Threader

by Rebekah Turner

  ‘Here she is.’

  I look up to see Archer and Cooper approach us with loaded trays. They sit next to us and Cora’s face flushes when Cooper throws her a dazzling smile.

  ‘How did your first day go?’ Archer asks me. ‘When are you joining general population?’

  ‘I start tomorrow.’ I look at Cora for confirmation, but she’s busy studying her salad. ‘I think.’

  A tall Indian guy with coal-black hair approaches our table, clutching a tray piled with food. He’s skinny, with pants that are hitched too high and ears that are too big.

  ‘H-hey, Cora,’ he stammers.

  Archer looks at him with a frown. ‘Beat it, techno-nerd.’

  The skinny guy’s face falls and he hurries off and settles down at an empty table before Cora or I can say anything. She throws me a stricken look while Archer and Cooper just chat among themselves like nothing happened. I heave a sigh and stand, knowing I’m probably about to commit social suicide. Somehow, this feels like high school all over again.

  ‘Come on, Cora.’ I pick up my tray. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Don’t leave,’ Archer protests. ‘Come on. If you want to sit with the dork, we don’t mind. I’ll call him back.’

  ‘Don’t do me any favours,’ I say, then cross the room to the Indian guy, who’s staring at me like I’ve grown a second head.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ he hisses when I sit down. Cora joins us a second later and she’s breathing kind of fast. The conversation in the room dips and I realise people are watching us.

  ‘That was unexpected.’ Cora puts her tray down. ‘Josie, this is my friend, Darsh. Darsh, meet Josie.’

  ‘You do realise that was your big chance to join the elite group,’ Darsh tells me.

  I shrug. ‘What does it matter?’

  Cora gives me a funny look. ‘Like I was telling you before, Galloway Industries only offers limited positions to graduating cadets. A lot of it comes down to politics, families and who you know. Cooper and Archer both have corporate capital. Archer’s dad is a high ranking judge and Cooper’s heir to some pharmaceutical empire. You can be pretty sure that come graduation, they’ll be offered positions with Galloway Industries. They’d be good friends to have.’

  ‘And you just blew it with them,’ Darsh points out helpfully.

  ‘Josie’s not like them,’ Cora tells him, then turns to me. ‘But he’s right, you know. Life would be pretty easy inside their group. Most of them have been at the academy since primary school, so they think they run the place.’

  ‘Screw the elite,’ I mutter. Sure, Cora and Darsh couldn’t do anything for me socially, but sitting here just felt like the right thing to do. I guess I’m lucky Helios isn’t interested in me for my street smarts. ‘Doing things the easy way has never been an option for me, why start now.’ I offer up a winning smile to Darsh. ‘So, what’s your talent?’

  ‘He’s a technopath.’ Cora jumps in before Darsh can say anything. ‘A really good one.’

  ‘And all the ladies love me for it.’ Darsh pretends to adjust some imaginary cuffs. ‘I used to work at my family manufacturing plant in Bangalore, before I was offered a place at Helios.’

  ‘Cool,’ I say, then add awkwardly, ‘well, I’m a threader.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Darsh looks more impressed than he should be. ‘How good are you?’

  ‘She only went to Assessment today,’ Cora says. ‘Give her a break.’

  ‘What kind of tests did they want you to do?’ he asks, shovelling some pasta into his mouth.

  ‘I met Aaron Galloway,’ I say. ‘And they wanted me to do stuff with him.’

  Darsh pauses between mouthfuls, his eyes darting to Cora. ‘That sounded creepy to you as well, right?’

  ‘It didn’t go so well. I may have broken his brain.’ An idea forms in my head. ‘How good a technopath are you?’ I ask Darsh. ‘Are you as good as Aaron Galloway is supposed to be?’

  Darsh swallows before answering. ‘Uh … no. He’s kind of the best there is.’

  Cora’s eyes dart behind me. ‘Don’t look now, but Olivia Galloway just walked in.’

  ‘Who?’ I turn to see a long-legged redhead stride into the canteen. Her clothes have the Helios logo, but I haven’t seen anyone else wear what she’s got. She’s in leggings and knee-high boots, with a wide belt and fitted top. A thin girl with blonde hair trots behind her, dressed in a pencil skirt and an identical top.

  ‘Olivia is the youngest in the Galloway family,’ Cora tells me. ‘She’s the redhead and a first year cadet, like us. Only a low-level TP esper. Nothing too flash. Tina is the blonde. I don’t know what she does, other than being Olivia’s doormat.’ Cora pauses. ‘This should be interesting.’

  ‘Why?’ I watch Olivia march towards Archer and Cooper. Other cadets have sat at their table now, and I recognise Dutch and Jasmine with them, talking and laughing among themselves. Nobody notices Olivia until she stops behind Archer.

  ‘Apparently, Archer and Olivia were an item nearly all through secondary school,’ Cora explains, ‘then he broke up with her a month ago. The rumour is, Archer was fooling around behind her back and she had no idea until Tina told her. Pretty sure that’s the first time someone tried to make a Galloway look stupid.’

  I glance back over my shoulder just in time to see Olivia say something to Archer. He doesn’t acknowledge her presence, but says something to Cooper, who breaks up in gales of laughter. Olivia’s back stiffens. Her head whips around, realising people are watching her. Anger ripples across her face, then smooths to nothing.

  ‘Awkward,’ Darsh mutters.

  Olivia might come from a powerful family, but I can’t help but feel a little sorry for her. It’s obvious Archer doesn’t care that he’s humiliating a fancy-pants Galloway family member. But instead of fireworks, Olivia turns and stalks off. Her friend Tina follows, throwing Archer a dirty look over her shoulder.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to be in Archer’s shoes.’ Darsh tugs absently at one of his ears. ‘You don’t screw around with the Galloways, without it coming back to bite you.’

  Turning away from Olivia, my eyes snag on a figure. Blake sits at a table by himself at the back of the room. He’s watching his sister leave, his brow furrowed. As if sensing me, his gaze zeros in on mine. I glance down quickly, busy myself with poking my congealing pasta.

  ‘What?’ Cora catches my expression and looks around before spying Blake. ‘I wonder why he’s in here,’ she says. ‘He usually has lunch outside, by himself, nose stuffed in a dusty paper book or something. I mean, I love retro as much as the next person, but honestly. What a pretentious jerk. I mean, he shouldn’t even be eating in here, this is for cadets, not faculty.’

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t feel he fits in with them,’ I say absently, then wonder where that thought came from. ‘What does he read?’ I ask, remembering the books he bought from Bobby.

  ‘Who cares?’ Cora says. ‘I hate it when he takes the slider tutorials. I’m not very good and he makes me so nervous.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not that bad,’ I say.

  Cora snorts. ‘I don’t slide fast enough, so I can’t travel very far and he’s really mean about it.’

  ‘Shadow sliding sounds like a pretty amazing skill,’ I say.

  ‘I guess.’ Cora doesn’t sound convinced. ‘I hate it though. You always need deep shadow to step into the slipstream. I don’t relish the idea of living half my life bumbling around in the dark.’ Her eyebrows rise. ‘Do you remember much about your slide with Blake?’

  ‘How do you know about that?’ I ask, frowning. Was it public knowledge how I’d arrived at Helios? I wasn’t sure I liked that.

  Cora flushes. ‘I might have taken a little peek of your file and read what happened with him.’

  I shrug, sipping my cola. ‘I had no idea what I’d done, or where I was. I felt like I was falling … or maybe drowning in ice water.’

  ‘I heard the slipstream once described like a fast flowing river,’ D
arsh says.

  ‘Kind of,’ Cora replies. ‘The slipstream is the layer before the shadow biosphere itself. Sliders only skim across the surface of that fast flowing river. Of course, there are these currents you can ride safely and they’re always marked and mapped by beacons. It’s their light that form the tunnels we use inside the slipstream.’

  Listening to Cora describe the frightening dimension I’d slipped into with Blake, I can’t help but steal another glance at him. He’s still alone at the table, and I find myself wondering if he has any friends at the academy, or even a girlfriend.

  ‘We call these tunnels lightpaths, and usually enter them through safe entryways, accessed through slider dark-rooms,’ Cora continues her explanation. ‘But if you get tossed off a path, you land deeper in the slipstream and then you can get in serious trouble. It’s difficult to get back on track unless you’re wearing a nanosuit and have some serious thruster juice loaded in. Not to mention you’d need plenty of oxygen packs, or you’d suffocate from the thin atmosphere.’

  ‘Has anyone travelled inside the shadow biosphere itself?’ I ask.

  Cora shakes her head. ‘If the slipstream is a river, then the shadow biosphere is a bottomless ocean. Anyone who goes there doesn’t come back. Sometimes, you can see dark fissures beyond the lightpath. Apparently they lead directly to the heart of the biosphere itself.’

  ‘Ever see any sharks?’ Darsh jokes.

  Cora gives a small laugh that sounds forced. ‘Not yet.’

  I put my fork down and push my plate away. ‘Do you know of anyone who’s gotten lost in the slipstream?’

  Cora’s forehead wrinkles and Darsh gives her shoulder a sympathetic squeeze. I throw him a questioning look.

  ‘The sliders had a good tutorial teacher until recently,’ Darsh explains. ‘After he left, Blake Galloway took over the class.’

  Grief surfaces in Cora’s eyes. ‘He didn’t leave. He was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. So he chose the deep.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ I glance at Darsh, but he’s watching Cora with a pained expression.

  She gives me a weak smile. ‘Choosing the deep is suicide. It’s to enter one of those fissures. Like I said, no one comes back from that.’

  Next to her tray, Cora’s slate beeps. She stares down at it, then grimaces. ‘I forgot to tell you. I’m supposed to take you to Director Eckhart’s office. Your last appointment for the day, I promise.’

  ‘Who’s Director Eckhart?’ I ask, the name sounding familiar.

  ‘The big banana around here.’ Darsh waggles his eyebrows at me. ‘The grand director of the executive committee of Helios. He was army intelligence before he came to the academy. He’s so scary he made a cadet wet his pants once.’

  I look at Cora. ‘Serious?’

  ‘Darsh is joking,’ she assures me.

  ‘I run in the opposite direction if I see him coming,’ Darsh deadpans. ‘Once I hid in a bush to avoid him, and I swear he knew I was there.’

  ‘Does he meet with all new cadets?’ I ask faintly.

  ‘Not usually,’ Cora admits.

  ‘Cheer up.’ Darsh sees my worried look. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing serious.’

  ‘Have you ever met him?’ I ask.

  ‘No way.’ Darsh pulls a horrified face. ‘And I hope I never have to.’

  CHAPTER 11

  Director Eckhart’s office is on the top floor of Central and a stern-faced woman guards the closed double doors to his office. After a ten minute wait, she motions for us to enter. The office interior is a wash of khaki and gold framed photos. Packing boxes sit in front of an empty bookcase and a pile of books are stacked beside it.

  Eckhart sits behind a dark mahogany desk, his eyes scanning a monitor. He looks up when Cora and I enter. He’s got dark, slicked-back hair with a widow’s peak, and he wears a sharp charcoal suit with a crimson tie. A thick platinum flexi-slate shackles his left wrist, read-outs flickering across the curved screen.

  ‘Ms Ryder.’ His voice has a rasp to it, like gravel being shovelled into a steel bin. ‘Excuse the mess.’ He indicates for me to sit in one of the leather wingback chairs facing his desk. ‘I hear you like to be called Josie.’

  ‘Would you like me to go?’ Cora asks from behind me, sounding nervous.

  Eckhart stares at her like he doesn’t even know why she’s there in the first place. Cora throws me a sympathetic expression, then hurries from the room.

  ‘Please.’ Eckhart motions for me to sit again. ‘Make yourself comfortable.’

  The leather chair creaks as I lower myself into it. Eckhart swipes the monitor shut and turns to give me his full attention.

  ‘I’m told your tests show that you’ve got great potential as a threader.’ Eckhart’s smile is lopsided and I realise the left side of his face has no muscle tone. He places his hands on his desk. ‘Tell me. What are your impressions of Helios so far?’

  I say the first words that pop into my head. ‘Big. Clean. Shiny.’

  I wince at my complete lack of articulation, but Eckhart just nods, like he gets that feedback a lot. His eyes are bright as they watch me, and I get a sense of a ruthless intelligence in their depths. ‘I was told you weren’t aware Alice and James graduated and worked here at Helios for a number of years.’ A small amount of saliva wets the corner of his drooping mouth and he pulls a cloth from his pocket to wipe it. ‘Sad day when they left. Helios lost a good team.’

  ‘Can you tell me why they left?’ The words come out in a rush.

  Eckhart tucks the handkerchief away, not answering me. After a moment, he says, ‘James was killed in a car accident, wasn’t he? I read the police report. Says you were in the car with him. Trapped until a rescue unit came and cut you out. Is that right?’

  I nod, hoping he’s not going to pry any further.

  ‘You have my sympathies.’ Eckhart’s lips move funny, as if the kind words don’t sit naturally in his mouth.

  ‘My uncle raised me,’ I say.

  ‘Yes. Bobby Ryder.’ A brief smile flicks across his face. ‘I read his file. I always have respect for a man who’s served. Gives people a chance to see what they’re made of. And it’s those people whose sacrifices enable our freedom to develop the big, the clean, and the shiny. Things for us all to enjoy.’

  I’m uncertain of where this conversation is going, but am acutely aware that Eckhart still hasn’t answered my question about why my parents left. It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask again, but Eckhart speaks before I can.

  ‘You’ve come to us well into the academic year. The first year cadets have the advantage of many months of seminars, tutorials and training. My inclination is to throw you in the deep end, see if you sink or swim. You’d be given any assistance you need. But you’re going to have to be hungry to succeed.’ He pauses and looks at me expectantly. ‘Are you hungry, Josie?’

  ‘Yes,’ I tell him.

  His demeanour relaxes. ‘Then we’ll see how things go.’ He leans back, steepling his fingers. ‘I do have some hopes you’ll consider following your parents’ path, perhaps even picking up some of their research. No one has come close to making the kind of discoveries they did, you know. Is that something you think you might be interested in?’

  I bite my lip, not sure how to respond. Something happened to my parents before I was born, something that made them want to live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. A trauma from the past had sent them there, of that I was sure. I want to find out what did that to them and I know the answer is here. But I can’t shake a sensation of dread at what I might find.

  Eckhart sees my hesitation and his brow crinkles for a moment before smoothing out. He waves a casual hand, as if to dismiss his earlier words. ‘Plenty of time for those kinds of discussions though.’ He clears his throat. ‘Now, it was brought to my attention that you had an altercation with a cadet in one of the common rooms this morning. Dutch Hemming. Primal boy.’ Eckhart waves vaguely at his hair. ‘Sensible haircut.’

 
; I press my lips together tight, not sure what to say. I don’t want to lie, but I don’t want to complain that Dutch was harassing me either. It seems like a bad move and I’ve already bombed out with Archer and Cooper at dinner.

  ‘I know things for you have been difficult,’ he says. ‘I was dirt poor and nearly starving myself before I joined the army, just a weakling telepath. You know how I dealt with that?’

  He pauses and I shake my head.

  ‘Strong mind and discipline.’ Eckhart’s eyes narrow. ‘Something missing from today’s youth. All born feeling they have the right to Citizenship. I didn’t have a passport to such privileges, despite having a talent. No one was waving magical Citizenships for my kind back then. No. I achieved my goals after serving my time for my country. I had to work for it, through my own sweat and blood.’ Eckhart rests back in his chair. ‘But I feel the need to remind you that this is not some lawless alleyway back home. This is the Helios Academy. Here, every cadet and potential future employee of Galloway Industries is expected to behave in accordance with the code of the Helios Academy.’

  ‘What happened with Dutch won’t happen again.’ I say this with a quiet confidence. If I had to dodge him for the rest of the year, I would.

  Eckhart nods, looking satisfied. ‘Unofficially, of course, I like it when a cadet shows grit. Keeps others honest. But just try to keep it out of medical.’

  ‘Uh … okay.’

  Eckhart pauses again, watching me, and I wonder if I’ve been dismissed but missed the signal. After another moment, I go to rise and he raises a hand to stop me.

  ‘One more thing.’

  I sit back and wait. Eckhart lowers his hands and drums his fingers against the desktop.

  ‘I said before that your tests show potential. Except for the threading session with Aaron Galloway, which failed miserably.’

  My face grows warm. ‘I don’t know what happened.’

  ‘And I have no doubt you tried,’ he says. ‘A theory is being formulated, and it has to do with the manner in which you were brought to Helios.’

  My mind turns blank, before an image of Blake’s scowling face flashes across my memory. ‘Blake Galloway?’