Page 124 of Cage of Starlight
Tory can do this for him, if nothing else. An apology in action. He’ll do this, and then he’ll go back. He’ll search those woods and find Sena, even if the only thing left to do is bury him. Grieve for him, without hiding.
“There’s something I have to do.”
Jeffra waves him out, smile slow and sad. “Stay out of trouble, all right?”
“Can’t promise anything.”
The devices Riese gave him to create interference wait at the bottom of his pack. Intake, residence quarters, and the room marked #004.
First those, then the Monitor Room.
A swell of Sena’s energy stops him in his tracks as he paces down the hall. Tory’s stride falters, a surge of foolish hope nearly tripping him over his own feet.
He pauses in front of a closed door and pulls Sena’s stolen tab from his pocket, dangling it in front of the stellite slice in the door until it unlocks.
There’s more than one source of Sena’s energy inside, but the most intense one is a small cube of dull gray metal on a crowded, paper-strewn desk, the seam between the box and its lid barely visible.
The type-determination tests, the targets, the vest, Null, and now this cube. Tory snatches the box off the desk and tucks it under his arm. It’s his, now.
The density of the energy coming off the thing is ten times stronger than that off the targets. The familiar buzz of it warms him as hestalks down the hall. He tips his pack off one shoulder and swings it around front. It’ll be a tight fit, but he can probably fit the cube inside. He stops before dropping it in, curiosity getting the better of him. He gets why they’d use Sena’s energy for the type tests, for Null. But why abox?What is it they’re neutralizing?
Tory pries one corner of the lid up and nearly drops the whole thing as a billow of crushing, disconcerting heat rolls through him. “Shit!” He punches the lid back on as something inside the box stirs, like it’s moving from sleep to slow wakefulness. Vines.
Of course. Of course they’d store aLegion unitin a box like this.
Tory shoves the thing deep into his pack and hurries down the hall.
*
Sena shakes awake to haze in his head, heavy-limbed slowness, and the shadowless solid gray of an overcast sky.
At Niela’s bidding, Iri pumped Sena full of whatever was in the med kit before he fell asleep. Painkillers, antibiotics. Ointment and a simple dressing for the scalpel wound and another for the blistered injection site in the crook of his elbow.
Niela must notice him stirring. “Feeling any better?”
“Yes, thank you.” He’s feeling a different sort of worse, so it’s not a lie. “How far out?”
Her lips turn up in a determined grimace. “A few minutes if the fuel lasts that long.”
The meter shivers on empty.
Niela taps her foot on the accelerator, but she’s already flooring it.
A few minutes.
They crest a hill, and the world spreads out beneath them. The great, cold mass of the Compound and the sea of trees with their fading, yellow-brown leaves block the sight of the Golden River Anton Chimre fell in love with and the rocks beyond it, mined bare of stellite. In the sterile Compound’s high walls, pinprick-sized Seeds scurry to training, to dinner, to the infirmary.
“The sun is almost down. Riese and the others are likely already there.” Iri squints down the road. “No smoke, screaming, or other signs of chaos, so whatever he’s making Tory do, it hasn’t happened yet. That’s good. I am going to kill him.” The words come out soft and strangely thoughtful.
Sena’s NOVA winds around his spine tight enough to crush it. The man who can use it to kill him waits beyond those walls, but Tory’s in there, too. What a rotten choice to be left with.
“How will we get in?”
They’re hardly an impressive fighting force.
Niela frowns. “You’ll have to convince them to let us in the front, then you can find Tory and convince him to stop whatever idiocy this Riese guy’s put him up to.”
Sena has never been convincing. “I don’t know if that’s the best idea.”
