Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,67
she passed Spirit, she turned and winked before leaning over the back of the boy’s seat. Spirit stared in shock. It was Muirin!
“’Smatter, Adam, not used to eating anything for breakfast that doesn’t come in neon colors with marshmallow bits?” Muirin drawled.
Mr. Krandal nearly exploded out of his seat. “Muirin Shae!” he barked, looking absolutely furious. “I’m not going to ask you what you’re doing here, because it’s obvious you decided to stow away.”
Muirin looked as innocent as she could, which was not very. Finally she shrugged. “I’m ahead on my classes, you can check for yourself. I just want to go to a bookstore. Is that so bad?”
Mr. Krandal was obviously struggling with himself. “It’s too late to turn back now, which I assume you know. You sit right down there, young lady. I am going to have a conference with the other teachers about this, and we’re going to call back to Oakhurst about it.”
Muirin shrugged again and sat down in the empty seat beside the boy she’d called Adam. Mr. Krandal stalked down the aisle to the door at the rear of the car and through it to the second car where the other two teachers were.
“Damn, Muir, now I see why you were always jonesing for some junk food, if this is the crap they feed you,” Adam said with a grin.
Muirin rolled her eyes. “You have no idea,” she said. “Adam, these are my peeps, Spirit, Loch, and Burke. Guys, this is Adam Phillips. His brother Tom is the one hanging his chin on the seat back. They were the ones giving me and Seth some … help.”
Spirit knew very well what Muirin meant by “help.” Tom and Adam, who looked to be about fourteen and eighteen respectively, were the ones who had helped Muirin and Seth with smuggling contraband into Oakhurst.
“So what’d old Krandal mean by ‘the new relationship with Radial’?” Muirin asked, looking at him keenly. “Last I heard, Radial thought the school was a maximum-security jail for high-dollar juvies and would’ve been happy to see it shut down.”
“Oh that’s big news.” Adam smirked and Tom rolled his eyes. “Really big news. One of your Alumns made good in video games. He’s the brain behind Breakthrough.” At Muirin’s blank look, he coughed. “Breakthrough Adventure Systems. I keep forgetting they keep you people in the Victorian ages. I’ll make it short and easy for you—MMOs and console games that have pretty much taken over the marketplace. They took over about six games that failed dismally and one old favorite that everybody had been waiting for the update on. And they made them all into everything everybody wanted. Anyway, he decided that the best place for his new HQ was Radial, ’cause he’s, like, nostalgic for good old Oakhurst.”
“Yeah, right,” Muirin replied sarcastically.
“Somebody has to be,” Loch said.
“Anyway, this is like—like Lucas decided to move ILM out here on the same day that Sega announces they’re going to put a plant here and work with him,” Adam went on. “Bigger than big. Jobs, jobs, jobs, money coming into town like nobody’s seen before, and every time something comes up—like the sewer plant not being able to handle all the new people—Rider just throws money at the problem and it goes away. Him and Ambrosius are all BFFs, and some people figure he’s going to use Oakhurst as his game-designer-factory, ’cause you’re all supposed to be super-geniuses and everything. I can tell you, though, right now, so far as most of Radial is concerned, you could take a dump in the street and they’d swear it was roses.”
“Most?” Muirin probed.
“Well, you know. No matter what, there’s going to be somebody who’s going to hate it.” Adam shrugged. “They’re going to extend your rail line out to Breakthrough and start using it, ’cause the roads aren’t good enough for everything he wants to bring in. They’re already laying track in town. It’ll probably be done in a couple of weeks.”
“And what’s your take on this?” Burke asked, leaning over.
Adam blinked, as if he hadn’t expected Burke to speak. “It’s money coming in. I graduated last year; I’m going to get a job out there and work until I get enough saved up to get the hell out of Radial. I don’t care what people are saying, all that’s going to happen with Breakthrough is once they get their compound put up, it’s going to be us and them all over again. Anything they want, they’ll bring in