by V. St. Clair
“Alright, you worthless sack of meat, are you ready for some—Topher!” Fox changed tracks mid-sentence, his tone lightening instantly. “What in the world are you doing in here with my prisoner?” he didn’t sound entirely pleased by the intrusion.
Topher regained his sense of balance in the conversation and was able to respond, “I thought I’d pay you a visit and offer my assistance,” quite calmly.
Fox scowled and said, “Thanks, but no thanks. A few more days with this kid and I’ll have him singing like a bird.”
Maxton looked like a man who was trying not to show how terrified he was, staring anywhere but at Fox, as though he could make him go away by not acknowledging him.
To Fox, Topher said, “I’m sure you will, but I’m quite bored at the moment. If you don’t mind, I’m going to go review the evidence against him and interview the Minors who brought him in.”
“What?” Fox asked, clearly startled. “Why would you want to do that?”
“Idle curiosity,” he raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps they overlooked something that will give you an advantage during your interrogations.”
“The evidence against him was mistakenly destroyed,” Fox explained coolly. “A blunder, to be sure, but the Minor involved was reprimanded, so there’s nothing to do but move on from here.”
This was jarring news, and a big point in the favor of the prisoner’s assertions.
It’s still possible that it was just an innocent mistake, born of incompetence or negligence…
On the other hand, if they had done something underhanded to get Maxton in here, they would need to destroy the evidence after the fact to keep anyone from discovering their crime.
If there is corruption here, Fox would have to be involved in it.
What could his motive for corruption be? Money? Power? Beautiful women? Beautiful men? Something else entirely? Hell, maybe he just wanted a promotion to move up the ranks of the Provo-Major. Catching Hera would certainly bring him great reward.
Topher raised his eyebrows and said, “A pity we’re still plagued by such incompetence in our ranks, after all these years.” Maxton hadn’t said a word during this entire exchange, though he still looked frightened as he watched them talk. “Well then, I’ll leave you to your work.”
He hated the guilty feeling in his gut when Maxton flinched at his abandonment. Topher knew his presence was the only thing keeping the other man safe, and could only hope the painkillers would tide him over and keep him alive long enough for him to get to the bottom of this.
Topher left the interrogation with more questions than answers, and he was determined to reverse the ratio.
5
Ana Crumb
Ana was enjoying a leisurely walk towards the Illucept building when she got the call. Since she had eaten lunch alone that day, rather than traveling across the Academy to find her friends, she had more time than usual to get to her afternoon lessons, which was a welcome change of pace. At first she mistook the buzzing of her communicator for a passing insect, almost causing her to miss the call entirely.
When she realized it was her communicator, she fumbled hurriedly through her bag and extracted the palm device with one hand, slapping the ‘accept call’ button before it blinked out. She barely had time to register Risa’s picture on the screen of the circular device before they were connected in real-time.
“Hey Risa, I almost missed your call because my comm was in the bottom of—”
“Where are you?” the other girl cut her off sharply, sounding slightly winded. All Ana could see from the limited view of the background was that her friend was somewhere outdoors, presumably at the Academy, which was unhelpful because the place was massive.
Alarmed by the urgency in Risa’s tone, Ana said, “Are you alright? You sound like you’re running.”
Actually, the image was a little shaky as well, as though bouncing in time to a rapid human step.
“Where are you?” Risa repeated, pale cheeks flushed. “It’s important—I think I left my homework in your book by mistake and I need it before class.”
This was a common code phrase of theirs for an emergency situation, and Ana’s eyes widened in surprise at hearing it now. The government said they didn’t monitor or record communicator transmissions unless they had a valid warrant on a specific person, and maybe that was true, but Ana wasn’t prepared to risk her life on the integrity of the Viceroy’s establishment, so they used code-phrases wherever possible.
“I see. I am just about to walk into Illucept for my afternoon practicum; where are you?”
Risa nodded and said, “I hoped you were on your way to class; I’m almost there. Wait for me outside the building.”
She cut the call without another word, leaving Ana to stare at the black screen, fear washing over her as she wondered what was wrong. Had Hera been caught? Had their cabal been found at last? Had the Provo-Minor uncovered something critical in their investigation of the Physman building? The possibilities were endless, and none of them were good.
Ana was antsy by the time she got to the Illucept building, standing away from the entrance and leaning against the warm stone wall, scanning through her communicator to kill time. She checked her email but there was nothing to read other than a few notices about online homework assignments in Anatomy and an email about the government-sponsored career fair. Closing out her email, she went online instead, searching for anything interesting to read while passing the time, but she was mostly disappointed. It was hard to take much interest in reading the blogs, advice columns, and reporting done by others when everything they said was being censored by the government.
Thankfully, Risa didn’t keep her waiting very long, approaching at a jog a few minutes later. Ana’s first thought was something horrible must have happened for her friend to look so unkempt, and to risk being late to her own afternoon lessons over it.
“Risa, what the—”
“They’ve taken Carl,” Risa blurted out in a hushed whisper, eyes alight with suppressed panic.
“What?!” Ana hissed in disbelief, pulling her friend further away from the main entrance of the Illusions and Perceptions building. “You mean the Provo got him?”
Quickly, Risa explained what had happened in her room the day before, how she had been attacked by those absolute toads, Paul and Harry, and how Carl had shown up to help her in the nick of time, using his Gift to do it.
“And now he’s gone,” Risa moaned, shaking her head as though to deny the words coming from her own mouth. “Jonathan said the Provo-Minor took him away for questioning during the night, and he hasn’t been seen since. What have they done with him?”
Ana frowned, brushing her wavy brown hair out of her eyes and doing some fast thinking.
“We have to stay positive for now; there’s no point in freaking out or it’ll only draw more attention to you,” she said at last. “The Provo-Minor don’t have the authority to—” kill him, she said mentally“—to do anything too terrible to him. Even if they arrest him, which I can’t see the justification for, they would have to put him somewhere reasonable, with food and water and an exercise period, until they decided whether to assign formal charges and put him on trial or let him go.”
“Unless they take him to the bowels of the Augenspire,” Risa shuddered and looked behind her, glaring up at the hated, blackened steel structure looming over them from the bluff like a carrion bird. “The Minors can’t do anything themselves, but if they got a Provo-Major involved…”
“But why should they?” Ana stopped this train of thought before it could get too depressing. “All Carl did was help peel a couple of jerks off of you, and you’ve got tons of reports filed against them for picking on you for years, anyway, so it’s not like there isn’t a paper trail of evidence in your favor.”
Risa scowled and said, “But he’s a full-spectrum Deco-Reco, which is pretty rare and powerful. What if they trump up an excuse to bring him to the Augenspire so they can get him out
of the way before he can use his powers against them?”
Ana definitely thought that was a possibility, given the things she had heard about people going missing in the Augenspire, but she didn’t feel honesty was the best policy just now.
“We don’t know that for sure. For now we just need to act naturally and give it a few more days; perhaps they’ll return him after they’re done interviewing him.” Neither of them really looked like they believed this comforting lie, but Risa didn’t bother contradicting it out loud. “I’ll visit my aunt tonight and tell her what you told me; maybe she’s got some contacts who can find out what’s happened to Carl. I think he was right when he said you should keep a low profile for a few weeks and stay away from our meetings, but as far as I know, no one is scrutinizing me at the moment, so I’ll go on your behalf.”
Risa nodded glumly, looking helpless and miserable. Whatever she said to the contrary, Ana still firmly believed that she liked Carl very much and would be devastated to lose yet another person from her life.
“Thank you—and you’re right, little though I like it,” Risa acknowledged, glancing at her watch. “Damn, I’m going to be late if I don’t leave now. Just…just please tell me what your aunt says, as soon as you hear something, good or bad.” There was a slight inflection on the words ‘your aunt’ as she said them. Ana had been trying to break her of this habit for a year, since it made the codename for Hera sound exactly like a secret codename when Risa gave it special intonation.
“I’ll meet up with you first thing in the morning, I promise.” Ana turned and went into the Illucept building, mind racing with the new information and her sudden change of plans for the night. She had been intending to take a well-deserved night off, but now she had to find a way to get to one of Hera’s meeting spots and send a message to her. She’d be lucky to make it back to Building-9 before curfew, but she owed it to her friends to try.
Hang in there, Carl. Hera will find out where you are and if there is anything we can do to save you.
She walked past the first three gymnasium-style rooms on the ground floor and turned into a fourth, still lost in thought over which disguise she should wear and which meeting spot would be the easiest and fastest to get to on short notice. She was one of the first ones into the room where Illucept students with unusual Gifts tried to better refine and define them. It was important for the Provo to understand the exact abilities and limitations of each person’s Gift, to ensure there wouldn’t be any unpleasant surprises during a fight if it became necessary.
The room itself was large and spacious, about the size of a gym but without any of the equipment. Instead the room was divided into two distinct areas; the half farthest from Ana was segmented into neat little booths with flexi-glass dividers on both sides to prevent sound from carrying between booths. There were simple wooden chairs on the side where the students would sit, and on the other end was a padded chair, a shelf to write on and a jar of pens, and a black circle the size of a piece of candy that was actually a video camera with three-hundred-and-sixty degree visibility to record their interviews.
The other half of the room was filled with an assortment of mirrors, shelves of colored glasses, and other seemingly random props that would look out of place to someone who wasn’t familiar with the testing here. Ana knew those things were used to help hone in on some of the trickier aspects of illusionary or perception-altering Gifts, to make sure each person’s ability was fully-defined.
By the time their session was scheduled to begin, the room filled with other people, and Ana had mentally worked out her plan for tonight. She forced herself to push Carl’s fate from her mind and focus on the task at hand. She was fortunate her true skill wasn’t something that could be easily discovered by others through testing alone, not unless she made a colossal mistake and said something to give it away.
There were about twenty people in this class with her, though people were always coming and going, as newly-Gifted thirteen-year olds were brought in for further testing while older students were dismissed from practicums once it was decided their Gifts were entirely understood and documented.
Ana hoped they would release her from practicums soon, if only because it would give her an extra two-hours of her day back whenever she was scheduled for them. She could petition to discontinue her normal classes whenever she wanted to—there was no requirement that one had to take science, math, or any of the rest of it if they didn’t want to—but as long as she declared herself a student, the government would support her financially.
And they get really mad if you’re late for a class they’re paying for.
If she decided to drop out of school and get a job she would have to support herself, for which she would need a good education, which is why she was still in school trying to earn a degree in something useful.
Even if Ana stopped going to school in the Academy, she would still be forced to reside there, unless she was working for the government and got a special permit to live away from the Academy as a reward for selling out her peers. Almost all Gifted were housed within the Academy at night as a way for the Viceroy to keep them all contained in one place if another war broke out.
No matter what else Ana did with her life, she wouldn’t be allowed to stop attending the practicums until someone more important than her decided there was nothing left to discover in her Gifts. Practicums were compulsory for all Gifted students when assigned, and the punishment for trying to skip out on them was too horrific to think about.
“Ana,” Ms. Tofta called her name, “we’re at the tables today.”
Ana suppressed a frown and went to join the instructor at one of the flexi-glass booths. She hated being tested this way, constantly afraid she was going to make a critical misstep.
It was quite easy, by comparison, to fake a lack of ability in the practical part of the room, because she could stand there all she wanted and try to change someone else’s perception of her with complete confidence in her inevitable failure.
There were an even number of instructors and students in the practicum, one to focus on each of them. Ms. Tofta had been assigned to Ana a year ago, after her predecessor had dropped her teaching contract in favor of pursuing a different career path. Ana hadn’t seen the woman since, which convinced her that her former instructor had gotten one of those special permits to live away from the Academy that was given to traitors. For all she knew, every instructor in here was her enemy, employed by the government to pretend to be her friend or mentor, only to really serve as eyes and ears for information on Hera.
She joined Ms. Tofta at the first available booth, taking a seat on the hard wooden chair and trying to get comfortable, while the instructor tapped the camera between them to begin recording. A younger woman of around thirty, Ana had always wondered what the seemingly kind, reserved Ms. Tofta had done to achieve her rank so quickly within the Academy. What part of her soul did she have to sell for this?
“Good afternoon,” Ms. Tofta smiled pleasantly at her, her short blond hair pinned away from her face, the better to try and stare into Ana’s mind with her sharp brown eyes.
“Good afternoon,” Ana replied politely, faking a smile of her own as the instructor withdrew an electronic notepad from her bag and began flipping through it with her stylus to set up a blank page for today’s session.
“We last left our lesson with you attempting to levitate objects that were perceived to be endangering you,” Ms. Tofta reviewed.
Ana remembered the ‘lesson’ quite clearly.
Since all anyone knew about her Gift was that she always seemed to know when her life was in danger and how to avoid it, her instructor hypothesized that perhaps she was actually able to assert some control over the things posing a threat to her, to prevent the injury in the first place. So Ms. Tofta had tried to injure her by throwing heavy objects at her while she was tied down, shooting at her with low-powered lasers, and so forth. Ana hadn’t been able to prevent a single thing from injur
ing her—she had known she wouldn’t be able to at the outset—and had been bruised and sore for the better part of the last week. At least she hadn’t been asked to do anything dangerous since then, a small mercy on Ms. Tofta’s part.
“I recall the lesson,” was all Ana said to this.
“I still believe there is some other component to your Gift that we haven’t discovered yet,” the instructor continued. “It seems odd to know you—and occasionally those near you—are in danger, but not be able to do anything to prevent it.”
“Well, not all Gifts are terribly useful on a practical level,” Ana said with a shrug, which was perfectly true. “Besides, I can usually do something about it when I know I’m in danger—namely, to leave the place or situation threatening me before it’s too late.”
Ms. Tofta watched her closely for a long moment without speaking. Then, changing the subject entirely, she said, “Today I want you to look at some pictures and tell me what you see.”
Surprised, Ana raised her eyebrows and said, “Alright…”
Pictures should be relatively harmless, she thought with relief. There’s nothing there for me to read, no danger of me going in too far and of being detected…
Ms. Tofta flipped over a sheet of paper that showed a man with a smiling face on it. He was wearing a business suit and looked relaxed.
“Uh, a happy businessman,” Ana answered lamely, not sure how she was supposed to respond. What was Ms. Tofta looking for here?
Her instructor said nothing, simply flipping over the page and replacing it with another; this time it was a woman crying.
“Woman crying,” Ana continued, not seeing the point in this. This seemed more like a psych test than a test of her Gift.