by Harrison, S.
I watch the outer circle expand; I can’t help it . . . I’m mesmerized by it. The glowing ripple distorts as it softly laps an invisible shore, and its faint circle of light breaks apart, but it doesn’t disappear. The light carries on, spreading outward from where it broke, moving over a patch of darkened ground beyond the water’s edge like a pale flame widening a hole in a fragile sheet of paper. It quickly spreads in every direction, wrapping around me, behind me, and over me, painting silhouettes of twigs and leaves and rocks and earth in the hidden spaces between the shadows. The edge of light spreads farther, weaving and peeking in and out of tiny valleys in the darkness, tracing the bumps of tree roots, blades of grass, clumps of moss, and curling ferns. It splinters, shooting upward in pin-striped rocket trails, threading up the furrows in the bark of the ring of trees surrounding me. Their leafy branches, black against a dark-blue night sky, cast their long shadows over moonlit water and down across the dirt-smeared toes of my strangely small bare feet.
I realize that I’m not drifting in the void anymore; I’m standing beside a pond. Wait! This is not just any pond. This is my pond. The secret pond in the Seven Acre Wood on the grounds of Blackstone Manor! I love this special place so much, and I know it so well, but I don’t remember it like this because . . . I’ve never been to the pond at night . . . not once in my life.
I look up at the moon; it’s big and bright in the sky. I pick the other pebble from my palm and hold it up against the moon between my fingers. The pebble is big compared to my small, thin fingertips, my hand tiny compared to the moon. I throw the pebble on the dirt behind me and frown. One day soon, when they’re bigger, these hands will move mountains. I smile at the childish thought.
Be realistic, Infinity.
Mountains might be a bit of a stretch, but one day, these hands will leave their mark on this world, a mark painted in blood. I’ll make sure of it. I look down and make two tight fists. Even though I know that it’s just a matter of time before I’m big enough to prove myself, it doesn’t stop me from hating being only ten years old.
I shrug off my disdain for what I can’t change and get back to the task at hand. This may be only a training exercise, but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t take it seriously. I think of Major Brogan, and I’m reminded of his deep, stern voice. “Rule number one, this applies to life as well as combat. Stay sharp; always be mindful of your surroundings.”
That’s good advice. I breathe in deeply through my nose, smelling, then tasting, then separating the faint night aromas of the Seven Acre Wood. Every scent from when I checked the air five minutes ago is present and accounted for. No new ones. No change.
I listen to the sounds of the night. The chirping crickets, the trickling water, the slow breeze rustling the leaves in the trees overhead.
I decide that now is the perfect time to practice the little trick I discovered a month ago when Major Brogan was trying to teach me how to meditate.
I close my eyes and push the sound of the rustling leaves out of my mind completely. I do exactly the same for the sound of the water and every other stray background frequency until only the sound of the crickets’ tweeting chirps punctuate the blanket of silence in my head. I focus all my attention on the chirps, amplifying them in my ears a hundredfold. Their usually soothing tweets suddenly become a jostling babble of high-pitched noises; the closest crickets are so loud now that the cacophony crinkles the edges of my eyes. There are dozens of the chirpy little night crawlers within only a few meters of me.
Focus, Infinity. Do this right, and the enemies out there in the dark will never know what hit them.
I take a slow breath and concentrate on separating the crickets’ trills and whistles, isolating their individual rhythms. I take careful note of the beats and pauses, starts and stops, tempos and pitches in the different songs of each cricket. As I do, I lower the volume of each song ever so slightly and move on to the next one. I repeat the process, one after another, for each and every cricket I hear. Recognize, reduce, and move on to the next one farther out. Recognize, reduce, and repeat until the edge of my hearing moves out between the trees in a creeping carpet of chirps, the sound of each cricket becoming a reference point on a map in my head, forming an auditory web stretching deep into the forest. Ten thousand chirps and whistles strung into a living lattice of sound. A sensitive web that I can use to tell if anyone is approaching from any direction . . .
There!
Five crickets, thirty meters to the south of my position, all went silent midchirp. Two others have done the same thing thirty-one meters due west, and . . . yes, there’s also a moving silence between those two points heading toward me, approximately twenty-six meters out. That’s three enemies, and they’re getting closer. I guess the bait of the pebbles plopping in the water worked just like I wanted it to.
They’re all heading straight for me.
I open my mind to the full sound of the night. The spear I made from a sharpened tree branch is lying at my feet. I hook my toes underneath it, kick it up into my hand, and dart away from the edge of the pond, leaping from patches of bare earth to the tops of rocks to fallen folds of bark to clumps of grass, using them as silent stepping-stones, deftly avoiding the telltale crunch of the fallen leaves and twigs around them. My skintight combat suit pulls at my body as I move like a shadow through the night, up the hill to my right, hugging the tree line.
I stop against the trunk of a tree and scan the ground that leads into the forest. The canopy of leaves overhead is blocking too much moonlight to see where I can step without making any noise, but that’s a problem with an easy fix. I close my eyes and quickly imagine each eye as a huge, sapphire-blue pool of water. In the center of each pool, I imagine black oil is bubbling up, spreading out farther and farther, until it almost covers the entire surface of them both, the blue in each pool of my eyes now only a razor-thin rim around the edges of two massive circles of black.
When I open my eyes again, I can see through the dark.
Every leaf, stone, stick, log, patch of earth, and blade of grass on the forest floor is sharp with green-tinged detail, as if rays of secret sunshine were being piped in just for me. I map out my foot placements for the next fifteen meters and leap out from behind my tree, turning my attention toward where the southern enemy should be. I spot him, shoulders hunched forward, his clunky body armor bulging on his frame as he stalks toward the pond. His arms are hugging his assault rifle to his chin as he does his best to softly crunch through the leaf litter. He’s doing a very good job. Most people would hardly notice the sound at all, but as Lieutenant Brash keeps telling me, I’m not most people.
My stare stays fixed on the enemy as my feet move on their own toward a big fallen tree trunk, hitting every noiseless step on the way from spatial memory alone. I vault onto the fallen tree without a sound and assess my options. The tree I’m perched on fell in a way that leaned it up against another. I slowly peek around the side of the upright tree and see him. He’s twenty-three meters away. I can jump really far, but that’s too far, even for me, and he’s walking parallel to my position. He’s not gonna get any closer. I have to make my move now.
I scan the forest floor between us and spot a solid patch of ground. That should do nicely. With my spear gripped tightly in my hand, I take off like a sprinter, running up the fallen tree and launching myself as far as I can. I sail silently through the night air, heading straight for the patch of earth halfway between the fallen tree and the enemy. I clutch my spear securely in both hands, pointed-end down, and jab it into the spot of bare dirt with a dull thud, swinging my body and kicking my legs out for extra momentum. He hears what I’ve done and turns just in time to see me pole-vault at blinding speed directly toward him. The spear spins in my fingers, and I thrust the sharp end forward, impaling the enemy right through the center of his chest as I knock him down to the ground with my flying knees. I crouch on top of him, pull his gun fr
om his hands, sling its strap over my shoulders onto my back, and then leap three meters straight up into the crook of a sturdy limb in a nearby oak tree.
One down. Two to go.
“STOP!” booms a voice, echoing through the entire forest. All around me, there are loud chunking sounds as the flood lamps in the trees punch on from every direction, blanketing the whole area with a blinding white light, turning the night as bright as day. I blink my night vision away and squint down at the forest floor. The whirring of a sublevel elevator is soon followed by the sound of leaves crunching under approaching footsteps. It isn’t very long before I see the angry military stride and army-buzzed haircut of Lieutenant Simon Brash. With his fists set firmly on his hips, he turns his face up toward me and glowers.
“Infinity One. Get down here. Right now!”
I let out a huge, bothered sigh and shuffle off the tree branch, dropping to the ground right beside the Lieutenant.
“Explain this,” he says, pointing down at the human-size, army-green robot splayed at the base of the tree. Orange goop is lazily bubbling from the hole my spear made in its chest.
“Do you have any idea how expensive these things are?” he asks, his wide eyes creasing deep lines in his forehead.
“Oo!” I blurt, thrusting my hand in the air like I do in training meetings. “That’s a rhetorical question!”
Lieutenant Brash frowns, and his eyes narrow into slits. “Don’t you dare give me any lip, Infinity One.”
I slowly lower my hand, and Lieutenant Brash grunts in frustration. “Dammit, look what you’ve done. These robots are prototypes, the first of a new generation of advanced robotics, five years ahead of their time!”
Judging by the look he gives me, you’d think I’d killed a puppy or something.
“How many times do I have to tell you? A twist of the neck, a shot with a Taser rifle, or the red button on their back shuts them down. Without damage! You know this! So why the hell do you insist on acting like you don’t?”
“Real enemies don’t have a red button,” I say with a growl.
He looks down at me, the corner of one eye twitching, and I can almost see his thought processes trudging their way through the mud between his ears to the tiny part of his brain in charge of moving his mouth. “Well . . . that may be true, but . . . you were ordered not to break any Drones this time.” He thrusts a finger, pointing right at my nose. “If you can’t follow orders now, then what use will you be on an actual mission?”
I smack his hand away from my face. “Send me on a mission, and you’ll see what use I can be,” I say as coldly and seriously as I can.
Lieutenant Brash looks down at me with an amused sneer. “What? No! You’re not ready. You’re too young.”
I stare right into his eyes. “I’m a weapon. That’s what I was made for, it’s what I am, and luckily for all of you, it’s all I ever wanted to be. I may be only ten years old, but if you give me a real target and point me in its direction, I’ll show you what this weapon can do. I’ll show all of you.”
The same weird twitch spasms at the edge of his eye, and one corner of his mouth moves a quarter of a millimeter upward. His chin crinkles, just for an instant, and his nostrils flare ever so slightly. He hides it well, but the sum total of his microexpressions equals only one thing. Lieutenant Simon Wigmore Brash, Special Tactical Training Officer, military-clearance-level seven . . . is afraid of a little girl.
For a moment, I think he may not be as stupid as I’ve always thought he is.
The Lieutenant gives me a patronizing smile and thrusts his hand out, palm up. “Your knife, hand it over.”
My hands whip to my side, covering the black-pearl handle of the titanium-alloy combat knife that Major Brogan gave me. Apart from my black-diamond pendant, it’s my prized possession. I frown up at the Lieutenant and grunt through my clenched jaw. “No.”
“Training is over for tonight, Infinity One. Give me your knife. That’s an order.” Lieutenant Brash raises two fingers in the air, and the red laser point of a sniper’s rifle somewhere out beyond the floodlights spots onto my chest. “Don’t make it the last order you ever hear.”
With a hissing breath, I slowly pull my blade from its sheath and grudgingly hand it to him. As he tucks it into his belt, a bead of sweat trickles down the side of his face. A face that I would quite happily punch right through the back of his head.
“Taser rifle, too,” he orders as an almost imperceptible gulp sticks in his throat.
I pull the rifle strap up over my head and barely swing the gun around my shoulder when he quickly reaches out and roughly snatches it from me.
“You’re right . . . ,” he says as he checks the rifle’s chamber and magazine. “You are a weapon. But no matter how hard I try, I just can’t seem to get it through that thick little skull of yours. We give the orders, and mouthy little girls need to do what they’re told.”
Lieutenant Brash snaps the rifle to his chin, and with a loud bang, the weapon kicks in his arms. Three Taser darts spike me in the chest, and I’m punched backward, hitting the ground hard as a loud hum bores through my body. My eyes flick back in my head, my teeth grind, and my back arches into the air as my whole body is racked with agonizing pulses of electricity. Simon Brash’s voice fades into the distance.
“Take that nasty little piece of work down to Mind Alteration. I think someone needs another attitude adjustment.”
My arms and legs jolt uncontrollably as my fingers clench dirt and leaves in my trembling fists. Even though I know that they’ll try to take it away, I vow to hold on to this moment. Don’t forget this feeling, Infinity . . . Never forget . . . Always remember . . . Always remember . . .
Always . . .
“. . . remember . . . Oh my god, I remember,” I whisper into the void. My heart is drumming in my chest, and my mind is reeling again. The warm breeze drifting over my body flitters away like a withdrawing veil, and as I feel it wisp from the tips of my toes, the chill of the void returns with a rush and I’m suddenly falling at speed again, the passing darkness rippling my skin. “I remember.”
I found another one of Infinity’s memories.
It was so vivid, so real, and just like before, it felt as if I were right there. I guess, when I think about it, I kinda was there. The ten-year-old me in the back of ten-year-old Infinity’s mind, carried along for the ride like a sleeping passenger.
I’m getting closer to her—I must be.
The more I think about her, the more it helps. But what I just saw was plain crazy. I only experienced a few minutes of her past, but it was so drastically different from how I was raised that in some ways the closer I get, the more distant from her I feel. I try to imagine doing all the things that she did that night in the Seven Acre Wood, and I can’t wrap my head around it. She’s not normal. She’s extraordinary. No normal human being I’ve ever heard of can do what I just witnessed. The way she saw in the dark like a cat. The way she moved so inhumanly quickly. Not to mention the incredible way her hearing crept through the night like a fog, mapping the terrain like sonar.
I’m suddenly intrigued. And maybe even a little bit envious of her abilities. What else can she do?
Listen to me; I’m thinking about Infinity like she’s completely separate from me, but . . . what if . . . ?
I look down at the darkness whipping against my skin.
The truth is . . . my body is her body.
I bring my hands to my face and study them, turning them over. The lines on my palms are the same ones she sees.
Her hands are my hands.
I can’t do what Infinity does; Graham said they made me forget, that they wiped the knowledge of her abilities from my half of our mind, but . . . what if Infinity and I aren’t as separate as I think?
I was right there, running through the forest. I was right there, leaping through the night. I
felt the spear in my hands. I pushed it through the Drone’s chest. I may not have actually done it, but when I was inside that memory, I felt what she felt, spoke how she spoke; I wasn’t Finn anymore. I was Infinity.
I was thirteen when I wrecked my bike and fractured my arm. Infinity showed me that memory, a memory that they locked away from me. But when I healed my arm . . . I was me! I was Finn, not Infinity. Even after all their messing with my head, I was beginning to learn how to do what Infinity does, all on my own! And Jonah just stood there. With that phony look of surprise. Lying to my face. Pretending to be shocked, biding his time until he could lure me underground and wipe the slate clean again. Which is exactly what he did.
But that memory proves that I could do it. So I can’t see any reason why I can’t do those things again.
Infinity and I are two sides of the same coin. I’m positive that I can do anything that she can do, if I can just get inside the right memories and learn how to. I’m right; I know I am.
And there’s one way I can know for sure.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes, trying to feel what Infinity felt when she listened to the songs of the crickets. I focus my mind, concentrating on the only sound there is: the rushing wind of the void. It’s fast, thick, and enveloping and—I suddenly notice—twice as loud as it was a split second ago.