Free Broken Angels by Harambee K. Grey-Sun Page B

whenever Adam had a visitor, so Robert could only guess what Adam watched when alone. But he knew whatever Adam saw on his screens was important, as was anything Adam had to say to him.
    “Please come in. You are not a stranger here.”
    Robert did as he was told, but he did feel like a stranger, no matter how many times he’d visited and how many times Adam had told him otherwise. Adam’s appearance wouldn’t help anyone feel at home. From the top of his head to his fingertips to toes, he wore attire that, in Robert’s eyes, resembled the armor of a postmodern knight.
    At first glance the suit of full-body plate armor seemed to be composed of pieces of a silvery white alloy, custom molded and strategically fused together. In reality, it was made up of a different material—a more flexible, porous material that was at least as strong as steel but that also contained innumerable slits, each of them an inch long and not more than a pinhole’s size in width. These fissures allowed slivers of air and light to pass through, enter, and presumably touch the man’s undergarments or skin. In keeping with the motif, Adam also wore a helmet that covered his entire face and neck. The front of it was a smooth concave mirror that gave a funhouse view-of-self to anyone who spoke with him face-to-“face.” Curiously, while the suit had its openings for light and air, the front of the helmet had none Robert could see. Still, even though there was something off about the way the man talked, Adam’s voice wasn’t distorted or muffled. One could hear only a thin metallic echo when Adam completed a sentence.
    The suit may’ve appeared ridiculous or frightening in the eyes of many, but Adam’s mobility would’ve been severely limited without it. Even with it, he needed the assistance of a sturdy iron cane to walk. Most often, as now, Adam was seen sitting uncomfortably in a high-back swivel chair.
    He wasn’t offered a seat, so Robert didn’t take one. He just stepped forward, stopped in front of the desk, and crossed his hands behind his back.
    “You wanted to see me, sir?”
    “Yes,” Adam said. “I have managed to dig up some information on your latest find. Ava Darden.”
    “Oh,” Robert said. “Shouldn’t—? Is Darryl coming?”
    “You can fill Mister Ridley in later. There is not much, but since you happened to be at The Burrow, I thought I would just tell you face-to-face. Some of this information was previously gathered— last year, to be exact—when we first began to look into the disappearance of the McGillis girl and the incident that preceded it. All of their classmates were questioned last spring and summer.”
    “So we knew Ava was missing?”
    “No,” Adam said. “She was never officially reported missing. So I kept her name off of our lists.”
    Robert thought it odd that, whether reported missing or not, finding the Virus-infected girl who’d stopped a school massacre wasn’t considered to be a task just as important as locating the one who tried to pull it off. But he kept silent and listened.
    “Her legal name is Stavan Darden. She would have graduated from high school last May if she had not disappeared shortly after her engagement with Marie-Lydia McGillis at that very same high school in March of that same year. As you have seen from the videos that made the rounds on the Internet, the girls fought each other so intensely, they beat each other into unconsciousness. Both girls ended up comatose. They and many of their classmates were taken to the hospital after that fight. Stavan—or ‘Ava’—was visited by one relative. Her mother. She came to see her daughter several times, but she probably never got to see her wake up. We could not find anyone who did. Ava simply disappeared from the hospital one day or, more likely, one night.”
    “Just disappeared?” Robert asked. “We’re sure her mother didn’t take her out?”
    “If she did,” Adam said, “she left no trace of coming or