Page 23 of Cage of Starlight
Part Two:
Fight
CHAPTER SIX
The unrelenting clatterof an alarm bell rips Tory from rest at an hour no reasonable creatures crawl from their holes. He sits up on his naked mattress and looks to his roommate for cues. No luck. The man’s dead to the world.
The bell keeps going. It’s coming from behind a metal grate close to the ceiling at the back of the room, which means Tory can’t beat it into silence.
The first thing from his roommate’s lips when he wakes is, “Dammit.”
“What’s happening?” Tory chances, rolling out of bed.
“Breakfast. Training.”
That’s something. He can follow the guy to wherever they eat.
His roommate tips out of bed and glares muzzily at Tory. “You were rotten last night, y’know that?”
Tory grimaces. That might’ve been a bad move. He’s not here to make friends, but he knowsexactlywhere he needs to point his cutting edge, and it’s not at people trapped here like him. “I felt it. Bad day.”
His roommate grunts and tugs the door open. “Fair. Food’s this way.” The cardplayers from last night, hunched and yawning, wait outside. “Normally you’d need to make your bed before leaving the room, but . . .” He flicks a hand at the bare, disgusting mattress.
“Yeah. Where can I get blankets?”
The second point on the card-playing trio, a tall guy with rat-like features, offers, “Closet two doors down has bedding. It’s locked, though. Your supervisor didn’t give you the stuff?”
Vantaras, thatbastard.
His roommate laughs. “Who’d ya get, Menden? Fella’s senile.”
They stop in front of the closet door.
His roommate gestures to the third cardplayer—short and thick, with a clumsily shaven head and a scar that makes a furrow through his left ear and cheek. “Rendt here’s got your back; he can break in and no one’ll know. He did it for some of Menden’s other supervisees.”
“Don’t know Menden. My supervisor’s this guy Vantaras. And nah—I can do without a blanket until I see him next. Wanna make him work.”
The men go quiet.
“Vantarasis your supervisor? What’s your type?” Tory’s roommate snags his wrist. “Synergistic. And . . . WS? What the—?”
Tory pulls his wrist away. It might be better to keep his cards close to his chest, say only a little. What was it Helner said, about the carriage? “Something about kinetic energy.”
“Nah, man, I’m Kinetic.” His roommate thrusts his hand at Tory, baring a tag that reads (S)K/2084. “You don’t have the K.”
“She said I threw concussive force.”
Scar-face smirks. “Oh,” he says. “Oh, man. You got Seedbait for a roommate. You’ll get the bed back in no time.”
Tory doesn’t like the sound of that. “What’s Seedbait?”
“Come on, they send you people to the front lines to catch bullets for us. You’re cannon fodder. Corpse corps.Seedbait.”
Tory shudders.
“Ain’t they CF, though? This guy’s WS.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time the idiots in the labs fell asleep on the job.” His roomie shrugs. “Well, look. I’m Gavin.”
