The Proving (30 page)

“Who?”

“Skye. When she told us to hold our position.”

“Maybe she’s a super-secret double agent and is actually working for the Specters.”

He forced himself not to smile. “That’s not funny.” It was, though. And the fact that Cleo could joke in a time like this actually made him grateful. She made everything feel less intense. He could only imagine her discomfort, being stuck with someone like him. He was utterly incapable of being less intense. It was the anxiety. He was just waiting for the next bad thing to happen.
Expecting
it.

“You’re right, I’m not funny at all. If anything, I’m too serious.” Cleo put her arms down. The computer screen announced that the decontamination process was finished, but the doors on the other side of the room remained shut. “Er, hold on. I need to hack this door, too. Stupid XP9-1 security features.”

“You’re funny,” Ben said. “Just . . . maybe a little inappropriate. I’m not sure you realize when you’re annoying other people.”

“We Persians aren’t known for our people skills. And I’m not here to make friends. In fact, I’d be happy to just get out of here alive at this point.”

“I think you’d make a good friend.”

She looked at him in surprise. Her light brown skin blushed just a bit. “Oh. Well, I didn’t say I was
opposed
to the idea.”

“Good.” Ben crossed his arms. It was obvious she’d taken his compliment the right way, and that pleased him. “I’d welcome your friendship.”

“Fine, we’re friends. Now stop being such a weirdo.”

“I wasn’t . . . uh, was I being weird?”

She nodded. Her dark hair fell over her face. She sighed and pulled it back, tying it in a ponytail to reveal the buzzed sides of her head. She checked her VRacelet again. “And stop saying
um
and
uh
so much. It’s not doing you any favors with the Spartan gal.”

Ben’s face and ears warmed. “Um, what do you mean?”

She looked at him, exasperated. “Dude. Pal. Dasher. You stare at her butt all the time.”

“I don’t!”

“You do.” She shrugged, turning back to her VRacelet and tapping a few buttons. “I don’t blame you. The girl’s got a nice butt. I wouldn’t mind a butt like hers.”

“Uh, you’re attractive, too . . .”

“Please, spare me the pity. You like her, not me. So what? I’ve got a boy back in the city.”

“You do?” Ben’s mind whirred. He may only have time for one question so he had to make it good and precise. “Where did you go on your first date?”

Cleo laughed. “Oh, he took me to an old-fashioned holo-arcade. Didn’t even let me use his credit chip. Can you believe that? I think he paid for a gourmet hot dog and we split it. And it wasn’t even real! It was a Krusto-Brand Synthdog, printed in this dirty old vending machine. I
hate
synthdogs.”

Ben was about to inform her about the amazing flavor advancements in lab-grown meats when the doors opened, revealing more darkness. Cleo entered before Ben could reach out and stop her. The moment she stepped inside, the overhead lights kicked on.

She stopped. Ben hadn’t yet taken a step but the moment his eyes took in the entire facility, his raced forward. Understanding hit harder than the Tumbler crashing through foliage. “No,” he whispered. “No no no no no no.”

The word just kept repeating until there was so little air left in his lungs that they ached. The blood escaped Ben’s head, causing him to go dizzy. He hurried inside, trying to take in everything while his brain struggled to make sense of the images. His eyes panned the massive research lab so fast that everything seemed blurry. It was the water in his eyes. Stinging, salty water . . . a reaction that could only be emotional.

He was on the verge of
crying
.

“No,” he croaked.

“Oh no way,” Cleo said. “No. Freaking. Way.”

To their right were computer terminals, each one sitting atop a tall glass table. On some of the tables were stacks of paper; others were cleaner, with simple mini-tablets and mugs of coffee and a few old-fashioned picto-screens that were still cycling through pictures of families — a boy, then a younger girl, then a man with a goatee kneeling beside both of them on green grass. On one of the tables, a holoscreen displayed a three-dimensional DNA helix, twisting hypnotically in the air. On another table, a touchscreen lay beside a knocked-over can of fizzy drink.

Resource nodules ran along the wall. Thick, reinforced tubes snaked out of the ceiling and disappeared underneath the steel grated floor. Multicolored wires ran to a containment module in the center of the lab. The module was about the size of a standard living room, only instead of couches and a holoscreen there were strange nozzles in the corners and reinforced glass cut into triangles and separated by steel. The thick wires ran along the base, slipping inside at tiered insertion points.

There was nothing inside. But the vidscreens hanging from the outside corners of the module told the story Ben needed to know: there had been a Sebecus Specter inside. The footage running on the screens was dated back just twenty hours ago. The Sebecus Specter, pacing inside the module, snapped its crocodile jaws at the camera. It was big, glowing a darker shade of red than Ben could have ever thought possible.

How had they captured it? A more terrible thought crept into Ben’s mind as he stared at the Specter’s reflection in the glass: had they
fed
it to increase its energy?

“Oh crap, Ben!” Cleo backed up and bumped into him. He held her steady, then gently moved her aside so he could see what had spooked her. He nearly fell back when he saw it.

Another Specter. Only this one was different. Smaller. Much, much smaller, encased in a glass tube like some kind of hideous museum display. A Manteidos, with four little undeveloped wings and a head with a rounded, underdeveloped crest. In Ben’s biology classroom, the instructor had kept a baby mammoth floating in a glass container, its little trunk curled protectively over its midsection. This Specter was a juvenile, too. Its body was curled up protectively, its bulbous insect eyes staring out.

“There’s a shield,” Cleo said in a shaky voice. She took a cautious step closer, examining the red coil wrapped around the steel base of the tube. The coil disappeared into the floor. “This is the power drain. The shield is keeping the Specter inside this tube.”

“It’s probably vacuum sealed,” Ben said. He had to force his eyes to blink. He felt like he was in some kind of strange dream. “That’s . . . that would theoretically make it impossible for the juvenile — the Specter — to move. The shield is a precautionary measure.”

“They’re obviously cautious. Idiots.”

“I’ve never seen one so small,” Ben marveled. “A juvenile suggests they either reproduce or . . . something else. Why have we never learned about this? Why were we never taught this?”

Cleo stepped away, flicking her wrist. Her VRacelet’s VR weapon appeared: two blue, translucent holographic blades. “I could kill it. Right now. And then I can shut down the battery drain.”

Ben fought the numbness that was spreading through his body. It was more intense than it had been before — were the nanobots strengthening his fight-or-flight system? Or were they malfunctioning? Regardless, the feeling gave him just enough courage to walk around the tube, examining the rest of the row of lab tables running beside the empty containment module. Each table had similar a similar tube, but the rest were empty.

With his mind no longer reeling, he could see this place for what it was now. Carnage. Confusion. A body of a scientist lay beside the far table. Stools were kicked aside. One computer screen had been smashed by something heavy. Papers containing chemical readouts were strewn around a single desk that was lined with little molded plastic animals. A coffee cup rested on the floor, its contents spilled between the thin grates.

The
grates
.

Ben looked down. He searched the darkness between the grates, willing his glasses to reveal what was underneath. But of course the glasses couldn’t, not unless he got closer. He took two more steps back, toe-heel, toe-heel, his ears ringing at the sound of his boots’ rubber soles rubbing on the steel grating. A strange, electrical energy pricked at his skin. It was an old, familiar feeling, and he remembered it well: just ten years old, laying in bed under the covers, sure that a terrifying ghost was waiting under his bed, ready to grab him.

“The shield for that big room is shut off,” Cleo whispered. “Something
bad
was in there, though. Wasn’t it?”

Ben nodded, his eyes still searching the steel grates. His hand found his VR pistol and he drew it, quickly double-checking the battery: three-quarters charge.

Something crashed to the floor. Something made of glass. It shattered, and the pieces fell through the floor grating, clinking and tinking.

Cleo’s hand found Ben’s shoulder. His body flinched violently and he felt his heart grow heavy, like a lump of lead. Breathe, he told himself; let the nanobots even things out. He turned to Cleo. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted just enough for her to suck in deep breaths through her mouth. She was regulating her breathing — good, he thought. They had to think clearly. Something else was in this room. What would Skye do?

“Kill it,” he told her.

Cleo walked past him, toward the tube holding the small Specter. She swung her fist and her VR blades slashed through the glass, slicing the little yellow Manteidos in half. It disintegrated, leaving the glass unbroken. “Good riddance,” she hissed.

“Can you . . . can you access the lab’s computer circuits?” he asked quietly.

She shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. But if you’re asking whether I can hack into their research computers, the answer is a definite yes. The only problem is they don’t have a Wi-Fi signal in here. It’s a security precaution.” She raised her VRacelet. Her twin blades shimmered as her hand passed through them to reach the touchscreen. She opened a program with a teddy bear icon. “We have to do it the old-fashioned way. I need to plug in to one of the consoles.”

Ben barely heard her voice. A million thoughts ran through his head. This place couldn’t be real. What was happening here defied everything he’d been taught. The Specters were too dangerous to study, even in controlled experiments. Small Phenocyte reactors were unreliable, which was why there were only large ones in each city. Everything about this was wrong. Too risky. Too dangerous.

“They lied to us,” he whispered. He could almost feel his raging amygdala taking over his entire brain. It was hard to think straight. It was hard to think about anything except all of the non-answers his teachers had given him about the mysteries of the Specters. “Everything we learned in primary school about the Specters . . . it was never the full truth.”

Cleo grabbed his arm, tugging. “So maybe we make them pay. Let’s get the data from here and see what we can find.”

“Yes. OK.” He followed her to the consoles on the other end of the lab. As they passed the large containment module, they both turned and looked inside. Where was the Specter that had been in there?

Something crashed somewhere on the other end of the lab. Ben turned, aiming his pistol. The little CPU in his glasses highlighted and identified the glass coffin-shaped objects sitting in neat rows along the opposite wall:

OCEANUS CONTAINMENT UNIT (MILITARY GRADE)

DESIGNED BY: TYRANIUS INDUSTRIES, CLAN PERSIA

PURPOSE: CLASSIFIED

“We’re all in on it,” Ben said. “All the clans. Everyone knows about this place.”

“Everyone with a Level One clearance,” Cleo clarified, reaching underneath the nearest glass console and pulling a thin blue cord from a small gray component box. She plugged the cord into her VRacelet, flicking her wrist to turn off the proton blades. “Not many people have a Level One clearance.”

“Skye’s dad has a Level One clearance.”

Cleo looked up into his eyes. Whether she intended it or not, she gave him a look that told him not to think about it. “This is gonna take a minute.”

Another crash, this time closer.

“Ok seriously, what the hell
is
that?” Cleo asked. She checked her VRacelet. “I’m picking up another energy spike.”

Ben searched the empty room, pointing his pistol. “It’s a Specter, somewhere underneath our feet. It must have a strong energy field to be disrupting material objects. We should leave. This entire place is one big mistake. We shouldn’t be here and they never should have been here, either.”

“We’re
totally
going to leave.” Cleo typed furiously on her touchscreen, bringing up a new suite of commands. “But if we want this information, you’re gonna have to pull your head out of your ass for a few minutes.”

The coarse language surprised Ben, enough to pull his mind back from the distracting memories of all his classes on the Specters. He searched the room again. There! Just in front of the large containment cell, in the floor: a soft, yellowish glow. A Specter lurking underneath the floor grating. A juvenile, just like the one Cleo had killed.

“I see it,” Ben said, aiming his pistol. “I can’t shoot through the floor. Isn’t there anything you can turn on?”

“There’s a dozen different things I could
turn on
,” Cleo said, “if we had enough power. This place has twenty-three different safeguards to make sure this exact problem never happens and all twenty-three shut off the moment the Phenocyte reactor was damaged and systems reset. The emergency battery isn’t powerful enough to start up any of these processes.”

The yellow glow moved closer to them, underneath the body of a gray-skinned man, his lab coat splayed loosely over his back like a white funeral shroud. His fingers danced — he was alive! — then went still as the glow moved past him.

The ring. The silver wedding ring on the man’s finger. It had reacted like a magnet to the Specter’s energy. Ben could see a little of it through the grating now. It
was
a juvenile; its energy waves were having a magnetic effect on the silver ring.

It moved closer. Quickly.

“Up,” Ben ordered.

“What —”

“Jump up on the table,” Ben said. “Hurry!”