Pulse

rooms.
    “He says we need to be at the practice field in two hours,” Wade said as they arrived at the three hundredth floor and the elevator stopped.
    “What else does he say?” asked Clara. She stepped out of the elevator into a corridor lined with doors and turned left.
    Wade laughed. “He says not to overdo it until he tells us to.”
    “Figures,” Clara said, stopping at a door just off the elevator. She minimized her Tablet and held the screen next to a reader on the door. There was a soft, buzzing sound, and the door unlocked. “If he has it his way, we’ll never show anyone what we can do.”
    “He wants us to contact him as soon as we settle in,” Wade said, snapping his Tablet small and placing it in his pocket. Unlike Clara, who could turn moody and sullen when the pressure was on, Wade was dizzy with excitement as he went to the plateglass window and stared at the view below.
    “Come on, Clara. You have to be excited when you look at this place.”
    Clara stood next to her brother, trying not to feel manipulated by forces outside of her control. What she really wanted to do was start throwing things around the room with her mind, but she knew that would solve nothing. Looking down, she saw the location for the Field Games, a stunning spectacle of modern architecture. Buildings towered all around the edge of a rooftop field. The striking green color of the grass overpowered the sea of white and silver. There was seating for 100,000 around the edge of the track, and on top of all the surrounding buildings another 50,000 seats. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide would watch the games on their Tablets or on larger screens in their apartments, but 150,000 would see them compete live. Clara thought of those people, especially the lucky few who would be seated near the field, and mulled over something she’d been contemplating for days.
    “Let’s contact him,” Clara said. “I want to start warming up as soon as we can.”
    Wade was happy to see his sister come out of her funk, if only a little, and went straight to work setting up a connection. The G12 network wasn’t available outside the Western State, but Wade had been instructed in how to get around that little problem. With a few keystrokes, he was tied into multiple networks at once, and a few seconds later he and Clara were sitting on a couch staring at two people. One was Mr. Reichert, the other Miss Newhouse. They were no longer using those names as covers though, and they were no longer running Old Park Hill, which had closed the previous day.
    “No trouble getting settled in?” asked the man. His name was Andre Quinn, and though he really did have something of an egg-shaped head and a bad haircut, he was a formidable presence when he wasn’t pretending to be a washed-up school principal.
    “No trouble at all,” Wade said. “And we can see the field from our window. Amazing!”
    Wade’s father smiled proudly. He loved his son’s childlike exuberance. Unlike his sister, who could be difficult, Wade wanted nothing more than to please his father.
    “Remember,” Andre Quinn warned, “this has to be handled delicately. If you compete at too high a level, our plans will be harder to manage. Don’t draw undue attention.”
    Clara hated this part of “the plan.” She knew she could win every single event without even trying. Having to pretend that she was lame like every other athlete on the field was going to be very tough. And the plan had been bothering her for a long time, primarily because she didn’t fully understand what it was.
    “I don’t know why we have to throw these events,” Clara said. Arriving in the Western State and seeing the facility had turned up the volume on her competitive nature. “What’s the point of even doing this if you’re not going to let us compete?”
    “There’s a job to do. Drawing attention to yourselves is the last thing we need,” Andre’s wife said. Her name was not Miss Newhouse and never had been. This was Gretchen Quinn, and she was always the bad cop when it came to dealing with Clara. “This is not about winning, Clara. At least not yet.”
    Clara rolled her eyes. She couldn’t stand her stepmother and thought she was a power-hungry idiot. “Whatever you say, Mommy dearest.”
    “That’s enough, Clara.” Andre was all too happy to let Gretchen deal with Clara’s behavior, but there was a line he would not let Clara cross. “We’re at the beginning of a long