“I wasn’t wallowing.”
She laughs. “Oh, you’re wallowing. That is the most wallowing bowl of chili I’ve seen in my life.”
I glance over to the lonely bowl, considering her sage advice. It’s times like these that I’m convinced the two of us should just hijack a shuttle and take off for Polaris or Vega or some other fun ship-a ship where they don’t train children for illegal, dangerous work and then mock them when they’re not up to it.
“Speaking of,” she reaches over and grabs the bowl, “you got any enemies, Fisher? We can pick the lock on their door and dump this on them while they’re sleeping.”
I chuckle, despite myself. “That sounds like the worst idea you’ve ever had.”
“Oh, come on. I’ve had worse.”
“Well, there is August Bergmann… ” I wince as I say his name, imagining how he’ll spin my little Surface adventure once he hears about it. The guy’s had it in for me ever since Year Six.
Her face lights up. “Yeah! Now there’s a perfect candidate for a late-night chili dump.”
I shake my head. “But I’m already in trouble. Alkine’s concerned.” I frame the word with air quotes. “They’re all concerned.”
She rolls her eyes. “They’re always concerned. If they weren’t, they’d be concerned about that too.” She pushes the bowl away. It flies across the table, nearly toppling off the edge.
“There were Fringers,” I continue. “Not friendly either. Hence the lovely mark on my cheek.”
She rests her chin in her hand, staring at me. “It’s actually kinda cute. Think of it as a temporary tattoo. Real badass.”
“Yeah.” I smile. “Temporary tattoos are the definition of badass, right? They might as well have just scrawled ‘loser’ across my face. Bergmann’s gonna have a field day with this one.”
She shrugs. “There’s always the chili. Just sayin’.”
I nod, relishing the idea of August Bergmann with cold chili dumped all over his body.
“Seriously, though,” she leans closer, “you’ll get over it. After my parents died… when General Campbell had me transferred over here, it was the absolute loneliest time in my life. Sometimes this place is like a tomb. You just wanna get outside and breathe in fresh air for once, but people keep pulling you back. I mean, who cares about Pearls and stuff when your whole world falls apart, right?”
I nod.
“But then I started hanging out with you and things weren’t so bad. The teachers may be concerned about you, Jesse, but they’re boring, stuffy people. They don’t matter.”
“I don’t think they’d agree.”
“Trust me,” she says, “you’ll be wasting your effort trying to please them. Wilson was born disappointed. Alkine, well… if you ask me he’s not exactly the sympathetic war hero he’d like everybody to believe. You make me laugh, Jesse. And there are maybe three people onboard who can do that. Should count for something, right?”
I smile. “Thanks, Avery.”
“For what?”
I pause, holding back what I really want to say. “For coming up here. For talking.”
“Hey, no problem.”
I stare at her face for a second before glancing away, realizing that I look like a stalker. “I should get to bed early tonight. Wilson’s making us do Bunker Ball tomorrow morning and my legs are killing me.”
“I’ll walk down with you.”
We stand up from the table and take off through the empty canteen, leaving the chili in the corner to harden.
When we reach my room on the second level, I input my code and crack the door, turning around. An awkward pause comes between us.
There’s always an awkward pause. If we were really boyfriend and girlfriend I’d lean over and kiss her goodnight, or at least give her a hug. Instead, I offer a meek “goodnight” and she smiles, heading down the hallway. I watch her go for a moment before slipping into my room, kicking myself for wasting yet another perfect opportunity.
Before plopping onto my half-made bed, I walk to my desk and run my fingers over a pair of medallions hanging on the wall. They belong to my parents, which means technically they belong to me. The Tribunal had them shipped over in honor of bravery and sacrifice and mass heroic stuff like that. They’ve been a permanent fixture in my room for as long as I can remember. The Tribunal destroyed all photographs for security purposes. My parents weren’t the keepsake type, either. These medals are all I have-a constant, glistening reminder of how fearless they were. Not like me. I can’t even handle a Pearlhound trainee.
I drop the medallions and let them clank against the wall, reaching for the entertainment console at the end of the desk. Then I slump face-first onto the bed and purge the day from memory with the most mind-numbing program I can find on Skyship TV.
7
Cassius hadn’t slept well. Four times he’d woken up, covered in sweat. Each time he was convinced it was going to happen again. Fire. Everywhere. Another room destroyed.
Part of him still couldn’t believe that it was true. He’d seen what was left of his room. He’d heard what Madame said, but he held onto the hope that there was another explanation.
Now he was on his way to her office for mission briefing. They would be traveling up to Skyship Atlas tomorrow afternoon. If Madame stuck to her word, it would be his last full day at the Lodge for a while. He wasn’t sure if finding Fisher was an opportunity or a punishment.
He paused outside the Office of Research and Development-the Lodge’s nerve center. Madame was expecting him in half an hour, which meant he’d have time to browse through the Lodge’s database in search of more human combustion episodes. Not that he didn’t trust Madame, but he wanted to see if this had ever happened before, to anyone else. After all, there was nothing special about him. He couldn’t be the only one.
“Stevenson?” A man’s deep voice issued from a speaker above the door. “Is that you out there?”
The voice belonged to Lieutenant Henrich, one of the head instructors at the Lodge’s training division and one of Madame’s most trusted allies.
“Yes, sir,” Cassius replied, annoyed to have been spotted so soon.
“Come inside and give me a hand,” Henrich said. “You’ve been given the access code, haven’t you?”
“Yes.” Cassius plugged in his code beside the door and entered. Madame had just granted him access to the office two weeks ago. He was the only student privileged enough to receive it. Another perk of being her favorite.
Once inside, he passed through rows of computers and bookshelves. It was a tight space, longer than it was wide. At the far end, below a curved glass window, sat the central computer system, responsible for tracking Pearls as they hurtled through the stars and estimating Surface coordinates once they landed.
“Over here.” Henrich’s voice came from the Stasis Laboratory, a small room connected to the main office. A green glow spilled out from the open doorway. Cassius passed through an aisle of bookshelves, hoping that whatever Henrich wanted wouldn’t take long. He needed to find out what was happening to him. Madame’s cryptic answers weren’t enough.
Green light washed over his body as he entered the laboratory. Lieutenant Henrich stood before a wide counter, wearing a white undershirt and dark trousers. His black hair was slicked back as usual. A Pearl sat in a shallow basin before him. A wall of television screens beamed just beyond the counter, each displaying security footage from one of the ten entrances to the Bio-Net around Rochester. Many of the Lodge’s rooms shared this feature. A precaution.
“Stevenson.” Henrich greeted him with a lopsided smile. “Come over here and help me attach this stasis equipment. Fraggin’ thing’s already getting buggy on us.”