The Raging Ones

by Krista Ritchie

  Tie loose on my neck, I take a breath and say, “We’re not intimate with other people, and if any of us ever has a change of heart, we’ll open this up for discussion again. Agreed?”

  They voice their approval the same time the library doors burst open. The after-breakfast crowds file boisterously inside.

  I peer down, watching as they choose tables on the ground floor, clamoring for the one closest to the aerospace shelf.

  I’m not surprised. At five o’morning, my father said only 433 candidates remain, and he keeps hinting about a starcraft components exam that’ll most likely expel half the candidates.

  “Has anyone seen my engine notes?!” someone yells to the library.

  “Maybe Quick-Hands Jakker stole them!”

  Candidates laugh and whisper among friends. I freeze, my pulse frantic. I lick my lips and try to move, but dread snakes down my spine.

  Mykal scoots his chair closer to mine. “Kinden isn’t coming up here,” he assures me, but he misreads the source of my panic.

  My whole body is numb. I shake my head, dazed.

  Franny watches me with furrowed brows, her pen between her fingers.

  Mykal frowns. “Court?”

  I turn my head. I look down, and I spy my older brother perusing a bookshelf. He rotates his head and our eyes lock. A weighted heartbeat passes before I tear my gaze away.

  I know his expression. Incredulous. Suspicious.

  Uncertain. Questioning who I am. Why I look so much like his “dead” brother.

  It’s not the first time he’s noticed me. Every day his interest escalates. He followed me out of a flight seminar last week, and he only gave up because I acted like he was unhinged. So I muster a fragment of courage, and I throw another look his way that says, You’re delusional.

  Kinden drags his suspicions to the ground and then trains his attention to the bookshelf.

  A hardback book crashes to the floor.

  I jolt, more strongly than I should. I check behind me again, and Mykal clasps my neck protectively. “Heya,” he breathes. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s not Kinden, then?” Franny asks just as quietly.

  I rub my sweaty palms on my thighs and then clutch my knees. “It’s not my intent to frighten either of you—”

  “Forget about us,” Franny says, shutting her journal.

  “I can’t forget about you both right now.” I breathe heavily. I’ve hesitated to tell them the truth because if I say it aloud, then it becomes more real. Then I know they’re thinking the same as me, feeling the same as me. That’s three times the emotion and the energy than I ever want to spend on a person I loathe.

  But I stare at them. Mykal’s hands fall to my chair, eyes like battleaxes. Ready to injure anyone who may cross our path.

  Franny blisters, heart full of fire.

  I feel them. For the first time, I realize they’ve been my strength, my hope, and they can be my peace. I just have to let them help me. And to do that, I need to grow the courage to speak.

  I’m ready.

  I shift my chair, my back to the balcony, and I explain my time at Vorkter in a quiet but tight voice.

  “One of the people who scarred me”—I feel beneath my shirt, the callused scar puffed over my heart—“was not just a prisoner who escaped. He was my cellmate.”

  My words carry weight but die off my tongue, like they mean nothing, but inside, I’m screaming a thousand terrors and nightmares—and they feel the anguish against their ribs like rocks piled in both lungs.

  “As Seifried said,” I continue, “he was the greatest thief in the past century.”

  Franny glares at the bookshelves. “Bastell Icecastle.”

  Mykal digs his bitten nails in the table.

  The invisible monster is no longer invisible. Mykal remembers the day I was attacked. He knows every wound, felt each blade rip open my skin, but I never let him paint a full portrait of the memory. I never gave him a single name or a single face.

  Now that’s changed.

  “I lived with Bastell for five years in Vorkter,” I breathe. “He taught me how to steal.”

  I’d slip through the iron bars at night and practice on neighboring prisoners. Stealing their blankets and socks and whatever else I could find, and then I’d return the items next morning before they woke, not wanting to get my skull bashed in just to learn a new skill.

  Our individual cells were never as heavily guarded as the entrance, or else we would have tried escaping much earlier.

  Franny is horrified, crushed, sympathetic—so many hot and cold emotions at once. All written on her brows. “You’re afraid he’s the one who’s in Yamafort.”

  “Yes.” I pause. “But there’s no proof, other than…”

  “What?” Mykal scoots his chair even closer, arm stretched over the back of mine. And then Franny edges her seat near. I think I would smile if I could.

  “The Rose Glades,” I explain. “Before I was sent to Vorkter, that’s where I lived. With Kinden and my father, my mother and Illian—Bastell knew this. I told him.” I told him too much.

  How was I to know that I’d dodge my deathday? Or that my cellmate would try to cut out my heart with two daggers and a dull pickax?

  “It could be coincidence,” Franny says.

  I doubt.

  “He’ll never be finding this place,” Mykal adds.

  I doubt.

  They reassure and reassure, and I doubt and doubt. Then Mykal clamps his hand on my shoulder, and Franny seizes my frozen fingers from the top of a hardback. They both squeeze, and my muscles try to unbind.

  I try to be at ease. It takes many moments in their company, in shared silence, but I gain a sense of security. Whether false or fleeting, I don’t care. Right now, I breathe.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Court

  On Holy Wonders Day, and during the feast at eight o’night, my father clinks his glass and readies himself for a speech. “Set down your wine and silverware. Tonight, out of the two hundred candidates here, only one hundred of you will remain. Make your way to the launchpad and please wait in a single-file line.”

  Great.

  On the launchpad, the enormous, sleek body of the Saga starcraft lies in the center circle, engineering motor-machines and tools packed neatly away.

  StarDust displays the vessel like a work of art, spotlights directed on the onyx shell. The cement shines beneath eight sets of retractable wheels.

  From my eyes, I see beauty. My chest swells with new possibilities and freedoms that I’m closer and closer to grasping. Every time I view the starcraft, our plan to leave this world seems more feasible. And real.

  I don’t gaze long.

  Panicked candidates ascend the metal on-ramp to the Saga starcraft’s locked entrance. In everyone’s haste, Franny and Mykal lose their spots directly behind me. The line forms after the pushing ceases, and I stand at the base of the on-ramp while they wait farther back.

  At least I’m ahead of them. I calm myself.

  I can’t imagine what would happen if Mykal had to take this exam before me. After he failed a communications simulator, I asked Amelda why he wasn’t expelled, and she said honestly, “StarDust wants a fall in the final thirty for good luck. There are only two left.”

  Raina Nearfall is his true sole competitor, but she’s a girl who assisted her father in designing this very starcraft’s engines, and she’s scored higher than me in most simulations.

  Only eleven, Raina is treated like an engineering virtuoso.

  “Excuse me. Pardon me.” Amelda jogs up the ramp with a towering stack of clipboards.

  The line bends, allowing her space before she stops at the entrance.

  She hands a clipboard to the first candidate and adjusts a stopwatch around her neck. “The timer starts from the first moment you enter,” she explains. “Read the packet for directions, and when you’re finished, leave through the starboard exit.” Amelda unlocks the entrance with a keycard.


  After the first candidate disappears inside, the doors slide closed.

  I wait and wait, the line shortening as candidates vanish into the starcraft. When I reach the middle of the ramp, someone disrupts the straight line. Murmurs echo. I lean sideways for a better view.

  And I go rigid.

  Kinden descends the ramp, briefly asking candidates if he can move toward the back of the line. I doubt he’d listen if they told him no. His boots clank against the metal grate.

  Closer and closer to where I stand.

  “I’m going to cut in behind you,” Kinden tells a boy, who’s eager to move ahead. My older brother then wedges his tall frame right in front of me. For many weeks, I’ve ignored his curiosities, dodged his advances—and now here we are.

  “Those Valcastle boys,” my father’s colleagues would say, not always out of kindness, “will not stop until they follow their minds’ desires to the very end.”

  I’ve been on my brother’s mind for too long.

  Don’t acknowledge him. I’m stiff and unblinking. Even as Kinden turns to face me.

  “You know who I am,” he states.

  Yes. My honest brother.

  I blink once, eyes on him. “Yes.” I abandon the light inside my body. “You’re the pathetic candidate who’s been obsessed with me.”

  Kinden shifts his weight, jaw muscle twitching, but he’s steadfast in his pursuit. Scrutinizing me with pierced eyes. I stand taller. Glaring down at him with malice that I don’t wish to feel.

  “I’m obsessed,” he repeats like he can battle the world till the end. He gives me a once-over, trying to place me in his memories.

  I want to scream shrilly, fully. Until my heart bleeds. “It’s me! It’s me! I’m your brother! I’m right here. See me. Love me.”

  There is no solace. If he found out the truth—that I dodged my deathday—he may tell our father, who’d report me to Altia Patrol. Who’d do worse than send me to Vorkter. They may physically prod me to find answers that have no origin.

  “You’ve been following me,” I add. “You stare at me for extended periods of time. What else would you call it?”

  “Intrigued.”

  I scan his fashionable attire: high-collared coat, champagne-colored slacks and white, buttoned shirt. “I’m flattered, but I’m already promised to—”

  “I’m not romancing you,” he snaps. “Tell me why no one has heard of you before?”

  “I lived beneath a rock,” I say dryly. “It was cold and dark, and you wouldn’t have liked it there. No armoires.”

  Kinden isn’t easily deterred by insults. “I like clothes, but I like honesty more. You’re not very honest, are you?”

  If I could be honest, I would tell him, “I’m sorry I forgot to wake you that morning.” The day I was driven to Vorkter, I never saw or heard from Kinden.

  He’d been asleep.

  Before I answer, the line shuffles forward, and Kinden walks backward, his attention still cemented to me. With a pained, bitter smile, I say, “I value privacy above honesty, and if that irks you, then so be it. I never asked to be your friend.”

  Kinden laughs scornfully. “And I never asked to be yours. Yet, I left my spot, second in the row, to speak to an enigmatic boy with no history, no background, no family or known wealth.”

  I’m numb. My voice is dead. “I have a history.”

  His widened eyes blaze with raw memories. “Where is it?”

  Dying. Dead. Gone. “In my hands.” I step forward, taking command even if it knots my stomach. In this second, I appear older, better, wiser—but I am not. “You will never be privy to my history,” I sneer, my lips near his cheek. “I will laugh as you crawl toward me, thinking you can be me. Wake up to your own pathetic sensibilities.” I breathe lowly, “Wake. Up.”

  As our chests bump, he shoves me back, not forcefully. His interrogative gaze bores straight through me, and I wail inside, Wake up! Wake up!

  Wake up, Kinden.

  See me.

  In a thick stupor, Kinden dazedly faces the starcraft. Ignoring me without a final word.

  * * *

  Systems test directions:

  Find Saga starcraft’s bridge.

  Give this packet to a StarDust director waiting for you.

  Exit through the starboard side.

  (You are being timed.)

  My boots clap loudly on the steel starcraft flooring. I run through the wide metallic corridor, a cascade of lights illuminating the curved path. Hatches and archways lead to several other corridors and bays, but I need to find the command station, commonly referred to as the bridge.

  While I run, I shelve all my concerns regarding my brother.

  Focus.

  Franny and Mykal depend on my precise movements, so they can copy me during their turn. When I see a square violet button, I skid to a stop and push. The door swooshes open vertically and reveals the circular bridge.

  The first time I’d stepped foot inside, the sheer beauty stole my breath: glossy control panels, multicolored blinking screens, a humongous overhead light shaped like a steering wheel from a fictional boating vessel, and five stately chairs for five candidates.

  Technology this advanced exists nowhere else on Saltare-3, but right here. And StarDust keeps it a secret from everyone on this planet.

  “Clipboard.” A StarDust director emerges in a dignified gold and black suit, and I pass him my clipboard as he says, “You’re to correctly identify the pieces of equipment and systems that I point to.”

  All business, he moves swiftly around the bridge. First to a sole leather chair propped high in the exact middle. Overseeing all the other command stations.

  “Captain’s chair,” I identify, hoping Franny and Mykal feel my lips. Purposefully and inconspicuously, my fingers glide over the armrest.

  To the right, I pinpoint the maintenance-engineering unit, better known as MEU. A silver chair is bolted in front of blue panels and lit screens, percentages and numbers detailing the craft’s data. As my father has said, “The MEU is like a physician to the starcraft. If the craft can’t fly, they must fix it.”

  To the left, I label the communications station. Another silver chair faces a headset and spread of dials, buttons, and four tiers of screens. Aloud, I identify the function of each knob and switch. Most of us had never even seen a radio until a seminar about comms.

  “Down.” The man passes the captain’s chair and steps down three little stairs to reach the cockpit. I follow. Two full-bodied leather seats with attached chest-belts sit side by side, joysticks positioned between each pilot’s legs. Multicolored keys to the left and right.

  “Pilot A and Pilot B,” I say aloud.

  He scribbles on the clipboard. “Differences?” he asks.

  “Pilot A controls the speed. Pilot B the direction.” Their seats face the vast windshield that begins at the steel floor and extends as far as my peripheral. The eyes of the starcraft. From the outside, it looks like a curved visor on a saucer plate.

  After he asks a few questions about the joysticks, I’m finished. Clipboard back in hand, I sprint through the starboard exit. Rushing down a ramp on the opposite side of the starcraft. Hidden from Amelda and the other candidates.

  My father waits below.

  I slow as I near him. Without much expression, he clicks a stopwatch and collects my clipboard.

  We’ve spoken little, if at all, but I’ve heard from Amelda and the other directors that Tauris is fascinated by my aptitude for knowledge and simulations. Whether or not he’s also intrigued by my resemblance to his criminal son, I don’t know.

  When I see him, I try to imagine he’s not the father I once knew. That he’s as different as I’ve become.

  Then he offers a genuine smile and the past barrels into me.

  “Why did you do it?!” He’s crying.

  Screaming painfully.

  “Court.” Tauris waves a hand over my eyes—I nearly flinch. “Did you hear what I said?”

  “
No, I apologize.” I stand straighter, combing stiff fingers through my hair. It’s strange hearing Court from his mouth. A name I gave myself.

  “You’re to wait with the other candidates.” He motions to the candidates who’ve completed the test, all dressed in their very best for the Holy Wonders Day feast: suits and ties, glittering blouses and furs.

  No longer merry, they wait in nervous clusters.

  * * *

  No one is allowed to leave until the exam ends and the expulsions are made.

  Time ticks slowly. The starcraft is stationary nearby, and most candidates sit on the concrete. When Mykal joins me, he nearly coughs on his gum, surprised that they all risk dirtying their “silly” slacks.

  “Everyone cares more about the results than their clothes,” I tell him.

  A grunt in his throat, he plops down and props an elbow on a bent knee. He did fine, I try to convince myself, but I sensed him tripping over his words when describing the comms panels.

  I focus on Franny while Mykal chews his stale, flavorless gum. She’s fine. Franny speeds through the command station much faster than Mykal, and in a few minutes, she drops down beside us with a huff.

  “I hate exams,” she says beneath her breath. “You know what I’d like?”

  Mykal blows a bubble. “A greasy hare with the skin still attached.”

  “To run over every exam packet that ever existed,” Franny says, stretching out her legs and massaging her knees to compensate for my rigid body. “And the hare, for you.”

  Mykal wears a lopsided smile, and then Franny pushes his arm lightly with a closed fist. Responding fast, he drapes his arm around her shoulder and tugs her frame close. He rests his chin on her head and then mouths proudly to me, She likes me more than you.

  I didn’t realize we’re competing for her affection, but in a place where not very many understand Mykal—and most flock toward me at first impression—I can see why he’d relish Franny’s fondness for him.

  Still, I roll my eyes. Jealousy bites me.

  I’ve had him all to myself for years. And there’s still a mountain wedged between me and Franny. It’s my own fault. Whenever they joke and banter, I separate myself.