Family of Three Burns to Death in Accidental House Fire.
It took three or four tries for the words to register.
Three deaths. Accidental.
It couldn’t be.
“Legion officials have identified the remains of Captain Martin Raish,” the caster was saying, “along with those of his wife, Klara Raish, and son, Haldin Raish.”
My insides turned to ice.
“The investigation is ongoing, but preliminary reports have indicated the fire may have started due to a mechanical failure in the home’s backup energy cell. Officials are still working to con—”
The vid paused.
I turned to Carlisle, who’d gestured the command. He met my eyes with an apologetic expression.
“What—How could he—I don’t…” I clutched at my buzzed scalp in some vain attempt to keep my mind from exploding.
Kublich was the High General of the Legion. Sanctuary all but belonged to him. I knew that. But for him to warp the facts so quickly and so completely, and on the WAN no less… It was unthinkable. The Word of Alpha Network was the premier news source for all of Enochia. They were the mouth of the Sanctum, which was in turn the law of Enochia. They wouldn’t be bullied into lying by one man. Not even the High General.
Which meant this had to go deeper—entire networks of Legion soldiers and WAN newscasters either willfully lying or masterfully manipulated. I could barely wrap my head around the depth of that kind of corruption. And then there was the other part.
“They found a third body.”
My voice was flat, but Carlisle heard the unspoken question anyway.
“If the universe was kind, Kublich merely saw to it that the right people lied about what they found.”
“And if the universe wasn’t kind?”
A shadow fell over his expression. “There are plenty who live hungry in the streets of Divinity. I doubt a raknoth would have trouble procuring a body on short notice, and it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for the investigators to assume such a body was yours if they had trouble identifying it after a fire.”
I leaned shakily against the desk for support. “He can’t. He can’t just get away with this.”
“I’ll do my best to see he doesn’t,” Carlisle said quietly behind me. “But… I trust you realize you can’t go back to Sanctuary now. Kublich knows you’re alive. His servants will be looking for you. Probably the rest of the raknoth too. They don’t tend to leave loose ends.”
I said nothing. Part of me wanted to argue out of spite. The rest just stood there, stupefied, as the full weight of the situation settled on my chest.
I hadn’t expected returning to Sanctuary would be a safe option anytime soon. But the situation was so much more complicated than that now. Everyone I knew thought I was dead. And if they found out I wasn’t, it might well land them in Kublich’s crosshairs.
So much for reaching out to Johnny.
I stared at the frozen reel.
Johnny.
What would he have done when he’d heard the news? Would he be at lessons right now? Or would they give him the day?
I saw him in my mind, grieving, hiding the pain behind his jokes when they asked him if he’d like to speak about me at the funeral the Legion would no doubt put on in my family’s memory.
Kublich would speak at that funeral. I had no doubt about that. He’d look down on the people who’d known and loved me and my parents, and he’d spout words of respect for my father. Words of praise for me and my mother.
My hands curled into painfully tight fists. “I’m going to kill him.”
I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but once the words were out, I knew that I meant them to the core of my being.
The life I’d known was over.
My parents were gone. I was alone. Alpha’s light, I was dead according to the WAN. There was no going back. All I had left was the fear and the rage—the red hot pressure, building, building with each beat of my racing heart. I was going to burst with it.
I was going to make Adrian Kublich pay for what he’d done.
Carlisle was watching me silently, his expression guarded. “You should take some time to process everything,” he finally said, turning to go busy himself at the fab before I could answer.
I watched him, unsure what else to do, as he moved about, preparing two bowls of some fabbed bean concoction.
Take some time? Time was the last thing I needed right now. What I needed was a plan of attack. Clear targets. An objective, for the love of Alpha.
I needed to do something.
And yet here was Carlisle, depositing the two bowls at the small table and settling down to eat, like the High General of the Legion hadn’t just gotten away with murder.
“Join me, please,” he said after a few bites, when I was still standing there gaping.
“I’m not hungry.”
I couldn’t imagine I would be for some time.
“For mental digestion, then,” he said, sliding a chair my way.
“I can’t,” I snapped before I even knew what I wanted to say. I took a breath and tried again, more calmly. “I can’t just sit down and pretend like this isn’t happening. I need to do something about it. Right now. You snuck into Sanctuary for Kublich. That doesn’t happen by accident. You must have a backup plan, right?”
Carlisle set his spoon down in his bowl, the movement precise and deliberate, just like everything else about him. The slightest crease formed in the brow of his otherwise impassive face as he thought. “Several. Most of which fell to pieces the moment Kublich attacked your family. The rest of which”—he gestured at the bowl—“involve subsisting long enough to find another way.”
“We could sneak back on base. It’s the last thing they’d expect us to do.”
“Us.” Carlisle looked troubled by the notion. “And tell me, even if that were to happen, provided the operation didn’t fall apart in any number of the thousands of ways it likely would, what would you do once you had the High General alone in a room?”
I thought back to how Kublich had shaken off multiple gunshots—the ease with which he’d manhandled my mom’s body and broken my dad’s neck. I leaned against the table, suppressing the acidic swell that rose in my throat at the memory.
“You stopped him. You said I was gifted too.”
He looked like he wanted to say something, but he stopped himself, waiting for me to say what he clearly knew I was going to say next.
“I want you to teach me to do what you did. Teach me to be a Shaper, or whatever you wanna call it.”
He stared at me for a long stretch before finally dropping his attention back to his food.
“No.”
And, just like that, he took another bite of the bean stuff, tranquil as ever—like he hadn’t just cold-heartedly denied my plea for justice.
“No? What do you mean, no?”
He closed his eyes and let out a deep breath, as if bracing himself for coming unpleasantness. “Let’s not make an issue of it right now. You need food and time to clear your head before we discuss it.”
Anger flared through my clenched jaw down to my painfully flexing toes.
An issue of it? A tiny little issue of wanting justice for my murdered parents? Was that what I was making?
“Haldin, I think you should—”
I grabbed him by the front of his tunic, barely thinking, barely seeing. I yanked him up from his chair… and promptly found myself stumbling backward for balance, grip broken and forearms burning. The shifty bastard.
I threw my first punch almost before I knew it. Nothing but thin air. He’d barely moved, but the miss was so clean—the punch so wild—that I staggered for balance. Missing pissed me off. But Carlisle’s reaction? Not bothering to retreat or press his advantage? Just standing there with that maddening calm?
Something took hold of me then—something I’d been holding in since last night. Something I’d never let loose in all my years of training.
9
The Hard Way
I might as well have been dancing with myself in an empty room.
All the pain. All the helpless rage I’d been sitting on, too stunned to even process. It all came out. And Carlisle couldn’t be troubled to care. He evaded two crisscross punches without even moving his feet. Slipped the savage rib kick that followed with only a small step. I threw a flurry of jabs. A strong cross. Launched into a wild flying knee.
Carlisle calmly pivoted clear of each successive blow and spun outside my flying knee with an ease that dropped it from devastating attack to laughable farce in an instant. As salt to the wound, he even clipped my back leg as my knee flew past his chest. I tumbled to the ground in an awkward roll, bounced back to my feet, and hovered there, burning with embarrassment and the throbbing trophies of my stone floor landing.
Demon’s depths, he was fast. Unquestionably faster than anyone I’d ever sparred with. Too fast to bother blocking my attacks. He didn’t even have his guard up.
It was infuriating.
“Not bad,” he said. “But if I were a raknoth, you’d be dead right now.”
So he was assessing me now? What was this, smashball tryouts?
“You know I’m a trained soldier, right?”
The words sounded especially pathetic after Carlisle had effortlessly dismantled my wild offensive, but he just dipped his head in agreement.
“Indeed. And you’ve learned what they’ve taught you quite well, I think.”
Was he mocking me now?
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you appear to be an adept study. But also that your teachers have been slow and brutish.”
“Maybe I’m just reticent about hitting an old man.”
A hint of amusement tugged at his eyes and mouth. “I think you’ll find me sufficiently spry.”
I had no doubt about that. The man had survived a fall off a damn building, after all.
“Your base is strong,” Carlisle added, starting to pace a leisurely arc around me, toward the more open half of the room, “but it will never be as strong as a raknoth’s. Not even close. Your rigidity does you no favors.”
“Rigidity is power.”
“Power?” Carlisle raised an eyebrow. “Show me.”
It was a trap. I wasn’t too angry to see that—just angry enough to think I could show the bastard anyway. I lunged into the hardest punch I could throw, driving through my planted foot and up through the kinetic chain that ended with my fist flying for Carlisle’s open sternum.
He blurred to the outside of my punch, caught my wrist, and tugged all in one liquid flow. It was a simple move, but his timing was perfect. I staggered forward to regain my stolen balance. He reversed direction before I could find it, pivoting sharply and flicking his wrist. The world blurred, and I crashed to the floor. Hard. Had it been on the stone, I might have broken something. Instead, and probably not by accident, it was Carlisle’s pale blue practice mat I slammed down to, which left everything intact. Everything but my pride, at least.
“You call that a punch, tyro?” I heard Docere Mathis’ voice in the back of my head. “You think daddy would’ve fallen for that bullscud?”
Some trained soldier I was.
“Okay,” I muttered, picking myself up. “You’re fast. I get it. You’re really fast and I’m not gonna be killing Kublich with my bare hands. Was there supposed to be a real point here?”
His face took on a shadow. “I have no doubt you’d fare well in a fair fight, but this isn’t that. What happens when you find yourself facing five men? Twenty? A thousand? If it were only the raknoth, they’d already have us outnumbered and outmatched, but it’s far worse. They have the Legion. They probably have the Sanctum. Their power is vast, they’re far stronger than us, and they are very hard to kill.”
I flinched inwardly at the intensity in his voice. It was the closest I’d seen to him getting upset. But there was something else.
Us.
He’d said us. Not singular.
I swallowed. “So does that mean I passed tryouts?”
He let out a sharp sigh. “You’re not ready for this.”
And with that, he went to sit at his desk, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
I wanted to be angry. Maybe I should’ve been indignant. But it was hard to be much of anything other than embarrassed after how effortlessly he’d just kicked my ass. So I watched, waiting to see if he’d say more, but he was immersed in the reels as if the entire incident was already gone from his mind.
“Look, I get it,” I said. “The odds are stacked.”
“That’s putting it quite lightly,” he said, not bothering to unglue his eyes from the displays. He hesitated, then added, “There are places on Enochia you can go to escape notice. I can help you get that far. It’ll be better that way.”
Better for me? Or for him?
Now probably wasn’t the time to push it. Right now, all I wanted was to be alone. To think. To get out of this room and see the Alpha-blasted sun.
“I’m going for a walk.”
Aside from the mag lift that led to the skimmer bay below, the room had only a single door—a thick steel one that looked at odds with the ancient stone of the room. It had to lead outside, to fresh air and open space.
“Haldin.”
I paused at the door, expecting Carlisle to object—to tell me it wasn’t safe or that I might be spotted. Instead, he went to the kitchen unit, filled a water jug, and tucked it into a small satchel along with some dried goods and a hand lantern.
He returned and offered the parcel to me without a word. I took it, feeling even more embarrassed now for having lashed out at him, and nodded my thanks. A few seconds of awkward fumbling later, I threw open the heavy door’s latching mechanism and exited into a dim stone tunnel. I pulled the door shut, thought about digging out the hand lantern, and decided by the faint glow of daylight up ahead that I probably didn’t need it.
The hall led me to the top of a dilapidated stairwell. More daylight crept in below, where the structure looked to open to a larger space. I picked my way down the crumbling steps… and gasped.
Compared to Carlisle’s little hideout, the chamber was enormous. It was also in ruins, but somehow that fact didn’t mar the majesty of the place.
Gentle daylight poured in through several cracks and holes in the high walls, giving life to a vibrant network of vines, mosses, and even a few flowers throughout the grand old space. On the far wall, an open doorway and two empty spaces higher up that might’ve once housed ornate windows gave me the impression of eyes and an open mouth. Ground stone dust seemed to coat everything, and, strewn throughout, the crumbled remains of sculptures and great stone pillars lay cold and forgotten, majestic in their own way.
Rough sand shifted under my boots as I crossed the room. The place must have been decaying for a long time. Outside, the story was similar. What looked to have once been great works of stone art lay dying slow deaths in the golden glow of the afternoon sun. I picked my way through the crumbling maze and the wild undergrowth that threatened to swallow it whole, heading for a large hill to the west of the ruined temple.
The climb felt good. Fresh air in my lungs, sweat on my brow, and the pleasant burn of light exertion in my legs. For a little while, I didn’t have to think about anything else. But then I reached the crest of the hill, and there it was in the distance. Divinity.
The sight of the city filled me with a powerful longing, and an equally strong fear. For a moment, I was tempted to take cover behind the two massive oaks that’d made their home on the hilltop. But that was ridiculous. No one would spot me over here, miles away across the wide expanse of the Red River—which, despite its name, sparkled clear blue in the afternoon sun.
So I sat beneath the oaks, staring at the sprawl of Divinity. From my angle, I couldn’t help think the skyl
ine of the tallest skyscrapers bore a vague resemblance to a giant hand, reaching for the descending sun and the heavens beyond. Maybe it was just my subconscious giving shape to the will of the monsters I now knew were right there at the heart of the city, pulling strings and orchestrating Alpha knew what kind of evil.
My gaze drifted to the highest-reaching finger of the vague hand. The Sanctum’s White Tower. The very tower where they’d executed Andre Kovaks just… two days ago?
Alpha be sweet, had it only been two days?
Two measly days, and my entire life had exploded.
I sat there for a long while, idly watching the sun descend on the Divinity skyline. The tears came almost by surprise, soft and silent at first, then building until I was sobbing into the rough bark of the oak, expelling everything I’d been holding back since the attack.
Eventually, the sobbing and the gentle touch of grass and sunlight carried me off to sleep. Their faces swam before me, telling me to run, to find a safe place and never come back. Telling me that this wasn’t my fight.
Then a red-eyed Kublich appeared to rip them away from me, and I snapped awake, panting and sunburnt. My stomach gave a mournful groan, and I realized I still hadn’t eaten that day. The sun was low in the sky now, its traces peeking through the taller buildings of Divinity and illuminating the Red River in a manner most fitting to its name.
I tore hungrily into the dried fruits and jerky Carlisle had given me, contemplating his warnings and those of my dreamt parents. Maybe they were all right. Maybe I was another innocent bystander, just like my mom had been—a victim of horrible circumstance. Maybe this wasn’t my fight at all. In fact, it definitely wasn’t. I hadn’t asked for any of this. Hadn’t done anything to deserve it.
And maybe I still could get out. Alpha knew there was a part of me—and not a small part—that longed to just give in, scud my pants, and run for the mountains. I’d been around career soldiers all my life. I’d seen loss. I was living it. And I knew how much more lay ahead if I tried to take up the very fight that’d gotten my dad killed.
My dad. The celebrated hero of the Dorrin Uprising. And Kublich had broken him like a twig.
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