Page 33 of Cage of Starlight

“Considering your exhaustion from using your abilities so long without rest, the fact that you inhaled water, and your current state, it’s not impossible.”

Tory scoffs. “Wow, thanks. Where did you learn to interact with people, Sena?”

“You’re no better at it, if the way you drew your roommate’s ire is any indication.”

“Better than being a freaking puppet.”

Sena winces, but it’s an accurate-enough descriptor.

He saw the NOVA before they cut him open and installed it against his spine: a strange, articulated metal thing with a long, embedded strip of pure stellite.

A symbolic set of strings to control him with.

“Do you think you’re beyond control? All someone has to do to send you on a rampage is mention your tattoo. I’m still not sure why.”

Tory’s glower is palpable. “I just don’t like it. Do I need a reason?”

“You must have one. I don’t need to know it, if that’s what you’re asking. I didn’t intend to cause offense.”

Laughter explodes from Tory. “Oh, you’re really good at not pissing people off .”

The sun is a sliver ahead, barely visible through the trees as they climb a hill blanketed with dead leaves. It will be dark soon. Sena stares straight ahead. “I don’t mean to,” he offers.

“What are you trying to do , then?”

Sena’s chest hurts, and not only because of the fall.

He never learned how to talk about this.

“I’ve never been as . . . socially competent as my peers.

I’ve gotten better at interpreting behavior by observation because I’ve had to, but not overwhelmingly so.

Not enough to keep them from—” His shoulders go tight.

“Never enough for it to matter. It’s not my intention to ‘piss you off’.

The feeling is mutual, if you care to know. ”

“What did I do?”

Sena levels a dry stare at Tory. “You were loud. Reckless.”

He was infuriating. He is infuriating. But he is also, to Sena’s great chagrin, infuriatingly impossible to look away from. When he arrived at the Compound and threw himself up against every wall, tested the give in every rule, spat in the face of safety and propriety—

It made Sena furious. It was like Tory didn’t know that people could only fall so many times before they couldn’t stand again. Like his bones didn’t know how to break.

Tory huffs. “Not everyone can have their panties in a bunch all the time.” His footsteps slow, considering. There’s a smile in his voice when he continues, “So I pissed you off, huh? The blindfold thing, on the training field—you did that ’cause I annoyed you?”

“No.” A bald-faced lie. Sena amends, “That wasn’t the only reason. I thought it might help. Seeing you bombarded with balloons was merely a pleasant byproduct.”

“Didn’t see the point of being nice anymore, after where it got me.”

There it is again, that awful nonchalance.

Sena’s trembling, but that’s no surprise.

It’s been ages since anger didn’t make him shake.

It’s at least as dangerous as hope has ever been.

“The point ,” Sena grits out, “is to not become a target. Were my heritage something I could have disguised when I was young, I would have. If I could have matched the graces of my peers, I would have. If I could—if the colonel—” It’s not fair.

Tory makes rebellion look so easy, so consequence-free .

“You invite violence and blame the ones who bring it.”

“Fuck you! I was tired of appeasement!”

Sena shouldn’t be glad to have gotten a rise out of Tory, but it douses some of the furious heat in him. It means, at least, that Sena isn’t alone in feeling like his body is a fuse waiting for a spark.

“I was so tired, you have no idea . I’ve spent every moment since I was eight just taking it. Why don’t you get it? Your dad fucking bled you and you let him. I—what I saw—don’t you understand you’re just making it easier—”

“Nothing makes it easier!” The heat surges back, foreign and horrible and frightening.

Tory plucks this feeling from him so easily.

He makes Sena weak and unsteady. Out of control, when control is the only thing that’s ever kept him safe.

Sena clamps down on the surge of anger and throttles it.

Calmly, he says again, “Nothing makes it easier. I tried everything. The only thing I could do was make it happen less often.”

“ Don’t make trouble .” Tory’s voice is thoughtful, and Sena grimaces. He doesn’t need Tory’s pity. “My mom had rules like that. She was afraid, too.”

Sena rasps out a laugh that echoes with a gong of pain in his chest, and he stops to catch his breath.

Tory must notice something. “Are you . . .?”

“Fine,” Sena breathes, straightening.

Afraid . It’s such a flimsy, laughable word for the horror that’s carved Sena hollow for years, so sharp the agony of the NOVA came almost as a relief at times: at least he didn’t have to keep waiting for it.

Conveniently, they come upon a creek, and Sena buys time by kneeling to fill his canteen.

He uses the excuse of his busy hands as he twists it closed and secures it to his belt so he doesn’t have to look at Tory when he finally decides on, “It wasn’t your fault. ”

“What?”

“In the tent. The NOVA. Kirlov would have found another reason, if not that. You apologized back then, but it wasn’t your fault. It was at least in part because I allowed the Arlunian non-combatants to ’port away.”

“I wondered if that was on purpose.”

Sena shrugs. “When I can do something . . . I try. Sometimes it doesn’t work. That day you arrived—with the scalpel—I meant to let the rebel infiltrators escape unharmed, but one of them went for my gun. You were right that I’m a coward, that I only give others advice to prevent their own pain.”

Tory swallows audibly. “I didn’t say you were a coward.”

“You didn’t have to.”

They walk, on and on and up, until Tory finally says, “Ownership.”

Sena blinks. “I’m sorry?”

“The tattoo. You asked, right? It’s—it’s like the Core. It’s not something I want, not something I chose . Someone put it on me to show I don’t belong to myself. People see it and think they know me, think they—” He stops, like maybe he can stuff the words back inside himself.

Sena knows the feeling. He gets it now, though. Warmth fills him. How strange, that they can be so different and think so alike.

Tory’s looking down, shoulders up to bracket his ears, like he’s bracing himself for a blow. Sena says, quietly, “I’ve misunderstood you.”

Tory’s wide eyes find Sena, tension going out of his shoulders. His gaze is a question, so Sena makes himself answer. “There’s no shame in survival. Your tattoos”—his scars, Sena’s scars, so many other things—“aren’t ugly. Other people make them ugly.”

“You’re not wrong.” Tory trudges up a hill behind Sena, humming under his breath. Finally, he says, “You know, I fucking hate people.”

The suddenness of it shocks a grin from Sena. “Yes.”

He doesn’t interrogate the warm feeling that fills him at the brilliant smile Tory offers in response. They sink into silence, and for the first time, it’s comfortable.

The sun sets fast. They find a defensible resting place before the last of the light leaves—a nook in a jagged wall of rock that creates a right angle, leaving only the front exposed—and Sena sets to work making a small fire.

Discovery is a concern but dehydration, illness, and hypothermia are equally dangerous. Sena leaves his wet gloves on.

Tory dries his socks in front of the fire while Sena boils the water from the creek. They feast on some of the dried rations in one of the large pockets on their jackets and save the rest for later. Sena keeps his handgun but gives Tory a knife, just in case.

When Tory’s clothes are mostly dry, he falls asleep sitting up, and Sena gently prods him into lying on his side. It’s been a long day. Sena should sleep, too.

But it’s not bad, like this. The cold, open air. The heat of the fire. Tory curled like a crescent moon toward Sena, close enough to touch.

The sky above goes on forever, and Sena really should sleep, but instead he counts the stars and whispers their names and feeds brush into the fire to keep it bright. He’ll enjoy this freedom, every moment of it, for as long as he’s allowed to keep it.

*

Tory wakes at first light. The fire has died down, but the embers still burn bright. Tory frowns. Sena hasn’t been asleep long, then.

He waits until the light sifts full and bright through the trees overhead before he wakes him.

Sena barely stirs at the first nudge. Tory tries again, shaking his shoulder, and Sena jolts awake, taking in the state of the light.

“You should have woken me hours ago,” he rasps, and immediately tries to stand.

He fails, making a ragged, shallow gasp as he crumples.

Tory should have noticed it earlier. “When we fell . . .?”

Sena grits his teeth. “It’s nothing.”

He makes it to his feet this time.

Tory steps in front of him. Something strange and unfamiliar wriggles in his stomach at the pallor of Sena’s face and the bluish smudges beneath his eyes. “Wrong answer. Try again.”

“I . . . may have fractured a rib during our plunge.”

“Hitting the water wasn’t so bad. Did you land on something?”

Sena’s breathy chuckle turns into a cough. “ Something landed on me.” He stretches out, winces. “In any case, the break is tender but not debilitating. It was merely unwise to move without consideration for it.”

Tory swallows an apology (Sena might tell him it’s useless again) and packs up in silence. He works fast so Sena doesn’t have to—an apology in action, not words. With dry shoes, socks, and clothing thanks to last night’s fire, the work is nearly pleasant.

Sena sets a brutal pace. A few minutes into their journey, he breaks the silence with a grimly cheery, “In any case, our injuries are the least of our concerns. We’ll be dead in three days if we can’t get back. Two days, now, I suppose.”

Tory nearly tumbles down the hill. “We’ll what ?”