Page 119 of Cage of Starlight
Then she floors it, tossing both the unsecured communication rig and an enterprising soldier attempting to climb into the back of the vehicle with a crash and a guttural yell.
“Come on, come on,” she mutters. The truck jolts over every bump, the needle of its speed gauge shivering into the red zone. “We don’t havetimefor this.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Helner falls inbeside Tory as soon as the soldiers drop him off inside the Compound’s door. “You’d better have your story straight. Kirlov wants your reportright now.”
The weight of the pack Riese gave Tory, stuffed with contraband, increases a thousandfold on his shoulder. “Can’t I swing by my room first? Or—or wash up, at least?” He could put the pack in his locker. “Surely it’d be disrespectful to face the colonel like this.”
But Helner with herplausible deniabilityhas no idea what she’s making him do.
“No time.” She pulls him to a stop at a nondescript gray door and, before Tory can explain, tugs it open and shoves him inside. “Brought the Channeler!”
Colonel Erwin Kirlov waits on the other side of a gray table, hands steepled and posture rigid.
His cold eyes pin Tory. “Arknett.”
Ice rushes through Tory. He quells the instinct to lean the shoulder carrying his pack away from Kirlov.
“Sit.”
Kirlov’s gesture exposes the watch he used to hurt Sena, and heat floods Tory. He should probably greet Kirlov with his rank. Should probably say something—anything at all. But Sena isn’there for Kirlov to punish for Tory’s mistakes, so Tory just drops into the uncomfortable chair screwed into the floor on the other side of the table.
He slides his pack from his shoulder—as casually as he can while his heart drums double-time—and tucks it between his knees. He white-knuckles one of the straps when Kirlov’s eyes go to the bag but unclenches his fist from the thing, bones creaking, to offer the man an unkind smile. “What’s so important I wasn’t allowed to shower?”
Kirlov’s expression doesn’t change in any way Tory can pinpoint, but the air in the room goes thin and frigid. “We’d like your account of what happened to Lieutenant Vantaras.”
Matter-of-fact, without mercy.
Tory’s fists ball, stomach churning acid.
It’s fine. Whatever they see on his face, it’ll only help him sell the story. “We were pushed over the cliffs by an explosion from a modified shell. We survived the fall, but Se—Lieutenant Vantaras was injured.” The title comes easily, so far removed from Sena as Tory knows him that he can almost imagine he’s telling a story about someone else. “It worsened as we traveled. We made it back to the battlefield to get our hands on a communicator, but . . .” After all the people he’s healed—people whose names he can barely remember— “I couldn’t heal him. Itried.” He twines his hands together under the table and squeezes as tight as he can. He wants to move, not think, but he can’t mess this up. Fidgeting will get him pinned as a liar, could draw attention to the pack between his knees.
“And the body?”
Wouldn’t you like to know?It probably shows on his face, because Kirlov’s eyes narrow. Tory wipes his expression clean. “In the woods.”
“Which woods?”
“Ones withtrees.I’m crap at navigation. Sena’s—” He closes his teeth on his lip, lets the sharp burst of pain clear his head. “Thelieutenantwas the one who knew the terrain. I just went where he said. I . . . before he—” He’s so weak. He can’t even say it. “He said as long as I kept going northeast, I’d hit either the Compound or the road, so I kept going. I got here.”
Helner ticks the sharp heel of her shoe against the floor. “If we’re finished . . .”
“I believe we need a more thorough account of the lieutenant’s decline. Arknett?”
Thorough like Sena’s gentle smile by the light of the fire—apology and farewell in one? Like the way he tried to dissuade Tory from hoping he’d survive?
Like the whistle of air in his chest, maybe. He never once had hope for himself, and this bastard is the one who denied him that. Anger sits bitter on Tory’s tongue. Back in Hulven, Tory had Hasra and Thatcher behind him, feeding him kindnesses he never let himself embrace.
Who did Sena have?
Helner paces over to the table. “Colonel, enough. This is getting morbid.”
“Doctor.I did not ask your opinion. You will not be the one writing the report to the Grand General informing him of his son’s passing. Arknett, as much as you remember.”
Tory forces himself to speak. “When . . . when we hit the water, Lieutenant Vantaras took the brunt of it. Broken ribs, at least. He kept moving, said we needed to get back or we’d die.” The words come out rote and flat. That’s probably bad. It probably sounds like he’s lying, but he can’t make himself linger. “He was feveredon the second day, delirious. Coughing. I could tell it hurt. The last time I saw him, he was—” he chokes the words back. His head feels too full, a bare moment from cracking open. Lungs too small, air too far, bones too big. Tory pushes up from the chair. “I can’t do this.”
Because here’s the awful truth of it: Sena hadhim,and maybe only him, and Tory promised to stay. Sena wasn’t well. Maybe he didn’t even know what he was doing when he left. Riese said he was confused.
