Immune (31 page)

With one more glance up at Heather’s window, Mark turned back toward his house. At least for now, this was his problem and he would figure it out on his own.

Jennifer sat on Heather’s right, looking out the school bus window intently enough to make Heather wonder whether the scenery along the route to Los Alamos High had changed. Mark sat by himself two rows up. That was probably a good thing. She didn’t want to talk to him right now. It had been a long time since she had been this mad at anyone, and for it to be Mark that she was angry with was a new experience, one that she could have done without.

Heather had awakened on the first day of school with that special thrill of anticipation that this day always gave her. What in the world had possessed him to bring her down like this?

Heather had known for a while that Mark was less than thrilled with the idea that her parents had her on antipsychotic meds. Until this morning, he had never directly challenged her on the subject. But whatever good sense he had shown heretofore had evaporated as they waited for the bus. He’d actually had the nerve to say that her mom and dad were drugging her out of her mind and that she was crazy for knuckling under to their wishes.

If she hadn’t been quite so mad, Heather was sure she would have been reduced to tears by the verbal assault from someone she loved so dearly. She wasn’t going to let that happen, though. Mark wasn’t the one suffering from the horrifying mental fugues that had been ripping apart her reality, leaving her trembling with fear that she might completely lose her mind. He had no right to judge her or her parents. No right.

A sudden jolt as the rear tires of the bus climbed up over the curb as it turned into the high school, brought Heather’s thoughts back to the present. New bus driver. Heather hoped the bumpy entrance to the school grounds wasn’t a sign of things to come. In response to her mental question, the image of her old Magic 8-Ball toy came to mind, the answer swimming into view through the blue liquid beneath its lens.

“Don’t count on it.”

Without bothering to dwell on the unpleasant thought, Heather allowed herself to be swept from her seat, carried along by the excited throng toward the entrance to the high school entryway, and then into the hallway beyond. When she glanced around, Mark was gone, as was Jennifer. So much the better. All she wanted right now was some sense of return to normality, something that the bustling high school hallway promised to deliver.

First-day activities consumed her: class schedules, new teachers, book issue, locker assignment, assembly. Most of her classmates seemed genuinely happy to see her.

Only Paulette Carlton and her troupe of snobettes got in her face.

“Look what we have here,” Paulette exclaimed with an expert flip of her long, blond hair. “A certified, national science contest award winner. Nation’s biggest cheat.”

The other three girls, all members of the cheerleading squad, laughed loudly as they passed by in Paulette’s wake, Heather’s scowl lost on their backsides. Watching them from this angle, Heather could understand their popularity with the boys: lots of waggle and vocabularies that didn’t include the word
no
.

Grabbing her chemistry notebook from the locker, Heather pushed the pride of Los Alamos High School’s cheerleading squad from her mind and headed toward her next class.

A small group had gathered just outside the classroom, and to Heather’s dismay, she saw that Paulette and the kitty cats were among them. Just as she was about to put her head down and duck by the cluster into the classroom, Heather caught a glimpse of the person at the center of everyone’s attention.

Jennifer Smythe stood smiling and chatting amiably, the group around her as enthralled by her presence as if Elvis had just walked into the building. Heather stopped to stare. Even the cheerleaders appeared to be trying to crowd nearer, as if they couldn’t bear to be excluded from Jen’s inner circle of admirers.

Unable to believe the evidence presented by her own eyes, Heather edged closer, ignoring the sound of the bell calling her to class. Suddenly, Jennifer’s laughing eyes caught her own and a feeling of gentle longing filled her mind. As Heather watched Jennifer turn that sparkling gaze from person to person, a chill spread through her body.

With the probability equations forming a torrent in her head, Heather understood. Her shy little friend was in the midst of becoming. The only question was…becoming what?

“Coach, I’d love to go out for the football team, but I can’t.”

Mark knew that the words sounded false as they passed through his lips. Coach Crawford’s eyes locked him in place.

“I want you to listen to me, son. I would never talk to you like this if I hadn’t already had a discussion with your parents. Your father told me he had encouraged you to try out for the football team. I’m sure you know that he was an all-state defensive end when he went to high school in Albuquerque.”

Mark nodded.
Oh crap, here it comes
, he thought.

“Now I know that you see a future for yourself in college basketball, and I understand why Coach Dickey doesn’t want you to risk injury playing football, but the truth of the matter is that high school is what makes a young man. If you look at the great athletes, the greatest among them excelled in multiple sports. They never let fear make their decisions for them. Not fear of failure. Not fear of injury. Hell, not even fear of a tough coach.

“They believed in themselves. It’s that kind of belief that makes a winner. Do you understand what I’m saying, Mark?”

Mark swallowed hard. “Yes, Coach. I believe so.”

Coach Crawford slapped his shoulder firmly enough to be heard across the hallway. “Good. I’m not going to ask you to make a decision right now. You made your initial choice when you didn’t come out for summer tryouts and two-a-day practices. Your muscle definition says you have a great work ethic and self-motivation. If you give it a chance, football will give you the confidence and belief in yourself it takes to be a real winner.”

Coach Crawford patted him on the shoulder once again. “Think about what I said.”

Before Mark could respond, the coach turned and walked down the hall toward the gymnasium. Mark stood by his locker, watching the coach disappear into the crowd of students hurrying on their next class.

Great. He was being spied on by some Rho Project anomaly. He had made Heather so angry that she wasn’t even looking at him, much less speaking. Now the high school football coach had implied he was a coward for not trying out for the football team. Could the first day back at school get any better?

The real pisser was that Mark wanted to play football, wanted it more than he wanted to play basketball. He wasn’t the least bit worried about getting hurt. What worried him was that he couldn’t control his adrenaline. In the rush of excitement, he might hurt someone horribly.

A year ago, he would have gone for it, figuring that his enhanced reflexes would allow him to keep from hitting anyone too hard. That was even truer now. What scared the crap out of him was that, in the heat of the moment, he might want to hurt someone. Shit. All it took to send him into an adrenaline stoked rage was for Heather to smile at some boy down the hall. And it didn’t seem too likely that the referees would let him call time-out after every play so he could meditate.

“Mark Smythe!”

The authoritative tone spun his head in the direction of the sound.

Principal Zumwalt stood three feet away, his gaze locked on Mark’s face. “Come with me, young man.”

Without waiting for a response, the principal strode away down the hall toward his office with Mark in his wake, the students parting around them like the Red Sea for Moses. As they stepped into his office, Principal Zumwalt motioned for Mark to take a seat and then closed the door behind him.

The principal moved around his desk, seating himself so that he stared at Mark across steepled fingers. As the silence dragged on, Mark began to wonder if he was expected to be the first to start talking. However, since he had no idea why he was even sitting here, he resisted the impulse to speak.

“Mark, I know that Coach Crawford spoke to you about trying out for the football team. I want you to know that his approach was out of line and I will be speaking to him about it.”

“Sir, I appreciate it, but that’s not really necessary.”

“In my mind it is. And I wish that was the reason that I called you to my office.”

Principal Zumwalt paused again, and with each passing second the oppressive atmosphere of the closed office deepened.

“There are times when being a high school principal is unpleasant in the extreme. Although what I am about to tell you affects your sister and Heather McFarland as well, I called you in first since you are the most deeply impacted.

“The Los Alamos school board met last night to discuss proposed sanctions for the alleged plagiarism that led to your team’s disqualification from the National Science Competition.”

Mark inhaled deeply. Oh Jesus, not that again.

“Even though no formal finding was issued by the judges, the school board felt obliged to reexamine the facts of the incident to see if you violated school standards in a way that brought dishonor to this institution and to the community as a whole.

“Mark, I want you to know that the board was split down the middle on this one and that many people, including myself, came forward in support of you three. However, in the end, a couple of key votes on the board were influenced by the strong statement provided by Dr. Donald Stephenson, who argued that failure to harshly punish all three of you impugned the intellectual integrity of this school. He also emphasized that star athletes across the country are granted immunity from academic standards all too often and that such a thing has no place in the elite boundaries of Los Alamos.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but the board has decided that all three of the members of your science team will be banned from all extracurricular activities for the entire school year.”

Mark was too stunned to speak.

“That means you are banned from participation in high school clubs, band, or high school athletic teams. For you that means no basketball.”

Mark swallowed hard to clear his throat. “But, sir, surely there is something we can do, some appeal we can make.”

“I’m afraid not. The school board is the final authority in this matter, and they have spoken. I’m sorry.”

Unable to remain sitting, Mark rose to his feet. For several seconds he stood there staring at Principal Zumwalt, feeling as sick as if he had just been kicked in the groin. Unable to find anything else to say, he merely nodded, then turned and walked out of the office into a suddenly alien hallway.

Rage at the injustice of it all rose up within him until he found himself shaking. Desperate to get outside before he did something he would regret, Mark stumbled through the front doorway and began running along the highway toward home.

If they didn’t want him playing basketball, fine. He didn’t want to play for that God damn intellectual snob high school anyway. As the ground swept past beneath his feet, a single thought hammered the inside of his skull.

Screw them. Screw them all.

Indian Summer. Janet had grown up in the northeast where that term meant a late fall return to warmer weather. Here in the high desert of New Mexico it had taken on a whole new meaning. Late summer storms had become a daily occurrence, their arrival presaged by towering thunderheads trailing curtains of rain, stabbing at the ground with their jagged spears of lightning and shaking the canyons with the heavy rumble of thunder. The wall of thunderheads building in the distance showed every indication of delivering another of the violent performances that made her wonder if the small hogan could remain standing.

Janet loved the storms for the diversion they provided from the strands of loneliness with which her isolation bound her. Jack had been gone for three weeks. Like some great crocodile sliding into the Nile, he had departed, leaving her alone. And although she had not heard from him directly, she knew he was out there somewhere back east. He had given her specific instructions to stay put and stay focused, correlating the pieces of the puzzle as she hacked her way through secure networks around the globe.

So Janet had stayed, making use of the quantum twin link to their source's magical Internet gateway. She still had no idea what technology enabled her to enter a precise coordinate and then connect to any network at that location. The systems that attracted her interest were all highly classified networks, physically isolated from any type of external access and protected by the best shielding that could be constructed.

But, despite their layers of protection, the classified networks she targeted might as well have been broadcasting an open Wi-Fi signal. It was as if she had just plugged a Category 6 cable into the remote hub. Once she was in, the data access was easy. Hardly anyone bothered to encrypt data on the network, so confident were they in the protection provided by the network itself. Unfortunately, that was where the easy part ended. There was so much data to search, so many subnets to access, that finding the clues she needed was daunting.