Ryan looked out the helicopter window. It was still dark, but the moon provided enough illumination that he could make out vague features on the ground below. Over the dark wing, he saw miles of treetops, glowing white in the moonlight filtered softly through the clouds. Sciarpa sat across from him, chin propped on her palm, gazing out the window. He watched her, keeping his head turned to the window. In spite of her biting sarcasm and endless teasing, she was capable of sincere genuineness, which Ryan had seen only briefly. He turned back to the window, silently reviewing what he knew about 217.
Their helicopter landed a few dozen yards away from the house. The other helicopter had landed a short distance away, and a man in thick armor carrying his helmet under his arm was walking towards them. He and Sciarpa exchanged a brief salute before he began briefing them.
“Our team arrived twenty-five minutes ago ma'am. We've been through the whole house, it's clear. We found the testing room; two chambers in the basement,” he quipped in a loud, curt tone.
“Good work,” Sciarpa answered. Her voice was soft, Ryan noticed. He wondered how long she had been on duty. “No one went in either chamber?”
“No, ma'am. Protocol was followed.”
“Good, thank you. I’ll take it from here.”
“There’s something else,” the lieutenant said, stopping her. “The house was empty when we got here. No children, no weapons, no drugs. Clean.”
Sciarpa looked at him for a moment, mulling this over. “Alright. Thank you.”
She turned and started for the house, and Ryan followed. He had no idea what the abandonment of the house meant, but it didn’t sit right. Normally when a harvester’s house was raided, the teams busted open the doors, and screaming kids were scrambling all over the place. Sometimes the older ones would hear the helicopters before they landed, get guns and shoot at the soldiers. That was one instance where the clause “non-lethal force” actually meant something: they would never risk hurting a Natural, and at a distance it was impossible to tell which ones were and were not of value. 217’s house was dark, and quiet: someone had cut the power lines to the house, they were not told whether it was the security team or someone else. Ryan followed Sciarpa up the creaking, aged porch steps and into the house. Her heels clacked loudly on the hard wooden floor. The house was old, and well used: the walls were covered in warped, peeling wallpaper the color of coffee stains, the floorboards were unvarnished and uneven. Sciarpa could tell it had been built by hand: the ceiling height varied from room to room, and the corners were not square. Looking around, she saw that nothing was square or even, adding to the surreal quality of the house.
Sciarpa told Ryan to check the second floor; he wasn’t allowed in the testing chambers. For some reason, the floor was carpeted; he assumed it was for the children. As they were told, the rooms were empty. The soldiers hadn’t disturbed them more than necessary. The children’s rooms were mostly bare: a bed or crib, a few toys or books littered the floors. He noted that each room had one or two items obviously not meant for children: a weightlifting set, a computer, a set of oddly shaped mirrors and lenses were a few things he observed. These things looked almost new, and were kept neatly organized, unlike the other items scattered about. Ryan wondered why Sciarpa had brought him along, and why she had sent him up here, knowing he would see this. He wasn’t sure he was allowed; watchers were kept nearly as much in the dark as soldiers.
Sciarpa descended the stairs to the basement, passing two armed soldiers on the way. She had them shut the door behind her; policy was very strict about investigating testing areas. She reached the basement: it was a narrow hallway of bare cinderblock, lighted by light bulbs hanging from wires. She presumed the basement lights were on a circuit separate from the rest of the house. There were two doors: a wooden one place halfway down the hall on the left side, and a steel one at the end. She crossed the hall to the steel door, inserting her card into a slot on its face. The latched clicked, and the door opened slightly inward. She pushed past it, and florescent lights blinked on. The room was circular, and a set of stairs led down to the floor some ten feet below the door. The walls were lined with equipment: weights, glass spheres, intricate brass machines, computers and unidentifiable electronic equipment were placed neatly on shelves. At the center of the room was a large walnut desk, with leather chairs facing each other on either side. Sciarpa walked around the room’s circumference, taking notes on the various objects. She looked through the desks drawers with disinterest: typical entry-level psychology examinations, memory and intelligence tests, none answered. There was nothing she didn’t expect; the notes were a formality. The real treasure lay in the other room.
The wooden door required a key, rather than a card. Like the hallway, it was lit by a single, bare light bulb. Filing cabinets lined the walls, about half were empty. Sciarpa scanned the files, looking at the final scores and tossing them aside. Hank had tested duds almost exclusively, and the scores had dropped off significantly beginning about a decade ago. Given his results, he would have been either fired or “remotivated,” as it was called, sooner rather than later. Sciarpa was getting frustrated with his lack of results; she hadn’t found a single subject that had scored over a twenty yet. She was about to give up when she found a file out of place, the final score torn from the page. She looked over the rest of the review, but Hank had crossed out so much it was practically unreadable. She flipped through the pages, frustrated with the lack of information, until she got to the front page. The top few lines were left unedited:
First Name: Penelope
Last Name: ________
Age: 3
Potential Codes: CCK, PSY, PRB, NTL/INS
Sciarpa smiled. This was what she was looking for. With this, the final score didn’t matter. If they could find this subject, she thought, maybe they would have the chance to-
A memory interrupted her scheming. The other team had picked up two children, a boy and a girl. Hank had been keeping the girl, much longer than he should have. If this was her file... Sciarpa’s grin widened. This was exactly what she had wanted, what she had been searching for out in these crumbling hovels. She folded the file and slipped it into her coat pocket, turning off the light as she exited the room.
Ryan fiddled with some of the machines in a child’s room. 217’s room had contained nothing of interest, and he was unsure of what else he was supposed to do. Watchers would typically never see a trainer’s house, much less be asked to investigate one. He was staring at an intricate, obtuse device when Sciarpa yelled to him from the bottom of the stairs, “Kesseler! We’re leaving!”
He quickly put the device back, bolting out of the room and down the stairs. Sciarpa met him at the bottom, and after a brief word with the lieutenant they boarded the helicopter. Ryan waited until they were strapped in before asking, “So? What did you find, did he have anything?”
Sciarpa looked out the window, staying silent for a moment as the airship gently lifted off the ground. With turning away, she replied, “No, nothing. He hadn’t tested anything over a twenty in years. There was nothing.”
=====================================================================
Penny awoke suddenly. She didn’t remember falling asleep, nor could she tell how long she had been sleeping. She looked around the cabin; Kai was laying on the floor, staring at the ceiling. There was light coming through the window, and she crossed the room to get a closer look. The helicopter was resting on a landing pad, and she could see row after row of identical aircraft, their rotor blades neatly folded behind them. The landing pad was lined with slowly-pulsing blue lights; Penny assumed they were for landing at night, as they had. Beyond the helicopters, she could see the lights of the city: enormous, glittering towers of black glass, with lights of every color dotting the crystal landscape like sparks from a forge. The door unlocked and was pushed open; two heavily armed guards entered. Kai watched them closely. A man with slicked back hair and a black business suit entered after them, flanked by more guards. He looked at them for a moment, before motioning to the helmeted men.
“Cuffs on them both, chain them too. Two to each.”
The men moved towards Penny and Kai, drawing hand cuffs from their belt holsters. Kai pressed his back to the wall, trying to make himself as small as possible. One of the guards grabbed Penny’s wrist, popping open the handcuffs at the same time. Penny had felt scared when they had entered; the physical aggression turned her terror into anger. She pulled her arm back, shouting, “What the hell are you doing? Leave me alone, you son of a bitch! I ain’t goin’ anywhere with you, you big ugly bastard! I’ll--- Hey! Leave him alone, he didn’t do nothing! Don’t touch him, damn it!”
One of the soldiers had Kai in handcuffs, and had attached a chain to them. Kai looked at her and briefly shook his head. The man kept the chain taut, pushing Kai along with a massive hand between his shoulder blades. Seeing the passivity in his face, she begrudgingly allowed herself to be cuffed and escorted off the aircraft. On the landing pad, a cold wind tousled her hair. Both she and Kai were held by two guards each, following the man in the suit. A massive wall of concrete and glass rose before them; looking out over the edge of the pad Penny saw that they were high from the ground. She had never been higher than the top of a tree, and she felt sick not being able to see the ground. When they reached the building, the man stood in front of the wall for a moment. A pane of glass slid down, revealing a hallway lit by harsh, halogen bulbs. They entered, and walked through a maze of identical hallways, all lined with dark glass doors. The carpet was a deep red, and the walls were painted a light gray. After what seemed to Penny to be hours, they reached a large, square room. The ceiling opened up into a cylindrical tower, with balconies evenly spaced on its interior. She squinted, but could not see the top. A heavy, gloved hand pushed her head back down. The dark-suited man gave one of the guards a pair of keycards and a small stack of papers, saying something Penny couldn’t hear. He glanced at her, said something further to the guard, then turned from them towards one of the many hallways that intersected the atrium. The guards pushed her towards another, and she saw Kai being led towards a large rectangular door. She hadn’t known Kai for more than a number of hours, but something about him made her fiercely protective. She lunged suddenly, throwing the bulky soldier off balance.
“Hey, where’re you taking him? He’s just a kid, you can’t take him away! Let go of me goddammit, let go! I have to stay with him, you can’t take him! Let him go, I’ll kill you if you don’t let him go! You goddamn sons of---”
Her jaw clamped shut as thousands of volts took command of her body. She dropped to the floor, violently convulsing, her skin burning as electricity arced to the metal cuffs. Her muscles were contracted with pain, and she lay in a tight ball on the floor, screaming and sobbing without knowing that she was doing either. Before she lost consciousness, she saw Kai through her tears, looking at her over his shoulder as the massive doors shut behind him.
Kai awoke hours later. The last thing he remembered was walking down the strange, squat hallway, as the large men behind him pushed him along. He was on his back, and whatever he was lying on was cold and hard. He started to move, and found that his muscles would not obey him. He looked down the length of his body, and felt fear turn to panic at the sight. He was bound to a steel table with thick, leather straps across his arms, legs and chest. Tubes and needles trailed from his arms, and wires ran from electrodes placed all over his body. Different colored liquids were running through the tubes, and he felt them gently surging into his veins. A heart rate monitor was beeping somewhere behind him; he heard its rate steadily increasing. As he turned his head, he felt a thick bundle of wires move with it. Some of them were attached to electrodes stuck to his temples, other ran under his skin, inside his skull. All over his body he felt wires and needles in his skin. A blinding white light flashed on above him, and a voice filtered through a speaker broke the silence:
“Doctor, it’s hyperventilating, we have to start now. Permission to begin deep sedation.”
A man appeared over Kai’s face. He was wearing a white coat, and a surgeon’s mask and headcap. Kai could see a few graying hairs not covered by the cap. The man’s eyes were crinkled with joy.
“Permission granted, 20 cc’s, level 40. Take him down.”
Kai struggled against the heavy anesthetics, trying desperately to make a fading world stay solid. As his mind clouded and the lights dimmed, his last thought was a single name.
Penny.
Their helicopter landed a few dozen yards away from the house. The other helicopter had landed a short distance away, and a man in thick armor carrying his helmet under his arm was walking towards them. He and Sciarpa exchanged a brief salute before he began briefing them.
“Our team arrived twenty-five minutes ago ma'am. We've been through the whole house, it's clear. We found the testing room; two chambers in the basement,” he quipped in a loud, curt tone.
“Good work,” Sciarpa answered. Her voice was soft, Ryan noticed. He wondered how long she had been on duty. “No one went in either chamber?”
“No, ma'am. Protocol was followed.”
“Good, thank you. I’ll take it from here.”
“There’s something else,” the lieutenant said, stopping her. “The house was empty when we got here. No children, no weapons, no drugs. Clean.”
Sciarpa looked at him for a moment, mulling this over. “Alright. Thank you.”
She turned and started for the house, and Ryan followed. He had no idea what the abandonment of the house meant, but it didn’t sit right. Normally when a harvester’s house was raided, the teams busted open the doors, and screaming kids were scrambling all over the place. Sometimes the older ones would hear the helicopters before they landed, get guns and shoot at the soldiers. That was one instance where the clause “non-lethal force” actually meant something: they would never risk hurting a Natural, and at a distance it was impossible to tell which ones were and were not of value. 217’s house was dark, and quiet: someone had cut the power lines to the house, they were not told whether it was the security team or someone else. Ryan followed Sciarpa up the creaking, aged porch steps and into the house. Her heels clacked loudly on the hard wooden floor. The house was old, and well used: the walls were covered in warped, peeling wallpaper the color of coffee stains, the floorboards were unvarnished and uneven. Sciarpa could tell it had been built by hand: the ceiling height varied from room to room, and the corners were not square. Looking around, she saw that nothing was square or even, adding to the surreal quality of the house.
Sciarpa told Ryan to check the second floor; he wasn’t allowed in the testing chambers. For some reason, the floor was carpeted; he assumed it was for the children. As they were told, the rooms were empty. The soldiers hadn’t disturbed them more than necessary. The children’s rooms were mostly bare: a bed or crib, a few toys or books littered the floors. He noted that each room had one or two items obviously not meant for children: a weightlifting set, a computer, a set of oddly shaped mirrors and lenses were a few things he observed. These things looked almost new, and were kept neatly organized, unlike the other items scattered about. Ryan wondered why Sciarpa had brought him along, and why she had sent him up here, knowing he would see this. He wasn’t sure he was allowed; watchers were kept nearly as much in the dark as soldiers.
Sciarpa descended the stairs to the basement, passing two armed soldiers on the way. She had them shut the door behind her; policy was very strict about investigating testing areas. She reached the basement: it was a narrow hallway of bare cinderblock, lighted by light bulbs hanging from wires. She presumed the basement lights were on a circuit separate from the rest of the house. There were two doors: a wooden one place halfway down the hall on the left side, and a steel one at the end. She crossed the hall to the steel door, inserting her card into a slot on its face. The latched clicked, and the door opened slightly inward. She pushed past it, and florescent lights blinked on. The room was circular, and a set of stairs led down to the floor some ten feet below the door. The walls were lined with equipment: weights, glass spheres, intricate brass machines, computers and unidentifiable electronic equipment were placed neatly on shelves. At the center of the room was a large walnut desk, with leather chairs facing each other on either side. Sciarpa walked around the room’s circumference, taking notes on the various objects. She looked through the desks drawers with disinterest: typical entry-level psychology examinations, memory and intelligence tests, none answered. There was nothing she didn’t expect; the notes were a formality. The real treasure lay in the other room.
The wooden door required a key, rather than a card. Like the hallway, it was lit by a single, bare light bulb. Filing cabinets lined the walls, about half were empty. Sciarpa scanned the files, looking at the final scores and tossing them aside. Hank had tested duds almost exclusively, and the scores had dropped off significantly beginning about a decade ago. Given his results, he would have been either fired or “remotivated,” as it was called, sooner rather than later. Sciarpa was getting frustrated with his lack of results; she hadn’t found a single subject that had scored over a twenty yet. She was about to give up when she found a file out of place, the final score torn from the page. She looked over the rest of the review, but Hank had crossed out so much it was practically unreadable. She flipped through the pages, frustrated with the lack of information, until she got to the front page. The top few lines were left unedited:
First Name: Penelope
Last Name: ________
Age: 3
Potential Codes: CCK, PSY, PRB, NTL/INS
Sciarpa smiled. This was what she was looking for. With this, the final score didn’t matter. If they could find this subject, she thought, maybe they would have the chance to-
A memory interrupted her scheming. The other team had picked up two children, a boy and a girl. Hank had been keeping the girl, much longer than he should have. If this was her file... Sciarpa’s grin widened. This was exactly what she had wanted, what she had been searching for out in these crumbling hovels. She folded the file and slipped it into her coat pocket, turning off the light as she exited the room.
Ryan fiddled with some of the machines in a child’s room. 217’s room had contained nothing of interest, and he was unsure of what else he was supposed to do. Watchers would typically never see a trainer’s house, much less be asked to investigate one. He was staring at an intricate, obtuse device when Sciarpa yelled to him from the bottom of the stairs, “Kesseler! We’re leaving!”
He quickly put the device back, bolting out of the room and down the stairs. Sciarpa met him at the bottom, and after a brief word with the lieutenant they boarded the helicopter. Ryan waited until they were strapped in before asking, “So? What did you find, did he have anything?”
Sciarpa looked out the window, staying silent for a moment as the airship gently lifted off the ground. With turning away, she replied, “No, nothing. He hadn’t tested anything over a twenty in years. There was nothing.”
=====================================================================
Penny awoke suddenly. She didn’t remember falling asleep, nor could she tell how long she had been sleeping. She looked around the cabin; Kai was laying on the floor, staring at the ceiling. There was light coming through the window, and she crossed the room to get a closer look. The helicopter was resting on a landing pad, and she could see row after row of identical aircraft, their rotor blades neatly folded behind them. The landing pad was lined with slowly-pulsing blue lights; Penny assumed they were for landing at night, as they had. Beyond the helicopters, she could see the lights of the city: enormous, glittering towers of black glass, with lights of every color dotting the crystal landscape like sparks from a forge. The door unlocked and was pushed open; two heavily armed guards entered. Kai watched them closely. A man with slicked back hair and a black business suit entered after them, flanked by more guards. He looked at them for a moment, before motioning to the helmeted men.
“Cuffs on them both, chain them too. Two to each.”
The men moved towards Penny and Kai, drawing hand cuffs from their belt holsters. Kai pressed his back to the wall, trying to make himself as small as possible. One of the guards grabbed Penny’s wrist, popping open the handcuffs at the same time. Penny had felt scared when they had entered; the physical aggression turned her terror into anger. She pulled her arm back, shouting, “What the hell are you doing? Leave me alone, you son of a bitch! I ain’t goin’ anywhere with you, you big ugly bastard! I’ll--- Hey! Leave him alone, he didn’t do nothing! Don’t touch him, damn it!”
One of the soldiers had Kai in handcuffs, and had attached a chain to them. Kai looked at her and briefly shook his head. The man kept the chain taut, pushing Kai along with a massive hand between his shoulder blades. Seeing the passivity in his face, she begrudgingly allowed herself to be cuffed and escorted off the aircraft. On the landing pad, a cold wind tousled her hair. Both she and Kai were held by two guards each, following the man in the suit. A massive wall of concrete and glass rose before them; looking out over the edge of the pad Penny saw that they were high from the ground. She had never been higher than the top of a tree, and she felt sick not being able to see the ground. When they reached the building, the man stood in front of the wall for a moment. A pane of glass slid down, revealing a hallway lit by harsh, halogen bulbs. They entered, and walked through a maze of identical hallways, all lined with dark glass doors. The carpet was a deep red, and the walls were painted a light gray. After what seemed to Penny to be hours, they reached a large, square room. The ceiling opened up into a cylindrical tower, with balconies evenly spaced on its interior. She squinted, but could not see the top. A heavy, gloved hand pushed her head back down. The dark-suited man gave one of the guards a pair of keycards and a small stack of papers, saying something Penny couldn’t hear. He glanced at her, said something further to the guard, then turned from them towards one of the many hallways that intersected the atrium. The guards pushed her towards another, and she saw Kai being led towards a large rectangular door. She hadn’t known Kai for more than a number of hours, but something about him made her fiercely protective. She lunged suddenly, throwing the bulky soldier off balance.
“Hey, where’re you taking him? He’s just a kid, you can’t take him away! Let go of me goddammit, let go! I have to stay with him, you can’t take him! Let him go, I’ll kill you if you don’t let him go! You goddamn sons of---”
Her jaw clamped shut as thousands of volts took command of her body. She dropped to the floor, violently convulsing, her skin burning as electricity arced to the metal cuffs. Her muscles were contracted with pain, and she lay in a tight ball on the floor, screaming and sobbing without knowing that she was doing either. Before she lost consciousness, she saw Kai through her tears, looking at her over his shoulder as the massive doors shut behind him.
Kai awoke hours later. The last thing he remembered was walking down the strange, squat hallway, as the large men behind him pushed him along. He was on his back, and whatever he was lying on was cold and hard. He started to move, and found that his muscles would not obey him. He looked down the length of his body, and felt fear turn to panic at the sight. He was bound to a steel table with thick, leather straps across his arms, legs and chest. Tubes and needles trailed from his arms, and wires ran from electrodes placed all over his body. Different colored liquids were running through the tubes, and he felt them gently surging into his veins. A heart rate monitor was beeping somewhere behind him; he heard its rate steadily increasing. As he turned his head, he felt a thick bundle of wires move with it. Some of them were attached to electrodes stuck to his temples, other ran under his skin, inside his skull. All over his body he felt wires and needles in his skin. A blinding white light flashed on above him, and a voice filtered through a speaker broke the silence:
“Doctor, it’s hyperventilating, we have to start now. Permission to begin deep sedation.”
A man appeared over Kai’s face. He was wearing a white coat, and a surgeon’s mask and headcap. Kai could see a few graying hairs not covered by the cap. The man’s eyes were crinkled with joy.
“Permission granted, 20 cc’s, level 40. Take him down.”
Kai struggled against the heavy anesthetics, trying desperately to make a fading world stay solid. As his mind clouded and the lights dimmed, his last thought was a single name.
Penny.
