by C. G. Hatton
“Go,” Hil sent, “just go. Leave it.”
I ran in the opposite direction, skidding on the polished wooden floor and turning the corner as the sound of a key in the lock echoed out behind me.
I didn’t wait to see what happened. I dropped the medal into my pocket and ran.
Seconds later a klaxon screamed.
And the entire school erupted around us.
I couldn’t move fast enough. Hil was giving me a steady sitrep, detailed enough that I knew he was watching my every move, and stressed enough that I knew he was in trouble himself.
I did what he said without question. It’s weird now looking back. We were an awesome team. So in synch we almost didn’t need comms. But after the crap we got dropped in later, we never worked together out in the field again… after everything from the past two years caught up with us both and ignited into a situation we were lucky to survive. We’d both thought Redemption was tough. Turned out we never left Redemption behind. Not really. Or at least, it never left us… I’ll leave that story for Hil to tell you.
Right then, at Westings, I was screwed. Running on automatic, half my concentration at that perfect school in its perfect colony in the Between as Westinghouse mobilised its entire armed security detail to lock down the whole campus… and half oscillating between a dusty airfield on Kheris and the small control hut of an elite shooting range at the Royal Ancients Military Academy on Caron Four, a Thundercloud descending from orbit right above our heads.
I could hardly see straight, the lock in front of me could have been anywhere. Thick metal door. Simple reactive lock mechanism with a code. I bust it open and pushed out onto a roof, midnight blue sky, gunships with searchlights roaring overhead, but no rockets, no automated defence systems pounding out interception after interception, no DZs rumbling around at ground level. It was a school. I crouched low, adrenaline pounding, heart in my throat, keeping in the shadows. It was Westings. I ground my palms against my eyes, telling myself, this is Westinghouse. Stay now. This is a nice as hell private school. What the hell could they do to us?
“Get back to the dorm, LC.”
Hil sounded as freaked out as I’d ever heard him.
“Don’t get caught out here.”
I pushed up and ran for the edge of the roof, staying low and sending back, “Where are you?”
There was no answer.
I hadn’t screwed up in that office. I was absolutely sure I hadn’t. I hadn’t triggered anything that would let Blackstone know his secure FailSafed data had been compromised. I knew I hadn’t.
There was a fire escape heading down from the north side of the roof. I knew every inch of this school from the plans. I made it to the ladder and hunkered in close to the wall as the school security detail came near, flashlight beams searching.
I sent, tight wire, “Hil…?”
“Just get back to the dorm.”
“Hil, how could the guild not know this…?”
“LC, just get inside. Get back to the dorm.”
I sent back, “I’m trying,” as I waited for the searchlight to pass then swung myself over the ledge and dropped down the fire escape, shimmying down the ladders and dropping a good fifteen feet to the ground. I stumbled, my knee giving way, and almost yelled as someone grabbed me and pulled me backwards.
“Where’s the medal?” Hil hissed into my ear.
I couldn’t breathe straight. I fumbled around in my pocket and pulled it out. I held it there for a second, feeling the cold metal of the star digging into my palm. Nothin’ freaking honourable about a damned medal from Derren Bay, I’d heard one of Charlie’s men say, drunk one night when they’d forgotten I was still with them in the outpost.
Hil held out his hand and sent again, “Don’t get caught out here. You understand?”
I let the medal drop onto his palm. “I didn’t trigger the FailSafe. I swear I didn’t. Why are they doing this?”
“What the hell was in that office?”
The knot in my stomach flipped again. “A ledger.”
“And you have it?”
I nodded.
He grabbed my shoulder and made me look at him, saying again, “Get inside. Do you understand?” He waited until I nodded again before he let me go.
The school’s security detail were running a sweeping search of the grounds, flashlight beams bouncing, harsh shouts as they coordinated their coverage.
“Go.”
I ran, keeping close to the walls, watching my shadow, trying not to limp. I made it to the corner of the main building and crouched. It was a short run across to the red brick, ivy-covered eaves of Zurich House. There were two armed guards approaching, not just patrolling, they were scanning around, calling out markers. I didn’t know about Hil, but I didn’t have any guild kit activated. I’d already run tabs with full stealth, body temperature nullifiers, motion negators, heartbeat dampeners… the works. We could go completely off radar, invisible to whatever monitoring kit was being used where we were going. Not there at Westings. I had nothing active to give away the fact I was guild.
My heart was racing. If they had high end detection equipment, I’d be standing out like a neon sign. And a school like Westings, with duty of care over some of the most valuable kids in the galaxy? Of course their security detail would have high end kit.
They were coming right at me.
I shrank back and glanced over my shoulder, expecting Hil to be behind me, and instead saw him step out into the open floodlit courtyard, hands up.
He’d done it before I could protest.
The two guards in front of me spun around, turning their backs to me, bringing their rifles to bear on him, shouting, breaking into a run towards him and yelling at him to get down.
He shouted back, “I’m a student here,” dropping to his knees but they still rushed him and wrestled him to the ground.
I braced myself to move, to get out there and give myself up too, I wasn’t about to let him take all the shit, but the Senson engaged with a quiet, “Stay where you are.”
“What are you doing?”
“Saving your ass.” Hil cursed, probably not intending to send it, and added, sounding strained, “Just stay where you are.”
I watched as they hauled him up and dragged his hands behind his back. He wasn’t fighting them but they still subdued him with a swift blow to the back of the head, as if they were threatened by an unarmed seventeen-year-old kid.
“Get into the dorm, LC,” he sent, swearing as they hit him again, sending him stumbling. “Get inside. You understand?”
I sent, “Yes,” and watched as a vehicle pulled up, skidding to a halt, headlights glaring bright. Hil was bundled inside, sending a hissed warning, “LC,” as if he didn’t believe me.
There were still times on the Alsatia that Hil could be an absolute dick to me. Like those first few weeks when we were getting prepped for Redemption. When he was still raw from Wildlands and wherever else he’d been. Hil might not have had the black ink tattoos anymore, but he still had that smouldering temper. And there were still times he confused me. I admit, I had trust issues after I’d been stabbed in the back by someone I’d thought of as a big brother my whole life, but somehow Hil was different, a million light years away from Benjie. And out in the field, whenever we’re away from the guild together, whether it’s a tab or not… I never feel safer than when Hil is watching my back.
The vehicle doors slammed shut.
I sent him a quick, “I will,” not even sure he could still hear me.
It drove off, the search teams pulling back, voices fading, as if nothing had happened. I was kicking myself, cursing inside at Hil, but I forced myself to move, made it across the open space and jumped up onto the wall outside my dorm. From there it was an easy climb up and through the bathroom window I’d left ajar.
I was awake the rest of the night, going over every minute, trying to figure out if I’d messed up. I couldn’t make contact with Hil. Wherever he was, if he w
as even still there at the school, or on that planet, he was shielded or not able to get back to me. The past few weeks started to feel like I’d imagined them. Like none of this easy life in the pleasant playing fields of Westings had been for real.
They came for me the next morning before breakfast.
Chapter 7
Everyone stared as the housemaster shouted out my name at the door. I was expecting it, sitting on the end of my bed in full uniform as everyone else was just waking up and wandering to the bathroom. I wasn’t expecting the armed security detail, guns in holsters not exactly hidden under their jackets.
I stood, heart racing. If Blackstone knew I’d bust into his ledger…
I had no idea where Hil was, and no way out of this.
One of the kids whispered, theatrically loud, as I passed, “Holy shit, Felix, did you do it?”
Everyone knew about the dare. Even kids that hadn’t been in the senior common room that night.
“What do you think?” I muttered, throwing him a wink as if it was all a joke.
The guild had two philosophies for its deep cover operations. Mendhel had explained it to us. One is you blend in, you are grey, nothing special, nothing stand out, nothing anyone will remember when you are gone. The Thieves’ Guild has that art down to a tee. They taught us how to be invisible. How to just not exist. The other, he’d said as he was briefing us on this tab, was to be so memorable, so stand out, that everyone you encountered would only ever see exactly what you wanted them to see. And the key to that, he’d said as he gave us our IDs, was having a cover that was so cast in iron, so indisputably anchored in real life, that you could jump in and out of it whenever you wanted. That was when he’d told me to just be me. I bit my lip. I might have taken that a tad too far. Mend was going to ground me forever. If I’d blown this assignment as badly as it was looking, I was never going to see the light of day again.
The housemaster glowered at me until I was standing before him, then he said, frosty as ice, “Tie, Mister Dennison.”
I was confused for a second. I’d remembered the damn tie. It was crooked, I knew it was crooked, how the hell do people get these things to not be crooked? I reached to straighten it, catching sight of Imogen as I did, standing in the doorway of her dorm, peeking out from behind the door, watching. I kept my head down while I fumbled with the damned tie, but raised my eyes and mouthed, “It’s fine,” at her.
She shook her head, eyes wide, but a grin was right there, threatening to crease the corners of her mouth.
It wasn’t fine. I knew the guild wouldn’t let us stay there, not knowing McIntyre was involved.
Our housemaster lost his patience eventually and batted my hands away from the tie, taking it and fixing it himself. Then he stepped back.
I hadn’t lost eye contact with Imogen and sent her a quick nudge on the Senson, sending, “Don’t let…” but one of the security guards clamped a hand on my shoulder and slapped a dampening patch against my neck, over the Senson, negating it completely, nothing in, nothing out. The connection broke.
They shoved me forward without a word.
I didn’t look back.
They took me straight to Blackstone’s office, knocked, waited, then walked me right inside, each with a hand on my shoulder. He was waiting, sitting at his desk, the office warm, natural daylight flooding in through open windows, freshly laid logs in the fireplace. He didn’t stand.
My two buddies backed away to the door, taking up a position beside it that left nothing to the imagination.
“Felix Dennison…” Blackstone said, voice low and expression dark as he regarded me, thick arms resting on the desk, fingers laced together. He was looking at me as if he couldn’t decide what to do.
The medal was right there in front of him, gold points reflecting the sunlight.
I swallowed, keeping my breathing slow and steady, reckoning there was a fifty fifty chance I could get out of this intact.
But then he leaned forward and murmured, conspiratorial, as if this was just between me and him, “I might have guessed it would be you.”
I had a horrible, sinking feeling in my stomach that he knew.
He stood, straightening his perfectly tailored jacket. “Your brother is trying to take the blame for this… this prank.” He couldn’t have sounded more disgusted. “And I’m sure that is very honourable, but I don’t think you understand the trouble you’re in, my boy.”
I wasn’t his ‘boy’ and I didn’t appreciate him calling me that. If he knew I’d broken into his ledger, I could imagine exactly the trouble I was in. I thought about rolling out the big eyes that had always served me so well, but thought better of it. It didn’t work so well on ex-military assholes like Blackstone. I knew that. I forced myself to stare at him and not be drawn to look at the wall of gilt-framed photographs beside the fireplace.
Blackstone had the kind of look the soldiers on Kheris used to have right before they’d shove us and raise their rifles. “I know you were out in the grounds last night,” he said. “After curfew. We take intruder alerts seriously here at Westinghouse. Very seriously. You were both lucky not to get shot.”
He let that hang, standing there, letting a single, stupidly long heartbeat pound out in the silence between us.
I still couldn’t tell if he knew about the ledger or not.
“Your brother has spent the night in custody,” he said, staring at me as if he was gauging my reaction. “Let’s hope he learns from that experience.”
I had to work hard to keep my expression neutral. I was sure that whatever lockup facilities they could possibly have there, they weren’t a patch on Wildlands.
Blackstone shook his head solemnly. “It’s a shame. Kristian had the makings of a good student. I had high hopes for him.”
Not me. I was never the kind of student anyone would have high hopes for.
It didn’t register straight away that he was using past tense.
“I know about the dare,” he said with absolute disgust. “I don’t think you realise what this little stunt of yours has cost your brother, and your family.” Blackstone reached his fat hand to the table, thick-set signet ring glinting, and picked up the medal.
I hardly dared believe this was just about the medal…
He had his fist curled around it as if he wanted to either pummel me with it or protect it from me. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
I stuffed my hands into my pockets and shrugged, staring back at him, and for the lack of any other options, I forced myself to pull the bored look. Didn’t care. They could do what they wanted. Dayton had on Kheris. McIntyre had on Redemption. Adults have a way of wielding their authority with impunity, however ill-deserved it may be.
I kicked lazily at the leg of the desk.
And that flicked his switch entirely.
The way he looked at me, I thought he was going to flatten me, but he stood there, red in the face but calm, as if I’d just pushed him to a decision and made it easy for him.
“You’re expelled. Both of you. Get the hell out of my school.”
My buddies took me to the admin block without a word. Hil was already there, sitting holding a cold pack to the back of his head, flanked by his own armed goons. He raised his eyes as we approached and gave me a look I couldn’t figure, like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to jump up and throttle me or grab me and give me a hug.
“You okay?” he said. He looked tired. He had a black eye forming, bruising around his cheekbone where they’d hit him. He had a patch on his neck. That explained why I’d not been able to reach him.
My new best friends nudged me forward with a heavy hand on each shoulder. I shrugged them off and sat beside him with a quiet, “Are you?”
He lowered the cold pack he was holding. “Yeah.” He glanced up at me. “That didn’t exactly go how I expected.”
“I don’t…” I shut up as a door at the far end of the corridor opened and one of the pastoral staff walked in, Matron
herself.
Hil stood up as she approached us. I hesitated for a second then figured that I needed to stand as well. Being around people in authority was not one of my fortes.
She looked us both in the eye and nodded briefly. “Your mother is on her way.”
Hil tensed beside me as he muttered, “Shit.”
The tall woman who was brought in was a whirlwind of gushing emotion, elegance personified in a cloud of expensive perfume and a jangle of priceless jewellery. She rushed over to us, fussed over the gash above my eye, held a hand gently against Hil’s bruised face, and took his injured hand in hers with a pained expression creasing her perfectly beautiful face. Then she embraced us both, at once, somehow managing to stroke my hair as she held me close. I couldn’t breathe, wanted to cringe and break free, but she let me go with immaculate timing before I made a scene.
Hil played the obedient son, murmuring with deference and a slight bow of his head, “Mother…”
I just scuffed my feet.
There was no way she’d got here in the two hours they’d kept us waiting, wherever the Alsatia might have been. So she’d either been called in before this latest drama, or she’d been close by and waiting for something to happen. Or she’d been coming for us anyway. Whichever, it didn’t bode well.
Mother turned with a flourish to Matron and, shepherding us ahead of her, arms around our shoulders, said with the warmest sincerity I’ve ever heard, “I’m sure there must be a mistake. My boys would never…”
Matron shook her head. “Mistake or not, the decision has been made. You can appeal in writing to the board of governors but…” She glanced at me, her expression a strange mix of pity, fondness, relief she was getting rid of me, I don’t know. Seems I was good at inspiring that kind of emotional dilemma in people. She looked back at our mother. “Mrs Dennison, this might be for the best. A new start somewhere where…”
Mother nodded, too vigorously, and squeezed us tight. “We appreciate everything you’ve done. You can be assured of an excellent testimonial. I’ll get my staff to prepare one immediately, with a generous donation.” She lowered her voice and leaned forward, gripping my shoulder even tighter. “We know he’s not like other children. We understand that you’ve done your best. If you ever need a personal recommendation…”