Gravity (The Taking) (6 page)

“Ari, meet Cybil, your new private trainer.”

My mouth drops. “Private? I thought I was training with other Pre-Ops.”

“You’ll receive private lessons,” Dad says. “You aren’t ready for Op training. Not yet.”

My heart sinks. Of course he would override Coach Sanders’s request. I peek at Jackson, my entire body numb from embarrassment, but he doesn’t return the look. Dad leads him out of the office without a second glance my way.

Cybil clears her throat and smiles at me.

“Are you new?” I ask.

“Me? No, I’ve assisted for years and was just promoted when your dad assigned me to your training.”

I cringe. “Sorry.”

“Nonsense. I’m excited to train you,” she says with a smile. “Now let me show you around.”

I follow her back down the main hall, wanting to tell her that I’ve already seen most of the Engineer building but not wanting to come across as rude. I expect her to stop at the elevator, when instead she walks to the end of the hall and to a floor-to-ceiling painting of President Randolf Cartier, Lawrence’s grandfather, who died a few years ago. She slides her hand behind the right side of the frame and within a second, the painting swings open, exposing a hidden entryway.

Cybil motions me forward, and once we’re both inside, turns on me. “Your father lied in his office,” she says, her tone indifferent. I start to question what she means, but she raises her hand. “You’re not receiving personal Op training. That was said for Locke’s benefit. Your father wants you to experience more than that of an Operative. He wants you to learn his work, commander work. We’ll meet daily after school.”

Goose bumps rise across my body. “So when you say you’ve been an assistant, you mean…”

“Special Projects Assistant to the commander. I organize Engineer advancements, research, development, that sort of thing. I also monitor tracking.”

“Tracking what?”

Cybil releases a curt laugh. “You’ll see. Follow me.”

She starts down a long hallway that looks like it should be part of the tron instead of the inside of a building—glaring metal walls with nothing but hiccups of black doors to break up the silver. The walkway is lined with lights on the floor and the ceiling. There is no one else in the hall, no sound coming from the doors. I release a breath and see the air puff in front of me.

Cybil reaches the fifth door and slides her keycard through the scanner stationed on the right side of the door. Inside, there are a thousand mini T-screens covering the back wall. Too many to count. Too many to focus on. And all of them are trained on people going about their lives. Working. Eating. Having sex. Ack. Okay, so the Engineers spy on us. I can’t say I’m surprised.

Cybil walks over to the left side of the wall, where a male attendant with reddish hair and freckles sits, wearing the telltale black Engineer attire. She motions to me, and he nods as though my presence explains everything.

“Do you see this woman?” Cybil says as she clicks a screen and points to a blond lady getting onto the tron. “We suspect she’s a Latent, a rogue Ancient hiding in our world. As you know, Ancients are only allowed to be on Earth during the Taking. The fact that they are here breaks the rules of the treaty.”

“A rogue Ancient? How do you know?”

“It’s tricky,” she says. “Average people don’t notice them. After all, there are tons of pretty people in the world. People with seemingly no imperfections, which is how they have existed for years—hidden among our beautiful.” She redirects her attention to the screen, zooming in with her fingertips so every feature of the lady is in focus. “But they aren’t like us. If you look closely you can see their skin is neither white nor brown, neither light nor dark. See,” she says, tapping the screen, “it’s almost golden. And their eyes…” She zooms farther and then taps the screens above and below the one with the lady. An older man appears in the top screen, a young female in the bottom. Cybil zooms in on their eyes. I have to stifle a gasp. They are all, all three, exactly like Jackson’s. A strange combination of blue and green, changing, it seems, by what they wear, the color of the sky, their mood, who knows.

“Their eyes are all…”

“The same. We know,” Cybil says. “But that isn’t enough for us to take someone into questioning. We have to be sure. Recognizing an Ancient is recognizing that nothing about him or her can be easily classified. Nothing except movement, which is always premeditated. We don’t notice the Ancients because they don’t want us to notice them. And that is what makes them so dangerous.”

“But you said they were rogue Ancients. Why don’t you just contact Zeus about it?”

“We have, yet the number of Latents continues to rise. You’re the future commander. Think like it. What do you think that suggests?” She crosses her arms, waiting.

There are Ancients living in our world, pretending to be human. Of course, I already knew that thanks to Jackson, but I had no idea the numbers were so high. Zeus wouldn’t ignore our concerns unless…

“Zeus sent them to spy on us,” I say. Jackson said it’s already in motion. This must be what he meant. And this room shows thousands of Ancients, but there have to be more that are not yet discovered, like Jackson. My greatest fears from this morning may be true after all—they’re watching us. But why or what they have planned I haven’t a clue. Enough delaying; I need to question Jackson. The sooner I get home, the sooner I get answers.

Cybil dismisses me with the assignment to pay attention to those around me, but when I slide onto the tron, I find myself staring out the window, avoiding everyone. I don’t want to start staring from person to person, checking for eye color, creeping everyone out. Instead, I try to think through how the Latents got here. They could stay after the Taking, I guess, but more than likely they come through one of the interplanetary ports. There are ten ports across the world, two here in America, all connecting to Loge—the Ancients’ home planet. The Ancients control them, which would make for easy access of large numbers, but surely Earth’s leaders watch the ports.

I focus out my window, trying to make sense of it, when my eye catches on the forest behind a series of houses. Trees. The trees act as hyperspaces between Loge and Earth, linking the two so that Ancients can travel easily between planets. So technically they could come at any time. But surely we monitor them on some level, though how could we possibly monitor every single tree? We couldn’t. If they can cross over to Earth through any tree, at any time, there could be hundreds of thousands already here. The thought sends a shudder down my back.

The tron stops at Landings Park. Farther down the street are the rows of new composite steel apartments, but here, the old, rundown part of Landings, the buildings crumble in places, and it has the smell of burned wood. Of course, you’d never see a wooden building in Process. It seems stupid to me anyway to use wood to make a building or house when wood is so flammable. I guess the Chemists agreed and so they banned the use of wood ten years ago.

I glance out the window at a group of people huddled over a fiery metal bin. I wonder what they’re doing and then realize—cooking. Landings is a food pill region, which means someone has found, stolen, or spent a month’s salary on a piece of meat. A few more people walk up, then a group of kids, none of them older than five or six. The look of wasted taste buds envelops their small faces. I’ve seen the look before, especially around desserts.

I start to look away, saddened by the poverty our government allows, when something catches my eye. Adjacent to the fiery pit is a patch of trees, and clinging to a thick limb is a man. His golden skin contrasts against the brown of the tree. His brown hair moves with the wind. His expression looks focused, too focused. He watches the people for a fleeting second, and then he’s on them, tossing children into the street, Taking one then another then another. I bang against the window. Everyone on the tron jumps up and rushes to the windows, all pointing and shouting, all horrified. My eyes dart down the aisle, and then back to the attack. I gasp. Every human lays lifeless on the ground—men, women, and children. There is no blood. The Ancient has leeched the life from these people.

Everything changes today,
Jackson had said. He knew.

I race to the front of the tron. “Open the doors!” I scream at the attendant, but he just looks at me, confused. A few more passengers join me, all of us yelling at the attendant to do something. Finally he phones for emergency help, just as an explosion sounds from the site of the attack. Everyone darts back to the right side of the tron, but all we see is a thick cloud of smoke. The tron kicks back into motion, and we’re ordered to take our seats, though no one does. Finally we reach Process, and everyone rushes off the tron. Several are already on their phones, recounting what happened, and I pull mine to do the same. First bringing up Dad’s number and then switching to Mom’s, I message
Attack at Landings, call for help. I’m okay. Almost home now.

Ten minutes later, I’m home. I slide my keycard at my front door, activating Dad’s home protection system. A red laser scans over me twice, and then the light on the alarm turns green. “Ari Alexander, welcome home,” it says. I dash inside, looking frantically for my parents.

“Mom? Dad?” I yell.

“They aren’t here,” Lawrence says, walking in from the kitchen. He takes one look at me and wraps me in a hug. “Are you all right? I just heard about the attack.” He loosens his embrace and motions to the T-screen in the sitting area off our kitchen.

I cover my mouth with my hands. They show the attack, and then what looks like a bomb dropping, followed by smoke. When the smoke clears, the ground is black, the trees decimated. I don’t know how the building is still standing, but it is streaked in black.

My phone buzzes in my hand, and I click a message from Mom.
Are you okay? Are you at home?

I type
yes
and drop my phone into my pocket. Lawrence hugs me closer, his warmth blanketing the chill in my spine. He starts to ask me more when the screen switches to the address. We both sit silently on the sofa in front of the T-screen, waiting to hear what they say about the attack.

President Cartier, Lawrence’s mom, sits in the center of a long table. To her right and left are the three other worldwide leaders, and seated at the end of the table is Zeus Castello—the sole Ancient leader.

President Cartier is the smallest of the five, so petite she looks almost like a child in an adult’s chair. Her brown hair curls in perfect waves, just like Lawrence’s. Her olive skin shows her age, creasing in fine lines across her face, the heaviest lines around her eyes. To her right sits Alaster Krane, the European president, known for his stunning height and overpowering attitude. His skin and eyes and hair are as black as the night sky. Down the table to President Cartier’s left are the African and Asian presidents. The African president is the only other female, and her skin is as fair as mine, but while I have nearly black hair, hers is fiery red. The Asian leader sits quietly. He’s always quiet, as though he prefers to think more than speak, a quality I wish some of the other leaders would possess. His looks are perfectly symmetrical, and I imagine he was very beautiful when he was young.

Then my eyes drift to Zeus, my breath catching. He stares into the screen, ominous and powerful, like he knows so much more than any of the others. I’ve never met him, and I pray I never will. I study him as though I’m seeing him for the first time. Long white hair that must reach the center of his back. Eyes like a predator. He looks human, like Jackson and the other Latent Ancients, but now that I’m looking at him closely I realize that nothing about him is warm. From his expression, to his face, to his posture. Everything about Zeus oozes danger. I clear my throat to push back my fear.

They begin with the regular stuff—the laws of the treaty, discussion of amendments (there never are any), and a reminder of our responsibilities as humans. I almost scream for them to get to the attack. Law looks as tense as I feel.

Finally, President Cartier focuses on the main camera, her face solemn. “Today, there were four attacks across the world, one in each of the four governing territories. We believe the actions were that of a vigilante Ancient group. They have all been apprehended, returning our world to safe order.” She turns to Zeus. “Mr. Castello, to your knowledge, can you guarantee there are no other threatening groups, and furthermore, do you agree to maintain our peaceful separation until coexistence can safely commence?”

“Vigilante Ancients?” Law asks, but I’m too shocked to respond. Because Zeus Castello has just walked off the stage.

The leaders jump up. One yells after him.

The screen cuts to black.

CHAPTER 5

Hours later, I’m alone in my room, left with my paranoid thoughts. Dad and Mom came home right after the address, both looking wrecked with worry. Dad went straight to his office and Mom, after asking me a zillion times if I’m okay and checking me for signs of stress, went straight to bed. I tried to listen by Dad’s office for a while, hopeful he’d say something, anything to make sense of all this, but then he stormed out of his office, nearly barreling into me, and ordered me to go to bed.

I flip on my T-screen and wait for Gretchen or Law to sign on. Maybe they’ve heard something. A few messages appear from professors. At-home exercises from Coach Sanders. Each tiny note comes across as a virtual envelope and then disappears once I’ve read it. We’re supposed to archive anything from school or the Trinity, but I’m too exhausted from the day to care.

I glance at the clock. 11:50. I need to prepare. I reach for the power-save button just as a message flitters across the screen. I sit back in my chair, watching as the note blinks from yellow to green, yellow to green. Across the letter, written in script, is the sender’s name—Jackson Locke.

I hover my pointer over the letter and then say, “Open.” It flips backward and a note appears.

I forgot to tell you—try not to scream.