Citadel: The Concordant Sequence Read online

  The woman smiled.

  Ashleigh got mac and cheese.

  “You’re going to get fat.” Kiera grinned back at her friend and waved her hand over the silver egg by the register to scan the chip in her hand. The machine beeped, and the cashier―hired probably for decoration―smiled.

  “Go to hell.” Ashleigh gave her a raspberry, waving a large empty cup on her way to the soda fountain. “I’m skinnier than you and that’s not easy.”

  “You are not. I―” Kiera turned away from the cashier, took one step, and stopped, staring at the boy in the green plaid shirt still filling his soda. That’s weird. Maybe he came back for a refill. She ducked around him, grabbed a bottled water, and headed for the largest open spot at the sixth-grade table across from three boys. Ashleigh sat beside her less than a second later, startling her into yelping.

  “Eep! Did you forget your drink?”

  Ashleigh rattled the ice in her full soda. “No. Why?”

  “You couldn’t have been right behind me. How did you fill it so fast?”

  The girl shrugged. “Same way I always do.”

  “Hey,” said Jordan.

  “Yo.” Thomas mumbled over a mouthful of food. “You kill that alien?”

  Tarik shook his head. “What’s taking you so long, Kier? You’re like the only one in the whole world who hasn’t beat TCS yet.”

  She stared at them. “Uhh, not yet. Why?”

  “Didn’t think you’d like being the only player not to do it yet.” Jordan grinned.

  “She’s determined to blast her way through.” Ashleigh threw an arm around her back. “Oh princess of guns blazing.”

  Kiera stabbed a fork into her salad. “Yeah… yeah…” She bit down on a mass of leaves, Caesar dressing, and grilled chicken―tasting something vaguely beef-like. The unexpected flavor startled her into coughing. None of the other kids reacted to her almost choking. She took a single bit of chicken and nibbled on it, getting the same not-quite-beef flavor. Face scrunched with disgust and confusion, she glanced at her friend. “How’s your mac?”

  “Crappy, like always.” Ashleigh put a forkful in her mouth.

  Kiera stole a fry from Thomas, who ignored her. It too, tasted the same: somewhere between damp cardboard mush and beef. She opened her mouth to speak, but her brain stalled at the sight of the kid in the green plaid shirt still at the soda fountain. A stream of foamy brown liquid flowed continuously into a large cup. The boy stood motionless, fixated on his task. She watched him for far longer than it ought to have taken the cup to overflow, but it didn’t. Soda fell into a bottomless hole.

  Ashleigh and the boys chatted about playing The Concordant Sequence, and beating it ‘ages ago.’

  Eyes narrowed, Kiera jabbed her fork into her friend’s mac ’n cheese, stealing some. The girl didn’t even look at her. It, too, had the exact same flavor as the salad and the fry. Not-beef.

  “Everything tastes the same,” said Kiera.

  Thomas laughed. “Well it’s school cafeteria food. What do you expect?”

  “No, I mean it literally tastes the same. The salad, a fry, her mac, all tastes like liver pâté.”

  “What the heck is liver pâté?” asked Tarik.

  “You don’t want to know,” muttered Ashleigh. “Something rich kids like Kier get forced to eat.”

  Kiera sighed. “I’m not rich. Dad’s a lawyer and Mom’s a VP. Well… okay they’re both VPs.”

  “They makin’ serious bucks.” Jordan grinned. “My dad works in HR for Citadel. He could find out what your parents make.”

  “That’s illegal,” said Tarik.

  “It ain’t. He works in HR, that’s his job.” Jordan held his finger up like a lawyer with a killer argument. “Telling me what they make… that would be illegal. His finding out ain’t.”

  The residue of mac and cheese on Kiera’s tongue shifted to the taste of mac and cheese. She eyed her salad. Can being exhausted make my tongue stop working? She ate a forkful of salad, which tasted like it ought to have. Deciding to ignore what happened, she bowed her head and kept eating.

  A thin, nerdy boy got up from the far end of the fifth-grade table behind her and hustled down the aisle. Kiera munched on romaine, watching him, fully expecting Bryce, a huge eighth-grader, to trip the kid. Sure enough, as soon as the runner passed the end of the table, the enormous fourteen-year-old stuck his boot out and tripped him flat. The scrawny kid slid about ten feet on his chest before stopping.

  The cafeteria erupted in laughter―except for Kiera.

  Time seemed to slow down. She looked around at all the huge smiles, closed eyes, belly laughs, and expressions of mirth. That moment had happened before. Everything as it had occurred seconds ago had occurred before, in the exact same way. That’s ridiculous. It’s déjà vu. I’m tired.

  With a roar, kids’ laughter leapt back to normal speed. She crouched over her salad, hurrying it along with a furtive glance toward the soda machine, expecting to see green plaid boy, but he’d gone. She sat up tall, looking around, but couldn’t find him anywhere. All the overhead lights flickered.

  A sudden, jabbing pain pierced the back of her head like an icepick. She grabbed the base of her skull in both hands and cringed, but the pain faded away before she could scream.

  Ugh. I’m never staying up too late again. Maybe I can sleep in English.

  “So, you gonna play TSC after school?” asked Jordan.

  “Probably,” mumbled Kiera. “Unless Ash wants to hang out.”

  “It tastes like mac and cheese,” said Ashleigh.

  Kiera glanced at her. “You’re lagging.”

  “Huh what?” Ashleigh looked at her.

  “You’re about five minutes behind the conversation.” Kiera stuck out her tongue.

  “Oh, whatever.” Ashleigh grinned. “You really need to catch up with the rest of like… everyone and beat that game.”

  Kiera glanced at her. Why are they all obsessed with TCS?

  Since no one could go outside in the oppressive October heat, the students migrated to the ‘fun room’ after they ate. Kiera attempted to sit by herself in the corner on one of the sofas and nap, but Jordan and Thomas pestered her about the game. Both prodded her to try a ‘stealth build.’

  “I like being out in the open. The stealth tree doesn’t have any up-front damage boosters so the PR-49 hits like spitballs. It’s much faster to shoot the aliens in the face. I don’t even know why they bothered putting stealth in that game. It’s like they made the game as a shooter and decided to add stealth later.”

  “Aww, it’s not. Stealth is über.” Thomas grinned. “You’re not patient at all. It takes finesse, but sneaky builds are basically overpowered.”

  After another thirty-five minutes debating game strategy, she trudged down the hall to her locker, retrieved her QuickTab, and headed to Mrs. Martin’s English class. Here, she had a desk in the next to last row nearest the windows. Far enough away from the teacher to nap. On the way in, her elbow brushed a giant glass vase with water and glass beads instead of soil, a large arrangement of flowers at the corner of the desk.

  “Careful!” The teacher grabbed the vase.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Martin.” Kiera veered away from the desk and headed down the aisle to the back of the room. She slid into her chair, set her bag on the attached desk, and put her head down on folded arms, eyes closed.

  Exhaustion left her feeling like she floated, weightless in nowhere. Something tapped on her lips. Come on, honey, said Mom. It’s not as bad as you think. It’ll feel like you blinked your eyes. Strange fear came out of nowhere. The prodding at her lip went into her mouth, sliding down into her stomach. A sensation as though she’d swallowed a large piece of plastic shocked her awake.

  Kiera shot upright at her desk, grabbing her throat and gagging.

  No one so much as looked at her.

  Mrs. Martin lectured about the differences between the two main characters of Blood for Breath, a fictionalized account of two br
others on different sides of the environmental disaster. One worked for an energy company, the other belonged to an eco-terrorist group. The teacher argued that the corporate brother was the nobler of the two, despite his actions being contrary to the planet’s health, as his brother considered no act too violent to ‘save the world.’

  Whoa. She swallowed and rubbed her throat. What was that?

  “Mrs. Martin?” asked Emily in the front row, “if someone was going to kill me, but my Dad shot him first, would that be evil?”

  “Of course not, Miss Dominguez.”

  Emily tilted her head. “What if Nathan thinks of the planet as his child? He’s defending everyone’s life.”

  Kiera started to settle down for another attempt at napping, but stared at the vase on the teacher’s desk: the water and glass beads had vanished. She leaned forward, gawking. The flowers appeared healthy and alive, but the water she’d been certain had existed when she almost knocked it over was gone.

  Loud buzzing arose outside. Kiera looked away from the vase, twisting in her seat to peer out the windows at the robotic lawnmower, a giant version of the little round thing that cleaned the floors at home. Polished silver, it threw off a blinding glare in the afternoon sunlight. She squinted to keep watching the machine gliding back and forth in precise rows over the school’s yard that no one dared step foot in anymore. Maybe in late December or January when the temperatures only hit ninety, someone might want to go outside.

  She glanced up at the corner of the window, where holographic numbers indicated the outside temp as 109 degrees Fahrenheit. With a sigh, she slipped her feet out of her flip-flops and put her head down again, trying to remember what it felt like to walk on grass.

  “Kiera?” asked Mrs. Martin.

  So much for sleep. She lifted her head. “Marcus believed the dangers to the environment were overstated and the protestors had a grudge against Big Oil. Nothing he did violated any laws, and he even protected his brother Nathan by giving the police vague information. He didn’t lie to them, but he could’ve told them right where to go. Nathan planted bombs that hurt and killed people who were only doing their job and had no control over the decisions made by the company.”

  “Can you give us a justification for why someone might consider Marcus the nobler of the two?” asked Mrs. Martin.

  “I just answered you,” said Kiera.

  The teacher stared at her.

  Kiera fidgeted under her gaze. She looked away―at the vase that had water and glass beads in it again. This is too weird.

  “Correct,” said Mrs. Martin. After a smile, she resumed lecturing about how the book, written in 2021, became controversial when Paul Allen Roberts cited it as his inspiration for a terrorist attack he carried out on oil pipelines in the Midwest.

  The mower went back and forth… back and forth….

  Kiera stared at it like a hypnotist’s pendulum.

  A sudden, blaring bell scared a scream out of her. Twenty-eight minutes had disappeared.

  She scrambled to her feet, stepped into her flip-flops, and rushed out, both eager and dreading her last class of the day. Ashleigh emerged from her chemistry class two rooms to the left and on the opposite side, running to catch up. Kiera stopped at her locker, stared at her robotics kit, gloves, and safety glasses, and decided not to bother taking them with her.

  “Mr. Conroy is kinda cute.” Ashleigh skidded up to her locker and typed in a code.

  Kiera stared at her, feeling like she’d gone back in time. “He’s like my Dad’s age.”

  “No he isn’t.” Her friend shut the locker door with her elbow, clutching her QuickTab. “He’s only twenty-five. He looks like the guy who played the elf archer in that movie you like.”

  “Still eww.”

  “Gotta run.” Ashleigh waved and zoomed off.

  Kiera shut her locker, sighed, and trudged two rooms down the hall to Mr. Conroy’s class. Someone had closed the door, but the bell hadn’t gone off again so she couldn’t be late. She grabbed the knob and turned, but pulled herself forward, feet sliding.

  “Huh?” She blinked. “It’s not locked….”

  She slung her backpack over one shoulder and grabbed the knob in both hands. Grunting, she hauled back. The door peeled away from the frame, resisting her like she tried to open it into a pit of syrup. Kiera braced one foot up on the wall, straining with all her strength, but the door refused to open faster than a creep. She dragged it a few inches before running out of steam and sagging limp, out of breath.

  Mr. Conroy walked over and pushed the door open with two fingertips. “Miss Quinn? Are you all right? You look flushed.”

  “I’m…” She fanned herself, staring death at the door. “Fine. The door was stuck.”

  “Oh.” He smiled, pushing and pulling the door back and forth with one finger. “Seems you unstuck it.”

  Kiera grabbed the door. It moved freely, like any other door ought to. Am I going crazy? She hurried to her desk, sat, and huddled over her book bag. Oh, crap. Please don’t let me have like a brain tumor or something!

  “All right everyone, you won’t need your kits today I’m afraid. It’s test day.”

  The class emitted a collective groan.

  A period that sounded like it would be a fun time playing with robots had turned into a brain-numbing introduction to electrical engineering that should’ve been in high school, but Kiera managed to cling to a middling C at least, her only class not getting an A. Algebra’s A- still counted as an A. This period, though, she loathed.

  Everyone took out their QuickTabs. Soon, the teacher’s command overrode them and locked out everything but the test. A hundred questions. She stared at the first one. Four sample circuit diagrams, asking her to select the most efficient layout for wiring a force-feedback sensor so a robot could evaluate how much strength it applied to an object in its grasp.

  Cold crawled all over her body again, making her teeth chatter. Worse than the air conditioning vent above her head, the devouring freeze seemed to ignore her clothes entirely. The circular diagrams looked so familiar. A twinge of pain jabbed her in the left thigh before tingles ran up and down that leg.

  I’ve taken this test before. She struggled to remember her crummy grade, the corrected version. Maybe I’m still asleep at home and I’m dreaming the same day happening over and over again until I pass this stupid test.

  Forty-five minutes later, Kiera rushed the last eight questions by randomly picking buttons. The test auto turned-in at the end of the period with her finger a second and a half away from touching the submit button.

  “All right, people. I know you all love tests, but tomorrow”―the bell rang, causing everyone except Kiera to spring to their feet―“we’ll be doing something fun. Group project. Walking robot design.”

  Kiera stared at the clock, a hologram flickering a few inches away from the wall at the front of the room: 2:10 p.m. The only good thing about this class turned out to be its time slot as last period.

  “Planning on moving in?” asked Mr. Conroy, smiling. “Time to go home, Miss Quinn.”

  “Sorry. I’m tired.” Kiera stood, stuffed her QuickTab into the backpack, shouldered it, and dragged herself out into the hall. “See you tomorrow.”

  He waved without looking up.

  A river of children flowed down the hall toward the front doors. Loud voices shouted about sports teams, movies, video games, plans for after school, and so on. Kiera stumbled along with the crowd toward the brilliant furnace glow at the door. She cringed as a blast of hundred-degree-plus air smacked her in the face, then darted down the stairs to the sidewalk. Blur clung to the parking lot, the surface likely hot enough to melt her flip-flops and/or burn her feet if she dared touch it without them.

  Ashleigh fought her way out of the waterfall of kids coming down the stairs and trotted over, flops snapping against her heels. “Hey, wait up, Kier.”

  “I hate tests. Feels like there’s been a million and we’re not even to midter
ms yet.”

  “I gotta go to the commerce-plex with my mom today.” Ashleigh tilted her head. “Are your parents still saying you can’t go?”

  Kiera headed toward her bus, one of twelve sleek yellow loafs lined up in front. The promise of air conditioning got her up to a jog. “Yeah. Dad says it’s too dangerous there. Half the San Antonio National Guard is right around the ’Plex and there’s always fighting. I heard one of the stores even had bullet holes in the window from a skirmish six blocks away.”

  Ashleigh twitched. “Are your parents still saying you can’t go?”

  “Uhh, yeah, Ash. That’s exactly what I said.” Kiera pushed the glowing red button by the bus door and basked in the rush of cold air when it folded in half, opening to either side. She stepped up into the wonderful coolness and looked back.

  Her friend stood still, not having followed. “Are your parents still saying you can’t go?”

  “Ash, stop it. That’s not funny.”

  Her friend came up the steps. “What’s not funny?”

  The doors closed behind her with a faint pssh.

  “You’re making fun of me for being a total zone-out today.” Kiera rolled her eyes and threw herself into a seat by the window, backpack in her lap.

  “Am not.” Ashleigh sat beside her. “I gotta go to the commerce-plex with my mom.”

  “Right… I guess I’ll call you later.”

  Kiera clung to her bag, hoping with all she had that a giant, ridiculous tumor wasn’t squeezing the crap out of her brain.

  2

  Perfect Run

  The bus wound its way among the streets of suburban San Antonio, Texas. Kiera gazed out at the flawless houses, impeccable lawns, clear sky, and occasional pedestrian.

  Her eyebrows slid closer together. All the news programs kept talking about environmental damage, mass extinction of animals, the erosion of the biosphere, countries turning their militaries on their own citizens, even militaries within the same nations breaking up into factions and fighting each other. Some big companies, mostly the ones the protestors targeted: chemical plants, mining, oil, pipelines… all of them had formed military-like forces, or hired deserter soldiers with stolen equipment.