Pittacus Lore - The Search for Sam

Finally, I feel myself getting into a groove. In the next hourly ranking, I’ve climbed two positions. In the one after that, I’m position thirteen out of twenty.

“Luck.” Serkova sniffs.

I glare at him. I know I’m not here to compete with this jerk, but I can’t help it: wanting to knock him down a peg drives me on. By late afternoon, I’ve climbed up to position eleven.

I figure I’ve bought myself enough of a cushion to give myself five minutes of snoop time. I quickly page away from the hyperlinks and try to access the hub’s central servers.

But doing research with a ticking clock hanging over my head proves disastrous. I enter in searches for phrases like “mind transfer,” “Dr. Anu,” and “Dr. Zakos,” but they all lead me to restricted areas on the server, and I don’t have time to hack into them. I try to be more general. Remembering what Arsis said about humans in the lab, I do a search for “human captives.” Instead of directing me to anything about Anu or Zakos’s research subjects, I’m led to some internal, hub-wide memo about a broad new policy regarding human captives. “Whenever possible, humans suspected of aiding and abetting the Garde shall henceforth be held at the government base in Dulce, New Mexico.”

A government base? Why would the U.S. government have anything to do with the Mogadorians?

I put it aside for now. It’s an interesting—and unsettling—tidbit, but it’s not going to help me save One. Before I even have a chance to enter a new search, my five minutes is up.

I turn back to my work. Predictably, that short diversion cost me, and my hourly rank plummets. Regretfully, I accept that I can’t afford any more “independent research” today.

We finish at seven p.m., replaced by the night shift, who we’ll relieve at seven tomorrow morning. My body aches from remaining hunched and sedentary, and my eyes feel like they’ve been blasted with sand. I’ve finished the day back in the middle, at position eleven.

“Not bad,” admits Serkova, getting up from his chair. “But hardly what you promised the General.”

He’s right. Landing right in the middle of a group of twenty can hardly qualify me as a master tracker. I can only hope my ranking is enough to let me live another day.

I walk the tunnel alone, heading back to the hub.

I’m too tired to even consider sneaking off and snooping around the other tunnels: I’d definitely blow my cover.

“Arsis, you flaming moron!”

Arsis! The idiot assistant technician in the labs . Advancing my secret agenda was the last thing on my mind until I heard that name.

“Sorry, Doctor.”

I round the corner to see an open doorway leading into one of the laboratories. Inside the gleaming white lab, an incredibly tall and spindly doctor has a young guard backed up against a wall, prodding him with an angry index finger.

“These samples were supposed to be refrigerated at subzero temperatures. You put them in the regular freezer.”

“Sorry, sir.” The boy is docile, subservient, nothing like the sullen brat I’d imagined from his IM transcripts.

The doctor commands him sternly. “Revial the samples from our remaining cultures, and get it right this time. You asked to be trusted with more important work; now show that you can do it properly.”

“Yes, Doctor.” Arsis scrambles off to redo his work.

I stand gaping at Dr. Zakos, at his massive laboratory. This is the man who might be able to save my only friend.

He catches me looking.

Shit .

He glares at me. I either have to turn around and walk away, or think of something fast.

“Doctor Zakos?” I say, deciding to wing it.

“Yes?” He looks puzzled.

I step forward into the lab.

“I’m Adamus Sutekh. Son of General Sutekh.”

He looks at me, evidently suspicious.

“I wanted to meet you,” I go on, “because my father has spoken so highly of your work.”

My ruse pays off: I watch Dr. Zakos flush with pride. Even Mogadorians have their vanity. An exploitable weakness.

“I’m glad the General is satisfied,” says the doctor, giving a little involuntary bow.

“I was actually a subject in your predecessor’s experiments,” I continue. “The work he did with the first fallen member of the Garde … the memory transfer …”

“Ah, of course.” He shakes his head. “Dr. Anu’s work was a deplorable failure. I’m certain the mind-transfer technology I have been developing since is much improved, if I could ever get clearance to actually use it.”

I’m confused. Zakos keeps talking, looking at me with much more interest now. I struggle to maintain a neutral expression. “You’re saying the procedure could be done more successfully now?”

He nods. “That’s my theory.”

“How is that possible? I thought the procedure needed to be done soon after a subject’s death.”

He cocks his head curiously and ignores my question. “Where have you been since the experiment?”

“In Africa,” I tell him. I don’t want to get into too much detail about my activities since I was last with the Mogadorians. But the doctor seems to accept my answer without question.

“And did you suffer any … side effects due to the procedure you underwent?”

I’m tempted to be sarcastic. Only that little coma . But I hold back. “Nothing other than those that you already know about.”

The wheels seem to be turning in his head as he looks me up and down.

“It’s a possibility,” he muses, almost as if to himself. “The neural pathways of the Garde have been dormant far too long to attempt the transfer again with a new host. But with the original subject, from the original experiment—”

I can’t help interjecting. “What are you talking about? What Garde? You can’t mean her .”

Dr. Zakos just grins and struts over to the laboratory’s wall, which is covered with ten or so off-white square tiles. He places his hand over a small steel control panel next to the wall and performs an elegant sequence of hand gestures across the panel’s surface. With a sudden and jarring hydraulic whoosh, one of the tiles slides out of the wall, opening like a drawer, spewing cryogenic vapors.

It’s like a mortuary slab.

He stares down proudly at what’s lying on it.

“Have a look,” he says.

I step deeper into the lab, peering over the edge of the tile.

“Perfectly preserved.”

I can’t believe my eyes. She doesn’t even look dead: she looks like she’s sleeping.

My best friend in the world.

One.

CHAPTER 8

One keeps me up half the night, bombarding me with questions I can’t answer: about Doctor Zakos’s experiments, about what he meant when he said he could successfully download the entirety of One’s memories, about what it meant that her body had been so thoroughly well preserved.

“Well, you’re still dead,” I say.

“Uh? A little tact, please,” she says, laughing.

I’m in bed. She’s sitting on the floor in the corner of my bedroom.

“Sorry,” I say. I’m a bit rattled. Seeing her in the flesh like that, a corpse on a cold steel slab, has upset me more than I’d like her to know. She’s been my constant companion for years now, but the sight of her body brought home to me how tenuous her current existence is.

“Did you notice?” asks One, jumping right back into her excited speculation. “There were at least ten tiles on that wall. Remember what that Arsis kid said in those chats? About humans being dredged for intel? You think they’re being kept preserved on those slabs too?”

I marvel at One’s mind. She wasn’t even present until I finished reading Arsis’s IM transcripts, and she was definitely gone when I was in Zakos’s lab.