“Get up. Get up. Get up,” Erik sang the next morning.

“Go away. Go away. Go away,” I groaned, covering my head with a pillow.

“Go away?” he scoffed. “We have a big day ahead of us, and the sooner you get up, the sooner we can get it started.”

“It’s my day off,” I whined.

“We have a surprise for you,” he tempted.

“I don’t like surprises,” I countered.

“It wouldn’t be a surprise if you had made curfew last night,” Henri cut in dryly.

Guilt washed over me. I groaned again and threw the pillow in the direction that I judged Erik’s voice to be coming from.

“Nice. All that sensory deprivation training really paid off,” Erik commended me as the pillow hit him with a soft thud.

“Thanks. Now, tell me my surprise,” I demanded, sitting up.

“You’re so bossy in the morning,” Erik teased.

“We’re taking you to D.C. for the day,” Henri announced.

“I’m not allowed to go to the city, remember? I’m just a lowly pledge.” I tried not to sound too disappointed.

“I already cleared it with Captain Alvarez, who in turn called the Director, who, of course, said you could go,” Henri replied dismissively.

I expected Erik to make a snide remark, but for once he kept his mouth shut.

“Wow. Thanks, Henri.” Now I felt even worse about missing curfew last night.

“You can only come for the day,” he warned. “The Director wouldn’t budge on letting you stay down there after dark.”

“That’s okay. I’m just so excited to get to go at all!” I exclaimed, jumping out of my bed.

“Then get ready already so we can leave,” Erik urged.

I squealed happily and skipped to the bathroom.

I absentmindedly hurried through my morning routine and opened up my mind to find Donavon. I could tell he was awake and in his cabin.

“Hey, guess what?” I sent.

“What?” His mental voice sounded sleepy, so I assumed he’d just woken up.

“Henri cleared it with your Dad. I get to go to the city today!”

“With Henri and Erik?” He didn’t sound happy.

“Well, yeah. I guess so we can spend bonding time, or whatever.” I tried to sound offhand, but I was really excited and I didn’t want him ruining my mood.

“Oh, well, have fun, I guess,” he said, obviously irritated.

“I know you were hoping we could go together, but Henri went through the trouble of going to the Captain and calling your Dad….” I started to apologize.

“No, it’s fine. I’ll take you another time,” he cut me off.

“I’ll come find you when I get back,” I promised.

“Yeah, whatever.”

I closed my mind again. He was killing my happy buzz.

Elite Headquarters is located in West Virginia, about one hundred miles west of the nation’s capital. The actual compound sat on several hundred acres of what used to be farmland but now boasted the latest and greatest technology that the world had to offer. The compound’s stores sell anything a pledge or operative needs. In Washington, D.C., you could buy anything imaginable, and probably many things that I couldn’t imagine. Erik, like many of the other operatives, frequented the city bars to pick up girls. However, pledges weren’t usually allowed to visit the city, even on our days off. The idea was that pledges stationed at various other locations weren’t afforded the same luxuries, so it wasn’t fair.

As a child, my parents and I had traveled constantly, never staying in one location for more than a couple of months. Since coming to live with Mac and his family, my travels have been limited. My relocation trip to Elite Headquarters was the first time I’ve left the School’s grounds since arriving there seven years ago. The notion that a large city existed, only a hover-ride away, has been making me restless.

Donavon had completed his pledge year and graduated from school the year before. Since becoming a full-fledged Hunter, he had been taking full advantage of his newfound freedom. Sometimes, he brought me flaky pastries filled with chocolate or strawberry cream from the bakeries. Other times, he brought back lengths of embroidered silks to take home to Gretchen, so she could have outfits made for me. When he was feeling uninspired, he simply bought trinkets from the street vendors.

Henri had reserved a hover-car for the day to drive the three of us the one hundred miles to Washington. I kept my face glued to the cold glass, watching as the dense woods surrounding Headquarters gave way to small farms and spread-out houses. We were still twenty miles outside of the city when the buildings became more dense and elaborate. The roadways beneath us were packed with bumper-to-bumper road vehicles. From our vantage point in the air, I suddenly saw the city materialize beneath us. I stared down in wonder.

When we reached the outskirts of D.C., we flew straight through the border checkpoint without stopping. Ordinarily, all vehicles—both road and hover—need to stop, and the occupants are required to show identification. However, as we were in a clearly marked Agency car, we were able to sail through without pausing.

I was overwhelmed the moment we landed. The buildings were tall and packed so close together; there was no space to walk in-between and the height restrictions were long forgotten. Most of the buildings were made of diffractive glass that changed color depending on where you stood. The architectural style varied from one building to the next, with no two looking exactly alike. I saw some buildings that were short and square, some tall and thin, and several topped with elaborate sphere-like structures. I even saw one hexagon-shaped building with a moving walkway that snaked around the periphery, taking people from street level all the way to the pinnacle. A sky railway arched high above the busy ground walkways, connecting the buildings.

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The sky was dotted with small hover-cars—the primary mode of transportation; although, the streets inside D.C. were just as packed with road mobiles as the beltways surrounding the city. The population was so great that the occupants needed both types of cars to get around in a timely fashion.

The men and women walking the streets were dressed in beautiful, albeit colorful, outfits. Many of the younger people had brightly colored hair that was dyed to match their clothing. I noticed a large number of people with unnatural eye colors similar to Erik’s and mine. It wasn’t rare to have untraditional eye colors. In fact, I was unsure why people still referred to my eye color as unnatural. Donavon had told me it was common for city kids to have their eye pigment altered, or in less extreme cases, wear colored lenses to get the “unnatural” hue.

The older women in Washington’s shopping district wore vibrant silk dresses and intricately carved wooden high-heeled shoes. Many wore ropes of colored, glass stones around their necks and varying sizes of adornments in their ears. Some of the wealthier women even had glass beads braided into exquisite up-dos or bird feathers crowning their heads.

Working-class men and women pushed their way through the crowded sidewalks, wearing cheaply made business attire in varying shades of gray and navy. They ducked into sandwich shops and greasy fast-food joints, trying to find the most expedient place to get food on their lunch breaks that were far too short. All of the women wore makeup. The older women seemed to favor simple shades that accentuated their natural features. Younger women, and even some teenagers, sported makeup so thick that their faces looked more like painted masks, designed to look like a caricature of the real person underneath.

I felt extremely plain and naked in my navy cotton dress, thong sandals, and makeup-free face. At least I had my purplish-blue eyes and long spiral curls going for me. I did have more elaborate clothes in my closet at Headquarters, but I usually shied away from wearing them since none of the other pledges or operatives ever wore anything exciting.

“What do you think, Tals?” Erik interrupted my gazing.

“It’s beautiful,” I replied honestly.

“Far cry from school, huh?”

“Sure is,” I agreed softly.

The boys promised me a tour of their favorite places, and I’d been worried that meant I would be spending the day becoming acquainted with the city’s drinking establishments. My fears were put to rest when our first stop was a candy store. Erik showed me how to use the computer to design my own taffy flavors. We watched as large metal claws pulled and stretched long pieces of taffy, mixing and melding them to create my custom candies.

After the candy store, our next stop was the Air, Space, and Technology Museum. There was a tour starting just as we passed through the entrance scanners. I figured we’d join the group. Instead, we walked straight past the throng of people towards the first exhibit. It turned out that Henri was a frequent enough museum patron that he gave the tour better than any guide.

For the rest of the morning, I followed the boys in and out of game shops, techie boutiques, clothing stores and several establishments that sold questionably legal merchandise. I tried to take it all in, but I was on sensory overload.

After a full morning of shopping, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant that claimed to have “The Best Apple Pie in the District”. There were so many cakes and pies on the menu that I considered just ordering dessert for lunch—then decided against spending the afternoon with a stomachache. I’d never heard of many of the dishes on the menu, so I settled on cold octopus soup with spinach bread. Both the School and Headquarters rarely served any seafood, and I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity while in D.C.

“What else do you want to see before we go back?” Henri asked as we finished lunch.

“Can we see the ocean?” I asked hopefully. I knew the city was not actually near the ocean—it was about another one hundred miles or so east—yet I hoped that since we had the hover-car, it wouldn’t be a problem. Driving on the road, the trip would take hours, but in a hover-car we could get there in just thirty minutes.

“I guess we could do that,” Henri answered with a shrug. “Erik—any complaints?”

“Have at it. You can take her to the ocean if you want. I think this might be where we part ways,” Erik answered.

“Do you have something better to do?” I demanded, for some reason offended that he wanted to run off so soon.

“Actually, I do.”

I scowled at him. “Fine. Be that way.” I turned to Henri, “You don’t mind, do you?”

“No, not at all. Erik, I’ll meet up with you later tonight?” he asked.

Erik nodded before heading out of the restaurant.

Henri led me back to the towering, aboveground parking garage where we’d left the hover-mobile, and we set off for the short trip to the beach. Even though it had been over one hundred years since the nuclear reactors had leaked waste contaminating the planet’s oceans, very few people risked swimming. Instead, most people favored lakes and ponds—fresh bodies of water that didn’t connect to the ocean. As a result, the Eastern Shore beaches were relatively empty, and we were able to land the hover-mobile right in the sand. I impatiently waited for Henri to pop the glass covering. Once he did, I kicked off my shoes and jumped over the side of the car, landing in the soft sand.

I inhaled deeply and closed my eyes. The smell of saltwater and seaweed filled my nostrils. I inhaled a little deeper and concentrated my mental energy towards expanding my sense of smell. I could pick up traces of fish and kelp mixed with oil from the fishing boats. I found it contradictory that people would eat the ocean life, but refused to swim in the water. I exhaled happily.

The breeze coming off the water was cool, but the sand was warm from the afternoon sun. I dropped to my knees and picked up handful after handful of sand, letting it trickle through my splayed fingers. If I kept my eyes closed, I could pretend that I was a little girl on the rocky beach of Capri.

When I was very young, before we started moving around, my family lived in a stone house built into the bluffs overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. My mother would take me down to the beach at the base of the bluffs and let me play in the pinkish-orange sand. I would collect bottles of the sand and take it back to the house. I painstakingly sorted out the pink and orange grains under a magnifying lens. My mother knew that the colored sand was a byproduct of the ocean contamination, but she never ruined my fascination by revealing the truth.

The sand on the beach at the Eastern Shore was not pink or orange but rather a dark brownish-black. The water here was also a dark, muddy brown—a stark contrast to the clear, sparkling water of the Tyrrhenian Sea. I kept my eyes closed and walked towards the sound of the waves lapping the shore. I heard Henri calling my name over the breaking of the waves, warning me not to get in the water. I ignored his counsel and walked until I could feel the water swirling around my ankles. I stood there inhaling the salty spray until my feet had sunk so deeply into the wet sand that Henri had to help me out.

As the sun began to sink lower behind us, I knew my time at the beach had come to an end. Mac had said I needed to be back by dark, and I didn’t want Henri getting in trouble on my account. We rode back to Headquarters in silence.

“Thanks for today,” I said sincerely, when we pulled into the parking bay of Elite Headquarters.

“You deserve it; you’ve been working so hard.”

“I still appreciate it. It was nice of you to go to the trouble of getting permission from the Captain to let me go.” I didn’t want him to think I expected special treatment because of Mac or Donavon or whomever else.

“It wasn’t a big deal. After all, being practically related to the Director does have its perks.” He winked at me to let me know he was, at least, partially joking.

I smiled. “I’ll see you later.”

I jumped out and watched as he took off back to the city to join Erik for the evening.