by Gage Lee
“There are more guards coming,” Hagar said. “We have to pull out.”
“No,” I demanded. “You told me this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get our hands on this material. Where’s the target?”
“It’s dangerous, Jace,” my handler insisted. “We don’t know what it can do. The extraction team has containment gear—”
“No time,” I said. “Which way?”
Hagar debated whether to give me the location for what felt like hours. The sound of boots on the tiles rang through the building all around me. I was just about out of time.
“Straight ahead to the end of the hall, then right, first door on your left.” Hagar’s voice sounded hoarse. “The material isn’t stable, Jace. If you touch it, no one knows what will happen.”
“I understand,” I said as I raced down the hall. “I’ll do this.”
The guard stationed in front of the door leading to my target had wisely held his ground despite the disturbance. He was there to protect what I’d come to steal, I was sure of that. Nothing was as important to him as keeping it safe.
He hadn’t, however, drawn his gun, and he wasn’t anywhere near fast enough to do it after he saw me. His hand hadn’t even reached his holster before I was up in his face.
I snatched the guard’s harness, dragged him away from the wall, then slammed him back into the drywall as hard as I could. The impact drove the air from his lungs and rattled his brain in his skull like a nut in a cup. The guard was out like a light.
I kicked the door in, and it bounced back on its frame to close behind me as I charged into the room. Like the storage unit, there wasn’t much in this room. A naked lightbulb over a desk that held a small, strange cube beneath it. A manila folder lay next to the cube, opened to a sheet of paper inside it.
I wished I still had the eye-snapper and hoped that my helmet could capture at least some of what I saw. I rushed to the desk, looked down at the paper, and saw a bizarre mess of technical diagrams and handwritten notations. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of the diagrams, but a tangled scribble on the right side of the page snagged my eye.
It was my mother’s signature.
“Device needs more power,” she’d written, then signed it with the same scrawl she’d used on the notes she’d written to my school when I missed a day sick.
The device on the diagram was clearly a match for the cube in front of me. Why would my mother have been involved in this thing’s creation? I couldn’t understand how all the pieces I’d gathered fit together.
“You’ve got guards coming,” Hagar practically shouted in my ear. “You have to get out of there.”
“Is this it?” I stared at the floating cube to make sure Hagar understood what I was asking.
“Yes,” Hagar said. “But—”
We were out of time for buts.
I hooked my serpent around the cube and yanked it off the table.
A blinding flash of light exploded from the device. A blast of searing pain rocketed into my core, and for a moment I thought Hagar was right. I’d screwed up. I was dead.
Except, I wasn’t.
As fast as the pain began, it vanished. A strange vibration poured out of the device, rumbling through my serpent and into my core. It was familiar somehow. Like I knew this thing. Or at least I should have known it.
“How do I get out of here?” I asked.
“Back the way you came!” Hagar shouted. “Go go go!”
I banished my fusion blade and ran like I was being chased by the world’s angriest pit bull.
Jinsei flooded into my legs from my core, increasing my speed even further. A pair of guards drew their weapons at the intersection, and I ducked around them and kept running. Left, then right, I juked back and forth across the hallway, hoping speed and evasiveness would keep me safe.
Five feet away from the guards, they realized I wasn’t going to stop and raised their weapons. At that range, there was no way they could miss.
Which is why I didn’t let them fire.
My remaining tentacle smashed across the chest of one guard, knocking him to the ground. Before he regained his feet, I slammed the serpent across the other guard’s knees. He went down with a grunt, and I was past them and around the corner.
“We’ve got company on the roof,” Hagar said. “Two minutes, Jace. Then we have to pull out.”
Another guard seemed to materialize from thin air in front of me. He raised his gun, and I threw out an elbow that caught him across the chin. He flew backward from the blow, his eyes unfocused. His pistol roared, and something tugged at my sleeve.
That had been too close.
My serpent slammed into the side of the man’s arm, knocking the gun out of his hand, then spun back to bounce his head off the wall. His legs gave out, and he went down.
I crashed through the stairwell door and raced up one flight after another. The jinsei in my core was almost gone. I didn’t have any left to pump into my legs. I wasn’t going to make it. My lungs burned, and my muscles were on fire. Doors behind me flew open as more and more guards joined the chase. I’d never be able to outrun them.
“One more floor,” Hagar shouted into my helmet. “You’re almost there!”
My core ached as I wrenched a final drop of jinsei out of it to fuel my run. Finally, I reached the maintenance room and burst through its door onto the roof.
There were guards hunkered down behind ventilation fans and raised conduits, all of them with weapons trained on the transport. None of them had heard me over the growing roar of the vehicle’s rotors. A barrage of gunfire was followed a split second later by the almost musical sound of bullets punching into the side of the craft’s metal hull.
“Over here!” I shouted to Hagar.
I dragged myself on top of the entrance to the building and crouched down on its roof to avoid catching a bullet from the angry guards who turned to track the transport’s flight.
The transport lifted into the air and screamed low over the rooftop. Its rotors were far too close to the guards for comfort, and the hired guns threw themselves flat to avoid being torn to ribbons. At the last possible second, the transport pulled up short beside my perch with its hatch wide open.
I jumped in and slammed into the back of the transport’s interior as the pilot gunned the engines and roared away from the building before I’d even touched the deck. The vehicle’s nose pointed toward the sky at an angle so steep it flattened me against the rear bulkhead.
Bullets continued to ping off the transport’s hull for long seconds after we’d left the building. Finally, the barrage died down, and the transport leveled off.
“Too close,” Hagar said. “Way too close.”
“Yeah, but I got it,” I said, a manic grin stretched across my features. My serpent raised the Machina to show her.
Hagar Inaloti recoiled from the object. She held her hands in front of her face and closed her eyes as if the radiance that spilled from it burned her.
“Put it in one of the compartments,” she said. “Hurry.”
I was puzzled, but I did as she asked. The light hadn’t hurt me in the slightest. I dumped it into the nearest cargo compartment and slammed the lid.
“You okay?” I asked.
“No,” Hagar said. “My face hurts. My hands, too.”
The parts of the warden’s hand and face that had been exposed to the light were bright pink. She looked like she’d gone for a stroll through the Sahara without sunscreen.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay,” she said, her voice thin and tired. “I’m glad you made it out of there in one piece.”
“Me, too,” I said. The adrenaline was wearing off, leaving in its place the nagging worry about what I’d seen. I couldn’t figure out why my mother’s name would be on a technical diagram in a heretic storage cell. It made no sense whatsoever.
“What did you see in there?” Hagar asked as if she’d plucked the thought ou
t of my mind. “Just before you grabbed the material, you were fixated on a diagram.”
“I thought I recognized something.” I shook my head. “I was wrong.”
“Jace...” Hagar popped out of her flight harness and moved over next to me. She put her hand on my knee and squeezed. “What you did in there was incredibly brave. That material you gathered could make all the difference in our fight.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That’s why I stuck around to finish the job.”
“It was also really, really stupid,” she said. “You’re important, Jace. More important than any single mission. If we lost you...”
Hagar’s eyes were strangely misty and distant. She was looking at me, but also at something else. Something, or someone, from her past.
Her Singapore.
I wrapped my hand over my controller’s fingers and gave my friend a comforting squeeze.
The Brother
IT WAS HARD TO CONCENTRATE on my schoolwork after the raid. Thanks to Clem’s help, my scrivening grades didn’t slip, too much, but I certainly didn’t make any great improvements in my skills there, either. I struggled to focus even in martial arts class, and the technique I’d been chasing seemed to slip further from my grasp with every passing day. The breakthrough I’d been on the verge of just a few days ago eluded me.
Things didn’t get any easier when Hagar started dodging me after she’d returned to classes following our last mission. Every time I tried to catch up to her, she ducked down the hallway or buried herself in conversation with her friends. Every day, I hoped I’d find her waiting in front of the champion’s door. And every day, I was disappointed.
We were most of the way through the first half of the school year when I finally couldn’t stand it anymore. I cornered Hagar on her way into the dining hall for dinner, and wouldn’t let her past even when she waved at one of her friends and tried to squeeze around me.
“We have to talk,” I whispered.
“No, we don’t,” Hagar shot back, her face twisted into a deep scowl. “You can’t keep doing this, Jace. I’ll contact you when it’s time. Until then, back off.”
“Did you find anything out about my mother?” I demanded. “Did you ask the elders—”
Hagar recoiled as if I’d struck her. Her eyes darted back and forth to see if anyone had reacted to what I’d said. With a hiss, she dragged me out of the main hall into a shadowy side corridor.
“I know you’re worried about your mom.” Hagar’s voice was low and stern, her eyes cold and flashing. “You’ll be the first to know if I have anything.”
“Why did the heretics have her name?” I couldn’t let this go. My mom was out there in the cold because of me. Anything could have happened to her already. I had to know she was safe.
“Stop,” Hagar hissed. “We’re not in charge of this, Jace. The elders will tell me when it’s time to tell you. In the meantime, stay away from me. People will start talking about us if they keep seeing us together.”
With that, Hagar pushed past me and made her way into the dining hall. Frustrated, I watched her go with a frown stamped into my face. My expression stayed like that as I stepped into the main hall and headed for dinner.
“Oboli for your thoughts,” Clem said, surprising me.
“Oh,” I said, relieved it was my friend. “Just, you know...”
“Arguing with Hagar?” Clem said. “You seemed to be having a pretty heated conversation.”
“No,” I said, then corrected myself. “Sort of.”
Clem nodded and waited for me to elaborate. When I didn’t, she shrugged and pointed to the table where Eric was already waiting for us.
“I’m starving, let’s get some food in our bellies,” she said, and hooked her arm through mine. She dragged us into the hall, navigated around the initiates to the line reserved for second years and above, and threw a jaunty wave at Rachel as we passed her table. “She’s nice.”
“Rachel?” I asked. “Yeah, she is.”
Clem handed me a tray, then grabbed one for herself.
“You think so?” she asked, in a voice that tried to be nonchalant and failed.
“I mean, yeah,” I said. “I thought you two were getting along?”
Clem and Rachel had partnered with me during every Intermediate Scrivening class, though they never spent any time together outside of class. Rachel didn’t eat meals with us, and Clem didn’t try to insert herself into my almost nightly nature walks. The two of them seemed to have reached an uneasy truce. That’s why Clem’s question caught me off guard.
“We are,” Clem said. She pursed her lips tightly after that and didn’t say another word until we were back at the table with full plates.
“She’s just sort of difficult,” Clem said at last. “Rubs me the wrong way sometimes.”
“Rachel again?” Eric rolled his eyes to let me know this wasn’t his first time in this conversation. “I’m sure you’re not all peaches and cream around her, either.”
“I’m perfectly nice to her,” Clem said, irritation clear in her voice.
Eric glanced at me warily, then gave me a short shake of his head. I wisely avoided feeding into Clem’s simmering anger and turned the topic to something safer.
“How’s Abi doing? Haven’t seen him around for a while.”
“He’s on the late shift,” Eric said. “I think he rotates back to his normal classes next week.”
“They have tutors for the students on PDF,” Clem said distractedly. “Good ones, from what I hear. I think Abi was promoted to operator, so he’s been learning how to pilot the portals.”
“Really?” That was surprising. “That’s a big investment to make in a student.”
We chitchatted about that for a while longer until the conversation ran dry. I was too distracted by my encounter with Hagar to be much fun, and Clem couldn’t take her eyes off Rachel for more than a few minutes at a time.
“I’m sorry, guys,” Clem said at last. “I’m beat. I think I’ll head back to my room to study for a bit and then turn in.”
“I hear you,” I said. “I should probably do the same.”
“My two best friends,” Eric said, “Sleepy and Grumpy. You guys are the best.”
Clem flicked a glob of mashed potatoes off her plate into Eric’s hair, then giggled and ran off with her tray.
“You need to watch yourself with those two,” Eric said quietly.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Oh, man,” Eric said. “Don’t be so dense. They like you. They both like you. Clem’s got dibs, so she’s extra annoyed.”
“Dibs?” I said, a little too loudly. Rachel caught my eye and gave me a quick wink. “You’re crazy. Even if they were chasing me, I don’t have time for this.”
“I don’t have time for the two prettiest girls in school,” Eric said. “You’re killing me, man.”
“I gotta get outta here, clear my head,” I said. “Maybe I’ll bring a doggy bag to Abi.”
“Yeah, he’ll dig that,” Eric said. “Tell him I said hi. And remember what I said. Those two will carve you up if you don’t.”
“Will do,” I said, leaving my friend behind with a slightly sad, slightly disappointed look on his face. It wasn’t what I wanted, but there was a lot of that going around. I needed to focus on my work with the elders. Nothing else was as important as fighting off the heretics and finding my mother.
I gathered up some easily portable foods in a takeout bag and felt a sudden pang of whatever the opposite of nostalgia was for the year that had passed. I’d entered the school a social outcast and had nearly been in exile by this point last year. This year, I had too many friends that I disappointed because I was distracted by my Eclipse nature and missions for the Shadow Phoenix elders. I wanted a happy medium, and it just kept slipping away from me.
Abi sensed the turmoil within me, of course. Even as I handed him the bag of still warm food, he furrowed his brow and wagged a finger at me.
“Thank you for the meal, my friend,” he said. “But I would thank you more if you delivered it with a smile on your face. You are still so troubled. What is it that bothers you?”
I didn’t know where to start. I had a soul-eating monster trying to bust out of my core. I was going on deadly secret missions with Hagar for the elders of the Shadow Phoenix clan. Clem and Rachel were competing for me, and I hadn’t even known it.
“Girls,” I finally admitted. That seemed the least dangerous of the real problems on my plate.
“Ah, yes,” Abi said, his face split into a wide grin. “The girl problem. Eric and I talk about it whenever we can.”
“I’m sure that makes both of you very happy,” I said and jabbed Abi in the arm. “I put a couple of biscuits in there, a few chicken tenders, and some of those steak fingers you like so much. There’s also an apple and a little cup of broccoli. Not exactly a balanced meal, but it’s the best I could do.”
“Thank you,” Abi said sincerely. He put the bag on the little desk in front of him. “Did you hear the good news?”
“That you’re becoming a fancy portal pilot?” I grinned. “Clem told me. Maybe you could take me for a spin over to Kyoto sometime. They have this awesome ramen place—”
“Do not even joke about that, my friend,” Abi said, his eyes suddenly cold. He crooked a finger in my direction and leaned toward me. “They are only training us because there have been attacks on the portal network. Protestors put two of the pilots in the hospital last week. The network has been on a quiet lockdown since last night.”
“Oh, man,” I said. “I’m sorry, I had no idea.”
“Few do,” Abi said. “I apologize for being so abrupt with you. But even joking about using the portals without explicit permission is grounds for dismissal from my post. They could jail me for sedition.”
“That’s insane,” I whispered. “Have things gotten that bad?”
“I hear bits and pieces only,” Abi said with a shrug. “But the protests are becoming more brazen. And there have been attacks.”
