Juno Vex's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

The hatch stayed shut for an hour after the inspectors left. Then Fenn tapped twice on the wood and lifted it. Juno climbed up. The judge was gone. The containment slip lay folded on the table with her thumbprint drying on the wax. "They're back on the ridge," Fenn said. He watched the copper vane on the roof turn. His armadillo, Kita, pressed flat against his collar. "Recalibrating. Better lenses this time. If they catch you in open sun, the paper won't hold." Juno set her notes on the table. Underlined twice. A time. A light angle. And a note at the bottom she had written in the cellar: another child, same shadow. She still had to find that child. But she could not walk the lanes in daylight while inspectors tuned their scanners a hundred meters off. "I need help," Juno said. "Someone who watches people and knows the school rolls. Not you." Fenn thought about it. "Petra," he said. "Linguist at the courtyard house. She likes you. She keeps lists." He would not take her himself. Two figures on the track drew eyes. He drew a map on the back of a receipt and pushed it across. Juno went out the back way, along a drainage ditch, keeping the copper vane between her back and the ridge. The Palmtech Courtyard House sat under a wide thatched roof with sliding glass panels open to the shade. Petra was on the porch in her sand-yellow jumpsuit, headset over one ear, writing on a slate. A big man in a rumpled linen suit stood behind her. Speaker rods lined his jaw. He watched Juno the way a guard watches a door. "Tomas," Petra said, without looking up. "She's fine. She's the cousin I told you about." Tomas did not move. "Inspectors on the ridge." "I know," Juno said. "That's why I came inside." Petra set the slate down. Juno pushed her notes across. "I need every child logged with a lighting exemption in the last year. Sunburn waivers. Indoor PE. Anyone who skips the shadow drills." Petra's face did not change. She pulled up a school roster on the slate and filtered it. Twenty-three names. She filtered again. Nine. Again. Two. One was Juno. The other was a boy from the east dorm. Exempted from outdoor assembly for eleven months. Reason: photosensitivity. No medical file attached. "That's him," Juno said. Tomas leaned in and read the name. He tapped one of the rods on his jaw and it did not light. "He was at the delegation house last week," he said. "With an inspector escort. They weren't testing him. They were showing him to the aliens." Juno stared at the slate. She had a name now. She also had a much bigger problem than a shadow that would not move.