The Toll (Arc of a Scythe #3) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,17

on things. It was overwhelming.

At her parents’ behest, she had gone in to get her nanites tweaked in order to raise her spirits—because not even melancholy could be tolerated these days—but the line was too long. Loriana could not abide waiting, so she left.

“Only unsavories wait in line,” she told her parents when she got back, referring to the way the Thunderhead organized the AI’s Office of Unsavory Affairs—with intentional inefficiency. Only after she said it, did the obvious occur to her. She, herself, was unsavory. Did that mean that pointless lines and horrendous waits were now going to be the norm? It brought her to tears, which in turn made her parents more insistent that she go back to have her nanites tweaked.

“We know things are different for you now, but it’s not the end of the world, honey,” her parents had told her. Yet for some strange reason, she thought that it might be.

And then a month after the world went unsavory, her former boss showed up at their door. Loriana assumed it was just a courtesy call. Clearly it couldn’t be about rehiring her, since her boss had been laid off along with all the other agents. Even their old offices were gone. According to the news, construction crews had shown up at Authority Interface headquarters throughout the world to convert the buildings into apartments and recreation centers.

“The work order just showed up,” said a construction foreman on the news report. “And we’re happy to do whatever the Thunderhead wants!” Work orders, supply requisitions, and the like were the closest thing anyone had to communication with the Thunderhead anymore. Those who received them were to be envied.

Her boss had been the head of the Fulcrum City office. Loriana was the only junior agent to be working with Director Hilliard. If nothing else, it looked nice on the résumé Loriana never sent out.

How she had become the director’s personal assistant was less about her abilities and more about her personality. Bubbly some might call it, although others would call it annoying.

“You’re perpetually cheerful,” Director Hilliard had told her when she offered Loriana the position. “There’s not enough of that around here.”

That was true—Nimbus agents were not known for their sparkling personalities. She did her best to liven things up and see many a miserable glass as half-full, which, more often than not, irked the other agents. Well, that was their problem. Loriana suspected that Director Hilliard took guilty pleasure in seeing her subordinates rankled on a regular basis by Loriana’s positive penchants. Although these many weeks without a thing to do, and no prospects for the future, had popped most of her bubbles, leaving her about as flat as any other Nimbus agent.

“I have a job for you,” Director Hilliard said. “Actually, more than a job,” she corrected. “More like a mission.”

Loriana was thrilled—the first positive thing she had felt since the Authority Interface had been shuttered.

“I have to warn you,” Director Hilliard said. “This mission will involve some travel.”

And although Loriana was much more skilled in staying put, she knew this might be the only opportunity she’d have in the foreseeable future.

“Thank you so much!” Loriana said, vigorously shaking her boss’s hand long past the point where most others would have stopped.

* * *

And now, two weeks later, she was out in the middle of the ocean on a tuna long-liner that wasn’t doing any fishing, but still reeked of its last catch.

“There weren’t many options when it came to ships,” Director Hilliard had told everyone. “We had to take what we could get.”

As it turns out, Loriana wasn’t the only one chosen for this mission. Hundreds of Nimbus agents had been brought in. Now they populated a dozen mismatched ships. A bizarre ragtag flotilla bound for the South Pacific.

“8.167, 167.733,” Hilliard told them in the preliminary briefing. “These numbers were given to us by a reliable source,” she said. “We think they represent coordinates.” Then she brought up a map and pinpointed a spot somewhere between Hawaii and Australia. The targeted spot showed nothing but empty sea.

“But what makes you think they’re coordinates,” Loriana asked the director after the briefing. “I mean, if all you had were random numbers, they could mean anything—how can you be sure?”

“Because,” the director confided, “as soon as I spoke my suspicion that they might be coordinates, I began to receive advertisements for ship charters in Honolulu.”

“The Thunderhead?”

Hilliard nodded. “While it’s against the law for the Thunderhead to communicate with unsavories,