Read Online The Hipster Who Leapt Through Time (The Hipster Trilogy Book 2) by Luke Kondor - Free Book Online Page B

lived in a foster home. “Everyone make your way home now, I’ll get Darpal to the nurse.”  
    “Sir, honestly, I can call them now.”
    “No Jason! Just leave it.”  
    Ian lifted Darpal’s head in his hand and waited for the children to scatter out through the door and into the field behind the science building, leaving Ian and the broken child alone.
    Like the Tolkien tree-creature Ian was, he took an age to figure out that he should probably call someone. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the school-supplied phone. Darpal gently shivered in his hands, calming somewhat now.
    “Hello,” Ian said, “I have a child here.”
    “Yes,” the voice replied. It sounded like an old man. “What do you want us to do with it?”
    Ian pressed his hands against the boy’s balmy feverish head.
    “You know what I mean. I think he’s one of them.”
    Ian hadn’t called an ambulance. There was no point: nurses and doctors couldn’t help the child now. It was up to them. The IPC.
    “Well, does he have the speck?” the voice said, tired, annoyed. Probably taken fifty of the same calls that morning.  
    “The speck?”
    A sigh.  
    Ian felt silly. He could tell the voice wanted to hang up.
    “Okay, so let’s go through a quick checklist.”
    “Okay,” Ian said as he readjusted the glasses on his face. “I can do that.”
    “Are you alone?”
    “Yes, the other kids have all left. Just me and the boy.”
    “Okay,” he said. “Does the child have a high sense of self-worth?”
    Ian looked down at the boy, now quiet, asleep. He didn’t think so, but there was the boy’s assertion that he deserved an A+ on his recent biology test, even though it was really more of an A-.
    “Definitely,” Ian said.  
    “Does he feel the rigid ritualistic systems are archaic?” the voice said.
    “What? Like, is he an atheist?”
    “Sure,” the voice said.  
    “I think so. He never mentioned being a Christian.”
    “And last question. Does he have the speck?”
    “Speck?”
    The voice sighed again.  
    “The fucking speck. The speckled indigo pigments in his eyes, just around his pupils. If I have to explain it any more than that I will be sure to report—”
    “Okay okay. Calm down.” Ian’s face reddened as he gripped the phone between his cheek and his shoulder. He leant down over the boy and lifted his head up. With the boy’s chin cupped in his one hand, he pried open an eyelid with the other. Sure enough, in the boy’s dark brown cornea, he could see the speckled indigo. It looked like amethyst dust suspended in rock. Ian smiled in wonderment as the boy’s eye sparkled.  
    “Well?” the voice said.
    “Yes,” he said. “Bloody hell yes, and it’s magnificent.”  
    As he peered into the boy’s eye the pupil contracted and he began to murmur. He was waking up.
    “Okay then. Get ready because I’m sending over a team. They’ll be there shortly to pick you up.”
    “Me too?” Ian said.
    “Yes, you’re both coming to the academy. That’s how it works. He’s never going to see his parents again. He needs someone he recognises. And you’re that someone.”
    “What? I didn’t sign up for that,” Ian said, letting the boy lie back down on the floor. “Do I have a say?”
    “What do you think?” the voice said.  
    A silence passed between them before the voice said “Goodbye” and hung up.

Nisha Bhatia

    Nisha forced the smile. All-pearly-whites. She’d done it every single weekday morning, just like this, for the past five years, but on that day she was struggling.  
    Lifting her cheek muscles a half-inch was a quest given to her by the gods themselves. She couldn’t blame the gods though, not for that anyway. It would be like blaming the tree in your garden for breaking your arm when you fell out of it. You were the one climbing it.
    After seeing the faces of the children in pain, she’d hardly slept. She’d finished the bottle of red, and then moved onto a tiny bottle of