The Altered.

Chapter LXXII.

It took an hour to reach the tower.

An hour of frantic hiding and false alarms and close calls with danger.

Nobody was hurt. Not yet.

The two combined groups were currently crouched behind a tall hedge. Greenery like this wasn't common in the city - or anywhere, really - but the Vega Sector tower had an entire courtyard of its own, fit with gardens and fountains and statues. The place was practically a castle.

The tower was almost exclusively assembled of glass from the outside; it was easy to see inside during the daytime. It was taller than most other buildings in the city, and inside there were countless elevators that travelled to all of the levels. Thanks to the glass that the building was constructed of, when the elevators were functioning, they could be seen from the outside of the building, moving up and down. Now, though, the elevators were dormant.

The place was crawling with Altered. They were everywhere in the courtyard, and the longer the group of Unaltered stayed crouching behind this hedge, the more at risk they became.

"Wait," Kano said suddenly, and all heads swivelled to face him. "Won't all of the electricity be off in there?"

The words hit Miles like a physical blow, so hard that he forgot for a moment something so obvious that Percy had to point it out instead. "No," Percy responded, voice hushed. "All big company-owned places like this - especially this tower; this is the most important place in the city - have battery generators made to last months. The power will still be on inside where necessary, but it'll be being reserved."

Aaron cursed. "Why didn't we stay in a place like this instead of that library? We could have charged our devices and tried to get on the internet."

"Did you really want to be staying in a place like this?" Miles muttered. "Look how many Altered there are here. It would have been suicide to stay in this building or any other like it."

"Why are there so many Altered here?" Claire asked.

"It's likely instinct for them to gather around a place so significant to the Alteration," Percy suggested. "That, or they just like the flowers in the gardens of this courtyard."

Aaron, who had picked a flower and was halfway to tucking it behind his ear, paused. "The flowers are nice," he said, a little defensively.

Miles scowled at Percy and took the flower from Aaron, tucking it behind Aaron's ear as opposed to letting the blond do it himself. "He never said the flowers weren't nice." He gave Aaron's head a soft pat. "Keep that there."

Aaron touched the flower tenderly, blinking at Miles. He nodded. Miles trusted that the flower wasn't going anywhere, and he was content.

"Now we just need to get to the entrance," Miles said.

"The doors will have an identification pad on them, and if we try to break in, we'll set off an alarm," Percy explained. "And I shit you not, that alarm will wake the whole city. So we need to find another way in."

Miles was suddenly relieved that Percy's father worked here; otherwise, they wouldn't have had this insight. "Then what's our plan?"

Percy clearly hadn't thought this far, for his response was delayed. "The only other way we could get in is with a visitor pass. But... we can only get one of those from inside, so..."

Miles gave Percy a light thwack over the head with the back of his hand. "Think harder!"

As if this had literally knocked sense into Percy, he straightened up all of a sudden and blurted, "Oh! I can get us in! Since my dad was a worker here, I have access. With my arm." He gestured with his working arm to his limp prosthetic. "My handprint is registered."