Page 31 of Cage of Starlight
A man with a floppy thatch of mouse-brown hair, a mess of freckles, and a perpetual smile responds instead. He introduces himself as Randall. “Oh.” He laughs. “You don’t.”
“Why?” Tory steals and throws the momentum from one of the wind-up abominations, slowing it for a moment.
Randall’s answer is the same as Menden’s. “Realism!” he says. “Or as close as they can get, which isn’t very.”
“What do youmean?”
Randall laughs again and keeps talking, like multitasking in a field of projectiles and death-spheres is an everyday occurrence. “Uh, just because? I mean, you don’t kill them. A Legion unit killsyou.”
“Legion?”
“Yeah, ’cause one of them is as good as a whole legion of soldiers,” Randall offers. “Not that I’ve seen a real one! But I visit my girlfriend in the infirmary and sat with one guy the other day while he—you know.”
Tory can guess.
“From what he said, these things here? They’re children’s toys.”
A nearby trainee screams as one of the children’s toys crashes into her and breaks bones. Tory doesn’t have breath to respond, but Randall keeps going.
“The real ones are nothing like these. They can just . . . change shape. Any shape. Heard of one that could disappear, one that killed people before they even saw it. You see one of these things on a battlefield, you’re dead. You and everyone with you.”
Children’s toys or not, the things are ugly. Any trainees unfortunate enough to encounter them are dragged off the field and sent back once their broken bodies have been sealed by the waiting Healers. Tory puts what he’s learned to use and steals the kinetic energy off one of the mechanized spheres. The weight of its stolen momentum pushes against his hands like a boulder. Tory trembles at the heft of it, then pushes back, so the energy crashes into the rolling bastard he stole it from. Knocks it back a good few feet when he does it, and Randall laughs like it’s the best entertainment he’s had in years.
“Oh, do it again!”
Tory does it again, and again, until sweat stings his eyes. He manages to mess up the embedded tracks on one of the spheres so nicely that it spins itself in circles for a while.
Randall talks about everything—the quality of the cafeteria’s meat, the weather, Menden, his family, his girlfriend—and the smile never goes. If this guy’s midfielding, Tory can’t imagine how good the ones closer to the gate are. He barely manages monosyllabic grunts while he works and still misses as many balloons as he drops.
“Sorry!” Randall jumps in front of Tory and takes a balloon to the chest, clipping Tory’s shoulder as he stumbles back.
“I could’ve gotten that.”
“That’s why I apologized! I needed to take that one.” Randall shakes water from his hair.
“You . . . like getting hit?” Some folks in the Houses were into that. Giving or taking it.
“In a sense!”
When the bell for the end of training sounds, Randall tells him the cooks are making corn hash soup tonight (a good thing) and guides him to the front of the line for healing. Barring medical emergenciesor returnees from the battlefield, theirs is always the first unit allowed into the infirmary, apparently.
“My girlfriend works here,” Randall informs him, waggling his eyebrows. “Sight for sore eyes.” He rolls his shoulder and hisses. “Sore everything.”
Tory can’t hold back a laugh.
First dibs or not, the line is eternal and the wind blows ice-cold. It’s not worth the wait. Tory slips between storage buildings to head inside and hit the showers. Hot water—as much as he can stand—will beat the cold from his bones and the ache from his limbs. A feast of food waits for him when he’s done.
Today, he learned how to defend himself with his powers—and how to attack with them, to throw stolen energy where he wants it to go. He can learn from these people.
As training wore on today, Tory advanced closer and closer to the wall. The best folks are at the front already—near the matte-black cannons and the saw-toothed gate Tory entered through. It opened once or twice during training to let soldiers in or supplies out.
Soon, he’ll be there with the best of them, and he’ll have all the time in the world to figure out how to escape through the gate while these bastards provide him with training he can turn against them when he’s out. The infiltrators Vantaras scared away are probably the rebels Hasra told stories about. They wereclose. If Tory can find them, he can join them.
His petty resistance against Vantaras has felt nice, but Tory wants to try his hand at a real fight. A meaningful one.
These walls would look awfully good as rubble.
CHAPTER EIGHT
