Chapter 1

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Sarah Fenton shifted uncomfortably in her seat inside the stuffy lounge of the Lal School for Gifted Orphans. She stole a longing glance at the silent air conditioner that perched atop one of the room's two open windows. It was only April in Providence, but the temperature was already well over eighty degrees Fahrenheit, with high humidity making the heat unbearable. Unfortunately, the orphanage's climate control would only kick in when the temperature exceeded one hundred.

She wished the orphanage provided tank tops instead of the baggy long-sleeved shirt she was wearing. At least then she would be a bit cooler. She also regretted cramming tissue paper into her bra before leaving her small dorm room. The crumpled Kleenex were now damp with sweat and she would have to peel little balls of paper off her skin later.

Stuffing her bra was a childish thing to do, but she had wanted to look mature enough to deserve the internship she was here to interview for. She'd woken up thinking today could be her ticket out of the orphanage.

Yet by now she'd been sitting on an old, cracked faux leather sofa for thirty minutes, waiting for the morning interview. Around her on mismatched chairs and couches sat half a dozen of her classmates, fellow orphans at the institution that had taken her in. They were a motley crew, mostly about her age of 16, of every size and race, all wearing clothing whose bland cleanliness only served to accentuate its age.

Every few minutes, the principal of the orphanage, Margaret Kim, would stick her head out of her office door and call out the name of one of Sarah's classmates. After a few minutes, that student would walk back out of the office, head hanging a little, shoulders slumped a little, and Ms. Kim would call the next name.

The whole event seemed like a waste of time. Sarah was impatient for her turn to come. She'd been up late necking with Robbie Bayer in a broom closet last night and she had overslept and missed breakfast; her stomach rumbled.

She looked down at the apple bar she was snacking on. It had unblemished red skin and sweet white flesh that tasted like an apple. But it was not a real apple. The apple bar was a rectangle, making it easier to stack than a round apple, and had no core or stem.

Sarah had eaten real apples a few times in her life. Their skin wasn't as perfectly red, and they had cores full of tough fiber and bitter seeds. But she preferred something naturally imperfect to something unnaturally perfect. She wished vat-grown foods like apple bars could look more real, even if it meant she'd occasionally swallow a few seeds by accident.

After shaking her phone to charge its kinetic battery, she checked the long distance signal strength, and saw it was zero. Not a huge surprise; it was well-known that communication satellites were failing and the undersea data cables were being corroded. Getting reliable access to what bandwidth remained was pricier than most people could bear. She certainly couldn't afford it.

Not that network strength really mattered. She probably didn't have enough credit to make a long distance call. She definitely didn't know anyone worth calling.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a muffled yelp and a thump from within Principal Kim's office. A moment later, a male classmate named Nathan came back out of the doorway, sheepishly rubbing his backside as he quickly strode out into the hall.

Sarah rolled her eyes. Nathan was such a dork.

She heard a man's voice calling out to Principal Kim. "Sarah Fenton is next." The voice was friendly, but carried the tone of someone who took for granted that his orders would be followed.

Principal Kim greeted her in the doorway. "Be careful," she whispered into Sarah's ear.

"Careful? – Don't you mean, 'good luck?'" asked Sarah incredulously.

"No, I mean, be careful," said the Principal pointedly.

Sarah noticed that the furrow across Principal Kim's brow was even deeper than normal, and brought her fingers to the small silver cross she wore around her neck for reassurance.


***

Nick Lal reached out to hold his girlfriend Peggy Peng's hand. She flinched away slightly, as if afraid of the contact.

"I'll be back soon, good as new," he said, in a reassuring tone. "I promise!"

The two sat on the granite stairs to their elite private high school, wearing smartly tailored gray jackets with the school's seal imprinted on the breast. Nick wore navy blue slacks, and Peggy a knee length navy skirt whose waist she had folded over several times so that it left half of her thighs bare. They both sported long locks of raven black hair.

Peggy looked down at her hands and played with a golden ring, not saying anything.

"What's wrong?" asked Nick, careful to hide his frustration. "Are you afraid of this silly implant I'm getting tomorrow?" He gestured at his head.

Peggy kept looking down, and spoke in a soft voice. "They talk about you."

"Who?"

She looked up and faced him, sadness making her features droop slightly. "Everyone. Everyone talks about you. They say you're going to be a freak. A weirdo."

"It's not such a big deal." He willfully softened his voice until it almost had a jovial tone. "It'll become common in a few years. Everyone will have one. You too, next year after you turn 17. I'm just a trendsetter!"

She looked away. "You know my family can't afford to get me one of those things. Once you have one, will you still stay interested in real people? In me? I've read the brochures. I know what it can do. Won't normal life seem so boring in comparison?"

He forced a chuckle. His voice came out higher pitched and more strident than he'd intended. "Oh come on. My parents are making me get it. And brain implants have existed for decades. This is just the most powerful one ever."

Peggy kept looking away. "Yeah, like 10 million times more powerful. It's a bit different from an implanted 10G phone."

"Whatever. Don't worry, I'm not that interested in computer stuff. I'll hardly use it."

She looked up at him again, her eyes narrowed in anger. "Yeah right. Once you do use it, you'll forget all about me." She stood up crossly and walked away.

Nick sat on the stairs, grimacing in frustration. He was genetically engineered to be smart, but he didn't even know how to soothe his girlfriend. He heard Peggy stalking through the ornate wooden doorway into the school, and turned to watch morosely as the door closed behind her.

But the door didn't shut. It was stopped, and then opened again by a strong arm. Three boys came out, wearing the same uniform as Nick. They walked jovially, as if they had just shared a joke. Upon seeing Nick sitting on the stairs alone, they exchanged knowing glances. Their grins faded into grimaces and their postures tensed.

Nick looked away. Jake Carnegie had been pushing him around since news of Nick's surgery had spread.

He'd taken the abuse patiently at first, but that had just encouraged Jake to be rougher. Nick had sworn that next time Jake bothered him, he would put up a fight. But Jake had two friends with him now, and three against one didn't make for good odds. Especially not when his opponents had the same genetic upgrades he had. And if Nick was going to fight, he'd let them throw the first punch, so he could claim self-defense and avoid being suspended from school. So for now, the best thing to do was just sit quietly.

He heard shoes scrape to a halt behind him. Don't provoke them, he thought. Wait for another day when Jake is alone.

Something heavy thudded down hard between Nick's shoulder blades. He fell forward down the stairs, bloodying his nose and tearing one of the elbows of his jacket.

He rolled onto his back and looked around in a daze from the pavement. As his eyes came back into focus, he saw a beautiful white and brown leather wingtip scrape to a halt on the pavement just to the right of his head. Desperate to get up, he moved to his other side, but saw a shiny black leather loafer waiting for him there.

"What were you doing, freako?" The voice came from between his legs. He looked down the length of his body and saw a pair of heavy black boots standing right below his groin. Instinctively, he scrabbled backwards and tried to close his thighs.

"Freako, I'm talking to you!" He looked up the long blue trouser leg, to the grey jacket that stretched snugly over broad muscular shoulders, and finally to the thick jawed, pug-nosed face of his attacker.

Jake was pointing at his own head with both of his hands. "What are you doing alone out here? Were you using your brain device to send secret messages?"

"I don't even have the implant yet, you—"

Nick's remark was cut off by a sharp kick to his kidney from one of the white and brown wingtips.

First Peggy ditching him, now Jake and his goons kicking him. His caution was replaced by anger and he tensed his muscles in anticipation of a fight.

Nick had grown up aping all of Jonnie Wang's kung fu holomovies and was going to put the martial knowledge he'd gained from the cinema to good use.

He slammed his open palm into the kneecap of his attacker. He didn't manage to shatter the knee like Jonnie Wang would have, but at least the boy fell to the ground heavily.

When Jonnie Wang found himself on the floor surrounded by enemies, he would spin his legs around above him in a way that pulled his torso up off the floor and brought him to a standing position, and then use all the torque stored in his hips on the way up to unleash a roundhouse kick at the nearest bad guy.

Nick spun his legs around above him as ferociously as he could. The maneuver did not pull him up to a standing position as planned but the momentum rolled him over on top of the boy he'd just knocked over. He planted a hand in the boy's solar plexus and pushed himself up.

As Nick rose, Jake greeted him by swinging a meaty fist in a wide arc towards his head. Nick had seen Jonnie Wang counter the same attack a hundred times with a devastating dip-roll-punch combination. He rotated his torso away and then down and back under Jake's arm. As he came back up to standing position he wound his torso to the right while driving a left uppercut at Jake's chin. His fist caught in Jake's armpit, eliciting a grunt but not doing much damage.

Nick wasn't done yet. He screamed sharply, unwound his torso and unleashed a right hook at Jake's jaw, with tight form that would have made Jonnie Wang himself proud. The punch glanced off Jake's shoulder and lost most of its force before hitting its target. But Jake was staggered, holding his jaw and cursing.

Nick winced and stared at his split knuckles. Jonnie Wang never hurt his hands when punching the bad guys, except in the outtakes shown during the ending credits. Apparently those outtakes were more realistic than the scenes that made the final cut.

Nick's contemplation of his injured hand was interrupted as he was shoved from behind. He managed to stay on his feet and used the momentum to carry him towards the small playground that served the primary school next door. Directly before him was a jungle gym made of vertical and horizontal steel pipes. Directly behind him was the last of Jake's goons, racing to catch up.

It was time to deploy a classic Jonnie Wang move: spinning around a conveniently located pole to kick a pursuing bad guy in the face. As Nick reached the nearest vertical bar of the jungle gym, he leaped forwards, grabbed it with both hands, and used his momentum to hurl himself around it feet first.

Unfortunately, the boy behind him had pulled up just out of range. Nick's feet spun past his opponent harmlessly. Jonnie Wang had never faced this dilemma, so Nick wasn't sure what to do. He held on to the pole and let his momentum pull him around it, once, twice, thrice. Finally, he ran out of momentum and his legs dragged on the ground.

Somewhere in the middle distance, he heard a group of girls laughing.

Jake trudged over. "We don't need freaks like you around here anymore. Go find a school for freaks." He raised a knee and slammed his black boot down on Nick's abdomen.

Nick gasped for air as he heard the three boys jeering and exchanging high fives. "I call dibs on your little girlfriend once you're gone!" Jake yelled as they sauntered off.


***

Sarah walked through the threshold and saw a middle-aged black man with closely cropped hair at the old beat up desk normally used by Principal Kim. Though he neither rose nor moved to shake her hand, his gaze was friendly and welcoming. She looked over her shoulder at the still-frowning Principal Kim with a shrug and arched brows, as if to say, what's there to worry about?

The man introduced himself as William Johnson and encouraged her to call him Willy. He offered her a seat across the desk from him.

Now Sarah knew she liked Willy. Principal Kim always made her stand in the office, but Willy had let her sit. She set aside her annoyance at her thirty minute wait and resolved to do her best to pass the interview. As she sat, she folded her hands in her lap in a way she thought looked attentive and polite.

Willy smiled and asked "Sarah, do you know why you're here?"

"I suppose that you're looking for some kind of intern for your company, and Ms. Kim has recommended me for an interview."

"Good guess, but wrong." Willy stared at Sarah for a moment before continuing. "I work for a federal agency. And I'm not looking for interns. We're recruiting for permanent positions."

"What? A permanent position for the government? Are you recruiting for the army or something?" No wonder you didn't like Nathan." She regretted the dig at her classmate immediately, and suppressed the chuckle in her throat.

"Let's just say if we hire you, you'll get to explore new worlds. But I don't want to get specific just yet." He raised his eyebrows as if politely requesting Sarah's agreement, but everything else about his manner suggested that this was no request.

Sarah smiled in assent, careful to keep her lips closed to avoid exposing her crooked teeth.

"You've been here at the Lal Orphanage for ten years now," said Willy as he glanced down at a tablet. "I know you've excelled academically and athletically. But I'd like to know more about you. What kinds of things do you think about when you're alone?"

"Well... all kinds of things." She looked around the room and then back at Principal Kim uncomfortably. She spent her days dreaming about boys, but that was probably not what Willy wanted to hear.

At night, she woke screaming from nightmares in which she was a young girl again and her mother gazed at her through sad eyes. Sad because Sarah had left the door open and the men with knives had come and now her mother wouldn't live to see Sarah grown.

This was also not something to share with Willy. She reached up and stroked the necklace she'd taken from her mother's trembling, red hands that night ten years ago.

Aware that Willy was looking at her expectantly, she seized on something to say. "Just now I was thinking about how it stinks that we have no more satellites so I can't get a good long distance signal. You're with the government, why can't you just send up some more satellites?"

Willy seemed amused by the question. He responded with one of his own: "Tell me, Sarah, how many satellites is the theoretical minimum we could use to create a global communications network?"

Sarah formed her fingers into a sphere in front of her face and thought for a moment. "Three. You form them in a triangle around the Earth, far enough out that each one can see the other two. I mean, that's if you don't care about the North and South Poles – to cover those you probably need five. Assuming polar bears and penguins don't need coverage, we can probably get by with the three."

"Polar bears are extinct so I don't suppose they need a signal. Not sure about the penguins." Willy pursed his lips thoughtfully, looking down at a small screen in front of him. He lowered his right hand below the desk as if reaching for a file in the drawer.

Sarah continued, "Hey, so why can't you guys in the government just send up a few new satellites?"

"That's not my department," responded Willy, with a sly smile and a wink. At the same time, he flicked his right hand up and over the table, sending two small rubber balls hurtling towards Sarah in diverging paths.

Sarah reached up with both hands and grabbed the balls out of the air without breaking her line of thought. "I know the economy is bad but can't we at least afford a couple new satellites? And, why are you giving me two rubber balls? I need at least three to show you the satellite thing."

Willy leaned back in his chair and grinned at her. "How would you like to get out of this dump, Sarah?"


***

Nick and his parents sat facing each other in the spacious limousine as it drove East through Central Park, along one of the transverse roads that linked the two shores of Manhattan Island.

Peggy had refused all of his phone calls and ignored all of his messages. They'd been dating for a year, and he'd thought she really liked him. She should know how nervous he was about the procedure, so her refusal to talk to him now was particularly cruel. A simple message from her, wishing him good luck, would be more reassuring than anything his parents could say.

He stared out the window of the car, trying to push away his worries about Peggy and his anxiety about whether the surgeons would ask him about the bruises on his abdomen and the scrapes on his elbows. He didn't want to admit he'd been beaten up by bullies at school. Through the glass, he saw few other motor vehicles on the road, just a lot of bicycles. Every now and then, the car passed a horse- or mule-drawn cart.

Willfully ignoring the envious and resentful stares of the filthy men and women who were driving the carts along the road, Nick fiddled with the seam at the bottom of his custom tailored Armani t-shirt.

"I remember, when you were born, Central Park was still closed to the public" began Nick's father wistfully in his slightly lilting Punjabi accented English. "The government needed the farmland. We had famines, riots, million percent inflation... So much has changed since those days."

"Because you changed it," said Nick's mother, reaching out and smoothing her husband's dastar turban back into place where it threatened to slip down and obscure one of his brown eyes.

Nick's father held his wife's olive hand in his brown one and spoke in a voice that was slightly reproaching. "Please, Fabiana, you did half the work. And this is besides point." He turned back to his son. "Your mother and I, our science merely delayed the inevitable. Humanity will be in peril again soon. Nick, I know you're nervous about today's surgery, but you're already a gifted boy and this implant will give you new abilities you can use to help the world the next time it's in danger."

Nick looked at his yellow-turbaned, grey-bearded father, and at his short and plump mother. Then he turned his head and stared out the window, looking through the reflection of his own green eyes, pale skin, and chiseled features.

"Oh, don't give him so much stress, Aakar, not on such a big day," interjected his mother. Her Brazilian accent, as always, was stronger when she was

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