Someone, or something, watched her from her high perch. Eyes trained on her, felt more than seen. Neither predatory nor friendly, merely an observer to her own detachment.
Something else invaded her solitude. Something to her left. Tearing away from the surreal sight of her own body below her, she expanded her range of vision.
The boy floated beside her, hovering over his own body. He was not a solid object, like the shape on the ground, but she recognized him as the scowling, distant child who ran with her up the hill. A presence who sensed her, as she sensed him.
Her conscious mind remained in suspense, surveying the landscape and the small figures below her with detached curiosity, a spectator on a theater balcony watching someone else’s story unfold.
In the distance, the strange beam of light from the house flickered, then vanished.
New figures came into view, men in black robes running along the ridge, and in an instant, Amira dropped to the ground, retching, her body her own again. The calmness of the moment vanished, but the taste of rust lingered in her mouth.
The Elders approached, running to the boy first. His face turned the color of curdled milk as they lifted him, but his eyes found Amira’s before the men carried him away. The boy’s head jerked to one side in a subtle gesture that Amira returned with a silent nod.
Say nothing.
Hands gripped the sides of her head and Amira gasped. The interviewer removed the sensors. She pressed her head into the back of her chair, light-headed, a common sensation in the immediate aftermath of a reading. The room, with its white walls and monochromatic machinery, felt vivid and real compared to the foggy world of her memories, all sharp lines and edges.
“What happened there?” the man asked, unable to suppress the curiosity from his voice.
Something happened beyond her control years ago. At the time, she feared she had accessed the Conscious Plane, a level of transcendence forbidden without an Elder’s guidance, but her years in the Academy had provided another explanation. Dissociation, the separation of mind and body. A known phenomenon, but rarely as extreme or pronounced as Amira’s experience at the Gathering. The panel would declare her unfit to be a reader in response. Someone with a tenable grip on reality, they would pronounce with an appropriate mixture of firmness and empathy, could not delve into the minds of others. Despite her undeniable skill and years of hard work, a single memory would unravel everything. All those years, wasted.
Amira hesitated. She couldn’t lie, at least not completely. Holomentic machines, though built to heal, also functioned as effective interrogation devices. The map of her neural activity would pick up an outright lie when the brain center for imagination, not memory, highlighted on the nearby monitor. The heat and fear of the Gathering fresh in her mind, she gripped the armrest to hide shaking hands. She could not go back to the compound, or end up on the street, as other compound escapees often did. She would not fail.
“I don’t know exactly,” she said slowly, a truth in the broadest sense. “But looking back, I think it may have been a panic attack where I disconnected somehow—”
“I’m sorry, I meant after you were found? After you and the boy got what looks like heatstroke. Were you punished for getting so far away?”
Amira gaped at him. Did he not see her separate from her own body? She recovered, arranging her face to show the shape of polite introspection.
“They didn’t question me too much,” she said. “The Feds arrested most of the Elders and their marshals for unlawful assembly. A power play. They have so little influence over the compounds that they couldn’t pass up an opportunity to charge so many Elders at once. Everyone was frightened. The remaining adults took us back that night. The Elders were released by the Feds – by the Alliance forces the next day – on some technicality. The punishment came months later, when I tried to escape. I’m sorry, did you mean to continue the reading?”
“I did, but the machine’s acting up,” he said with a dismissive nod toward the holographic table. “It went black when you fell down next to that other kid who was freaking out. Not sure what happened, but it came back on when the men found you on the hill. I’ll have to get it looked at, but I certainly have what I need for today.”
He shook her hand and gestured her toward the door with a slight smile.
Amira exhaled audibly, breathing freely for the first time in the room, but her hands trembled as she walked down the hallway. Psychotic breaks, multiple personality cases, even the final brain signals of the dying – all could be captured in some form by the machine. But the holomentic device failed to display the moment on the mountaintop. Only death was undetectable by the machine. So either the examiner misinterpreted Amira’s dissociation as a mechanical malfunction, or the moment itself was…what, exactly? Why had it failed to read that moment on the ridge?
The house in the middle of nowhere, anchored by the mysterious beam of light, hovered in her racing mind as she approached the panel room.
* * *
“Valdez? Amira Valdez? Excellent. Have a seat.”
The room looked the same as every other in the Academy – spacious, polished, but lacking in charm. Amira liked it regardless, with its geometric furniture and high, echoing ceilings. Here, they would declare her fate.
The yawning window to her right overlooked the Academy’s pool, an extravagant, costly structure flanked by synthetic palm trees and plastic lounge chairs. She had spent countless hours doing laps there and even more floating on her back, staring out through the clear ceiling as shuttles and helicopters passed silently overhead.
Amira did her best to ignore the crystalline water and focus on the panel before her. A severe woman and a short, round man sat behind a metallic desk. Both wore the requisite violet lab coats of senior professors. A flat screen on the desk’s surface displayed a string of text alongside Amira’s profile picture. It was taken several years ago, but she looked the same – light brown skin and angular face offset by her eyes, almost as black as her hair. She wore the same expression in her profile that she wore now – thoughtful and stern, except for her mouth, which turned up at the corners in a subtle, almost cryptic smile. The slight frame of her shoulders slouched in the image. She straightened her back and crossed her ankles, compensating for her poor posture. The man on the panel smiled brightly in her direction, but the woman scrutinized her in an unabashed manner.
“You know this already, but you passed your physical.”
“Yes,” Amira said. “Fifteen miles.”
“You’ve also scored consistently high on your academic reviews,” the woman said, running her long fingers across the screen. “Let’s see…aeronautics, physics, some neo-quantum physics, genetic engineering, bioengineering. Excellent across the board.”
Amira nodded, keeping her gaze on the stern woman’s face. The professor’s eyes were the color of dried olive pits, her hair cut in that fashionable, unevenly chopped style. Little warmth emanated from her person, or even a trace of personality, but then again, this was a meeting that required formality. A District of Aldwych Jury insignia was fastened to her breast pocket, indicating a position on one of the district’s most powerful governing bodies, second only to the elite Aldwych Council. The man, on the other hand, was small and genial, with tufts of dark hair springing from his face and round features that reminded Amira of an affable koala. Her mouth twitched as the comparison set in, followed by a pang of guilt. Unlike the woman, he seemed kind, eager to tell her what she wanted to hear.