Project Aquarius (The Sensitives Series Book 1) (3 page)
Read Project Aquarius (The Sensitives Series Book 1) Online
Authors: Colleen Jordan
Now that he was relaxed, Sammy began to entertain himself with memorized facts. His brain cataloged lots of things, but he especially liked plants. He began to visualize different species of ferns in his mind. Ferns were symmetrical and particularly soothing. Thinking about ferns could entertain him for hours. The stalks, the leaves, the radial patterns. It was all so orderly and order was soothing.
CHAPTER THREE
Cyril had removed all possible imperfections, sheared every single one off the top. He sighed slightly as his palm reported his cranium to be as smooth as a freshly buffed marble floor. The obsessive plucking had paid off.
He shifted attention to his feet, his toes suddenly aware of their confinement in the thick-walled combat boots. To relieve the pressure, Cyril rolled up into tiptoe position, stretching his calf muscles taut, like a child too short to see in the bathroom mirror. His head bobbed in the reflection of the glass office walls. Shadowy wisps of eyebrows stared back in contrast to the blank flesh-domed canvas. Cyril smoothed his pencil-thin eyebrow hairs down with his fingertips. He plucked one that jumped out as longer than its neighbors. The prick of pain, as the hair left its follicle, exhilarated Cyril. His eyes scanned his reflection for more offending body hairs. Everything had to be perfect.
Cyril so desperately wanted the Master’s approval. He had been waiting for this moment since the millennium. And so he would continue to wait, for the signal, for a few more painful minutes in a glass office at the edge of the world.
While he waited, Cyril bit at his nails and drew blood— the taste reminding him of his mother. How she’d lean into the doorway of the kitchen, dirty apron clinging to her haggard form; unclear whether the crooked doorframe was holding her drunk ass up or it was the other way around. Then she’d chastise him about damaging his cuticles as she pulled drag after drag off of her cigarette.
Certain forms of self-destruction had been acceptable in Cyril’s family. But nail biting was not. It was part of his weak constitution, from being the youngest, his mother had always said. Her womb and her patience were all used up by the time he had come into the world.
Cyril had never managed to explain to his mother that the nail biting protected him from far greater forms of self-destruction–– that his thoughts were to be feared, not his insecure habits. That he bit his nails to keep his hands busy, to prevent them from wringing her neck, choking the life out of her, so that she couldn’t judge him anymore…
He took a deep breath–– in through the nose, out through the mouth. His thoughts were trying to betray him again. He chewed more deeply into his nail bed as he waited for a sign from his boss.
The Master was bent over a laptop, typing a flurry of keystrokes, not looking in Cyril’s direction. He typed like a ballet dancer moved. The Master was a man with a purpose, precision, and grace.
Cyril spat a chunk of chewed cuticle on the carpet. He looked at his damaged finger with a strange relief— the gaping hole so appropriately highlighting his struggle between damage and perfection.
Fleetingly, the Master looked up from his screen. Cyril’s heart twirled in anticipation, but the Master grabbed a stack of nearby papers and went back to his furious typing.
Panic crept in to Cyril’s chest. He felt completely invisible. Sometimes Cyril didn’t even feel real… His heart raced and his mind reeled. The waiting was killing him. He took two more deep breaths and reassured himself that all reports from the field were positive. The Master’s army was poised to carry out the plan. Soon Cyril would get the recognition he deserved. They all would. And no one would realize what had happened until far after the fact.
Zero Hour was going to be even more crippling than anticipated. Cyril had added a little special flair on top of the Master’s orders to ensure it. He had finally put his genius to good use. The fact that he was about to outsmart everyone in the world deeply satisfied him in a way he had never felt before. It was a feeling better than making money on a bet, or hunting the most elusive game. It was better than sex.
Cyril exhaled and checked the glowing screen of his tablet. Dozens of blinking red dots indicated that Believers all over the country were ready to synchronize the attack. Militaristic precision would ensure that everything would go according to plan. The world needed this delete button.
As though on cue, the Master finally poked his head out the glass door. “Everyone in position?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. All stations reporting,” Cyril said with pride.
The Master waved him inside the transparent command center. “We’ve been waiting a long time for this.”
“Yes, we have,” Cyril agreed as he stepped over the threshold into the immaculate office.
The sweet perfume of power filled his nostrils. He had waited 15 years for this glory. And he had waited his whole life for the moment when superior intelligence would rise.
“Together we’re unstoppable,” the Master said, as he flourished a few final keystrokes. “For over a decade we convinced private donors to open their wallets to fund our research on the human genome, all for this moment. The world will regret underestimating us.”
Power-hungry predators disguised as harmless researchers— the two had remained undetected for years as they amassed a secret stash of wealth and knowledge large enough to start their own biotech giant, GenetiCorp.
“I can’t wait until everyone knows our names,” said Cyril with a hint of lust in his voice.
“Patience, Commander. We’ll have to lay low for a while. We don’t want to be seen as a threat. We want them to come to us, remember?”
Cyril nodded obediently.
The Master often had to quell Cyril’s grandiosity. This had helped them advance their cause even further.
Cyril checked the scrolling screen of data on his tablet. “The reports are in. The machines are in place.” He made his statement without a hint of insecurity, a skill the Master had taught him, even though Cyril craved validation like a fine wine.
“Wonderful. Zero Hour approaches. Send the group text.”
Now, it was time for the Army of Believers to shake things up. The human race had deviated from its course and things had become grossly imbalanced. Soon, as the Mayans had predicted, the world would change drastically and never be the same.
“Yes, sir.” Cyril’s fingers tingled with anxiety.
Sent.
Everything had led to this moment. It was time.
CHAPTER FOUR
“
Darnell! Back in line!” the teacher barked.
Damn, that lady read his mind.
This was going to be more difficult than he had thought.
In resignation, Darnell gazed down at his pristine white Jordans and stepped back behind his classmates. He had only been in Ms. Harding’s class for two weeks, but she was already onto him.
Darnell looked longingly outside. Escape from this Hell of a school was only a few feet away.
“Don’t even think about it,” Ms. Harding added as the transition line formed next to the big glass doors that led to the playground.
Damn. He had trouble reading his new teacher. She was young and more energetic than the old worn out ones. And she had different methods. It bothered him.
Darnell could read most adults as well as college kids read textbooks. He had learned how at an early age. It was survival. Anticipate Dad’s next move. Read the energy of a drug deal gone bad. Darnell Powell was no fool. And he was only nine.
“Does everyone have sneakers on? Mr. Salinetti likes everyone to be prepared for gym class.”
A few kids stepped out of line and into the coatroom. Darnell saw his chance. As his classmates began to fuss, he expertly pulled off his prized sneakers and hid them behind his back. Then he slipped into the coatroom behind the other kids, careful to keep his shoes away from Ms. Harding’s watchful eyes. Once out of sight, he took a little longer than needed to pull them back on, taking extra care not to smudge the tips.
And then he waited.
“Darnell!” Ms. Harding called.
“Right here, Miss.”
He popped back into view and took his spot at the end of the transition line, right where he wanted to be. He added the ‘Miss’ because he found carefully executed niceties got him further in life.
Ms. Harding smiled with approval.
JFK Elementary was going to be easy to crack after all.
The students slogged forward in the transition line to gym class. While most kids looked down, Darnell kept his eyes up, ready for any opportunity. He observed the cracking linoleum of the hallway floor and the swear word etched in the dark brown door to the boys’ bathroom. He held his breath as the class ambled past the nasty library that smelled like old people.
He noticed everything.
After two weeks at JFK, Darnell had observed so much lameness that he was ready to bounce. In fact, he found every school was pretty much lame in the exact same ways: too many rules, too much silence, and not enough action. He had no clue where he was going to go, but there had to be a better school than JFK. He had heard about one in Somerville that had ice cream every day at lunch.
Darnell’s classmates whispered and giggled as they walked, but he was left out of the joke. In his short time as the new kid, he hadn’t exactly made friends. Actually, Darnell found it hard to connect with other kids. They perceived him as aggressive and unpredictable. And he perceived them as untrustworthy two-faced liars.
A girl two places ahead of him in line turned around, pointed at him, and giggled.
Darnell’s blood heated under his skin.
“Whatever,” he defended. “Hate on me if you gonna.”
The girl’s smile faded and she dismissed him with a nasty hair flip as she turned back around. Darnell didn’t care. He didn’t have time to care about people. With a shrug he put on his emotional armor, ready for battle.
As the class rounded the corner to the gymnasium, Darnell saw that the door to the school kitchen was slightly ajar. The shiny stainless countertops glistened under the fluorescent lights. Loaves of bread, stacked nearly to the ceiling, sat on neon orange pallets on wheels. The open door beckoned to Darnell. It seemed to glow and pop out from the wall, as though engulfed in a halo. He was compelled to act. He just had to.
With three large swift steps, he disappeared behind the door into the steamy backroom of the school cafeteria. He flattened himself behind the stacks of bread, hidden from view.
The lunch personnel were distracted. It was the first period of the day and some were cleaning up breakfast, others beginning to defrost lunch entrees. Darnell knew if he could just make it across the slick floor, thirty feet maybe, he could escape out the emergency exit and be home free.
He stayed low to the ground. Amazing how little adults looked down. They were always busy yapping and making eye contact, two things that made Darnell uncomfortable. Hunched over, he scampered across the kitchen behind the backs of two lunchroom employees.
Then he saw it.
Someone had left the walk-in freezer open just an inch. The big bulky latch hadn’t closed all the way. It was highlighted in a yellow halo, beckoning to him.
Darnell felt an overwhelming urge to go explore the freezer. It happened to him sometimes. This feeling. He had to act on it. It felt urgent and absolutely necessary. Like life or death.
All other thoughts flew out of his mind.
Darnell took his chance. With his best stealth move, he rolled into the freezer ninja style and caught the door with the tip of his toe so it wouldn’t slam. Sweet.
The inside of the freezer was like a closet with tall aluminum shelves that climbed up to the ceiling. Darnell flipped the light on to reveal a hulking expanse of shrink-wrapped food–– a rainbow of beige freezer burn crystals clinging to plastic wrap. So this was what school lunch looked like before they melted the cheese. Nasty.
The freezer’s metal shelves were perfectly constructed ladders that begged to be climbed. Darnell scurried up to the top and sat down on the cold metal rungs. He folded himself into a tiny ball, tucking his knees to his chest.
Then without warning, the door slammed. Someone in the kitchen had seen that it was ajar and closed it. But Darnell didn’t waste his energy freaking out. This wasn’t his first time being trapped somewhere he didn’t belong. He knew there would be an emergency latch somewhere. It took a moment, but he spotted one just to the right of the doorframe.
Everything was back in his control.
Sooner or later someone would come to the freezer to get a forgotten ingredient or more supplies or something. He flipped the lights off. Darnell decided he would wait it out and scare the crap out of someone.
He was good at being funny.
