The Proving (23 page)

But Seamus? Seamus wasn’t like them. Seamus
couldn’t
be like the others. Or maybe Ben was just being gullible. Maybe Seamus knew tons of secrets that he would take to his grave. The thoughts and feelings swirled around inside Ben’s head as he stared up at the glowing Ring. He was too trusting, that was his problem. Too anxious. Too trusting. Too soft. Definitely not Skye’s type.

Did she steal glances at him when he wasn’t looking? Did her beautiful eyes land on him and stay frozen there for intermittent periods of time? Should he look her way right now and try to catch her? He shouldn’t be thinking all this. There was more important stuff for his brain to focus on. Did she maybe notice that his face was actually pretty symmetrical? Studies showed that people consistently found symmetrical faces more attractive than asymmetrical faces . . .

“Ben.”

He sat up, surprised to see Cleo standing over him.

“We need to go talk,” she said. “Come on.”

He got up, staying crouched as he followed beside her. “Uh, is it a good idea to stand up? If a nearby Specter sees us . . .”

“We have bigger things to worry about.” She stopped at the doorway, waiting for him to reach her. His hamstring muscles burned from walking in a crouch. He wondered if it was the nanobots, finding the little tears in the muscle and nudging his body’s satellite cells to fuse to the muscle fibers.

He glanced over his shoulder, to where Tahlia was laying splayed out on her sleeping bag, spread-eagle. One of her hands had reached out, resting on Reza’s face. He didn’t want to leave the kids. “Are you sure this can’t wait?”

“Yup. Come on.”

He followed her down the stairs. At the bottom, there seemed to be a slightly reflective piece of plastic wrapped across the doorway. Cleo walked through, then motioned with her head for Ben to follow. “It’s OK. I just amped up the personal shield a bit since we have so much battery juice. It only covers the doorway so it doesn’t have to work as hard as, say, when it’s wrapped around our bodies. Or a big Tumbler.”

Ben walked through, expecting some kind of jolt but feeling nothing. He was sufficiently impressed. Enough to temporarily forget about Skye’s beautiful eyes. The left side of his brain — the logical side — thanked Cleo for the reprieve.

“So your corpse —”

“Mrs. Walker,” Ben corrected her, following her to the glowing computer console.

“Right. Mrs. Walker. She has an interesting history, professor. Take a look.” Cleo brought up a file on a holoscreen, letting it float over the console. She used her fingers to widen the file, then flipped it to the second page. All of the blacked-out information was revealed. Ben read slowly, trying to make sense of it all. None of it was part of her medical record. “This doesn’t make sense,” he said. “This is a data set from a study.”

“It’s a Blackops file,” Cleo said. “Serious stuff. Now check this out.” She used her finger to flip to another page. Ben read through the contents and gasped.

Undisclosed facility.

Top-secret research.

Specters.

“What are they waiting for?” Cassidy asked in a quiet voice. “Why don’t they come for us?”

Skye sighed. Had the boy paid
any
attention in classes? “They’re too far away to sense us. If they get closer, we may have a problem. But for now, they’re content to wander.”

“Like ghosts.”

Ghosts aren’t real.

She watched them. There were more than a dozen Specters deep inside the forest, their glow illuminating the leaves of the trees. A dozen more wandered along the road leading back to the main highway that led to Neo Berlin. Skye watched a bright orange Sebecus walk across the road, spilling its glow over the old, blistered concrete. Its long, spiked tail hung in the air. The orange-red glow on the trees changed as the creature moved beneath the canopy of leaves. Searching the forest. Drifting.

Like a ghost.

Cassy adjusted his Ecosuit. “They’re not as scary up here.”

“Good,” she said. “Father would be happy to hear you say that.”

“But you
were
scared,” Cassy said. He moved his VR pistol to his right hand. “When you were attacked in the basement, right?”

“Keep your pistol in your left hand,” she said.

“My hand is getting sweaty.” He used his teeth to pull off his glove, then looked over his shoulder toward where the others were sleeping. He yawned. “Who’s going to keep watch while we sleep?”

“No one. I’m not sleeping.”

“You have to sleep. Everyone has to sleep.”

“I don’t trust anyone else to stay awake.”

“You sound like Father.”

“Thank you.”

“I was trying to be mean.”

The words stunned Skye. Now she realized why he’d taken his glove off, and she grabbed his hand before he could bring it to his mouth. “Don’t bite your knuckles!” she whispered harshly. “Why can’t you stop that?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Well, it’s senseless,” she said. “It’s a sign of weakness.”

He didn’t answer. Skye sighed, feeling guilty.
Stupid, stupid. Why do you get so mad all the time? It’s not his fault he’s weak. Father’s the one who coddles him
. She reached down, grabbing her tray of half-eaten rations sitting on the rampart. “Here. Take my peas.”

“Really?”

“You’re the one who loves these things, right? Who else am I going to give them to?”

He holstered his pistol to his belt and grabbed the tray. Skye turned back to the forest, watching the glow of the Specters. If only they followed some kind of pattern. If only there was a way to gauge what they were thinking.

They’re not thinking anything. They’re just like jellyfish, doing whatever is in their nature. Unthinking. Unfeeling. That’s what makes them so dangerous.

She turned away, not interested in watching the things in the forest anymore. They were far away and no danger — yet. The camera on her glasses cut through the darkness, trying its best to maintain the natural colors of the setting for optimal judgment and projecting the night vision onto the smartglasses’ lenses. The night vision setting didn’t work particularly well. The sleeping bags were a dark red. The solar panels were black. But everything was a shade of green.

There were more Specters to the north. Much farther away, their glow barely noticeable as they moved across the mountain. None of the flying giant insect species. The Manteidos.

The flying species have a pattern. Explain that, Clan Athens. Try and figure out why the Manteidos migrate.

Maybe Clan Athens
did
know why the Manteidos seemed to follow the warm weather, despite only coming out at night like their Sebecus brethren. Maybe Clan Athens knew why there were two distinct species of Specter. Maybe Clan Athens just wasn’t sharing, despite the alliance. Maybe Clan Athens had a solution for the Manteidos’ constant attacks on the aerial drones and simply refused to share it to make Clan Sparta look foolish.

Yikes. I really am turning into Father.

“You know how tall those mountains are?” Cassy asked, spooning a nutrient-rich mixture of peas and goo into his mouth.

“How tall?” Skye asked.

“Four thousand meters.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve been taking geography class as my elective this year. I told you that a million times.”

“Oh. Well, what else do you know?”

“Tahlia says there’s deer in those mountains. And wolves and snakes and hamsters. She says the farther away animals are to the cities, the more Specters leave them alone.” He ate another spoonful. “It’s like they’re looking for something, don’t you think?”

“Yes. They’re looking for delicious creatures to eat.”

Cassy shook his head. “Mmm-mmm. It’s more like . . . they seem lost.”

Skye’s eyes panned the peaks of the mountain range. From this distance, the Specters looked like nothing more than glowing orbs. She’d once read a story about a ghost that carried a lantern up a mountain every year, and anyone who followed him would disappear forever. Father had told that story when she was young, before her Spartan training had begun. Back then, he’d been stern and serious and gruff but he sometimes found an opportunity to smile when they were in the privacy of their home.

After he’d told the story to her, after he and Mother had gone to sleep, Skye had reached into the safe-keeping box under her bed and pulled out her little Maggie doll. It was a gift from a citizen boy in primary school who had thought she needed one. She would tell Father’s stories to Maggie, brush her curly red hair, straighten her white overalls, then put Maggie under the covers before going to sleep.

She did this for three years. Every night, she told Maggie a story, or told Maggie about what she did that day, or told Maggie about the great things her family had accomplished.

And then, on the first day of her Spartan training, she woke up and Maggie was gone.

“Skye?” Cass said. “They’re back.”

She turned to the doorway. Ben and Cleo were walking toward her. A strange feeling of jealousy crept over her.
Stop it. What do you care if a Persian and Athenian find a little time for extracurricular activities?
The feeling refused to go away. The feeling seemed to be telling her it had every right to be inside her body, and would remain there, thank you very much.

“We need to wake everyone up,” Ben said. “We have . . . um, an emergency.”

“What do you mean?” Skye asked sharply.

“He means crap is about to hit the fan,” Cleo said.

“I don’t understand your weird language,” Skye snapped. “What do you mean?”

“Mrs. Walker,” Ben said.

“The corpse,” Cleo added.

Ben nodded. “She . . . had secrets.”

Skye stared at them a moment, waiting for more. But apparently that was all they were willing to say. “Fine. Wake everyone up, then. Cassy, let’s go.”

They walked to the others. Ben reached down, gently waking them one by one. Wei sat up, looked around, and immediately started whimpering; Gabriel grabbed her and held her close. He shivered, looking up at the Ring. Skye watched his expression — not fear, but rather a sort of angry wariness. She respected that, at least. The Parliamentarian was pampered, but his eyes saw the Ring right.

“What the heck time is it?” the chubby Persian boy asked, rubbing his chubby cheeks. “It’s freezing.”

Cleo sat crossed-legged beside her brother. “It’s late. Or early. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. We need to have a chit-chat.”

She tapped a few buttons on her VRacelet and a map appeared on the screen. She held out her wrist, letting everyone get a look. Their sleepy faces were bathed in the white glow of the map; the reflection of a little red blinking destination bounced on Wei’s pale forehead. Skye leaned in to get a look, then moved aside so Cassy could see, too.

Check your six.

Her heart skipped a beat, as if expecting another Specter to have quietly appeared somewhere on the rooftop. But it was empty. Only a few spots of fiery orange luminescence in the expansive forest to the east. And a few stars poking out near the horizon, far enough away from the Ring for darkness to take root.

“What are we looking at?” Gabriel asked.

“A research facility,” Ben explained. “It’s about twenty kilometers northwest of here. It doesn’t appear on any of the Tumbler’s maps. Judging from the rest of the information we found in Mrs. Walker’s file, no one is supposed to know it exists.”

“So how do
we
know where, exactly, it is?” Skye asked.

“Because there’s a distress signal coming from the location,” Cleo answered. “And not a public distress call, either. Otherwise, the Tumbler’s computer would have automatically picked it up. This is like a super-duper top-secret distress call that I only found because I punched Mrs. Walker’s clearance into the computer and bypassed a Cobra firewall. It was pretty tense.”

“What kind of distress call is it?” Gabriel asked.

Ben and Cleo looked warily at each other. “Specter attack,” Ben finally answered.

Adrenaline coursed through Skye’s body. She couldn’t fight the urge to look around again. She had the terrible feeling that some
thing
was watching them right now. The tactical voice in her head that had been reassuring her of the roof’s strategic advantages was conspicuously quiet now. And without that voice, any illusions of safety she’d built up in her head seemed to shatter. They weren’t safe here. They weren’t safe anywhere.

They should have risked the drive home.

What are you thinking, girl? Most Spartans dream of this opportunity. Glory! That’s what it’s all about!

She looked down at Cassy. Her brother was on his knees, peering over the rampart at the mountains to the north. His bare hand found his mouth and he began biting his knuckles one by one.

“So what do we do?” Gabriel asked. “We contact someone, right?”

Cleo shook her head and pointed to the Ring above. “Still no satellite feed yet. The electrical disruption must have really done a number on them.”

“So we go,” Gabriel said. “When?”

“Now,” Cleo answered without hesitation. “Now, now, now. We gotta go help them.”

“Wait,” Skye said. “That’s not protocol. At daylight, as soon as the satellites are back up, we contact Parliament. For all we know, they’ve already received the distress call.”

“If that’s true, then there’s already a Spartan assault team on-site and they can escort us home,” Cleo said. “Come on! The corpse’s data card says there are eighty-six people at this place. We can’t just leave them!”

“We can,” Skye said. “And we will.”

“That’s not your call to make,” Gabriel said. “As crazy as it sounds . . . I agree with Cleo. If there are people in danger, we can’t just leave them to die.”

“We’ve got a fully charged Tumbler, which is pretty much a tank,” Cleo said. “And it’s a short distance. And all of our personal shields are mostly charged, too. I can even bring one of the spare ION batteries with us so we have plenty of juice.”

“What about our secondary objective?” Skye asked. She didn’t like this. They were talking about disobeying a direct order from the premier. They were talking about going out of their way to put the entire Coterie — including the premier’s son and daughter — in danger. The Specter in the basement had been unexpected. This was different.