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

“I not only suspected,” she said without pride or conceit, “I deduced the correct location. It’s impossible to be sure without the device, but the symbology fits, and I know from video feed that our operatives arrived less than a minute after the targets departed.”

“Where were they?”

“The Kolkata Science Institute. It’s a front for the LYS—another marker.”

“How do you know for sure?”

“There were artifacts inside.”

Jianyu whistled. “Why did we not know about it?”

Her long fingers tapped against the back of her open laptop like spidery appendages. “Maybe some of us did.”

“Don’t be so cynical. We’re young. Our status will change after this mission.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps we will not live to see it through.”

“Have faith, Daiyu.”

His sister’s return smile was melancholic. “How ironic that you are now asking me to believe, my brother. Were your doubts erased so quickly in the library?”

“Is that not the way belief works? Can it ever be a gradual thing?”

She answered in a near whisper, her eyes flicking past him as if searching for a golden mask. “There was never a time when I did not believe. So I do not know.”

Ever since the face-to-face meeting with the Archon, Daiyu had grown more withdrawn than usual. Whenever he’d tried to discuss the astonishing illusion—or whatever it had been—of the figures swarming the library stairs and those strange ziggurats, his sister had rebuffed his attempts.

As for Jianyu, while he may not have been superstitious like his twin—in fact, he considered himself a creature of pure rational thought—he very much believed in the awesome, unexplained powers of science and the mind. He was more convinced than ever their mysterious leader had access to better technology and mental hacks than the rest of the Ascendants.

“Give me specifics,” he said. “It might help me understand their methodology.”

“Once I realized the science institute might be the location, I informed the team, and they sent operatives to the site. It was quite difficult to hack the security cameras—another clue about who it belongs to.”

“Difficult, but you were better.”

She gave a curt nod, then waved a hand over the bio-bracelet. The keyboard hologram reappeared. After typing in a command, she pulled up the recorded video of Andromeda Robertson and Calvin Miller on the central monitor. Using the bio-bracelet as a remote control, she issued voice commands and waved her forearm back and forth in sinuous motions to play the footage, pausing and enlarging the images as her brother requested.

“As soon as I took control of the system,” Daiyu said, “I blocked them from terminating the feed. They knew we were watching and sounded the alarm. The targets evacuated just in time. As you can see, they were examining a book in the foyer that made a miraculous disappearance before our team entered the building.”

“Did they engage?”

“The institute was too well fortified for a public disturbance.”

Jianyu waved a hand. “Fine. We know where they are. It should be easy to track them, no?”

“You’ve never been to Kolkata—it’s hardly Shanghai. Very little of the city is under CCTV. Our network has been alerted, but it will be an uphill task. And what if they have moved on to the next location, in some other country?”

Jianyu flashed a charming grin, revealing teeth as white as eggshells. “Then I am sure you will make adjustments. Tell me, sister, have you ever failed to find a target once your mind is set to the task?”

When she spun her chair around without answering, he chuckled and said, “You’re too self-deprecating. I might have newfound faith in the Archon, but I’ve always been a believer in you.”

Jianyu returned to his private suite. The plane to Kolkata was scheduled to depart in four hours, and it would take at least an hour to ride to the Ascendant-owned airstrip on the outskirts of Shanghai.

In the interim, after he packed, Jianyu ran through a quick workout. From a young age, he had trained in kung fu and chin na, and was a champion before he turned sixteen. He had joined the military at eighteen, and was quickly promoted to a special operations unit. While not as mentally gifted as his sister, Jianyu embraced all forms of technology—especially those of the military nature.

After his recruitment by the Ascendants, Jianyu had been suddenly discharged in good standing from the military. Given the twins’ lineage and the resources invested in their birth, Jianyu knew the government had grand plans for them; he had no idea how the Ascendants had managed to extract them from the Orwellian reach of the bureaucrats.

While the military lifestyle had never appealed to him—Jianyu was far too creative and independent, as well as obsessed with the biohacker lifestyle—it taught him to be a creature of habit, and he never missed a workout if he could help it. The basement of his building was well stocked with training mats and every conceivable kind of hand-to-hand-combat weapon, including a blood-spattered wood-floored cage for sparring. He referred to his training area as the Monastery, since kung fu was developed in Shaolin temples. Often, the Ascendants sent new operatives to Jianyu for coaching, and this was where he held court, dispensing advice and testing his mettle against two or more opponents at a time.

In the vast soundproof hall next door was the shooting range, where Jianyu practiced with firearms ranging from assault handguns to the most high-tech weapons available: Corner Shot guns, sight-optimized rifles, PHASR rifles, digitized grenade launchers, 3-D-printed weapons of all sorts.

Jianyu started off with a hard-and-fast free-weight routine, pumping blood into his muscles until they were as red and plump as dragon fruit. As he ran through his katas and fired a few clips at center mass in the shooting range, his mind was even more focused than usual—for Jianyu knew that a very dangerous opponent awaited.

The foolish older branch of the Leap Year Society had long since lost its teeth. In response to the horror of the world wars, it had turned away from martial affairs. This was