“Great job, mate.” Skandar barely contains his chuckle.
Paulina Sterner pushes him. “He lasted longer than you, didn’t he?”
Skandar grunts. “Dumb luck, that’s all.”
I fold into a fetal position.
Eva crosses her arms. “I gotta hand it to you, Fisher. Even though you missed Chan completely, which is pretty pathetic considering the amount of detonators you threw at him, at least you showed some fighting spirit.”
Skandar reaches down to help me up but I push him away. I just wanna lie here. That way I can pretend this never happened. The fact that it feels like a truck’s just been driven into my chest doesn’t really give me the opportunity.
“Whatever.” Skandar withdraws his hand. “I’m gonna go hit the showers.” He waves goodbye. Paulina and Manjeet leave too, now that the spectacle’s over.
Eva lingers. “You just gonna lie there?”
“Go away,” I mutter into the sand. It’s better to give up, chalk it up to fate. Even when I try not to make a fool of myself, the universe still finds some way to kick me in the butt. Other kids would have family to comfort them, to go on and on about how mass special they were. I’ve got Eva, standing over me like a disappointed bodyguard.
“You know, you can’t keep doing this, acting like a baby when things don’t go your way.” She waits for a response, but I don’t give her one. So with one final disapproving sigh, she walks away, leaving me alone in the middle of the empty battlefield.
9
Two a.m. Any sane person would be asleep by now. I am decidedly in sane.
I sit upright in my bed. I gave up on sleep twenty minutes ago. My body wants to droop into the mattress and shut down, but my mind’s going 300 miles per hour.
Every time I close my eyes I’m filled with images of that dead, mist-clogged city-the key around my neck, the figure behind me.
I glance around my darkened bedroom. Shadows cover the walls like toothed monsters. The floor’s dotted with piles of clothing and junk. It’s an obstacle course to get to the bed without stepping on something.
I toss the covers from my legs and throw on the first pair of shorts I can find. Time to roam the corridors until I’m too exhausted to move. Time to fool my body into submission.
Slipping out the doorway, I turn down the hall past dozens of closed doors and make my way to the outside corridor. Moonlight streams in through the wall of curved windows. The stars are impossibly bright.
I head up the stairway to the fifth level, in search of another night owl whiling away the early morning hours in one of the rec rooms. After clearing the first flight of stairs, I freeze.
Rumbling. Just beyond the entryway to the fourth level, echoing along the hallway. It sounds for a second longer-low, crackling-and stops. Footsteps.
I tiptoe to the entryway and peer around the side of the wall, staring down the empty hallway. Level Four’s mostly living quarters, but at its center sits the largest of the Academy’s three research laboratories.
Just as I’m about to move, the rumbling returns, softer this time. I step forward, inching down the hallway in pursuit of the sound. For a second I wonder if it’s coming from a bedroom. It sounds like snoring, but the dorm walls are much too thick. No one snores that loudly.
No, it’s coming from the end of the hallway.
The rumbling stops again. I pause and glance around the vacant hallway, expecting someone to jump out and grab me.
Silence.
I venture forward, turn a corner and head deeper into the center of the ship. A lighting tube crackles above my head, burnt out. I listen for the sound, but everything’s quiet. Quiet as the stars.
Then I see movement at the end of the corridor. A door opens. A person steps outside. I flatten against the wall, hoping I won’t be seen. But it’s too late. The figure takes a few nervous glances around and sneaks down the hallway, right toward me.
There’s nowhere to hide, so I step out from the shadows and shove my hands into my pockets, trying to look as nonchalant as possible. The figure freezes as soon as it notices me. It’s dark, and the person is too far away to make out facial features.
“Hey,” I mutter, hoping that it’s a student and not a faculty member. After Alkine’s little lecture last night I’m not dying to be alone with a teacher again.
“Jesse?”
I step forward and watch as the figure fumbles with something in her pocket. “Avery?”
Avery comes into view. Her hair’s pulled back in a ponytail. There’s a smear of black grease on her cheek. “Jesse, what are you doing out here?”
I shrug. “Couldn’t sleep. Did you hear that noise?”
“Noise?” She rubs her cheek.
“Yeah. Rumbling. Kinda loud for two in the morning.”
Her eyebrows raise. “Could’ve been the water reprocessor.”
“You can hear that all the way up here?”
She frowns. “If everyone’s quiet enough, I guess.”
I crane my neck around her outline and peer down the hallway. “Where were you? I thought your dorm was on Level Three.”
“It is.” She rests her hand on her hip. “Um… you know Phoebe, right? She was in my year, back when I was still training. We were friends. Well, kind of… but anyway, she needed to talk about, you know, girl stuff.” She glances at her watch. “I guess we got a little carried away.”
I look down the row of closed doors. “I didn’t know you hung out with Phoebe.”
“Uh huh.” She runs her hand through her hair. “I can have other friends, you know. They may not be as flaunt as you, but still… ”
I rub my eyes.
“I thought Year Nines had curfew,” she says. “Shouldn’t you be in your room?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
She chuckles, pushing past me to the corridor. “You forget. I may not be an agent, but I still work here. I can come and go as I please. I am a god among men. No, strike that. Goddess. Tremble in my wake.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I follow her into the corridor, staring at her moonlit face. “I swear I heard rumbling.”
“You’ve got an active imagination,” she replies. “I didn’t hear a thing.” She pauses, fumbling with her pockets before turning her attention back to me. “Nice shorts.”
I look down. They’re so baggy that they reach well past my knees. “They were Skandar’s once. He likes them… uh… roomy, I guess.”
“Right.” She yawns. “So what’s up? I hardly saw you today.”
I lean against the windowpane and push my thumb against the fiberglass. “Oh you know, the usual. Got yelled at in math for talking to Skandar. Got knocked out in Bunker Ball. Mr. Wilson said I had too much sympathy for the enemy, that I hesitated instead of ‘stickin it to him.’” I frown. “Wilson’s words. Not mine.”
Avery crouches at the edge of the corridor, her back to the stars. “Sometimes sympathy’s not such a bad thing. Missions aren’t easy when feelings are involved. Trust me.”
I sit next to her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She shrugs. “Just saying. Emotion compromises a person. You’ve gotta choose between your brain and your heart.” She smiles. “Heart should always win, I think.”
“I wasn’t emotional. I wanted to win that stupid game as much as anybody.”
“Yeah? Well, I want a flying dog that barks the alphabet backwards. Some things just ain’t gonna happen, kiddo.”
“Don’t call me kiddo,” I mutter.
She ignores me. “So what’s the real reason you’re up so late?”
I play with a loose thread on the bottom of my T-shirt. “Bad dreams, I guess.”
Avery nods. “Gotcha. After your little Surface adventure, I’m not surprised you’d have nightmares. Pearlhounds can be pretty scary.”
“You’ve fought them?”
She chuckles. “If running away is considered a form of combat, then yeah. It was my junior year, right after transferring from Mira. I hadn’t had much Surface experience so they stuck me with a few of the more promising students in my grade. It wasn’t a Fringe trade like you guys did yesterday. A Pearl had fallen outside of Tallahassee… pretty far from the nearest Chosen, so we thought we could grab it before the Pearlhounds showed up.” She smiles. “They swore we’d be able to handle it.”