Cloak (YA Fantasy) (25 page)

Dr. Noctua removed his spectacles and cleaned the lenses with his pinkie feather. “Einstein’s theory is that Immunes are somehow born with enchant instincts, or the ability to connect to the animal side, without having an animal side. It is as though they are wired to be an enchant, but come with none of the hardware. We’ve never been able to prove the theory because the technology wasn’t advanced enough. But your reactions to the enhancers, especially hearing and smell, seem to prove that Einstein was correct.

“What you, Wilhelm, were able to do in seconds would be impossible for a normal Nep and would take the most talented enchant a lifetime. While you obviously are able to instantly master animal traits, the enhancers also appear to magnify your personality traits, like confidence and curiosity. But, as we just saw, you are very susceptible to binding instincts as well.”

“Binding instincts? Is that why I was out of control?”

Dr. Noctua nodded. “Undoubtedly. The scent enhancer allowed you to follow a Builder—absolutely unheard of.”

“But what was one doing here?”

“Just because they’ve been banned from social contact does not mean Builders are not an essential part of enchant life,” said Dr. Noctua. “They are still responsible for the engineering at St. Grimm’s. They do it unseen.”

Dervis shivered. “Don’t remind me.”

Will remembered how the construction noises had stopped in the Great Hall the second the door had opened. It must have been Builders, maybe the same ones that approached him.

“Builders communicate through scent far beyond the ability of most enchants to detect. As Agent Rizzuto mentioned, few enchants have ever communicated with them. Builders can also produce powerful chemical pheromones that trigger instincts in other Builders, forcing them to follow orders. I believe the instinct that seized control of you was simply a to-do note left behind by a Builder.”

Will shook his head. “It seems silly now, but when I was there, it was the most important thing in the world. I felt like I was going to die if I couldn’t find a wrench.”

“Binding instincts are powerful things, especially those that govern insect enchants. They can unite the will of a hive or increase the efficiency of a colony of Builders. But binding instincts also take control of the individual will. Not ideal if you like making your own decisions.” Dr. Noctua smiled without humor.

“So Builders are like slaves?” Will was appalled by the idea of anyone feeling as helpless as he had after sniffing the binding scent.

“It is a way that has served them well for a long time, and it is not our place to judge. But you, Wilhelm, must promise only to use the smell enhancer while under supervision until we can help you overcome binding instincts. I would hate to discover you trying to hang from the ceiling of the atrium to change a light bulb. Builders get such orders all the time, but then they can walk on walls. I’m afraid the results of you receiving that binding task would not end well.”

“I promise I won’t.” Will didn’t want to try the clip again. The hearing enhancer was way cooler anyway, although when he looked at the testing course where he’d done the flip, his legs turned into spaghetti. It was nice to have that sort of confidence, but he promised himself that he’d learn to temper it.

“These two need no adjustment. They seem a perfect fit.” Dervis gave Will instructions for care of the hearing and scent enhancers, placed them in protective cases and handed them over.

After five more minutes of warnings and discussion, Kaya, Manning, Rizz, and Flores made Will say goodbye, and left the doctors chattering excitedly about Will’s newly discovered abilities.

As the door to R&D slid shut, Rizz cleared his throat. “I’m sorry if you felt like a lab rat in there. We shouldn’t have let them do that scent thing. I don’t care if they are doctors. That wasn’t right. You okay, kid?”

“Agreed,” said Kaya. Flores and Manning nodded.

“I’m fine.” Will didn’t understand why everyone was so upset about what had happened. “Really. I’m totally good. It was a little freaky, but it was kind of cool too, ya know? Well, until the end.”

“Yeah. It’s just that—” Rizz looked Will in the eye. “Remember your promise? You swore you’d never go near Builders.”

“Yeah? And I haven’t.” He looked around at the rest of the team who was staring at him intently. “What? You think that now that I can track a Builder I’m going to go try to hang out with them or something? I’m not stupid.”

“We’re just concerned,” said Kaya.

“Well, don’t be,” snapped Will. “If you thought it was scary for you in there, imagine how I felt.”

“The kid’s got a point,” said Rizz.

“I’m not so sure that enhanced confidence is such a good thing for you,” Kaya smirked. “Now, why don’t we get you fed? I hope that’s just the hunger talking.”

Will wasn’t sure if it was just an aftereffect of the enhancers, but he did feel more confident. And he liked it. Strutting just a bit, he followed the team up the tunnel, tucking the enhancers into his bag. The round smell enhancer case fell to the floor and rolled into a hollow nook in the wall, behind a stalagmite.

“Oops. Hold on.” Will turned back to retrieve the case. The nook was deeper than it looked. He bent down and stretched his arm, but the case was still out of reach. Suddenly, the case slid forward, pushed by segmented fingers.

A chill enveloped Will. Something moved in the dark recesses behind the stalagmite. A Builder, smaller than those he’d seen in the Gathering Hall. The blackish-red face studied him from the shadows. Its exoskeleton made its human features a hard, unchangeable mask. A red stripe covered the Builder’s mouth between its mandibles that jutted from its jaws, just below its tiny ears. Its large expressive eyes were fixed on Will with penetrating intensity while its antennae flicked the air.

Will froze.

Slowly the Builder looked down, lifted the case, and placed it in Will’s shaking hand. It looked up and cocked its head to the side, almost like it was curious.

“Kid,” Rizz called down the tunnel. “You okay?”

At the sound of the voice, the Builder skittered backward and disappeared into the dark.

“Kid?”

“Yeah.” Will remembered his promise. “I’m fine. It was just hard to reach.”

Will stared into the dark and tried to shake off his insatiable curiosity. Forcing himself to stand, he followed the agents up the hall. Before they rounded the bend, he glanced at the case in his hand, then back over his shoulder at the nook behind the stalagmite. The smell of earthy black licorice still lingered in his mind.

22

Training

S
t. Grimm’s was swarming with Deputy Liska’s team of steely-eyed ISPA agents. Liska herself kept appearing unexpectedly, attempting to interrogate Will about being in league with the Builder menace.

To counter Liska’s interference, and to keep ISPA from stopping the naturalization, Agent Val Manning made it her personal mission to schedule Will’s every waking moment. She rotated his schedule erratically to keep the snooping ISPA agents confused. Unfortunately, the random schedule had the same effect on Will. Anytime, anywhere Will had to be ready to train for the naturalization test, which seemed like a cross between a cut-throat extreme-fighting match, a grueling college placement test, and the enchant version of basic training.

Twice he’d been dragged out of bed at one a.m. for two hours of “enchant arts training” in the physical therapy room with Agent Manning. Enchant arts was kind of like martial arts, only with claws and horns instead of weapons. After four brutal lessons, all Will had been able to master was how to get beaten up and say “yield” when he didn’t want to get hit any more.

The physical therapy room had a rack of boxing gloves. Most surfaces in the room showed signs of past battles—deep claw grooves along the walls and gouges in the rock pillars that were stained with what looked like blood. Several of the punching bags had bite marks and a four-inch tooth was stuck in one of the chains suspending them from the ceiling.

Will wanted to use his hearing enhancer during the sparring matches, but Manning refused to allow it until he was properly trained in the arts. In the last session, Will managed to land a kick to Manning’s ribs. He was pretty happy about the accomplishment until she celebrated by flipping him on his head and smearing his face across the mat.

When Agent Manning wasn’t using him as a punching bag, Will was either working a shift in the maternity ward, eating, sleeping, or being shuffled from one kind of secret naturalization training to another.

In the Amazon habitat chamber, he practiced stealth and survival techniques with Agent Flores.

“You will be asked to demonstrate how a gerbilchant stealthfully hides from enemies,” stated Flores, snapping a dragonfly out of the air with his tongue.

“And how do I do that?”

“You will find a hole and curl up inside.”

“That’s it?”

“Well, we can’t all be chameleonchants, can we?” Flores smirked into his mirror. He made Will practice crawling under muddy logs for an hour.

Will’s favorite training was tagging enchants with Rizz. The hearing enhancer made tagging a snap.

Will could close his eyes and visualize the front, back, top, and bottom of every enchant that walked by as he and Rizz sat in the lobby, pretending to read newspapers. Will managed to tag a pair of huge jackal enchants before Rizz could—he used the enhancers to peek at their snarling faces under their hoods.

A large portion of the naturalization test would be a written exam. Will spent hours studying enchant history with Dr. Noctua in a secluded section of the library that smelled old and bitter. The scent was distracting at first, until Will realized that the moth enchant librarian avoided the area.

“Mothballs?” asked Will, sniffing the air.

Noctua winked, opened a book and began to explain how a polar bear enchant’s practical joke created the legend of the Yeti.

Will expected his lessons in instinct suppression techniques to be easy since he wasn’t an enchant. However, Kaya had gotten hold of three Builder scent-command samples and kept forcing Will to sniff them while wearing his smell enhancer. The commands were to dance, to bark like a dog, and to swim. It was awful.

Will ended one session barking in Agent Flores’ face. In another, Kaya pulled the clip from his nose while he was swimming laps around Manning on the stone floor of the storage room. Once he snapped out of a binding instinct to find himself waltzing with Rizz.

Will had been so busy studying and darting from one lesson to another, he’d almost forgotten about Agent Liska and her ISPA goons. The same couldn’t be said for the rest of St. Grimm’s.

By day three, there was a general hatred toward Liska throughout the entire hospital. Doctors were tired of being interrogated about their past associations with Builders. Nurses kept finding ISPA microphones under patients’ bed linens. Throughout the mountain, Liska’s reputation for callousness spread like a disease.

Most enchants missed Sergeant Gnar being in charge. He had been relegated to giving out parking tickets and moping around the halls, enforcing rules against noise pollution. Liska had even taken over Sergeant Gnar’s office, claiming that any issue with St. Grimm’s security was likely related to the Builders and thereby under her jurisdiction.

Will was so busy he’d only seen Mars a few times in the past six days. She’d waved while being disciplined by Liska after dumping a vat of petroleum jelly down the tunnel between Cardiology and Gastroenterology. It turned the whole walkway into a giant slide.

Another time, Will passed Mars being marched down the hall by Dr. Bump. He was covered in a gallon of chocolate-alfalfa ice cream. Mars grinned when she passed, and Will bit his lip to keep from laughing out loud. He hated to admit it, but he missed her.

By the end of day four, Will was ready for a break. Enchant arts practice had been brutal. His nose still seemed a little crooked. Kaya’s binding instincts had made him dance the polka. The lecture from Dr. Noctua, about the public relations nightmare caused by a sea turtle enchant skinny dipping in Loch Ness, had lasted three hours. He had mud in his hair and water in his socks from crawling into hiding holes.

Fortunately, it was Rizz and Manning’s turn to escort him to dinner. The last time Flores had meal duty, he brought his own sack lunch. Will had to watch Flores eat a bowl of sesame locusts. It was almost as bad when Kaya brought her food. She was considerate enough to eat away from the herbivores, but the smell of roasted meats and smoked poultry always made Will jealous. Eating with two herbivores would at least let him enjoy his meal without thinking about what he was missing.

Manning prodded Will through the corridors. They were nine and a half minutes behind schedule, and Manning threatened to take it out of Will’s mealtime if he didn’t move faster. The smell of herbs and grilled veggies told Will that they were almost to the cafeteria. That’s when he heard screaming.

Will felt the floor tremble beneath his feet.

“Trouble.” Rizz perked his ears. “Run!”