High Flyght – Chapter 20

It’s one thing to see the two boys in the cryocontainer, and it’s another to see them wrapped in blankets and shivering on a spare bed. Both of them hold mugs of warm, spiced goats’ milk, and they stare into space while Jinzo asks them questions.

“Do you know where you were going?” Jinzo leans in, hoping for an answer.

The boy with short hair shakes his head. The one with longer hair stays still and quiet.

Standing at the room’s door, I don’t want to go in and talk to them. They should never have been on my ship in the first place.

Skylar stands with me, her arms crossed.

“Fucking human trafficking, Viv. What have we gotten ourselves into?”

When I don’t answer, she says, “I don’t blame you. Not one bit.”

“Thanks.” I look down at my feet. “But I’m the one that chased after Gai Reis looking like a newborn fawn. He took advantage of me, sure. But I walked right into it.”

Skylar sighs and taps her boot against the bulkhead wall. “We needed the money. I would’ve done the same thing.” She lowers her voice. “But we don’t have to take this sitting down.”

Skylar is wearing her ‘determined’ face, the one she saves for when she wants something and nothing will stand in her way.

I poke her in the chest. “I like where you’re going with this, but honestly we don’t need anything else on our plate right now. It’s fucking full and flowing over the edges.”

“Is it ever.” She snorts a laugh. “But seriously, Viv, let’s ruin them, whoever they are.”

Do I want to ruin them? Yes. Do I have the time to bring ruination on these people? Ehhhhh, doubtful.

“I have a plan,” Skylar says, her chin lifting.

“I’m sure you do.” I lean in close. “Any chance I can give you this task to do? You know, captain to pilot?” I glance in the door at the two boys in the room, still too scared to talk to Jinzo. “I don’t care how much money is at stake here for whatever they’re doing. They need to be stopped.”

There’s so much in this universe I’m willing to overlook. I look past the drugs, the body modifications, the false and basically forced prostitution of the relationship network system, and countless other things we do that stretch the moral fabric of our existence. But the buying and selling of human beings is beyond the pale. And you fucking do not use me and my ship to do it.

They messed with the wrong women. I have hundreds of personalities just waiting to be called forward, and a good eighty percent of them are evil and take no shit. Skylar is worse than I am.

“I thought we were flying under the radar?” Skylar’s testing me, making sure I’m not just talking it up.

“We are, so let’s be subtle and strike only when the situation is right.”

She frowns. “I’m not good at subtle.”

“Unfortunately, neither am I, so we both have a lot to learn.”

Movement down the hall catches my eye. Carlos is hanging out around the corner, watching and listening. His face is clouded with worry, so I leave him be.

Skylar squeezes my arm. “I’ll go get us ready to land.”

Finding a smile to give to these two boys is hard right now, so I bring it up from my reserves of strength.

“Hey there,” I say, approaching the bed to sit. The mattress sinks under me, and both boys shift closer to each other. Jinzo sits next to me. “I’m Vivian, and I’m the captain of this ship. We didn’t know you were in cold sleep in that cryocontainer, so it was a bit of a shock to find you in there.”

“Ken and Carlos are combing the police records looking for any reports of young boys gone missing,” Jinzo fills in. Except I know that Carlos is right outside.

“We’re not missing,” the boy with long hair says. Both Jinzo and I pull back in surprise.

“Is that so?” I rest my chin on my hand. “Where are you going?”

The boy with the short hair pokes the long-haired one. “Shut up. You’re not supposed to tell.”

“We’re aboard their ship. How are we going to get there if we don’t tell them?”

“He has a point,” Jinzo says. “We’re your ride.”

“We were supposed to wake up there, not here.” The short-haired boy is much more skeptical.

I shrug. “Customs officials boarded us, and we had to think quickly. Do you know the name Gai Reis?”

Long-haired boy nods. “He was going to wake us and bring us to” — my body tenses, ready for the reveal — “where we’re going.”

Bummer. He’s too smart for us.

“The Vir Lyceum?”

My head whips around to Carlos, standing in the doorway.

“Yeah!” The short-haired boy’s face lights up. “Yeah, that’s where we’re going.”

Jinzo and I look at each other, and there’s no recognition in his face.

But Carlos knows. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him frown like this, and his skin is so pale and wan, he looks ready for the morgue, not hacking computers.

“Hmmm, hold up here, boys. We need to speak outside.”

I’m about to shut the door behind Jinzo and me, but I stop and point to the door panel. “If you need anything, you can open the door here. The bathroom is there.” I point to the bathroom door. “And we’ll try to find you some clothes before we bring you to Gai Reis.”

I don’t wait for their replies; I shut the door and turn to the gathered men.

Ken joins us.

“No sign of missing kids matching their descriptions on the duonet.”

“There won’t be any reports,” Carlos says, swallowing and staring at the closed door. “These boys are gone for a reason.”

“Vir Lyceum? What the hell is that?” Jinzo’s almost nonexistent temper is rising.

“It’s…” Carlos swallows a few more times. “It’s an academy for boys born with the Vir gene. A secret academy, and before you ask, I have no idea what they teach there. Any mention of it is erased from the duonet as soon as it surfaces.”

I put two and two together. “And you know about it because they wanted you.”

Carlos nods. “They offer a large sum of money to families they think will sell off their boys. It’s a good offer too. The boys leave, and they’re never heard from again. The parents don’t need to worry about getting them into a good school or supporting deadweight the rest of their lives.”

Deadweight because most women want men in their relationship network who have the possibility of fathering females. Inevitably, most Vir men end up costing their families more than they produce. Unless you’re like Carlos.

He stops to lick his lips. “By the time I was five, my parents already knew I was good with tech, and they’re too traditionalist for this stuff. We take care of our own. But they were approached. Offered twice what other families are offered. I guess I was good academy material.”

I thought coming in here to talk to these boys would answer some questions. Instead, I’m even more confused than before.

“Have you heard of this?” I ask Jinzo and Ken. “And where is Gus?” The group feels lopsided without him.

“In his room, I think,” Jinzo says, glancing down the hallway. “He scanned each of the boys and then took the results to his room to go over them.”

“I’ve never heard of this before.” Ken shakes with a chill. “It’s savage, shipping kids off to secret academies. Who the fuck would do that? And why does this place even exist?”

I groan as I run my fingers through my hair to alleviate some of the tension in my body.

“Vir boys are expendable, no?”

“Vivian,” Jinzo admonishes me, glancing at Carlos.

I wave my hands in front of me. “Just for the sake of argument. Sorry, Carlos. I don’t really believe that.” I wait until they’re all with me. “What if… what if…” I laugh and cover my mouth with my hand. “Oh God, it’s too easy. Too easy to put together.”

Carlos gasps and steps back. “You’re right. It is too easy. It must be a mistake.”

“But we only know this because of what’s in front of us.” I count the points off on my fingers. “Tomu’s datapad. The boys in cold sleep. The seeds. Your knowledge of the lyceum recruitment. No one but us could put these clues together.”

Carlos and I are on the same page. Everyone else is catching up.

“It makes us even more of a target.” It’s Carlos’s turn to groan. “We’re in more trouble than we thought.”

“What?” Ken and Jinzo shout at once.

“The Vir Lyceum is the training ground for the military’s new weapons. They’ve turned these expendable boys into some kind of superhuman fighting team. And since human gene therapy is still very illegal, this is their way of getting around it.”

Ken’s eyes widen. Jinzo’s mouth drops open.

“They create a secret, remote academy that they erase the knowledge of from the general public. They use people that others are happy to get rid of. They employ the largest company in the universe to do their R&D, a company that will happily cover everything up if it means their profits soar.” I scratch my head as I stare off into the distance down the hallway. “I bet the military is giving Athens Industries everything they need to dominate the markets.”

“The only thing standing in their way is the Duo Systems Parliament, Premier, and public outcry.” Ken is convinced. “And with the government stretched between two systems…”

“They’re easily outmaneuvered. Especially with Athens using small couriers.” Jinzo takes a deep breath and rocks back on his heels. “My mom will shit a brick when she hears about this. No doubt many of her clients have sneaked Vir boys right under her nose.”

“They could be like us, though, and have no idea what they have on board.” I turn and kick the wall, ignoring the pain it causes in my foot. “Damn it. I was a part of this, and I didn’t even know!”

“You did the right thing, opening the box,” Jinzo says, reassuring me. “Who knows what those guys were expecting.”

I nod while pressing my bottom lip between my teeth.

Carlos’s eyes are downcast, and his shoulders slumped. He looks like someone just died, or maybe he’s imagining being young and vulnerable like the boys in that room. I step to him and wrap him in a hug.

He sinks into my embrace and wraps his arms around my waist.

“What are we going to do, Captain?” Tears fill his words, so I squeeze him a little tighter.

“I don’t know yet. But I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”