.10.htm.

Okay, okay, here it is. I expect my chapters on this to be longer. Just ask Jaci, she read my outline up to chapter nineteen -- minus a bit of a plot I sort of forgot to include -- and she said it was a novel. I just need my ideas written down or I forget them really quickly! So, anyway, blah blah woof woof, here it is.

Part .10

"I broke the damn wall down," I told them, "and all the thoughts of the people in my area of hearing flooded me . . ."

Sebastian started almost at once. "Tyronica, why didn't you think it through? How many times have I heard you complain about the amount of thoughts you could hear when you opened a window, not to mention a door?"

I took a ragged breath, trying to suppress a memory that was trying to flood forth. "I'm sorry," I told them.

Dad broke in. "You were out for three days." I glanced around at the group surrounding me; they all acknowledged the fact I had been out for such a long period of time. My God, that was surprising. "Don't ever do it again."

"I didn't think," I admitted.

{vivid thoughts}

"Annelise! You never think! Why can't you ever stop to think?!" Mother asks me.

I shrug. "I didn't think, Mother," I tell her quietly.

{/vivid thoughts}

"You'll never make that mistake again," Zack interjected. I purposely made no response to his first comment of the day.

"Well," Mom said, "you've got to explain a bit more these memories you keep babbling about. Even when you were asleep, you were thrashing. First, Ty, you were rigid and we could barely open you. Then, you started thrashing on the second day. Finally, about two hours ago, you stopped. We all just stepped out for a breather when Martin said your name."

"Its just like thinking back when I was three and visiting my grandparents on a farm. I see everything for the first time," I told them.

"You've never done that, Ron," Dad says.

"Exactly!" I exclaimed vehemently. "That's what its like!" I would be there but it wasn't me. "I can't tell what's real and not, sometimes, because I get so scared. I get worried I'm not in real time or in real memories."

"Damn, girl, you got some weird ass way of describing it," Original Cindy said. I shot her a glance. It was the Goddamned truth, did she believe me? "Original Cindy ain't saying nothing 'ginst ya story, boo, 'cuz she knows you ain't the type to tell lies, but it sounds like you have one helluva time just thinking things through." Exactly, Cindy, exactly.

~ ~ ~

Mom and Dad were pretty cool with the fact that I needed a lot of time alone to sort out my rooms and make certain that all of my walls didn't have holes in them. I was pretty worried about hearing thoughts and things; I built my walls so strongly that even Zack couldn't penetrate them.

I had more windows than originally built, though they had strong shutters, and quite a few less doors. If you can see my mind as I can see it, you can imagine how much more secure I felt.

It took me three days to even get comfortable with the thoughts in my head. I started sorting them into a new room, large in space, whenever I saw one flirting across my mind's eye. It was annoying, having to sort through my memories, and I didn't much enjoy the task.

Isn't it amazing how many thoughts one can store? I was quite surprised, myself, when I was going through my head, at the sheer number of memories and ideas that were tucked away. I was extremely lucky in the fact that I had stored most of my memories already, so I needn't have gone through sorting all of my previous memories. It actually made my job of hunting down foreign memories a bit.

I tended to stay away from others while I was sorting, preferring to spend my entire time in mediation, so that I didn't absorb any new memories.

I didn't eat much. Though Mom did make me stop to eat at least two meals a day, I picked at my food more than I ingested it.

~ ~ ~

Martin showed me his book about five days after I "woke up" in Sebastian's house. It was filled with information, written in Martin's neat hand, across the pages.

Dad was looking over my shoulder as I flipped through the pages, excitedly thinking about my siblings of whom the pages where written about, when he asked me a question.

"Er, Ty," he said, "why is it written in that odd script?"

I glanced down at the page upon which I was reading. On it were lines, curves, and dots, arranged in various ways on the paper.

"Oh," I said.

[gray thoughts]

"Tie-raw-nick-ka," Arsaces whispers hoarsely into my ear, "wake up." I don't bother to correct him by saying that my name is Ter-raw-nick-ka because my nickname is Ty and it doesn't make much sense and I also know that he is just saying that to get on my nerve. My Dad is silly, nicknaming me Ty. I don't say Ter-raw-nick-ka much anymore, myself, anyway, which causes me to think. Have I changed my name? Oh well, it is just a name.

I bounce out of bed, giggling. At age seven, I am decidedly smaller than my brother. He is always bouncing on my bed, early in the morning, waking me up. I punch him lightly in the arm while I make certain that I am dressed correctly.

"Hey, Arsie, stop," I say tiredly. "We're going out on a skirmish today, so help me get everybody up, will you?"

Arsaces looks over his shoulder. I look there too. Everyone is already up. I groan; I am the last one to be woken, which means that I will have to make everybody's bed. This is just great.

After I smooth down the covers, I take my place in line and walk the others to breakfast. We are fairly early, as usual, so we get a prime table. Eating our food quickly, we rush to the briefing room, where we will be told of our skirmish.

"I'm telling you, they aren't as superb as the X-5s," I hear a man telling another as we walked down the hall, "but they have the potential. If they can morph, those MA-1s will be able to take on the form of a perfect soldier. Hell, they might be able to blend and create their own . . . "

We enter the room and close the door. Andrea rolls her eyes and gives me a soft smile. We have seen the reports on the MA-1s; the man speaking is giving the other a crock of shit and we all know it.

I make certain that the others were lined up; we must always be perfect soldiers and appear as we must always be. A man walks in; menial and unimportant, he is just here to assign us our orders. With a fleeting thought, I feel that the man is envious of our group. It seems that we actually have higher rankings than he does. We do?

Okay, out the door, complete the mission, come back in thirty-six minutes. Its simple. The mission is a five minute thing with Lezli and myself, experts on the scaling of walls. We will have thirty-one minutes of free time.

The mission completed, we sit down and talk. There is nothing to do, so Alan and I start scratching on the bark of an old, gnarled tree.

"Hey," Ally says, "why don't we make our own letter system, one that is more difficult for a Manticore than Chinese is to an American norm?"

I giggle. This is an amusing thought. Norms think that they are so smart; we are far more intelligent than any norm that I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. I think that maybe we are more intelligent than any norm that has ever been birthed on this world.

"Sure," I say, "and let's not forget to write it right to left instead of left to right, just to confuse people."

Lezli topples off the log in a fit of laughter; Mikaele has to pull her up.

[/gray thoughts]

Martin piped up before I had the chance. "Its our code, we made it when we were younger. I thought it was better to write in than Chinese, Hebrew, or ancient Egyptian; people know those. Only seven of us ever knew about this."

I smiled ruefully. It was true, I had to admit. Andrea, though, was dead and buried, along with every secret we had ever shared with her.

Dad nodded. "Could you teach it to me?" he asked. I looked at Martin and shrugged.

"Sure," I nodded toward Dad. I leaned across the desk and got my notebook. I opened it up to the first leaf and started writing down the alphabet. "We we have a few extra letters. See, here, this is in place of p-h . . . this is in place of s-h . . . this is in place of c-h . . . this is in place of g-h . . . lots of the f sounds . . . Oh, this one is the s-t in our alphabet . . . this is the i-n-g . . . this is the e-d . . . I think that's it . . . it makes a lot more sense when you're writing it out . . . Our English alphabet really isn't the basis of this . . ."

"I'll say," Dad said, laughing. "It looks difficult."

"Oh, it isn't, not at all!" I told him quickly. It was ever so much easier just to write out than one might believe.

"Never mind, Ty-girl, I would have to spend time on this, and I've got to take Qelbee and Roan-Sullivan to the park," Dad said. I scowled darkly at the twins as I tore up the paper. Dad looked at me as I ripped it.

"Don't want anyone to be able to read this, it might be a key to deciphering the locations," I said. It was so obvious that I turned away in disgust. Dad laughed it off and went out with the kids.

I had found out that day that Qeleigh-Bronwynn Zesiro was the poor little girl's name. Qeleigh-Bronwynn as the first name, Zesiro as the middle. Following form, Roan-Sullivan Banji was named. Luckily, I could say Roan-Sullivan and admire how pretty it was. Qeleigh-Bronwynn had to grow on you.

"Martin," I said as the car started outside the door, "I need a contact number."

Martin looked up at me. He had returned to the couch where he'd been watching the news, but now he walked toward me again. He gait was slow, even, perfectly symmetrical with itself.

"You can just use the one that I used," he told me. I looked at him thoughtfully. The idea has occurred to me, but I wasn't used to having somebody follow me blindly. It was sort of comforting, having my brother trust me so deeply.

"True," I told him. "Would you mind handing over the number and password?" Without hesitating, Martin wrote down the information. "Where's my Mom?"

"She's at the store," he told me. The store? We were camped at Sebastian's, why was she shopping for him?

"We're home alone," I said. I was rather miffed by the thought. Hadn't they missed me at all? Sure, they hadn't actually left me in about five days, but it was rather disturbing to have them both run away from home as soon as I was able to be out and about. Sebastian wasn't anywhere to be seen, either. It was his place, didn't he want to make certain that we didn't lift anything?

Martin didn't answer me, just handed me the phone. I quickly punched the numbers and waited while the monotonous mechanical recording took me through the procedure of checking my messages. Yadda yadda yadda, press pound, two, then the pin number.

No new messages. That was a good thing, wasn't it?

I sat down moodily on the couch, disappointed that I hadn't been able to hear the voice of at least one of my siblings. Martin sat down next to me and began watching the news. Sebastian had one killer access code; he actually got some channels that I had never seen before.

True, when I was younger, I watched mainly the early morning programs and cartoons, but I had searched after school a few times for some interesting stuff and nothing had come up. Obviously, Dad hadn't bothered to tell me there was an access code you needed, which was really pissy of him.

I got bored of the news pretty early, so I went exploring in Sebastian's house. I knew it pretty well, having not only been up and about for two days but having come to Sebastian's house with Dad once when I was ten and still very nosy. I hadn't outgrown that nosiness at all.

I found my way into the computer room, where there was a really nice computer up against the far wall. I wanted to sit down, but I knew how touchy Dad was about his computer and figured that Sebastian would be about as twice as touchy, me not being family and all.

After about two minutes, Sebastian came into the room.

"Would you like a go?" he asked me. Eagerly, I nodded in an affirmative fashion. "Go on ahead. Just don't change anything unless you ask me."

I sat down in the chair and began typing away. I was pretty interested in the conspiracy theories that he had. Most of them were old news to me, having worked on typing up some of the more secret documents at Manticore, but some of it was pretty interesting. I fixed a few of the factually incorrect statements for him -- with his permission of course -- and read away happily until Dad came.

"I see you found the computer," he said as he popped his head in the room. Roan-Sullivan, affixed solidly to Dad's leg, was trying to eat his sister's hair in a most uncharming manner.

"I'm attracted to them like metal to a magnet," I told him solidly. I loved computers; I had loved them ever since I was young and taken into the room to learn basic typing. I glanced down at my fingers. They traveled the keyboard ever so much better than when I was eight and first learning, with Ally and Andrea looking dubiously at the keyboards.

"I'll bet you are," he said amiably.

"Dad," I said after a pause, "got any information on parents for Martin?"

Dad looked at me solidly. I knew that he was aware that I didn't want to let Martin go so early, but he and I both knew that uprooting Martin after he got comfortable in Seattle would be one of the stupidest things imaginable.

"Yeah," he said quietly. I looked at the wall behind his head, careful not to make eye contact. "Actually," he continued, "it's one of my contacts. You know televisions of course," he grinned. "Well, there is this chip that is in every one of those that Shamal Prasad makes. Conveniently, he is the only one that manufactures it in North America. Even more conveniently, I went to college with him. In the past two years, he has started adding a receptor the the chips. Its one line of coding that allows my broadcasts to go directly to the television set . . ."

"It makes your hacking easier?" I asked.

"Exactly," he agreed. "Anyway, Ty, he's loaded. He's also a widower with a boy about twelve or thirteen and looking for -- "

" -- a foster son?" I broke in. It was the logical ending to that sentence.

"No, an adoptive son. That is the good thing about it," Dad told me. I digested the information. It was a very good thing for Martin, a very good thing. It was a good thing, it was.

"So, he's a nice guy?" I asked, carefully trying to count the bumps of paint on the wall. There were quite a few, as it turned out.

Dad smiled softly. "Yes, Ty. I trust him with my life. He's a very good father, too. He spoils Andrew a bit, but it is only to be expected."

"Where is he?" I bit my tongue, expecting Oregon or even California. I was quite lucky in the respect, Dad said neither.

"Florida." So far away, Dad. It was so far away.

I nodded. "Right, then, so shall we get ready? I expect you've spoken with Mr. Prasad already?"

"Yes, all I have to do is arrange a plane trip. If you want, you could go with him," Dad gave me a look which meant a lot more than any one person could imagine.

~ ~ ~

The plane trip two days later was fairly enjoyable. Martin and I watched a few on-plane movies and goofed off a bunch. In other words, we had as much fun as we could before we landed in Florida.

After we landed, I called a taxi and gave them Shamal Prasad's address. Once we got outside the house, I rang the doorbell.

"Be good, Martin. If you don't like it here, you can always call me. Always," I looked him in the eye to enforce my point.

As the door was opened, he nodded. I handed him the papers and we walked into the entry hall. It was nice; hardwood flooring, impeccably white walls, the whole she bang.

After the quick, quiet interview with Mr. Prasad, I walked out of the house. At the first pay phone I got to, I called Dad and told him everything was successful. Then I pick pocketed my way into a cyber cafe and logged onto a web site.

I changed the pin number on the voice mail.