Page 62 of Mountain Target

Hugo thought everything in life could be fixed with a hard sparring session.

“No, thanks. I have no interest in getting my ass kicked today.” He softened his tone when he saw his teammate’s crestfallen expression. “Maybe next week?”

That seemed to appease Hugo.

“Okay, then. I’d better go speak with Bristow and see how he wants to play things at the school tomorrow.”

His teammates cackled.

“Hey, it might be fun,” Alex quipped.

18

Beau

It wasn’t fun.

Beau’s jaw was so tight, he thought he might need to visit the dentist after today. If so, he was planning on sending the bill to Colonel Pelegrin.

Bristow, on the other hand, was in his element. The scientist had arrived dressed in chinos and a royal blue shirt, wearing dark sunglasses and looking for all the world like a celebrity traveling incognito.

After spending a few minutes with the school principal and senior faculty, they’d been ushered into the gym slash auditorium. Rows and rows of foldable chairs covered the green rubber floor, leaving a wide aisle in the middle for people to walk through on their way to the raised stage at one end.

Bristow had been quick to organize everyone on stage. “You sit there, Gilles, since you’ll be managing the slides. Fontaine, you can sit in that seat in the corner. My team needs to be closer to me, then Monsieur le Directeur, and I’ll sit here,” he said, plonking himself down in the first seat.

The scientist looked at Beau somewhat defiantly, as if he expected him to disagree—not realizing, because it was clearly so far removed from his own experience of the world, that the further away Beau got from the center of the stage, the happier he’d be.

“Sounds perfect,” Beau said.

A few minutes later, the shiny emerald green logo for Seismic Revelations filled the large screen behind them. Bristow’s team gave a collective sigh of relief.

Beau settled into his corner seat as students started pouring in. The colonel had been right. He didn’t have much of a role in today’s proceedings. His job was to stand back and let Dr. Bristow shine, and be there to answer any questions anybody might have regarding safety issues or topics related to town.

They’d been told only middle and upper school students would be attending the assembly, the topic having been deemed too technical, and perhaps too sensitive, for lower school students.

He recognized Ren as soon as she walked into the gym, following behind a group of three girls—almost with them but not with them, Beau sensed. Her hair, which at home he knew she usually kept in a high ponytail, was loose and draped around her face, as if she wanted to hide it.

What’s that about?

She followed the girls into one of the middle rows. Her eyes widened as she recognized Beau, but she quickly looked away, as if embarrassed. Within a matter or minutes, every chair in the room was full. There were murmurs and coughs while the school principal gave his short, if rather uninspired, introduction to the subject, but everyone fell silent the second Dr. Bristow took the floor.

Bristow, Beau had to admit, was a natural. Up on the stage, he was charming, dynamic, and, most surprisingly, able to connect with individual members of the audience. By the time he got through his presentation, Beau was sure half the kids in the audience wanted to work at Seismic Revelations when they grew up.

However, every time he glanced towards Ren, she was sitting very still, a curtain of hair separating her from the girls on her right side.

And then came the Q&A. Beau sat up straighter in his seat, knowing that some of these might fall to him.

The first few questions were addressed to Bristow’s team. The kids couldn’t get enough information about the technology. The fourth question came from an older boy with dark, curly hair.

“What did it feel like, to be up in the mountains when the earthquake struck?”

Dr. Bristow glanced at him magnanimously. “You were up there at the time, Commandant Fontaine. Perhaps you could tell us about it?”

As Beau stood up, he felt Ren’s gaze on his. Though he could only see one of her eyes, her mouth formed a single word, “No”.

As in, don’t mention me. I don’t exist.

Beau gave a sanitized version of what that night had been like. As his answer drew to a close, he felt Ren relax in her seat again. She didn’t move again until the entire presentation was over and they’d all been dismissed.