use, clean and fire every known weapon in the Sarcodinay Empire, the best way to kill someone when you need to ensure they make no noise while dying, how to steal and modify a vid card or forge a caste-mark that will pass security.
Sometimes they would make us take pills before a session, and when this happened we would become so tired that it was impossible to stay awake, but the training tape continued regardless. At first I thought they would be angry that I had fallen asleep, but then I realized that everyone else had too, and the teacher expected it and did not seem displeased. I wondered what it was we learned during those sessions.
That is not today.
The light fades and there is a shuddering cry. I look over to see that one of the girls has gone into a seizure. This happens sometimes. The teachers are quick, professional. It’s no emergency, nothing to get worked up over. Sometimes the children react poorly to the stimulation—it is more information, faster, than any mind should have to process.
I see into her mind. She has no defenses while her body betrays her, convulses around her. She is scared, terrified, that she has failed her teachers, that they will pronounce her seizure with the most fatal and condemning of judgments: weakness. The girl knows what is done to those who are weak, but she cannot stop herself from shaking.
I can though. I close my eyes and reach out for her, stroke her mind the way one might pet a cat, calm the nerve clusters that are spasming with staccato fire. She stills, falls into a sleep.
The teachers are confused.
I look at the head teacher at the front of the class, sitting behind the control board, and I realize I have made a terrible mistake. We are hooked in to every kind of monitoring equipment, connected to a system that watches our bodies while we take our lessons. And the teacher is looking at those readouts, then looking at me, and although it is much, much harder for me to read a Sarcodinay than a human, I can feel her fear.
My chest starts to pound, and I cannot slow my heartbeat, even though I know that is a lethal moment—that if she panics she can flood this room with deadly radiation. It is a moment of exquisite, piercing tension, that knife’s edge between life and death.
“Excuse me, but is there a Mallory MacLain here?” A male human voice interrupts the deceptive quiet.
Penrolyr looks over, frowns. “We are in class.”
I look over too. There is a man there, an adult male who is tall and willowy and has a large hooked nose, messy black hair and a teacher’s caste mark. There is a somewhat neglected air about him, as if he does not care enough about the uniform he wears to be bothered with all the fasteners or be much upset if he spills soup on the front of his khani at lunch. He looks unkempt, and no one at Kaimer School ever looks unkempt.
The man responds to the Sarcodinay teacher’s obvious dismissal with a wide grin. “Oh, by all means, keep going, but Mallory’s excused the rest of the day.” He gives the Sarcodinay a wink and a conspiratorial nod. “She’s being put in a new class. Orders from the top.”
“I was not notified of any such—“
”Oh it should all be on your vid. Go ahead and look. I have all the time in the world.”
The Sarcodinay blinks, probably because she is not used to a human using such a tone with her. The man is all impossible grin and cheeky impudence, with none of the sullen rebellion she could call him on. What was she was going to scold him for? Being happy?
The teacher frowns. “Yes, fine. I see the orders. Mallory, go with this man.”
I nod and stand, walk over to him. He smiles at me, a bright, merry kind of smile that might have put me at ease if we were anywhere else.
I am surprised when he reaches down to take my hand, something no one but Paul has done since I came to the school. With a glance backwards at the girl who collapsed, we leave together.
“Don’t you want to ask where we are going?” He questions.
“I do.”
“Why don’t you then?”
“I’m not supposed to ask questions.” I try not to bite my lip.
“And you always do what you’re supposed to? A perfect student, you are?” He squeezes my hand just a little. I think he wants to reassure me.
“Who are you?”
He grins. “That’s a different question.”
“A more interesting question though. You’re taking me some place in the Kaimer School, but you aren’t like anyone else I’ve seen here. You don’t act like anyone else I’ve met here.”
“Oh, I’m new,” he explains. “Still have that new teacher smell, doncha know.”
“New teacher smell? New teachers smell different?” I wrinkle my nose to let him know what I think of such a ridiculous idea.
“Oh. Oh Sorry. Old Terran joke about automobiles. Never mind. Not important right now anyway.”
“You’re weird.”
“See right to the heart of a person, don’t you? Yes, I’m weird. I’m very weird. I might even go so far as to say I’m professionally weird. Believe me, it’s a lot more fun than trying to fit in with everyone else when you don’t. Fit in, I mean.”
“And you haven’t answered my question.”
“I haven’t, have I? I’m Vana-Goliard Duncan. And you—” He squeezes my hand again, “—are Mallory Barbara MacLain. Excuse me: Seris-Kaimer Mallory. And how you have grown. Hard to believe it’s been eight years already.”
“You know me?” I’m so surprised that I stop walking, tug my hand from his, turn and look at him.
“One question is just going to follow the next with you, isn’t it? I can already tell you’re going to be like a water faucet I can’t turn off.” He takes my hand back up in his. “Now be good for just a little bit. I promise I’ll explain everything once we reach the basement.” We walk down stairways while questions race through my mind. After we have walked for ten minutes down stairs and across lonely concrete tunnels without reaching anything resembling a destination, I begin to wonder if maybe asking where we are going might have been the better question after all. It doesn’t seem possible that we could still be inside the school.
Finally, there is light ahead of us, and Duncan opens doors to a ruined splendor.
I don’t know where we are, but it’s not Sarcodinay. These are old ruins, taken back by the jungle, the stone cracked and pushed aside by vines and grasses. I’m not even sure what kind of room this is: it’s large and it’s filled with equal parts plants and debris. Someone—probably this Duncan—has cleared the plants against one wall and turned it into a living space with curoquo couches, an impromptu kitchen, and a large open space covered by foam mats.
I look behind me, to the long hallway that leads back to the Sarcodinay school, then to this strange, wild, magic room, where there is running water dripping down one wall and beams of sunlight falling into the room from a collapsed section of roof, large enough for me to see outside, large enough for a child like me to climb outside.
Escape—right through that hole.
I am wary and guarded as I turn back towards Duncan. He grins.
“Would you like some orange juice? Ooh, or milk. Milk’s very good for human children, assuming you aren’t allergic. I have kalmara juice too, but we’ll save that for a treat. Orange juice, then?”
“Who are you again?”
“Try to keep up. We’ve moved past that question.” He opens up a door that has escaped my attention and pulls out a jug filled with cheerfully orange juice.
“What are you then? You just marched right out of—“ I stop. “I don’t understand. Why did they let you just take me?”
He stops smiling. “I haven’t. You’re still enrolled in the school.”
“No one is enrolled in that school,” I correct him, my young voice as icy and cold as I can make it. I never talk to an adult this way normally, but after his strange banter I don’t think he will call me on it. “We are trapped there. Until they are through with us, one way or another.”
“Yes.”
“So who are you again?”
/> He sighs and winces, almost simultaneously. “Your parents had more friends than you realize. One of those friends is...influential. He has some pull. Not enough to save your parents. Not enough to stop you from being placed here. But enough to help.”
“How is he helping exactly?”
“He could, and has, pulled the strings to have me assigned here. I’m going to take over some of your training. Paul’s too. I’d separate you, but they’ll want to keep you together.”
“I like Paul!”
“Yes, I imagine he’s very likable. Probably couldn’t be more likable if he’d been designed that way. In any case, I’m your new teacher.” He glances over at the mats. “They’ve been told combat training, so I suppose we’ll have to get around to some of that at some point. Luckily I am actually qualified to teach it.”
“Why?”
“Well, I spent a lot of time learning martial arts from—“ He sees the look on my face and stops. “You’re not like the other students. You’ve already noticed this.”
“They’re trying to mold us, shape us, make us something they want. I don’t—“ I shake my head. “What they’re doing just seems so obvious, and I don’t understand why the other students can’t see it. They’re killing us on the inside, and anyone who doesn’t die inside, they kill for real. Why do they want us dead but still alive?”
“Because if you kill someone’s soul, you can fill the empty space with whatever you want. You said it yourself: they are trying to mold you.” He pauses a beat. “But that’s not the only