Lynette scoffed and jammed her holo into the holder on her belt. "I can't believe him! If he wants to screw it up for himself, that's fine. That's just fine by me!" She stormed to the door and angrily punched in a code. "But if he screws things up for me...hoo boy he better hope he gets enough clearance to leave before me!"
She was shoving on the door trying to make it open faster, and I grabbed her arm. She stopped her tirade and turned to look at me. "I'm sorry," I said.
She got flustered. I didn't know why, but she sputtered, trying to say something, and turned red. I still don't understand that."It's...not your fault."
"I won't work on it anymore. I don't want you to get in trouble."
She took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. "You won't get me in trouble." She gave a quick little laugh. "Actually, since you outrank all of us, you already had the clearance to see any of those files."
"Then why didn't Marlon just have me get the files for him?"
"Because he's the great Marlon. Genius. Brilliant mind in a kid's body." She rolled her eyes. "He was hoping you'd do the work, crack the code, and then he'd swoop in to take credit. I'd bet my life on it. He just doesn't want to share the spotlight."
Ah. So like Stefan. Another thing clicked. If that was the game, then I knew how to play it. All week long I'd struggled to pin Marlon down, to get an idea how to deal with him. Lynette gave me the key. Maybe girls weren't the only things that were universal. Marlon was like Stefan. I should have put that together myself. Maybe I would have if he didn't spend so much time with Ralph. He barely gave me the time of day, just gave me boring lesson after boring lesson through a HuTA. Marlon's like Stefan. Bingo.
I realized I was still holding Lynette's arm, and let go suddenly feeling...I don't know. Embarrassed. I cleared my throat. "Yes. Well, I won't work on it. Not that way."
She tucked her hair behind her ear. "It's okay. Unless he's really lucky, he won't be in any shape to hack after tonight." She cracked her knuckles and gave me an evil little grin.
"Thanks for bringing me here," I said, truly meaning it.
She smiled. "Now. Let's go kill a brother, shall we?"
Chapter 6
Marlon did not speak to me the next day. He had the HuTA programmed with extra difficult lessons and sat across the room glaring at me while I went through them, then took the tests. I decided to pay attention and pass the tests just to annoy him more. He scoffed when the HuTA announced the score.
"Lesson 517-23a!" he barked from across the room.
"Educator key input, please," the HuTA requested.
He sighed and stomped over. He took his key and inserted it into the back of the HuTA. On my old model it would have been a six digit entered code that changed monthly. The programmers must have figured out how easy that was for a child to bypass. On the new one, a DNA key had to be inserted and scanned. There was no cheating that, unless you were lucky enough to get your hands on the key. I had a vague idea where Marlon lived, and I was pretty sure my high security clearance would get me in. I entertained the idea of swiping his key in the middle of the night.
However, passing the tests was proving to be a far better revenge than cheating. I knew Lynette ripped him a new one. She looked smug, another look Ashnahta often wore herself. To be honest, it's not a bad look on a girl. She gave me her lesson plan for the day. Presidents, of course, hammered home over and over until I nailed them all.
"At least you won't start a war now," she said when I passed. "Now. If you don't want the entire teenage girl sector gunning for you, let's get back to pop culture."
"Is it really that important?"
She scoffed, still riding the high of her victory over Marlon. He was not allowed access to any terminal, or even his holo, for an entire week. Torture for him, absolute victory for her. "Jake. We've got a war of public opinion on our hands. You need to be as normal a teenager as possible."
"But what could I possibly be expected to know about movie stars?" It was absolutely absurd. It still is. I still can't wrap my head around any importance to it at all.
"You need to relate, Jake. Relate. You need to prove as many similarities as possible. Some would think it's cute you don't know. Others would want to educate you. I'm not exactly sure what Christophe has in mind, but let's just be prepared for all possibilities, okay? Besides," she said, shooting Marlon a look that made me bite the inside of my lip to keep from smiling. "He's just waiting to take over your lessons for the day. Now. Who is Ky Ty Tinton?"
I'll hand it to her, she dragged it out as long as she could. I still can't tell you who Ky Ty Tinton is, though. I don't remember if he's a singer or an actor. It's a dumb name. I can tell you that much.
They all seemed to have dumb names, the "pop icons", as she called them. Ky Ty? Seriously? How about this one: Parupa McGee. She had purple hair on half her head and the other half was shaved completely bald. There was a guy who was in movies named just D. No last name. No real first name. D. He had metal sticking through his ears, nose, and lip. And in every picture I saw, he was sneering. He looked like he wanted to rip your face off. Lynette insisted that's why girls liked him, that he was a "bad boy".
"Then they should stay away."
"Which is exactly why they don't! Every girl likes a bad boy, Jake."
I didn't get it. It was too much. And the music was painful. Jagged razors scraping across a broken mirror would have sound better. Though, to be fair to music in general, there are many different styles. None of them matched the insongs of the Ehkin, though. Or even the war calls of the Qitani.
Lynette dragged the lessons on as long as she reasonably could. By that time, Marlon was almost frothing. He put his code in for the difficult lessons, and got exactly the response he wanted. Not from me, from Ralph.
"Come on, kid," Ralph chided. "Ease up. He's not ready for that stuff yet."
"It's the lesson of the day," Marlon said firmly.
"So you're going to take out the fact that you got busted on him? Is that your game?"
Marlon scoffed. "This isn't a game. That fah'ti code was my ticket up, and tattle tale baby pants there had to run to his little girlfriend and ruin it."
"Marlon!" Lynette's anger was unmistakable.
"Your time's up. Don't you have some class to go to?"
"It's fine, Lynette," I said. "Ralph, it's okay. I'll give it a shot. Who knows? Maybe I'll do better than you think." I smiled pleasantly at Marlon.
He scoffed. "Fat chance, space monkey." He twisted the screen around and gave me a smug look as he plunked in the squishy sofa to watch me fail.
And he slammed the monitor around even harder when I passed.
And he gave up and simply left in a snarling fury when I went on to pass the next lesson as well. I waited for the door to close before I turned to Ralph. "You know, if he really wanted to humiliate me, he should have picked something other than biometric calculations. I've been doing Stefan's for years."
Ralph snorted and shook his head at me. "Nice job, kid. He's a smart guy, but boy does he have a chip on that shoulder of his."
"He's indentured," I said. It didn't matter how much of a jerk he is. I couldn't help feeling at least a little bad for him. My childhood wasn't normal, but at least it was safe. At least I was loved. As weird as it was, I didn't regret it or long for a different past.
"Yeah. I know. It's the only reason I've given him as much slack as I have. You know he'll push you harder tomorrow, right?"
I shrugged. "I'll just listen to the lessons."
"For once." Ralph's grin let me know he always knew the score.
I got up and stretched and looked at the time. Four and a half hours. It was the longest I had actually studied anything through a HuTA in years. My stomach growled and it occurred to me it was about dinner time. And then it occurred to me that our team was not there. We'd been eating every meal with them all week. "Where is everyone?"