Unawakened

by Trillian Anderson

  Sergeant Gildroy’s grin widened. “If information sciences is of interest to you, you have come to the right place. We’ll start you on the smaller systems, of course, but if you like working with data, I think we can find work appealing to you. I’ve already seen a copy of what you created at the college during the initial registration. It’s been useful. We’ve used your basic layout to begin development of the new system. It would be beneficial to us all if you continued your work on that project.”

  While I had known the dean had been gathering information on behalf of the police, I hadn’t realized I had actually been credited with any of the work. “Has categorization been completed?”

  Sergeant Gildroy snorted. “It’s been started, but we’re still learning a lot about new types of dae. That’ll be part of your job. I’m in charge of the dae registration for our region, and while we have a list of names and general abilities, we haven’t been able to organize them in a way that makes sense—or converts well to groups. Apparently Washington thinks it’s a good idea for all major cities to handle their own registration databases. I don’t envy the bastard who has to take all of that data and turn it into something useful.”

  A researcher’s paradise of servers, tablets, desktops, and laptops waited through a doorway, and Sergeant Gildroy gestured me inside. “This is our current workroom for categorizing the registration databases. Your interview will be simple. For the next hour, see what you can do with this mess. I’ll observe you.”

  Jacob leaned against the wall, crossed his arms over his chest, and he smiled. His smug expression challenged me. Smiling made every muscle in my face ache, but I sat down at one of the stations, leaning away from the keyboard long enough for the sergeant to give me access to the system.

  If the police wanted to see some magic, I’d show it to them. Some of the elite, like Kenneth and Rob, were smart. I couldn’t deny that, but I had seen the kids at the college.

  Maybe they were smart enough under the egos of their upbringing, but they wasted their potential. How many people had?

  Most of the world, if the existence of the dae was any indication. Rob’s explanation was starting to make sense to me. It wasn’t just the wishes and dreams of humanity that had gone up in flames, but their potential, too.

  Maybe I couldn’t fart fire like most dae, but I hadn’t lost anything, either. Maybe some of them could fly, maybe others could grant wishes, and maybe they were all the dying dreams of humans, ripped away from their bonded, but they needed people like me to make sense of the mess they had made of the world.

  The dae confused me, but I understood the rigid structure of elite society, and I knew what the government wanted. All I had to do was prove to Sergeant Gildroy I was as capable as I thought I was.

  One way or another, I’d manage.

  Chapter Eleven

  From the outside looking in, the elite had it all. Wealth, intellect, and good fortune were theirs for the taking. All of my ambitions had been focused on becoming one of them.

  My first—and last—day of classes at the college had educated me about the lack of critical thinking and education among the elite, but I hadn’t realized just how inane those in charge were until I got a look at the dae registration database.

  Working for Kenneth had made knowing how to access and use databases a necessity, and my secondary education had refined my skills. Under the guise of reorganizing the data groups, I scanned through the types of identified dae, marveling at the variety of them.

  Knowing they represented the hopes and dreams of their creators both horrified and awed me. Many dae had wings, ranging from feathered werewolves to avian shape shifters, vampires, and even winged unicorns. Fire breathers dominated the ranks.

  The unawakened weren’t even listed in the database, nor was there a field for them. I considered the exclusion, wondering how it would benefit me in the future. Sometimes, being ignored and left out of the system was far better than inclusion.

  When the military came calling, I wouldn’t be a consideration at all. I liked the idea, so as I worked at reorganizing the data, I maintained the exclusion of unawakened. I wasn’t just helping myself, either.

  If Rob’s explanation of why Arthur Hasling had wanted me was true, excluding all the unawakened from Baltimore’s primary database would protect us from becoming a food source for the dae without humans to provide for them. Helping those untouched by the Dawn of Dae appealed to me as much as getting my hands on the information necessary to figure out what Dean Lewis was up to.

  Manipulating the system from within intrigued me almost as much as making a difference to those who were just like me, trying to survive in a world gone mad.

  One day, I would learn how to work without my world narrowing to the focus of my concentration. The clearing of a throat behind me startled me so much I jumped out of my chair, tripped on one of the legs, and landed on my ass while the air rushed out of my lungs. I floundered, my heart pounding in my throat and ears.

  “Time,” Sergeant Gildroy announced, and I heard the amusement at my reaction in his voice.

  I was so tempted to crawl under the desk and hide until I died of dehydration or starvation. Climbing to my feet, I dusted myself off, aware of how hot my cheeks felt. I mumbled an apology under my breath, fixing my gaze on the tiled floor.

  The elite really liked marble.

  “Explain your choices for your reorganization of the database,” the cop ordered.

  I was aware of Jacob’s gaze on me, although the dae remained silent. Inhaling and holding my breath for several seconds helped steady my nerves, and I sat back down, gesturing to the screen. “There isn’t much point in creating a database you can’t realistically use. While there’s a lot of data in the old one, it’s spread over several different places with no easy way to link them all together. For example, in one set of databases, people are listed by an identification number only. To find the person’s name, you have to link to a database that lists both identification number and name. There are databases that go by name only, and since there are people who have the same name, the data becomes muddled. Those individuals will need to be resorted, matched with their identification number, and put into the system again. Unfortunately, that’s potentially tens of thousands of people. Then you have the issue of the dae who lack humans. Most externalized dae are recorded alongside their human counterparts, which doesn’t allow for free dae.”

  “I follow. Continue.”

  “If you want a system that works, you need a consistent way of linking all of your data sources. That’s it. That’s the starting point. You can’t develop much else until you have a foundation that actually works. If you try to put the end game goal ahead of the basic infrastructure, you get a mess like this.” While I wanted to point out the average fringe primary school student could probably devise something better given half a chance, I kept my mouth shut.

  I was already toeing the line criticizing someone else’s work, especially when that someone else was likely an elite.

  “Interesting. And your recommendation for correcting this issue?”

  “Build a sane foundation with proper database linking and repopulate the data. Once the data with good integrity is loaded into the system, redo the remaining entries.”

  “Did you not say this is potentially tens of thousands of people?”

  “Could be hundreds of thousands, depending on how many people have the same name—or how many dae have the same name. I can’t give you an exact number without pulling records from the database.”

  “How long would that take?”

  I considered it. The police had good tools for sifting through records and even better machines backing their databases. I hadn’t had a lot of time to experiment with the system, but as long as I could find commonalities allowing me to get counts of the overlapping records, it wouldn’t take long to go through the data.

  A few extra hours—or days—on top of my realistic estimate would give me all the time
I needed to start comparing the surviving humans with those who had gone missing. To do that, I needed access to the primary database of those living within Baltimore’s jurisdiction.

  I made a thoughtful sound in my throat, opened one of the databases, and scanned for addresses and last-known residences of the populace. “It’s possible if I could gain access to the citizen registry databases I can take the address data of some of these people and limit how many have to be redone. I won’t know until I try, however. It depends on how complete the information in the system is.”

  “We’ve been looking into the problem of identifying the missing and dead. Will that comparison help do that?”

  It took every bit of my willpower to hide my glee at Sergeant Gildroy’s question. “I can try. I can’t make any promises the current data set will allow it, but I can see what I can do.”

  “Good. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear. I’ll speak with Dean Lewis and make arrangements regarding your work hours, Miss Daegberht. What is the best way to reach you?”

  “My email is likely best; I check it often. I don’t have a phone.” I wasn’t exactly telling the truth; I did have a phone, but I didn’t have the rank or clearance to activate it. “I’m staying with a close friend right now, so any documentation can be sent to his place.

  When I gave Sergeant Gildroy Rob’s address, Jacob’s eyes widened before he recovered enough to smooth his expression.

  I somehow managed to leave the station before smiling my triumph for the world to see.

  Jacob stalked me all the way back to Rob’s apartment building. When I finally reached the doorway leading inside, I turned to face Kenneth’s dae. “What was your game back there?”

  The dae tilted his head to the side, and the corners of his mouth twitched up in a faint smile. “I was ensuring your placement among the police. You’re not just an unawakened now. You’re a potential bonded. You should be thanking me. A little nudge and a little push, and you’ll be classified as a free bonded. That benefits us both.”

  I had no idea what a free bonded was, but I had every intention of asking Rob. “I will assume this is a good thing for the moment. If you’re expecting thanks, don’t hold your breath. You’ll have to do a lot better than that to earn my gratitude.”

  “Noted. Kenneth asked me to offer his apologies and expressed his desire for a more cordial relationship moving forward.”

  I was tempted to flip the dae a rude gesture, but I restrained the urge and forced my best smile. “I’ll think about it. If his version of cordial relationship involves stabbing me in the back, I’d rather not bother. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I’m not willing to put myself in such a position again. I don’t trust you, either, so don’t get too cozy with me. I’ll play your pretend partner game because it benefits us both. Straight and narrow, Jacob. Walk it.”

  “Yet you trust that snake up in his tall tower,” Jacob hissed.

  I bared my teeth and hissed back at him. At the same time, I rolled up my sleeve to show him my snakehead tattoo. “Birds of a feather flock together.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Do you want it to be? Enough posturing. If you want me to play the game, I have work to do, and it doesn’t involve talking to you.”

  “It certainly doesn’t,” Rob grumbled from behind me. I whirled, my eyes widening.

  The way Rob glared at Jacob promised pain, suffering, and death, and I shivered at the thought of the dae turning his ire on me.

  “Message received.” With a glower the rival of Rob’s, Jacob growled something under his breath, turned, and marched away.

  “How long were you skulking there?” I demanded, wrinkling my nose at Rob for having startled me so much.

  “Long enough. You get full points for hissing at him. It seemed like you had things under control, so I thought I’d watch and wait to see what happened.”

  “Let’s go up to your place before I decide to whip out my gun and shoot him,” I grumbled, wrinkling my nose while glowering at Jacob’s departing back. “I hate that dae.”

  “With good reason.” Rob linked his arm with mine and tugged me inside. “How did the interview go?”

  “Let’s talk upstairs.”

  What I really wanted to do was flop onto Rob’s couch, grab a pillow, and hide, but until I figured out how to deal with being saddled with Jacob, I had to get my head into the game. If there were advantages to allying with Kenneth’s dae, I needed to decide how to make use of them.

  They would be making plans of their own, and I couldn’t allow them to beat me, not this time.

  Colby dropped from the ceiling and landed on my head with a wet splat. Noodle by noodle, my casserole streamed down the back of my neck and into my shirt. My shriek echoed in Rob’s condo as I flailed and tried to peel my roommate off my back. “Damn it, Colby!”

  Shudders ran through me at the chill of it oozing along my spine. Shucking out of my jacket, I contorted in my effort to dislodge Colby. “Get out of my shirt. Out! Damn it. Colby!”

  Rob laughed, grabbed hold of my holster and freed me from it, lowering it to the floor and pushing it out of the way with his foot. Grabbing hold of my shirt, he pulled it over my head.

  Rob sucked in a breath. “Stay still, Alexa.”

  I froze, my eyes widening at the seriousness of his tone. “Rob? What is it?”

  Laughter wasn’t the answer I expected, and I twisted around to glare at the dae.

  He held up a small disc which was smeared with neon orange slime. “You brought home a friend.”

  “I what?” I snatched for the object. Colby dropped to the floor before sticking to my leg. I stumbled at its unexpected weight and fell against Rob.

  The dae kept laughing, and his chest rumbled with the sound. “Seems someone is really interested in what you’re up to, Miss Daegberht.” Rob held me with one arm, and with the other, he lifted the disc to examine it. “Curious. Audio? Visual? You left for a little over an hour and got intimate with someone else. Naughty woman.”

  My face burned. “I did no such thing.”

  Before we could look at the device any further, Colby lunged up and engulfed Rob’s hand. Rob’s eyes widened and he shook his arm. “Not my hand, not my hand! Colby!”

  When the dae finally managed to dislodge my macaroni and cheese roommate, his hand and wrist were orange and dripped strings of cheese and a few stray noodles. I blanched. “Gross. You have Colby goo all over you.”

  The culprit darted across the apartment and disappeared into its room. I blinked and stared at Rob’s hand.

  The disc was gone.

  “It’s gone. Is your hand going to be gone, too?” I tilted my head to the side and wondered what I would do if Rob’s hand started to melt like metal, glass, and other objects did when under the influence of Colby’s terrifying digestive system.

  “Don’t even think it.”

  “Towel.” I spun on a heel to head for the kitchen.

  “All you can think to do is grab a towel?” Rob blurted. “My hand! It tried to eat my hand.”

  “No, Rob. If Colby had tried to eat your hand, you wouldn’t have a hand.” I wet a towel in the sink, returned to Rob, and offered it to him. “I saw what he did to the skyscraper.”

  “I was trying not to remember that.” Grabbing the towel, he scrubbed at his hand and wrist. While he got the stringy cheese and goo off, his skin remained a brilliant orange.

  Biting my lip kept my mirth contained for the moment, but laughter threatened to overwhelm me. I turned around and presented my back to Rob. “Did he slime me, too?”

  “Your bra will never be the same.”

  I shuddered. Grateful it clasped in the front, I ditched it to discover Rob had played me for a fool. The black material remained untouched by Colby’s determination to devour the disc that had been attached to me.

  “You fiend!” I picked up my bra and whipped him with my lingerie before tossing it onto the couch. “You deserve to be
stained. Freak. There’s nothing wrong with my bra.”

  “I could have sworn there was orange all over it,” Rob replied, widening his eyes in his bid to play innocent.

  I grabbed my shirt, checked it over, and satisfied there were no orange stains or any other devices attached to it, I pulled it back on. “It was probably Jacob.”

  “Did anyone else get near you?”

  “A couple of cops. I didn’t get near anyone on the street during the walk over.”

  Rob frowned. “Well, either way, if that disc was broadcasting, they now know about Colby.”

  Snorting and shaking my head, I took the towel out of Rob’s hand and shoved him in the direction of the kitchen. “No one in their right mind will ever believe in mobile macaroni and cheese.”

  “You do.”

  “Who said I was in my right mind?”

  Colby’s discovery and destruction of the disc left me and Rob with far more questions than answers. I paced around the living room, pausing to stare out the window over the city.

  “Why would anyone tag me?” I complained, stomping my foot. “I’m basically a limp noodle in a world full of fire breathing freaks. Winged werewolves. Dragons. Even the macaroni and cheese has more viable options than me. You’re the one who should have been tagged with a damned disc. We don’t even know what it did. Colby ate it.”

  “Food!” my roommate replied from its room.

  “Not food, damn it! Colby, we can’t tell what it did now.”

  “Mommy?”

  While I was tempted to throw things at my casserole for making my life even more difficult, I took several deep breaths until my impulse to hit someone or something faded. “Thank you for finding it, Colby.”

  “Food!”

  “Your macaroni and cheese fiend has a very specialized diet,” Rob murmured, leaning against the kitchen island with his arms crossed over his chest. With a mixture of relief and disappointment, I noticed the orange stains had faded from Rob’s hand. “So. You went to the interview. You claim no one was near you on the street. Did Jacob touch you?”