Page 23 of Cage of Starlight

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A rogue shot of energy from behind drives Tory into the mud and grass of the training field.

“Damn, sorry!” Gavin calls.

Beating the guy down in the rec room hasn’t been conducive to friendly relations.

It’s their first day doing maneuvers with Gavin’s unit.

The Kineticists and other sword corps Seeds aim attacks at moving targets along the wall while the shield corps—CFR and Fielders—manages defense.

The support corps—mostly Healers, with one or two Porters for emergency transport, evacuation, and reconnaissance—lingers along the periphery.

This, Menden promises, is where everything comes together, each unit acting in concert.

Hardly. This is where everything falls apart.

Tory crashes into the mud halfway outside the forcefield, hands slipping out from under him as a Legion-sphere passes. He has a fraction of a second for horror—not long enough to move away—before thousands of pounds of metal roll over his hand.

He doesn’t scream, not while Gavin stands behind him, snickering. He doesn’t hug his wrist to his chest or invite the attention of one of the Healers. He pushes himself up with his opposite hand and keeps working. He can’t prevent this pain, but he can deny Gavin the satisfaction of his suffering.

It’s a nicer idea in theory than in practice. By the time training ends, his hand is horribly swollen, mottled purple and red. Drumbeats of agony throb with every heartbeat. Normally he’d skip the Healers and hit the showers, but not even Tory can shower off shattered bones.

Randall fusses over him as he gets in line, and Gavin settles in behind him, glare palpable.

“Hey, Special Diet,” someone calls. “Heard you did a runner. How’d that work out?”

“At least I tried .” He fixes his eyes on the door.

Tory’s unit has mastered coordinated force redirection, and the Fielders know their jobs. With a small unit of Healers waiting on the outskirts to deal with debilitating injuries, the line to the infirmary is half its normal length.

It’s already taken twice as long as it should.

Chill wind dries sweat to Tory’s skin and rips a shiver from him. He longs for his usual hot shower. Resentment—if not for Gavin, he’d be enjoying it right now—pulses through him.

The guy at the front of the line when this whole thing started still stands at the front, though. The door hasn’t opened once.

“Something’s wrong,” he whispers to Randall.

“I know,” Randall whispers back. “Your arm’s as big as a balloon. You want me to tell Menden what went down? I saw that jerk laughing. We’re supposed to be working together .”

“Not that,” Tory hisses. “It’s taking—”

The door opens before he can finish, and what might have been a spark of relief dies inside him.

“Niela . . .” Randall breathes.

The Healer who opens the door, compact with brown skin and dark hair cut at the same angle as the scar that lines her left cheek, wears blood like a robe. It dyes her apron, cascades down the front of her powder blue uniform, and sits on the tops of her white slippers. Her hands shine with it.

Randall pushes through the crowd. “Niela! Are you—?”

She just shakes her head.

Perfect silence accompanies the unit into the infirmary.

Every bed lies empty. None of the Healers talk about what caused the delay, but the solemn nurses carting out blood-soaked rags and the stains not quite washed from the floor tell a story no one dares to speak.

The Healer who takes care of Tory’s arm still has blood under his fingernails.

The urge to run hits him with an urgency that steals his breath, but Vantaras’ warning floats back into his mind. “Hey,” he says. “What’s a NOVA?”

The Healer’s hands jerk against his arm. “You don’t want to know.”

He gestures at the boy’s fingernails, at the stains on the floor. “Can’t be worse than that .”

Silence scrolls out, and the boy glances twice at the door before whispering, “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?

” His fingertips press too hard into Tory’s forearm, creaking against not-quite-healed bone.

“It’s inhumane is what it is. It’s part kill switch, and it just gets worse from there.

” The Healer pales. Far too slow and careful, he says, “Don’t tell me one’s been ordered for you. ”

Tory swallows. “Not yet.”

At dinner that night, he forces food into his mouth. He can’t make himself return to his room, to Gavin with his thinly veiled hostility, so he wanders.

Every time he wanders, he learns. He files away each shred of knowledge.

The guard at the front sometimes steps outside to smoke.

The light in Dr. Helner’s office in Intake stays on at all hours.

She never sleeps, never leaves—except when she disappears, and no one can find her.

Everyone has a filthy rumor to account for that.

Someone said they saw her shoving a cute guy into a closet once.

The only thing the nasty rumors agree on is that she’s always the boss.

The asshole general who runs this place sings in the shower. Once, Tory catches Menden reciting a love poem to Jeffra from outside the door of the infirmary.

It should have occurred to him to wonder why the building is circular, but he stumbles on the answer by accident.

After weeks of gray halls, the unnatural glow from the dead stellite lighting, and the nose-burning scent of cleaning solution in the hallways, he doesn’t know what to do when he inhales and tastes earth.

The scent leads him to a closed door.

He tries his tab on the off chance the area is public access and jolts back when the door unlocks.

He opens it to a wide-open, circular garden, like the building itself is a wall made to trap it inside.

At night, the garden is alive with insect songs, and above it all is the sky , deep blue and cloudless, strewn with stars.

It’s been too long since he’s seen them.

He knows none of their names, but the round gravel of a cobblestone path massages his feet through his slippers, the grass on either side of it thick and soft.

Woody vines climb the walls that hem the garden in, throwing off serrated, heart-shaped leaves and a profusion of flowers in shades of indigo and violet.

Aside from the colors, they’re just like the ones that crowd over the walls near the mine in Hulven.

The bell-shaped blossoms perfume the air, honey-sweet.

It smells like home, as much as any place can.

A massive tree rises from the center, leaves misted with droplets from the rain that blew through after dinner. It’s a beast of a tree, its trunk ash-brown and gnarled. The vines live here, too, twining around the branches and dropping willowy strings of blooms between the leaves.

That night, Tory falls asleep against the tree and misses the bell for breakfast, waking with just enough time to run to training. Vantaras is less than pleased, but Tory doesn’t care.

Even the mutters of Hey, Special Diet! don’t ruin his evening, because out there in the dark there’s a canopy of stars and that old tree with its blanket of moss and grass, where he can be alone.

He eats quickly and disappears, his knowledge of the halls working in his favor when the distinct, staccato ticks of Vantaras’ shoes echo against the floor.

He ducks into a dim and dusty storage room until the footsteps pass, then continues on his way.

He gets out to the garden before the sun sets. It’s narrower in daylight—more prison, less paradise. Fine netting on the skeletal dome overhead shields the space from open sky.

Sunset golds settle nicely on the tree, though.

Perhaps the gardens were cultivated at some point, but the place has reclaimed a sort of fenced-in wilderness. Tory inhales the evening damp and treasures how night leeches warmth from the ground as the insects start with their scratchy songs.

Some nights, he doesn’t go back to his room at all.

*

Other nights, he doesn’t even make it to dinner.

Vantaras corners him outside the mess hall, breathless and distracted. “Dr. Helner sent me to find you.”

Right. Their bartering the other day with Tory as the item of interest.

Randall waves from a table in the corner, grin half-eating his freckled face and finger pointing aggressively at whatever’s in his bowl.

He mouths something Tory doesn’t catch and waves for Tory to join him.

Then he points to a ragged strip of paper dangling from his pocket and waggles his eyebrows.

He’s been gambling again. Tory takes a step toward him without thinking, but Vantaras’ extended arm stops him.

“I need you to come with me.”

“And I need you to leave me alone. I’m hungry.”

“Eat later.”

Tory rounds on Vantaras. “Why should I listen to you? Whatever Helner has on you, it’s got nothing to do with me. Why should I care if you keep your end of the bargain?”

“Because if she tells the generals what she alluded to, I won’t be the only one on the chopping block. They’ll look closely at you, too, and as I said before, you don’t want that.”

Tory paces as close to Vantaras as he dares, balled fist aching at his side. “I want to punch you in your smug mouth.”

“You’re welcome to try as soon as we’re finished.”

“What is it she wants to do, anyway?”

Vantaras’ lips thin as he leads Tory down the hall. “One of her experiments, I presume.”

“That’s it?” Tory scrambles to keep up. “Hey! You’ve got to give me more than that.”

“Ask her when you see her. The doctor loves to talk.”

“Tell me, Sena , what is it she has on you?”

Vantaras’ eyes narrow at the use of his first name.

The bastard walks faster . Soon, they arrive at a door marked with a simple, hammered silver plaque: Lab #1.

It’s not particularly ominous, but neither is it any more helpful than Vantaras has been.

He snaps his fancy tab from his pocket and hangs it in front of the chunky locking mechanism with its inset crystal.

The crystal flashes white and clicks to unlock.