We had to stay in Torronto for three more months. Absolutely no one was happy about that fact, but we couldn't do anything about it because it was mostly for safety concerns so no one could argue about it. Parker and the rest of the newly established agency were going great, they were bouncing between here, the United States and several other countries trying to find people affected by Agent Ambrosia.
The morning we were supposed to move, I was standing next to David and Sulvia in front of the hotel. Sulvia was doing well since Ziva had healed her, and had gained a lot of experience in her powers since we had shown up. She and her father had had a long conversation and he had agreed to move out there with her so she could have a somewhat normal life. She had been living in a manor that was somewhat isolated so that she could use her powers in peace.
We were watching the first of the buses that would be leaving soon. Some people would be driving on the ground instead of flying for one of various. Some were going because they weren't confident in their abilities. Others were afraid of heights and weren't good fliers. A large problem was that Canada didn't have a lot of airplanes. We were lucky enough to have gotten as many as we had when we came up, but since we weren't in a state of emergency, we couldn't use as many as I would have hoped.
"They're going to be fine," David said, and I gave him a sideways look.
"I know," I said, and grabbed the tablet out of his hands. I checked off the people who had just left, and as soon as I hit their names they moved off the list and moved to the traveling one. As soon as that was done I handed it back to David.
"Thanks," he muttered and turned to his daughter. "Do you have everything packed?" she nodded eagerly and he smiled. "Good. Now go and make sure it's in the right place." She grumbled and walked away into the hotel. I gave a small laugh at her expense and David gave me a pointed look.
"I finished my packing last night," I said, and I heard footsteps behind me. I turned my head and saw the next group of people walking down the steps. They were made up of mostly kids who were on the border of changing, their families, and some medics. We had decided that was the best choice for them to make sure there were enough people watching them until they got into the city.
I watched them until they started loading onto the bus before turning to watch the city around me. News had leaked that we were here, but thanks to David and Justin's people it had been kept private to the area we had been staying at. Justin also had Toronto's police and the Canadian Army watching the secured locations to deter people from trying to mess with us. No one liked it at first, Canadians or Americans, but since they tried to make friend's right away and didn't try to enter without permission, no one cared. They were respectful of our wishes and I was thankful about that.
After my look around the block turned up nothing, I watched the bus pull away from the hotel to go to the Toronto Airport, and I had to hold my breath. I was worried about all of them and wanted everyone to be safe. As soon as they turned the corner, I looked back at David again. He was turned back to the hotel, and was looking at the door. I turned my head, and saw Alex walking down the steps toward us.
"Hey," I called out.
"Hey," she said with a smile as she stopped between David and I. "Did everyone get out?"
"Yep," I said, and David handed her the tablet in his hands. She opened it and looked at the lists that we had done. We stood in silence as she flipped through it, and as soon as she finished she handed it back to David.
"Are you ready to go?" She asked me.
"Yeah," I said. I was one of the people who were going earlier than everyone else. I was going with Calvin, Felica, and one of Felicia's old cabin mates, Hailey. Part of Project Hammer was to put every single kid with an adult. We had done that before Project Hammer, but since we were moving into apartments and houses we needed to put kids with adults. Some of the kids would be allowed to live on their own, but they had to be seventeen and could take care of themselves. They also had to meet with people on the outside.
"Go get ready, I'll make sure everyone heads out," Alex said with a smile.
"Of course," I said and walked back into the hotel. The hotel was busy with movement. The Americans were busy making sure they had all of their belongings, or were gathering in groups to be taken to the West Coast. The workers were busy cleaning the rooms to prepare for more people to come in eventually. I saw Jaquine and some of the former tower workers and hotel workers directing people around.
I ignored the chaos and walked through the lobby towards the conference room I had been staying in for the last few months. It had been dismantled this morning and the table that was supposed to be in here had been moved earlier. The two bags that I had brought with me to Canada were sitting on one of the chairs. I grabbed them and threw the larger backpack over my shoulder and held the smaller purple one in my right hand.
I walked back into the hallway before turning to look at the room. I smiled sadly before turning and walking back into the lobby. It was still as chaotic as it was a few minutes ago, and I joined the line with Calvin and the other two. Felicia and Hailey were talking excitedly about something quietly, so I turned to look at Calvin.
"Are you ready for this?" he asked, curiosity in his voice.
"Maybe," I said and his smile dropped a second before returning. I knew that he was wanting a better response, but I couldn't give a better one.
"Line A four," a woman called. I turned my head and saw a black woman dressed in skivies fourty feet away from me. She was one of the people making sure the entirety of a plane is contained to one or two buses. I was a part of the group and lined up with everyone else. As soon as we were in somewhat of a line, the woman led us out of the building and onto the bus.
The two buses taking this group were on loan from the Torronto Airport, and when I walked onto the first one, I noticed that it was very nice and was clean. I sat down next to the front door with my small newfound family. Everyone walked on after me, and took their seats. As soon as we were seated the buses pulled away and started the thirty minute drive to the airport.
We easily got to the airport, went through security with minimal issues, got onto the airplane with no problem, flew and landed with no problem. When we landed we were shuffled onto buses from some of the school buses from the Vancovor School District. The irony wasn't lost on me as I clamered on board and rode out to New Rose Hills. The city was kind of far from Toronto on the West Coast, so it wouldn't be hard to defend if we needed it.
I looked out the window as we approached and no matter how many times I had seen it in pictures, I was still surprised how beautiful the city was. The few apartment builsdings were taller than the pictures had made them out to be. The driver of the bus pulled in front of the elementary school closest to our apartment buildings. My nerves were extremely stressed by the fact I was in a school bus for so long, so the adults let me and the other kids who had been in camps for a while off first to catch their breaths.
"Are you better now?" Calvin asked me quietly. I nodded, and he walked to Hailey to ask her the same question. Once he made sure all three of us were calm and not on the verge of a panic attack, he clapped his hands and said "come on. Let's go check out our apartment, then we'll check out Ava's and my offices. Then the school, then we'll just explore."
"Okay," I said, and the others nodded eagerly. Calvin had been slowing down on how much he left the three of us. He went with me to make sure that I was okay, but other than that he never really left. He wanted more time with Felicia and wanted to be there for Hailey and I since we hadn't wanted to see our parents that much. My mom, and her dad had called us in and the other parent hadn't been found yet. We hadn't been able to find them yet, and neither of us were praticuallry eager to meet them.
The apartment building we were staying in was right around the corner from the school. So we were easily able to walk to the small apartment building. It was fourteen stories tall, and towered over us as we walked through the front door. As we walked into the building's lobby, I noticed that it was homely looking. There was a small lobby zrea with a reception desk. The woman behind the desk smiled at us we stopped in front of her,
"Name?" she asked.
"Calvin Brown," he said, showing the passport that immigration had given him. Hailey, Felicia, and I pulled our passports out and showed them to her.
"Thank you," she said, and looked down at her computer. She typed something into it before looking at something on her desk that I couldn't see before rustling through something and pulling out four key cards. "All you have to do is wave it in front of the door, and put your fingerprint on the door. Your apartment is 415, the stairs are behind me and the escape stairs are over there." She pointed towards the wall, and I could see the stairs.
"Thank you so much," Calvin said, grabbing his card. I nodded my thanks as I grabbed my own. Hailey and Felicia grabbed theirs with smiles. As soon as they grabbed them, Calvin led us to the elevators and pressed the up button. The elevator must have been on the first floor because the doors immediately opened. We walked in together into the surprisingly large elevator and the doors snapped shut behind us.
"This is nice," Hailey said as we rode up to the fourth floor. The trip was short lived and the door opened with a small ping ringing through the room. The doors opened to a small room painted the same brown color from downstairs. There was red and brown carpet on the ground, and no furniture in the hallway. There was a hallway immediately outside the room and Calvin led us out of the elevator, out of the small room that held the four elevator doors, and into the hallway. It was nice and when we had to stop to look at a sign to see where our apartment was. We walked down the hallway and stopped in front of the door with 415 written in gold letters on the front. Calvin held up the key card, and when it beeped put his thumb up to check it. When that beeped, the door popped open.
Calvin pushed the door all the way open into the small foyer. He stepped inside and the three of us followed inside. There was a small kitchen immediately to our left and a wall to our right. There was a living room in front of us. I walked into the living room and heard the front door close behind Hailey. The kitchen had a small bar on the wall between the kitchen and the living room. There was a door on the opposite side of the living room that led to a small balcony.
The main bedroom was on the right side of the apartment building with a small bathroom attached to it. I walked to the left side of the apartment where Hailey's, Felicia's and mine bedrooms were. We had collectively decided to get a three bedroom and bathroom apartment. I was going to be eighteen soon and though I enjoyed spending time with the other three I would want my own apartment soon. While Hailey and Felicia had been together for years now, and were not waiting to split quite yet.
The room I was taking was the smaller of the two. The other two girls needed a lot more space than I did, and I didn't have a lot of belongings that would warrant a bigger room. There was a small door that led to a hallway on the left side of the apartment. My door was immediately off the hallway. The bathroom door was right inside of the room, and as I walked into the room I saw that the bathroom and closet shared a wall. Like the rest of the apartment, the bedroom had minimal furniture. There was a bed, a dresser, and a desk. And that was it. There weren't any hangers in the closet and there wasn't even a bar to hang up clothes.
Part of the reason why it took so long for us to move out here was because David had talked to a lot of psychologists while Ziva was living with him. She had been in a funk after we had sent her out there and he had wanted to know how he could help. What he discovered was the Americans had a higher chance of depression than usual. So when we had agreed to come out here, he had gone back and renovated things so it would be harder for people to kill or hurt themselves. He had also hired a bunch of psychologists to come out and talk with everyone soon.
Everyone would get things like hangers, belts and shoe strings only after we had proven ourselves to not be a flight risk. I didn't like not hanging basic things, but I understood why everyone was so concerned. I set my bag on the bed and started unpacking the few shirts, shorts, underwear, sweatshirts and sweatpants that I had to my name. I did have more clothes, but most of them I had to leave behind at Tundra. The teams that David had sent down had started to ship things up to Canada, but everything was still in storage.
My other backpack had things like a stuffed toy that I had since childhood, and a small family photo album. There were other small trinkets that I had for a while that I didn't want to split with. Most of the stuff I had gotten when the search towns went back to my hometown to look for survivors and anyone who wanted anything to do with us. Most of them didn't want to do anything with us and the town had mostly been abandoned.
When I finished unpacking, I set my backpacks in the closet, and walked out of the room to further explore everywhere else. There was a small room where the washer and dryer were attached across the hallway from me, and the girls room was right next to it tucked into a small corner. The closet was right next to the main door, and the bathroom was next to it. The two dressers were tucked into the closet and the desks were simple small tables. The two twin beds were attached to the walls. Eventually they would be given a bunk bed, but that would take a while. The girls had already unpacked their things and were working on something on their computers.
"You girls doing okay in here?" I asked.
"Yeah," they said together.
"Good," I said sitting down on Hailey's bed. "What are you looking at?"
"Miss Erika sent out a homework assignment that we could pratice on,
Hailey said. Erika was their English teacher. She had been teaching for twenty some odd years and she was very good at her job. She could keep the kids in line, and wasn't bothered at all by the kids who used their powers in her classroom.
"Do you guys need any help?" I asked and they shook their heads.
"It looks really easy. We can probably do them when we get back," Felicia said with a shrug and shut her computer. She placed it on her bed and stood up. Hailey did the same thing a second later. I followed them out of the room and closed the door behind me. We walked out into the living room where Calvin was walking out of his bedroom.
"You guys ready?" he asked.
"Yep," I said and the two girls nodded.
"Well come on," Calvin said, grabbing the keys for us to use. We walked out of the building, down the hall, down the elevator and out of the building. Waving at the woman in the front as we left. We were pretty early in the show, maybe fifteen hundred total here right now, so things like buses and other public transport weren't working yet. The designers of the city had actually designed it to be extremely walkable to save time and energy.
Town Hall was maybe fifteen minutes from the apartment building by walk so it wasn't that bad. As we walked we looked around the city which was really nice. We waved at the few people that were here. Town Hall was actually a four story building that took up a city block. It looked like any Town Hall and smelled like fresh paint as we walked into the building.
There were a few people from the old control tower. We waved at them and they waved back happily. My office was on the second floor of the building and Calvin's was almost exactly above mine. There were a couple shelves on the right side, a desk by the window. There wasn't much else in the offices.
After that we swung around to the elementary school that Hailey and Felicia were going to. Thanks to my powers, and the teachers we had, I was able to get most of my highschool education finished. Justin believed us when we showed him the records of who did what and when, but he had everyone do a couple tests to make sure we were properly placed in classes that we needed.
The elementary school was a three story building that was extremely clean and smelled really nice. We found Felicia's and Hailey's classrooms, before we turned around and as we left the building the next few buses showed up. The few greens and Canadians who were in charge waved at them and started checking in the group.
"Hey," Felicia called out to one of the girls she knew well. Some of the kids waved and smiled at them.
"Come on," Calvin said, trying to lead us away from the group, and I couldn't blame him. It was almost eight p.m. at night. We were all tired and the new arrivals would be too. Calvin led us back to our apartment and we were ready to make sure everything was good. As soon as I was in my bedroom, I brought out the tablet that David had given me.
He had given me two actually, one for work and one for personal use. He had given us a lot of things actually, and I always had to wonder, when was he coming for the bill? Us saving his daughter would only go so far. I turned on the facetime app, and clicked Alex's phone number. It rang for a few seconds, before she answered the call and her tired face showed up. I could see the city horizons in the background.
"Hey," she said chipperly, and I smiled.
"Hey. How did everything go on your end?"
"Good, I sent out the last flight five minutes ago, and I am ready to get out of here," she said with a small laugh. I had to give a small laugh as well. Alex would be on the last flight out. She said she wanted to be on the last one so that everyone left before she did so that no one would get left behind.
"I know you do. How many did you manage to get out so far?" I wasn't able to see how many thanks to an increased chance of being hacked. Better be safe than sorry.
"Fourty planes, and thirty buses," she said, and I did the math in my head. When I was done, my jaw dropped. That many buses and planes going out equaled about fifteen thousand people, which was about a fourth of our people. It was good work in a day.
"Good," I said with a smile, and I immediately caught her frown. "What's wrong?"
"I got word from the viper team. They were in Deleware when they encountered a skip tracer carrying a weapon that could release short doses of White Noise. They were able to take control of the situation, but they were spooked," Alex said, looking around nervously. I couldn't blame her. One of her old cabin mates had joined the viper team when the team was being built about a month before we moved up here. We had heard stories from kids we picked up from Leda Corps held locations. Frequencies that could only be heard by kids. Most of the camps we had raided hadn't heard about them. The PSF's had used intimidation to keep control, not machines that they didn't know for certain were on or off. Most of the skip tracers didn't know what they were either.
"Shit," I said quietly.
"I know, but Ava, that's not the strangest thing. Usually when it's released, it affects everyone. It feels like a bolt of electricity to the skin, but this time it only really affected Bailey. The rest were fine. Robert said it sounded like a bee when he heard it. Marcos said it sounded like a water stream, but Bailey was knocked out screaming."
"So it could be color based?" I asked. Bailey was green, but Robert was orange, and Marcos was blue.
"Yeah. The three of them were farther apart from the rest of the group, so Terry and Christy weren't able to hear it and tell what it was, but if this is true it could change how we raid camps in the future. We wouldn't be going in blind anymore if we could use it like an EMP."
"Wait, could it be used like an EMP and if we could use it that way, could we use it to find kids?"
"How would I know that?"
"Because you know just about everything and you're in charge of approving experiments more often than not. How would you not know about this?" I asked, deadpanning the entire thing. I had been in charge of the entirety of Tundra, and in a certain way did control the other five places to a certain extent, but Alex more often than not controlled the small details of the entire camp.
"Fine, I know the people running the experiments. They were doing small one's for the last few months, but we've always thought there wasn't much use for the noise. If we could use this, we could find everyone better," Alex said, confidence in her voice. I heard the sound of a bus pulling to a stop, and people chatting. "Hey I have to go, another group is going out."
"Alright. I'll call you first thing tomorrow. If something changes call me," I said, and she nodded before hitting the shut off button. I laid the tablet next to me on the bed, and there was a knock on the door. "Come in." Felicia tucked her head into the room and when I smiled at her she walked into the room before sitting down next me.
"Who was that?" she asked curiously, settling down.
"Alex. I was checking in with her, and she said everythings good. What were you wondering?" I could practically feel her desire to ask something.
"I want to know what happened to my mom. Dad never talks about it, but I want to know." I paused for a second. Calvin and I never talked about his former wife, and Felicia and I talked about her even less, but I knew one thing, Felicia's mom had called her in after she had seen her heal a cat who had broken its tail.
"I'll help you, but I want to know why you're suddenly interested in knowing where she was."
"I want to ask why she gave me up. Why didn't she want to protect me like Dad does?" I sighed and closed my eyes for a second before opening them again.
"Alright, I'll make a call. Make it a somewhat priority for the search teams, but Felicia just because I make that call doesn't mean we'll find her. I mean the United State's is huge."
"I know, but I still want to ask."
"Alright. Did you have anything else you wanted to ask?"
"Nope. Thanks Ava," she said, jumping off the bed and walking to her room. As soon as I heard the door close, I stood up and walked immideatly to Calvin's room. The man in question was sitting next to his desk, looking through something on his computer. When I walked into the room, and leaned against the wall he looked up at me, closing the computer as he did.
"What's up?" he asked, curiosity in his voice.
"Felicia just asked me to find Lucy, she said she wanted to know where she was so she could ask her some questions. I was hoping you might have an idea where she was." Calvin's face dropped when I said his ex-wifes name. After a second he shook his head no.
"I haven't heard from her since I found out Felicia was going to Tundra. My last conversation with her was after you changed her color coordination with the higher ups. I knew her parents were probably somewhere in California, but at that time things were starting to get bad so I have no idea what would have happened to her."
"What about your family? Any chance she had a change in heart and reconnected with them?" I knew enough about the man's divorce to know it hadn't been pretty, and the two sides of the family had gone separate ways.
"Not a chance, it was really bad. What sparked the question anyway?"
"Curiosity I guess. She wants to know why you've been fine with her using her powers, while Lucy reacted so violently about her using them." '
"Ah. What are you going to do about it?"
"Sate her curiosity. If she wants to know about it, I'll put in a call to the search teams to keep an eye on her, but I want to know how you'll react."
"I'm fine with you finding Lucy, but I want to warn you, Lucy is bad news. She'll only let Felicia down in the future."
"I'll let her stay long enough for the questions to be asked, nothing more."
"Good."
"What else do you need?"
"Nothing else," I said and I could feel the tiredness in my bones. "I'm going to bed."
"Alright, I'll see you in the morning," he said, turning to work on his computer once again. I stood up and walked out of the room towards my own room. I used my powers to send a message to town hall so the message could be sent out to the search teams to keep an eye out for Lucy. As soon as the message was sent out, I fell onto my bed and fell asleep.