One floor up from where they were, there were mind pebbles – illegal ones. Good shit. And Aissaba was going to get her hands on some. She wrinkled her nose. It didn’t sound great when you put it that way, she realized.

In her defense, though, she wasn’t stealing for herself, but rather for the kids. Actually, it didn’t sound great when you put it that way either. But, hey: Apocalypse risk, right? If a handful of illegal mind pebbles were what it took to comply with the Fortress’s sacred mission, who was she to argue? Odds were even the Master of Virtue would agree.

And if a couple of the illegal mind pebbles happened to find their way to the party tonight–

She shivered and forced herself to pay attention to Tassadu’s Hall of Life monologue.

He pointed out, to his left, one lab full of green-robed adults who (no big deal) were single-handedly keeping the Earth’s ecosystem alive, and another, to his right, where they were (no big deal) preventing two global pandemics at once.

Cassandra nodded politely, and Orion had the decency, at least, to stifle his yawn. Back to normal kid behavior. Apocalypse prevention was mostly just hundreds of grown ups sitting at desks with pebbles held to their foreheads. The most interesting things in the rooms were clusters of scribes talking in hushed voices near chalkboards or huddled in the glow of computer screens nestled amongst the vines.

A few scribes in the pandemic lab were taking a break near a small waterfall, sipping from wooden cups. They waved as the tour went by.

Orion gave them a “sup” nod, and Cassandra giggled.

The Hall of Life had its own tabula rasa laboratory called the Room of Soup – which Tassadu had, of course, reserved. Like the Room of Sand, mind pebbles in the walls and ceiling gave the impression that it was massive – an infinite ocean of primordial soup rushing out to meet gray sky at the horizon a million miles away. In reality, it was just a giant circular swimming pool, one that got deeper toward the middle. Where they stood at the entrance, the liquid barely covered the soles of the Johnson’s Converses.

“You kids want to do some life magic?” said Tassadu. Judging by the tremor in his voice, he wasn’t sure if they’d say yes. Or maybe he was worried that they would.

Stolen novel; please report.

Aissaba wasn’t sure what she wanted either. Maybe for the kids to suddenly become normal twelve year olds and be excited about studying Fortress magic? Or maybe for them to come clean and say, “No matter how good the tour is, we’re heading back to Montana like dumb idiots.”

It was weird though: There was genuine excitement in their purple eyes as they each took a green pebble.

(One pebble. Not a handful. Can’t fool Tassadu twice!)

Aissaba watched their awestruck faces as Tassadu showed them how he could hold a pebble near the surface of the soup, generating bacterial life out of the amino acids. Their purple eyes widened as the bacterial colony evolved to secrete bioluminescent proteins of electric green and blue – an aurora borealis spreading across the soup. There were very genuine tears of joy in Cassandra’s eyes when Tassadu scooped up some of the goopy borealis, dropped the pebble into it and, seconds later, was holding a small plant, roots entangling his dripping talons, leaves reaching for the gray skies above.

Something inside them needs this, Aissaba thought. Yearns for it, like most kids their age. The chance to break the rules. To make them.

She tried to peer through their purple irises into the souls beneath. I’m good with kids, she told herself. They’re just kids.

Maybe they were scared. The lack of rules can be terrifying – the way ledges with no railing can be terrifying. Not just the heights, but the freedom. Nothing stops you from jumping to your death. There’s no popup that says: Are you sure you want to do that? Maybe their lives had been so controlled that the lack of it was freaking them out.

Or maybe they were scared of something else. Of getting the Sega taken away. Of missing 3pm Spanish. Of never seeing their parents again.

Of whatever they had been told about the Fortress.

Whatever the root of the fear, Aissaba needed to find out. Take away the fear, and only the joy will remain – something her mother liked to say. She had a sick feeling that if she failed to find the root of their fear, then the tour would end embarrassingly for her and Tassadu.

And Tassadu deserved better. Always had.

Yeah, it was settled. Once they ascended the spiral staircase on the far side of the Room of Soup, she was getting her hands on some mind pebbles. The good ones. She wrinkled her nose. It sounded bad, but it was the only way.