Page 13 of Cage of Starlight
“Yes, sir.” Vantaras jumps to attention, like the guy on the other end can see him. Maybe he can. The alarms taper out, and Vantaras’ hands return to his sides. “Registration,” he snips.
Tory’s tired—stilltired from helping Kelly—and all he wants is to kick this officer’s face until it caves in. “What kind of registration?”
Vantaras strides down the opposite hallway in lieu of answering, shoes ticking against the cold floor. Brushed metal covers the bottom half of the walls. A thin, guiding line of powder blue sits below another line, painted a white so bright Tory’s head hurts to look at it.
No, not painted.
It’s a light, somehow. Blindingly illuminated, the thin line goes on forever. The mere sight of it raises the hair on his arms and makes his stomach twist, and that’s how he knows what it is.
Stellite. Vantaras has kitted this whole disgusting place out with stellite lighting, that rich bastard.
The first time Tory heard that Vantaras had captured lightning inside a stellite sample, he didn’t believe it—not until he saw it with his own eyes. Even Hulven’s pleasure house, the only building outfitted with stelliteanything, only has a single, small lantern set into the chandelier in the main hall, and it’s only illuminated for special events.
But this—the wastefulness sickens Tory. Is this what the miners break their bodies for?
It feels wrong, too. It’s nothing like the raw stellite in the mines that makes Tory’s head spin and his mouth go dry. This stuff feels dead. It looks it, too, milky like corpse eyes.
“In here.” Vantaras indicates an open door.
Tory paces into a wide room to the stares of at least six people.
“Alleged Channeler,” Vantaras says. “Here for typing and registration.”
A woman in a powder-blue uniform pushes him into a bleached leather chair and straps his wrists to its arms. Before Tory thinks to free himself, another nurse arrives with a needle.
“Just need a blood sample.” He kneads Tory’s arm and swipes at it with a cold cloth.
“I need to be tied to a chair forjust a blood sample?”
“A precaution.”
“Against what?”
The nurse frowns, and Tory clenches his fists, testing the bonds. No give.
They won’t look at him. No one, save the Vantaras guy, has looked him in the eye since he arrived. Tory’s always relied on remaining anonymous and invisible, but there’s something wrong with this.
He sucks in a breath. It’s fine.Observe and absorb.
Tinted windows line the far wall—the ones he saw from outside. If they open, they could be a good escape route.
“Relax. It’s only a prick.”
It’s two. One in the tip of his finger to draw a generous globe of crimson, and one in the crook of his elbow to fill two vials. They press his finger to a square of parchment with a bullseye in the middle; the thick paper sucks up the blood.
A nurse pulls out a black mat. Another dons goggles and lifts a dropper with a tiny measure of yellow fluid at the bottom. Everyone’s attention turns toward the paper.
Tory can’t say why. As far as he can tell, they’re about to squeeze an eyedropper of piss onto a piece of paper saturated with his blood.
More and more nurses don goggles, and several hold clipboards at the ready. The nurse with the fluid squeezes out one careful drop. It falls, lands—explodes.
A blue-white flame puffs up, devouring the bullseye and both rings outside it. The fire then fades to a dimmer navy and fizzles out in a hiss of cerulean sparks. The parchment curls up, ashy at the edges.
Hushed voices burst out around him.
“Did you observe the reaction?”
“Reaction recorded. Patterns confirm preliminary type report: synergistic Source. Channeler.”
