Page 49 of Cage of Starlight
Vantaras’ eyes narrow at the use of his first name. The bastard walks faster.Soon, they arrive at a door marked with a simple, hammered silver plaque:Lab #1.It’s not particularly ominous, but neither is it any more helpful than Vantaras has been. He snaps his fancy tab from his pocket and hangs it in front of the chunky locking mechanism with its inset crystal. The crystal flashes white and clicks to unlock.
The laboratory blinds him—polished metal and white walls made cutting and cruel with brilliant light.
Surrounded by murmuring technicians in the center of a gleaming silver table, a ball of tightly wrapped, peeling vines waits, at odds with its clinical surroundings. A few serrated, heart-shaped leaves sprout from it. They’re identical to the leaves on the vines in the garden and the ones in Hulven with their organ-red blooms.
Pulses of energy—violent and vibrant, like something living—barrel into him.Da-dum, da-dum,like an electric heartbeat. Tory shakes with it, knees knocking, breath frozen in his chest. He traces the energy to its source.
To the nondescript ball of vines.
The scientists mill around like it’snothing. Helner stands less than a foot away, tapping long, sharp fingernails on the table. She’s close enough to touch it.
Even from the doorway, Tory can barely stand. His vision tunnels.
It’s like that eerie feeling he got from the mine in Hulven except so much worse. Better?
He’d die to touch this thing.
“Breathe,” Vantaras reminds him, dry.
Tory manages a blurry glare. “Can’t theyfeelthat? Can’t you?”
“They’re not Seeds.”
Tory notes the fine tremors in his clenched fists. “Helner is.”
“Dr. Helner isn’t human,” Vantaras snips.
Tory doesn’t mean to laugh.
At the sound, Helner turns. “Ah! Knew I could count on you, Vantaras. Such a good boy.” She invites them over with two scalpel-sharp gestures.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to go, but there’s no way his legs will carry him there.
He manages a few toddling steps, and the energy intensifies, filling every empty place inside him. He looks back, vision swirling. “You’re not coming?”
At least if Vantaras was going, he could hide his jelly-limbed staggering behind him.
“I’ve been the subject of this experiment more than once.” A quick, mirthless smile. “They didn’t like the results.”
“Tory! We don’t have all day!”
He clamps his mouth shut on the questions he wants to ask. Halfway to the strange sphere, he goes down on one knee. There’s a shuffle behind him, and when he manages to turn, Vantaras is halfway across the floor toward him.
Helner growls, “Lieutenant, moveonestep closer and I will trash you to the colonel.”
All color fades from his face and he’s flat against the back wall again, an inch or so from blending into it.
“Arknett, up.”
Helner grabs his elbow when he gets close.
His blurred vision clarifies when he stops mere feet from the table, the world etched with sharp lines and painted in colors Tory has nonames for. Dr. Helner and Sena are revelations, galaxies, the Seeds within them unspeakably bright.
“He’s high,” Helner says. “How sweet.”
Pain blooms on his cheek like a flower, sharper and duller than any sensation he’s felt.
It could be hours later when he manages, “Ow?”
