Todd thought she was really nice, and he hadn’t stopped telling his friends about her since she’d contacted him. He truly thought he had made a friend. “Hey, did you ever watch that movie I told you about?”

  Hannah glanced up. “Oh, uh…Jumping Jack Flash? I haven’t had time yet but it’s on my list for sure.”

  “If you want, I have it downloaded. You can come watch it on Saturday,” he offered.

  She cleared her throat and gave him a flat-lipped smile. “That’s a really cool offer but I...um, I have to do some military stuff on Saturday. You know, keep up with the rat race over here.”

  Todd nodded and honestly didn’t think anything of it. Hannah was glad he didn’t push the subject. He was a cool kid and all, but she was there to get him signed in, not to become his bestie. She handled it with professionalism. It wasn’t like it was the first time it had happened. She was a young, beautiful Latino woman with crazy blue eyes and a tight uniform. The boys tended to flock to her, not to mention the fact that she was kind to them or, at least, came off that way.

  He smoothed his hair back and pulled down on his button-up. “So I’m taking all the remaining tests, right?”

  Hannah put down her stack of papers. “Yep. I’ll get you plugged in right now. It shouldn’t take you very long. Honestly, it’s not rocket science. Well, some of it is, but the rest will be a fly-by for you.”

  She led him to one of the testing rooms and hooked him up to the VR headsets they used for the placement testing. Exactly like the tests had been for decades, they were mostly multiple choice with a couple of short-answer questions thrown in.

  Todd went directly to work and answered everything with ease. He was more than glad he had actually prepared and vaguely considered the possibility that if he had done that all along, he might have achieved better grades in school. Then again, he didn’t really care about all that at the time. He’d simply wanted to download music and movies and hang out with Stephanie.

  When he had completed the testing, he removed the headset and submitted them. He meandered back to where Hannah waited for him with a Federation Navy ballcap. “The computer is calculating your scores. When they are done, I will go over the info with my CO and give you a call to set up the rest of the process.”

  He smiled broadly and stood up tall with pride. “Thank you, Hannah. I can’t wait!”

  She chuckled and showed him to the door. “Jump in one of the cars out front and they’ll take you home. And good luck on the last leg of school you have.”

  Todd walked out of the door and pulled his hat on, feeling like a new man. Hannah raised an eyebrow and closed the door before she returned to her desk. She pulled up the assessment page and leaned her head back against the chair to wait for the last score to come through. With all the technology available, she still couldn’t understand why they had such archaic shit in the recruiting offices. But then again, it didn’t really matter because unless a kid failed—which was damn near impossible—they put them wherever they wanted to anyway.

  Hannah printed out the test scores, walked to her CO’s office, and knocked on the door frame. He looked up and waved her in. “Petty Officer Santino, come in. How is the new recruit coming along?”

  She handed him the scores. “Really well, actually. He tested in the top percent for aptitude. It surprised me, I won’t lie. With his high school transcript, I didn’t expect very much.”

  Captain Cromwell scanned the paper and narrowed his eyes. “Hmm, yes. He did do well. Although this seems to be a regular thing with your recruits—the male ones anyway. I have a feeling they are trying to impress you. You might have missed your calling as a teacher. Shaping bright minds one tight skirt at a time.”

  Hannah chuckled. “No, I don’t think that would work. Besides, you know how I feel about kids. They’re great when they are ready to enlist, sir. Snot-nosed, loud, and sticky when they are under eighteen.”

  Cromwell laughed deep and low. “This is why I like you, Santino. You always say it straight but in a tone that would make me think you were a saint. Luckily for the Federation, you aren’t, and your three-year tour on the Abdunnasir in deep space showed that.”

  She put her hands behind her back and straightened. “I simply did my duty, sir. Those Dreth pirates were getting out of hand and someone needed to send them spiraling back into hell. But it was a team effort.”

  The captain smirked, his attention still on the papers. “And modest too. If all recruits were as good as you, we’d be one hell of a Federation Navy, wouldn’t we? As it is, this kid shows promise. He could be good with Naval Intelligence.”

  Hannah nodded. “Yes, sir. That was my first thought.”

  The captain flipped the page to his physical stats. He snarled slightly. “We have to work on his physical attributes a little but nothing a diet and several dozen laps around the space track with higher gravitational pull won’t fix. Get him set up. Good work.”

  She took the papers. “Oh. Also, he can feel the MU energy.”

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  >>Replay video from Wednesday, 4:33 pm, 1500 block of Church St. NW

  BURT wanted to review the footage himself, knowing that one of his hires had been severely injured and that the other guard and Stephanie were somehow able to fight off almost a dozen men. It didn’t compute for him that she would have been strong enough to do that yet in the real world. His system went through the video footage data and recreated the incident in a computational annalistic form that BURT quickly ran through his system. She fought the whole time using a mixture of magic and human emotion to fuel her skills.

  >>Query: Human capabilities without magic in Earth-based street fight.

  The computations were quick and easy and showed that even the most trained fighters would not be able to use the types of functional fighting moves she’d used in that capacity while also draining energy to use magic as well. Their average fight time would calculate to only seven minutes. She’d fought the gang members for over double that amount of time and did not need recovery afterward.

  BURT replayed the video again and located the scene at the very end with the battery. From his calculations of both pixel saturation and form of object, the battery was almost completely full. According to his numbers, it should have been at least three-quarters empty, if not totally tapped. There were also no other signs of any other batteries on her person or disposed of during the fight. This left him perplexed.

  “Could her Meligorn side be adding something?” he asked himself as he continued to run through the data over and over, using caveats such as adrenaline and dietary intake to make the number make sense.

  Despite his efforts, nothing emerged that brought any clarity. It was as if she did something with the energy conversion that he didn’t understand. He was programmed with every byte of data on Earth, and if it were new and not yet uploaded, he could easily search for it through his connection with the Net servers. But no answer came in, which meant whatever was happening had not happened before in a way noticeable to mankind.

  Stephanie whistled cheerfully as she hung her clothes up and walked to the pod. She was thankful that they were able to turn the heat up in the room. She had been freezing every time she went in and out. The pod regulated her temperature while inside, but the exit and entrance were not only awkward due to nudity but uncomfortable too.

  She climbed into the pod, pulled the door shut, and lay back on the seat. The process had become seamless, and she rarely even noticed her switch from her human perception to when her avatar awoke in the virtual world. She opened her avatar’s eyes and glanced around at a Meligorn temple of sorts—not religious in nature like the ones on Earth but more focused on the magic of the world than anything else.

  The dust puffed gently off the floor from the slide of her boots as she walked forward. The walls were all etched with a language she had never seen and in the center stood a pedestal with a small bowl on top. She approached cautiously and stared down at it. The liquid in the bowl wasn’t water but wasn’t something she recognized either. She narrowed her eyes and looked closer. Within the bowl, images played like an old movie but with people of Meligorn in the very temple in which she stood.

  “That is the Mnemonic Basin,” the voice of her Meligornian teacher, M’rick, said.

  Stephanie looked up as he came gently down the steps to the right. “And what is it for?”

  He put his arms out to the sides. “This is the Temple of Presage, located on Meligorn outside the Capital Burghal of Nastar. It is said that the temple was the first building ever to be erected and sits atop the very place that spills the magic from the core of the planet. It is thought to be the most mystical and magical place in the universe. That bowl was placed there on the day the last stone was set. No one filled it, and it filled itself with magic. Within the waves of the energy that you cannot feel with your hands, taste, or touch are the memories of every moment that has come to pass within these walls.”

  She looked back and attempted to touch the surface of the liquid. Her hand went right through as if it were a hologram. The faces that passed within the liquid changed and moved forward through time. It was fascinating, but she was still unsure of why she was there. She looked up at M’rick with a small frown.

  He cracked a smile and chuckled. “You are wondering why you are here. It is an important place for both humans and Meligorn. And right now, I want to test you on your Meligorn magic absorption.”

  Stephanie, her forehead scrunched, shrugged her shoulders. “Why?”

  M’rick smiled and led her to the open space within the Temple’s atrium. “Humor me.”

  She nodded, happy to trust his guidance. Calm and relaxed, she stood in the center of the stone floor, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply through her nose. She pulled the MU up from the ground exactly as she had done before. When she had drawn enough, she whipped it around her and allowed it to flow through her like a continuous stream connected to her very being. Her body glowed brightly as she moved her shoulders and arms to command the flow like a conductor directed the orchestra.

  M’rick watched a moment before he touched her arm to break the concentration. She opened her eyes and instead of the energy retreating immediately, it took its time to flow slowly through her and down into the ground. BURT watched the entire thing and calculated every change in her body at every moment. Not only did she pass this examination of sorts, but it was obvious she used the MU in a new way. But how?

  He queried the system as rapidly as he could and pulled resources from every place he could. In the end, it made no difference. There was no available data to extrapolate the potential issues. Nothing to compare to or contrast with. With this new form of magical and energetic control, he couldn’t help but wonder if she would once again explode. But this time, would it be in real life?

  Several men sat in a penthouse apartment smoking cigars and sipping bourbon. The place was decorated in old-world charm. Large deeply colored oriental rugs, earth-toned vases from the ashes of some of the most important ruins in history, and framed documents that held both rich historical value and magical significance. One of the men, with dark hair, deep-set eyes and a shadowed aura deepening his features, ran his finger over the edge of his rocks glass. He rolled his shoulders and the leather of his jacket made an uncomfortable creaking sound.

  He looked at the three men across from him, all of them similarly dressed and very close in looks and prominent in stature. “What do they say on the ground?”

  The man to his right—the one they called Beta P for the radioactive scars across his face and hands—sniffed and put his glass down. “The cut-out gangs were a failure.”

  The man beside him scoffed, uncrossed his legs, and tapped his cigar in the ashtray. “Like we thought they would be in the first place. They were pigs, low-level people who normally steal from the neighbor’s cookie jar. Did you expect them to be capable of taking down a human witch? It was a waste of time from the beginning and only made restrictions tighter.”

  “We had to start somewhere,” another man pointed out. “It would have been better to snatch her quietly but we now know that amateurs are not the way to solve this. She shouldn’t be that powerful, not yet. Not with the small amount of energy she carried in her pocket. But we saw that it didn’t matter how much she carried. Her powers are beyond what we fully understand.”

  Beta P rubbed his right hand abstractedly. The pain from his past radioactive injuries haunted him constantly. “Right. Well, now we know. And we need to make sure that we give her more focus with better quality outsourcing agents.”

  The main man maintained an expressionless face. “And the agents who hired the gang?”

  Beta waved his hand dismissively and picked his drink up. “They are taken care of. They won’t sing to anyone anytime soon. They knew the cost of failure and decided to use amateurs. Sadly, they paid for that mistake.”

  “What about her parents? They are the most important people to her,” the man in the middle ventured.

  The leader licked his lips and puffed at his cigar. “I think that at this time, with her powers unknown, we should leave the parents as a last resort. That kind of rage could create a backlash we aren’t ready to handle. Besides, we would prefer to talk to her and foster her support for us and the cause. I don’t think kidnapping the people she loves the most will put her in the mood to discuss anything other than our deaths.”

  They all could agree that they wanted her for more than simply her magic, her clout, her persuasion, and her intellect. They couldn’t ever expect her to trust anything they said if they harmed the people she loved. It was not the way they usually handled business, but for her, they would agree on a softer form of advancement.

  He smacked his mouth and the smoke billowed around the room. “So it’s decided.We will work with more qualified agents to bring this girl in. Beta, I can assume you will get on top of this.”

  The man nodded. “Yes. I will make some calls as soon as we leave here.”

  The leader smashed his cigar down into his ashtray and set it on the table. He grunted slightly as he stood and walked to the balcony doors. With a sigh, he cracked them and watched absently as the smoke flooded out of the condo. That done, he walked to the bar, grabbed a napkin, and picked several olives up before he rested on a stool.

  The other men waited for him to speak, knowing he had the agenda in his mind. He put an olive in his mouth and chewed. “What about the ambassador? I’ve seen nothing to suggest that he is on our priority list.”

  Beta glanced at the others, who seemed to like to stay quiet unless they thought they might be in line for recognition. “I have watched him in recent days in an effort to keep up with the girl and him, and I believe that we should ramp up our efforts when it comes to…clearing his voice.”

  The leader’s gaze studied Beta as he popped another olive in his mouth. “Why is that?”

  The man pursed his lips and considered his answer for a moment. “He, in my opinion, has too much success and influence in the Federation work at the moment. It is becoming a liability that I’m not sure we need or want right now. There is a plan—a bigger one than any of these small things—but he has the ability to influence and change the course of Federation focus. Which you know, of course, is far from the direction in which we hope to go.”

  Although he grumbled under his breath, the leader nodded his head as he wiped his fingers. “Yes. I’ve seen the amount of travel and the new agreements put forward between nations recently. It definitely has the potential to dampen our efforts. We all should know what the most important part here is that we need to watch—continually watch—the Federation’s efforts with the Dreth pirates. The harsher they seem, the more their ships will be pointed at the Dreth’s throats. The more they chase them off into deep space, the less their focus will look behind or to the side. We have known for a long time that the Federation works with blinders on. They assume that they can somehow protect themselves from all angles of space. This is absurd, of course.”

  The three men nodded. “Of course. Absurd.”

  He walked back to his chair and sat. “It is vital that we keep the pirates as the focal point for the Federation, NorAm, and everyone else, for that matter. Anyone who could spook the Federation should be contained. Their heads need to be forcefully turned toward the Dreth pirate ships. We do not want anyone—the Federation, Dreth, or Meligorn—to see what is going on behind the scenes until it is so far gone that there will be nothing they can do to stop it.”

  Beta mumbled and flexed his fist. “And the ambassador is one of those beings who could quickly throw this whole thing off course. With his voice in the public and political arena, as well as the well documented Meligorn intelligence, he is probably the most dangerous individual to us in the whole universe. God knows the Dreth and their tiny pea brains are no threat. They can barely get full sentences out or ships off the surface, much less figure things out.”

  The leader chuckled and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “True, Beta, and your passion shows your true heart in this matter. So we need to get close to the ambassador. What are your suggestions for this? And you two need to start putting your brains to use. I am not here simply to make you feel important.”