Idols Read online

  08/23/2066 CTD.

  THE KEY TO OUR RESEARCH IS THE NOTION THAT EMOTIONAL ENERGY IS COMMON ACROSS ALL PEOPLE. WE HAVE ESTABLISHED, IN THEORY, THAT THIS EMOTIONAL ENERGY IS CLOSE ENOUGH TO THE OUTPUT OF NULL’S DEVICES THAT WHEN SUFFICIENTLY AMPLIFIED, IT SHOULD CANCEL OUT THEIR EFFECT—ESSENTIALLY GRANTING IMMUNITY TO THE CHILDREN, AND GIVING US A WAY TO FIGHT THE DEVICE’S POWER. WE ARE ALSO EXPLORING THE POWER OF THE CHILDREN TO USE THEIR ENERGY TO INFLUENCE PEOPLE AROUND THEM IN DIFFERENT WAYS.

  THIS HAPPENS OFTEN IN LARGE GATHERINGS, WHEN A POWERFUL SPEAKER IS ABLE TO TRANSPORT AN AUDIENCE, CHANGE HOW THEY FEEL, HOW THEY BEHAVE. WE ASSUME SPEAKERS USE “POWERFUL WORDS,” BUT IN FACT, I BELIEVE THEY USE THEIR EMOTIONAL ENERGY, REACHING OUT TO THOSE AROUND THEM, CAUSING THEM TO RESONATE AND CHANGE.

  THUS, THE ENERGY FROM MY CHILDREN MAY NOT ONLY BE ABLE TO INFLUENCE HOW OTHERS FEEL, BUT IT MAY UNLOCK LATENT ABILITIES IN THOSE AROUND THEM.

  LIKE A CHAIN REACTION.

  I’M JUST NOT EXACTLY SURE WHAT THAT REACTION WILL BE. BUT I DON’T REALLY HAVE THE LUXURY OF TIME TO WORK OUT EVERY ANGLE.

  THE POTENTIAL IS GREAT, BUT THE UNKNOWNS ARE A BIT DAUNTING.…

  SPEAKING OF POTENTIAL… I WONDER IF WE COULD FIND A WAY TO GET OUR CHILDREN TO BE EVEN STRONGER, LOUDER. A WAY TO AMPLIFY THEIR ENERGY BEYOND THEIR ENGINEERING? OVERCLOCK THEM? BUT HOW? NO IDEA. ONE STEP AT A TIME, PAULO.

  22

  HAWKERS

  The next day, the sun hangs low and hot and we have taken to the streets in a small, rattling cart Bibi calls a tuk-tuk. The five of us barely fit in the square of seats behind the ancient driver, who slaps his reins along the back of an even older animal. “Kwai,” Bibi says. “Water buffalo. Stupid as Fortis.” He grins.

  We have left Fortis behind, Bibi says, because he only makes people upset.

  “No arguing with you there,” I say.

  Bibi takes great care to show us the sights, as if we were here to see them. But one in particular cannot be ignored. The SEA Projects, like all Projects, are on the coast. We don’t know why, or what the water has to do with it, but it’s the case. Projects are only built along the shore. At least, that’s what they say.

  Because the SEA Colonies are built on reclaimed land—from mud and silt and rock that was dredged up off the sea floor and mounded above the water to make an island where there used to be only seawater—a long, thin strip of land connects the newer SEA Projects to the older city, called, imaginatively, the Old City. Old Bangkok.

  Bibi smiles. “Krung Thep. City of Angels. That’s what it means in Colonist dialect.”

  “Just like the Hole. Old Los Angeles. Another City of Angels,” I say.

  Tima watches the street from her side of the tuk-tuk. “I don’t know why so many cities are said to belong to angels. There are no cities called the City of Lords—and everything belongs to them.”

  Bibi laughs, but I think she’s right. The longer the Lords are with us, the harder it is to remember a time when the beings who came from the sky were made of love, not war. When they were miracles, not nightmares. I wonder if anyone in Krung Thep remembers differently.

  As we rattle our way down the road, the air and sky hang huge and blue around us, but the barbed-wire edges of the outermost SEA Projects yard are even more vast. The ragged walls are so high they almost block out the sun over our heads, and in the shade, the temperature drops almost as rapidly as it rises in the sun. As if the Projects carry with them their own climate.

  I wouldn’t be surprised, I think. Seeing as we know nothing else about what goes on inside.

  Above the imposing sheets of wire and metal, I see a bright yellow flag flapping from the highest tower next to the front gate.

  “What does it mean? The yellow flag?” I look to Bibi.

  Bibi frowns. “Safety code for the Remnants inside. Yellow means you won’t immediately collapse from the ash and fumes. Red rhymes with dead, and not by accident.”

  “So that’s not good.” Tima looks worried.

  Bibi shrugs. “It’s better than being dead already, I guess.”

  “By how long? How much better?” Lucas sounds sarcastic, and I realize that, as we near the Projects, we are all on edge.

  “Who can say?” Bibi sighs again. He shakes his head. “Thank the Lord Buddha we are out here and not in there.”

  As he speaks, the tuk-tuk rattles to a stop along the first street next to the walled-off ghetto of the Projects. Since the city abuts the perimeter fence, we’re still too close for anyone to be anything other than paranoid.

  As we should be, I think.

  “We’re here.” Bibi lowers his voice. “Stay right behind me. Don’t look anyone in the eye. Don’t speak. Do you understand?”

  I understand. Bibi’s as much a spy as a monk.

  Then he raises his voice, as if someone is listening. “Hawker center. Here we go. We stop for lunch.” He pats his stomach. “Bibi time. We have to feed the beast.”

  Bibi climbs out of the tuk-tuk and disappears into the crowded street, motioning for us to come.

  The smells have already wrapped their salty-sweetness around me, and I follow, transfixed. We slip into one of the many warm marketplace food centers, the one with sacks of unopened rice and potatoes propping open the flapping tarp walls. I pass beneath a roof of low-hanging corrugated tin that traps both the heat and the scent inside. All around me, vendors are boiling and frying and steaming and chopping, all at different booths and counters. Smoking, spattering grills offer up charred versions of meats formed with rice into strips. Weathered iron stoves, round and hot, make what look like pancakes out of sizzling coconut batter. Tall glasses of bright, milky pink are stuffed with sections of sugarcane. Even taller buckets hold limes and leaves, trapped in ice.

  And then there are the noodles. More kinds of noodles than there are people in the food center. Fat ones, skinny ones, white and brown ones. Laced with wild vegetables or studded with fatty kernels of meat. Sweet or sour. One flavor or four.

  One stand in particular seems to be where we are heading. Nearly deserted, and tucked into a dark corner, it wouldn’t have been my first pick. It’s some kind of soup stall, where fat, curling strands of golden noodles slop into bowls, covered with fried versions of the same. Steaming, fragrant broth—it smells like lemongrass and ginger and coconuts—splashes over them, dropping the occasional carrot or green leaf. Thick wedges of lime and sprigs

  of cilantro drop inside, and the soup bowls bang onto the counter. Ready to go.

  My stomach begins to rumble. The man at the counter—I think he has five or six teeth left in his entire mouth—doesn’t look up.

  Still, Bibi looks at the soup appreciatively, offering up a greeting that is ignored. Then he raises his voice, speaking in English. “Tom kai, eh? Five, please.”

  “Eat in carry out.” The man finally looks at him, up and down, unimpressed.

  “Eat in.”

  The man shoots him a final, withering look, then grunts as Bibi hands him what looks like an ungodly amount of digs, for five bowls of noodle soup. And five cups of tea, steeping in a heavy metal pot.

  Bibi parts a curtain of beads with one hand, and we follow him into the darkness of the soup stand’s back room. Then I understand what the high price of this soup actually buys.

  Privacy.

  Because a slender, willowy dark-haired woman in an Embassy uniform sits alone at a table in the corner, behind a bowl of soup that she does not touch.

  “Dr. Yang.”

  I almost drop my lunch at the name.

  The woman does not wait for us to sit down. The inquisition begins when we are still standing. She is out of her chair and circling us before we can say a word, appraising us as if we were livestock or lettuces.

  “I didn’t believe it when I got your call.” The woman stares.

  “Believe it,” Bibi says.

  “These are the ones?” Her face is blank, and I reach for her in my mind. I get a flutter, a rupture. Panic, curiosity, adrenal
ine. Nothing settled. Nothing solid. Nothing set.

  She’s a mess. But there’s something else.

  She recognizes us, something about us.

  Ro’s eyes flicker to mine. He knows I can feel something. I look to Lucas and Tima, but they’re too distracted by the appearance of Yang to notice anything else.

  Bibi smiles, putting down his tray. “Dr. Yang, this is Doloria, Furo, Lucas, and Tima.” I must look panicked, because Bibi smiles at me. “It is safe to talk here, little one. Don’t worry. You look like you’ve swallowed your tongue.”

  I feel my cheeks turning pink.

  “Are you telling me this is them?” Yang—whoever she is—stares at us. “Is it possible?” She leans closer, examining us from every angle. Inspecting us like sheep in a Grass auction, I think. Sheep, or slaves.

  “Surprise,” says Bibi.

  “But it was just research. Purely theoretical. Ela and I, we never actually built anything,” she says. Then she corrects herself. “Anyone.”

  Ela. There’s that name again, the one I read in Fortis’s journal.

  “And yet here they are.” Bibi nods. “Dolor, Timor, Furor, Amare. The four iconic characteristics of the human temperament.”

  “It’s true,” I say, staring at her. “Ta-da. Here we are. Humanity itself, in the flesh.” I sound bitter, which I am. And frustrated, because this Dr. Yang knows more than she’s saying.

  It’s my job to poke her until she says it.

  I feel the questions behind her eyes. I feel the pounding of her heart. The quickening of her pulse.

  Nothing more.

  I leave her alone.

  Yang moves her eyes from me to the others.

  “They were nothing. The most unlikely of ideas. The vaguest mathematical possibility.” She’s in shock, I think. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to read anything more from her.

  Yang peers into Tima’s face. Pinches the side of her cheek. Runs her hands over the tattoo on Tima’s arm. Tima stands, frozen, looking as though she might throw her soup bowl at the woman. Yang doesn’t even seem to notice. She’s so absorbed in what she sees. In us.

  Finally, Yang looks up at Bibi. “They’re perfect, aren’t they? Truly perfect?”

  “They’re something.”

  “Generally speaking, I’d say they hit the mark. One hundred percent. Has someone been tracking this?”

  Bibi shrugs. “The Merk.”

  “I heard they arrived by boat. A SEA Projects cargo ship. A bit risky, don’t you think?”

  Bibi sighs. “That’s a Merk for you.”

  “But why did they come back here?”

  “Back here?” Ro looks at her like he wants to hit her. I don’t feel much differently myself.

  Back here. To the SEA Colonies. A place I have never been.

  I knew Fortis had been here.

  I didn’t know we had.

  “You realize, of course, that we’re standing right here,” Lucas says.

  “And we can hear you,” Tima adds.

  “You can speak,” Yang says, nodding. “Well done.” I can’t tell if she’s joking or not.

  “We can do a lot of things,” Ro says, evenly. I can feel his temper rising. “You want to try us?”

  He fixes his eyes on her until beads of perspiration form on her forehead. Moments later, the soup in her bowl begins to bubble.

  “Enough.” Yang holds up a hand. She turns to Bibi. “This is, I take it, the Rager?”

  “He’s not the Freak,” says Bibi, looking like he’d like to take a step back from Ro himself. Tima glares at both of them.

  “We’re here because we’re looking for someone,” I say. “We were hoping you could help us find her.”

  “Someone like us. A girl. The fifth.” Tima looks at Yang, who doesn’t seem to understand.

  “The fifth?” Yang repeats. She looks at Bibi, meaningfully. “The fifth what?”

  “Icon Child,” Lucas says.

  “That’s not possible,” Yang says, after a moment.

  “More impossible than we are?” Ro asks. He looks at me. I can read the questions in his face.

  How does she know what’s possible? What does she know about us? Do you want me to find out what she really knows?

  Ro’s ready to resort to other methods. I shake my head, almost imperceptibly.

  Let her talk.

  “Don’t act so surprised. You work in the Project labs, Dr. Yang. It’s not like you’re a monk.” Bibi studies her face. “People do talk.”

  “I’m telling you. I would have heard if…” Her voice trails off.

  “If what?” I ask.

  “I just would have heard.” She looks at Bibi. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know they were real. I didn’t know someone would actually do it.”

  It’s Ro’s turn. “Who are we, Dr. Yang, and what do you have to do with us? If you know anything about me, you know not to make me mad.” He takes another step. “I’m a Rager, remember? I rage. Is that the scientific term?”

  Another step.

  “To be honest, I don’t know what else I’ll do.” He leans in. “Sometimes I surprise even myself.”

  For the first time, Yang looks nervous. “I swear. I’ve had nothing to do with this. Not for years.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Ro says.

  “It isn’t me. It’s him. Ask him. It’s all him.”

  “Who?” Ro says. “Fortis? We already know that he made us. That he’s the reason we even exist.”

  “No,” Yang says. “Not that. Not just that. Someone else. Something worse. Far worse.”

  She opens her mouth to answer—

  But the words never come.

  Only the noise.

  Because the entire hawker center explodes into flying chunks of concrete and billowing clouds of smoke and ash.

  GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH: EASTASIA SUBSTATION

  MARKED URGENT

  MARKED EYES ONLY

  Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B

  RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies

  Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.

  FORTIS ==> DOC

  02/13/2067

  PERSES PRESSURE

  //comlog begin;

  Doc, I’m sending this from a private terminal. One way.; I am receiving increasing scrutiny regarding PERSES and what we have learned thus far. Since I have been provided essentially a carte blanche research budget, Congress is insisting on progress reports and accounting. As though they don’t trust me!;

  For now, to be safe, keep all information regarding NULL, the nature of the contents of PERSES, and related research materials highly encrypted, obfuscated, tucked away. Hidden. You get my meaning.;

  Until we know more, I am characterizing PERSES to Congress as an asteroid only, with minimal likelihood of impact with Earth. Which, at its current trajectory, at least, is true.;

  A lot of people, governments, corporations, etc., would be willing to spend or do almost anything to access my—our—information. As such, keep a close eye on any queries, probes, worms, attacks, small or large. Any attempts to breach your security.;

  Finally, please, and this should be obvious, but if others are watching/listening when we communicate, play dumb.;

  //comlog end;

  23

  ASH

  I lie under what feels like a blanket. Heavy as a layer of beach sand, or strangely tepid snow.

  It isn’t.

  It’s the room and the people and the food stands and everything else that made up this busy hawker center—pulverized and powdered into nothing.

  I hear the screaming and the shouting and I feel everything starting to move again around me.

  Hands take my shoulders, pulling me upward, and soon I am lying over Ro’s back, slumped like a big sack of rice.

  He lowers us both to the ground. “Dol. Dol, please. Wake up.”

  I open my eyes. M
y eyelashes are fringed with a grayish blur.

  Ash. It’s ash.

  “Ro.” I try to think of the words, but my brain is still as rattled as the marketplace. “I’m here. I’m good.”

  For a second, Ro looks like he’s going to cry. Then he pulls me in close. I feel his head resting against mine, his lips against my forehead. “Doloria Maria de la Cruz. One of these days, you are going to kill me.”

  “I thought you didn’t care?” I smile, reaching my fingers up to his cheek. He takes them in his hand.

  “I don’t. But if someone’s going to kill me, I don’t want it to be you. That would be insulting.”

  I smile again, and then I remember.

  Lucas. Tima.

  “Ro,” I say, but he knows.

  He nods. And like that, he’s gone for the others.

  I close my eyes, wondering what I feel and why I still feel it.

  Dr. Yang is lying somewhere, unconscious in an Embassy hospital bed.

  Connected to beeping machines, just as I was, in another Embassy—in what feels like lifetimes ago.

  Will she die because of what she was going to tell us?

  Will she die because of him? Whoever he is?

  Is there really something more to this than just Fortis?

  Or could the Merk have blown the place up? Was this his work?

  I stare at Fortis while he speaks. Shouts, more like. He’s as angry as I’ve ever seen him, and I have to wonder if he’s worried about Yang, or his plans to take out the GAP.

  “It’s not an accident when someone blows up the whole hawker center you happen to be visitin’ while you’re still there.” Fortis pulls the bandage tight around Tima’s arm, wrapping it against her body. “Done it enough times myself. I should know.”

  “Relax. We’re all okay,” I say. I move my leg up and down, trying to get the throbbing to stop. I can’t decide which hurts more, the lump on my head or the swelling in my ankle. Even in the clean sarong I have tied around my shoulders like a sleeveless shift, I am sweltering in the heat—which doesn’t help.

  Still, I know how lucky I am.

  Who knows what else could have happened?