Chapter 10

It was early afternoon that same day and Naomi was exiting her Auto-Cab at the front of the 10th District Junior High School. As if her employer did not make enough demands on her busy schedule, Mrs Brackenridge had insisted Naomi run her professional eye over the school’s security arrangements.

Naomi knew that the Brackenridge child, a spoiled little brat named Angelina, studied at the school. The girl was apparently a Telekinetic prodigy and expected to reach a Grade Three ranking within the next year. After a couple of dangerous attacks on the school, both of which involved the sole child and heir to her employers, the security team at the place had been substantially increased. All paid for and provided by Brackenridge Transportation.

As Head of Security, it fell on Naomi to make sure the new Security Chief at the school was running it to the standards demanded by her own company. She had an appointment with the woman, Fiona Smith, just after school ended for the day.

Thus it was Naomi was walking into the school grounds as a small group of students, delayed for some reason after everyone else had left, came chatting and laughing towards her. The presence of students at the school, even after hours, was not uncommon. Many attended special interest groups and sporting activities that run into the early evening, she already knew that.

What caught her attention was the sight of Angelina Brackenridge, her employer’s daughter, in the midst of the group. The girl was arm in arm with another student, a plain looking girl with long brown hair and carrying a cricket bat over her shoulder. Another couple, arm in arm also, walked alongside of them. Naomi examined the couple using the zoom function on her Smart Goggles, designed to look like stylish fashion glasses, and saw an unremarkable red haired girl and a dark haired boy. She dismissed them from her attention and focussed on the last pair of students.

They were walking apart from each other, a blonde haired girl of average height alongside a taller boy. It was the boy who captured her attention, with his precise way of walking and calm features. He was unlike any of the others, moving and acting with an assurance she had only seen in adult soldiers and Freelancers.

The group had not seen her yet, so she set her goggles to record, downloading the data files directly into her own internal processor. With a devious grin, she decided to get a little more data so she could verify the nagging suspicion she had.

“Miss Angelina!” she called out to the group, stepping forward and waving her arm in greeting. The girl in question stopped and her group of friends did also, the one with the cricket bat seeming to drop it into her hands as if she intended to fight her! That was interesting, but even more so was the sudden shift of stance in the rearmost boy.

He dropped instinctively into a Guard fighting stance, feet spread and balanced, arms held slightly out to the sides. His eyes were locked onto hers as she recorded his reactions.

“Sorry to startle you” Naomi apologised to Angelina, switching her gaze back to the surprised girl. “You may not remember me, but I am Naomi Tengaki, Head of Security for your parent’s company”

Angelina paused for barely a heartbeat then smiled a polite acknowledgement.

“Of course, I remember seeing you at the last Board Meeting. It is nice to see you again, Ms Tengaki” Angelina replied. “Are you here for me?”

“No Miss, I have an appointment with your school’s Head of Security” Naomi answered smoothly. “Sorry to interrupt your time with your friends. Please excuse me as I must go now”

Naomi executed a small formal bow and hurried past the group, noticing that the unusual boy had not taken his gaze from her or adjusted his combat stance the entire time.

It was only once she reached the main doors to the school, after nodding politely to the grey uniformed guards on duty, that she allowed herself a brief smile. The evidence was only tenuous at best, yet the boy fit the size and stance of her elusive intruder.

Striding into the lobby came her appointment, a tall Japanese woman going by the name of Fiona Smith, but Naomi knew she had been a Guard clone before. The cybernetic right eye and her solid build was a definite give-away to her origins.

“Miss Smith?” Naomi called to her in greeting. “How nice to finally meet you in person. I am Naomi Tengaki and I am looking forward to hearing about everything that goes on at this school”

=====

“So are you doing anything tonight” Sarah asked him out of the blue.

“Huh?” said Eric in confusion. He had been looking over his shoulder as they walked to the main gates of the school, his thoughts on the woman they had just met. “I was going to visit the Eighth District. Why do you ask?”

Sarah did not want to look at him it seemed, her blue-green eyes fixed resolutely on her feet as she walked at his side. The rest of their group had already reached the gates and were milling about in that last minute before they went their separate ways home. Angelina’s car was there too, her driver standing to attention beside the open rear door.

“I wondered if you wanted to come to my place for dinner” the girl finally answered in a tentative voice. “Mum has been dying to meet you and she said I could invite you over. We are having lamb chops” she added in case that altered his decision.

“Thanks for the offer, Sarah, but I really need to find out some stuff tonight” he responded with a feeling of guilt. It was the first time he had been invited anywhere for a meal in his life. “Can we make it another evening? How about tomorrow night?”

“It’s Okay, you don’t need to come over” Sarah declared to him. “I didn’t want to make it weird between us” The girl stopped short of the gates and regarded the boy. “I just thought it would make a change from spending all my time with Stanley”

Eric was torn between his desire to find out what secrets awaited him at the Little Angels Orphanage and the chance to spend some time with Sarah. She had been his first true friend, accepting him despite the unusual existence he lived.

“I like our weirdness” he told her and took her hands in his. Sarah gasped in shock but did not pull her hands away, letting her slightly cold fingers be held in his warm palm. “I meant what I told you, that time before” he continued, softer now so only she could hear him.

The girl nodded at him, knowing what he referred to. That time outside of her apartment building, a few short months and an entire lifetime ago.

“You still haven’t decided, have you?” Sarah whispered, so softly that Eric almost did not hear her words. Almost, but not quite.

“I’m sorry” he replied in the same gentle tones she had used.

Sarah pulled her hands from his grasp and gave him a sad smile.

“It’s Okay, Eric” she spoke louder this time and her friend Carmody on the street side looked back at the pair of them. “I should have danced for you sooner”

With that confusing statement she ran to join Carmody and the pair of them walked briskly off towards their homes. Angelina, Lilly and Achmed had already gone, leaving Eric standing alone and troubled in the courtyard.

“It’s time to be heading home, lad” said a voice at his side and he recognised the school security guard who was standing there.

“Thanks, Mr Henderson” he replied to the guard, which earned him an appreciative chuckle from the older man.

“Didn’t think any of the students knew our names” he told Eric. “You must have a good memory”

“I never forget anything” Eric assured him. “I just don’t always understand the things I remember”

With that he set off, leaving the school behind and walking in the direction of his apartment. He wondered what it would be like, to have a companion at his side. Someone who understood him, cared about him, maybe even loved him.

Someone who liked his weirdness.

Sarah was pulling up the struggling plants in her rooftop garden plot when her mother found her at last. A few caterpillar ravaged lettuce had given it their best, but she knew they were goners.

“There you are, Sarah!” her mother said with relief. “I have been looking everywhere for you. Dinner is already on the table and I have been trying to call you. Why is your phone switched off?”

“Sorry mom, I am not hungry tonight” the girl said, kneeling in the garden bed with her pale skinned hands stained with mulch-laden dirt.

“Is it because that boy you like, Eric, didn’t come over tonight?” her mom enquired. She knelt at her daughter’s side, reaching out a gentle hand to wipe a smudge on her cheek. “He doesn’t know what he is missing out on, the silly boy”

Sarah gave her mom a little smile.

“Your chops aren’t that good mom” she teased her mother.

“That’s not what I meant” her mom replied and leaned forward to give her eldest daughter a warm hug. Sarah put down the trowel she had been using and shifted into her mother’s arms, wrapping her own arms around the waist.

Sarah did not know why she started to cry. Her plants had never had much chance of surviving her less than careful gardening skills. Or maybe it was something else.

“Mom?” she said after a while, when her eyes dried a little. “Was dad the first one you ever loved?”

“The first? No, there were a couple of people before him. People I cared about at the time, but as you change and grow a little older, you want different things” she said. “But he is the last one I love. Other than my wonderful children of course” she added.

“You even love Brent?” Sarah demanded, wiping her eyes on her mom’s sleeve.

“Even Brent” mom agreed, tousling her daughter’s short blonde hair with affection. “Come on, those chops will be getting cold, assuming your father hasn’t eaten them already!”

She got off her knees and lifted her daughter to her feet. With surprise, Sarah realised she was nearly as tall as her mother now.

“Hmm, I may need to stop feeding you so much” her mom joked. “You are turning into a young woman way too fast!”

“It just means there is more of me to love” Sarah answered and together the two of them headed to the elevators.

Behind them, crawling from the dark nooks and spaces of the garden, the caterpillars descended on the remaining plants of Sarah’s garden. There were no survivors.

It was the end of a gruelling shift for Tula Greenslade. As a trainee Nursing Assistant she got all the glamourous jobs on her Ward, like emptying the bed pans and giving sponge baths to the grumpy invalids in their private rooms.

Tula found it deeply ironic that St Helens was an exclusive hospital, whose patients were generally wealthy, famous, influential or some combination of all three. So whereas the public hospital she first worked in used medical care robots to do all those menial jobs, at St Helens they expected a real life Nurse to wipe their bottoms for them.

In the absence of a Nurse, it was a trainee like Tula who got to be “hands on” with her patients. In a short time she had grown awfully familiar with every substance that could come out of a human body, even those she wished she had never seen! Or smelled if she was honest, and Tula was definitely an honest young woman.

Thus it was with a sense of guilt she had purchased some Heightened Experience, her friends assuring her it was non-addictive and perfectly legal. Which made her wonder why the room-mate who had obtained it for her, via the old ‘friend of a friend’ method, had been so secretive about the transaction.

It was against her better judgement, but she had suffered enough torment for one day. As soon as she had left the hospital front doors, she had taken a seat in the small park that lay opposite the entrance. The hypo-injector was a familiar tool in her hands, the kind of device she used a hundred times a day on patients in her care. Inside was an ampoule of Heightened Experience, purchased using the Pandas she earned doing the job that made her need the drug in the first place. More irony she supposed, but she was too fed up to care anymore.

With a hiss and a faint sting on her arm the drug surged into her bloodstream, like a bite from an angry snake. Tula lay back, her eyes roaming over the illuminated windows of the many private rooms of the hospital. A feeling of anger came over her, rage filling her at the thoughtless demands and complaints of all the patients she had tended to. She deserved better than the contempt they had shown her, a lowly trainee trying to better herself! How dare those rich old whiners tell her she was a useless girl, a hopeless excuse for a medical professional!

“Are you Okay, Miss?” enquired a voice nearby. A frail and halting voice, coming from an old man leaning on a walking stick. He was just like one of her patients, Tula thought angrily. Another of those ungrateful whingers coming out here to tell her she was no good!

Power flowed into her, thick and black like oil yet sweet and nourishing as honey. Tula had never felt anything like this before, never had she known such energy to fill her so completely! She was a vessel that had waited all her life to be filled and tonight it had finally broken through the barrier.

She rose from the park bench like a goddess, feeling the energy swirling inside of her like a tornado, desperate to be released. The old man cowered back from her, at last seeing her for the glory she held inside her young form.

“I feel wonderful!” she said to the man, her voice echoing like a peal of thunder. A slender arm was raised towards him, power sparking and flying from her fingernails. Tula had never even known Magic existed in her world, nor had she ever guessed she had the potential to be a magician.

The bolt of lightning flew from her hand, killing the man in an instant and shredding Tula’s own arm as the energy erupted from her unskilled body. She screamed and wild energy flowed from her again, tearing at her nursing uniform, her skin and bones burning and ripping with the forces she had unleashed.

Alarms sounded in the hospital and orderlies and nurses ran from the front doors, searching for the cause of the terrible destruction. It was a colleague of Tula’s who found her shuddering body on the scorched grass of the park, her face still recognisable despite the damage done.

“Get a stretcher!” he screamed and cradled her as medical staff ran to save her life.

She did not know it, but for a short while Tula Greenslade had become an Adept.