Seneca Rebel (The Seneca Society Book 1) (17 page)

I was out of breath, lying on my bed, chest pumping up and down after that intense release of everything I had in me. Moving from chaos to a meditative state was not so simple a process. I had to get out of here.

I tried to use S.E.R.C.'s bustling morning rush to drown out the automatic thinking inside my head. The acoustic carrier was packed with people headed to session. I wouldn't be able to concentrate on mathematics applications, quantum computing or anything else for that matter, but I had to show my face.

When I hopped off in S.E.R.C., Reba was there. I was surprised. How could he not hate me? We locked eyes. I was ashamed. He didn't appear upset. He looked resolved. "We have to talk."

"Not now."

"Yes, now."

This wasn't the sweet, playful Reba I was used to. He was assertive, refusing to leave this alone. "You can't just blow off our friendship like this. I know you don't mean the things you said."

I started walking towards my sessions.

"Doro, stop! Talk to me."

I stopped. Spun around. My glare ripped into him, "You're putting us both in danger. You need to quit. Don't question this anymore, okay? You have to trust me."

"If I have to trust you, then you have to trust me. It's a two-way street, isn't it?" I stumbled for an answer, because I didn't have one. He was right, but I couldn't even begin to go there. My emotions went into code red. Just being there with him, with this conversation headed in the direction it was, put us both in jeopardy.

"Come on, Doro."

"You don't understand what we're dealing with!"

"Part of me does. My mind is telling me one thing, but my intuition is telling me another. It's tearing me apart. I've always trusted my intuition before everything."

"You need to just leave this alone now. Before it's too late."

"There's no such thing as too late. You may think there is, but, trust me, there isn't.
You
may not know it yet, but
I
know you have the answers... not just for me. For everyone."

I glanced around in a complete panic. The crowds of people headed to session moved around us as if we didn't exist, but even with all the noise surrounding us, I knew his thoughts were being analyzed in some way. I didn't want him to tap into mine. It must have been too late, though.

"We can't do this here." I walked away from him. He didn't chase after me. He knew that I would be at the meal hall for lunch.

31

R
EBA
WAS
THE
only one I had left, and our relationship was hanging on by a thread. But it was all I needed. One human connection was all it took to believe I could get the others back. I couldn't believe I’d be disconnected from my mom, and from Dom, forever. A strong, loving, lifelong bond and a fresh new one, overflowing with possibility. I wanted them both so badly.

I sat in first session, daydreaming, and it hit me. This was a sickness of the soul I was feeling. I was love sick. Dominic Ambrosia had intercepted my heart in these golden halls, and having him ripped away from me had spun my world out of control, in complete disarray. It was one thing to accept the progress of life and technology, but it was quite another to give in to the man-made dictate that Dom and I were to be separated. If Reba could fight for our friendship, and not let me give up, then I could fight for everything I had that was right.

My session leader said my name at least three times before I heard it and it registered that my brain had checked out of there long ago. Everyone was staring. I blamed colitis. I didn't have colitis, but it seemed like the best excuse in the moment. Unlike school back in LA, where Mr. Malin always thought I was up to something, my session leaders in Seneca respected me. I had proven myself here. I don’t mean to be creepily boastful, but my math and tech capabilities made my session leader's own abilities look elementary. I was lucky that far from crushing his ego, it garnered me a certain level of respect from him. So when I complained about a stomach problem he simply believed me and dismissed me from session.

I knew my time to act would be limited. There would be a point when they would catch on to me, no telling when that might be.

I charged through the doorway to my room that opened as I approached, and immediately threw on a record. I needed to get in the zone. I popped a square of cacao into my mouth and dove headfirst into my flexer screen.

I had to access my Veil– all of my online endeavors in offshore gambling and financial accounts were running there. I knew that S.O.I.L. had a trace on it because that’s how they noticed my mathematical skills to begin with, so first things first– I had to place an encryption there. I coded it so that they would only be retrieving randomized repetitions of what they had already seen, and not any new activity. That would keep me under the radar at least for a while, and it was simple to accomplish. Done.

Next was the hard part. I had to trace the flow of data transfer from Great Falls, which was directly above the main Seneca City hub of the region, to determine where the bulk of it was going. That would lead me to identify and enter the mainframe that all the nanobots flowing through the blood of Senecans were entangled with. I ran equations until my fingertips were completely numb, but just kept coming up with dead ends. My hands couldn't keep up with my head, as if these two body parts were on two separate entities. I would go down one path that was seemingly effective, but then, bam, dead end again.

Time for a new approach. I had locked my entanglement to my flexer and had it under unbreakable encryption, by today's standards. I bypassed the encryption and followed the entanglement to an IP, which contained map coordinates that placed me right at the physical Latitude, 37.057372. Longitude, -80.627394. Claytor Lake. I ran a test to measure the data input and output there. It was astronomical. This was it. The mainframe was located in the hub below the incredibly inconspicuous Claytor Lake.

I crept into the mainframe through my own entanglement, and now had remote access to every nanobot with which this system was entangled. My body buzzed. My fingers were dead. My eyes numbed by the data in front of them. It wasn't just data, it was life. Identical versions of the neurological processes of every single citizen of Seneca were right there. I was blown away by the magnitude of what was at my fingertips. I paced circles around my square room, shook my hands to loosen them up for round two. The challenging part was over. I was in. Now I just needed to find Reba's brain data in the mainframe and break his entanglement, so that any communication between us would be undetectable.

We were categorized by name, DNA and Senecan ID #. I ran a name match search. Bam! There he was. Timothy John Reba.

My next step was to remove the block on Dom's memory and make sure his entanglement was also cut, but, before I had the chance to dive into that process, I received an incoming flex from Reba. S.O.I.L. was headed my way.

Even though I had blocked the data output from my blood and piggybacked off of another Seneca citizen’s data, I was not completely in the clear. S.O.I.L. had probably analyzed Reba's data from our time in the hall at S.E.R.C., and determined that my thought process, which they got second hand as it was communicated to him, was a threat to the system. I wasn't surprised that they had analysts on top of this data twenty-four-seven. I had to get outta the hot zone. I flipped the needle off the record and bailed.

As I jetted down the hall to catch the acoustic carrier back to S.E.R.C., I reprogrammed my flexer to appear as if I was in the restaurant district. They already thought I was skipping session, so I was going to try and send them on a wild goose chase. I needed to buy time. Judging by Reba's flex, this wasn't too serious, yet. They were just taking precautionary measures by monitoring me. Still, it was best I didn't underestimate S.O.I.L.

32

I
FOUND
R
EBA
at our usual meeting time and place. Once Reba and I were seated at our regular spot in the meal hall, it was safe to release my whereabouts. That way, S.O.I.L. would come find me here and see that everything was all fine and dandy. I lifted the block on my flexer. If it's all smoke and mirrors, I was puffing the biggest Cuban cigar in front of the wonkiest funhouse mirror of them all.

I bit into my quesadilla and noticed several S.O.I.L. guards walking nonchalantly through the hall. They had eyes on me. I had more than just eyes on them. I savored this Jack cheese. My appetite was back. Reba was chomping a mouthful like he always did. He wasn't acting like I was the presumptuous jerk who’d told him I didn't want to be his girlfriend. What a good guy. I was fortunate he could see past my imperfections. He was antsy, though. I could tell he was desperately waiting for me to let him in on what I'd been doing. But he was going to have to wait. He was going to have to give something up first. How had he known that S.O.I.L. was on to me? How did he continually answer my unspoken thoughts?

Chomp, chomp, chomp– it drove me insane! Couldn't this guy eat with his mouth closed?

"What? You don't like to see my food break down?"

Wow, okay, there he went again with that answering my thoughts stuff.

He chomped again and I finally grasped how this was going to be. This was going to be a T.M.I.-loaded relationship. Here we go.

"I like it so much actually, so much..."

"I can tell."

"Okay listen. You want me to come clean with you on some things, then first, I want you to come clean with me."

"Chica, I'm cleaner than soap."

"You'd tell me anything?"

He hesitantly made the decision in that moment that indeed he would. "Anything."

"Tell me why you're here."

Reba sat back, chewing the rest of his mouthful slowly, with his lips pressed closed. I found relief in that.

He swallowed dramatically. "What does it matter?"

"It matters because I feel like you expect me to show you all my cards... but you.
You
remain a mystery."

"Hmm... then you're saying I'm dark and mysterious."

"No. Just annoying."

"Ohhh."

"What's your story, dude?"

Reba pushed his tray full of half-eaten food into the tube. "Alright. But if we go down this path, there's no turning back. So let me go ahead and prepare for your reaction." He pushed the button and his food was retrieved.

"Do you know what my reaction is going to be?"

"Surprisingly, no. But I have enough experience with everyone else to know how this plays out."

"I'm not everyone else."

"Fair enough."

Reba fidgeted in his seat. I wanted to lighten the mood so I took a bite of quesadilla and chomped it. Smacked at that scrumptious Jack cheese. I watched his face warm up, his cheek muscles tightened, prompting a little grin. I think that although he was intimidated by opening himself up to vulnerability, there was also an impending sense of liberation in coming clean.

"Spit it out, freak."

"Okay, okay..." He lowered his voice, "Ever heard of an Intuerian? Well, that's what I am."

I stood up, feigning horror. "Oh, my god. I have to go now."

"Okay, come on. Stop. Sit down."

I sat. We needed to align and take some time to understand each other on a deeper level. I placed my almost finished food in the tube and sent it back, giving him every particle of my attention.

"When I was four years old, my birth parents started to notice that I was different than the other kids. I wasn't interested in normal kid things like playing in the park. I was always tuning into someone around me. I would alert them to things that were about to happen before they actually did. Little things, like a woman about to stumble on a crack in the sidewalk or that my dad's boss was about to flex him. My dad was freaked. My birth parents are super religious so they took me to the church looking for answers, solutions, anything. They were worried that somehow this could be the work of the devil."

"That's so messed up."

"Yeah, well, that's basic human error for you."

"Can't argue with you there."

"But hang on, because there’s the other side to that. There's always the other side."

I nodded in agreement, wanting to show him that this didn't freak me out in the least bit. It actually made me appreciate him more. I could tell that he felt more comfortable as he got into it and stopped worrying about the people around us. They weren't paying attention anyway.

"They tried to have exorcisms performed on me, but my abilities only grew stronger. I tried to hide them because I thought they were bad. I have an older sister. We're fifteen months apart so we were super close. They started keeping us separate. I became really depressed and didn't want to eat or go to school. My premonitions became stronger by the day. I wanted them to stop because I thought it was why my family hated me."

"Wow, Reebs. I am so sorry."

"Don't be, please. I don't want you to feel sorry for me, Doro. I just want you to understand. Then you can decide for yourself whether or not you want me in your life. I understand either way, I really do. I know this isn't normal."

"What is normal anyways? I don't think I'm normal."

"True."

I smiled. Felt our connection grow. "So, then, what got you here?"

"After my birth parents tried everything that the church had advised, and I was still me, they decided the only thing to do with me was send me into foster care. I was placed with a family who raised special needs kids. They embraced me, while everyone else in that small town community didn't want anything to do with me. I wasn't allowed to play with anyone's kids. By the time I got to intermediate school, I was bullied and beaten up so many times that my parents had to home school me."

"Your parents or your foster parents?"

"My foster parents
are
my parents. They gave me the love and support that parents are supposed to give. Without them, I never would have survived. They were a blessing. And then along came Seneca."

"The juicy part."

"Exactly. When I was thirteen, a woman was raped and murdered in my town. I started having these visions that I couldn't stop. They were so gruesome, Campbella, like nothing I'd ever seen in any movie. It made me want to kill myself. I fell so ill that it landed me in the hospital. I told a nurse that I knew what happened. The local authorities came to me, and then, the F.B.I. My visions were actual accounts of the murder. I knew who he was and where he was. I was brought in to help the F.B.I. uncover murders. Everything I gave them came from pure intuition.
 
It was good because I was helping people, and that felt like the right thing to do, but it was bad too because those images stayed with me. Haunting me, keeping me up at night. Nobody understood what I was going through, until I met Lindsay. The F.B.I. had her there doing the same thing. We got each other like nobody else ever could. And then, when I was fourteen, Ellen Malone showed up at our house. My parents didn't want to send me away at such a young age, but I begged and pleaded. I had to get out of that town. I had to get away from the people who had persecuted me and the memories there."