Page 51 of Cage of Starlight
Heat mounts. Sound fades. The light grows until it burns his eyes.
Roots explode in every direction. One spears the ticking instrument and impales it against the far wall where it spills wood splinters and cogs onto the floor. A strip of the inset stellite lighting bursts when a root punches through it, throwing glass-like shards through the air.
The white-coated assistants duck and cower. With awful, hollowthunks, more roots crash into stone walls, the floor, the ceiling, burrowing like they want to break through. More stellite slivers fly. The roots writhe, curling deeper. The ceiling falls in chunks.
Tory stands in the midst of it, safe and far away, senses swathed in wool. Two or three roots over his head deflect debris.
Red light kicks up in the strips along the floor—burst and fade, burst and fade. Tory staggers when something pulls at him from behind. He tips his chin to peer at whatever it is.
Helner.
She’s screaming in his ear, but she could be whispering from another room.
Let go,she’s saying.Tory, let go of it!
He can’t. It’s part of him now. Tory tries to pry his fingers away with his other hand.
Pipework tumbles from the ceiling, and water sprays down in a fine mist.
Sound returns in a roar. Twist of metal, crash of glass. Screams. The discordant clatter of an alarm bell. The instruments the vines didn’t topple or destroy hum and sing and tick around the crystal. The assistant who bemoaned how few of these were left sobs at Tory’s feet, hands bloodied from stellite shards. Tory meets every eye, but not one has an answer, until—
Vantaras strides toward him, backlit in red, a study in purpose and fear. The roots shy away, like they know something Tory doesn’t. Like the cannon did on the training field.
“Move,” he whispers, but Tory hears it loud and clear.
“Damnit, Vantaras,” Helner growls, but she doesn’t stop him.
He pulls the glove from his left hand with his teeth and lets it drop.
The air electrifies. There’s no other word for it. Static raises the hair on Tory’s arms and neck. It’s nothing he can feel or touch, nothing much of anything—it’s the silence before a lightning strike, and it’s coming from Vantaras.
Vantaras apologizes just before he lays a shaking hand on the roots.
The energy shifts at his touch. It’s something, nothing, everything—the bright burn of a star before it dies. The root beneath his hand goes still and gray. The color spreads, and vines crumble to ash, unable to bear their own weight. The crystal cracks, gray-black at its core, stars winking out. Tory staggers, freed from its hold and hollow with its absence.
Reality rushes in. A light flits on and off, a dying smoke-gray in color. The bell shrieks louder, earth-shattering and consuming.
Sena drops to one knee to grab his glove, shoving his hand into it before pressing both palms to his ears. The communicator on his chest flickers blue. “Isaidalarms were triggered at your location, Lieutenant. Respond.”
Kirlov’s voice.
Sena doesn’t answer, probably doesn’t hear it.
Ash-like flecks floating on the air are all that’s left of most of the roots, or little fragments in the shape of roots that crumble at the touch of Tory’s foot.
Red light throbs in and out with the cacophony of the alarm, and on the floor, in the center of it all, Sena says, sorry, sorry, I’m sorryand rocks into the cradle of his knees.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It takes a fewmoments, once Vantaras staggers to his feet and flees the room, for Tory to follow. Out the lab, down the hall,around, around, aroundthe wide circle of the Compound, past places he’s never been, and through a door—at last—into a clearly not-public-access hallway he can only enter because Vantaras’ tab unlocks the door and Tory grabs the knob before it closes.
The hallway is empty when he steps inside, but the door to one of the rooms hangs open. Naturally, the thing is twice as large as the glorified closet Tory shares with Gavin. Inside, Vantaras sits on the end of a bed made with unsettling precision, gloved hands in his hair.
“Whatwasthat just now?” Tory demands, pacing inside.
He’s a few steps away when Vantaras finally looks up, wide-eyed. His hands leave his hair to push out in front of him. “Don’t!”
He’s shaking, and after a moment he seems to realize how close his hands are to Tory, because he makes a noise and drags them back, wrapping them around himself and tucking them under his arms. “Don’t,” he whispers again. He rocks forward—toward a window, the bastard has a window—eyes fixed on its light. “You can’t be in here.”
