Awoken

by Timothy Miller

  The blood drained from Diggs’s face. “Tell me the cat didn’t have green and brown eyes, Mike. Please, tell me the cat didn’t have green and brown eyes.”

  A cloud drifted over the sun, covering them in foreboding shadow.

  Michael shivered. “The dollman warned me about something, Diggs. The cat was a Ven, wasn’t it?”

  Diggs’s eyes looked haunted. “They come in many forms. The cat is one of their lesser creations, a tracker. So was the crow. Where and when did you see them?”

  “A couple of blocks back, maybe five minutes ago. The cat called me a ‘primer’ or ‘pee-merry.’”

  “Primary?”

  “That might have been the word.”

  Diggs cursed under his breath. “Worse than I imagined. You had better go home, Mike. Keep out of sight. I’ll contact you as soon as I can.”

  “Back home? I need your help.”

  Diggs took a small medicine bottle from his coat pocket and popped off the cap. “That’s what I’m trying to do, Mike.” Pouring two white pills from the bottle, he tossed them into his mouth and swallowed them dry. “You lie low while I try to find the waystone and contact the People. With Ven so close, we have to be careful. And don’t tell anyone about any of this, especially your foster parents. Bad enough that Ven has noticed you; the less your guardians know, the safer they will be.”

  Michael scowled. “So I’m just supposed to chill at my house while you go out dollman hunting? What kind of plan is that?”

  “The kind that keeps you breathing.” Diggs walked away. “The People and I have been dodging Ven trackers awhile now. We know what to look for, and what to avoid. You know squat. Try to stay on the grass until you’ve had more practice with the stonesong. I’ll contact you when it’s safe. And, Mike, be ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  Somewhere nearby, a crow cawed, then another, and another, filling the air with raucous racket.

  Diggs looked up at the sky, and then at Michael. “To run.”

  10

  Fishing

  Equinox held the plastic shaker poised above the tropic-warm water, tapping one, two, three times. He watched the blue and orange fish closely as they sluggishly pecked at the yellowish, uneven flakes. The fish appeared distracted today, uncertain in their feeding. They acted almost as if their primitive minds had noted their master’s mood.

  “Do you feel something amiss, little ones? You seem rather agitated. Is it possible you somehow sense my own emotional state?”

  Unlikely, but then the fishes’ proximity to his experiments could not be ignored. Despite exhaustive precautions, they might have been exposed at some point. The possibility bore looking into.

  The computer monitor at his desk chirped. “Dr. Equinox?” inquired a polite female voice.

  Equinox didn’t turn from the fish. “Yes, Colleen?”

  “Belua Nabal has arrived, Doctor. Also, your ten o’clock is waiting on line two.”

  “Excellent.”

  Setting the fish food on the shelf next to the aquarium, he straightened his pristine white lab coat, then took a seat at his desk. The office wasn’t large but, like Equinox, it radiated a sense of strict professionalism. The walls were the dull color of wet cement, bare of pictures or his many awards. Aside from the fifty-gallon aquarium kept on a featureless Plexiglas stand, the desk and two chairs were the only furniture.

  Opening a drawer, he removed a roughly shaped cup of grey stone embedded with tiny silver flecks and set the item on his desk. Nabal would recognize the cup. The belua had delivered it only yesterday.

  “Inform the party on line two I shall be available shortly, Colleen. And send in Belua Nabal.”

  “At once, Dr. Equinox.”

  Equinox allowed himself a slight smile. Equinox wasn’t his real name, but given the nature of his research revealing his true identity wouldn’t have been practical.

  The door to his office opened, and Nabal stepped into the room. The belua had a deep, barrel-like chest and wide, heavy shoulders, hinting at his remarkable strength and athleticism. His face was smooth-shaven and tanned. As always, he wore a pair of dark sunglasses, but Equinox had no doubt that Nabal’s gaze was glued to the cup, and had been from the moment he’d walked into the room—no doubt wondering why the cup was here, rather than in one of Research and Development’s time-locked, hermetically sealed vaults.

  “You wanted to see me, Dr. Equinox?”

  Nabal’s voice was a disarming honeyed drawl, inviting as lemonade on a hot summer day. Equinox made a mental note to promote the speech analyst who’d instructed the belua.

  “Belua Nabal, good of you to come,” Equinox said. He didn’t offer the belua a chair, but gestured instead toward the cup. “I wanted to thank you personally for obtaining this. As you know, our supply of earthbone has run dangerously low. Congratulations are in order.”

  Nabal smiled. “Thank you, Doctor. I was only doing my job.”

  The belua’s pride was obvious, and Equinox gave an inward sigh. He’d hoped for more, but Nabal obviously had not the slightest inkling of his failure.

  Such a promising melding, he thought. But there always seemed to room for improvement.

  “False modesty is a difficult and often useless trait, Belua Nabal,” he chastised mildly. He would need to be firm now. “In your particular case, however, perhaps worth the effort. Failure is not something with which I am comfortable or tolerant.”

  Nabal’s smile drooped a little. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “No? Well, perhaps I can clear things up for you. When one of our urban units flat-lined, I sent you out to investigate. Do you recall your objectives?”

  “I was to determine if the primaries had eliminated our unit,” Nabal answered immediately.

  “And?”

  “And, if the primaries were involved, track them down and retrieve any earthbone they might be carrying.” Nabal nodded to the cup. “I still fail to see the problem. I tracked our downed unit’s GPS tag, engaged the primaries, and retrieved the earthbone. The mission was a complete success.”

  Equinox shook his head. “Your mission, Nabal, was to track and capture the primaries. Retrieval of the earthbone was desirable, but of secondary concern. Therefore, a complete success would have involved you bringing back all of the primaries to this facility, alive. Indeed, I would have considered even one living primary more valuable than this cup.”

  “There were eighteen of them, Doctor, and they resisted. I lost men and hounds.”

  “Fifteen hounds and six good agents to be precise,” Equinox said. “Yes. I’ve read the report. Significant losses—and pointless, absent the capture of a living primary target.”

  Nabal crossed his arms. “I was doing my job. Capturing even one of the little bastards would have cost us dearly in resources. We can’t have more than a few hundred hounds ready for the field, and about half that many belua. How many of them did you want me to waste catching one of your precious primaries?”“

  Equinox tented his fingers before him. “Even now you do not see, and that is what troubles me the most. I fear your animal half has won out over your human reason, Belua Nabal.”

  “Sir?”

  “You are still failing to grasp the larger picture. Either you are being willfully ignorant, or your medication is in need of adjustment. All the human hybrids share certain…urges. Given your actions, I fear it was a mistake allowing you to lead this mission.”

  “I’ve kept up my doses, sir,” Nabal argued. “I’m in complete control.”

  “I think not, Nabal. Cruel as it may sound, we have hounds and agents to spare. What we desperately need is earthbone. Indeed, the cup on my desk is the largest single mass of the element we possess.”

  “And I brought the thing here,” Nabal barked.

  “You did,” Equinox agreed. “I have already congratulated you on that accomplishment. With careful monitoring, this item may keep our research viable for another year. What then, I ask
you? Without the primaries to guide us, we may never find the main deposit.”

  “I don’t…we’ll find more,” the belua suggested lamely.

  “Oh? From where, exactly? The home of the primaries is the only known source of the element, and we have yet to locate the entrance.” Equinox’s eyes hardened. “Do you begin to understand?”

  “The saturation levels in the air—”

  “Are not high enough to track back to the source, and might not be for years. You’ve failed me,” Equinox said. “Moreover, you’ve jeopardized my research. Do you understand what that means? This world is dying, belua. War, famine, disease—they eat away at us all, consuming us like cancer. I am attempting to change all that, trying to save a world from itself.” As he spoke, Equinox’s eyes seemed to catch the light for a moment, flashing like tiny magnesium flares. “I have given my entire life to this cause, sacrificed more than you will ever know, and your reckless bloodlust may have cost us everything. Your mission, belua, was to capture the primaries, not to slaughter them.”

  Nabal paled.

  Equinox paused, closing his eyes for a moment as he gathered himself. He was allowing himself to grow angry, and that was unacceptable. This catastrophe was not Nabal’s fault, not entirely. Still, the belua’s recent behavior suggested a highly improper level of self-importance. What Nabal required was a pointed reminder of his place in the scheme of things.

  Yes. A firm hand was essential here.

  Equinox opened his eyes, regarding the belua with a carefully constructed expression of weary disdain.

  “Despite your mistakes,” he began, “you did well bringing me the cup.” He reached into his desk and removed a yellow envelope, sliding the folio toward the pale belua. “Consequently, I’ve decided not to have you liquidated.” Perhaps that was a bit much, but Equinox hoped the implied brush with death would assist to reinforce his authority over the erratic belua. “Moreover, I’m giving you the chance to redeem yourself.”

  Nabal swallowed shakily. “Thank you, doctor.”

  “In that file you’ll find recorded GPS coordinates of the urban unit you tracked to the primaries, including the unit’s exact location when it died. I want you to go there.”

  “What will I be looking for?” Nabal inquired hesitantly. “We already recovered the unit’s cadaver and the cup.”

  “That’s why I’m sending you. You followed the GPS chip right to the target. Didn’t you find it odd you found the primaries so easily?”

  “Not especially. The primaries made the mistake of taking the tracker’s body with them. They’ve never done that before.”

  “Exactly. So why did they make that mistake this time?”

  Nabal’s face darkened. “They were leading us. The runts knew we could track the body. They were leading us away from something.”

  Equinox leaned back in his chair. “Maybe there’s hope for you after all, Nabal. I want you to go to those coordinates. Flintville, Michigan. Find out what the primaries were trying to hide. Whatever you discover, I want you to speak with me before making any more costly decisions.”

  Nabal took the file. “I will, doctor. You won’t regret this.”

  “I had better not,” said Equinox coldly. “Assemble a scout crew and contact me with an update by the end of the week. Contain and capture teams will follow if you discover anything of importance.”

  Sticking the file under his arm, Nabal nodded and exited the room.

  Equinox rose from his chair and walked over to the aquarium. The fish were now darting about like tiny comets, attacking the flakes he’d put in earlier with hungry abandon. Like him, they appeared more relaxed.

  “Curious.”

  The intercom chirped.

  “Yes, Colleen?”

  “Line two is still on hold, Dr. Equinox. Shall I patch him through?”

  Equinox watched the fish, calculating in his mind the overall likelihood of their contamination. “Tell the general I’m indisposed. However, assure him that I’ve looked over his tests and remain confident his pancreatic cancer will be eradicated within the month. I’ll send him the details of his new medication schedule later this afternoon.”

  “I’ll let him know immediately, Dr. Equinox.”

  “Colleen?”

  “Yes, Doctor?”

  Equinox hesitated. He enjoyed his fish. Over the years, he’d experimented on hundreds of animals, thousands even, but that was different. The tiny swimmers were the only real pets he’d ever owned. He smiled wistfully, knowing he had no choice. Already, he was missing his little friends, but he’d learned long ago he could not save the world without sacrifice.

  “Send a memo to the aquatics division. I want the fish in my office dissected and examined, concentrating especially on inconsistencies or abnormalities in brain activity. I want a full analysis by Friday.”

  “Right away, Dr. Equinox.”

  11

  One Boy

  Michael awoke in a place where the ceiling was just inches from his nose and smelled like old gym socks. He nearly panicked, but then spotted a pile of familiar comic books next to his elbow. He breathed out a long sigh. “This is a new one.”

  Rubbing the grit from his eyes, he squirmed from under his bed and began to get dressed. Today was the day. Two weeks had passed since he’d spoken to Diggs, two weeks with no sign of dollmen or talking cats, two weeks cooped up at the Wiffle home.

  To take his mind off waiting, he’d kept busy practicing with the stonesong, spending hour upon hour sitting on the driveway listening to the pavement. He’d taken to wearing sunglasses to hide his eyes as he learned to control the surging power. The practice seemed to be helping. The driveway was mostly intact, anyway, only a few new cracks. But he was sick and tired of hiding. Plus the Wiffles, especially Barbara, were beginning to get the concerned look foster parents had right before scheduling a visit with the state-appointed child psychologist.

  A tangle of questions filled his mind as he pulled on a fresh T-shirt. Were the Ven still lurking about? Had Diggs found the waystone? Where were the dollmen?

  Two weeks and still no word.

  He needed answers, and it was high time he did a little investigating of his own. He grabbed his sunglasses off the top of the dresser. The frames were a couple of sizes too big. They made him look bug-eyed, but the lenses completely covered his eyes.

  “Have to keep the locals from freaking out if I can. Billy and his goons are probably still having nightmares.”

  Looking into the mirror above his dresser, he allowed a whisper of the stonesong to slip free. Humming energy filled him, and his eyes misted over with silver. His face scrunched up as if he’d eaten a rotten grape. Silver eyes, jeeze. If he ever saw another dollman, he was going to punch him right in the mouth.

  He put on the sunglasses and checked his reflection. The lenses completely hid the metal color of his eyes.

  “Good enough.”

  Closing off the stonesong, he left the room. Zipping down the hall, he took the stairs in three long leaps.

  Barbara was in the living room, busily vacuuming lime-green lint from the sofa. “Going somewhere, dear?”

  “I thought I’d swing by the library, Mrs. Wiffle. Is that okay?”

  Barbara’s face lit up. “Oh, that’s wonderful. You’ve been moping around here since that football game. I was worried some of the boys at the park… Did you have any trouble making friends, Michael?”

  He thought of Billy’s bleeding hand. “No,” he said. “We got along fine. Why do you ask?”

  Barbara turned off the vacuum. “Something has been bothering you,” she said gently. “You know, Michael, some of our other foster children had difficulty adjusting. If there’s anything Karl or I can do to help, all you have to do is ask.”

  He gave her a tolerant smile. “I’m fine, Mrs. Wiffle. No offense, but this isn’t my first town, or my first foster home. You don’t need to worry about me. I can handle things on my own.”

  Hurt, sharp a
nd immediate, colored Barbara’s eyes. “I was only…”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Michael said quickly. “You’re great, Mrs. Wiffle. Only, I’m used to looking after myself.”

  Barbara’s eyes cleared a little. “I’m not your mother, Michael. I know that. But I am here for you. The second you walked through our door you became family, and family helps each other.”

  Family?

  A heavy lump formed in Michael’s throat. Did he really have to do this alone? If he told Barbara what was going on, maybe the Wiffles could…

  No. Diggs said the Wiffles were safer not knowing about Ven. Michael wasn’t going to willingly put them in danger. He cleared his throat and steeled himself.

  “I don’t have any family, Mrs. Wiffle,” he said, a bit more sharply than he intended. “I’m an orphan.”

  “Is that so?” Barbara pursed her lips. “You’re a good boy, Michael, but sometimes you’re made of stone.”

  An iceberg dropped into his stomach. “What did you say?”

  “You’re too hard for a boy your age, too closed off from other people. It’s like your heart is made of rock.”

  “Maybe that’s because I’m never in one place very long,” he replied. “The foster parents I stayed with before liked to keep their kids close to a certain age. Makes sense, I suppose. There’s a big difference between fostering a six-year-old and a sixteen-year-old. But it’s kind of hard to connect when you keep moving every few years. I mean, all that stuff about family sounds great, but an orphan is an orphan. We don’t have families. We have keepers.”

  “Animals have keepers, Michael, not people. I was serious when I said you were family.”

  He stifled a scowl. Why was she pushing this?

  “You’ve only known me for a couple of weeks, Barbara. Somehow, I doubt you want to adopt.”

  Barbara’s looked away. “We would give anything, all that we owned…” She sighed. “I have a heart condition, nothing serious if I remember to take my pills. But I get tired sometimes, and can’t work a regular job. Karl is a good provider, but he doesn’t make all that much money, so the state will only allow us to foster, not adopt.”