The Valkyrie Project Read Online Free PDF Page A

mind wander, look at all the huge buildings around her, wonder what there would be for lunch, imagine what the other girls would be wearing, review what secrets she knew, and identify which of them she was ready to trade.
    Now, though, she practically had to hold his hand. It felt like Mom was spying on them, ready to reprimand her if Ana let Memo fall behind for even a second. As soon as she stepped through the door, Mom would be there. Ana was always wondering if at some point she'd pull out hard copy evidence, or review some secret video capture.
    Life had been good, Ana now knew, when Mom had taken him to school.
    It wasn't that she didn't like spending time with her brother. She certainly enjoyed hanging out with him more than most of her friends did with their brothers. They played around, laughed, worked on abstract mechanical art projects—Ana was the vision and Memo was great at piecing together random machine parts in a way that made them move like electric poetry. He would still come to her room after a bad dream if Dad had gone back to work after dinner and Mom was busy gabbing with the ladies.
    The time in the morning had been hers, though. One of the few times she really ever had to herself amid days of family breakfasts, crowded classrooms, theater practices, after-school study groups, family dinners, and extracurricular college application padding. It had been time to let her tightly wound sixteen-year-old mind unravel, a spool that she could kick down the street to school and let the thread of thoughts trail behind. It had been a time when she could disappear into the madding crowd and become part of the swirling rush of the huge world always waiting just outside their house.
    Now here she was, dragging him along just to get him there on time, knowing she'd be the one in trouble if he was late to his first class. Mom would know the instant his tardiness crossed the five -minute mark, but Ana would have to wait all day knowing that the questions would come only once she finally arrived home. After the inquisition at the dinner table, when they were alone upstairs, Memo would apologize, but it didn't settle her stomach during the day, upset with the anticipation of what she'd lose out on as a result of her brother's plodding.
    Still, life would be incomplete without him. No one else would hang on every word of her mundane high -school stories, no one else would share in her insanely detailed imaginings, no one else would come to comfort her loneliness without her calling. If he wasn't there…
    She looked around.
    He wasn't there.
    Ana tried to pause the busy world swirling around her. It kept moving at its dizzying pace, and there was no sign of Memo. She spun, and spun again.
    "Ana!"
    She spun again, homing in on the location of his voice.
    There he was. Flailing. In the arms of two men in black, their backs to her. Dragging him into a van hovering nearby.
    "Memo!" Her voice this time . Her legs were moving. There was no way she was going to make it—the van was already lifting into the swarming cloud of rush-hour insects above them. She didn't stop until she reached the point of departure, trying to keep an eye on the vehicle, but it was soon lost. Memo was lost.
    She pulled out her comm, hesitating—Mom or the police? "Police," she said. Then, "Emergency."
    "Ana Callif?" A woman's voice. Ana wasn't sure it was actually a question, and the woman continued without waiting for an answer. "Citizenship number, please."
    Ana rattled off the string of letters and numbers as fast as she could get the syllables out, hoping that her mouth wouldn't go numb before she did. Her lips were dry, and the feeling was spreading quickly through her mouth and down her throat, leaving nothing but a desert of dust in its wake.
    "What is the problem, Ms. Callif?"
    "My brother! My little brother!" She almost choked, then conjured some saliva and forced it down her throat. "Someone took him! Just now! They took him and flew