“I already cleared it with Captain Alvarez, who in turn called the Director, who of course said you could go,” Henri replied dismissively.
I expected Erik to make a snide remark, but for once he kept his mouth shut.
“Wow. Thanks Henri.” Now I felt even worse about missing curfew the night before.
“You can only come for the day,” he warned. “The Director wouldn’t budge on letting you stay down there after dark.”
“That’s okay, I‘m just so excited to get to go at all!” I exclaimed, jumping out of my bed.
“Then get ready already, so we can leave,” Erik urged. I squealed happily and skipped to the bathroom.
I absentmindedly hurried through my morning routine and opened up my mind to find Donavon. I could tell he was awake and in his cabin.
“Hey, guess what?” I sent.
“What?” his mental voice sounded sleepy, so I guessed he’d just woken up.
“Henri cleared it with your Dad; I get to go to the city today!”
“With Henri and Erik?” he didn’t sound happy.
“Well, yeah. I guess, so we can spend bonding time or whatever,” I tried to sound offhand, but I was really excited and I didn’t want him ruining my mood.
“Oh, well have fun, I guess,” he was definitely irritated.
“I know you were hoping we could go together, but Henri went through the trouble of going to the Captain and calling your Dad and stuff,” I started to apologize.
“No, it’s fine. I’ll take you another time,” he cut me off.
“I’ll come find you when I get back,” I promised.
“Yeah, whatever.” I closed my mind again, he was killing my happy buzz.
Elite Headquarters is located in West Virginia, about a hundred miles west of the Nation’s capital. The actual compound sat on several hundred acres of what used-to-be farm land, but now boasted the latest and greatest technology that the world had to offer. The compound’s stores sell anything a Pledge or Operative needs. In Washington, D.C. you could buy anything imaginable, and probably many things that I couldn’t imagine. Erik, like many of the other Operatives, frequented the city bars to pick up girls, but Pledges weren’t usually allowed to visit the city, even on our days off. I guess the idea was that Pledges stationed at various other locations weren’t able to be afforded the same luxuries, so it wasn’t fair.
As a child, my parents and I had traveled constantly, never staying in one location for more than a couple of months. Since coming to live with Mac and his family my travels had been limited. My relocation trip to Elite Headquarters was the first time I’d left the School’s grounds since arriving seven years before. The notion that a real city existed, only a hover ride away, had been driving me crazy.
Donavon had completed his Pledge year and graduated from School the year before; since becoming a full-fledged Hunter he had been taking full advantage of his newfound freedom. Sometimes he brought me flaky pastries filled with chocolate or strawberry cream from the bakeries. Other times, he brought back lengths of embroidered silks to take home to Gretchen, so she could have outfits made for me. When he was feeling lazy, he just bought trinkets from the street vendors.
Henri had reserved a hover car for the day that he used to drive the three of us the hundred miles into Washington. I kept my face glued to the cold glass, watching as the dense woods surrounding Headquarters gave way to small farms and spread-out houses. We were still twenty miles outside of the actual city when the buildings became more dense and elaborate. The roadways beneath us were packed with bumper-to-bumper road vehicles. From our vantage, point in the air I suddenly saw the city materialize beneath us. I stared down in wonder.
When we reached the outskirts of D.C. we flew straight through the border check point, without stopping. Ordinarily, all vehicles – both road and hover – needed to stop and the occupants were required to show identification. But, since we were in a clearly marked Agency car, we were able to sail through without pausing.
I was overwhelmed the moment we landed. The buildings were tall and packed so close together there was no space to walk in between – the height restrictions for the structures long forgotten. Most of the buildings were made of diffractive glass that changed color depending on where I stood. The architectural-style varied from one building to the next, with no two looking exactly alike. I saw some buildings that were short and square, some tall and thin, and several topped with elaborate sphere-like structures. I even saw one hexagon shaped building that had, what appeared to be, a moving walkway that snaked around the periphery, taking people all the way from street-level to the pinnacle. A sky railway arched high above the busy ground walkways, connecting one building to the next.
The sky was dotted with small hover cars – this must be their primary mode of transportation. Although the streets inside D.C., were just as packed with road mobiles as the beltways surrounding the city. The population must be so great the occupants needed both to get around in a timely fashion.
The men and women walking the streets were dressed in beautiful, albeit colorful outfits. Many of the younger had brightly colored hair that was dyed to match their clothing. I noticed a large number of people with unnatural eye colors, like mine and Erik’s. It wasn’t rare to have untraditional eye colors and actually it was so not rare that I was unsure why people still referred to my eye color as unnatural. Donavon had told me it was common for city kids to have their eye pigment altered, or in less extreme cases, wear colored lenses in their eyes.
The older women in Washington’s shopping district wore vibrant silk dresses, and intricately carved wooden high heeled shoes. Many wore ropes of colored, glass stones around their necks, and varying sizes of adornments in their ears. Some of the wealthier women had glass beads braided into exquisite updos or bird feathers crowning their heads.
Working-class men and women pushed their way through the crowded sidewalks, wearing cheaply made business attire in varying shades of gray and navy. They ducked into sandwich shops and greasy fast food joints, trying to find the most expedient place to get food on their too short lunch breaks. All of the women wore makeup. The older women seemed to favor simple shades that accentuated their natural features. Younger women, and even some teenagers, sported makeup so thick that their faces looked more like painted masks, designed to look like a caricature of the wearer underneath.
I felt extremely plain, naked, in my boring navy, cotton dress, thong sandals and makeup-free face. At least I had my weird purplish-blue eyes and long spiral curls going for me. I did have more elaborate clothes in my closet at headquarters but I usually shied away from wearing them since none of the other Pledges or Operatives ever wore anything exciting.
“What do you think, Tals?” Erik interrupted my gazing.
“It’s beautiful,” I replied honestly.
“Far cry from school, huh?”
“Sure is,” I agreed softly.
The boys promised me a tour of their favorite places on the ride over, and I’d been worried that meant I would be spending the day becoming acquainted with the city’s drinking establishments. My fears were put to rest when our first stop was a candy store. Erik showed me how to use the computer to design my own taffy flavors, and then we watched as large metal claws pulled and stretched long pieces of taffy, mixing and melding, to create my custom candies.
After the candy store our next stop was the Air, Space and Technology Museum. There was a tour starting just as we passed through the entrance scanners; I figured we’d join the group. Instead, we walked straight past the throng of people towards the first exhibit. It turned out that Henri was a frequent enough museum patron that he gave the tour better than any guide could hope to.
For the rest of the morning, I followed the boys in and out of game shops, techie boutiques, clothing stores and several establishments that sold questionably legal merchandise. I tried to take it all in, but I was on sensory-overload by midmorning.
After a
full morning of shopping, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant that claimed to have “The Best Apple Pie in the District.” There were so many cakes and pies on the menu that, I considered just ordering dessert for lunch; then decided against spending the afternoon with a stomachache. I’d never heard of many of the dishes on the menu, so I settled on a cold octopus soup with spinach bread. Both the Academy and Headquarters rarely served any seafood, and I didn’t want to waste the opportunity.
“What else do you want to see before you need to go back?” Henri asked as we finished lunch.
“Can we see the ocean?” I asked hopefully. I knew the city was not actually built on the ocean – it was about another hundred miles or so east – yet I hoped that since we had the hover mobile it wouldn’t be a problem. In a road mobile the trip would take hours, but in a hover mobile we could get there in just a half an hour.
“I guess we could do that,” Henri answered with a shrug. “Erik? Any complaints?”
“Have at it. You can take her to the ocean if you want. I think this might be where we part ways,” Erik answered.
“Do you have something better to do?” I demanded, for some reason offended that he wanted to run off so soon.
“Actually, I do.”
I scowled at him. “Fine. Be that way.” I turned to Henri, “You don’t mind do you?”
“No, not at all. Erik, I’ll meet up with you later tonight?”
Erik nodded before heading out the door to the restaurant.
Henri led me back to the towering, above-ground parking garage where we’d left the hover mobile, and we set off for the short trip to the beach. Even though it had been over a hundred years since the nuclear reactors had leaked nuclear waste contaminating the planet’s oceans, very few people risked swimming. Instead, most people favored lakes and ponds – fresh bodies of water that didn’t connect to the ocean. As a result, the Eastern Shore beaches were relatively empty, and we were able to land the hover mobile right in the sand. I impatiently waited for Henri to pop the glass covering; once he did, I kicked off my shoes, and jumped over the side of the car, landing deftly on the balls of my feet in the soft sand.
I inhaled deeply and closed my eyes. The smell of salt water and seaweed filled my nostrils. I inhaled a little deeper and concentrated my mental energy towards expanding my sense of smell. I could pick up traces of fish and kelp, mixed with oil from the fishing boats. I’d always found it weird that people would eat the ocean life, but refuse to swim in the water. I exhaled happily.
The breeze coming off the water was cool, but the sand was warm from the afternoon sun. I dropped to my knees and picked up handful after handful of sand, letting it trickle through my splayed fingers. As long as I kept my eyes closed, I could pretend that I was a little girl on the rocky beach of Capri.
When I was very young, before we started moving around all of the time, my family lived in a stone house built into the bluffs overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. My mother would take me down to the beach at the base of the bluffs and let me play in the pinkish-orange sand. I would collect bottles of the sand and take it back to the house, where I would painstakingly sort out the pink and orange grains under a magnifying lens. My mother knew that the colored sand was a by-product of the ocean contamination, but she never ruined my fantasy by letting me in on the secret.
The sand on the beach at the Eastern Shore was not pink or orange but rather a dark brownish black. The water here was a dark, muddy brown, a stark contrast to the clear, sparkling water of the Tyrrhenian Sea. I kept my eyes closed, and walked towards the sound of the waves lapping the shore. I heard Henri calling my name over the breaking of the waves, warning me not to get in the water. I ignored his counsel, and walked until I could feel the water swirling around my ankles. I stood, inhaling the salty spray, until my feet had sunk so deeply in to the wet sand that Henri had to help me out.
As the sun began to sink lower behind us, I knew my time at the beach had to come to an end. Mac had said I needed to be back by dark, and I didn’t want Henri getting in trouble on my account.
Henri and I rode back to Headquarters in silence.
“Thanks for today,” I said sincerely, when we pulled into the parking bay of Elite Headquarters.
“You deserve it, you’ve been working so hard.”
“I still appreciate it. It was nice of you to go to the trouble of getting permission from the Captain and all, to let me go,” I didn’t want him to that think I expected special treatment because of Mac or Donavon or whoever else.
“It wasn’t a big deal; after all, being practically related to the Director does have its perks,” he winked at me to let me know he was, at least partially, joking.
I smiled, “I’ll see you later.”
I jumped out and watched as he took off back to the city, to join Erik for the evening.
Chapter Eleven
I didn’t go back to my own cabin; instead I went directly to Donavon’s. I raised my hand to knock, just as the door opened.
“Hey, you,” Donavon smiled as he leaned down to kiss me softly. “You smell like the ocean.” He buried his face in my mass of dark brown curls, and inhaled deeply.
“Henri took me out to the beach after we roamed around Washington,” I smiled.
“You okay?” Donavon had seen my sand collection; it was one of the few things Mac had managed to rescue from the hotel room where he found me.
“Yeah, I’m good,” I replied honestly. “You look nice,” I commented as I pulled back from his embrace, really looking at him for the first time.
“You think? Would you come home with me if you met me at a bar?” he teased.
“Absolutely. But if you stay here, you don’t even have to spend money for me to go home with you,” I teased.
“Tomorrow I’m all yours. Tonight, I promised Harris and Arden a little team bonding.”
“I see,” now it was my turn to be irritated.
“Are you mad?”
“No, of course not,” I lied.
“You’re lying,” he accused.
“I’m not mad. I just don’t like that I have to stay here while you get to go have fun,” I tried to smile.
“You hate going out with groups of people anyway,” he reasoned.
“But I like being with you,” my voice was just short of a whine.
“And I love being with you,” he said softly. “And all day tomorrow that’s what I plan to do, okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Don’t worry, Tal, I’ll make sure he behaves,” Harris said sticking his sandy blonde head out through the door.
“I’m not worried, Harris,” I said, pulling myself together.
“Good, ‘cause we have to go. Come on, Donavon, kiss her goodbye so we can leave.”
“Start walking Harris. I’ll catch up.”
Harris squeezed my arm as he walked by and I gave him a nod goodbye.
“I love you.” Donavon said, as he bent down to kiss me again.
“I know.”
I headed back to my cabin in a far worse mood than when I’d left that morning. The bottom of my dress was still damp from the ocean, so the first thing I needed to do was change. With Donavon gone, I didn’t really have any friends around and there wouldn’t be any messages on my communicator. Our communicators were actually portable, but I never took mine anywhere, since no one besides Donavon and Mac ever called me. Unlike my dorm room at school, that was equipped with all of the latest technology Toxic had to offer, the cabins at Elite Headquarters were barebones. The idea was that, as Hunters, we spent a lot of time in less-than-ideal situations, and we needed to be accustomed to boredom.
As I crossed the Hunters’ Village, I noticed tall, gangly girl, with unnaturally bright red hair, coming out of the woods. Her eyes were large and bright green, and the oversized yellow plastic glasses that she wore seemed to magnify her eyes giving her a bug-eyed appearance. The Agency performs corrective eye surgery on all students, so I knew the glass
es were purely decorative.
“Hi!” she greeted me with an enthusiastic wave.
I glanced around, unsure she was actually speaking to me. I was the only other person in the vicinity. I returned her wave uneasily and waited for her to get closer.
“I’m Penelope. Well, Penny actually. Everybody calls me Penny,” she said, sounding a little out of breath.
“Talia,” I replied cautiously, not sure what to make of her.
“You’re a Pledge right? A Hunter Pledge?”
“Um, yeah.” Obviously, I thought. I live in the Hunters’ Village. Be nice, I chastised myself. She was just trying to be friendly.
“Cool. I am a Crypto Pledge. I know most of the Operatives are in the city tonight, and a bunch of us Pledges were going to get together and hang out.”
“Cool,” I replied, for lack of something better to say.
“You want to come?” she asked, her eyes were like big green saucers as she looked at me expectantly.
I started to shake my head and tell her thanks, but no thanks, when instead I said, “Sure,” before I could stop myself.
“Great! The others are already down by the lake starting a bonfire. I’ll wait if you want to get some warmer clothes?” she suggested, scrutinizing my wet dress.
I gave her a small smile; still unsure what made me agree to this, and led her to my cabin. Donavon was out with his friends having fun, probably getting drunk, I should enjoy myself too.
Penny followed me through the doorway and made herself at home on my bed while I searched for something to wear. I grabbed a gray sweater, jeans, and a pair of beat-up tennis shoes, and ducked in the bathroom to change.
“Ready?” Penny asked brightly when I emerged.
“Sure,” I smiled tentatively.
Penny kept up a constant stream of chatter as we wound through the woods on an unlit, dirt path. I led the way down to the lake since my eyesight was inevitably better than Penny’s, on account of all the sensory training I’d done.
The flames and distinct aroma of campfire, greeted me before we made it to the lake. I could hear the low hum of voices, but the people were still too far away to make out exactly what they were saying. Once we drew closer, I saw a strange mix of Pledges huddled around the blaze.