Tundra 37 (17 page)

Had it? She couldn’t remember. Immersed in developing and honing her psychic skills at TINE, she had no time to relax and reflect on her life.

Dr. Fields wants complete cognitive electromagnetic control by graduation. We need to work harder.

Abysme pressed her hand against the wall and the lights flickered on.
We’re doing the best we can. Can’t he see that? We need to have a life, too, you know. We have obligations to Mom.

Our obligations are to TINE. Who do you think pays for this high-rise apartment complete with real grown food and running water?

Abysme threw her hand up in the air.
Fine, they can have it back. I’d rather live in poverty with Mom.

And be afraid of making rent each month, of being thrown out into the gangs?

I’m afraid our life will go by, Metsy, and we’ll lose all the important moments, the reason for living in the first place.

Life can wait.
Mestasis pointed out the window at the dark craters on the moon, where mining teams had stripped the surface bare.
What’s going to happen when they run out of lunar REE and thorium? With the economy tanking, only the brightest and most talented will survive. Don’t you see? A better life’s around the corner and we’re almost there.

I don’t know how you can live here with your ripe tomatoes and warm showers while Mom suffers alone.

Mestasis sighed, wishing TINE would house immediate family members along with its students. Their mom worked so hard all the time and had no money for a pass to visit them in the upper levels. Although they sent their mom food, she wanted to save all three of them, to acquire enough fortune for a rooftop flat with their own greenhouse. That was the only dream she allowed herself to foster all these years. Going back now would only distract her, making it harder to complete the final tests. How could her sister risk their future?

I can’t go back. Not now, not when our graduation is so close. Don’t you understand? I’m working for both of us.

Did you ever consider what I wanted?

What Abysme wanted and what was best for her were two different things. Mestasis couldn’t allow her sister to choose. Besides, TINE needed them as a pair, and if Abysme left, she’d be wrecking all their futures, their mother included. She ignored her sister’s question.

Promise me you’ll come back.

Abysme gave her the guarded look of a caged lioness. Her mindspeak tone was bitter.
You know I always keep my word.

Mestasis ground her fingernails into the plastic couch, making five crescent marks above the seam. She hated how she kept her sister prisoner, that she needed Abysme as much as Abysme needed her. Their close, symbiotic relationship was both a blessing and a bane. She wanted to tell her sister how much she loved her, but bitterness came out instead.

Go have fun.
I’ll be here, practicing, doing all the work.

Abysme didn’t answer. She picked up her bags and slipped out before Mestasis had a chance to offer a real good-bye. Emptiness ached inside her and she felt abandoned, alone. Guilt trickled through her as she thought of Bysme and her mom sitting on their tattered couch in the lower levels, thinking about how
if only Metsy had come
. The three of them would be together again. One unit, a perfect whole.

She flicked on her holoscreen, burying herself in work, which was what she was good at anyway. Placing a hand on the screen, her thoughts of her mother drifted away. She pressed against the cold surface and concentrated. The electromagnetic pulses rode through her, tingling in her arms and legs. She could reach out and touch all the walls in the hundred and fifty story building. She knew on floor sixty-four, Suite A, someone had turned on an air ionizer, and on floor eighty-seven, Suite F, the coffee machine beeped.

Dr. Field’s eager face flashed in her mind. Listening to coffee machines wasn’t good enough. Mestasis’s head throbbed as she struggled to redefine her parameters, searching for different forms of radioactive and electromagnetic waves. Being alone gave her a desperate focus, and she stretched her powers beyond the electromagnetic devices for the first time, breaching a boundary previously holding her back. She detected the presence of infrared rays given off by people. She pushed harder traveling from ray to ray in a continuous spectrum, manipulating the entire world around her.

Mestasis grinned in triumph. She’d just brought her abilities to a new level. Dr. Fields would be impressed. Using her new talent, she scanned each deck, noting any anomalies for the report. He’d want proof and it had to be exact.

One particular spot on floor twenty-one caught her attention. The heat signature produced by the thermal radiation indicated a being much smaller than a person, but two times larger than a pigeon. Besides the agricultural towers, animals had all but gone extinct. People needed the dwindling resources much more than pets. She pushed further, and an image of soft fur danced in her mind.

An animal huddled in the corner of an abandoned floor.

Mestasis froze, unwilling to believe it just as a slim ribbon of hope floated up from her heart.

She checked again. The small body had wedged itself into a pipeline. Nothing else emitted a heat signature in the room.

She had to save it.

The animal may be the only one she’d ever see and it needed her. How could she let such a helpless endangered species die? She paused, noting how low floor twenty-one was, well past the security guards, right in the middle of gangland.

She scanned her empty apartment. Abysme wasn’t there to stop her, and loneliness had slowly worked its way into her heart. TINE would never let her have it, but they didn’t have to know.

Mestasis stared at the door, and the plastic moved into the frame in two halves, revealing the dimly lit corridor where her sister had exited. TINE employees and students rushed by her, running to tests and meetings. She slipped down the hall, avoiding anyone’s eye. Dr. Fields would ask about Abysme, and she’d have to cover, like always. Even though he wasn’t psychic, someday he’d see through her lies. At least now she had a new development to offer him, something to keep them at the institute and perhaps land a future job.

Crossing the checkpoint, she flashed her ID card to the armed guards. They took one look at her status and pressed the door panel, allowing her through to the lower levels. Dr. Fields expected a lot of them, but they weren’t prisoners at TINE. Mestasis made sure of that when she signed them up nine years ago.

The elevator only worked down to floor twenty-five. It slowed to a halt, the door sliding open to reveal a corridor lit by flickering fluorescent lights, half the blubs shattered. She stepped off, feeling a chill creep around her. The ventilation system didn’t bother to drive heat down this far, and any warmth rose to the upper levels. Mestasis suppressed a doubt, thinking of the endangered animal. She wished her powers worked as a superhero defense. She could flicker lights, turn off a coffee machine, and tell who stood in the next room. Not enough to make a tough-as-steel gang member shake in his laser holsters.

Kicking in an old-style door with a broken metal knob, she found a staircase. She’d have to climb down the remaining four flights. Slowly stepping over the debris cluttering each step, she worked her way down. Her heel stumbled over a used light stick, snapping the plastic in two, the energy cell leaking acid on the concrete. Skirting the hazardous mess, she reached a platform in between levels and kicked a doll’s head, its blue eyes opening as it bounced down each stair below her. Wincing, she waited for any sign of movement, pressing her palm against the cold concrete wall. No heat signatures registered until two floors below her, just the small huddled fur ball.

She emerged on a long-deserted factory platform. Derelict machinery cast menacing shadows around her. Stripped for parts by the gangs, the frames lay gutted. After the contractors added the higher levels, the fortunate abandoned the lower floors, each generation reaching to a sky free of smog and enough sunlight to grow food. The transport ships delivering goods and fuel only landed on top of the high rises. By the time things reached level one, there wasn’t much left.

She tiptoed through the dust, leaving light footprints. The animal must have heard her steps, because a noise she’d only heard as an impersonation from the holoscreen echoed from the back corner of the room. “Meow.”

Her heart melted into liquid gold. Mestasis placed both hands on the pipe, jutting out from an old air vent system. Her thoughts warmed the metal with currents of electromagnetic pulses. The nickel turned pliable under her fingertips. She coaxed the shape, drawing out the metal, widening the gap. Reaching down into the hole, she stretched her arm until fur tickled her fingertips. Carefully, she worked the small body out, scratching her arms.

Two golden eyes stared at her with sideways, oval-shaped black retinas, making the dangerous outing worth the reward. Black, white, and gold colors decorated its fur in a mottled pattern, making the kitten the most beautiful creature she’d ever seen. She hugged the tiny body close, smoothing down the fur standing up on end across its back. The animal purred, its head nestling against her.

She turned to the door just as multiple footsteps clanged up the stairway. Mestasis clutched the animal tightly and ducked behind an old plastic assimilator. She peered between the dangling metal arm and the assembly belt. Five young men entered, two carrying a large shipment container. Their hair was infused with neon green phosphorescence, the color of the infamous Radioactive Hand of Justice. They were a group with radical Robin Hood ideals making recent headlines for intercepting shipments from Utopia, the largest greenhouse in New England. What had she gotten herself into?

“Pry the lid.” The man’s voice cut like a razor through the shadows. Mestasis held her breath and put her hand gently over the kitten’s mouth.

Two other men with lanky bodies wearing long black coats and boots strapped with flash tubes lit up the room with their footsteps. They deactivated the code sequence by overriding the manual ID keytag. A fourth man circled the perimeter, his head cocked as if he could hear Mestasis’s heart thump in her chest.

She tried to calm herself and think clearly. TINE wouldn’t come and look for her until the next day, if she failed to make her appointment with Dr. Fields. She needed help. Reaching out across the city, she focused and redirected her thoughts.

Abysme, can you hear me?

Nothing. Her sister must have blocked the mindspeak channel in her anger, or she’d traveled too far away to reach through thought. Dread ate a hole in her stomach. She was on her own.

The gangmen pulled bags of grapes, apples red as blood, and sacks bulging with potatoes from the container.

“How’s this, boss?”

The man surveying the operation nodded, probing a grape between his fingernails. “An exotic fruit shipment. Yes, Quadrant Forty-five will be pleased.”

What if they stayed there all night? Mestasis’s heart pounded so hard she thought it would bounce right out of her chest and land in the tomatoes. The kitten wiggled in her hands, obviously bored and hungry. She couldn’t keep it quiet for much longer.

The lookout spotted something on the floor and dragged a line across her footprints in the dust. His boots flashed as he stepped toward her hiding spot, following her trail to the plastic assimilator.

Mestasis froze, feeling her life on the brink of nonexistence. After witnessing their crime, they’d never let her live. Especially after they found her keytag and learned she worked for a division of the government. She worried about the kitten in her arms. Would they torture it? Would they throw it out the window?

Her hands sweated into its fur as the man eyed the dangling arm of the plastic assimilator. Mestasis ducked, watching through a peephole in the corroded metal frame. He had wide gray eyes like two pieces of steel, silky midnight-black hair tinged with the neon at the tips, and cream-colored skin, much lighter than hers. Too handsome to be a gang member, but that was clearly what he was.

He met her eye, his own gaze flashing with surprise, and her body jolted inside. They froze, locked in each other’s gaze.

Please.
Mestasis bit into her lower lip.
Please don’t turn me in.

He raised a finger to his thick lips and turned the other way. Mestasis released her breath in disbelief. Gang members were supposed to be ruthless. But curiosity filled that man’s eyes instead of a hard edge.

Walking up to the man in charge, the lookout spoke with a soft and smooth voice, “We have to keep moving. We’re too high up.”

The leader nodded and his lackeys shoved the produce back in the container. “We’ll count the rest later.”

The lookout’s hand rested on his subsonic laser. “I’ll keep watch until the men carry the last of the containers down.”

“Excellent, James. Don’t linger.”

The two men who had opened the container bent down and heaved it over their shoulders. The leader turned back to him. “Thank you for your protection.”

James nodded, silky black hair tinged with neon falling around his face to block his profile. “I do what I can.”

The gang disappeared down the stairs and Mestasis contemplated making a run for it. But the man named James had just saved her life, and she didn’t want him calling out to his friends. She waited, listening to their footsteps fade.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t turn you in.” His voice was more amused than stern.

Mestasis gave up her hiding spot and stepped into the moonlight pouring down through the broken glass. Her body shook in survival mode, every inch of her skin tingling with oversensitivity. She could feel his heat signature from across the room, a strong, manly presence, much sharper than Dr. Fields.

“I’m not a spy. I came to rescue this kitten.”

Its furry head popped up out of her uniform and she realized her biggest mistake. She should have changed into civilian clothes before entering the lower levels.