Annihilation: Love Conquers All by Saxon Andrew, Derek Chiodo Read Free Book Online Page B

you when you say that you had nothing to do with this. After all, you’re the one that reported it. I also sense that those two assistants are also being honest, so that means something impossible happened here. The department of security may let little things slide, but not impossible ones. This could get messy. Advanced placement tests are taken very seriously, and this irregularity must be investigated.”
     
    Mr. Graham nodded and remembered how bored he was with his job when he started that evening. Well, he certainly was not going to be bored now. He even wished for that boredom to return. What he suspected was that he would not make thirty-three years as a test administrator if, as Sergeant Garcia suspected, this was going to be a mess.
     

Chapter 4
    T ag began working his way back home, making sure he avoided all the cameras and people he encountered. In the parks he moved through, he could smell the grass that the auto mowers had trimmed. The trees moving in the gentle breeze and the insects flying through the night lights made the night feel peaceful and calmed him after the stress of taking Leila’s test. He decided that the city at street level, which he seldom saw from his floater, had its own beauty. The parks that lined the thoroughfares and the buildings with their crystal windows reflecting light in all directions added to the serenity of the street-level sidewalks. The streetlights cast eerie shadows as they shone through the trees. It was slow going because most of the cameras overlapped their coverage, and he had to move during the time that one swung away while the other was moving toward him. He would occasionally walk beside another person because the shadow was there. This gave him time to enjoy the walk back to his home. As time passed, there were fewer people out. It was completely dark now and most people did not walk the streets at night. He was making good time, and if things continued moving smoothly he should make it home by daylight. He had already passed the spot where he had exited the floater and only had another six miles to go. It was eerily quiet at street level, and though he could see thousands of floaters flying far overhead their drone could barely be heard. Their lights made the sky look like thousands of swarming fireflies. He had passed several of the giant buildings a few blocks back and saw hundreds of floaters lifting off the top floors. “Must be a shift change,” he thought.
     
    “I hope my luck holds out. I’m not familiar with this area,” he worried. The first four miles had been easy because he had walked it going to his school, but he was unfamiliar with the route he was taking now, and it made him nervous and he wasn’t sure why. He normally flew high over this area on a public floater so the details at ground level just weren’t familiar. He moved through a small park, stepped around a swing set, and then moved to the sidewalk that ran along the wall of another building. Then he felt it. Someone was watching him, and they were not alone. There were five of them. He looked out from the wall into the park parallel to the sidewalk, but it was too dark to see very far into it. He couldn’t see them but he knew that they were there, and they were moving quickly to surround him. “This gift is strange,” he thought. “I can still see the shadows and avoid the surveillance cameras but I know that I’m being watched, and with that many watching me there’s no way for me to escape them undetected.” He thought about running, but then the cameras would see him. He had to decide quickly; the camera covering the sidewalk was swinging back.
     
    He had entered a part of the city that was dangerous. Though the Directorate kept tight controls over Earth’s population, some people living in poverty resorted to crime to support themselves. He passed one of the tall buildings in which a large percentage of its occupants were on government assistance and low income. He