Page 57 of Cage of Starlight

The trainees must have gotten used to being referred to by numbers, because they obey.

Their energy is a sizzling, electric thing.

Tory can’t help his reflexive flinch, but both attacks naturally fizzle out before landing, the small metal balls they’re using as projectiles slowing and dropping before they hit their target.

The officer’s eyes dance, and he lifts a clipboard from his side and jots urgent notes. “Excellent. Oh, excellent , this is better than anticipated.” He smirks at Helner. “As you may have noticed, Doctor, the material used to create the target and the vest has . . . unique properties.”

“I noticed,” Helner bites out.

“In addition to the vests and targets, we’ve also sent some of what we’re calling N001, a nullifying agent.

We have it in injectable syringe form, dart form, and gaseous form, to disable enemies.

Naturally, we’ll need to test all varieties and record the effects.

The Grand General is especially interested in how the gaseous form works in both enclosed spaces and open air and how long we can expect enemies’ abilities to be inaccessible after exposure. ”

“Enemies,” Helner echoes, hollow. “Both Arlune and Westrice’s fighting forces are Seeds. These weapons will disable both sides.”

“Yes,” the man says, thoughtful. “But we need to think of the future.”

Helner says what Tory’s thinking, fiery as ever. “ Lieutenant , what future could we possibly be preparing for with anti-Seed weaponry? Civil war?”

“Doctor!” The officer’s spine goes rigid. “I’m not at liberty to discuss that.”

“And he’s using his son to do it. That boy really is better off dead.”

Tory closes his eyes, but the feeling growing in him is closer to rage than sorrow. How dare these people? How dare the Grand General turn someone as gentle as Sena into a weapon?

The officer straightens a uniform that’s not in need of straightening.

“A minor inconvenience, that, but nothing we can’t work past. Luckily, the compound in the Neutralizer’s blood is stable and powerful in very small doses.

Our existing stock should serve us for years .

” He brightens. “Ah, forgive me. Is this the Channeler, then? The Grand General believes it would be wise to repeat the experiments but have the Channeler gather and combine the attacks before directing them at their targets. We’d be interested to see if the unique skills of the Channeler change the way the neutralizing component reacts to attacks. ”

He pauses after he speaks, like he expects Tory to leap to attention and execute his orders.

“Channeler?” The officer says again. It’s weird to recognize how different it is from how Sena said Worldseed . The officer says Channeler like a person might say hammer.

“I have a name.”

“And I would use it if it were relevant to our work here.”

Anger coils in Tory’s stomach, and he strides over to where the officer has indicated.

“Good. Kineticists, please accelerate attacks toward the Channeler as a group. Channeler, redirect those attacks toward the target.”

A long pause. The officer’s pen waits, poised over his clipboard.

“I’d appreciate verbal affirmation.”

“Fine,” Tory says.

When the three Seeds throw attacks at him, it’s child’s play to steal the energy. It takes a bit more focus to combine and direct them, but he already did it during his escape attempt, and he handled energy on a much larger scale on the battlefield.

As expected, the attacks die before reaching the target.

The officer jots a few more notes. “Very good. Keep going. Kineticists, give it everything you have. Don’t let up—once one attack is redirected, send another. It’s important that we discover whether the target’s effects are static or exhaustible.”

The sizzle of their energy approaching fast in the periphery says they’re obeying, and Tory steals and slings those attacks, as well. Sena’s energy neutralizes them.

It’s nothing like his actual presence. Even with every prototype they’ve made—the Null and the neutralizing vests and the targets and whatever else waits in those boxes stacked at the back of the room—the energy is negligible.

If this were the extent of Sena’s energy, Tory could have crushed it to a pinprick and healed him, easy—soothed his fever, sealed broken bones.

He could have saved him. This is weak in comparison.

He could lift and move it, could expand it.

The next attack, he tries. The energy jumps to do his bidding as readily as it ever has.

Tory spreads it until it’s riddled with holes, nothing like Sena’s energy that unfurled over miles of forest. He wonders, with a pang, how far he’d have needed to expand it before it showed holes like this.

Which one of them would reach their limit first?

It’s a silly question, and not one he’ll ever be allowed to find the answer to. He was so stupid. He should have stayed, should’ve looked .

The more he thinks about it, the more his insides knot up and his flimsy self-justifications flood away. They seem so childish, a transparently thin veneer over his own cowardice. Why didn’t he scour the woods, reach out for that beacon-like energy? Why, when he wasn’t too late to save him?

He’ll free every Seed with what he’s going to do today—every Seed except the one they had most thoroughly under their thumb.

It doesn’t fill him with the same glowing purpose it did when he talked about it with Riese.

He expands the energy farther, then directs the kinetic attacks at the back of the room.

The target—and the wall behind it—burst where the energy stretches thin.

The wall craters, spilling stone. The boxes explode with the force Tory throws at them.

Vests shred. Vials burst. Slivers of stone and wood and whatever the target is made from slice at him as they fly past with the force of the explosion.

Blood drips from at least four fine cuts on Tory’s face and arms as silence settles over the room, and it’s not enough. It’s not satisfying, but it’s something.

Sena asked him, after all. If he saw any of the weapons they’d made from Sena’s blood, he was supposed to ruin them.

It’s Tory’s turn to smile, a hollow thing.

Next time, he’ll turn every last item they’ve made from Sena’s stolen blood to dust. He won’t stop with STAR-7.

Everything here, and then everything from here to Maran.

The Grand General thinks he’s so clever, cutting Sena open to torture him, bleeding him to subdue other Seeds.

Tory will track every sliver of that lightning-storm energy that calls to him like a song.

None of these people deserve to have any part of Sena. “Keep it coming.”

The officer glances, mute, between Tory and the shredded target and blown-open boxes.

A clear fluid that must be Null spreads out along the ground at the back, mixing with stone-dust. After a moment of gaping, the officer bursts into a flurry of motion.

“I—that—there’s clearly been a mistake. This is—this shouldn’t be— ”

The Kineticists scatter as chunks of concrete crash down.

Tory executes the most mocking bow in his arsenal, loose as a sated predator. He pastes on a concerned expression, too sweet. “I think they might be broken. Maybe you should run back to Vantaras and tell him he’ll need to try harder next time.”

The pen slips from the officer’s lax fingers. He doesn’t bend to retrieve it.

Helner clucks her tongue and scurries over to Tory. “Oh dear!” she says, playing it up. “You’re bleeding! I should take you to the infirmary, can’t let the General’s best weapon bleed out on the floor . . .”

The officer’s mouth opens again, but Helner has already seized Tory’s elbow and begun to pull him from the room. “Stars!” she muses, performatively loud. “No idea what went wrong. That was horrible, wow!”

But when she gets him a ways down the hall, she rounds on him, eyes glittering.

“ Fuck yes. Absolutely stellar. You’ll have to tell me what you did after we get Jeffra to clean up your pretty face.

What have you been eating since I saw you last?

” She ushers away her own question with a wave of her hand as she stops him in front of the infirmary door.

“Tell me later. I’d better get back and smooth things over in there. ”

Then she’s gone, heels ticking down the hallway.

The thrill he got from destroying everything in that room lasts only as long as it takes Jeffra to notice him standing in front of the door and open it.

The silence presses between them, suffocating. Last time he was here, Niela was sprawled on a chair in the corner, avoiding work. And right over there was where Sena—

Tory retreats. “Sorry, I’ll just—”

She drags him inside by the wrist. “You’re bleeding on my clean floor.”

He could be bleeding on someone else’s clean floor if she’d let him.

She gestures to one of the treatment beds. “You know the drill.”

“They’re superficial. They’ll scab up in a minute. I’ll just go.”

Jeffra pushes him down onto the nearest bed. “I insist. We need to catch up, don’t we?”

Tory isn’t so sure. What is there to say?

She heals him to the tune of cheerful birdsong, closing cuts and flinging splinters into the trash as she urges his flesh to give them up.

A small cage hangs in the corner of the room, close to the west-facing window.

A vibrant yellow bird twitters and swings as the warmth of healing spreads through Tory.

“Glad to see you safe,” Jeffra says, quiet. Her hands linger too long. Twice, she opens her mouth like she wants to speak. Tory’s eyes keep finding the bird.

He doesn’t mean to say it. “Sena’s?”

Jeffra follows his eyes. “Sweet, isn’t he? I think he’s a good addition. Music can be as healing as anything. His name is Kierney.”

Kierney who makes a nest of Sena’s hair, who made Sena smile like a child by the fire. He can’t push words past the stone in his throat.