Scythe Page 6

“Thanks for sharing. I’ll just type in no interest.” The Bummer focuses on Chloe. “And Drillbittina Jones. Anything with you and mechanics?”

  “I say my entire name while burping. Does that count?” Chloe brightens. “I can demonstrate, if you want.”

  She can, too.

  The Bummer taps her cheek. She’s actually considering this. “Nah.” She scans the room. “Anyone else looking to volunteer? There’s no quota listed, so I don’t care either way.”

  The class is silent. Excellent. I wouldn’t want anyone to get their brains fried out with those learning implants.

  Setting aside her data pad, the Bummer launches into a monotone speech about the periodic table. My eyes flutter with the need for sleep. At some point, science class ends. I spend the rest of the day slumped in a series of chairs, trying to catch some very needed shuteye. It’s hard to rest without a deskie-thing to lean on, but I try anyway. Chloe or Zoe poke me whenever it’s my turn to say something in class.

  I don’t perk up again until I’m marching home. Like always, Mom and Miss Edith are in the kitchen. My mother’s in her regular chair, but her body trembles with excitement. The moment I step in the room, Mom turns to me.

  “Sun. Corona. Convergence. Electromagnetic energy.”

  Miss Edith shoots me a sympathetic look. “She’s been this way all day. I think she needs more sleep.”

  “Sure thing.” Stepping to Mom’s side, I guide her toward the door.

  As we walk away, Miss Edith wags her bony pointer finger in my direction. “Maybe you should head to sleep early as well.”

  “That,” I say slowly. “Is a brilliant idea.”

  I can’t see Miss Edith any more, but there’s no missing the smile in her voice. “I have my moments.”

  Taking Miss Edith’s excellent advice, I set Mom into bed and tuck myself in early as well. It isn’t until I’m setting my alarm clocks that I notice the date.

  It’s my birthday tomorrow. With so much excitement—not to mention the magnetic convergence coming—I forgot all about it. Not that there’s much competition. Once the magnetic convergence starts, multiple versions of Earth will encounter massive solar storms at the same moment in time-space. The result will be a magnetic energy spike of massive proportions, if you have the equipment to detect it. Like so much with the universe, it makes things like turning seventeen seem small in comparison.

  Ah, science. Always good for putting things in perspective.

  Once my clock alarms are all set, I collapse into bed. This time, I fall asleep almost instantly. I don’t dream about the boy, though.

  That makes me sadder than it should.

  Chapter 11

  “Ahem.”

  A voice sounds above me, interrupting my much-needed snooze. Little by little, I force my eyes to open. Mom stands over my bed holding a thermos, moldy picture frame, and plastic bust of Albert Einstein.

  That wakes me up, fast.

  This must be a dream. After all, my mother is awake, alert, and holding objects over my bed. Plus, she’s even wearing one of her old lab coats from her researcher days. The frayed insignia of “United Americas” is still visible on her pocket protector. We’re not even supposed to say the name of the United Americas anymore, let alone save themed clothing.

  At this moment, the words total panic pretty much sum up my life.

  “What’s wrong, Mom? It’s—” I glance at my alarm clocks “—just after 4 am.”

  “Nothing’s wrong, Meimi. I’m merely stopping by for a motherly visit.”

  “Umm …”

  Shock ripples across my skin. That was a string of coherent words. From my Mom. I’d forgotten the sound of her regular voice—it’s clipped and deep, the tone of someone who gives orders and expects to be followed. Suddenly, she’s the old Mom again. The one who claws science into me with a ferocity that makes mother tigers look like the wimps of the animal world.

  Wow. Welcome back.

  At this point, I consider Mom’s entire visit to be a present, which is perfect considering how it’s now officially my seventeenth birthday. Not that I wouldn’t like a gift box or a happy birthday, but there’s no point being greedy. The old Mom being out of her chair and speaking complex sentences is more than enough.

  “I brought you some decorations.” Mom crosses my bedroom, carefully stepping around the piles of notebooks and circuit boards covering the floor. She pauses by one particularly large knot of wires. “What’s all this?”

  “You know me. Another project.” That’s my extra magnetic enhancer. I’d explain all that in detail, but my brain’s still stuck on the whole Mom speaking in full sentences thing.

  “Were you well compensated?”

  “Sure.” I skip over the part when I traded with Fritz for a favor. “Why else would I do it?”

  “You can get wild ideas, Meimi. Sometimes I worry that you’ll join some kind of resistance movement, like Sister Rage.”

  “That’s not a real rebellion.”

  “Maybe not.” Her mouth thins to a worried line. “But you still need to do your work—”

  “And keep my head down. I remember.” Back when Mom was more tuned in, we’d have this conversation all the time. I skip to the big ending since I know Mom will go there anyway.

  “The Authority is too powerful,” I say in a sing-song voice. “The best anyone can do is hide.”

  “Correct. Now let’s get back to brightening this place up.” Mom moves to stand before my rickety dresser. After swiping off all the dust with her forearm, she positions the mashed-up bust of Einstein in a spot of honor.

  “Looks great, Mom.” Honestly, she could put it anywhere and I’d say something nice. This whole situation is a miracle.

  Mom pats Einstein’s head and sighs. “Here’s why we live off grid. So you know who this man is.” She finishes positioning the empty frame. “All done.”

  There’s an obvious question here, which I can’t help but ask. “Why an empty frame?”

  “It’s to remind us that Luci is gone.”

  My throat tightens. “Right.” As if I could forget.

  The empty frame also reminds me of all the other blanks about Luci. Did Zoe and Chloe tell the truth? I open my mouth, ready to ask if Luci acts like an entitled witch with a B, or if Josiah’s a nasty creeper. Unfortunately, that line of questioning feels like tossing a sledgehammer through a stained glass window. This moment is simply too lovely to destroy. We can chat about Luci later. If ever.

  Mom pulls a piece of white chalk from the pocket of her lab coat and waves it around. “Let’s work the drift.”

  My mouth falls open with shock. “You want me to help you?”

  Back when Mom had more lucid moments, she always worked the drift solo because, as she put it: Meimi, you’ve a brilliant mind but no stomach for being told what to do.

  In other words, I’m a lot like her.

  All of which is interesting since Mom says I take after my father. Maybe that’s just in the looks department, though, not temperament. I definitely don’t fit with the tall, willowy, and white-blonde thing Mom and Luci have going on. That said, I have to take Mom’s word about the Dad-stuff since she didn’t keep any pictures of him around. I know, super suspicious. But my mother is also semi-unhinged at best, so there’s that.

  Mom gifts me a gentle smile. “Yes, work the drift with me. I need your help. The convergence has begun and it’s simply extraordinary. We’re seeing the greatest magnetic storm in a century.”

  Pieces of the last few days fall into place. My eyes widen. “You’re planning something special with magnetic fields.”

  “Correct again.” Mom winks. “I can use those fields to get help.”

  “Help for what, exactly?”

  “Why finding Luci, of course. She’s not dead.”

  Surprise prickles across my skin. “You known that? For how long?”

  “I’ve known for years, I just haven’t been able to do anything about it until today.”

>   The words tumble from my mouth. “Did you also know that Luci’s an entitled witch with a B and Josiah’s a creeper?”

  Stained glass window, meet sledgehammer. I really need to stop asking every question that comes into my head.

  Mom pins me with an honest stare. Like me, she considers facts to be both sacred and shared, even if others don’t want to hear them.

  Especially if others don’t want to hear them, actually.

  “Here’s the truth as I see it,” says Mom. “Before you were born, your father, Luci, and I all lived in the Boston Dome. Truman and I both researched and taught at ECHO Academy.”

  I blink hard, trying to process this news. My parents once worked at the greatest school for science in the world? That doesn’t seem real. All of a sudden, the whole we lost all our pictures thing makes sense. Maybe Mom wanted to forget her past. If I were living in an abandoned warehouse in the sticks, I’d certainly be tempted to toss out pictures of ECHO Academy.

  “There’s more,” continues Mom. “After your father died, I left ECHO to work in a private lab. You, Luci, and I then moved to Malden. That wasn’t easy for your sister. Luci missed our old life. ECHO is far more glamorous, you see.”

  “I get that.” Everyone’s seen images of that campus. It’s like a spaceship landed by the Charles River.

  “That’s why Luci found Josiah so intriguing. He had plans for life in the Boston Dome. I don’t know about him being a so-called creeper, but Josiah did make rather large promises to Luci. So yes, Luci had a bit of an attitude sometimes, and yes, I coddled her. Call it a motherly weakness.” She lets out a long sigh. “You see, I set up he experiment that killed Truman.”

  Whoa. Talk about a morning for revelations.

  I knew there was some kind of explosion that ended my father’s life. That said, I didn’t know Mom was part of it. “That’s rough.”

  “I felt so guilty for your father’s death and its impact on Luci. I still do. That clouded my judgment.”

  “Is that why you let Luci take me to RCM1?”

  Mom’s shoulders slump. “Yes. You weren’t learning anything in school, and it seemed so important to Luci that she have company at work. You were always so strong, Meimi. Luci wasn’t.” Mom’s eyes glisten with guilt. “Even so, you shouldn’t have been forced to work at such a young age. I’m sorry about that.”

  My throat tightens with emotion. “You’re forgiven, Mom.”

  A realization hits me. Right here, this morning—it’s the most I’ve talked to my mother in years. Who knows when we’ll chat again? I don’t want to spend our last conversation crying over the past. “Let’s change the subject. How can we find Luci?”

  Mom brightens. “Today’s convergence gives us options. We can leverage the storm’s power to open a stable corridor to another world. Then we can send a message for help. It’s an excellent opportunity, team. I mean, Meimi.”

  Team. That’s right. Mom used to have a fleet of assistants. At this point, those people would probably say, What do you want me to do? But those folks aren’t here. I’m Meimi, and I push back when something doesn’t seem right. There are about a million questions I want to ask, most of them science-related. So I whittle the long list down.

  “I have two questions.”

  Mom sighs. “Meimi …”

  “Question number one. Who’s going to help us and why?”

  Mom’s nostrils flare. “Back when we worked at ECHO, some beings from another world asked me and your father for help. They owe us.”

  If Mom jammed a cattle prod in my side, I couldn’t be more shocked.

  “Let me get this straight.” I raise my pointer finger. “You and Dad were contacted by actual aliens?”

  Side note: This is huge. While other kids were playing house, I begged for games like meet the lizard men from Pluto. Luci was the only taker, and then it was on the strict understanding that we’d follow up with a round of Barbie Dream Date.

  Mom gives me the side-eye. “You know the drift. Countless universes exist alongside this one. How can you be surprised?”

  I side-eye her right back. “It’s one thing to know in theory about aliens. It’s another to maybe even dream about them. But it’s another-nother to have some actual aliens call your parents. You can’t just drop a bomb like that and not expect me to want details.”

  “I am and I do.” Mom’s deep voice takes on that rough edge which means one thing: she’s about ready to head into the lab without me. Family stories about alien encounters will simply have to wait.

  “Second and final question,” I say. “You’ll call these beings … how?”

  Mom folds her arms over her chest. “We have a language between us. If I toss something with Luci’s DNA on it through the corridor, the right person will know how to respond.” She pulls a brush out of her pocket. “This has some of Luci’s hair. Really, Meimi. We don’t have time for this. The magnetic storm won’t last much longer and—”

  “Stop right there.”

  “What?” Mom bites off the word.

  I hold my arms up, palms forward. “You convinced me. I’ll help.” I hop out of bed and start scrounging around for relatively clean clothes.

  A small smile rounds Mom’s mouth. “See you in the lab.”

  With that, Mom takes off while I uncover a pair of old jeans and a T-shirt in a corner. All the while, my soul feels so light I could cheer.

  I’m about to work the drift with Mom. Some small part of me warns that my mother is unstable and getting her anywhere near volatile equipment is too huge a risk, but I overrule that worry.

  After all, it’s my birthday. My present awaits.

  Chapter 12

  Minutes later, I’m navigating through the forest of vats on our factory floor. Soon, I reach a pair of rusted metal doors on the far-right wall. Written in chipped white paint are the words: Research Lab—Authorized Personnel Only.

  In my mind, it might as well say, Mom Only.

  Over the years, I’ve imagined all the cool tech Mom built inside. Power boosters. Dimensional lenses. Quantum detectors. I invented versions of that same stuff in my basement lab. But my creations got cobbled together in a small storage area. This is a real laboratory: longer than a city block and filled with equipment.

  And today I’m going in. After taking in a long breath, I knock on the door.

  “You ready for me?” I ask.

  “As ever.”

  I step inside. What I see knocks the breath out of my lungs.

  So. Much. Crap.

  The space is huge and open. Rows of large chalkboards line the walls, all of them covered in equations. A maze of old Formica tables lie the floor, their surfaces topped with racks of glass vials. Every few yards, there stands a tall machine called a monolith. These can hold all sorts of equipment inside, everything from network routers to dark matter simulators. The ones here look rusted, dusty, and untouched for decades. Most likely, they’re in desperate need of upgrades.

  In the far corner, Mom sits at a workstation, furiously typing onto a keyboard. Green screen monitors line a partition wall before her. I step up to her side.

  “So,” I begin. “This lab needs some work, eh?”

  Mom keeps typing. “What do you mean?”

  “Where are your wormhole regulators? Quantum field windows?” I scan the nearby tabletops. “You don’t even have an exotic matter detector.”

  Mom shrugs. “I get along fine without any of that.” She slaps her hand onto the wobbly tabletop. “Damn. This isn’t working. At this rate, I’ll never tap into enough magnetic energy from the storm. Take a look at this code, Meimi. What do you think?”

  My soul swells with pride. This is me and Mom, swapping thoughts in a lab. Love it. Stepping closer, I scan the computer screens. All the data adds up to a single conclusion. “You need a magnetic enhancer.”

  Mom scrubs her hands over her face. “If one existed, that would be perfect.”

  “I have one in my room, remember?”
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  Mom swivels around in her chair, stopping when she faces me fully. “Is it finished?”

  I grin. “Oh, yeah.”

  Mom eyes me for a long moment. I can almost see the doubts swimming through her head. “Bring it here. I’ll take a look.”

  What a day. I’m invited to the lab and Mom needs one of my inventions.

  Happy birthday to me.

  As I rush back to my bedroom, my steps feel feather-light. Soon I’m back inside my concrete citadel of old Earther alarm clocks. The magnetic enhancer is exactly where I left it. Scooping up the device, I speed-walk back to the lab. Mom’s still typing so quickly, I’m surprised she doesn’t get a finger cramp. I hand her my creation.

  Mom turns the device over while eyeing it carefully. A pang of anxiety moves through my chest. My invention may work, but it really does look like a wire octopus. Will she approve?

  At last, Mom speaks. “This is perfect. Well done, Meimi.”

  My chest could burst with pride. “Thanks.”

  “So who requests this level of work?” Mom stares at me with her right eyebrow arching upward. She already suspects who booked this particular job.

  Here goes. “The Scythe.”

  “But he’s a criminal.”

  “Who keeps us off grid. It’s fine, really.”

  “It’s not fine, and I wish things were different.” Mom slumps back in her seat. “My mind.” Her voice quivers. “It’s not fair to you.”

  I kneel before Mom’s chair so I can get a better look at her. “It really is okay. You took care of me for years. Plus, you taught me how to take care of myself. Everything I know about the drift is thanks to you. Now it’s my turn to give back.”

  Mom gives me a shaky smile. “Well, working for the Scythe has clearly developed your skills.” She hands me the enhancer. “This really is top notch.”

  What a compliment. If I died now, I’d be a happy Meimi.

  “I’ll pop it on a monolith.”

  “Place it on the one nearest me.” Mom gestures to an area behind the wall of monitors.

  For the first time, I notice a space behind the green screen panel. There, Mom has dragged a dozen monoliths into a rough circle. I pull open the access panel for the closest one and plug in the enhancer. The more I stare at these monolith towers, the more I wonder.