60
Atlanta
“I call dibs on the pterolycos,” Sam declared. She stood in the living room of the Presidential Suite, looking out over the skyline of downtown Atlanta, the floor-to-ceiling windows affording her a bird’s eye view of the city. She imagined flying on the back of the majestic creature, its thick, silver fur clutched in her hands as they leaped off the balcony together into the sky, and the very idea of it made her smile.
“Hey! I want a pterolycos!” Kaitlyn protested.
“Sorry,” Sam said, shrugging her shoulders, as though the matter were simply out of her hands. “Too late. I called dibs.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Mackenzie said, laughing.
“What would you get, Grid?” Kaitlyn asked her.
“I’m going to wait and see what Tick-Tock ends up with, and then I’m going to get Sketch to find me something in Ammu’s book that can beat it up,” she declared.
Sam rewarded her with a wry glare, and Mackenzie laughed again. She sat, at the moment, on the couch next to Sketch, watching as his most recent composition took shape.
“Really?” Mackenzie asked him, pointing at a section he had just filled in, and he nodded silently while his pencil continued to glide across the page.
“Is that another illustration for your book, Ammu?” Daniel asked. He held his guitar idly as he sat on the floor, currently between melodies, his back propped up against the overstuffed chair Kaitlyn was sitting in.
“I do not believe so,” the man replied, smiling knowingly. “This particular work is in honor of today’s festivities, I think.”
The book that served as Ammu’s catalog of spirit creatures had been printed almost a century earlier, the most recent edition in a long, unbroken line of copies produced since the original collection. Because summoning had not been possible throughout the intervening millennia, the artwork had never been updated—only duplicated by hand and then eventually photographed for preservation. Ammu had suggested that the book would be vastly improved by modern renderings of the creatures within it, based on actual experience, and Sketch had readily agreed.
Ammu had bought him a new art pad for the purpose, and Sketch had accepted it eagerly, happy to assist with the project but also more than ready to abandon his practice of keeping two separate chronicles of his life, especially now that the ICIC had officially become a year-round program, so that he no longer had to worry about who might run across his darker visions and what they might try to do about them.
“And what sort of creature might you like to be your special companion, Sketch?” Ammu asked.
“I want a dragon,” Sketch said, his eyes never leaving his drawing.
“Isn’t that a little big for a pet?” Sam asked, but Sketch only shrugged.
Just then, the door of the suite opened, and Rush walked in with Staff Sergeant Miller close on his heels.
“I trust there were no signs of trouble?” Ammu asked.
“Not that I saw,” Miller reported. “Although it’s a zoo out there. But you’d have to ask Rush about any creepy crawlies. I’m only good at the flesh-and-blood security: muggers, kidnappers, assassins, that sort of thing.”
“Rush,” Ammu asked, grinning. “Did you witness any ‘creepy crawlies’ in the course of your perambulation?”
“Nope,” Rush replied easily. “All I found was this lousy thing.”
He grinned as he reached into a bag and pulled out an olive green T-shirt, tossing it in Sketch’s general direction. Seeing that Sketch still had his pad and pencil in his hands, Mackenzie snatched the shirt out of the air and passed it over to him.
“My T-shirt!” Sketch exclaimed happily. He held it up to examine it, turning it over so he could read both sides. On the front was the HRT Alpha logo, and on the back were the words Beta Invitational in large, stylized letters, with a litany of sponsor logos arrayed in three columns beneath it.
“Sorry about the size,” Rush said. “It’s a limited edition thing, so a men’s small was the best I could do.”
“It’s perfect!” Sketch declared, pulling it on over the top of the T-shirt he had already been wearing, blissfully ignoring the fact that his new prize hung down almost to his knees.
“Thanks for letting me do this, Ammu,” Rush said, turning to the man he had come to think of as his mentor, and his friend. “I promise I’ll only take the job as long as it won’t interfere with the ICIC. I mean, assuming I win, that is. I just want you to know the program is my number one priority.”
“So you have said many times this past week,” Ammu noted, smiling gently. “There is no need to thank me, or to reassure me for that matter. I have no doubt that you will be taking your place with everyone else when our classes begin in September—and we will be cheering for you proudly today.”
“I know you’ll win,” Sketch declared. “You’re the best. It’s your special pathway.”
“Yeah, about that…” Rush began, looking at Ammu and hesitating.
“Yes?” Ammu prompted.
“Well, I don’t think it probably matters now… at least, I hope it doesn’t… but there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you.”
“Oh?” Ammu raised his eyebrows, but there was no shadow of concern or prejudgment in his eyes, just the same intelligence, curiosity, and faith with which he had approached every new challenge they had faced together. It was something Rush and all of the Intuitives had come to count on, and what Rush loved about him most of all.
“Well, when I took the Intuition Assessment Battery, I kind of… didn’t really take it, you know, the right way.”
“How so?” Ammu asked, clearly puzzled.
“After the first few questions,” Rush admitted, “I just sort of filled in all the blanks randomly.”
“Oh my God,” Sam exclaimed, rolling her eyes in disgust. “All the rest of us get here through our genuine brainiac test scores, and of course Rush just waltzes in by sheer, dumb luck. Wouldn’t you know it?”
But Ammu was only smiling at him.
“What?” Rush demanded, clearly wishing he had waited to unveil his secret more privately.
“Surely you realize by now that I give very little credence to the idea of coincidence, especially when it comes to an occurrence of ‘luck’ as statistically unlikely as you are proposing.”
“Well, what was it then?” Rush asked.
“My dear Rush,” Ammu said, his eyes twinkling, “your unconscious mind understands patterns of thought—it is your most profound affinity, just as Daniel understands emotion, or as Kaitlyn understands the flow of energy.”
“So?” he said, still not seeing the connection.
“Ammu,” Sam scoffed, “you can’t be serious.”
“So,” Ammu continued, “I would argue that you did not need to take the test ‘the right way,’ as you say. Thanks to your particular pathway, you predicted the thought pattern of the test makers by recognizing the answers they would select. In its own way, the IAB did test your intuitive talent. You just did not know it!”
As Rush listened to Ammu’s explanation, a smile gradually dawned across his face. He had known he had a role to play at the ICIC, no matter what he had done on the day of the test, but it was nice to know that his place in the program was just as valid as anyone else’s.
“If that’s true,” he said, his eyes gleaming wickedly as he turned to look at Sam, “then in a way I’m kind of the most intuitive one here, wouldn’t you say, Ammu?”
“Oh, please,” Sam said, rolling her eyes.
“Face it,” Rush said, continuing to taunt her. “It does take two of you to kill me when we play together. So doesn’t that make me twice as intuitive as either one of you alone? I mean, just speaking mathematically, of course.”
Mackenzie snagged a pillow from the arm of the couch and tossed it at Rush’s head, but he caught it deftly while Sketch looked on, laughing.
“OK, man,” he said to Sketch. “You about done there? Better get moving if you want to come with me instead of sitting in the audience with everyone else. I have a tournament to win.”
“Yeah, just a sec—almost.” Sketch looked at the drawing on his lap, gave it a few final touches and then picked up the pad, carrying it with him and handing it to Rush. “I made it for you,” he said. “For good luck.”
“Oh yeah?” Rush said. “Thanks, buddy, that’s—”
As he spoke, he looked down at the page, and suddenly his words fell away. It was a drawing of the Intuitives, all six of them: Rush, in the middle of the page, standing in the back row as though they had been posing for a group photograph, wearing a suit of anime armor worthy of any MMORPG on the market; Grid, on his left, with a huge golden bear towering over her head; Tick-Tock, on his right, a classic smirk on her face, as what looked like a stylized array of electrons whirled around her; Daniel and Kaitlyn, each on one knee in front of the others, he with a rainbow aura of light cascading around him, and she with a spray of tiny bubbles that traced glimmering tracks on her skin before flying up into the air; and Sketch, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of Rush, looking exactly like himself, smiling broadly.
Ammu was there, too, standing to Grid’s left and slightly behind her, with the seal of Alexander the Great glowing bravely over his heart. And Christina stood on the other side, slightly behind Tick-Tock, wearing her signature business suit, paired incongruously with a pair of tall, golden boots and a matching superhero’s cape. Finally, rounding out the portrait, Sketch had included the gryphon cub, sitting on the floor to Sketch’s left, puffing its chest out proudly and wearing its battle armor, which perfectly matched Rush’s own.
Rush’s eyes pored over every inch of the image, taking them all in—the best friends he had ever had, captured forever as they were today, right now, in this perfect summer—and he had to clear his throat before he could finish his sentence.
“That’s really special, Sketch,” he said finally. “Thanks. I mean it. Thank you.”
Sketch grinned up at him, clearly pleased that he liked it.
“Take care of this for me, Ammu, OK?” Rush asked. “While we’re down on the gaming floor?”
“Always,” Ammu replied, his smile conveying a deeper meaning behind his pledge, and he took the pad carefully as Rush handed it to him for safe-keeping.
Turning to go, Rush looked around to make sure he had everything he needed. Sketch was with him, he had his backpack, and Miller looked ready to go…
“Hey!” Rush called out. “Where are you? We’re going to be late!”
At the sound of his call, the head of the gryphon cub appeared over the back of the couch, flopping over the edge to stare at him upside-down, the cub having spent the entire morning sleeping on the sofa next to Sketch.
“Let’s go, you lazy cat-bird. But you’re flying this time. I’m tired of taking the blame when people trip over your invisible butt.”
With a mild chirp of protest, the gryphon flew up into the air and hovered obediently above and just behind Rush’s head.
“Do you think you could teach me to see him someday?” Miller asked, looking up into the empty air that Rush appeared to be petting affectionately.
“Sure!” Sketch promised, and with that, the three humans and the invisible gryphon headed out of the suite together.
“That is why we are here, Staff Sergeant Miller,” Ammu said quietly, after they had shut the door behind them. “That is why we are here.”