"Shorter children near the front!" Miss Kaylee called from the raised platform in the center of room 117. "Everyone should be able to see!"

Clay pulled Kenny to the second row to sit with him, even though she was taller than the boy. The two were being seated for the Gifted seminar, and Kenny had found Clay just a few minutes before in the hallway. She was happy she had found someone to sit next to, especially someone as hyperactive as Clay. If she was left alone, Kenny was worried she'd fall asleep during the seminar.

Kenny hadn't gotten much sleep the night before. Because robotics club had taken up most of her afternoon, she was only able to continue searching for ciphers in the library after dinner. After several hours of endless frustration, she decided to head back to her dorm around eleven o'clock. The young girl stole to her dorm room before 11:15 could appear on the clock, and she spent the rest of the night reading about the history of technology to better prepare her for her next meeting of robotics club. She'd been surprised when the morning had arrived.

"Hawking, are you listening?" Clay asked.

Kenny stared blankly at the boy, unconscious of that fact that he had been speaking to her. She shook her head and removed a card from her pocket. I'm sorry.

"It's okay. I was just talking about how this is the first seminar for the both of us. I wasn't old enough to go to the last one because you have to be learning at a Kindergarten level or higher to be allowed inside. I wasn't skipped to first grade until this September, and you didn't get here until...I think it was two weeks ago! I can't believe I've only known you for two weeks!"

Clay laughed, and Kenny nodded. She, too, was surprised at how short her stay at AGC still was. She felt as though she had been there for two years, not two weeks. Many of her teachers had stopped calling her Neo and started using her nickname, and she was well on her way with her school work. The only thing Kenny was still new to was the vocabulary of the students. Even now, she didn't know what the word "mixer" meant. Perhaps she would learn during the seminar.

The room slowly began to fill as more students were called from their dorms over the intercoms. It took at least forty minutes for everyone to get settled, and the room was incredibly noisy once they did. Kenny managed to spot Color and Fins near the back of the room, but they had been too engrossed in a conversation (or an argument, more likely) to see her and Clay wave at them.

Miss Kaylee stepped up to the microphone and tapped it several times. The chattering around the room diminished, and the woman pressed a button on a remote in her hand. All of the e-boards around the room lit up with the words GIFTED SEMINAR: OUR ORIGIN AND HISTORY.

"Hello, everyone!" Miss Kaylee chimed in a voice that was familiar to Kenny. This was the same tone she used to speak to the Kindergarteners at CCC. "How are you all?"

"Good," the crowd droned in response.

"That's great! We're going to be here all morning, so I hope you all had a great breakfast. During this seminar, I'm going to be answering common questions many Gifted children have about themselves and about being Gifted like I always do. However, these questions are going to revolve around the history of Gifted people and where we came from. But first, we're going to play a game. All you have to do is stand, introduce yourself, and tell us what Gift you have. I'll start. My name is Kaylee Anderson, but most of you know me as Dr. Anderson, the elementary guidance counselor. I have the Gift of telepathy, like many of you guys do. Who wants to go next?"

Several students raised their hands, and the game began. By the time the first hour had was up, almost everyone in the room had gone. It didn't take long before Kenny began to worry Miss Kaylee would accidentally choose her like she had done that day in Cute Cuddly Care. However, that moment never came, and the seminar continued.

"Alright, that took a while! But I loved getting to know each of your names. When I need someone to answer one of my questions, maybe I'll call on you, Rain, or on you, Star, or even you, Clay!"

"She said my name!" Clay whispered excitedly.

Once she was finished speaking, Miss Kaylee began a slideshow explaining how all Gifted people came from approximately 1,000 breeding pairs. "After the genetic bottleneck approximately seventy thousand years ago, the human population shrunk down to about ten thousand. Out of this ten thousand, only 2,500 were Gifted. This is why if some people have Z-areas too small to be seen on an MRI scan, we have their DNA tested. This is also why, compared to others, there are so few Gifted people on earth. Before the bottleneck, our research shows that Gifted people were as common to find as non-Gifted people. In fact, certain groups cast away people who weren't Gifted because the group members didn't see them as useful. It's uncertain whether our ancestors were closely related to homo sapiens, but we know they derived from the same common ancestor."

Miss Kaylee began to move up a timeline of Gifted history. She spoke of Europeans with Gifts that caused them to be resistant to the Black Plague, African tribes full of Gifted people that thrived before they were captured as slaves, and disturbed Gifted Americans who started the Salem Witch Trials as a way to make non-Gifted people feel the pain of being persecuted. The woman talked about recent history, such as the creation of the Academy for Gifted Children and the establishment of Gifted capitals, which were cities that thousands of Gifted people resided in together. The slideshow ended with slide titled "What will you be remembered for in Gifted history?" with a picture of a silhouette.

"Do any of you have any questions?" Miss Kaylee asked when she was done. The slide show had taken another hour, and there was only one more left before noon came around. Most students asked questions about the Witch Trials, and Miss Kaylee dutifully answered them all.

"I'm going to ask a question," Clay murmured to Kenny. He raised his hand.

"Yes, Clay!" Miss Kaylee beamed.

"Well," Clay paused when everyone turned to look at him. "Er, you keep calling us Gifted children and Gifted people, but that seems kind of...long. Is there a shorter word for 'Gifted children' that doesn't take as long to say?"

Miss Kaylee laughed, shaking her head. "No, I don't believe so, but we can make one! Does anyone have any ideas as to what we can call you guys other than Gifted children?"

For the next few minutes, students came up with names that ranged from somewhat funny to just impossible. Kenny wondered when the seminar would finally end, for she was beginning to fall asleep even with all of the noise the teens behind her were making. She was nodding off when she heard Einstein's voice from the row behind her.

"We could call ourselves prodigies, Dr. Anderson," the boy said. "Gifted children—with a lowercase g— who have impressive abilities in specific areas are called child prodigies."

"That's perfect!" Miss Kaylee clapped. "Yes! We're all prodigies, Clay!" The woman checked her watch before announcing that the children were to play another game. Kenny dozed off several times during this game and was unable to recall any of it. She could only remember standing from her seat at the end of Gifted seminar and heading to the kitchen to work on Kitchen Duty for one of the last times until the next semester.

After lunch, Kenny made her way to the library. She decided that researching ciphers would help her stay awake, but before she could start, her mind wandered off. She began to think of Crash's journal, which she had finished reading a day or so ago. The entries became cryptic and odd near the end, and the very last entry included nothing but the words, Press shift for numbers. After the Nursery entry on Day 16, Crash never ceased speaking of Reader and his friends. He stopped dating his entries and began writing sentences like, Lacumemine is a weird word that's not in any dictionaries, in the middle of passages about his hatred of physical education. Kenny was unsure whether Crash's mental state was deteriorating under the stress of being an AGC student.

Kenny's mind went back to the final journal entry. Press shift for numbers. What did that mean? She had learned about computers hardware the previous night, and on Qwerty keyboards, the user pressed shift for symbols, not numbers. This made her think. Certain computer companies (such as Renecesere Corporation, the creator of Orion) were no longer just offering Qwerty keyboards. They also allowed consumers to buys Dvorak keyboards. Was that what Crash meant? Press shift on a Dvorak computer?

Kenny went to the technology section and picked out a book on computer hardware. She scoured the book's pages for a diagram of the different types of keyboard, and fortunately, she found one. Kenny sat down with the book and pulled a single sheet from her pocket. It was a page from one of the files that she'd carried with her to test against the ciphers. She flipped the page over and began to draw the symbols on the Dvorak keyboard with their corresponding numbers. For fun, she began to do simple arithmetic with the symbols and their numbers. However, in doing these addition problems, Kenny noticed something.

Her sums looked similar to the code written on the other side of the page she was using.

Trying not to get her hopes up, Kenny flipped the page over and tried to decipher the first line using the Qwerty and Dvorak keyboards. After a few moments of thinking, she realized that someone could have written the paper using a Dvorak keyboard with Qwerty keystrokes. If they did this, the word "mathematics" would end up being written as "mayd.maycj;". This was nonsense to someone who didn't know the system for encrypting the words, which meant it was perfect to encode private documents.

Documents like the one Kendall was holding in her hand.

Kenny tested the first line and was disappointed to find that it didn't work. The words written were still unintelligible. Disheartened, she continued to decipher the rest of the line until she found a word she could understand. She vaguely recognized the word pueri, which was Latin for children. The young girl's brows furrowed as she looked over the line she was decoding.

The words weren't unintelligible! They were in Latin!

Kenny ran to find an English to Latin dictionary. She spotted one behind Miss Gavin's desk, and it seemed to be the only one in the library. She took it off the shelf, as Miss Gavin let her borrow any book she fancied, and began to translate the first line into english. She was overjoyed to find that the words finally made sense. She scanned the books she had found and her ID card at a computer to check the titles out of the library. Kenny then ran to her dorm with the intent of spending the rest of her day and all night decoding every single one of the files she had found in Miss Kaylee's backpack.

****

Miss Kaylee wished her day would end soon. The Gifted seminar had tired her, what with her speaking nonstop for three hours, and she wished rest would come soon. However, she and Dr. Zhang had a meeting with a visitor, and the woman's boss had ordered her to be there. This is why the second the seminar had finished, Miss Kaylee had left the room and was hurrying to the Main Office building.

Miss Kaylee took the stairs two at a time to Dr. Zhang's office on the top floor. She pulled her hair into a formal-looking bun and knocked on the door.

"It's Dr. Anderson," the woman called as she straightened her glasses.

The door opened, and Dr. Anderson found herself looking upon the most beautiful woman she had ever met.

The woman's hair was reddish brown, and the color complemented her round brown eyes perfectly. She wore a black dress that stopped at her knees, and a badge sat upon her chest. When Dr, Anderson saw this, her astonishment quickly fell away into annoyance. This was who Dr. Zhang's visitor was, then: an agent from the International World Affairs Bureau.

"Kiara Gevinsky, iWAB agent and head supervisor of all things Gifted." The woman offered her hand for a shake. "Hello, Dr. Anderson. It's nice to finally meet you."

Dr. Anderson plastered a smile onto her face. "And you. Where is Dr. Zhang?"

"Ah, yes. Dr. Zhang and I were just coming to the main reason for this meeting, but we will need you. Come."

Kiara opened the door, and Dr. Anderson followed her into the room. Dr. Zhang's office, which had been shocking beautiful the last time she had stepped inside it, felt cold and formal. Dr. Anderson stood behind Dr. Zhang's chair, preferring to face Kiara then sit next to her in the seat her boss had put out for her. Kiara looked at her questioningly but didn't say anything about it.

"You, Dr. Anderson, are main researcher here at AGC, if I am correct," Kiara began. "So this mostly falls upon you and your work."

"What falls upon me?" Dr. Anderson queried.

Kiara paused for dramatic effect and seemed to relish her next words. "iWAB has begun to think about shutting down the Academy for Gifted Children."

Dr. Anderson gasped. "You can't!"

"Just listen. We've been building a new facility in Beijing, which is a Double Capital— a Gifted and non-Gifted capital. If you take a look at the demographics of this school's students, most of them are from Asia. It would be larger, and the children would be surrounded by communities of Gifted people to support them. They don't have that here in Lexington. Not only that, but the oceans are rising quickly on the coast. You'll have twenty more years at the very most until the school's submerged."

Dr. Anderson frowned. "You still haven't explained why this falls upon me."

"We find you aren't opening the Nursery often enough." Kiara said flatly. "Every other week isn't good enough anymore. We need more information, and soon."

Dr. Anderson almost flinched at her words. That was what this was about; that was why iWAB wanted the close AGC. The school was no longer providing information fast enough for them. However, the thought of the institution closing was unbearable to the woman. What would happen to the children whose parents refused to send them halfway across the world? They were the very same students that had just participated in the Gifted seminar less than a few minutes ago.

Gifted seminars wouldn't be offered to them any longer.

"What if we worked every week rather than every other week?" Dr. Anderson blurted. "And Fridays, too."

Kiara smiled, and the woman could tell this was what she had wanted to hear. "That might work."

"But that's impossible! We cannot run the Nursery every night." Dr. Zhang looked between the two women, unaware of the charged energy between them. "Think of what the LM will do!"

Dr. Anderson looked down at her boss apologetically. "The Academy for Gifted Children can't close either," she stated firmly.

"And besides, iWAB doesn't care about the LM or what it does. We only care about results and information, and that's all we'll care about until we get them."

Kiara stood and placed a file on Dr. Zhang's desk. "I have to get going soon, but first...." The woman turned to Dr. Anderson. "Am I correct in stating that you were one of the many Searchers sent to Snowcoast to find out what the source of Gifted energy Dr. Zhang felt there was?"

"You are."

"Did you meet a boy by the name of Gabriel Jackson while you were there?"

Dr. Anderson shook her head. "No, he was not in either my or Miss Lilianna's Kindergarten class."

"Interesting. Would you like to see a picture of him?" Kiara pulled a paper off of Dr. Zhang's desk and presented it to Dr. Anderson. The image was blurry and distant, as if it had been taken with a camera on a street lamp, but Dr. Anderson could identify a face.

"Is that Einstein?" she asked in disbelief. The image was labeled with previous day's date, and underneath was the name of the city it was taken in. "Einstein wasn't in Snowcoast yesterday."

"No, he was not. That's Gabriel, Einstein's twin brother. And his mother has been spotted by this same camera."

"I thought his mother went missing years ago," Dr. Anderson replied.

"So did I. But she and a boy who looks like a complete replica of Einstein appeared in Snowcoast about three months ago. The only reported sightings of her are when she goes to pick up the mail, and she had groceries delivered to her house. However, the boy has been spotted several times within the last few weeks. He's either been playing with a girl or appears to be waiting for her to arrive, but she stopped showing up to his house the day after you returned to Lexington. And what did you bring with you?"

Dr. Anderson's eyes widened. "Kendall—"

"—Annabeth Frodell," Kiara finished. "And that's not the part I'm worried about. What worries me is how I've never met a pair of identical twins where one if Gifted and the other isn't. Which means that, if my experience stands for all identical twins, Gabriel is Gifted, and yet only Einstein is an AGC student. I worry about why that is. But I don't worry for me."

Kiara looked Dr. Anderson in the eyes. "I worry for you."

The iWAB agent turned and left Dr. Zhang's office with those words as her parting words. She would go very far, though, for CIA Headquarters were only two hours away from AGC. At this thought, Dr. Anderson was silent for a moment. However, she soon turned to her boss, her eyes as cold and empty of emotion as space.

"We'll start work in the Nursery tomorrow. Group A will help us. And as soon as I'm available, I'll need to speak with Kendall on the topic of Gabriel and Einstein."