The Grower's Gift (Progeny of Time #1) (16 page)

"You see? Even he doesn't want you do go to that school. Let's go home."

"Stop saying that, Giles. I'll be alright. I can take care of myself, you know. Especially if Ty is my friend."

"So you're using him, is that it?"

Maya slammed her cup in the table, hot tea sloshing all over it. "That is not what I'm doing at all. He's friendly to me and I'm friendly back. I have no reason to dislike him! He tried to save Mary, and he made sure we were paid fairly for fixing up his tiger. He got us into the Ring too. He might look very arrogant and cold, but I don't think he is. Looks can be deceiving."

Giles glared at her. "In his case, I don't think they are."

Maya sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. "Fine, be that way. But you have no real reason to dislike him."

"He keeps me locked up here."

Well there is that.
 

Maya wasn't about to give Giles the upper hand in this argument. "I'm sure that's in our own best interest."

Giles gasped and looked about to retort, but no words came out. Finally he shook his head and walked away. They didn't speak for the rest of the afternoon.
 

Maya kept glancing at the clock. At five, the funny, jittery feeling in her stomach started like she always got before her exams at school. Ty usually came at around six. She'd only been there for a few days, though, so there was no 'usually' to speak of.
 

Six o'clock came and went with no visitors. It wasn't until after she'd already eaten her dinner of fried chicken with mashed potatoes that Ty and Rober finally came. Giles never even took off his VR glasses, probably too absorbed in his game to notice them come in.

Ty strode up to her, slightly out of breath. "I can't stay. I came to tell you that I haven't been able to find out anything about the other school. I will tomorrow, for sure. "

He came just to tell me that?

The thought alone brought a smile to Maya's lips, she had no control over it. He blushed a soft pink, which took some of the edge off his cold blue eyes.
 

"Thanks for telling me, I guess. But maybe you could take me to the school here."

He looked away and cleared his throat, his cheeks turning back to the paleness of snow. "We'll talk about it later. I have to go."

"Bye then," Maya said to his back, feeling like she had maybe done something wrong, not sure what.
 

Giles shot her a nasty look from under his VR glasses as soon as Rober and Ty left. Then he slammed them back over his eyes and didn't come back out for the rest of the night.

~

Why did I have to blush?

Rober's revolutionaries were already waiting in boathouse eight. He should bring Maya up here. Maybe tomorrow night he would.

"We'd begun to think you weren't coming," Sage said when they entered.

Rober nodded in Ty's direction. "He needed to take care of something first."

Ty felt his cheeks reddening all over again.

"So long as we are all ready to begin now," Sage said and folded open her phone so that it became a tablet. She typed something onto it and a large holographic representation of the Ring filled the center of the room.
 

Sage pulled up Neo York, a perfect miniature replica of the real city, complete with the dome shaped shield that surrounded it. "Explain to us your plan then, Rober."

Ty was still goggling at the map when Rober joined Sage by the holograph. He'd never seen a plan so detailed outside of an SF command room. How had Sage gotten it? Did she steal it? How come no one noticed?

Rober cleared his throat and looked around the room. "I think the best chance of success we have is to steal all we need at the same time. In the same hour, if at all possible. We'll divide into four teams of two and meet at the exit point here."

Rober pointed at a spot on the shield in the warehouse district, far away from any official exits.
 

"There's no way out through the shield there," Ty protested.

"Well spotted," Rober said. "I'm making a secret gate, and only the six of us will have the code to open it."

Ty wished Rober had warned him how far along these plans were. Their last meeting sounded more like idle talk than any real planning. Now here he was, outlining a tactical plan. Still, maybe it could work.

"What do you plan to steal?" Ty asked cautiously.
 

"I already have the latest model 45 nanofabricator at home, direct from the factory. One team will get the plans for the terraforming probe from the BioTechnica facility. The third team will secure a craft, and the fourth will act as decoy to draw attention from what the rest of us are doing," Rober explained. "You know what I mean, Ty, keep it simple. At this point we only want to get the items we need into the Badlands and then return like nothing has happened. Sage and Adam will be the decoys. They get caught stealing something inconsequential from the SF headquarters, which is on the other side of where the rest of us steal the important stuff. We'll all be back home before they even know anything has gone missing."

Keep it simple?
There was nothing simple about this treason Rober had planned. Though how could a nanofabricator in the Badlands hurt, really? Even if he couldn't get Maya into that other school, at least this would give her hope for the future.

Ty chuckled. "Kind of how we always planned our escape from here when we were younger? Remember how we'd already begun to stockpile all we needed to start our own city?"

It was one of their wilder ideas. Take a builder and go to the uninhabited lands in the north. Rober's shield making skills would keep them hidden while they founded their own town in the wilderness the ice melt revealed there. They'd have their own city and anyone wanting to come in would have to get their permission. They were about ten years old then, it was a childish dream. This was real. Even Ty would be punished if the panel found out.

Rober nodded. "That's where I got the idea from. This won't be anything as drastic as that though. Like I already said, it's a long term plan and most of it will be done in secrecy. First we give the Badlands the means to make their terraforming probes and start using them. Then we slowly take power in the Ring and make sure no one stops the work done in the Badlands."

Ty was still seeing their northern city in his mind, a place where he could finally be free of his fear.
 

"I have the clearance for the university databases. I could get the plans," Ty said, surprising even himself.
 

"That's one of the main reason we invited you on board," Tanya Schwarz said, eyeing him suspiciously. "I'm still not sure it was the best idea."

Ty ignored her. "As for taking power in Neo York, I'm not so sure it's feasible. Hercules alone could prove a deadly obstacle."

"I don't think my parents will let Hercules succeed them, when it comes to it," Sage Montague said. "Rober's parents are in their eighties, and they're already talking about stepping aside."

Tanya was still locking eyes with him. "As for your parents, Ty, the rest of the panel are already discussing getting rid of Violetta. She did herself no favors by condemning all those innocent people to death at the talks. Your father is really worried for his seat right now because of it. The end of House Remarque could come sooner than you think."

Could it be true?
It would certainly explain why his father had been so nervous the last few days. But no, Violetta Remarque was much too powerful to be brought down.

"I doubt my mother will be dealt with so easily, and she won't go down without a serious fight," Ty said. "Even if we did have control of Neo York, there's still the other six cities to convince. I'm still more for the idea of founding our own city."

 
Rober clapped his hands to get their attention. "That's something we can discuss later. For right now, all we have to worry about is getting those three items out of the Ring and into the Badlands. Whatever power struggles erupt after that we will deal with as they do."

"Do you have a date for these thefts in mind then?" Ty asked.

"Not a date as such, an event. I don't think the executions will go over smoothly. I think there will be backlash from New LA and Dakota, and it will happen any day now. I say we use the commotion that will cause as a cover. I want you all to be ready to go at a moment's notice."

The more he considered it, the more Ty believed it could be done. They'd not be breaking any serious rules in these early stages and why not give the Badlands some hope?
 

"Best to do it during the day," he said. "I don't think I could explain away my presence at the university after nightfall," Ty said. "As it is, we'll be tracked."

Liam Northman tapped his chest. "That's where my specialty comes in. I can hack into the surveillance systems and put them on a loop so that we get one hour of no tracking. Any longer than that and we'll be seen; an hour won't be noticed, especially since the things we'll be stealing are in lower level security facilities."

"If you're sure," Ty said, not quite convinced.
 

"We are!" Sage said irately.

"Tonight I'll put the finishing touches on the hidden exit in the shield," Rober said. "I'm throwing a party at my house tomorrow night, and while you're all there, I'll add the necessary line and code to your tattoos so you can all open the gate as needed. It will be located here." He called up the exact coordinates for them to copy.

"Why does it have to be a party?" Ty asked Rober after the others had left.
 

"So no one suspects the real reason you're all there, of course. All of our plans have to be kept secret if we're to succeed."

"Fine, but make sure Maya's not there," Ty said.

"Why? They all already know her."

"They also know why she's here. Someone could say something to my mother."
 

Rober shrugged. "I'm sure no one would go to your mother. If you want, I'll hide her and Giles away."

Ty did want. Maya was too insistent on going to the facility. Someone might think they were doing her a favor getting her there.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Ty's mother left instructions for him to join her at the facility first thing in the morning. He considered going to see Maya first and telling her about Rober's plan, but disobeying a direct order from his mother was never a good idea.
 

It turned out she only called him in to read off some data from yesterday's experiment while she took notes and muttered to herself. Her hair was tangled up and sticking out all over the place, her eyes completely bloodshot. She must have been at it all night.

"Why don't you go home and get some sleep?" Ty finally asked her at about noon after she'd had him reread the same data four times.

"This is too important. Think of the power our SFs could have if they had the ability to blast holes through walls."

"You're thinking of developing this as a gifter? How will you control it?"

"Leave that to me," his mother snapped.

"Either way, I don't see why all the rush."

His mother ran her hands through her hair, making an even bigger mess of it. "I have to see if we have enough, or if we need to put him through another experiment."

"Just put him to sleep," Ty protested. The gifted were usually put into a deep, artificially induced coma after their tests were completed. "You can wake him up later if you decide you need more from him."

Violetta jerked up, knocking her tablet to the floor. "Wake him up? Haven't you learned anything? Once they're asleep, they're asleep for good. It can take months to wake them up again. And I don't want to have any more to do with any of them than I absolutely have to. They're all freaks of nature. Dirty anomalies of evolution."

Ty bent over to pick up her tablet, hoping to hide the shock that gripped him.
 

She took the tablet from him and stood up hastily. "Maybe I do need some rest."
 

Martin looked up at him with bloodshot eyes and sighed with relief once Ty's mother left. Ronia had dark purple bags under her eyes and looked like she was about to faint.
 

"Have you two been up all night?" Ty asked.

Ronia nodded and turned back to the wall panel. The center screen showed the man with the ability to blast holes through walls, his arms tied to his sides, sitting with his back to the wall of his padded cell. The man's eyes were wild, darting from one end of the room to the other. A tube extending down from the ceiling disappeared down his left arm, a greenish liquid flowing through it.

Ronia peered at the man intently, adjusting settings on the tablet in front of her constantly.

Ty couldn't look away from the terror in the man's eyes. Those could be Maya's eyes. Or his sister's. Or his own, if he wasn't careful.

Martin sighed and took his arm, leading him away from the screen. "It's not necessary for you to watch this, Ty."

Ty shook off Martin's arm. "What's happening to him?"

"The last exam unhinged him, but we may have to do more tests. He's being sedated now."

"He doesn't look sedated."

White letters appeared at Ronia's side, though she never turned from the screen. "I'm not to give him enough to make him drowsy, only enough so he doesn't seize on us, or use his gift."

Is this what happened to Julian? Did she test him like this?

He could ask Martin and Ronia what had happened to his brother all those years ago. He'd always planned to one day, but feared he could never look at his mother again if he ever found out the truth about what happened to his brother.
 

"How can you two do this to your own people?" The words left Ty's mouth before he even thought them.

"It's either help her or coma," Ronia's words appeared in the air. "Most days I'd prefer coma."

Martin told Ronia to be quiet and gripped Ty's arm again, pulling him from the room. Ty followed this time.