The Proving (18 page)

Ben couldn’t help but smile when he saw the two walk out of the building — the terrible urge to run up and hug both of them was almost too much. He turned to Seamus, expecting the Historian to return the smile, but Seamus kept a stoic face, simply watching.

The kids, however, were about as ecstatic as one could be. Everyone had hurried over to the supply depot’s rear entrance to greet Skye and Cleo as they emerged victorious.

“Yes, we are heroes,” Cleo said with a grin. She blew on her pistol, then attached it to her belt. “Was it dark? Yes. Was it scary? Hell yes. But deep down, I knew we had it under control.”

“Is that why you were screaming so loud?” Reza asked with a snotty tone that only befitted a sibling. Ben recognized that tone well.

“Eh . . . I was just trying to scare it.”

Ben turned to Skye, who was looking down at the dead woman. She licked her lips. Ben wondered if she was playing over the event in her mind, trying to gauge just how close she’d come to a similar death.

“I didn’t see much,” Ben said. “Uh . . . congratulations. That makes two dead Specters for you now. I would imagine that’s a big deal for Clan Sparta.”

Skye looked at him. The afternoon sun’s light was dimming, but still it hit her fair, freckled skin with a degree of harshness. She’d pulled up her glasses — he could see her beautiful green eyes focused on him and him alone, her left eye’s heterophoria kicking in after a moment. Ben liked it. It disarmed her a bit, made her less intimidating. It reminded him that she was human.

A really, really attractive human.

“You were very helpful,” she said finally. She tried to get around the kids but Tahlia stopped her, touching the VR rifle with one cautious finger. “What are you doing, Athenian?”

“That was a Sebecus Specter,” Tahlia said, looking up at Skye with what Ben could only describe as a serious kid’s face. The most serious a thirteen-year-old could look.

“So?”

“It was huge. But you killed it! That’s pretty neat.”

Skye pursed her lips. It looked to Ben as if she was trying to figure out how to respond. It was cute.

“Were you afraid your shield would break?” Tahlia asked.

“Heck no!” Cleo said before Skye could give an answer. “Those shields are prime Clan Persia tech. They don’t
fail
. They run out of juice, yeah, but Skye was the epitome of cool.”

“Your heart rate was elevated,” Tahlia pointed out, ignoring Cleo.

“So?” Skye asked defensively. “I need a protein drink.”

“I’ll get you one,” Tahlia said, following her back toward the Tumbler.

Ben watched Skye go, his eyes inadvertently glancing downward to watch her walk. When he turned back, the Historian raised an eyebrow.

“The, uh, the woman here died of a Specter attack,” was all Ben could manage.

“So you said before.”

“I just wanted to make sure you caught it. You know, for your records and all.”

Seamus said nothing. Behind him, the others had crowded around Cleo, anxious to hear her recount the entire ordeal. Cleo wasted no time jumping into exaggerations, leading the kids — and Gabriel — back toward the Tumbler while she swung a coil of blue wires over her head with each new jump in the story.

Ben sighed and knelt beside the woman’s body, adjusting his feet so he was as comfortable as possible. His hormonal stupidity was going to bite him in the butt. Their Coterie had destroyed a Specter, which meant their archival footage would get watched. A lot. All of his embarrassing moments captured for all to see. He could see it now: Footage of Skye shooting the Specter, then a quick cutaway to Ben staring at her butt. He would be teased mercilessly until the day he died.

Did Clan Persia have a microchip that he could implant in his brain to help him avoid doing stupid things? Maybe. But those types of chips were just as illegal as nanobots. Best to not commit too many crimes before finishing his secondary schooling.

His med-kit was still splayed out on the ground. There was plenty here to suit him: a scalpel, a DNA testing kit, and the medscanner. Plenty else — syringes, medigel, an antidote synthesizer — was more suited for exploration, but fascinated Ben nonetheless.

“That Specter in the basement,” Ben started, trying to think of the best way to phrase his thoughts. He wanted an answer, but he was afraid of the answer, too. “It was a really dark orange. Almost red. That was . . . um, highly unusual, right?”

“Highly unusual.”

Ben shook the follow-up questions. If it was important, someone in Clan Athens would analyze the video feeds. He trusted his clan. “It’s interesting, the way they feed. Don’t you think?”

“It depends on who they are feeding on.”

Ben smiled and looked up. “That’s kind of funny. In a morbid way.”

Seamus opened his mouth, then shut it just as quickly. It looked to Ben like Seamus was just a little bit embarrassed.

“Well, I’m going to perform an, uh, expedited field autopsy,” Ben said, changing the subject for the Historian’s sake. “I’ll scan her ID tag into the medscanner to see if there’s any information stored. She should have some medical records — Clan Athens pings new information to the CPU databases every twelve hours, so even without an available network out here, I should get a relatively good idea of her history.”

“I will supervise the procedure,” he said.

Ben grabbed the ID card and slid it across the medscanner’s card reader. It instantly brought up her information on the little touchscreen. “Janet Walker,” he read aloud. “Age forty-seven. Clan Athens. Married. One child. Research director at . . . huh.”

“Go on.”

Ben ran a finger across the screen, expecting more pages of medical notes. Instead, he got black bars. He’d never seen something like this on a medical chart. “All other information is redacted.”

Cleo returned from the Tumbler, holding her hand out in front of her to shield Mrs. Walker from her sight. “Well, the kids were thoroughly impressed by my storytelling skills, but they’re swarming Skye now because they mistakenly think
she’s
the hero.”

“You are too talented at storytelling for your own good,” Seamus noted.

Cleo wrinkled her nose at him. “Was that sarcasm?”

Ben laughed, watching her move her hand like a shield as she stepped around the woman’s body. “Don’t tell me after what you just went through, you’re still squeamish about this.”

“I’ve got a job to do right now,” she said. “I brought up the wires, and now I’m going to do what Clan Persia does best.”

Ben watched her walk inside the building, curious. He turned to ask Seamus whether it was a good idea to let her work alone inside the building, but stopped when he saw where Seamus’s eyes were. Seamus turned to Ben; Ben raised an eyebrow.

For a fraction of a second, the Historian’s normally stoic face broke; he looked away. “You were saying about the corpse?”

“I don’t have any records on Mrs. Walker at all,” Ben said. He opened the DNA testing kit, grabbing one of the card-shaped strips. He grabbed the scalpel, then looked down at the objects in his hands. “OK, I’m going to need your help for a moment.”

“I shouldn’t. I’m expected to observe whenever possible.”

“Well . . . see, the problem is I can’t do a surface scrape for DNA because the Specter attack affects a victim’s skin. So I need a blood sample, and the more careful I am swabbing the blood, the more accurate our DNA sample will be. How about you just hold this strip of paper for me? Please?”

Seamus looked around, then walked over and grabbed the little white testing strip.

“Good. Hold it right there.” Ben reached into the kit and grabbed a cotton swab. He held out the woman’s hand and very carefully ran the tip of the scalpel across one bubbling vein below her knuckles. He pressed down on her gray hand to apply pressure, using the swab to gently dab at the blood. He put the scalpel into an empty glass container on the bottom row of the medkit. When he closed the container, the sterilization process began, cleaning the blade.

“OK, thank you,” Ben said. “I’ll just take that back now. Thanks.” He carefully took the strip and ran the swab of blood across the surface, leaving a red streak. His hand shook a little, and it took a moment for him to understand why: he was excited. This was a
field autopsy
. There were Athenians who never in their whole lives had this opportunity.

If only he could get at that redacted medical information . . .

“OK,” he said, grabbing the medscanner. Its DNA testing procedure had been simplified so any technology-wary Athenian could do it: a strip reader on the side of the machine and a simple touchscreen program:

BEGIN

TEST

PURGE

Ben hit BEGIN and inserted the strip into the slit in the bottom of the medscanner. The machine gobbled up the card. The “Test” button turned green. Ben pressed it. The device grew warm in Ben’s hand so he set it down and stood up, stretching his legs.

“Has it been dead long?” Seamus asked.

“She. And I don’t think so. Mrs. Walker’s body is still stiff. Rigor mortis usually dissipates within 48 hours. We’ll know more in a few moments.”

“Will your immediate superiors question performing an autopsy?”

“Eh.” Ben leveled his hand in the air, tipping it left and right. He thought about his Secondary school teachers — they might be annoyed that he was breaking protocol. But his parents? Oh, his parents would be downright excited. And knowing that made Ben excited, anxious to tell them all about it. “Athenian instructors are typically pretty lenient about breaking rules in the name of scientific inquiry.”

“I’m aware.”

Ben’s breath caught in his throat. “Right. Well. I don’t
condone
breaking the rules or anything.” Seamus said nothing. Ben felt an urge to continue, glancing down the DNA testing kit in the vain hope that it was finished. It wasn’t. “I mean, um, you have to admit that it would be nice if Parliament let us study the Specters more in-depth. We know so little.”

“Do you believe studying them will change anything?” Seamus asked. It sounded to Ben as if the Historian’s tone had just a hint of an edge to it.

“Never mind. This DNA test will give us good gen,” Ben said. He scratched the back of his head. “Every little bit of information helps, no matter how trivial.”

“What do you expect to find?” Seamus asked. The question surprised Ben. The Historian sounded curious now.

“Well, depending on the results, we might be able to determine if that Sebecus Specter was her killer, or if it was something else. Mrs. Walker’s skin might have been able to tell us, too, but there’s a real risk of contamination. In her blood, though, we should get a pretty solid breakdown of how fast the cellular breakdown occurred. We might even be able to match up her family tree.”

“That excites you.”

“Well, I do find DNA experiments exciting. We’ve come a long way to understanding genetics. It’s saved our species more than a couple times.”

The device beeped. Ben reached down and picked it up. Where the BEGIN button had been, now there was simply a SEND button. Ben pressed it and tapped the side of his glasses to turn his comm speaker on. “Reza, I’m sending a DNA sample to the Tumbler. Can you please bring it up on Cleo’s console for me?”

“OK,” the boy answered after a moment.

Ben hit the PURGE button. The device spit the testing strip out, sending it floating onto the woman’s body. Ben reached down and picked it up, tossing it away from her. It would degrade fully within a week.

“You’re respectful of the dead,” Seamus noted.

“Uh . . . I suppose. I respect who they were. Death is just another part of life, after all. And something tells me Mrs. Walker isn’t done sharing her secrets with us just yet.”

They walked into the Tumbler. The kids were gathered around Skye, who’d taken a seat near the weapons locker in the rear. Her Xenoshield batteries were sitting in one of the charging ports next to the little medical station, and her rifle sat on her lap. Gabriel was sitting at one of the computer consoles near the front, watching the kids with a smile. He seemed, in Ben’s opinion, to be a pretty nice guy. Not too bossy, but willing to offer his educated opinion. Ben liked that.

If only he hadn’t panicked during the Specter attack. His terror had been recorded. The word “Run” repeated over and over . . . it had been a wonder Skye had kept her cool at all. But she had, he reminded himself. She would be a hero in her clan. He sighed. She would definitely get the choice of boyfriends after word spread.

“Tell us about it coming through the machine,” Wei urged, crossing her legs so she could be as close to Skye as possible without actually sitting on her feet.

“How many times do you want to hear it?” Skye snapped.

“At least twice more,” Tahlia said, serious.

“Tahlia, how about you come help me with this DNA sample?” Ben asked. “I’m sure Skye could use a breather.”

“Aw, Ben, DNA samples are so booooooooooring,” she said, stumbling her way over to Cleo’s console like a zombie.

“Boring?” he asked. “Boring? How can you possibly say ribonucleic acids are boring?”

She glared at him. “How about I go outside instead? There’s a species of herb near the fence with some really neat properties.
Mimosa pudica rojo
.”

“How about you stay here,” he murmured, searching the holoscreen console for some kind of navigation button. It was set to Map mode, pinpointing their location near a 3D topography of the mountains. “Better yet, how about you get Reza to help me with this.”

“Reza!” Tahlia shouted. “Come over here!”

“I could have done that.”

“Then you should have.”

He sighed, watching Reza stumble over like a zombie as well. “If I help you with this, will you
please
ask Skye to tell the story again?”

“Fine, yes,” Ben said. He held out his hands helplessly at the holoscreen. “Just please get me to the DNA sample I sent here.”

Reza leaned over the console, pressing the little icon on the touchscreen that looked like an old-fashioned mailbox. Ben inhaled through his nose and caught the scent of Reza’s body odor. The boy had decided to live up to the old Clan Persia stereotype, forgetting to apply deodorant. Microorganisms were breaking down lipids in the boy’s armpit sweat, causing the odor. They could be killed with a triclosan compound applied once per week — hardly an inconvenience, in Ben’s opinion. But then again, the boy was thirteen. Ben clearly remembered the terrifying, awkward ordeal that was the dawn of his teenage years.