”
Anna hunched up her shoulders, feeling self-conscious, then hung her head and let out a sigh. “As a person,” she clarified. “You don't know me that well, but tell me your first impressions.”
Amanda stood there, hugging herself and rubbing her upper arms, shivering despite the warm afternoon. “You're a Justice Keeper,” she mumbled. “You help people. I think that makes you a good person.”
“Would you like to know how many people I've been intimate with?”
“I-I guess.”
Anna held up five fingers.
The girl stared at her with eyes that seemed to pop out of their sockets. “That's…I wouldn't have expected that.” She covered her mouth with one hand, breathing deeply. “That's…That's a lot. Aren't you worried that your husband will feel…cheated?”
“The first was a young man I dated casually after taking an assignment on Alios; his name was Elan, and he was very sweet. The second was a one-night stand. A man I met at a work function. The third was my friend Sinara. I didn't think I was capable of feeling desire for a woman until I met her. She was quite eager to be my girlfriend, but I didn't feel the same way. The fourth was a boyfriend I had for about three months last year. His name was Tierin. And the fifth is my current boyfriend. I can assure you he's not the least bit bothered by my past.”
Anna stood up, pacing toward the girl. “I've been with five people,” she said softly. “But I've saved more lives than I can count and stood against unspeakable evil. My worth as a human being is not determined by the number of people I've slept with.”
Amanda shivered.
“And neither is yours.” Anna laid a gentle hand on the girl's shoulder, trying to offer her support. “It's what we do that defines us, whether our actions help people or harm them. Date Kevin, don't date Kevin; it's really not my business. But if you know something, then you have a chance to help someone you obviously care about. So, the question is 'will you take it?' ”
“He…” Amanda stammered. “He told me about a place he liked to visit.”
“Show me.”
Chapter 12
Five men sat around the table in the conference room on the second floor of the police station, bathed in warm afternoon sunlight. They all stared at him with wide eyes.
Harry stood before them with a tablet held up in front of his face. He lowered it to frown at the lot of them. “So let's go over this again,” he began. “If one of your officers comes across Kevin Harmon…”
Lieutenant Biggs – a heavyset man with a sour expression on his face – leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed. “We keep our distance,” he grumbled. “We call Agent Lenai, but we don't engage.”
Harry closed his eyes, nodding to the man. “That's right,” he said, approaching the table at a brisk pace. “Your people aren't equipped to deal with him, and it's important to defuse the situation.”
The lieutenant swiveled in his chair to face his four subordinates. “So we're all clear on that then?” he asked with more than a little exasperation in his voice. “You don't go near the kid unless he starts harming civilians.”
Biggs spun around to face Harry again, then heaved out a deep breath. “Any other orders for us, sir?” he asked, bushy eyebrows rising. “Or can my men go back to doing their jobs like the simple folk they are?”
Gritting his teeth, Harry felt his face twist. He shook his head with a growl. “Oh, I do have a few more things to say,” he replied. “Specifically, I want to go over what your people should do if they're forced to engage Kevin.”
“This oughtta be good,” one of the others muttered.
“Something, Officer?”
A gaunt-cheeked man with a tiny scar over his left eyebrow looked up to fix his gaze on Harry. “Just wondering how you think we should handle it, sir,” he said. “If we aren't to draw weapons, perhaps we should tickle him into submission?”
Several of the others laughed.
Harry had a hard time ignoring the anger in his chest. It had been like this for the last forty-five minutes, the officers paying attention with halfhearted interest when they weren't outright sneering at him. Well, he should have expected as much. There was no doubt in his mind that these men justified their behaviour with all sorts of excuses, but when you stripped it down to nuts and bolts, this was a case of white cops thinking that a black kid was dangerous and hating the fact that they had to take orders from a black man, orders that said “leave the kid alone.”
Harry leaned forward, bracing his hands on the table's surface, and stared at the five laughing idiots. “This is funny to you?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “Because, in case you haven't noticed, every time you escalate the situation, you put people's lives at risk.”
The gaunt-cheeked man winced, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “All right,” he muttered. “We understand your point. So how do you want us to handle a confrontation with the boy?”
“If it looks like civilians might be harmed, do whatever is necessary to remove them from the situation with minimal violence.” The very fact that he had to speak such instructions out loud was a failure of epic proportions. “Kevin has shown willingness to work with us; so keep your weapons holstered – they won't do any good anyway – and approach him with caution. Assure him that he won't be harmed and that Justice Keepers have the technology to remove the device from his hand.”
“Anything else?”
Harry stood up with a growl, frowning as he ran his gaze over all of them. “You're officers of the law!” he snapped. “Display a little professionalism for god's sake. If any one of you had been one of my subordinates, I'd have written you up.”
“Yeah…” one muttered. “I'm sure you get all the hard cases up in Canadia.”
Harry resisted the urge to respond to that. The comment was so mired in ignorance, there was nothing he could say anyway. All the hard cases? How about a Justice Keeper running around his city and getting into fights with maniacs who used energy weapons? How about a terrorist who used alien tech to kill and maim dozens of innocent people? How about god damn robots with no purpose other than to kill everything in sight?
“This briefing is over,” he said. “Dismissed.”
Tall trees rose up all around her with branches that stretched toward one another and leaves that caught the light of the sun in a sea of green. Down here, it was shady, but the mugginess was still fierce.
Anna stood with fists on her hips, peering into a small pit in the forest floor. “So, he would come here when he wanted to be alone?” she asked. “This was his sanctuary?”
There was nothing down there except dried up leaves and muck. A few twigs and candy wrappers littered the slope that led up to the other side of the pit. She did notice a nice big rock for sitting.
Biting her lip, Anna turned her face up to the sky. She blinked several times. “This is where he would come whenever he felt like he was in trouble. That's what he told you when he brought you here?”
She turned.
Amanda stood a few feet away with a hand pressed to her belly, hunched over so that Anna couldn't see her face. “We were searching for a place to bury the time capsule,” she said. “We just sat a little while and talked. He said this was where he would go when he needed to clear his head.”
Anna spun around, then hopped off the ledge. She landed crouched in the middle of the pit. “Candy wrappers,” she muttered under her breath. “How much do you wanna bet Kevin's the one who left them here?”
“He doesn't seem like the kind of boy who would litter.”
Mopping a hand over her face, Anna wiped sweat away. “Yeah, maybe not,” she said. “But if he comes here to be alone, it stands to reason that not many people know about this place.”
She extended her left arm to point a fist down at the ground. “Multi-tool active!” she ordered. “Full scan!”
The tool chirped in confirmation. There was a soft buzzing sound for a few brief moments, and then the results appeared on the display screen. Nothing noteworthy. Just some leaves and muck and…
Plastic?
She dug through the leaves like a dog trying to bury a bone, shoving them aside until she found a sandwich bag with a slip of paper inside. Now that must have been left here deliberately.
Someone had scrawled a phone number onto the slip of paper. The digits were written in faded black marker, but she could make them out. 931-555-7172. A jolt of excitement surged through her.
Anna tapped out the number on the screen of her multi-tool, then sent the call. A few seconds past while the phone rang, and then a deep voice answered her.
“Hello?”
“Kevin?”
There was silence for a moment, broken only by the sound of some heavy breathing on the phone, and then he spoke. “You're the Justice Keeper, aren't you? I had a feeling it would be you who found my quiet place.”
Anna licked her lips, then heaved out a soft sigh. “It's me,” she said with a nod. “Kevin, we want to help you. We can get that thing off you, but first I need to know where you are and if you're safe.”
“I'm okay.”
“Have you hurt anyone else?”
“No.” That was a relief. The kid didn't strike her as violent, but she would be lying if she said she wasn't worried about what might happen if someone else tried to corner him. “I've been avoiding people for that reason. This thing…It's like a song in my head. I can control it, tune it out, but when I get frightened or angry…”
“Kevin, I assume you left this number here for someone to find.”
“Yeah, I bought a burner yesterday,” he explained. “I couldn't risk turning on my actual phone. They might try to track me that way. This way, if someone calls, I can be sure of who I'm talking to before I tell them anything. I left the number in my spot for you. I was hoping it would be you.”
“So, you trust me?”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
“Then I need to know where you are.”
“You know the new housing development just east of I-24?” he asked. “I've been hiding out there in an unfinished house. I can turn on this thing's GPS if you want. You should be able to find me.”
Finally! Some success! Her relief was so strong, it hit her like a splash of cold water. She'd been living with so much tension, she hadn't even noticed it until it was gone. “All right, Kevin, this is how it's gonna play out,” she said. “I'm going to keep this low profile. No cops, no emergency response teams. Just me and a close friend that you can trust. His name is Harry. Once you have a chance to get to know us, we'll drive you to a landing site where a shuttle will take us up to Station Twelve. The doctors there can help you.”
“Okay.”
He hung up.
With the tension fading, Anna found herself feeling very tired. Too much stress for too long could leave you very drained. Hopefully, they would be able to bring Kevin to the station without any further incidents.
She climbed out of the pit to find Amanda standing there with her hands shaking, wearing a smile that would outshine the sun. “You found him!” the girl exclaimed. “So he's going to be all right?”
Anna smiled, then nodded to the young woman. “I found him,” she said, exhaustion thickening her voice. “He should be fine so long as we can get him safely up to the station. Come on.”
Their walk out of the woods was quick but uneventful. It took a few minutes to find the path that led to the back of the high school, and then it was just a short walk into the open sunlight. All the while, they discussed the importance of making choices. Hopefully Anna could impress upon this girl that her life was her own.
Once they were clear of the trees, the back of the high school loomed over them. Anna saw the chain-link fence that Kevin had ripped to shreds in his attempt to escape her and paused when she noticed her supervisor examining the hole.
Dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a pink t-shirt, Jena was down on one knee in the grass, scanning the mangled fence with her multi-tool. What would she be doing here? Why scan the fence? More to the point, if she'd wanted that done, why not simply ask Anna to do it?
Anna strode through the grass with her hands in her pockets, head bowed as she approached the other woman. “We found him,” she said. “Kevin made contact with me just a few minutes ago.”
Jena looked up at her with large dark eyes, almost as if she were surprised by the information. “You did?” she asked. “Well, that's wonderful. Where is the young man?”
Anna scrunched up her face, shaking her head. “Doing what teenagers do best,” she answered. “Hiding in one of the most unsafe locations imaginable. He's in an unfinished house just beyond the freeway.”
“I take it you're on your way there?”
Anna crossed her arms, then turned her face up to the open sky. The wind teased her hair. “As soon as I can find Harry,” she muttered. “The two of us can probably set Kevin at ease.”
The fence was an absolute mess, its wiry mesh ripped and torn and singed in a few places. No doubt the principal was beside himself when he considered the cost of fixing it. “So what are you doing?” Anna inquired. “I mean…You can't think there might be a clue to Kevin's whereabouts here.”
Jena doubled over, then rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “I was hoping I might be able to learn something about the device he carries,” she whispered. “Compare the damage here to things we've seen from other Overseer weapons.”
“Right.”
“Who's the girl?”
When Anna turned, she saw Amanda standing just inside the treeline with a hand pressed to a tree. The girl kept her eyes glued to the ground beneath her feet. In all likelihood, she felt a little out of place, like a student overhearing a conversation between two teachers. “That would be Amanda Simmons,” she answered. “The girl I told you about. Have you started the inquiry with Child Protective Services?”
“Inquiry?”
“Regarding Amanda,” Anna snapped with more venom than she would have liked. “We talked about it the other day, remember? I'm concerned about the situation with her father.”
“Oh, yes,” Jena replied. “Thank you for reminding me. I'm sorry; I've been a little distracted with…with Jack's mission to Leyria. Do you think he's made contact with the professor yet?”
Now, that was an odd question. Jack had posted a mission status update last night, stating that his team had arrived on Leyria and that they intended to meet with Professor Nareo early the following morning. “I can't really say,” she muttered. “What's the time difference between here and Kenthara Province?”
“Never mind.” The silhouette of Jena stood up behind her, bracing one hand against the fence. “I'm worrying for no good reason. I like being able to contact my people on a moment's notice, and when I can't, it sets me on edge. You'd better go find Harry. I want this case settled as soon as possible.”
Chapter 13
The first thing Jack noticed when consciousness seeped into his brain was the soft beeping of his multi-tool alerting him to the presence of an incoming call. He opened his eyes and saw Sareena's guest room in the early morning light.
His multi-tool was on the nightstand, still attached to the gauntlet he wore on his left wrist. The screen dis
played the words “incoming call,” and the metal disk attached to it buzzed to get his attention.
Jack squeezed his eyes shut, then forced them open again. “Multi-tool active.” He sat up and scrubbed a hand over his face, threading fingers through his thick brown hair. “Answer call. Audio only.”
“Agent Hunter?”
Jack pressed fists to his eye-sockets, rubbing the sleep away. “Yeah, that's me,” he said in a rasp. “There some particular reason you decided to interrupt my date with the lovely Katniss Everdeen?”
“I'm sorry?”
“Never mind.”
There was a brief moment of silence before the caller spoke again. By the soft light, he could tell that it was still early. The room was very spartan with only a dresser across from the foot of the bed as furniture. “Listen, Agent Hunter. This is Professor Aldin Nareo. We had an appointment this morning.”
Baring his teeth, Jack shut his eyes tight. He let out a soft, menacing hiss. “Please tell me that you're not planning to cancel,” he said. “I came a very long way to talk with you, Professor.”
“It's not that. For the last three days, I've been attending a conference in M'Sia. I had just returned to my hotel room when I got a call from my local police department. Someone broke into my house last night, and from the look of it, they used some very advanced weaponry to bypass the security systems. The police believe that the intruder intended to kill me. An attempted murder less than twenty-four hours before our meeting. You will forgive me if I have a hard time believing these events are unconnected.”
Jack winced, his face growing uncomfortably warm. He shook his head in disgust. “Can't argue with that logic,” he muttered. “Where are you now? Some place with a lot of security, right? Right?”
“I returned to my office for our meeting.”
“Does anyone else know you're there?”
“I passed a few colleagues in the hallways.”
Jack crossed his arms, leaning back against the wooden headboard. He looked up at the ceiling. “Okay,” he said. “Stay where you are and keep a low profile. I can be there in just over an hour.”