He dumped his plate and utensils in the appropriate alcove and followed the security officer out. Instead of continuing straight onto the elevator as they left the cafeteria, the officer turned right and led him into the warren of hallways on the eighteenth level.
Before they got there, he figured out they were heading to the gym, a path he remembered well from his years at the Ward School. Most of the time he’d spent there had been in the company of the man waiting for him. Their brilliant leader had once been an eighty pound weakling who came to the school late, at age thirteen instead of five. He had been the strongest Spark at the school, for sure, but as physically unimpressive as a young man could be. Alex, whose favorite part of every year had always been the six months spent boxing, was already bigger, stronger, and faster than the other boys of their class. He had seen Thomas’s potential. He’d defended him. Then he’d taken him under his wing and trained him.
The wiry, leanly muscled man currently hitting his gloved hands in rapid succession against one of the sand-filled canvas bags in the corner had clearly taken that training to heart. Alex strolled across the gym, his gaze darting over the Councilor to check his form, but he had nothing to critique. His friend was a weakling no more. He wasn’t an underdog anymore, either.
Somewhere along the line, their relationship had shifted. As they’d become friends, they’d become equals, then partners, with Thomas running their nascent empire and Alex handling the expansion of it in the field. Their roles fit their gifts. It was the best way to achieve the goals they’d hammered out together as young men.
The Councilor’s familiar pale eyes were small over a hawkish nose, and the old scar where he’d cut away the slaver’s brand was a flat, shiny patch under his right eye. His piercing gaze flicked out. “Alex.” It was all the greeting he’d get.
“Thom.” Amused, Alex mimicked his friend and partner.
Thomas’s lips turned up on one side. “So?” He grunted, fists still pounding the bag.
“Sooooo…” Alex dragged out the word. “Remember your theory about how the strongest Sparks, if left to their own devices and totally untrained, will come up with new ways to do things? Will even make themselves stronger? Kind of like…oh yeah, kind of like you?”
“I do.” The pace of his hits slowed as he listened, but not the force. “You found one?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Thomas’s quirked lips grew into a smile. “How strong is he?”
Alex waited a beat, drawing out the moment. He’d only get to do this once. “She is the brightest thing I’ve ever seen. Her bloom was so bright it hurt to look at it, and she was still fully functional.”
His friend stilled, one hand poised for a blow that didn’t fall. “She?”
Alex could almost hear the click as the final piece of Thomas’s grand plan fell neatly into place, making the largest, most theoretical of his ideas a reality.
His arms fell to his sides. He turned to Alex. “Tell me.”
“Do you remember Three’s Senior Councilor Aide, name of Gracey?” Alex asked. “Caught being curious about things he had no need to know? She’s his daughter.”
Thomas frowned his disagreement with a slight shake of his head. Unlike Alex, who had to use mnemonic devices to keep track of information, Thomas could flip through memories like file folders. “Gracey had a daughter and a son. The daughter’s just a mid-level. Like all girls.” His voice was disappointed.
Natural women and men had a roughly twenty-five percent chance of parenting a powered child. Add in a powered father, and the rate rose to fifty-fifty, but the children were always mid-level strength or lower. Powered women always produced Spark children. However, mid-level powered woman had an almost thirty percent chance of producing the coveted highly powered Spark, although those children were always male; with a highly-powered father, the rate rose to almost fifty percent.
The official story said every female born with power was naturally limited to mid-level or lower. Thus far, the records supported the story. At some point, it was widely believed, a hiccup in nature would produce highly powered girls. Since female Sparks bred true, they would produce only high-powered children. If one of these theoretical females produced children with a high-powered male, the possibilities for their children, and for the future of Sparks, were limitless.
There were communities—Neo-barb run—that patched together hydroelectric power or made do with windmills built from scavenged materials. But the Council had invested in humans they could control since the beginning. Their obsession with finding any such girls had been growing over the last half-century, a response to fear of hypothetical children strong enough to resist the growing restraints on Sparks. If they lost control, they lost power—literally and figuratively.