Unknown 9 by Layton Green (each kindness read aloud txt) 📕

knew, was a mystical diagram in Eastern religions used as an aid in meditation. Yantras typically consisted of geometric shapes and colors arranged within a symmetrical pattern. As far as she had time to tell, the text contained a basic description of yantras and nothing more.

As Andie raised the Star Phone, the guard burst through the revolving door. “You must go! The museum is now closed!”

“You said we could stay until we’re finished,” Andie said.

“There is no time. I’m sorry.”

“C’mon,” Cal said to Andie, starting for the door. “We can come back another time.”

“No, we can’t.” She turned her back on both of them and aimed the Star Phone at the page. Nothing happened.

Dammit.

“I urge you,” the guard said, “to exit the building with the utmost haste.” He hesitated, as if debating whether to keep up the charade, then said, “You’re in grave danger if you stay.”

“Don’t risk it,” Cal said, his hand on the door.

“This has to be it,” Andie said, continuing to scan the page. The guard touched her elbow, and she shook him off. She knew she was being reckless, but if the Ascendants were here, she would never get another chance at this.

As the guard ordered them to leave again, Andie pointed the Star Phone right at the word Yantra written in elaborate script at the top of the page—and then her world began to spin.

Andie gasped. “It’s happening.”

The guard was speaking again, but she blocked out the noise and focused on the image revealed by staring through the augmented reality lens of the device: a floating representation of a square-shaped yantra outlined in black. Attached to the outer surface of all four sides of the yantra was a protruding T with a short stem, giving the square the appearance of having little feet. Inside the square was a red circle made of interlocking shapes that resembled puffy sultan hats, and inside the circle was a series of triangles nested within one another, all of them pointing downward, and again alternating between red and black. In the very center of the yantra, hovering within the triangle, was a single red dot.

“We have to go,” Cal said. “Now!”

She shoved the Star Phone in her pocket. “Got it.”

The guard herded them through the revolving door and pointed down the street to his left. “Run! Get out of sight as quickly as possible!”

Andie and Cal took off at a dead sprint in the direction the guard had pointed, wondering what in the hell was going down, aiming for a handsome commercial district lined with jacarandas. Just before they fled into the first building they came to, a supermarket right off the street, Andie looked over her shoulder and saw three black SUVs whipping into the drive leading to the science institute.

As far as she could tell, no one had spotted them.

But she couldn’t be sure.

“You see those SUVs?” she asked Cal.

His face was pale when he turned. “I think we can safely assume they’ll find out we were in that museum.”

Andie pulled him inside the market. “There’s got to be a back exit.”

Together they raced through aisles filled with exotic fruits and vegetables, drawing stares from the other shoppers and almost tripping over a stack of crates. As they burst into the employee area at the rear of the store, someone shouted at them, but they kept running, shoving open an emergency exit, which, thankfully, did not sound an alarm.

They emerged in a tight, garbage-strewn alley that smelled of cat urine. Cal looked both ways before heading for a brick side street filled with pedestrians holding purses and shopping bags.

Andie ran beside him as they navigated the crowd, pumping her arms and checking to make sure the Star Phone was secure. Despite the panic clawing at her throat, she felt a perverse satisfaction in knowing that, even if the Ascendants were on their trail and hunting them in Kolkata, they had no way to access the image of the yantra Andie had just seen.

Those bastards didn’t know where to go next.

Shanghai   10   

Jianyu had been summoned to his sister’s office—her shrine, as she preferred to call it—on the top floor of a building connected by a skywalk to the repurposed abattoir. Though the concrete eyesore appeared derelict from the outside, the twins’ living quarters possessed excellent views of the city, and were outfitted with the most modern conveniences available—and some not so available. The Ascendants owned the entire semi-abandoned block. They used the nightclub and the loose hacker collectives in the surrounding buildings as both tech incubator and recruiting tool, a place to nurture disaffected geniuses.

When Jianyu entered the room, he stood silently as his sister’s fingers flew across the keyboard hologram floating above her tri-level stainless steel desk. All of her equipment—the keyboard, speakers, her custom laptop with a carbon fiber chassis, and the trio of monitors mounted on the desk—was synced to her bio-bracelet.

Daiyu’s chair had a curved, elongated back that hovered above her like a praying mantis. It was an ideal fit for her hunched posture, an extension of the disorder that marred her otherwise beautiful form. Though his sister never gave voice to her pain, Jianyu knew how much she suffered. He could read her body language as clearly as the map of stars in the sky. Their nonbiological father had once told her she should accept her appearance with grace, because nature did not make mistakes. It might produce deviations from the norm, or adaptations, or even strange anomalies—but not mistakes.

Daiyu had suffered in a myriad of ways under their non-bio father, but Jianyu had been present during that particular conversation and had seen the light go out of her eyes.

She spun in her chair to face her brother, dispelling the keyboard hologram. “They’re in Kolkata.”

Jianyu tensed, knowing her statement meant he would be deployed. “You’re sure?”

“I’ve already made a report,” she said quietly.

He could tell she was burdened by his imminent departure. “You suspected