4
The ArtReal receptionist printed out a little card and slipped it into a clear plastic sleeve with a lanyard attached. It hung nearly to Macy's waist, so she took it back and tied a knot in it a few inches from one end. Macy donned it and smiled, thanked the woman, then trailed her father down the corridor.
"Don't let me forget to turn that back in before we leave."
"Gotcha," she said, looking up and smiling politely at any employees they passed.
They hooked right and Geoff pushed through a doorway, turning toward his daughter with a finger to his lips to remind her there might be people sleeping inside. She nodded and repeated the gesture back at him.
Dr. Jacqueline Halbot was arranging glass containers atop a small cart. "Dr. McKenna," she said without looking his way.
"Dr. Halbot. I have my daughter with me today."
"Oh?" The woman turned around and removed small eyeglasses so she could better see the girl. "Is everything okay?"
Halbot gave Macy the creeps. She thought the woman looked like a Hollywood vampire in a lab coat. Years before, when she had first moved to New York, Macy had been abducted off the street near her aunt's place and experimented upon. She had only vague shadow memories of the event that occasionally pervaded her nightmares. When she was found, she had been comatose and was brought to ArtReal to see if the damage could be reversed. When the ArtReal scientists failed, Alex and his Quasar partner, Amanda, had used their combined talents to revive her. Macy sidestepped a little closer to her father who rested an arm around her shoulders.
"Everything's fine," he said. "We came to see the new Double A."
"Two three one? Peter?"
"Where do the names come from?" Macy asked.
"I think the list was created years ago by Walter Neville when he began the program," she answered. "Sure you're not ready to join up?"
Macy pressed closer to her father, finding the joke distasteful. Before Alex and Amanda's intervention, ArtReal's best means of reviving her at all was the suggestion to Quasar her. Sometimes she thought that would have been the most awesome thing in the world…but only if she'd turned out like Amanda. If she had become a standard, ghost-like Quasar, then her father would've had only a couple of weeks at most to prepare himself to say goodbye and bury her. Double A's were extraordinarily rare.
"Where are they?" Geoff asked. "Pete and Dory?"
"Try the gymnasium. Dr. Happenstance is conducting the traits and abilities tests."
Macy grinned. She always enjoyed visits with John Happenstance.
"Is there anything scheduled for me in the lab today?"
"I didn't check." As the pair moved away toward the laboratory, Halbot called softly, "Have fun, you two."
They crossed the room and Macy glanced over at empty beds on wheels lined up in near-darkness. She shuddered and rushed ahead to a door whose knob served also as the dial of a digital lock. Geoff approached and tried it. It opened easily and they entered a smaller, narrow room that was better lit and lined with cabinets and countertops. Geoff went to look at a bulletin board to see if there was anything pressing he needed to rake care of, saw there was not, and having recognized his daughter's discomfort, walked her toward the other exit so she wouldn't have to see Halbot again.
This time they emerged into a corridor with Arien glass windows that were almost perfectly soundproof. The blinds were down, but partially open, allowing a view of a sky that looked like it was becoming grey. From there they moved into a windowless stasis room where the sleeping bodies of Standard Quasars were kept alive as long as possible. It was the very room where Macy had been kept while her grief-stricken father had warred with himself over her fate after her abduction. The crypt-like chambers were empty. Now that Alex was gone, there were only two Quasar Force Officers, and the company had been slow in assigning them partners.
From there they exited into a corridor lined with offices. They turned left at the end, made a quick right, and entered a stairwell. The pair raced each other down, laughing and pretending to knock each other into the banister or wall, making crash sounds and explosion noises whenever one of them bounced off of one.
"One of these days one of us will get hurt and then we'll never do this again."
Macy replied, "I stole your wallet," and waved it at him as she hurried past.
He grabbed it back from her at the door at the bottom, and they exited the stairwell red-faced and breathless, big grins on their faces. The gym was to the right. They bypassed the double doors and entered a single steel door with a lit red light over it. A second door led to a small tiled room with a counter running along one wall, an empty wheeled cart pushed into a corner, some cabinets and a desk chair. Up three steps and McKenna knocked lightly at the door at the top. A young man looked through the glass window at them before nodding and Geoff held the door open for his daughter.
"Geoff! Macy!" exclaimed John jovially. "Did you come for the show?"
It was surprising to see how many people had crowded into the small space. When Amanda had been assigned to Alex, he'd just been given an assignment, so there had not been time to test her officially. Dorreen apparently had no cases at the moment, so the testing of her new partner was a luxury.
Geoff positioned himself in the center of the room toward the rear and rested his hands on Macy's shoulders. She could see between the people seated before her. She didn't know most of their names but was familiar with a few of their faces. A row of monitors emerged from the counter below the huge Arien glass window before them. Beyond that lay the gymnasium—a vast, open area in which stood a slim, short figure awaiting instruction and a taller one watching him.
One of the people in front of her operated a remote camera with a joystick and zoomed in on the smaller figure. Macy saw a face that could've belonged to a boy or a girl, with gentle eyes and a plump lower lip that jutted just enough to suggest a pout. The forehead was broad, the chin sweet and narrow. He had wavy hair of a warm wheaten gold and his eyes appeared maybe hazel and were ringed with thick, soft lashes. His nose was pert, throat slender and graceful. He was far slighter than Amanda, who'd resembled a slender, but well-formed fourteen year old. Macy thought of him as angelic in appearance. His skin was a soft, dusty pale gold as though he played regularly in sunshine, and his features were delicate. She thought that if he attended her school he'd likely be the envy of all the girls and the target of most of the boys. "Pretty," she heard herself murmur softly, and then glanced about to see if anyone had heard her.
"Oh, he is," agreed John. "I personally get a kick out of it when they turn out looking weak and frail. Packs more of a wallop when they cut loose on someone."
Quasars were programmed with crushes on their partners as a means of ensuring they would obey and protect them. This had been an issue for Alex, who was telepathic, and confused Amanda's feelings for him with his own feelings for her. Macy figured it should not be a problem for Dory, even though she barely ranked on the psychic scale at all due to the occasional dream she had that came true. Staring at the movie-star beautiful boy on the monitor, Macy recognized a pang of jealousy and smiled as she told herself it was stupid to feel that way. Looks were insufficient to judge people by. Personality was almost everything. None of the cute boys at school had ever been nice to her. It was as though they found her plain, simple, fresh-faced girl next door looks inferior. So she liked to look at pretty boys, but tended to avoid interaction with them.
John spoke into a microphone. "We have a couple of VIPs in here, maybe you'd like to do the last demonstration a second time for our late arrivals?"
Without glancing toward the window Quasar Force Officer 001, Dorreen Perandah, gave a nod before gesturing and speaking to her Quasar. She took a few steps back as the boy lifted a knee and drifted elegantly upward. He watched her for cues as she directed him to rise higher, and his slim body spun slowly in its ascent as though he dangled from a strand of spider silk.
"Graceful," Geoff noted.
"Makes 169 seem rough by comparison," John agreed, but Macy could see a grin on his face.
The boy swung into a slowly expanding outward spiral, then angled his body and picked up speed, zipping like a little, pale jet past the glass several times in the space of a minute. His partner called to him and he arced toward her, curving his body through the air like a leaping fish before he alighted soundlessly beside her. She mussed the top of his head, smiled, and took a bow. When she straightened, she looked up toward the window and scanned her audience with satisfaction.
"Strength test," John informed her, and they waited patiently as equipment was wheeled in and locked into place. Dory approached the all-in-one contraption and inspected the wheel locks, then announced she would be setting the weights at their limit of sixteen hundred pounds. When she was done, she approached the complacent, but aridly curious boy and bent to speak to him. He neared the thing, bent toward an edge of the frame, and lifted it easily with one hand.
The feat was noted, though not met with much excitement. The Quasar had tipped the device so that it remained on the floor and the bulk of the weight remained in gravity's grip. Amanda could have lifted the entire thing over her head.
"Flight strength," said John.
Dory gave the command and the boy rose slowly from the floor. The exercise equipment tipped almost on end. Dory spoke again and retreated a few steps. Very slowly the Nautilus machine left the floor, but only by a few inches. The Quasar, Peter, traveled a slow orbit around the room and then set the device down gently upright without having been instructed to. Clearly he lacked the means to chuck it through a wall like Amanda could.
"Impressive," Geoff mentioned softly, but Macy knew he was thinking the same thoughts as she.
"Ground speed," Dr. Happenstance said, and everyone watched Dory explain to Peter what she wanted him to do.
The boy sprinted off quickly and zipped laps around the gym. John's assistant activated a laser that emitted a beam across the width of the gym, and every time it was broken the time was recorded. After a few minutes the assistant told John, "Forty."
Macy had never seen Amanda run. She had never seen her do anything particularly fast, but she stubbornly believed the first Quasar she had ever met was probably faster.
"Air speed," John said, and the boy's orbits remained the same as he broke the laser repeatedly without his feet ever touching the floor.
"Same."
"Noted." The large scientist consulted an electronic pad beside him. "Ask him if he can alter his appearance."
After a moment, once Peter had settled, he stood looking puzzled until Dorreen made some suggestions to him. While he concentrated, the cameras zoomed in on him from different angles so that they could watch his ears elongate and form sharp tips. His hair faded to bleached blond, then acquired a rich carroty hue. The shape of his eyes grew almond and traveled a little farther toward the edges of his face. His cheeks rounded and dimpled, his irises changed color according to Dory who wore a small camera and microphone to record minute details. His height varied within the span of about a foot. He grew plump, then a little stronger looking. The look on his face told them none of this was easy for him. Finally he seemed to shrink and fade back into his original form.
"Limited," John decided.
By the end of the demonstration they had learned that Peter had an uncanny knack for comprehending and speaking any language they tried on him. He could manifest physical illusions as large as an elephant, but they remained in existence only so long as he remained aware of them. He performed a few stunts using his superhero-like gymnastic ability and showed extraordinary reflex capability.
Unlike Amanda, he could not pass through solids and could not become invisible. He did have the ability to vanish from one place and reappear almost simultaneously in another, and did this once while in contact with his partner who grinned broadly with pride in his talents. When they attempted to test his telekinetic abilities, the assembled group was amazed to witness a blurry, indistinct apparition that appeared to intercede on his behalf, picking Dory's sunglasses off of her palm and carrying them to Peter, then returning to flip her hair as though someone standing very close behind her had abruptly blown on it.
"That's new," one of the observers commented.
"Play it back," John commanded. "Slow it down. Enhance the footage."
They watched it several times. The peculiar, slightly dark blur took on the look of a five-digit hand as it coalesced somewhat around the sunglasses. Just behind Dory a vague, yet human-shaped face manifested just before her hair moved.
"Doppleganger," John declared. "A new trait. Study it, document it, and add it to the database."
"His shadow," murmured Geoff.
Happenstance turned his way. "What about his shadow?"
"Like in Peter Pan. His shadow kept coming loose and doing its own thing."
There was a momentary silence before Dr. Happenstance began to chuckle and several others followed suit. "Peter Pan," he said, shaking his head.
Macy grinned, wondering if her father would tell them about what she'd said the night before about keeping Peter Panned, but he added nothing more.
"Firing range," John said into the microphone, and Dory nodded and led the boy toward the exit. "I saw the movie…but I didn't read the book," he mentioned as people stood and filed from the room.
"I think I read the book," Geoff admitted, but he didn't sound sure.
Macy had seen the Disney film and from what she could recall, she hadn't been overly impressed with the story. "What are they going to do at the firing range?" she asked her father. "See if he can catch a bullet?"
"Something like that," was all he admitted.