Kyra’s day was one interruption after another. After seeing Hightower’s name show up with such frequency when Ty’s anomaly theory was applied, she was anxious to follow the trail and see just how far it led. Unfortunately, it seemed like everyone was enjoying similar successes with their own investigations, and as a result, they all desperately needed Kyra to validate their findings. Being in charge of the tech team had its drawbacks. She’d have to add “minimize interruptions” to her growing To Do list.
An image of an office with a door she could lock drifted past her mind’s eye only to explode into nothingness when Sasha and Mariel came storming into her cabin, excitement radiating off them like heat from a summer sidewalk.
“Hey Kyra” Mariel cried cheerfully, completely oblivious to the fact Kyra was deeply engrossed in the two monitors she faced. “We need to run something by you.”
“OK.” Kyra answered without taking her eyes from the screens. She really wanted to continue chasing this anomaly. Trying to disguise her desire to get rid of the girls quickly, she reluctantly turned away from the abundance of data her latest search was yielding. Crossing her arms over her chest, she tried to use body language to let Sasha and Mariel know her attention was elsewhere. Focused on their news, they were oblivious to even the most overt signs. Mariel rushed on, her words tumbling over each other in her excitement over whatever it was they found so important, it blinded them to Kyra’s obvious preoccupation.
“We’ve learned someone has been polluting Adamsville’s energy center with their own energy and thought it might be a way to help identify who is behind this. But we ran into a snag. Just like matching the energy signature in the ley lines to the source in Adamsville, we realized we’d need something to match it to. Is there a way we can get energy signatures from all of the people on the list?”
Kyra’s desire to get rid of the girls and get on with her work faded as she pondered the implications of her friends’ discovery. Her eyes glazed over as she rested her chin in her palm and thought about Mariel’s question for a minute before replying.
“Hmmm, I would think so, but I’m assuming you’re asking if it can be done without touching the person directly.”
“Exactly!” Mariel wrapped her arms around herself in an effort to contain her exuberance. She knew the full force of one of her hugs was likely to offend the girl who was more comfortable with computers than people most of the time. “We don’t need these guys figuring out what we’re up to right now. Not to mention, Tess and the parental units would have a coronary if they thought we were getting close enough to be detected.” She laughed at the mental picture of her parents’ horrified faces.
“I guess you’d just have to figure out what else they might have touched energetically. It would have to be something they severed the connection with once they were done.”
“Any ideas?” Sasha asked.
“Not at the moment, but I’ll give it some thought.” Kyra mentally added one more task to her list. “You might also ask the folks who compiled the list. Isn’t there a chance one of them might already recognize at least one of the suspects? I’d think any contact with one of these people would have left an impression.” She commented blandly. “We’re not exactly dealing with the subtlest, most low-profile beings on the planet.”
“Now why didn’t we think of that?” Sasha asked Mariel rhetorically. As close as Mariel and Sasha were to their parents, there were still times they saw them as hopelessly behind the times. Despite their own parents being responsible for identifying the problem in the first place, teenage logic saw them as oblivious. They were, after all, their parents.
“Thanks, Kyra” Mariel and Sasha chorused before heading off to check in with Phil’s team.
Heaving a sigh of relief and congratulating herself for passing the problem off to someone else, Kyra turned back to her monitors. With the data before her, she began developing a flowchart to trace Hightower’s lineage, and to identify when and where records had been changed.
Once again, Phil and his team were forced to admit they were being out thought by the younger generation. The concept laid out for them by Sasha and Mariel was enough to boggle their minds. His team weren’t strangers to energy signatures and how they were left; it just never occurred to them to use those signatures in their search. Looking at his daughter and her best friend, he no longer saw a pair of innocent, helpless little girls. He saw, instead, two amazingly intelligent young women who had, like the rest of the teenagers whose lives had literally changed overnight, far exceeded the expectations of those were their instructors. In fact, if he were to be completely honest, the students were delving into areas their instructors couldn’t even begin to understand.
Pondering the girls’ question, he was forced to give a somewhat evasive answer.
“We’re going to have to brainstorm this one, girls. It’s been awhile since any of us had reason to identify someone’s energy signature without their knowing. I know it’s possible, and maybe even an elementary task, but I need to spend some time reviewing what we know to come up with an answer which will neither endanger us nor alert them to what we’re doing.”
“Sounds fair, Dad.” Sasha’s calm acceptance was just another reminder of her new maturity. She knew from a number of stunned silences lately her parents were impressed with the thought processes of those who they’d thought of as “just kids” less than six months ago. “How long do you think this brainstorming will take?”
“Well, kiddo, we’re working on a problem with Kyra at the moment and have agreed to meet with her after dinner to discuss what she’s found and how we want to proceed. As the two issues are connected, I’m sure we’ll be working both at the same time. Let’s say 10:00 PM just to be on the safe side. Will that work for you?”
“Sure, dad. We’ll see you then. Here or in our cabin?”
“Let’s make it your cabin.” Phil answered, stroking his chin. “I’d like to keep this one under our hats for the moment. I’m still not sure if anyone is listening, or playing both sides like Hightower. It will be easier to augment the shielding on a smaller space. Can’t take any chances on losing our current advantage.”
As they got up to leave, Mariel paused as another thought occurred to her.
“Phil?” she asked to regain his attention.
Looking up, Phil lifted an eyebrow and waited, certain what she was about to ask would push his vision of two happy-go-lucky little girls even further into the past.
“I was just thinking.” Mariel began hesitantly, not entirely sure her idea was a good one. Even so, she knew Phil would give it fair consideration, as he was doing with everything the students presented these days. “You know how we took Sasha back to find the energy signatures she had felt but didn’t remember?”
Phil’s eyebrows shot up in surprise as he realized what Mariel was asking. “That’s brilliant, Mariel!” he wrapped her in a big hug. “Going back to someplace they’ve been is a perfect way to get a copy of their energy signatures without risking detection. We can probably pull Hightower’s from Sebastian’s office.” His distraction as he turned away told the girls he was already sharing the information with Karl, Tess and the others. The expression on his face, proof they shared his amazement at the insight of the two teenagers.
Grabbing apples, cookies and bottles of water from a side table which was kept stocked to accommodate the irregular hours of the compound’s residents, Sasha and Mariel left the mess hall. Stepping outside, they found themselves instinctively reaching for ley lines, reading them quickly to determine whether the signature they sought was in evidence, and moving on to the next. The group who was checking ley lines was woefully small compared to the number of lines they needed to check, and time was not at a premium these days. They had to take every opportunity they could get to continue their search.
“Is it me?” Karl appeared at Phil’s side and the two men stood watching the girls leave. “Or have they become women while our backs were turned?”
“I think they’ve just risen to the occasion.” Phil mused. “They saw a need and filled it, and I’m so proud I could bust. Sasha went through a lot, living in Adamsville with no friends nearby and her parents more absent than present. I doubt I’d have done as well at her age. In some ways, it saddens me that maturity was thrust on them this way, but when I see what they’ve become… aw hell, they make me proud!”
Barbara and Anita joined their husbands in time to hear the conversation, and exchanged sad smiles. A mother rarely wants to see her child grow up too fast, but just as Sasha and Mariel had shared everything else in their lives almost since birth, it went without saying they’d share their walk across the bridge from youth to adulthood as well. What made their mothers most sad was how quickly they’d been forced to leave their innocent childhood behind. That page had turned.
Setting aside the bitter-sweetness of their children’s lives, they got down to the business of answering the difficult questions raised by the two groups of teenage adults. They’d promised to meet with Kyra after dinner to discuss what she’d found. They needed to be able to offer suggestions on how to proceed with what she’d uncovered by then. It only gave them a couple of hours to discuss the possibilities Ty’s discovery had opened up, and they still needed to find answers to the questions Sasha and Mariel posed. Fortunately, there were fifteen of them, not counting Tess, and the work could be divided up. Each of them possessed unique skill sets making it easy to decide who was best suited to deal with each aspect of those questions.
Walking over to the urns of coffee and hot water the kitchen staff kept filled around the clock, Phil sent up a word of thanks for the constant flow of caffeine because they were going to need it to get through the next few weeks. Sensing his friend’s train of thought, Karl walked over to fill his and his wife’s cups again and put a hand on Phil’s shoulder. The shared understanding boosted Phil’s energy more than the caffeine for the long hours ahead.