Keaton Plasse
Keaton looked up from her flashcards again. “And, Cara, no multiple choice?”
“No, Keaton. Now keep studying,” Cara’s voice said, light with amusement.
Pulling a face, Keaton turned back to her flashcards. Caissons, piles, properties of soil behavior—what did any of it matter? Even if she managed to get back to Earth, even if Cara’s bachelors and masters programs technically counted back in the states, and even if Cara could whip up an online version of the necessary examinations and simulate an internship for Keaton, no one would hire a parahuman as an architect. Best-case scenario, the government found a job for her helping people; worst-case scenario, she was shelved away to decode documents or interrogate people. Going along with Cara’s curriculum was a farce Keaton was forced to suffer through for the sake of seeming normal. To anyone who cared to look, she’d been attending all her classes, completing all her assignments and scoring well on her quizzes. That her tests were going to be short answer was a slight but mediated hindrance courtesy of Cara after the AI saw Keaton’s aptitude for multiple choice exams firsthand, but Keaton wasn’t gunning for high grades here. Graduate school was as useless to her now as the material before her. Even the most useful class, her power-focused class, was limited in its usefulness. Though the exercises the instructor came up with her every week were interesting and oftentimes revealing in terms of her power, highlighting its edges, limits, and strengths, every revelation came with a moment of dread as the instructor made note of them. Slowly, Keaton was exposing her power to the staff, sharing her weaknesses and answering questions the scientists back on Earth had been unable to answer. She’d considered failing a few exercises on purpose to throw the instructor off, but Keaton knew about as much about her powers as the staff did. Her attempts at deception could just as easily reveal something else about her and her powers, and the last thing she needed was for her to land doubt from the staff because she wasn’t practicing properly.
What she looked forward to, then, was chatting, and by ‘chatting’ Keaton meant ‘chatting up strangers to figure out what shady going-ons The Promise had been trying to cover up before she boarded.’ The whole debacle with Salamandra had shaken her up pretty good, and besides confirming that Keaton was probably going to die here on this ship, it confirmed that the ship was undoubtedly made for some purpose other than rehabilitating parahumans. What that other purpose was, Keaton was going to find out, having jumped at Lynn’s offer to collaborate and share information they uncovered. Talking to people had always been one of her strong points, and striking up conversations with random people at the grocery or bookstore was as easy as walking up to them and recycling some mundane conversation-starter. From there, a discussion on what movies were on at the moment would transition to how life usually was on The Promise, once Keaton mentioned that she was new and was having a little trouble settling in. She’d never been around so many parahumans, barely even known about her powers or wasn’t too confident about them like others. Then it was onto the whole prison escape, how scary it was, how Keaton was constantly afraid it would happen again. When they reassured her it wouldn’t, that it was a unique occurrence that had never happened before, Keaton would sigh in relief, noting how good that was to hear after she’d been told by an acquaintance that strange things had happened in the past too. Further reassurance would prompt her to ask whether strange things had actually happened, what they were and how they were resolved. And, after milking her naive front for all it was worth, she’d transition the conversation onto some other mundane topic before citing the need to run and meet a friend, waving and thanking them for their company as she left.
While the general sequence varied depending on the wariness of the person she was talking to, a little attentiveness and a few reassuring smiles went a long way when getting someone to open up, and she made sure to give each of her excursions a reason, be it something as simple as a caffeine drop or something as convoluted as getting lost on her way to a new restaurant she’d been ‘meaning to try.’ Her levels of wariness were approaching Lynn’s, she figured, but there were certainly worse places than The Promise to be paranoid. Aside from the cameras at every corner, there was Cara, an AI that had the potential to be near-omniscient on the ship. The staff could be watching her every movement, listening to her every word, and Keaton would never know. So, instead of knowing, she assumed: The staff was watching her, the ship had secrets to uncover, and she probably wasn’t getting out of here alive.
Assuming that she wasn’t getting out was for her own benefit. It took the burden off her shoulders in terms of self-preservation since self-preservation was telling her feigned ignorance was the key, and it made lying to her dad that much easier. If she wasn’t going to leave the ship, wasn’t ever going to see her father again, there was nothing wrong with letting him believe she was having a blast out in space. She put off calls, citing a busy class schedule and numerous social calls by new friends, inventing new roles for Archie the jock and Lynn the brainiac. Manning the bookstore desk took up the rest of her time, she said, because her powers could help connect people to exactly what they were looking for. She was a matchmaker for bookworms, and she loved it, she’d say, even if she spent most of her shifts filching information from the few people that stopped by. This way, her father was happy. Keaton knew that for a fact—just as she knew that he was still worried about her, knew that he still hadn’t moved anything in her room, knew that he was counting on her to return and inherit the ‘family business’ that was no more than a phone number, some connections, and some slick-talking.
An alarm went off on her phone, and she stood, stretching.
“Well, that’s enough studying for today. See you later, Cara,” she said, grabbing her bag and heading for the door.
“See you, Keaton,” the AI’s voice replied, echoing out from her phone, speakers, laptop, television, and everything else capable of producing sound. The worst part was that Keaton actually found her voice relaxing, if she didn’t think too hard about it, but that was only when Cara was talking.
Keaton & Lynn
With her papers in the canvas bag slung around her shoulder, Keaton walked towards the bench that was today’s meeting spot. As usual, Lynn was there already. It came with her jumpy nature, but Keaton was beginning to think she had it right. The Promise could do with a few more paranoid souls, and Keaton herself was well on her way to joining them.
“Lynn,” she said when she was close enough, waving as the girl looked up.
Lynn glanced up mid-bite, flipping the page of her notepad over with the other hand. Denim. Lynn, almost unconsciously, looked her over for a wire or something similar, but Lynn was less concerned than she may have been elsewhere.
If they wanted information out of us, they would just bring us in, and they’d kill her all the same if they found out she had a part in it. Maybe. Lynn swallowed and let her gaze rest on the older girl for a moment. Lynn figured, of everyone, Keaton probably had the best shot of making things out okay. She was smart - smarter than Lynn, which rankled her to admit - and unassuming.
“Denim,” Lynn said back. She extended the tray of leftovers, a gesture that took even Lynn by surprise. It had been a while since she’d shared food with anyone.
The outstretched tray took Keaton aback, but she recovered quickly, taking a piece of chicken with a smile. “Thanks,” she said, taking a seat at the bench. With her other hand, she pulled her notes out of her bag. “Down to business then? Maybe we can join Archie and Natalie at the mall after.”
Lynn scowled, chewing on her lip for a moment. Something about the phrasing struck her. Archie AND Natalie. It reminded her, though, of something more important. “Shit,” Lynn muttered, pulling her brick of a phone out and turning it off. “You should do the same.” Lynn rubbed at her chin, waiting for Keaton to turn hers off. There was, of course, the added benefit of no more texts for another minute. “I doubt they’ll care about probable cause or any shit, but it’s better than nothing.” Lynn pulled her bag closer and drew her notes, messy and crudely scratched onto the page, a sharp contrast from Keaton’s ordered points “Find anything?”
Keaton nodded, turning off her phone as well. Cara had done enough listening for the day. “Not much about The Promise’s past, unfortunately,” she said as she slid her phone back into her bag. “The staff have been covering up though. I found another person who knew someone who’d committed suicide despite having made prior plans. Parahuman suicides are more common, but this ship isn’t doing a great job at preventing them.”
Lynn’s face flickered to a reaction of genuine sadness. She’d known a fair few who’d twitched at the end of their bedsheets. She thought her hatred for the snakes that ran this ship couldn’t keep growing, but it did. “Surprised that doesn’t hurt their precious numbers,” Lynn said. “Guess the cover-up. And now they throw us a damn prom.” Lynn looked over her notes, glancing around at their surroundings.
“The timing of the festival is definitely intentional, but it’s working. And, you know how social media is censored on the ship? Well, I was thinking—what if it’s to cover up for people that go missing? Well, not missing, but some people get sent back to Earth, right, but then no one ever hears from them again. No headlines, no news. Either it’s all censored, or they’re not getting sent back to Earth,” Keaton said, shrugging. “No confirmation on this, though. People like believing their friends got back safe. Just got a hunch.”
Lynn shook her head. “You and your damn hunches. You’re right. My - “ she paused, hesitating for a moment.
Already told her this much. Not like she wouldn’t have figured out you were an orphan. “I contacted my case worker before we went to Gennedy for our friendly lock-up chat. Told them in code things weren’t right up here. She emailed back and hadn’t heard anything. So no cavalry from back on Earth. Surprise.” Lynn shook her head again, anger at more than just the Promise bleeding out into her expression. “Still, these fuckers are definitely, like, suppressing the news. How many people must have died - “
four people vaporized - “ and...and we don’t hear anything. And they don’t either. They’ve got communications on lock, for sure. I bet it’s Ca - “ Lynn stopped herself. “The machine woman.” She corrected, not wanting to say her name. Even dead cell phones might be listening, Lynn reckoned.
“The ‘machine woman’ is definitely listening and censoring. The other day I was looking up social media sites, but none of my searches were showed up in my browsing history when I checked it. Hunch says it’s Cara, but I don’t know why. Best guess is more censoring, so I won’t be doing that again,” Keaton said, nibbling at the chicken.
“Worth a shot,” Lynn said. “That checks, though. I was talking with Alberto - dude I work with - and he said something interesting. Said a while back one of his friends had a heart attack or something here, right? And that he was talking with his buddy’s family back on Earth. They put the buddy’s body in a casket here, but the family had a cremation or whatever back home. No body. No service.” Lynn flipped through her notes. “Then I get to thinking - there’s gotta be a lot of bodies from the breakout, right? Where the hell did they all go?” Lynn looked down at her notes, where she’d jotted down some ideas, but none of them seemed plausible to her now, sitting next to Keaton. “More cover-ups. Just keeps going on. Tired of this North Korea bullshit.”
“There’s something going on for sure. They wanted Salamandra up here, alive, for a reason,” Keaton said, shaking her head.
Lynn’s pen dug down into her notepad, her face paling for a moment, despite everything, despite all the blank expressions she’d kept locked on her face in juvy or after getting an ass-beating. “Yeah,” she muttered, as neutrally as possible.
Hold your shit together, damn you, Lynn cursed herself.
Keaton blanched a little as she realized her mistake, and she rushed onto her next point. “I’m still calling parahuman studies, no hunches. Completely unethical and morally abhorrent on Earth, but in space, away from the public? No such problem.”
“You’re spot fucking on,” Lynn said, her voice a whisper. She was shaking a bit, her hair bound back in a ponytail flickering to a deep red. She reached into the bag and stopped, looking around one more time, before drawing out the doll and handing it to Keaton. “Look at the leg. The tag. It’s the same as...” she said, her voice trailing off.
The same as juvy’s. she wanted to say. There was a tag around the leg, a tag that read CONFISCATED PROPERTY: INMATE A3065, ITEM #3. “I found this in the woods. The breakout. No kids under ten on the Promise? Bull - fucking - shit.” Lynn’s eyes started to glow and she turned away for a minute, taking a breath.
Mugs. Warm the water. Not the mug. “I...c’mon. You gotta be like, five, six years old to play with that.” Lynn chewed on her hand for a moment, gathering her thoughts. “My money says they’ve got kids, somewhere. Kids without lawyers. Or parents. And they're ...” Lynn stopped talking. Keaton didn’t need her to finish.
Keaton stared at the doll for a moment. That was pretty definitive. Children, on The Promise—for what? Government gain? For money, science, or just the sake of holding bartering chips for the battlefield?
“The Promise has been around for roughly seven years, so that checks out.” Her eyes dropped to her notes. “Are the parahumans being sent here a cover-up for their real operations, then? Distract the public, distract us. Then get rid of us when we learn too much. Gennedy’s a bloodhound around these parts, if I even need to tell you. The older boarders never give me straight answers because of him. If he learned they even knew someone who knew something he’ll bring them in, apparently.”
A flash of panic took Lynn. She put the doll back in her bag, thinking. Lynn glanced back at Keaton, sizing her up again.
She looks almost like Lucy, Lynn thought, for one brief, bizarre moment. It was entirely true, but it was a feeling Lynn could not shake.
It’s not the way she looks, it’s...she carries herself, or whatever. Keaton was halfway to being an architect from what she’d told Lynn.
She could build skyscrapers if she got back to Earth, Lynn thought.
I...I could burn them down. “Keaton,” Lynn said. “You...you gotta be careful with that shit. Who are you asking? They’ll get you, man. They…” she paused. “Let me ask that kind of shit. They expect that from me. Not you. If…” Lynn stopped again. “I don’t know what’s taking so long, but Archie keeps fucking flipping when I’m around. First that skater dipshit drops from the sky and assaults him, and then - “ Salamandra’s name caught in her throat. “ - the restaurant. I...look, just, fuck, I’m kinda hard to miss.” she glanced up at her hair, now golden. “If one of us gets caught it’ll be me. That means it’s...it’s on you. If someone’s going to break this open. Help the kids.” Lynn turned back away. “Just...I don’t know. I don’t think there’s anyone here who won’t sell your ass out if Gennedy holds them to the fire. But that asshole can’t burn me.”
Keaton paused. The possibility had crossed her mind, but she’d been careful. Somewhat. It was, unfortunately, hard to be careful before you even knew what to be careful of, but after she’d caught word about Gennedy, she’d done her best. Could someone rat on her? Absolutely. But hopefully she’d come across innocuous enough not to prompt someone to turn her in.
“I won’t say that there aren’t a few people out there who could turn me in to Gennedy, but no fixing that. Most of the time I just slip my questions into conversation, and I mention that I’m new,” she said.
Damnit. Lynn had to admit that was clever. Smarter than she would’ve thought of.
Maybe she should be asking the questions, Lynn thought.
I’d just pick the one who looked like they’d snitch first and start hounding them. Works about everywhere else. “I…” Lynn frowned. Keaton didn’t get it. She remembered why she hadn’t trusted her to begin with, but there was no denying Keaton was willing to put her ass on the line to stop all this, and she wasn’t naive about what was going on, despite what she was. There was a family, and architect jobs, and a husband, and a white picket fence for her one ten minute shuttle ride away. “You’ve got folks and stuff back home,” Lynn said, fumbling for a cigarette. “I mean, like, if nobody ever comes home, even the dumbest motherfucker back on Earth has questions. They want the ones like you. You don’t turn into a t rex when it’s your time of the month or have ‘Nam flashbacks every time you punch through somebody’s chest. Just watch out. You’ve got a shot of going home.” Lynn snorted. “For the smartest motherfucker on this ship, I bet you can play dumb like a fox. I bet Gennedy didn’t suspect a thing.”
Keaton stared at Lynn for a moment. A shot at going home? She’d been avoiding that thought, avoiding getting her hopes up over something nigh unattainable. She’d come on the ship thinking she’d be home within a few years, max, but now, after seeing the body that’d washed up, after seeing Salamandra and the number of inmates that had escaped and vanished by the next day? If she was lucky, they’d have someone around to wipe her memory, if they even thought sending her back was worth the trouble.
“I don’t think they care about any of us that much. We’re all disposable, at this point. They could just tell my dad that I’m staying aboard the ship as a teacher. Or something—he’d believe it. He’d want to.” She rubbed the edge of her thumb, then sighed, looking up at Lynn again. “Thanks, though, but I don’t think I’d be clean enough at this point. You dig up anything else?”
Lynn said nothing for a moment. The idea that Keaton had a father, but...she believed it, she supposed, after all the piece of shit dads she’d known. Her own included, wherever he was. But still. Hadn’t expected it. “Nothing else right now. At least we know for sure something’s going on here.” Lynn closed her notepad and tucked it into her pocket. “And Gennedy will fucking pay for it before the end of all this.”
“For all we know, he’s just the face of the operation—the hound the higher-ups set on us to keep us afraid,” Keaton said, cleaning up her papers as well. “He’s definitely not the brains behind this all, that’s for sure.”
Lynn’s cigarette was already halfway burned through. “Hound fits. He’s a bitch. He - “ Lynn blinked, remembering. “He is dumb, you’re right. I forgot, fuck, I can’t believe I forgot. In the interrogation room - there...there was someone else, I think.” Lynn racked her brain, remembering. “Yeah, yeah, he said
we had questions, but like, he corrected himself once or twice, like he was trying not to say it. Said they didn’t have cameras in the woods, either. I dunno. Doesn’t help, I guess, but...yeah.” Lynn knew it, now, though she didn’t have the words to prove it to Keaton. Something in Gennedy’s voice had tipped his hand. “Just one more mystery to figure the fuck out,” she said, standing up and slinging her duct-taped bag over her shoulder.
“A telepath?” Keaton asked, frowning. Nullifiers were a must, but they weren’t the only power that could be put to use for the staff. Believing that the staff wasn’t employing other powers was like believing the staff was going to keep their students safe: it was too good to be true.
“No, no,” Lynn muttered, clenching the cig in her teeth as she swung the other strap on. “It was just me and him in there. Someone invisible. I - “ she snorted. “Shit, I know it...I don’t have any proof or whatever, but I’ve been in a lot of shakedowns, you know? Either they say we the whole time, trying to make you think the whole precinct is watching through the glass, or they say I, like it’s just you and your new best friend across the table. Gennedy was flip-flopping. It was weird. And nobody with the brains to keep it straight would’ve let slip they’ve got no cameras in the woods.”
“Someone invisible,” Keaton repeated, staring at Lynn. That—that was a whole lot more useful than telepathy. “I—let’s meet in a cafe next time. Spill some sugar on the floor around us. Or bring flour.”
Lynn wanted to kick herself for not thinking of this before. She scanned around them, seeing nothing, of course. “Yeah. Damn. Should’ve….should’ve remembered. Stupid.” She crushed up what was rest of the cigarette in her hand and the ash fell into the breeze. “Invisible burns like everyone else. Woods work too. There’s stuff out there they’re not onto yet. They can’t have eyes everywhere. Not all the time.” A week at a time. Lynn didn’t think about the endgame for this - she never had, not in all her years. Just another week to take care of. “Let’s get out of here before invisible fuckers or human supremacist cops show up.”
“Agreed,” Keaton said, standing and reaching for her phone. “You still up for the mall? We shouldn’t be too late if we head over now, and that Thai place is having a buy-one-get-one deal today, so if you’re still up for food.”
Lynn shifted back and forth for a moment. She had no desire to really talk to anyone at the present moment, particularly given that she had not had much of a face-to-face with either Archie or Natalie, and was not looking forward to whatever therapy bullshit they wanted to put her through as a result. Still, Lynn didn’t like the idea of Keaton walking back on her own - especially if whatever invisible fucker was lurking around. It didn’t bother Lynn much, because, rightly or wrongly, Lynn doubted he could take her in one hit, but Keaton was a different story. Beneath that, Lynn was already hungry again.
And that damn lizard has taken out half my clothes Lynn remembered, irritated. She’d mostly been wearing her work clothes, but she had to admit she needed more.
Christ above I cannot believe I am about to go to a shopping mall with these people. . “Yeah. I’ll swing by. May bounce after the food though. Probably not smart for us to hang around too much.”
“Acting normal is part of the disguise, you know,” Keaton said, grinning. “Let’s go.”
Lynn smirked. “Yeah. Normal. That’s what I go for. Lead the way, Denim.”
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