by J D Astra
Table of Contents
Summary
Shadow Alley Press Mailing List
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Books, Mailing List, and Reviews
Acknowledgements
Books by Shadow Alley Press
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Copyright
About the Author
About the Publisher
Summary
THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS on the path to enlightenment, but some will try.
The summer was prosperous for Jiyong, giving him the funds he needed to attend another year at Bastion Academy. The new first-year students are just as bright-eyed and rowdy as he remembers being, but there’s something more sinister to blame for their aggressive behavior: designer drugs.
The ability for any student to temporarily unlock the full potential of their magic with a single potion threatens to upend the school’s ranking system. And something dark lurks in the shadows of these performance enhancers: a signal sending personal data to a location within the kingdom. Worse, Jiyong’s mother’s illness is responding to that signal.
When the drug problem at the school turns deadly, Jiyong will have to hunt down the source to discover the cure before his friends and half the school’s cores are eaten from the inside out. Can he uncover the truth in time to save not only the school, but his mother, too?
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Chapter 1
“THINK YOU’RE READY to take me on again, Master?” I asked with a grin. I looked across the clean, stone arena from my tall pedestal and surveyed the battlefield to be. I’d fought on it dozens of times now, but we were always adding new obstacles to keep it interesting.
Woong-ji smiled, flashing a set of perfectly white teeth. “You’re getting a bit cocky for my liking, Acolyte.”
She pulled her small control panel onto her lap, and while I did the same, I did it for show. Over the summer I had honed my ability to remote access Tuko’s systems, which allowed me to operate him without additional machina—like a control panel.
“With my help,” Mae blurted in my head over my train of thought.
‘Yes, of course,’ I replied mentally.
There were staff members in the audience arena watching. While a select few of them knew my situation with Mae, not all of them did, and we preferred to keep it that way. We didn’t want to become a spectacle or a science experiment. Mae’s knowledge was powerful enough that someone would kill me to get to her.
Her information on nanites—what my people knew as munje, or magic—was immense and invaluable. I’d grown more powerful in a year of her guidance than I could’ve imagined. My initial core design was of my father’s doing, but Mae was the one who’d made all my dietary choices to help complete my second band and start my third.
With the second band completed, I could easily combine two munje at once. I could manifest more interesting spells like glimmers for Tuko or lightning infused punches—neither of which I could control well, but the possibilities were there. And the possibilities were endless!
“Are you going to dawdle all night, or make a move?” Woong-ji taunted, and her bot, the Rabid Rabbit, surged forward.
I went through the motions on the control panel to pull Tuko out of the way, but with remote access, it was just a show for the others. In reality, my direct connection with him allowed me much faster response times—so fast Woong-ji had yet to beat me since our renowned fight six months ago.
“Where’s your head at, apprentice?” Woong-ji asked. The Rabbit’s armor burst apart, and snaking tentacles reached for my retreating bot.
The sparse crowd whooped and cheered for the Boss, hoping in earnest that she’d put me down for once. I skittered Tuko around the corner of my pedestal and dropped a smoke bomb in my wake.
“Silly boy,” Woong-ji murmured with a smirk. The Rabbit twisted its tentacles like a fan, blasting the misty obstruction from the air. She gasped as the smokescreen dispersed, revealing Tuko mere centimeters from her Rabbit. She hopped backwards, looping her tentacles in a sphere around Tuko, but I already had the kill shot.
Tuko’s claw clamped down on the Rabbit’s neck, and I shouted, “Bang!”
Woong-ji disengaged the Rabbit’s tentacles with a sigh as the crowd moaned in disappointment.
Ryni cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted, “Next time, Boss! You got it!”
Woong-ji set her control panel aside. “You keep changing your tactics. How am I supposed to learn?”
I put my right fist to my left palm and bowed. “Adapt faster, Master.”
She mirrored my bow. “Get back to the workshop and finish for the night, then go home for the season.”
I cocked my head. “But there’s still a week left. You don’t need me?”
She shook her head. “Of course I do, but your family needs you more. Go spend time with them before school.”
I bowed all the way to the floor. “Thank you, Master.”
I walked Tuko along with me through the halls as I made my way to the workshop, my home away from home. There were three levels of shelves, all loaded down with spare parts, metals, wiring, scrap, and more. The previous “artisan” had left the place a complete mess. I’d spent two weeks reorganizing the shop to be usable.
Level three was where I kept the plastics and hard metals. Level two was a combination of soft metals, raw materials like gun powder, and spare components that were prebuilt and ready to go. Level one was all the tools, a huge metal desk to work at, and the current order’s device—reminding me of approaching deadlines—with a cubby for all the bots awaiting service. I’d built a pulley elevator at the center of the room I could activate with ma munje to take me exactly where I needed to go for the part I wanted. Everything had its place.
“Neat freak,” Mae joked.
I chuckled. “Maybe. It’s easier when everything is in order.”
I found the last order sitting on the desk. It was a brawler type bot, the most popular, but this one was unique because it had four arms for pummeling. I pulled up the work order on the display device built into th
e desk. The owner wanted to add two more arms.
I grimaced as I pulled the bot to the center of the workstation. The two arms protruding from the back already felt tacked on, rather than part of the initial design. The bot had several dents and scrapes on the chest and a completely unnecessary head. The secondary arms coming out from the back were longer than the two coming from the shoulder joints, but were still too short to block chest shots.
I reviewed the proposed request and scoffed at the over-engineering. This wasn’t the best way to go about it, but it was my job to follow the design requests, not to work on what I knew was best for the bot. Woong-ji had made that clear after my first bot upgrade, where I’d gone a bit off the rails—
“More like a complete redesign,” Mae crackled through the speaker on my chest as she materialized on the desk beside me.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, waving her off. “I’m not going to take any creative liberties, just follow the work order.”
I got down to business, melting open the chassis for the addition of the two limbs at the chest cavity. My en munje had advanced significantly since working at the Rabid Rabbit, giving me great leaps in skill that would put me above the other second-year students. My li was still pathetic, though, and my ry wasn’t much better. Hana wouldn’t let me live it down.
“Perhaps you should spend a summer at a dance house.” Mae mimicked Hana’s voice, and I frowned at her.
“Don’t do that.”
She rolled her eyes, and practically her whole head. “You know I love Hana just about as much as you do—
“Hey,” I cut her short, pointing the spanner menacingly at her light projection on the table. “Boundaries. Remember?”
She shrugged. “Sure, sure, but anyone could see how infatuated you are with her in a single glance, so I’m not preying on your thoughts.”
When the upgrade was complete, I put the bot back in its cubby and cleaned up my station. Nothing was wasted. I melted down the small remaining pieces and put them back in their appropriate metal bucket. I walked to the door and called back my ma munje that kept the lights running. I beamed at the clean, orderly, dark room.
“’Til next time,” I whispered.
I made my way through the long hall, past the bathrooms, and up the stairs to the bar.
“Come on, Ry-ry, just one more drink,” a patron slurred as he leaned over the bar, hand groping for the bottle Ryni held out of reach.
“You better relax, or I’ll negate your buzz,” she warned, her free hand glowing a cool teal. It was a ry-li spell, one-part persuasion and another part life magic that would zap the drunk’s core into action, producing zo to cleanse the alcohol from his system. I’d seen her and the bouncers use this method on people who’d had far too much several times. It was an intriguing spell, but nothing I needed to concern myself with. I was here to fix and upgrade bots.
“Night,” I said, waving to Ryni.
“Jiyong, wait,” she called as she pushed the drunk back onto his seat and hopped over the bar.
I turned and she pulled me into a tight hug, then ruffled my hair. “I’m going to miss you, nam-do sae.”
I chuckled at the familiar moniker, which meant something close to little brother, and scratched the scar on the side of my head that would never again grow hair. “I’ll be back on some rest days, I’m sure. I don’t think any amount of classwork will keep Woong-ji from assigning me bot repairs.”
“Hey,” Ryni scolded, pointing a finger at me, “call her Boss.”
I shook my head as I watched the drunk patron lean over the bar, clumsily grabbing at the bottle Ryni had set barely out of reach. I pointed and said, “Better do something about that.”
Ryni looked over her shoulder and gasped. “Ai-yah! That’s it! You’re out!”
She stormed back inside, and I walked out into the warm twilight, hands stuffed in my pockets. I caught the start of Ryni’s scolding before the door jingled shut. I was sure it would jingle open again in a moment when the patron was kicked out.
It was a humid trip to the train, and I was grateful that the air circulation system was operational when I stepped on. The train designers created machina to pull the moisture from the air as it passed through the vents, which helped sterilize it of any illnesses, too. It was a precaution to keep the sicknesses of outer-cities from reaching the kingdom on the express line.
The train jostled as we made our way to Pi-Ki, the last outer-city stop on the line. Pi-Ki was a decent sized city, due in part to the train system. There were various establishments for liquor, tea, fighting, dancing, shopping, and many other things purely for entertainment. It was a commerce point that kingdomites would frequent for cheaper wares, too.
The foliage grew dense the farther from the kingdom we went, and the stars shown more brightly than in the thick neon glow of inner-city. I’d spent a fair amount of time in both places, and while I would miss seeing the sky so clearly, the kingdom had everything, even at night. Hot, fresh dimsim? No problem. Entertainment of every sort: zo and ma fights, dazzle dances, and more. Malady healing of all kinds from skinned knees to broken hearts. The kingdom was a hub of activity and wonder.
“Final stop, Pi-Ki, na-dosi,” the overhead speaker crackled, and I pulled my bag onto my shoulder as I stood. A few weary faces around me looked ready to depart and collapse. Kingdom labor was rarely easy. From cleaning sewage at Yuri’s parents’ company to tending rooms and running laundry, outer-city folk always had the back-breaking jobs. I was lucky.
Woong-ji paid me well for my work—forty percent of all upgrades and ten guli an hour for everything else. I had saved more than enough to get my family moved into an apartment in the kingdom with a shared garden space, a patio for private use, and four bedrooms! Indoor plumbing—no more running to the river for water—and quick access to several renowned Primary schools.
The best benefit by far was the proximity to the hospital. There were specialists there who believed Machina Core Theory, the idea that our magical cores were made up of machines—something Mae had already confirmed for me long ago. While I still called it “munje” and “spells” out of reflex, I knew that my core was made almost entirely of tiny machines called nanites.
Almost entirely. The black crystal at the center of my core was something Mae had never encountered. She didn’t understand how, but it played a role in turning raw energy from my food and surroundings into different munje for spellcasting.
I yawned as I took the steps down from the train platform to the lively Pi-Ki. There were rickshaw drivers stationed all around the street calling out to the weary travelers. Many of the travelers took up the offer at a guli a minute.
I waved away the offers as I got onto the road home. I could keep a good pace and be there in forty minutes and save my hard-earned money for something more important, like kingdom citizenship paperwork for my family. The pattering of my feet on the dirt path merged with the chirping of crickets and grenifrogs with their loud, growling ribbits, creating a nighttime orchestra of sound.
I was eager to get home to my bed, so I upped the pace and cycled zo for a boost. The summer air was still warm, though the threat of fall was on the horizon, and the moisture made my dobok cling to my skin. En munje cycled easily as I approached the river. I diverted the flow of magic to my feet, preparing to try something new.
“I don’t think this is going to work the way you want it to,” Mae warned, and I shrugged her off.
The soles of my leather shoes became rigid and a chill shot up my legs to the base of my spine. The ground below my feet frosted over with every footfall, and I picked up speed toward the river. I pulled down a deep breath as I stepped onto the water—
And fell straight in.
Chapter 2
FREEZING WATER SWIRLED around my legs and I dropped, waist deep, a meter from the shore. I shivered, reversing the munje flow through my feet to heat the water instead. The current pulled me along, but I sent a reserve of zo to my arms and legs to pad
dle to the other side.
I dragged myself onto the shore with the help of some dangling roots a few meters from the path. I pulled my bag around and leaned against a tree.
“Ahem.” Mae cleared her throat with that tone.
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I know.”
“You and your mother certainly have one thing in common.”
“What’s that?” I asked before cycling down another breath for en munje. I swirled my fingers around and around like Yuri had shown me and lifted all the water from the contents in my bag, then returned it to the river.
Mae tutted. “Neither one of you listens to me when I warn you of danger.”
I hummed with amusement and made short work of my soaking clothes. My bag and I were dry in under a minute, and we were back on the road home. “The danger of falling into waist-deep water is not the same as the danger of core degradation.”
“What if I break?” she retorted, and my gut clenched in worry, then relaxed. I had showered plenty of times with her imbedded in my skin. If something were to happen to her, though... I didn’t want to think about it. Not only had Mae become my close friend—too close sometimes—but without her, I feared there would be no way to save my mother from her disease.
I sighed. “I will take your warnings more seriously.”
The rest of the way home was quick, and before I knew it, I was walking into our little cottage to the smell of rich oxtail soup. I closed the door quietly and set my shoes and my pack off to the side. It was dark in the house, but lamplight shone through the back window where I saw the silhouette of my mother.
I washed my hands in the kitchen, then stepped out back. Mother gave a waning smile as I joined her at our living swing chair—something Suyi had crafted from the nearby tree. I situated a cushion on the hardwood seat and plopped down next to her, swinging it harder as I did.
“Good day?” she asked with a rasp.
My brow pulled together in worry. “Is your throat sore? I smelled the soup.”
She shook her head and waved me off. “I’m fine. Just a bit of swelling from the pollen.”
