And pain.
Sweat breaking out across his forehead, Cam pushed Tomia out of the way.
“Hey!” Tomia said, catching herself on the adjacent workstation.
Ignoring her distress, he typed in a cross-search on all the students. Seven popped up with the words “beta trials” in their file. Iggie, Tomia, himself, and a few other kids he didn’t recognize.
“What’s the deal?” she said, irritated that he wouldn’t divulge any of his intent.
I don’t know—but there’s something. I know there is, he said, looking over each kid’s stats and figures. All of them from war-torn worlds, flagged and highlighted, all—except Cam—listed with termination dates. None of them particularly stood out as poor or outstanding students. There has to be a reason…
Then, as he compared family status, Reppen’s words sunk into the back of his mind: “You don’t have any family, do you?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” he replied.
“Everything, at least to the ones that make decisions around here.”
“We’re all orphans…” He stood up straight, his heart thudding in his chest. All the air left his lungs as he added: “no one would notice if we disappeared.”
Tomia gasped and froze in place.
Before she could ask, before he lost the nerve to check, he tapped on the word beta trials. A limited result came up:
Commandant L. Rogman, head of operations
Consultant: **redacted – level 1 security access required**
Dr. Charl Naum, assistant director, MD, Biotech MPA
Maio Kull, acquisitions coordinator, RN-IV, DvN
Bioenhancers and implanted modifiers, phase II
Isolation: East Wing, 001-101.
“What… what are they planning?” Tomia squeaked. Grasping the scar on her wrist with her opposite hand, she whispered. “I can’t stay—gotta leave—gotta get out of here.”
“Tomia,” he said, taking her by the shoulders, trying to stop her shaking.
“I can’t, Cam,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks, “I can’t—the machine monster—”
“I know,” he said, holding her tight. His chest burned as she buried her face in his chest. Voice cracking, he whispered: “I’ve seen him too.”
Tomia pulled away a little bit. “What do we do, Cam? We can’t stay here.”
Cam glanced at the door, then back at the opened profiles. Instinct told him to leave, now, while they had a chance, but something—a need that pulled stronger than his primitive fears, tied to the bleak discovery about his sister—drew him back to the console.
I have to know.
Calling up the triplet’s profiles, he stacked them three across, with Jahx’s in the center. As he guessed, numerous flags and alerts colored the text and stats, but nothing that allayed or confirmed his deepest suspicions. However, teacher reviews, scornful and unimpressed with the Fiorahian children, marred their reports. All except one.
Mine.
Although disguised under the name “student observer,” he read his own words describing Jahx, and his notations on the boy’s weaknesses—and unappreciated strengths. Kind, quiet; doesn’t want to be noticed. Avoids fights at all costs. Humble. Age six? seven? — but understands advanced chemistry. Maintains average grades. Has secrets. How can a human kid survive Fiorah? Maybe he isn’t really human?
And then the final damming note: Too passive; would have to be forced into real battle.
Heart aching, he realized how Rogman played him. “He already knew,” he whispered. Then why did he make me decide to use the Endgame?
“Oh, chak—them too?”
Cam looked to where she pointed on the screen on Jahx’s profile. In the same bottom corner, a notation flashed in red. Instead of “beta trials,” though, it read something else. Something he reread three times.
Priority status: Alpha
Awaiting final results: beta trials
Forced acquisition approved
RE: Volkor
Alpha-priority status? Final results? Forced acquisition? What the hell does any of that mean? He tried to click on the file, but it wouldn’t open. And what—or who—is ‘Volkor?’
Then, in red at the very end, a notation from Naum: Subject unpredictable; inappropriate candidate re: Volkor. Recommend vivisection to acquire critical data for Med Oculus II program, destroy specimen.
Vivisection. Cam’s stomach turned on itself. Blood draining from his face, he took a few short gasps, trying to keep himself from throwing up.
“Cam, come on,” Tomia said, tugging his arm. “We have to go.”
Why would anyone do this? His mind couldn’t wrap around such cruelty, or any kind of reason.
Reading down further, Cam’s eyes snagged on Rogman’s response: Pending results of Volkor.
Volkor. Jahx’s life hinged on the success of whatever or whomever that was. If not, Naum would flay him alive.
I need to know what Volkor is.
When he tried to click on the file again, the console went black. One by one, the adjacent consoles also blipped out.
“Chak, Jim’s been traced.” Tomia yanked hard on his arm, pulling him to the door. “We’ve got about thirty seconds before—”
Cam didn’t see the shockwands, only a streak of blue as the doors parted and Tomia lost her grip on his arm. Tomia’s scream strained at his eardrums, but his arms and legs went flaccid as electricity zapped through his body.
“Chak, not that one—he won’t survive—”
A scrambling of feet and arms, shouting.
“Call a medic!”
Gasping for breath, all the blood left Cam’s face and his limbs, his heart quivering uselessly in his chest.
I’m going to die.
The thought brought a stillness to his mind, to the feverish scene around him. Thinking of Kara, of the madness of the world, of all that he had done in the hopes that she was still alive, he let go.
Chapter 20
“Cam, are you paying attention?”
Sitting cross-legged next to the fireplace, Cam nudged one of the red and black game pieces on the checkered board with his knuckles. The fire felt good against his face, and through the holes in his sweater and his pants. But as he realized the hunger in his belly, and the gloom of the dilapidated old apartment, the teenage girl sitting across from him addressed him again: “Cam? What’s wrong?”
Am I dead? The thought stirred within him as he relived the memory of Kara trying to help him learn the latest board game. The guards came—I got shocked—
No guards in sight, no Tomia, no Rogman, no Academy. Just this place, like a memory caught up in a dream, ethereal and transitory. How is this possible?
Cam looked around, trying to reconnect the missing pieces. Mom should be passed out on the couch—
And the twins, barely two years old, should have been laid out next to Kara on a blanket, jabbering to each other in their made-up language.
But not here. Not in this place where the windows looked out into pitch blackness, and the walls and ceilings flexed back and forth, as if trying to hold their shape.
“Come on, it’s your turn,” Kara said, pointing to his red knight.
“You aren’t real,” he whispered, bringing up his knees to his chest. “This isn’t real.”
Kara mirrored his posture. “You have to decide what is real, Cam.”
“What?”
“Now, play.”
He looked back to the playing board. His knight faced an army stretched out beyond the playing board, beyond what his eye should have been able to see. Mechanoid creatures, crawling over each other, bucked and hissed, ready to destroy his lone player.
“I—I can’t,” he said, shoving backward. “It’s impossible.”
“Trust yourself,” Kara said. But this time, as she got to her knees, her voice changed, softening, growing younger with each spoken word. “It’s your move.”
Bending over the checkered board, Kara
reached down and placed her hand in the middle of the mechanoid fray. Creatures shrieked and howled, digging into her with their claws, pulling her down. Cam screamed as his sister’s eyes turned from brown to pale blue, her face draining of all color as she was drawn further and further into the board. Wires and tubes spun up her arm and split apart her shoulder, her skin hardening into metal plating. “You have to play.”
Cam looked down to the board, to the knight that could do nothing against such an army, against an indomitable force more powerful than the greatest galactic fleets.
I can’t do anything—
I can’t win this—
“Cam,” Kara whispered, her voice frail, pierced by pain.
“No!” he screamed, lunging over the board and wrapping his arms around her. He held her tight, against the machine monsters that pulled her down, her body cold and rigid. “Please, Kara—stop—I can’t lose you.”
He buried his face into her neck, his arms shaking as he tried to pull her up and out, the last of her sinking into the burgeoning maw. “Don’t go.”
Squeezing his eyes shut, he fell to the ground, still holding on to her as his own arms sunk beneath the board, into a sea of molten pain. “I love you.”
Everything stopped. The fire no longer crackled, the pain in his arms ceased, the room stilled. Kara’s moved her lips to his ears and whispered in a young boy’s voice, “thank you.”
“Finally.”
Cam groaned, his neck stiff and aching as he lifted his head. Sitting upright, strong hands held him to the back of a chair facing a long desk. A hardened face with dark-set eyes and a thick mustache came into focus. “Can you hear me, cadet?”
Where am I?
His hands gripped the faux wooden armrests to the chair. When he tried to move, the hands that held him back dug into his chest.
“Leave us.”
Cam looked again to the speaker, room still spinning as he tried to grasp his place. The hands left his chest, and he pitched forward, catching himself on the lip of the desk. Behind him, footsteps walked away, followed by the sound of a door swishing open and shut.
“You surprised me yet again, cadet,” the man behind the desk said, interacting with a holographic projection of a student profile. “That shock should have killed you.”
Cam looked down, seeing the fresh, pink and purple inflammatory streaks that branched out across his hands and up his arms. As his awareness grew, he realized the pain in his chest, and touched the scorched mark on his shirt.
God— he immediately retracted his hand, jarred by the slightest touch. Terrified, he pulled at the collar of his shirt and looked down to the burned skin on his chest. I’m not dead?
“Only a soldier with a true purpose can survive as much as you have,” the man said, dark eyes connecting with his.
Rogman— he thought, shedding the last of the dream webs that caught up his mind.
“Now, explain this,” the Commandant said, turning the student profile around so Cam could read the name: Jim Walker.
Tomia! He looked around the sterile office, trying to find some sign of her in the empty chair to his right. “Where’s Tomia?”
“Dealt with, as all students who break Academy rules are dealt with,” he said, his voice sending chills up Cam’s spine. “Your explanation, cadet.”
Cam didn’t know what to say. Rogman already knows everything, he thought, digging his fingernails into the armrest. What the hell is left?
The words came rushing out of his mouth: “I need to find my sister.”
“Your sister?”
“Kara. She was taken by the USC. I needed external network access.”
“To do what?”
Cam hesitated. What could he tell Rogman? That he intended to hack into the USC database? That he would infiltrate their command center? That he, a lowly Academy cadet who probably couldn’t pass an intro class, would somehow command a legion of soldiers on a rescue ops? No, none of it was ever possible, and if he had ever been honest with himself—
No, she’s alive. She has to be alive. And I will find her.
Eyes and cheeks heating, he wanted to lunge across the desk and rip the mustache right off of the Commandant’s ugly face as Rogman pulled up another hologram adjacent to the fake profile.
“Kara Jhean Ferros, Cerkan, age 20,” he said, showing Cam the three-dimensional image that looked like his sister. But instead of bright eyes and a kind smile, the woman rotating on the projectors appeared gaunt, hollowed-out, vacant, dressed in grey-striped prison jumpsuit. “Killed in a USC demonstration eight weeks ago.”
Cam froze. No, not possible.
“Just hold out my love—”
“The USC kills all prisoners,” the Commandant said evenly. “Law of retaliation.”
“…for blue sky tomorrows…”
No. Light motes dotted his vision as he held his breath, lungs ready to burst. No no no no—
“This incident has made me question your loyalty, cadet,” the Commandant said, enunciating each word. “A half-breed imbecile like you has no place here in the academy, not unless you have a purpose. What is your purpose, cadet?”
Head spinning, Cam could not hold on to any real thought, anything other than the pain that carved into his chest, and the despair that pitted his stomach.
(Just hold out—)
The law of retaliation—
No more blue skies.
No tomorrows.
Kara’s gone. KARA’S GONE.
And all because of the leeches, the war that had taken everything from him.
What’s left? He flexed his left forearm, feeling the implant grate against his tendons. Not this place. Not with cadets disappearing, countless violations, and machine monsters lurking in the shadows. Not when enemies were sheltered, and every game, every test, was rigged.
“What is your purpose, cadet?” the Commandant barked, slapping his hand on the desk.
A cool wave splashed over him, spreading an unexpected calmness throughout his body. A playing board appeared before him, his lone game piece lined up against his endless enemies. In this game, without the need for win, he would play for the only thing that mattered anymore.
“Revenge,” he whispered.
“Revenge?”
“There are leeches here, at the academy,” he said, clearing his throat to mask the quaver.
“Is that so?”
“Yes. I’ll expose them.”
Rogman twitched his mustache, his eyes narrowing. “Do so, cadet, and I’ll reconsider your termination.”
Cam didn’t care what else the Commandant had to say, or his terms. What he had planned, what he wanted to do, didn’t require his enrollment or his safety.
“How do you intend to accomplish this?” Rogman asked, freezing the hologram of his sister so that her dead eyes cast down on him.
“Let me arrange some of the Endgame matches. I’ll force them to use their powers. Then you can take them away.”
Something like a smile nipped at the corner of Rogman’s mouth. “Now you are beginning to understand your enemy, the true purpose of this war.”
Cam didn’t falter, holding Rogman’s cold gaze. “I do.”
***
After spending the night in the infirmary’s observation ward, Cam returned to the barracks, dressed in his pants and burnt shirt. Curious stares turned into gasps and averted gazes as he walked down the aisle to the last bunk on the right. He kept his gaze fixed, not caring whom he ran into, ignoring the questions as well as the insults.
Whispers, shock: “What’s wrong with him?”
“Look at his skin—”
“Is he hurt?”
“His shirt got burned—”
“Jeez, Ferros—you look like a zombie,” Stempton said, hanging off the rungs of a bunk ladder. Hoch and Walli, sitting together on the opposite bunk, snickered and shook their heads, but did nothing more to aggress him.
After gathering his datapad out of his locker, he couldn’
t help but glance over at Tomia’s top bunk. Perfectly made and undisturbed, it looked like it had been unoccupied for the night. As did Iggie’s.
As he passed by her bunk, a stain on the end panel caught his eye. A red smear, the size of three small fingers, colored the top of grey metal.
Blood. He didn’t stare for too long, not wanting to draw attention to his discovery. What happened last night?
Stomach in knots, he didn’t want to think of the possibilities, but another quick glance didn’t yield any clues. Besides, Jetta’s bed below appeared otherwise intact and made, as per protocol.
It doesn’t matter, he reminded himself. None of this matters anymore.
Still, he had to know. Pretending to forget something, he made his way back to his locker, using the opportunity to get another look at Jaeia’s, then Jahx’s bed. No disturbances, no stains, no cause for concern.
Get to class, he told himself after rummaging around his locker to give the appearance of his deliberate return.
But as he turned to leave, he found Stempton, Walli and Hoch blocking his only way out. Stempton, eyes burning with contempt, grinned from ear to ear.
This time, Cam didn’t give him the opportunity to state his terms. Dropping his datapad, he grabbed the Crexan boy by the neck and slammed his knee up into his groin. The boy howled and doubled over onto the floor. Hoch and Walli, shocked by the sudden onset of violence, backed away, but Cam didn’t let them get far. Shoving both at the same time, he back them into the lavatory door.
“Stay away from me!” he screamed, punching in between both of their heads, leaving a dent in the metal plating.
“It’s cool, Ferros,” Walli pleaded, bringing his hands up. “Everyone’s cool.”
Rearing around, Cam readied for more assailants, only to find the other twenty or thirty kids staring down the aisle, watching the fight unfold. Something inside him, born in the darkened streets of Cerka, stitched together by hunger and defined by pain, wanted the rest of them to rush him, to try and strike him down. But they did not. Only Stempton’s moans and the sound of Hoch and Walli hyperventilating filled the elongating silence.
“You’re dead, Ferros,” Stempton said, still tucked in the fetal position.
Blue Sky Tomorrows Page 20
