Spark Rising (20 page)

She was used to them.

He tilted his head to the side in a way that reminded her of Reyes. “Our food’s here.”

She looked where he indicated and noticed a young woman from the kitchens unloading covered plates and cups from a cart. She crossed to the table behind him and sat, smiling at the girl. “What are we having?”

“Well, I hope you don’t mind, but before he left, I asked Jackson what your favorite meal was. He said breakfast.”

The young woman pulled back the cover from the plate before Lena.

It was pancakes, with thick-cut bacon and shiny rounds of sausage surrounding a small bowl. Lena dipped her finger and brought it to her mouth. “Maple syrup! And it’s warm. They never put maple syrup out at dinner.” Jackson might be gone on maneuvers, but he’d still managed to send her a gift. She flashed Thomas a wide, happy smile before turning to thank the girl who’d trundled it all up from the kitchen.

“Right.” Thomas sat, glancing around at the rapt faces around them. “Well, clearly we’ll have to rectify that.”

Chapter 16

When Reyes came for Lena in the morning, she was up and almost ready. Last night, Thomas had warned her that she’d have a full day of lessons, both as student and instructor. She’d already eaten her second round of breakfast in twelve hours. When Alex knocked and entered, she rose from her chair. He stood inside the door as she bent to tug on her boots.

“Did you enjoy dinner last night?” He kept his voice bland.

She straightened up. Yes, he was amused. He’d already been to see Thomas.

She marched up to him, planted her hands on her hips, and tilted her head back. “You could have told me, Reyes.”

His lips twitched, and his eyes sparked with humor, but he mostly managed to keep from laughing. “First, enough with this ‘Reyes’ garbage. If you can call Jackson by his name, you can use mine. Second…” He paused, clearly trying a little harder not to laugh. “That is not the kind of thing you’d have wanted to hear from me of all people.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes. It is right.” He
was
laughing. “Pretty sure the last thing you want to hear from the guy who ruined your life is that you’re irresistible.”

“Irresistible.” Lena crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. “Ha. I remember you resisting just fine when you thought I was propositioning you back in the safe house. And you could have mentioned it then. Or when I started glowing and we were discussing my power.”

The smile faded from his face. He cocked his head. “My ribs were broken. And I could not have mentioned it then. That glow was almost my undoing.”

She pulled away a little at the intensity in his face. Her breath caught.

Then Reyes blinked, and it was gone. He tilted his head back and smiled again. “We never did find out what caused that, did we?” The question was light. “Remind me to ask Sam if he knows.”

She reminded herself to breathe. “Sam?”

She was willing to be distracted. She had managed to convince herself that Reyes was nothing more than the weapon he’d made of himself. She was pretty sure it wasn’t safe to do otherwise.

“Mm hm. That’s who we’re going to see. If you’re ready?”

As Lena preceded him out the door, she could have sworn he made a small sound of frustration, or perhaps relief. When she turned back to him in the hallway, he was all business. He led her back the way she’d gone with Thomas the night before, making light conversation the whole way, telling her about the repairs to the damage she’d caused to the Council building and the ongoing search for her in and around Azcon.

They crossed into the atrium again, and the sunlight dazzled her. She looked longingly out at the garden, but Reyes…Alex…crossed the atrium lobby and through a locked entry point into a corridor behind it.

The corridor here was unlike any other in the fort. Thick, wall-to-wall carpeting stretched from one end of the floor to the other. The air felt cool and dry, unlike the humid underground air pumped through the main complex. The lights were recessed into the ceiling.

“What is this place?” She didn’t know why she whispered, but it seemed appropriate in the hushed atmosphere of the hallway.

“Well, officially it doesn’t exist anymore. If it is ever spoken of, it’s remembered as Barracks Hall 13. The guys who lived here—” Alex made a little shrug and smiled “—they called it Sunny Acres.”

She frowned. “Sunny Acres?”

Alex nodded. He gestured her forward with his head and padded down five paired doorways to one on the left. Once she joined him, he put his hand on the knob. He didn’t turn it. He stared down at her for a moment as if trying to gain some measure of her. Finally, he gave her a bemused smile.

“You’re about to meet Sam.”

She nodded. “Yes. Sam. Who is…?”

“Sam’s a friend of mine. He was one of my teachers. Later, he became…let’s call him a mentor.” He took a deep breath and laughed softly. Was he laughing at himself? “He was a light to a boy who didn’t think light existed anymore. He was a light to a lot of boys.”

She felt her brows rising. “Wait. You were a boy once? You had a
friend
?”

He rolled his eyes. “Cute. You’ll see. Sam is going to blow your mind.”

The room was hushed and comfortable like the hallway. Quiet, humming machines clustered around an empty bed. The wall closest to them was lined floor to ceiling with shelves bursting with books. The view directly across from them, however, captured her attention.

It was a garden. Or at least, it had been painted to look like one. A tree painted into the corner leaned out over the rest of the scene, sheltering it with thin, arching branches covered in pale green leaves. Grass moved out away from the wall, and hedges of flowers appeared to bloom as far as the eye could see. Birds seemed to hover, captured in mid-flight.

An ancient man hunched in a wheeled chair facing the wall. He stared out. His scalp shone through thin wisps of white hair, pale skin mottled with age spots like craters on the surface of the moon. His hunched back bent him forward, and his body bobbed with constant movement. Even his hands, misshapen fingers curled upon themselves, moved on the arms of the wheelchair, silent tap and then retreat. Tap. Retreat.

She felt her breath catching in her throat. She remembered Erwin’s quiet voice the day before.
The oldest of them began dying sixty years ago
. The oldest of them began dying. What about the youngest?

Alex moved across to him. “Sam?”

In his quiet voice, she detected respect and affection.

“Who’s there?” The old man’s head came up and turned very slightly. His voice was strong, if a little breathy. “Is that you, Alex? Come around where I can see you.”

He moved around the wheelchair to squat in front of it and smile up. “Hi, Sam.”

“Hello, Alex. It’s been awhile. I’ve missed you. Missed our talks.”

Lena stepped forward and came around the wheelchair. She met his eyes, shiny and keen like a bird’s. His body might be failing, but his mind remained bright and sharp. She sensed intelligence there, and humor, and a wonderful, comforting sense of humanity.

“Alex. You brought me a guest?”

He nodded. “This is Lena. Lena, this is Sam.”

She leaned forward to touch the back of Sam’s left hand where it tapped upon and retreated from the wheelchair arm closest to her. She held it for a moment. “Hello, Sam.”

“You brought me a
pretty
guest!” His thin white brows rose in delight. He turned back to Alex, his lips twitching with amusement in a face crisscrossed with the seams of age and humor. Sam winked at the younger man. “You can go now. We’d like to be alone.”

In spite of the tension and confusion curling inside her, or perhaps because of it, a laugh burst from her. Sam reached his shaking hand out for Lena’s. Alex glanced at her for permission before he took her hand and placed it in Sam’s. The old man’s fingers closed around hers, and he closed his eyes. She could feel the Dust stirring within her, the almost-whisper at the back of her mind getting louder with his touch.

When Sam opened his eyes again, tears filled them. One rolled down his dry cheek. “Alex…,” he breathed. “You’ve found a treasure.”

Alex bounced in his squat. He swallowed and nodded his head. “I know.” He glanced up at her and away. “But she’s confused, Sam. She’s been told a lot of lies. I don’t think she knows what to believe. Or who. So I brought her to you.”

“To me?”

He smiled. “You know the truth. You lived it. Tell her, like you told me.”

The old man laughed, a dry, huffing sound that moved his entire body. “I had years with you. And you still didn’t believe. Not all the way. Not until you saw with your own eyes.”

“Yeah, well, that’s the next step.” Alex leaned in with an affectionate hand on Sam’s thin arm. “Will you talk to her?”

“Sure I’ll talk to her. What else do I have to do but stare at this wall?” He made his huffing laugh again.

Alex stood. “Do you need anything?”

“I wouldn’t turn down some nice water. What about you, Lena? Can he get you anything?”

She shook her head. “I’m fine, thanks.”

Alex crossed behind her, sliding one hand across her shoulders as he went. She shivered, and his attention dipped, noticing the involuntary response. He pulled his hand away and left.

Lena knelt down beside Sam. He regarded her, face serious. He still hadn’t released her hand.

“Alex is a good man with a thankless job.” His voice was firm. “But he does it so no one else has to. Remember that.”

“I will.”

He nodded. Once the bobbing motion started, it took him awhile to stop. “How much have they told you?” His voice had gone wispy and wan again.

She shrugged, at a loss as to where to start. “How it all happened. What the Dust really is. What we are. Where we came from.” She hesitated. “A little bit about me.”

“The basics.” The grimace on his seamed face seemed an exaggerated expression of impatience. “So I’ll start at the beginning of the end, then. My beginning. I was picked for the program when I was a kid, straight out of basic training. They were selecting for guys who had strong electromagnetic brain waves. Guys who could ace a biofeedback test. Once we were in, it wasn’t just training, though. They manipulated our DNA.” At her blank look, he explained, “They played with our genes, the stuff that makes us
us
. Made us stronger. Created a new dominant trait.

“I had celebrated my twenty-sixth birthday three days before we were called down. We were a secret unit, you know. An elite unit. They tried to play it cool, but after we ended the Pakistan Insurgency without a single casualty—dropped in the ‘bots, keyed them to target human energy signatures, knocked ’em all out and sent in the ground crew to gather ’em up like apples off a tree. Well, we knew we were it then. The next generation.” Sam smiled. It was wistful, and it faded quickly.

“We didn’t go to the sites. Cloud servers don’t have to move. We stayed here, actually. The scientists were the ones who went out to the sites with the bots. They were the ones who burned when it all went up a day later.” He fell quiet for a moment. “We lost a lot of the country that day. We got it all under control as fast as we could. We found what we hoped was a solution, but we were operating under pressure.” He smiled thinly. “It wasn’t perfect, but the explosions stopped. The fires died back, from infernos to slag.” His voice drifted off as he remembered.

Lena sat quietly, watching the pain move across his face.

“And then everything stopped. We didn’t have any information, but we could figure it out. It was dark for a long time.” She didn’t think he meant only the lack of power and lights. “The first winter was brutal. No heat. No fire. Nothing. It was hard enough to make it where we were out west. I don’t want to think about what it must have been like for people up north. But we did think about it, all of us who stayed to keep working. We knew people were dying out there. We wanted to get it all back. All we managed to get back was external combustion. Fire. Steam. And it took us most of a year. By then, we were falling apart.”

He fell quiet again. It took a little longer for him to start again this time.

“I made my way to Canev Relocation Center. Tried to help, but I barely stayed alive. We had no hope. No reason to go on. By the time I noticed everyone else getting older and I wasn’t, I just moved on.”

Alex returned then, moving quietly into the room. He carried a chair in one hand and balanced a tray with a pitcher and cups with the other. He set the tray on the bed and poured Sam a glass of water. He brought it over, setting it in Sam’s hand and wrapping his fingers around it. Then he set the chair beside Sam. “Sit,” he told Lena as he sank onto the floor. He stretched his legs out and settled his hands across his lap.

She moved into the chair.

Sam sipped at his cup. He flashed a smile of gratitude at Alex and raised the glass to him. “It was a long time of just wandering then. I saw a lot of things. Some good. Most bad. One day, one of Peller’s recruiters found me.” Something in the way he said the word ‘recruiters’ told her Sam regretted that day. “I joined up. I was happy to. I wanted a chance to put right what had happened. I was ready. Ready. Some of the older guys, they weren’t so sure. They told me Peller had been CIA. He’d been bounced from the program for some unethical behavior. They didn’t know what. I didn’t listen.” He dragged in a long breath and let it out. “He knew what we could do. And he had big plans on how we’d help him fix it all.” He nodded his head again. “And he did. He fixed it all.” He raised his face to Lena. She could see it still angered him. “Except he didn’t. We did it. He took the credit. We all felt so guilty about what had happened that we let him.”

He fell silent. Alex watched him. She waited.

Eventually, Sam sipped then he took a ragged breath. “I don’t want to talk about the breeding programs.” His head dipped as he hid his face.

He’s ashamed.

“It’s okay,” Alex told him, “You don’t have to.”

Sam nodded, head bobbing in decreasing arcs. “The program led to all of you, of course, and to this school. I retired here, to help teach the strongest of our descendants. So many children….” His voice drifted off. His head lifted, and his gaze moved over her face and hair. “You could be one of mine, you know? With those freckles and eyes. You could be one of my…great grandchildren? Great-great?”