15 years ago

Kamýk, Czech Republic

Sophia peeked around the corner into the living room. The man with the shaved head from the Argus Foundation stood there, briefcase in one hand. There was another man who stayed outside the apartment. He had red cheeks and thick, dark hair. The bald man called him Major.

The bald man handed the briefcase to Mama. She placed it on a chair, then tucked wisps of hair under her shawl.

'Welcome,' she said. 'I am sorry for this heat. The pipes are very hot and we have to open the windows even in—' She spotted Sophia and a smile appeared under her squashed nose. 'Sophia! The lovely man from the Argus is here to see you.'

Reluctantly, Sophia stepped out where he could see her.

He smiled. 'Hello, Sophia. It's good to see you again.'

Sophia blinked. Surely it was a mistake and her test results were mixed up with someone else much better.

'You can call me Denton.' He mopped sweat from his shiny forehead with a handkerchief.

'Are you excited?' Mama said. 'Today you go to the smart school.'

'It's not called the smart school, Mama.' Sophia rolled her eyes. 'It's the Argus Foundation.'

She pronounced it slowly and carefully to impress Denton. He nodded but didn't seem to be paying attention. She didn't know what to do with her hands, so she clasped them in front of her and fidgeted. Her stomach was spinning with butterflies: pink butterflies of excitement and blue ones of nerves. The blue ones were winning.

Some of the tests had been on paper, to see how well she could solve problems; others involved running, jumping, dodging foam balls—she thought she'd been clumsy in those tests, but he didn't think so. Maybe he hadn't been looking at her when she was tripping or falling. And there were the tests with doctors that used complicated machines and strange computers to measure things like her heart and her brain, and even a few needles—she didn't like that part. She'd been quite proud for not crying though. But Denton was really impressed with something inside her body, so tiny no one could see it without special machines.

'All the children at your new school are looking forward to meeting you, Sophia,' Denton said. 'Have you packed your suitcase?'

'Oh yes,' Mama said. 'We have everything ready, don't we, Sophia?' She turned to Sophia. 'Sophia? Do you have your suitcase?'

Sophia nodded, then went to her room to fetch it. But when she walked in, she realized it would be a while before she would see her room again. Of course, there would be visits. They would fly Mama and her brother and sister to see her, and sometimes she would be able to come home on semester break. But once school was over, she could do anything she wanted, and her schooling would all be paid for. Most importantly, her family would have enough money to buy what they needed. It was a dream come true.

She picked up her suitcase. It was Mama's, big and clunky, even though she hadn't filled it with much. She didn't have teddy bears or dolls like her sister. She didn't have many things actually, so she'd filled it with her clock radio, hairbrush, toothbrush, cassette player and her tapes of David Bowie—Papa's favorites—and her favorite clothes and her pillow with the purple pillowcase.

Sophia's little sister, Tereza, lunged at her from behind, hugging her and pinning her to the suitcase.

'It's not fair!' Tereza yelled. 'Why can't you take me with you?'

Sophia tickled her until she squealed and leapt away.

'They won't let me,' Sophia said. 'But you have the big bed now.'

Tereza rolled her eyes. 'I know, but it's not as soft and I want to go with you.'

'When you go to school next year, you can do the test and then you can come.'

'I guess so. Can I have your bed forever?'

'No!' Sophia smiled. 'Fine, but you have to share it when I come back.'

Tereza nodded, then put on her best sulking face. She still let Sophia hug her.

As Sophia took her suitcase out to Denton, the blue butterflies were having a party inside her.

'Are you ready?' Mama squeezed an overly dramatic hug from her. 'We're all very proud. Aren't we, Tereza?'

Tereza leaned into the kitchen doorway. 'Yeah,' she mumbled.

Sophia fidgeted with the briefcase handle. 'I'll miss you,' she said to Mama.

'There will be many other girls and boys your age at the school,' Denton said. 'Just as special as you. I'm sure you'll make plenty of new friends.'

'OK,' Sophia said, nervous again.

Mama saw her and Denton out. Denton's friend, Major, took her suitcase and together they walked down the stairs because the elevators weren't working again. They took her to their car, a dark gray one. It didn't look like a car for a fancy school, but Denton told her it was just a hire car. Both men sat in the front, although Denton was polite and opened the back door for her first. She sat on the right side and placed her suitcase on the left.

It was the last time she'd see her family for a while, so she waved through the window. Mama waved back at her from the balcony. Then the car started and they left. Sophia waved until she couldn't see her family anymore.

'Excuse me, mister Denton,' Sophia said. 'If I don't do very well, will my parents have to pay back the money?'

He smiled. 'No, of course not. It's all paid for.'

'What if I do really, really badly? Will you send me home and I'll have to do school all over again?'

'I don't think you'll do badly at all.' He turned to look at her. 'In fact, I have a feeling you'll be the best student we've had.'

*

Sophia woke in a sweat.

She was lying on a bed, still dressed in her T-shirt and jeans. It was cold; her arms had goose bumps. The sour mix of body odor and dried algae hit her immediately.

She sat upright. Her surroundings were unfamiliar. The depth and width of the bedroom were somehow wrong, the light below the door was different, even the position of the door was strange. It took a moment for her to remember she wasn't in her quarters at Desecheo Island, she was Adamicz's prisoner.

The last few weeks had been a haze of what Adamicz called 'deprogramming', but she wasn't so sure.

She'd been certain for a while that Adamicz was part of an extensive procedure to test her loyalty and sense of perception. That it was a new form of interrogation training. But the volume of documentation on Project GATE that Adamicz had shown her was unexpectedly thorough.

If this was a test, it was an extraordinarily elaborate one. And she wondered why the Fifth Column would go to so much trouble to instill distrust in her.

The only other possibility left was that Adamicz was some sort of terrorist who hated the Fifth Column. Which meant that Adamicz had struck it lucky capturing her and planned to use her against her own people.

Either way, this wasn't going to end well.

There was a dull pain over her left eyebrow. She touched it and found stitches. She didn't remember anyone putting them in. But she could hear music—classical piano. She remembered the gramophone she'd seen on one of the bookshelves in the library. Adamicz was playing a record. She could hear it.

And she could see it.

She sat upright. Electric tadpoles swept in arcs around her, turquoise and vivid, moving in accordance with the notes of the piano. Some of the tadpoles matured into a pure blue while others turned green. A cluster of notes worked them into a frenzy.

Adamicz must have done something wrong to her head. This wasn't normal.

She climbed out of bed and found a pile of folded clothes on a dusty nightstand. She checked the fabric for tracking devices, mostly out of habit, before changing into a T-shirt with a faded Pepsi logo and gray sweatpants.

She opened the bedroom door. Blue and green tadpoles propelled themselves down the hall ahead of her. She followed them, and found Adamicz sorting through notes in his makeshift office, which smelled faintly of gingerbread. The tadpoles danced around him. He seemed oblivious to their presence.

'What have you done?' Sophia said.

His gray eyebrows pressed together. 'I am deprogramming you.'

Adamicz's voice was disarmingly gentle. She didn't like it.

She left his office, along with its scent of gingerbread, and followed the source of the music until she found the gramophone. The tadpoles poured from the gramophone's funneled barrel, thick like ocean foam, then floated away. It was warmer in here, she noticed. She heard Adamicz's portable heater purring softly nearby.

Sophia lifted the needle from the record and the tadpoles disappeared.

Adamicz was standing nearby. He didn't seem annoyed, just intrigued.

'What is the problem?' he said.

She could smell something again. It smelled like Adamicz was cooking some sort of dessert.

'I can see the music,' she said. 'That's the problem.'

Adamicz looked puzzled, as though he hadn't understood her.

'The music you were playing.' She glanced at the record. 'Opus Nine, Number Two. It makes glowing blue and green tadpoles; they were swimming around me.'

'I see.'

'That's not normal, is it?'

He clasped his hands in front of him, as though shaking hands with himself. 'Not exactly,' he said. 'But it is interesting.'

She caught the scent of his cooking again. 'No. It is not interesting. I'm not meant to see music, I'm meant to hear it.'

'It appears the deprogramming has removed a divide from between your senses. You're having a multi-sensory experience at this time.'

'You sound like an infomercial,' she said.

'Do not worry, it is just temporary.'

She inhaled deeply. 'And your voice, it's ... cinnamon.'

Each word had a slightly different aroma and texture. When he spoke softly, the aroma was fluffy and light. That was the gingerbread.

A chill ran across her arms. 'Why are you living in an old library, anyway? That heater's not doing much.'

Adamicz straightened his posture. 'This is the Guarnacci Library. It was closed when the second global financial collapse struck Italy. A colleague of mine, Doctor McLoughlin, purchased the library for us to hide in. For the time being.'

'I'm in Italy,' she said.

He nodded. 'Volterra.'

'How did ... how did you capture me?' Sophia asked.

Adamicz nodded his head, smiling. 'Oh. This was tricky, yes. The former Blue Berets we sent were dressed in very low-temperature, arctic-rated thermal clothing, gloves, balaclavas and socks. They took you to a nearby furniture factory and set the temperature to thirty degree Celsius. They lay you on the floor and shifted a glass coffee table over you. Then they put another plate of glass over and placed a mannequin on top.'

Sophia rubbed her nose. 'Mannequin?'

'Your stunt double,' he said. 'Homemade, hollowed-out mannequin fitted with a battery, heater coil and tubing to distribute heat. To mimic your heat signature.'

Sophia thought for a moment. 'In case infrared satellites were watching.'

'Precisely,' Adamicz said. 'Once they have the mannequin and your body in perfect alignment, they turn on the mannequin and wait for the heat signature to replicate yours. Then they lift the second glass plate and slide another plate between. Special glass, coated in tungsten-doped vanadium dioxide.'

'What does that do, block infrared?' Sophia asked.

Adamicz nodded. 'Your RFID was supposed to be surgically removed, but you had saved us the trouble. Next, the soldiers covered your body with the same arctic-rated thermal clothing.'

Sophia folded her arms. 'And with my stunt double in place, they just ... hauled me out and ran off with me?'

'Yes. But the satellite shows you are still there, lying down.'

'They think I'm dead,' Sophia said.

'You are, technically.' His tone was at once darker. 'If the Fifth Column learn you are still alive, they will hunt you down, interrogate you and then kill you.'

'That's optimistic.' She swallowed. Her throat was sticky. She could feel her hands trembling.

'You need to stay here,' Adamicz said. 'This place is the only secure place for you right now, at least until it is safe to relocate.'

He walked over to the gramophone and removed the record, then slipped it into its cardboard sleeve.

'And how long is that?' she said.

'We estimate four to six months before it is safe to move,' he said.

'So I just have to go along with your plan? Trust you and do everything you say? Is that how you think this will go down?'

His eyebrows rose slowly. In curiosity. 'I rescued you.'

'Why me?' she asked.

'Your programming was breaking.'

Her fingers curled into fists. 'Maybe you should've let me break.'