“THEY WILL FIND OUT THE TRUTH BECAUSE I’LL TELL THEM!”
Hackner pushed a button beneath the conference table. Security would be here in seconds. He smiled at Plumb’s glittering mustache. “The truth is hardly relevant.”
The doors burst open and Plumb’s eyes went wild as guards dressed in black and green cuffed his hands. Hackner thumbed through his papers and sighed. “Euthanize him.”
One of the guards plunged a needle into Plumb’s neck. His eyes immediately rolled back into his head, and his face lost all color. Briefly, a smile floated across his lips. Then his corpse slammed onto the conference table.
Hackner watched the other council’s members fidget in their seats as they struggled not to look disturbed. “Councilman Plumb lied about his age and forged his birth certificate. His Indigo vaccine wore off and the Carcinogens ate away at his brain. We’ll have Margaret issue a regretful statement to the public about this terrible loss this afternoon.”
A guard hovered nearby, clutching a cup of tea in a shaking hand. Hackner stretched himself over Plumb’s corpse, grabbed the cup, and sipped the Earl Grey slowly as his face relaxed into a smile.
Per his recommendation, the Council voted to send in the Federal guards after the bombs were detonated. To try and find the Lost Boys. Hackner also suggested turning off the nets and letting the megalodons have at the wreckage a bit. The thought of corpses rising from the corals made him nervous. The Council agreed.
At five minutes to eight, Hackner made his way to the chancellor’s chambers. He’d have to be quick to make it to his bedroom in time for his appointment. A green orb roughly the size of a basketball flashed brightly on his desk, a single cord extending from its base to the closet.
The ConSynth.
A cool voice called from the orb’s depths—Miranda. “I’m not happy, Hackner. It’s been five months and the threats have yet to be neutralized. Five entire months.”
Hackner leaned against the desk and stared into the orb’s swirling depths. “I’m doing the best I can, but what’d you expect? Half the Council are idiots.”
The voice moved from the orb to a chaise lounge across from the desk. “I expected progress, Hackner. Not chicken shit.”
The ConSynth never failed to disturb him. It was the stuff of nightmares—formulated by engineers in the days before the Final World War. Mad scientists, the lot of them. A person could drain their consciousness from their body and upload their mind to the orb’s processor, allowing them to exist forever in a state of suspended animation, while gaining the ability to project perfect holograms—not fuzzy like those used elsewhere in the Federation—of their old body in the process. The resulting image was eerily real; in the early days of working with Miranda, he’d had to reach out and touch her once or twice, just to confirm that she wasn’t really there.
She lay sprawled out across the lounge, her bleached blond pixie cut contrasting with her signature sapphire suit. There was a tightness that spread across her cheeks, making her face look like it had been pulled taut with a paperclip. Her haunting blue-gray eyes pierced him from where she sat.
“Results, Hackner,” she said. “That’s what I want you to focus on in the coming weeks.”
“Miranda, darling,” he started, “let’s be reasonable.”
Hairs stood up on the back of his neck. The chaise lounge sat empty. He heard, but didn’t feel, her breathing behind him. “I’m always reasonable, Hackner,” she said.
His appointment was in five minutes—he had to get out. Had to pacify Miranda. The woman was persuasive. She had to be. She brought down the whole damn world—started the Final World War, centuries ago. Ended it, too.
He grabbed his briefcase. “We’ll talk later. I’ve got a meeting in five.”
She pounded a bony fist on his desk. Her suit flashed green. “Results, Hackner.”
She was next to him now, whispering in his ear. “That’s all I’m after. Kill Phoenix. Kill the other Lost Boys. And kill half the damned Federation, if that’s what it takes. The world almost ended once. It could happen again.”
He squeezed his briefcase and nodded. “You’re right, Miranda. Absolutely right.”
“Three years,” she said, her voice returning to the ConSynth’s depths. “That’s all it takes. Three years and you can wash your hands of this place like the men before you.”
She was right. He only had three more years as chancellor. Then she’d promised him freedom. His lips twisted into a grin. “Looking forward to it, Miranda.”
Three years could still be a long time.
“And Hackner?” she called as he pulled open his chamber doors. A chill ran down his spine. The ConSynth glowed green. “The megalodons were a nice touch.”
He shut the door behind him and steadied his breathing in the hall. He thought of Plumb’s white face and his cold, dead hands, and reminded himself that there were things in this world much worse than death.
Chapter 2
Turning fifteen in the Hawaiian Federation was a pretty big deal, mostly because it meant there was a good chance I wasn’t going to die. Sure, there was always the off chance I’d keel over in the waiting room, die with only moments between me and my Indigo vaccination. But those kinds of deaths were few and far between, and most of us only knew a few kids who that happened to.
I’d made it to fifteen. I could count myself as one of the lucky ones who’d survived to adulthood. One of the sixty-seven percent of kids who beat the Carcinogens, and got to live a long happy life before their euthanization at fifty.
One of the survivors.
With a rattle, the subway pulled out of the station and dove into the glass cylinder that was the Pacific Northwestern Tube. The underwater Tubes were the quickest way to go from one island to the other, five times faster than traveling by boat. They carried people between islands like pipes carried water.
Most islands had many Tubes, but since Moku Lani was the least populated, we just had the one—the Pacific Northwestern. It had subway tracks, instead of car lanes, and always smelled vaguely like feet. Charming.
On the Tube, it only took twenty minutes to get to the closest vaccination clinic on Kauai. The Feds hadn’t bothered putting any clinics on Moku Lani, since it was essentially just a giant rock. They’d drilled into its core a couple of centuries ago to create subterranean levels, which they now used mostly for nuclear energy experiments and marine research. Otherwise, the place was pretty desolate.
Moku Lani was a quiet place to grow up, but not the greatest. There was a Buster’s Burgers, but nothing else really. Some kids sniffed glue for fun. I could hardly blame them. It was easier than wondering which friend the Carcinogens would get next. And if they weren’t getting your friends, wondering when they’d get you.
I tried to get Mom to come to my vaccination, but she was too terrified to ride the Tube anymore. She hadn’t done it since Dad died. I don’t think she was particularly fond of being basically twenty thousand leagues under the sea.
She was more interested in researching sharks—megalodons, specifically (think great whites on steroids)—than transportation. She couldn’t appreciate the photosynthetic plankton that glowed like stars beyond the Tube’s glass. They were the closest things we had to real stars anymore. The smog and clouds—which had smothered the islands ever since humanity’s fall in the Final World War—had darkened the world, exiling the old stars to occasional fleeting glimpses and history books.
Mom always made a big deal out of birthdays. A really big deal. She celebrated birthdays the way most people celebrated weddings., and today was no exception. I’d started my morning by finding approximately two million sticky notes decorating the door of my room, with cheesy messages laced with all sorts of Mom-isms. “HAPPY FIFTEENTH BIRTHDAY TO MY BABY!” “YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE!” “EVERY DAY YOU MAKE ME PROUD TO BE YOUR MOM!”