The Breakers Code (16 page)

     “Here, at the crime site, people are livid.” Her back was straight, her face bright. It was obvious that she enjoyed actually having something to talk about.

     Mr. Colburn appeared on the screen, scratching his bald head. “I just can’t believe somebody would do something like this. Drugs, I tell ya. It was drugs. Theys always makin’ good people do bad things.”

     The scene changed again. This time, Sandra stood in front of a smoldering pile. It didn’t take a second glance for me to know what it was. The black wreckage behind her was what was left of my house.

     “Police say the arson happened sometime last night and was, as Mr. Colburn surmised, likely a drug-related accident. The culprit, Casper Rhodes, is a known drug addict and is currently on the run,”

     A picture of Casper replaced Sandra. It was from the photo booth session he and I took last year at the corn carnival, except I was missing from the shot.

     “What?!” Casper shot up. “I’m not a drug addict. I sooo couldn’t afford drugs!”

     “Crestview residents describe Casper as a loner, saying he had no friends and was always by himself,” Sandra continued.

     “That’s not true!” Casper answered.

     “Casper’s father, Carlton Rhodes, had this to add.”

     Casper’s dad popped on the screen, in his usual trucker’s hat and lip full of Skoal. “That boy was always no good. I never liked him.”

     “That part’s true,” Casper said.

     “Luckily,” Sandra appeared before us again, speaking to her town-wide audience of dozens. “The house in question was abandoned, so no one was hurt in the incident. If anyone has information that may lead to the arrest of Casper Rhodes, the police ask that you contact them at-“

     Sandra disappeared as the lights came back.

     “I’m a junkie criminal,” Casper turned to me wide-eyed. “A loser junkie criminal with no friends who burned your house down. It’s like every bad thing my dad ever said about me is true.”

     I stood up and hugged him. “Your dad’s an idiot. This is about me. They did that to get rid of me, right?” I turned to Echo.

     “You and your mother,” Echo confirmed. “We’ve spent the morning digitally combing through town records. There’s no sign of a Cresta or Julie Karr ever living in town. What’s more, there’s no trace of your mother ever working at St. Vincent’s.”

     “They’ve cleaned the planet of you, and they used your friend here as the scapegoat to cover their tracks,” Dahlia added, examining a mace that hung from the wall.

     “Sorry Cass, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen to you,” I said, looking down.

     “Hey, cars drive on roads, right?” He took my hand.

     “Right,” I said, squeezing it.

     “The problem is, we have no idea who’s behind this. I’m sending Dahlia to Crestview with a team to try and uncover answers,” Echo picked up a pen and started marking a sheet of paper.

     “I’m confused,” I said, twisting a strand of hair around my fingers for lack of my necklace and my steering wheel. “If they erased me from town, what good will that do?”

     “They erased you from people’s minds, from their public records,” Dahlia answered. Her voice betrayed annoyance. Her arms crossed herself again. “But the walls themselves are a different story.” She smirked. It was cold and bitter, but it was a smirk nonetheless.

     “She’s a Surveyor,” Echo said. “She picks up on the mental fragments that reside in areas. Cars, houses, even streets and fields; they all have mental signatures. And she can read them”

     “It’s like digging for fossils,” she added. “You break the surface, and you’d be surprised what you find. Two hours in that lovely town of yours and all your secrets will be mine.”

     “How comforting,” I said.

     “In the meantime, there’s something we need to discuss,” Echo said, and his fingers started running across the desk again.

     I’m really starting to hate that.

     “We have something of a situation,” he added. “You didn’t come alone.”

     “I know. I brought him,” I pointed to Casper.

     “You remember me; the crack head firebug,” Casper waved mockingly.

     “No, I mean the two of you didn’t come alone. You were followed.”

     My hand tightened in Casper’s. The blood in my veins went cold like ice, thinking of one of those freakish nightmares in front of me again.

     “What? Where-“

     “Calm down,” Echo stood, holding his hands out in front of him. “He was caught trying to sneak passed our security systems last night and has been apprehended. It’s under control.”

     I relaxed some, but just a little. Apprehended meant he was still here, in the building. If it was Jiqui or Ezra, or God forbid one of those meatheads that probably beat my mother until she couldn’t-

     Ugh! I can’t think about this.

     “The situation is a bit complicated, though. It’s- Well, why don’t you see for yourself. Follow me.”

     He walked toward the door. I didn’t follow. Neither did Casper. He must have been out of his mind, thinking I’d want to look in the face of someone who helped kill my mom.

     “Cresta,” he held out his hand. “It’ll be okay. Trust me.”

     So I did.

     We walked out of his office and through a long hall. Students were all around us, sorted in groups dependent on age and activity. Soon, I realized that these were classes. To our right, I saw a gaggle of girls pulling at dumbbells and lifting more weight than I’d have thought possible. Jackson shot us a smile as we passed him, working his way through a class Echo called ‘An Exploration of Dead Languages’.

     Sounds useful.

     There were no walls or doors, leaving only empty space to stop the classes from bleeding into each other. Still, none of the students seemed to be distracted by anything going on around them. In fact, I had never seen people so focused, at least not in a classroom. There wasn’t one person, not one, who looked less than completely engrossed.

     “Breakers have to be well rounded,” Echo answered a question I hadn’t asked. “We train them physically as well as mentally, so that by the time they’re ready to go out into the field, they’re able to deal with whatever comes.”

     “You make it sound dangerous.” I felt like he expected me to say something.

     “It can be,” he answered. We pushed out of the facility and into the outdoors. It was cold today, and I shivered as the icy breeze hit me. “As Breakers, we’re often called to a series of widely varied vocations during our careers. The future is fickle and can twist in a thousand different directions. We have to be prepared for all of them.”

     “You, like, kill people?” Casper asked. He was shivering too. With his arms crossed, he rubbed along his biceps, trying to keep warm. Echo, though, seemed unaffected by the cold.

     Still, he winced when Casper asked his question. “That’s not really something we like to talk about, son. I’ve been a Breaker for almost twenty years now. I’ve eaten with kings and fought with killers. I’ve helped people find the greatness inside of them and I’ve beat back mudslides. Now, I teach the next generation. And yes, I’ve done things that I wish could have been avoided, but that’s rarely the way of it. We fight for the future, and do what we have to in order to preserve it.”

     In front of us, crops popped up in rows as far as the eye could see. Every fifty feet or so, large planks jutted from the ground; like the sort you’d expect to see a scarecrow hanging from. Only, instead of a straw-filled man, these planks held large wooden ‘W’s painted red. People; Breakers, I was sure, shucked corn, bailed hay, and hauled water off in the distance.

     “This wasn’t here yesterday,” I muttered, my teeth chattering.

     “It was, you just couldn’t see it,” Echo answered.

     “Is that what the ‘W’s are for, to make people see what you want ‘em to?” Casper asked.

     “You’re shrewd for a baseline, aren’t you?” Echo smiled. “Illusions as big and sustained as what we use here, or what I assume was used on you in Crestview, require anchors; something to trick the human mind into ignoring what’s in front of it. Without the stipends we put in place last night, the sight of any ‘W’ on this property would send a message to your brain telling you to see something other than what’s actually there. We have over two hundred acres of farmland here. We also raise cattle and chickens, but anyone passing by would just see a barren field within the walls of a juvenile delinquent center, and beyond that, a wildlife preserve.”

“You farm?” I asked. It hardly seemed like the exciting life of a band of suave superspies.

     “Where do you think the food we eat comes from?” He smiled. “Besides, this sort of work teaches the children about responsibility. It teaches them to work for what they have and that, even with abilities as powerful as the ones they possess, they’re like everybody else. They have to earn their way.”

     I was right. They were Breakers. They were students. Apparently, when the kids here weren’t doing three hundred pound bench presses or learning how to say ‘Thank you very much’ in Klingon, they’re made to grow their own food.

This place sounds like a winner.

     “You’re thinking it sounds like a lot of work,” Echo looked at me. It’s like he was reading my mind. Wait? Was he reading my mind?

     “You’ll get used to it, I promise. And I think you’ll find this sort of life very fulfilling. I know I have,” he looked ahead as we weaved through the cornfields. “I want you to know I’m very excited about having you here Cresta. You’re starting late, but I firmly believe that, with the right training, you could do some real good in this world.”

     He wanted to keep me here; to train me as a Breaker. But what did I want? I hadn’t even taken time to consider it.

     “Of course, the extent of your abilities will become clearer after the drugs leave your system.”

     The drugs.

     That’s right, my mother drugged me.

     “Do you have any idea who was after us?” I asked, wanting to change the subject.

     “Well, it could have been any number of people. There are several sects of renegade Breakers who are known to use prophecies to further their own ends. There are also black market fate dealers; Breakers who sell their talents to the highest bidder; usually wealthy individuals who want to make sure they stay wealthy. There are even rumors of organizations that recruit wayward Breakers and bend them to nefarious means. I was hoping that our prisoner might help shed some light on the whos and whats surrounding the attack on you. But he’s proved less than helpful and, I’m afraid that, without knowing why your mother defected in the first place, it’s really a jigsaw puzzle.”

     “I wanna know about her,” I said, leaning on Casper as we walked and careful not to look at Echo. “What was my mother like?”

     He was quiet for a second, long enough for me to think that he didn’t want to answer. But then he spoke. “Your mother was amazing. She was kind and brave. She knew what was right, and she wasn’t afraid of anything. That’s why I’m having such a hard time making peace with what’s happened. If you’d have asked me back then, who is the last person in the world you’d ever think would run away from her responsibilities-“

     His voice trailed off. I spoke quickly, afraid I was going to lose him to the memory.

     “What happened? I mean, what did you think happened to her?”

     “It was her third field mission. We hadn’t been married very long, but already, she was a star. She’d have been a legend, if she had sur-“

     He cleared his throat and looked away.

     “Sorry. I’m still not used to the fact that she actually did. She was part of a group of Breakers sent to Russia. They were tasked with stopping the illegal trade of missile codes that, if left unchecked, would have thrown the world into a third world war. Two months into their mission, something went wrong. In their last transmission, they reported curious happenings, but before help could arrive, the facility where they had been housed blew up.”

     My mind rushed back to yesterday, to our house exploding in a mess of fire, splinters, and screams.

     “In the wake of it all, no survivors were found.” He took a deep breath and wiped some moisture from his eyes. “Whatever really happened, I suppose, is anyone’s guess now.”

     “You loved her,” I said. It wasn’t a question, but he took it up as one.

     “Our marriages have little to do with love traditionally,” he answered. Once we got through the field, we took a sharp left toward a small rounded silver building. It looked more like and outhouse that anything else but, for my part, I really hoped it wasn’t.

      “Creating a Breaker is an intentional endeavor,” Echo continued. “It takes specific genetic codes in both partners and those codes have to work together in certain ways. These genes are, for the most part, hereditary. They run in families, in bloodlines. As such, when a young Breaker is of age, their genes are examined. They’re then placed with a member of the opposite sex whose genes most perfectly match their own. That ensures the best likelihood of children with potent gifts.”