Dante

  “Lost memories seem more like Ghost’s specialty,” I observe.

  “If post-hypnotic triggers are the culprit, then yes,” Chris agrees. “But they might not be the cause. And even if they are, Ghost doesn’t normally handle the fallout.”

  “Fallout?” I raise an eyebrow. “You’re expecting me to have a nervous breakdown, or something?”

  “Leaning towards ‘or something’,” Anton says. “But that doesn’t mean it’ll necessarily be anything emotional or psychological with you.” He looks uncomfortable, but forges ahead. “Look, you’re not the only person who might be impacted. And Ghost usually doesn’t start chains of dominoes falling. She kind of knocks them all over at once, if she doesn’t turn them into shrapnel.”

  “And you’re saying I’d turn into shrapnel?”

  “I’m saying she might help you, and in so doing, knock over someone else who’s a very big bomb.”

  “You don’t trust her?”

  “I do. But we put a ton of responsibility on this one 15-year-old kid because she happens to be the best in the world at what she does. Even though we know her whole modus operandi is to blow up absolutely everything in her path and then see where the dust settles.” Anton spreads his hands. “Besides, this all goes back to ‘and you’re not ready to hear it yet.’ When you are, we can talk.”

  “But don’t ask Ghost, in the meantime.”

  “I can’t make you do anything. Just don’t expect her to hold your hand afterwards, if she can get you any answers at all. She’s a chaos agent – in a good way, but she totally is.”

  ***

  Speaking of Ghost, our first conversation went predictably.

  That is to say, in all different directions, with little rhyme or reason.

  “So,” I began, “I don’t suppose you’re in dire need of my help or anything?”

  Ghost snorts. “I think that’s my line, Dante.” She shifts a small, white fuzzy bag on her shoulder. One in the shape of… a shark? Odd.

  “Is someone else going to ambush me?” I ask, seriously. Ghost may seem casual, but up until today, exactly 100% of the times I’ve run into her, she was trying to save me from being mindwiped into a fate worse than death.

  Technically, I’ve only run into her once before, but it made an impression.

  “Not to my knowledge,” Ghost admits. “I matriculated.” She holds out an ID. “See, one proud new student of Waycross Academy.”

  I take the ID. The smiling face of one ‘Galen Anders’ stares back at me.

  “Is that your real name?” I ask.

  “Of course,” Galen replies. “No point in hiding it now. The Circle’s definitely figured out who I am. And the government starts watching whenever I pop up, just in case they pop up.” She laughs. “Which I’m sure drives them even crazier.”

  “And you’re here now because?”

  “To further my education. A girl can’t be homeschooled forever, y’know.” Galen gives me a practiced guileless look that looks, well, full of guile. “Oh, and also because Circle activity has shifted south, and seems to be converging on this city. Either I scare them away, or throw a hundred monkey wrenches in everything they’re trying to do.”

  “Huh,” I respond thoughtfully, and not for lack of words. I can think of a dozen different things I could say, but even if I’ve saved her life, I did it while she was saving mine, and I still owe this kid. Also, she’s probably the world-leading expert on something of intense interest to me anyway, especially given a couple of memory gaps I’m dealing with.

  Ghost gives me another carefully rehearsed ‘spontaneous’ innocent look, extends the toe of her sneaker to touch the paving stones, and then twirls in place. Leaving a barely visible mark behind… in the shape of a Circle.

  Subtle.

  “What does your family think of what you’re doing?” I ask a question which has been in the back of my mind for a while. “Or do they know?”

  “My brother thinks the best defense is a good offense, and he’s the only family I have left.” She shrugs. “We’re also down here because a lot of his business shifted in this direction, especially to Waycross.”

  “Business?” I ask.

  “He’s huge in biotech,” Ghost clarifies. “Fenrir Technologies. They…” She searches for a description.

  “Automate in-silico simulations to test potential treatments, and wet labs to test promising treatments physically – at scale.” ‘Scale’ meaning thousands or even millions of times via tiny cell samples and tiny drug and other doses.

  Fenrir did its own research, but was also the engine behind hundreds of startups – and established medical-research companies. Their infrastructure was immense, but then the company was a titan.

  So yes, I knew exactly who she was talking about.

  “Oh, you know us then?” Galen says. “I can arrange a tour. Even get you some swag from our gift shop.”

  “I’d like that,” I admit.

  “Anything for my bud,” she says, punching me playfully but fast in the shoulder. “Ow.” Galen pulls back her hand, shaking it. “I guess they weren’t overselling the whole ‘muscles of steel’ thing,” she remarks.

  “Sorry,” I say. And I am. She tapped me faster than I could loosen my muscles, and hard enough to hurt… herself. “You surprised me.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “That is the idea,” Galen observes.

  We swap contact info, and before the end of the week I have a cool Fenrir hat and Galen guiding me on an even cooler Fenrir tour.

  Their merch and facilities are all white. Which kind of figures.

  ***

  And she’s not the only one showing off beyond-cutting-edge facilities.

  The Aspect cousins keep giving me the rundown on all the tech we have access to as Archons, and I have to admit, it’s impressive.

  And, as Andrea describes it, already running out of control. For all that we’re basically a bunch of Enhanced high-school and college students using the castoffs of our slightly older predecessors, and whatever we can scrounge, download, swap or build ourselves.

  “Add one technology that amplifies technological progress to another. And then another. And then another. It never stops.” Andrea waves a hand at a wall sensor, and the gleaming double doors slide aside with a whoosh.

  She steps forward into a vast chamber filled with holographic monitors suspended in the air, endless sensor views and scrolling data running across them. I follow.

  “Nice view.” I suppose I could at least try to sound impressed. After a while, though, one digital world looks much like another, so matter how much you polish it up.

  Andrea waves once more and everything disappears. We’re on the sidewalk again, which fortunately follows the same path as the corridor, or some bus would have ended our tour faster than my unconcealed apathy.

  I’ve been getting a lot of my lectures via VR and AR, with Andrea sending visuals for the sites we’re touring straight to my sunglasses and bonus audio right to my earbuds.

  Given the locations they have access to, it all looks incredibly impressive. Or they’re just ripping off videogame graphics to intimidate me.

  Unfortunately, given the tech they’ve thrown around like it’s nothing, I’m pretty sure my virtual tours are real.

  “So you built all of this for what? To impress the new kids?” I fight the urge to roll my eyes. “Ever heard the word overkill?”

  Andrea shrugs. “Intelligence,” she says, “opened more pathways than Kestrel’s wormhole. And if the world is moving fast out here,” a flick of her fingers takes in the street and the city, “imagine what’s happening beneath the surface. Where no one has to explain or exonerate anything.”

  “What is happening?” I ask. Meanwhile I think, Kestrel’s wormhole?

  Andrea snorts. “It’s a carnival.”

  ***

  An hour later, and my carnival ride isn’t over, but it’s gotten a lot more interesting. I’m physically there, for one thing.

  I’m staring at what looks like the prototypes for stealth jet drones, quantum sensors and, oh yes, actual power armor scattered over several workbenches.

  All of which pales in comparison to the main attraction.

  “So…” I observe. “You’ve got plans for a mecha.”

  Blueprints are spread out over a huge drafting table in one corner of the… well, on the outside it’s a barn. On the inside it’s a white-walled workshop with a couple tons of 3D printers, plasma cutters and CNCs alongside a few pieces of dated equipment like lathes and, of course, the drafting table.

  Which clearly has plans for a 30-foot mecha laid out on top of it.

  Plans which could be just an AI mockup or the work of an imaginative art student who knows what engineering specs look like, but this doesn’t look like a fake design. ‘The equations,’ as my old middle school math professor Dr. Grimm would put it, ‘balance.’ I have to say, I’m beginning to feel a bit unbalanced. Because you can tell this is more than just cool art with a few convenient black boxes bolted on. Though small-print references to things like ‘aneutronic reactors,’ ‘quantum entanglement comms,’ ‘plasma jets,’ and ‘shielding for wormhole transit’ make me wonder if they have all the underlying technology yet.

  Or any idea how to do it at all.

  ‘The 64-trillion-dollar question,’ as Uncle Barry would say.

  “Oh, those,” Andrea says dismissively as she opens a wall safe. “That’s just Arden and Christopher’s nostalgia corner. She drew those up years ago.” She strides in my direction. “Fortunately, we got her to focus on more-productive ends.”

  “Like the flying bike we trashed?” I ask wryly, glancing up from the plans. Prodigy or not, I know enough about engineering to realize this thing looks workable. Which is incredibly impressive, especially depending on how many years ago she drew it up. Pre-AI? I wonder.

  Andrea rolls her eyes as she approaches. “A bit more interesting than that.”

  I can finally she has something in her hand. My skin prickles. Perhaps there’s something in the air, perhaps it’s just premonition. “Interesting how?” I ask.

  She holds up a small vial of glowing, translucent purple liquid. “Quantum dots,” Andrea says.

  “That’s impressive.”

  “Not really. Ten nanometers and larger, you can even get them working at room temperature.”

  “Huh. Ten nanos? Not so large, anymore.”

  “Yes. The tech caught up with our needs.” She holds the vial so that a ray of sunlight slices through the glowing liquid. “And then Arden caught up with our enemies.”

  “What do they do?”

  “That’s the impressive part. Quantum dots can simulate atoms or contain quanta or charged particles. Including anything that interacts with the more… exotic energies we’ve seen alongside our interdimensional interlopers, or as fallout from technology so advanced it breaks our models and all the rules.”

  I nod in understanding as I gaze at the glowing vial. “So you’ve got a scanner for them, or at least a proximity alarm.”

  Andrea nods. “And the with processing power we have access to, more than that. We’re building tools to affect, to analyze, to adapt, to…”

  “To reverse engineer whatever we can,” Arden interrupts, walking into her workshop-lab. “And figure out what we need to bury or burn and never speak of again.”

  I blink at them both. “We’re… teenagers.” I could have just said ‘kids.’ Exceptional kids, teens, whatever, but still, I had the weirdest feeling a bunch of high-school students were deciding the fate of the world on their own.

  “Barely,” Andrea snorts in answer.

  “We’re Archons, Dante,” Arden adds. “That’s the whole point of the network. We’re not doing all of this on our own, anymore.”

  I look around, shaking my head. “I’m not sure what you need me for,” I admit. And that’s before I saw the mecha diagrams.

  “Another Paragon?” Arden asks with a snort. “Everything.”

  “Speaking of which,” Anton drawls, trailing into the room after Arden, “we’ve even got a mission for you – today – if you’re willing to take it.”

  “A mission?” I ask. I blink. “Already.” I raise my eyebrows. It’s useful to be easily read. Because when you’ve practiced your tells, you can switch them out as needed. Just in case you ever have to act simple minded and easily led when your new classmates propose sending you off on a dangerous mission.

  As a random example.

  Anton waves away my concerns. “It’s important, given what we’ve learned in the last 24 hours, and super-easy. But only you can do it.”

  “Because of my Paragon numbers?” I ask, dubiously.

  “Um, because of your library card,” Anton says.

  Okay, maybe I’m not being used as cannon fodder, here. Anton doesn’t seem the type, really. He’d probably think it was more fun to do a suicide mission himself, if he could.

  “My card?” I blink in disbelief. “You have this much tech, and I’m the only one with a card?”

  “Not exactly,” Andrea interjects. “Your Uncle Barry is a major donor to Waycross Academy, and you’re allowed to use his card. He has unlimited access to the restricted archives for the university library connected to Waycross, and we’ve recently learned their donations include some rare texts donated by your grandfather, Quentin Price.”

  I stare at her. “And…?”

  Arden shifts uncomfortably. “The AIs picked up on it. Some grad student published a paper citing one of those books a few weeks ago, and included some photos of key pages from The Life of the Mind. Most of your granddad’s texts are pristine, but a few – the ones he’s really interested in – look to be covered in scrawls.”

  “All his notes from whatever he was working on at the time,” Anton adds. “We’re pretty sure this comes directly from the time he was on the Island, or just before, working on post-hypnotic suggestions to prime all of us.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “I could just ask him about it,” I point out.

  “And that might work,” Andrea says. “But he was involved, and he might just cover his tracks and alert the wrong people that we’re looking into it, even if he didn’t do this intentionally. And even if he doesn’t, we can’t assume he’d give us a full rundown of everything he used at the time. Considering what happened to the Island, those notes might not exist anymore.”

  “But an original version, or at least one full of hints and examples, definitely still exists,” Arden continues, “based on the fragments we’ve seen.”

  “This book is probably our Rosetta Stone,” Anton summarizes. “And you could just stroll in there and get what we need without raising suspicion. You wouldn’t even have to check it out. Probably shouldn’t, even if you could.”

  Arden holds up a small, silvery cylinder – maybe 2-inches tall – with a small cap on top. She pulls the top off to reveal a couple of buttons and a few tiny lenses.

  “Just pull the book,” Arden says, “hold this over the covers and every single page as you page through it, and you’re done.”

  “And then bring Arden’s non-destructive miniscanner back here to download it,” Anton adds. “But yeah, that’s about it.”

  “And with that, you can…” I prompt.

  They exchange glances.

  “Between what we remember clearly and what we can piece together from his work,” Andrea says, “we should be able break any mental blocks and defuse any traps left in our heads.” She pauses, and locks eyes with him. “It may not seem like much, but it’s incredibly important that we do this. And you can get the data without arousing suspicion and have it back here before anyone can interfere. Whereas if we try to arrange access and then go…”

  “Anyone watching you will get a heads up and can get there first. Or just burn that part of the archive or something.”

  “They said you were quick,” Arden observes. “So, how ‘bout it?”

  I leave with her device in my pocket and a sinking feeling in my stomach. Not that they’re asking me to do anything illegal, or even difficult, but if there’s one thing the last few days have taught me, it’s that these things could snowball fast.

  I just hope I’m not about to surf another avalanche.

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