Page 114 of Cage of Starlight
Niela hums. “There are substances that can break down the organic matter of the Core and speed its death. Did anyone give you anything? A pill, a serum, an injection?”
Sena shrugs—and the pain of it travels up and down his right arm. “Oh.” He tugs up the sleeve. “Here,” he says. “Antibiotics.”
The site where Helner injected them yesterday is inflamed and weeping pus. He didn’t even notice, what with his ribs, his Core, the wound on his shoulder—
Thewound. The memory of how he got it comes back in a frantic rush:
The flap of his tent shifting open in the dark, showing Travin when Sena expected Tory.
Sena dropping the metal pitcher onto his blanket in surprise, unable to manage even a greeting as Travin lurched forward with some tarp or bag or bundle of cloth and shoved it over Sena’s face. (Suffocation, of course. Easy to explain away, in Sena’s condition.)
Travin’s eyes, wide and afraid. Sena reaching up with gloved hands, with the same focused burst of desperation he felt at nine years old. Travin avoiding his grasp but not flinching away when Sena’s left hand seized his wrist. Of course. He shouldn’t have been able to do a thing with the gloves on.
Then a muffled yell. Withdrawal. Travin clutching an arm going sunken-thin and black where Sena touched him.
Fear—from both of them—thick enough to choke on. The smell of smoke, splash of coffee as he upended it in his hurry to run.
Travin scrambling away from the tent and away from Sena.
Then Helner, who smiled wryly and gave him painkillers the other day, running into him as he tried to leave the woods. A scalpel plunged in his shoulder and wrenched out, then raised again. An apology, barely audible. Regret, maybe, or some adjacent breed of feeling—hard to discern in the low light of morning. An elbow to her chin as he found his feet and ran until he couldn’t run another step.
Their fear and hesitation.
They were asked to do it. He wants to believe that, anyway. It’s easier to believe they didn’t choose to hurt him.
Niela says what he’s thinking. “There’s no way what they gave you was antibiotics.”
Sena closes his eyes.
“I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but . . .” She shrugs. “All I can suggest is you don’t use your Seed. It could make this worse. Sorry. I wish I could . . .”
Sena shakes his head. “It’s enough. Thank you.”
“We need to hurry. My mom’s back at the Box and she doesn’t know what’s going on. I already lost . . .” She stands, squares her shoulders. “I’m not letting anything happen to my mom, too. If we can find a Porter—”
“I can’t be ’ported. But . . . there were soldiers in the area. If we find them, they’ll have a way to get us back.”
First, they’ll find the patrols, and then they’ll aim for the Compound Sena swore he’d never return to. He bites his lip against the surge of fear and hardens his resolve.
He’s dead either way. If he can save Tory, it will make all this pain worth it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Tory sprawls ona makeshift operating table in the center of the gutted camp. The tents have been torn down, the stolen supplies packed into the truck, the boxes of stellite long since ’ported to the border. Everyone else departed, at Riese’s order, before the sun reached its zenith. Only Helner, Tory, and a curling wisp of smoke from the snuffed-out campfire remain.
Clouds rush in with the afternoon wind, darkening the light to an eerie and shadowless gray. Helner presses Tory onto a “treatment table” made from a stack of empty boxes and gets to work removing his Core.
It’s about as pleasant coming out as it was going in—fire and ice where she’s rooting around in his body. When she’s finished, Helner lays the Core on a platter in front of him, purplish-red and fleshy, dark roots spreading from the central sphere like veins. “Lovely, right?”
His stomach flops, and he turns his head to the side. “Beautiful,” he manages.
His skin burns, but when he slides a hand over where Helner extracted the Core, it’s smooth and unmarred. No long scar for Tory.
“Hey . . . what you did with Reaching, could you have done it with a scalpel?”
She goes still. “Aside from the fact that I am aReacher, so cutting people open is not my specialty—unlikely. Remember I said Core removals via Reaching have a 10% mortality rate? It’d likely be the reverse for surgical removal. And that’s generous. A 10% survival rate would be a miracle.”
Tory closes his eyes. He feels sick because of the Reaching, not because—
