By the time I was fifteen, I gave up on arguing with Dad about combat training. I was more interested in understanding the bigger picture that led to his decision. Dad never kept computer files because he knew any system could be hacked; so I would sit in his office every morning and watch what he was reading, trying to put together a puzzle from the same pieces he was seeing. Much of what he read was about the medical challenges faced by The Marked, and the resulting hostility that The Washed faced around the world.
I also committed to observing everything Dad did, in an effort to understand why Austin was treated differently than I was, and how that treatment might reveal to me the bigger picture Dad was seeing. That included poking my nose in when Austin and Dad were having time together.
“Jocie, you’re not even interested in cycling. Why don’t you go read a book?” Austin said.
“You’re not cycling yet; you’re still making the bicycles. Besides, maybe this new material you’re working on will be useful in rock climbing.”
“You don’t even understand the chemistry,” Austin replied.
Dad and Austin had already made dozens of attempts at creating the perfect material for a bicycle frame. Austin may have understood the chemistry better than I did, but what I really wanted to understand was what was left to accomplish. On the fifth try, they had gotten a material that was lighter than graphene and stronger than most titanium alloys. It would have made a fine bicycle frame, and yet, Dad kept on refining the process.
“Do you really think low heat and rapid cooling will make a difference, Dad?” Austin asked.
“We’re about to find out,” Dad said, as he removed a thin plate of their latest attempt from the freezer.
“You see, Jocie,” Austin began, with an air of superiority, “on our first run with this formula, we heated to two hundred and fifty degrees Celsius for one cycle. That’s when we knew we were onto something; but when we tested it for heat resistance, it was only good up to about one thousand degrees Celsius. I’m sure we can do better.”
“That’s five cycles at one hundred and fifty degrees Celsius, followed by cooling to zero,” Dad said, and Austin dutifully marked the data in his notebook.
Dad attached a thermometer to one side of the plate. It read zero degrees. He then turned on something I’d never seen before - a blowtorch - and blasted the other side with flame.
They both studied the computer screen.
“Wow!” Austin said. “It worked! Its thermal signature is seven times better than the last attempt.”
“We’re definitely onto something …” Dad said, “…but I think we can do even better than that.”
The two of them started making plans to adjust the annealing temperature by five degree increments and try additional heating and cooling cycles until they found the perfect balance. Austin was infatuated by the science and the challenge, but only one thought was on my mind…
Why would anyone need a heat-shielded bicycle frame?
******
When the news comes that Tyrone Bauer is expected to make a full recovery, the people of the safe house calm down a bit, but continue with cursing anyone who is marked.
Austin disappears into the command center for the afternoon. This time, dinner is taken in to him, so I don’t see him again until he comes out to sleep. I meet him at his door.
“We’re leaving,” I say.
“You heard the news then?”
“No. What news?”
“Mr. Bauer wants to meet me. I’m leaving for North Carolina in two days.”
“You’re leaving for Aunt Kimberley’s house tomorrow. Have you forgotten that we’re trying to find Dad?”
“Five-X needs me, Jocie.”
I take his hand and start sending him code. I don’t want to even whisper what’s on my mind.
Dad could have made the stunner shot that hit Bauer. After we’d rock climb, he would practice in the woods. He had me set up random sources of electrical interference and studied how it affected the shots.
I watch his eyes carefully. He knew something was wrong with Five-X, but didn’t want to admit it to himself.
I need to finish teaching them how to make the composite, he says. I promised.
“I’ll help speed things up,” I say aloud. “I know you hate writing. You dictate the process, and I’ll write the whole procedure out on paper for them.
We work until the middle of the night, with Austin dictating how to create the material. No detail is too small or insignificant for him, which reminds me of Dad.
“If I remember correctly, all that leaves is the heating and cooling,” I say.
“I didn’t think you were paying attention as Dad and I experimented. I’m impressed,” he replies. “The combination that works the best is to heat the material to exactly one hundred and seventy-six degrees Celsius and as soon as it gets there, rapidly cool it back down to zero. You need to do it at least ten times to get maximum heat resistance.”
“That never seemed hot enough,” I say.
“I thought the same thing,” Austin says. “But Dad and I tried higher temperatures and the heat profile would get all weird. It would have great heat resistance until about one thousand degrees, but at temperatures higher than that it would become brittle and just fall apart. We think there’s some sort of slow crystallization that happens at lower temperatures that makes it all work.”
He puts his hands out to take the stack of paper from me.
“I should double-check all the details,” he says.
I pull the papers back to my chest.
“Paulson’s are known for details. I’m sure you got it all right. Get your things packed. We’re leaving.”
I take the stack of papers with me and slip into the room that Zera and I share. She sleeps on her back with her arms at her side, like she’s a soldier standing at attention. She’s awake before I can touch her shoulder.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
“We’re leaving.”
“It’s about time.”
As we finish packing our few possessions, we happen to face each other as we both conceal stun guns in the small of our backs.
“I hope we won’t need these,” I say.
“But you already know we will,” she replies.
******
Austin is ready, when Zera and I return to his room. I place the stack of papers on the small desk and watch Austin’s face as he looks somewhat longingly at it. I shift to block his view.
“This could get ugly,” I say.
“Why?” Austin asks. “These people are our friends.”
We’ll see…
There are two sets of doors that are password protected from the outside to keep out intruders. When we arrive at the first door, we find that it now has a guard and there are some wires hanging out of the wall where new electronics are in the process of being installed.
“Can I help you?” the guard says.
“No. We’re just not used to being underground for so long,” I say. “We thought we’d go for a walk before the sun comes up and there are people on the street.”
“You two can go, but Austin needs to stay here.”
Austin steps forward.
“I need some fresh air to think so I can complete the project. Stand aside!” he says.
The guard doesn’t move.
His eyes shifted slightly to something over my shoulder. I bet they installed a camera.
I will my face and eyes to light up in a friendly way.
“Sorry, Austin,” I say, like I’m teasing him. “It looks like this is a girls’ night out.”
He grumbles and turns, then stops short when he sees the camera.
“Time to go!” I say, and give Zera a gentle nudge in the back.
She’s too close to draw her weapon, so she kicks the guard’s knee and punches him twice as he staggers. I draw my stunner and spin just in time to catch three armed men rounding a corner. I fire dangerously close to Austin’s head before he drops and gives me a clear shot. I hit the first two in the chest, but only get the third man in the leg, as he dives back around the corner.
The first door opens easily, but the outer door has an internal punch pad, requiring a code to get out. I set to work hacking into it.
“We’re not your enemy,” we hear Seth’s voice say from around the corner. “It would be a mistake to make us one.”
“Our family has an aversion to being held underground against our will,” Austin replies.
“That’s why you should join us,” Seth says. “Together we can ensure none of The Washed ever has to experience what your father had to endure.”
“Maybe …” Austin says. “… but not today … and never as a prisoner.”
I override the lock and the door clicks open. There’s nobody waiting to ambush us in the ancient tunnel, so we slip away. A minute later, we hear stunner rounds hitting the door and wall as they begin their chase, but we’re already long gone.
“They never would have made it in Four,” Zera says. “They’re all lousy shots.”
“Maybe so …” I reply. “… but they certainly seem ready to learn.”
******
The old tunnel ends at a hidden hatch near the river, which suits us. Ottumwa has a separate cargo station on the other side of the river, and we slip into a random car that takes us to Kansas City. From there, we find passenger cars to take us first to Lincoln and then to Ogallala, where Aunt Kimberley lives.
Her house is surrounded by ancient trees. She always said it was to provide homes for the birds, but I wonder if the real reason they’re here is to create a canopy that drones can’t see through during the day.
“Getting to the house is easy, but how will we get inside undetected?” Austin asks. “For all we know, The Guard has been here and hacked the palm scanner.”
“I’m working on the assumption that Aunt Kimberley is still inside,” I say. “Dad is pretty persuasive, but I bet even he couldn’t get her to abandon her house. If he was his usual five steps ahead, it was an anticipated part of the puzzle.”
“Then we need her to come to us,” Zera says. “How do we do that?”
I look at the house. The curtains are drawn in every room except for one, an upstairs window with a rocking chair in front of it. There’s a small table, where I can see something shiny reflecting in the sunlight. It’s a pair of binoculars.
“The birds,” I say. “Aunt Kimberley sits in that chair in the morning and the afternoon, and watches the birds on her feeders.”
“There’s only one feeder that’s still full,” Austin says. “The drone that fills them must be broken. All we need to do is leave a message on that feeder.”
Why would a broken drone still fill one of the feeders and not the rest of them?
“What kind of message?” Zera asks.
“A familiar one,” I say, and begin to rummage through my pack. “She’ll know this locket. It’s ancient.”
I take out a gold locket that Mom gave to me the last time I saw her. It’s the one Dad bought in Alexandria when they travelled through time together. There’s plenty of cover over the feeder; so I hang the locket over one of the perches that the birds land on. We all sit under a giant willow tree to see what happens.
In the late afternoon, when the shadows are deep enough that someone could sit in the rocking chair without being seen, I hear a scratching sound above me in the tree. I look up, expecting to see a squirrel, but instead I find myself looking into the familiar eyes of my great-aunt, Kimberley.
I gasp, which makes Austin look up, then Zera. Aunt Kimberley motions for us to be quiet and to climb the tree to join her; then her head disappears.
Austin and Zera climb first, and also disappear. When I get there, I see how. Like many old willows, this one has a hollow trunk where someone cleverly hid a small hatch. It’s quite a squeeze, but we all manage to wriggle around and climb down until we reach a ladder that takes us into a small tunnel and then through a hidden door into the basement of the house.
I barely get to stand before Aunt Kimberley releases Austin from a bear hug and crushes me with one.
“I cursed your Uncle James for years for digging that darned tunnel. It took me ages to clean up all the dirt, but if it brings family home again - I’ll dig another one myself!”
She switches back to hugging Austin, then to me again. She even crushes Zera once, before she asks her who she is.
“Come upstairs,” Aunt Kimberley says. “I refuse to be driven into the dark like a rat.”
She leads us through the dining room, where I see the massive table has been set as if it’s waiting for everyone to gather. She sees me looking at it.
“They’ll all be back one day,” she says.
“Do you know where they’ve all gone?” I ask.
“Back to Four, I should think. They didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask. The Corps can’t get information out of me, if I don’t know any.”
“So the Four network has been reactivated?” Zera asks.
Aunt Kimberley stops and cocks her head to one side, which she does when she wants to drive a point home.
“When you were still in diapers, my dear. It happened when Jocie was about four years old. Cephas left the entire network hidden, like buried treasure just waiting to be dug up when it was needed again.”
Buried treasure - Four was reactivated on the fifth anniversary of Dad’s time in the mountain, the day Albert brought Dad something made of metal with Austin’s initials on it. Whatever it was, it told Dad to bring Four back to life.
“Four has been active for thirteen years?” Zera asks.
“What have they been doing all of that time? And what happened to make them all disappear now?”
“You’ll find no answers with me,” Aunt Kimberley replies. “But you will find hot food and comfortable beds, which is what your father told me to provide.”
“When did you last see Dad?” I ask.
“He and your mother stayed here for a night, the last time he briefed congress on religious freedom.”
That was two months ago.
“Tell me everything you talked about,” I say. “Every detail you can remember.”
We all sit at the kitchen table.
“He came because he wanted to see something that he’d given me many years ago - an old data storage device,” she says. “It was the same one that held the information about your grandparents’ headstone.”
“Did he take it with him when he left?” Austin asks.
“No, but he asked me to put it into the hiding place I always used for hiding my Bible in the old days. I’ll go get it for you.”
Aunt Kimberley leaves the room for a minute, then returns with what looks like a fifty-year-old storage device. It has some wires hanging off of it that look like modifications to make it accessible to modern computers.
“We can’t access it with a com,” Zera says. “If we access it here, your house will make an electronic footprint and give you away.”
“Not to worry, dear,” Aunt Kimberley replies. “Cindi hacked me into every house on the block with some sort of scrambler gizmo that can’t be traced back to here.”
I slip a com into my ear.
“Computer, access the information on the storage device that’s on the table and display all files.”
There are hundreds. Many of them are from when Dad was a child, but many more were added by Grandpa James the year I was born, including a list of everyone who received the Four vaccine as he and Grandma traveled around the world.
“This will take forever to sort through,” Austin says.
“Computer display only the files that were looked at the last time the device was accessed,” I say.
Only one file comes up, in the folder marked “family.” It’s a genealogy chart that goes back nearly a dozen generations.
“That file is the reason he gave me the device in the first place,” Aunt Kimberley says. “See, there I am, and there’s your grandmother, and your father, and he even added you and Austin.”
Dad, grandma, and I are in a slightly different font from everyone else. Dad knew I’d notice. He’s trying to tell me something.
“Computer, move back two generations,” I say.
My great-grandmother is in the different font, as is her father, but none of their siblings.
“Keep moving back,” I say.
“What are we looking for?” Austin asks.
“I don’t know.”
There it is again, but only in a straight line of inheritance.
The trail of the different font ends eight generations back, at a woman named Atarah, whose parents aren’t listed. She emigrated from Israel to the United States when she was adopted as a baby by a family named Winters. She died young in 2037 in Baltimore, Maryland.
During the Final Holy War.
She had one child out of wedlock, a son named Jordan, my grandfather with six “greats” in front of it. I look at his information and see that he lived to be quite old. There are several pictures of him. In one, he’s a boy of about eight or nine years old, and is quite handsome. The rest of the pictures, though, beginning with one of him in his early twenties, show that he spent the rest of his life covered with many disfiguring scars and even lost part of a tooth. What’s funny is that in the picture when he was handsome, he’s sneering at the camera; whereas in those where he’s covered in scars, he’s smiling.
“It’s fun to see your roots, isn’t it?” Aunt Kimberley asks, ending my thoughts.
“But why is any of it important?” Zera asks. “What was your Dad doing?”
Once again, I have no clue.