Page 54 of Cage of Starlight

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

T ory sprawls on a makeshift operating table in the center of the gutted camp.

The tents have been torn down, the stolen supplies packed into the truck, the boxes of stellite long since ’ported to the border.

Everyone else departed, at Riese’s order, before the sun reached its zenith.

Only Helner, Tory, and a curling wisp of smoke from the snuffed-out campfire remain.

Clouds rush in with the afternoon wind, darkening the light to an eerie and shadowless gray. Helner presses Tory onto a “treatment table” made from a stack of empty boxes and gets to work removing his Core.

It’s about as pleasant coming out as it was going in—fire and ice where she’s rooting around in his body. When she’s finished, Helner lays the Core on a platter in front of him, purplish-red and fleshy, dark roots spreading from the central sphere like veins. “Lovely, right?”

His stomach flops, and he turns his head to the side. “Beautiful,” he manages.

His skin burns, but when he slides a hand over where Helner extracted the Core, it’s smooth and unmarred. No long scar for Tory.

“Hey . . . what you did with Reaching, could you have done it with a scalpel?”

She goes still. “Aside from the fact that I am a Reacher , so cutting people open is not my specialty—unlikely. Remember I said Core removals via Reaching have a 10% mortality rate? It’d likely be the reverse for surgical removal. And that’s generous. A 10% survival rate would be a miracle.”

Tory closes his eyes. He feels sick because of the Reaching, not because—

“Why do you ask?”

“No reason.”

The silence that falls between them is palpable.

“I’m . . . sorry,” she says, “About Sena.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Prickling-cold waves of nausea roll through him, his skin itchy and too tight, tongue thick in his mouth.

He opens his eyes, seeking a distraction, but only finds Helner’s face. The right side is swollen, the skin along her cheekbone ragged and rust colored. She catches him looking, shifts the uninjured side to face him.

Travin and Yized were attacked , Riese said. There’s the evidence of it, but his brain refuses to parse it.

“Stop staring or I’ll pull out a lobe of your lung.”

Tory turns away.

She’s the one who ends up talking, voice quiet. “What happened to Sena was a mercy. I wasn’t his biggest fan, thought he was a coward for the longest time, but I wouldn’t wish that bastard Kirlov on anyone. Death was the kindest possible choice.”

“But it wasn’t! If Riese’s plan worked—”

Helner whacks the back of his head. “I don’t want to know. Plausible deniability, remember?”

“Fine. Are you finished?”

After a pause that feels eternal, she pokes his Core with a finger, and it rolls over with an unpleasant plop-squish. Tory doesn’t gag, but it’s a near thing.

“I’m not seeing any broken-off roots, but . . . you know. If you die, think of me fondly.” She shrugs. “I need to get back. If they notice me gone, your little gig will be up, too. Travin better hurry. He’s my ride.”

“Mine, too, I think.”

Without fanfare, she plucks a scalpel from a tray of instruments to his right and plunges it into the Core. Blackish fluid oozes out in rhythmic rushes, like the thing has a pulse , and—

Yep, that’s Tory’s breakfast.

Helner sidesteps and pulls the Core away before he can defile it with scrambled eggs once removed.

“No appreciation for my fine arts.” She withdraws a sliver of pure stellite from the fleshy mass with a pair of tweezers. “I have to put this back in you.”

“You what ?”

“You can’t get in without it. This bit of stellite, charged with your energy, is what allows you to move around freely in the facility. Only place anyone can walk without it is Intake.”

She laughs. “But maybe you knew that, what with setting off the alarms as soon as you arrived by going down the wrong hall . But anyway. Right or left?”

It’s so different from the first time. No straps. No Sena waiting in the corner like he’d rather be anywhere else. “Neither. I’ll put it in my pocket.”

Helner makes a production of her sigh. “Fine. You lose it, don’t blame me.”

He’s situating it in his jacket pocket when Riese reappears out of nowhere, Travin at his elbow.

“Tory,” Riese says, regal and warm. “Glad to see you’re all right.”

“For the moment,” Helner says. “I see you brought my ride. Tory? I’ll see you later. Got some tests I’m going to propose to the generals, so be ready for that.”

She takes Travin’s arm and makes a shooing gesture, and they blink away, leaving Riese and Tory alone in the hollowed-out camp. Tory tries on a smile, lips tilted into just the right shape. It fits wrong, but he knows from years of experience what Riese will want to hear. He says, “I’m ready.”

“I know you are.”

Warmth spreads through him, like a reward. He is ready. He can do this.

Riese drops a small, canvas-wrapped bundle into his hands, and Tory peeks inside to find three small devices. Smoke grenades, perhaps.

“Remember what I told you?”

Tory ticks the list off on his fingers. “Residence quarters, intake hall, and the room marked #004.”

“Good. Activate them in order. They’ll create a distraction so we can slip in.”

“And the Cores . . .?”

Riese lifts a stellite tower, pure and a few inches tall. “Push as much energy as you can spare into this thing. If you use enough, given your unique abilities, you should be able to resonate with all the crystals in the room, your energy essentially overriding what’s already stored in them.”

Tory considers that. “Doesn’t that mean they all could be used to hunt me ?”

“Yes. That’s why you continue putting energy into this crystal until you hear it begin to crack.”

“Do I want to know why?”

“It will explode catastrophically . The compasses won’t be a problem after that.”

“And me?”

“Sufficient desperation, remember?” Riese grins, vulpine. “If you get caught in the blast, your desperation wasn’t sufficient enough. You’ll need to run like there’s fire on your feet as soon as you hear the first crack.”

“I can do that.”

“I know. Don’t let anything distract you. Remember, wait until closer to evening to get started. Travin can’t ’port the wagon, so we need the travel time. You have everything?”

Tory kneels to shove the bundle of supplies into the bottom of his pack. He has plenty of room—it’s nearly empty without Thatcher’s cloak. Something coils around his lungs, and he doesn’t think of Sena shivering by the fire, doesn’t let himself contemplate the future he dared to imagine for them.

He’s been fine alone for over twelve years, and he’ll be fine now. “Everything I need.”

“You’ll do well. You don’t have to be afraid.”

The miserable knot of nerves uncoils.

Travin arrives again behind them and chugs something from a canteen at his side.

Riese laughs and claps Travin on the back. “Sorry to make you work so hard. Just one more. Back here when you’re done. We have work to do.”

No-nonsense, like when Travin ’ported Iri out and left him to die. The anger the thought brings slips before it can find purchase. He’s got this. He’ll do well.

Travin executes a sloppy salute. “You got it, boss.”

One hand is bandaged, and Tory remembers Riese’s words.

Sena hurt Travin when he left. Tory squints at the bruise between the bandages, blood-flooded blue—nearly black, halfway up his forearm and creeping to the tips of his fingers.

He winces. Tries, again, to imagine Sena hurting Travin.

His mind won’t even unspool the images for him, the concept is so absurd.

Travin grabs Tory’s elbow, and before he knows it, the world shifts. One moment, an isolated road covered with trees. Tory nearly loses his footing on the slope of the earth beneath him. His feet were angled for level ground.

Again—the rocky bank beside a creek. Tory does lose his footing this time. One knee goes into the creek, startling a lazy school of minnows. He curses and glares.

“Oh, I apologize. You new to ’porting?”

Again. Thick woods beside a familiar road, well worn and expertly paved. Tory arrives on his knees, and Travin lets go of his elbow, laughing. “Sorry, it’s just so fun to see how the new ones take it.”

Tory left his sense of equilibrium behind at the last jump. His head spins.

“And—for this, I’m actually sorry.”

Tory has no time to ask what for. Travin’s fist collides with his face, and pain bursts in bright colors as he crashes into dirt and leaf litter on his side. He tastes blood. His tongue darts out to find a split lip. “ What ?” he demands, belatedly.

Standing above him and shaking his left hand, Travin shrugs—only halfway apologetic. “Realism. You think they’d believe you found your way off a battlefield and all the way back looking so clean and put together?”

He’s hardly clean. Tory wipes his expression blank. Stares at Travin until the guy shifts his weight and pushes out an awkward chuckle.

“Okay, fine,” he confesses. “But listen, it was like . . . a really flimsy punch, because I had to do it left-handed. Spark made me promise to mess up your pretty face. You’re not her target of choice, of course. That would have been—uh.” He lifts his bandaged hand. “Anyway. Good luck.”

Then he’s gone, and Tory is alone.

He’s fine. He has a job to do. Sitting up, Tory wipes blood from his lip and brushes mud and leaves from his clothes, for all the good it does. They’re filthy beyond help, stiff with seawater and three-plus days of dirt, sweat, and worse. Given the option, he’d kill for a shower.

Tory stares through the woods and up the road where the sleeping cannons and the high walls around the Compound wait. Home, unsweet home.

He’ll tear this prison down himself.

*

Sena and the others find the patrols faster than they hoped. A pillar of campfire smoke gives them away.