Page 139 of Cage of Starlight
The figure walks forward, gun raised and mostly steady in his left hand, strange rifle slung across his chest. The haze clears enough that, as the lights glow their brightest, he catches pale hair and the bearing of a general.
Kirlov.
And if Kirlov is here, alive, alone—
He squeezes off another bullet as the pulse of red light fades, plunging them into blackness. When it floods back again, Tory finds the bullet. Off, this time, by a few inches.
He’s lucky Kirlov’s not left-handed. His right arm hangs loose at his side.
Another bullet, and another. Tory’s ready this time. The theory is the same as it is with balloons and arrows and explosive shells. He takes the velocity off them and throws it at Kirlov’s knee, relishing the guttural noise of pain and the wretched, wet crack of bones breaking and flesh splitting.
Kirlov drops hard. This close, Tory can make out dark stains and spatters of blood on the sleeve of his right arm. Sena’s blood, probably. Anger boils inside him, and all he can see is Sena on the floor of Kirlov’s tent, barely breathing as Kirlov twisted the dial on that awful watch. Tory left him behind to that, again.
“Bastard,” he hisses, stepping in close enough to grab the collar of his uniform. “You—”
Too close.
He registers the sound of the pistol hitting the tiled floor too late. It’s followed almost immediately by pressure against his abdomen, a hollowclick-thunk,and a dim pain.
A syringe is buried in his belly, and liquid floods into him, breaking him down. He cries out and staggers back against the wall. The stolen cube in his pack crashes against the wall and jolts with the groan of metal on metal, but it doesn’t matter, because Tory’s burning from the inside out.
Something coils inside him and mutes him, swirls outside him andcreateshim, something electric-hot and—
—and familiar. Heknowsthis energy.
He laughs. Reaches for it, and it jumps to him as easily as it did in the clearing with Iri. The pain vanishes as he pulls the energy off the fluid in the syringe and discharges it harmlessly into the air. He staggers away from the wall and brings an elbow down hard onto Kirlov’s left shoulder as he tries to slide up the wall without putting weight on his shattered knee.
Kirlov falls again, and hot satisfaction courses through Tory’s blood. He wrenches out the syringe of Null and tosses it away so it shatters against the opposite wall. Glass shards scatter across the floor like falling stars, and Tory can’t tear his eyes away. His blood sings, alive with something unnameable. His head swims, mouth dry, every sense razor-sharp.
Shit, the box. It must have opened when he fell.
TheLegion. He’s moving at half-speed as he slips his pack off and reaches in with numb fingers. The lid of the containment box isskewed, the metal at the corner warped. Inside, its crystal pulsing cerulean light against a cradle of vines, sits the Legion, fully awake.
Tory’s consciousness pulses and fades with the weapon’s light, body slow and clumsy, mesmerized.
Not now, he doesn’t need thisnow.
Tory tries to force the lid back on, but the warping along the edge makes for an imperfect seal. The tapered edge of a vine sneaks through and tickles the tip of Tory’s finger.
He shudders and drops the box. Its lid skitters free, and the roots rise to reach for Tory.
They widen and contract with each pulse of light—too much like the rise and fall of a living chest. All of this, and he’ll die, stabbed to death by atree.
No. Sena said—he said Tory was controlling it before, in the lab, that it protected him.
He can do it again, surely. Buthow?
A voice cries out, wrenching his attention from the blue-lit stellite and the breathing vines that embrace it.
“Tory, his gun!”
Sena’s voice.Sena!
The distraction holds Tory too long, mind still syrupy-slow.
Kirlov dropped the pistol, and Tory knocked him to the ground right beside it.
Now, Kirlov has it in his hand, and Tory’s energies are slow to respond, just like Iri’s took time to uncrumple after Sena extinguished them in that clearing.
