by C. A. Bryers
Salla nodded.
“Good.” Lochmore rubbed his hands together. “As you may have heard, this filthy hovel here is called the House of Falling Rain. Anybody tell you why it’s called that?”
Salla glanced at Iriscent. “She didn’t—”
“I didn’t know,” Iriscent interjected, her voice dropping low enough for only Salla to hear. “Don’t really care, either.”
As if he’d heard, Lochmore shot Iriscent a wink. “The House of Falling Rain is called that because as I’ve more or less said, this is a rehabilitation facility. A storm comes, rain falls, but there’s always sunlight after the storm.”
“Unless it stops raining in the middle of the night,” Iriscent joked.
The Adjutu just smiled at her. “Small place, small tour. How about we get to it?”
Salla nodded, trailing behind the pair to the nearby double doors.
Lochmore drew them open. “This is Cereporis Hall. Used to be the inmate processing and interviewing station, had these quaint little offices everywhere that we knocked down. As you can see, there isn’t much here anymore. The kneeling pads you see laid out in rows are where you’ll be receiving your tephic instruction programs during meditation. Then, my assistants break you up into groups based on similar challenges you’re trying to overcome, and work with you on practical application of the implanted lessons.”
He led them back into the foyer, pointing to the nearest passage to their left. “It’s a short jog down that hallway to the commissary. Don’t get your hopes up on the food being the one area where the Order gives us something nice, because it isn’t. The stairs in that hall go down to the prison levels below, and are the only ones that we haven’t blocked off. If Iriscent didn’t tell you already, those floors are off-limits unless you’re escorted by an assistant.”
His finger swung to the next opening. “That’s Temperance Pass. Houses the barracks and showers, and leads to what we call the Iron Grounds, or the prison’s old exercise yard.” He pointed across the room. “That passage is called Adjutu’s Path. It’s more or less the administrative corridor, named after some long-dead Majdi who came up with the concept of what it is I do here every day. My office is down there, along with assistants’ quarters and so on.” He spun about, holding the same finger in the air. “That’s right, I almost forgot. Where’s your rho? Typically, newcomers are accompanied by their rho when they meet me.”
“His rho couldn’t be here today, but is coming,” Iriscent said before Salla could fumble out a response.
Lochmore lobbed another berry into his mouth. “Fair enough. I’ll have your tephic instruction prepared, and we’ll see you inside the hall.”
Half an hour later, a procession of gray-garbed Majdi started to filter from the corridor leading to the old barracks, the one called Temperance Pass. Loose chatter echoed up and down the halls of the House of Falling Rain as they approached. Some of them gave Salla and Iriscent passing glances, while others ignored the two completely. Once the last few passed through the double doors of Cereporis Hall, Salla and Iriscent slipped inside as well.
“Find a pad in back, probably. The less attention you draw to yourself while you’re here, the better.” She offered a halfhearted smile. “I have to go assist with the assisting. When they start administering the tol’kaa, relax and set your mind adrift. Too much thinking jams up the process.”
“Almost sounds like you’re programming a bunch of dumb worker drones in here,” Salla said, eyeing the room skeptically.
“Yes, in theory it probably could be used for that purpose. But what we’re testing here is based on efficiency. If we can shorten the training period and even bypass stumbling blocks in traditional learning methods, that’s not a bad thing.” She looked from his face to the far end of the room and back again. “I’ve got to go. You’ll be fine.”
The low murmur of voices died down as the Majdi began taking their places on the meditation pads. With a deep breath, Salla strode to one of the rearmost pads and knelt down. His knees sank into the dark blue foamlike cushion almost an inch, the resulting effect making him feel as if he was kneeling on nothing but air. A few rows ahead there was still some smattering of talk, but the room fell starkly silent when the lights dimmed.
Doubts, like worms inching their way through his ear canals, started filling his mind. Could he trust these people to just start plugging things into his head, fixing this and removing that? True enough, they had done nothing malicious during his time in their custody thus far, but allowing others to implant knowledge and potentially alter the way his mind and body functioned sent small tremors of warning rippling down to his core.
He did his best to shake loose the thoughts, remembering Delflore’s repetitive urgings to trust her. Despite his misgivings about the entire Order, he had allowed himself to do just that—to an extent, at least. She had seemed honest and genuine, but the truth of the matter was that he had little choice but to do so. If he did not, if he railed against her suggestions, she would have no alternative but to let him wait in his prison cell for as long as it took. One day, the warring forces of the Eyes of the One and the Magsem would at last lay waste to their battleground, destroying the host body containing them and ending his life.
He closed his eyes and breathed. Trust. His mind at once revolted against the notion.
Casting his thoughts elsewhere in search of a distraction, Salla let his mind wander to the Adjutu of this place, Lochmore, and the curious feeling the man’s presence had stirred within him. There had been a strange residual sense of familiarity there upon their parting, but Salla could not figure out when, where, or how he might have met him before. Had Lochmore entered his life during his years as a scrapper? A face aboard one of the vessels the Mayla Rose had incapacitated before stripping it of its valuables? Or was it before that, when he was Natke’s second, during his countless hours of research or while on expedition?
He abandoned his efforts when dark silhouettes in the bluish half-light began slipping from a doorway in the western wall of Cereporis Hall. A pang of anxiety shot through him like a jolt of electricity. He was supposed to be meditating at this point, he assumed, but he had never meditated in his life. How was it done? He had no idea.
With a quick look about the room, Salla adopted the pose most others had chosen: hands on knees, head bowed. But it was the proper mindset that was eluding him. All he could think of was that, for the most part, things were going well. He had settled into the back of the room, and nobody else had taken notice of him. If he could remain invisible and anonymous throughout however long this process took, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad after all.
As the sound of light footsteps approached in the darkness, Salla at last recalled Iriscent’s advice. Set your mind adrift, she had said. Everything his mind had been tripping over itself to decipher and unravel—questions of trust, the vague familiarity he felt in Lochmore—he let it all drop away. He felt the tight muscles in his shoulders, back and neck loosen bit by bit, and his thoughts drifted lazily about in the quiet of the room.
A weight settled on the pad behind him, splayed fingers pushing through his hair to rest against his scalp. He waited for something to happen, for some indeterminate change to occur in his thought processes while Lochmore’s assistant penetrated through the inner walls of his psyche. The fingers shifted position, and still nothing.
Was he doing something wrong? Was Loch—
He became simply an observer then, witnessing the tephic instruction being pumped into him as if it were a flow of neon colors spreading out through an inky black pool. It bloomed wide before his eyes, an ephemeral dream slipping into all corners of his consciousness. There was no telling what information the tephic held, only that it was there, and nothing he could do would reverse its flow. Parts of his body still felt awake, while others felt detached, as if belonging to someone else. He had to trust that these sensations and eerie visualizations were all part of the process, but it all felt so intrusive,
so unnatural.
Another feeling from a different realm of consciousness began to swell. It was a slow growth, like that of some lumbering creature rising up after a long, cold winter of hibernation. With it came a strange sense of danger. This thing that had been suppressed felt…threatened. The scope of its presence began to expand exponentially, an explosion of energy that Salla could in no way comprehend being contained.
Pulses of blinding light swallowed the whole of this ethereal state. The serenity brought on by his wayward stream of thoughts prior to the tephic implant dissolved. Panic had taken root and a new swelling was filling his body, emerging as a prolonged, terrible scream.
He was awake at once, the bestial shriek still howling from his throat. When his voice fell silent at last, Salla felt dampness…sweat on his face, neck, and body. He was lying flat now, and a group of those dark figures stood like wraiths above him in the dim light, postures betraying a distinct uncertainty about what to do.
With heaving breaths, Salla scanned the room, heart pounding faster with every second that passed. The faces of every kneeling body were fixed upon him, like unmoving statues out of a nightmare. He knew who they all were; the bland, tattered gray uniforms were identical to his own. The kneeling bodies were the other Majdi and ijau undergoing retraining. The standing figures were Lochmore’s assistants, the ones who had administered the tephic instruction.
His hopes to remain a shadow in the back of the hall lay smashed into a billion jagged pieces across Cereporis Hall. They all knew he was there now, every one of them undoubtedly wondering who he was, and what was wrong with him.
15
The next hours passed by in a blur. Coherent thought came and went, but over time it started to congeal into something resembling normalcy. As soon as it did, it was as though his mind revealed to him pieces of the splintered moments of time when he had been awake and aware. He recalled coming out of the darkness, crumpled to the floor in a broken-tiled shower stall. An oppressive heat bored through his veins like the slow, unstoppable flow of molten lava as a cascade of frigid water rained down upon him.
Someone was there with him…Iriscent. Fully clothed, drenched and shivering beside him, she held him by the face, her words lost in the hissing spray of the shower.
Standing at the hazy periphery of his vision was someone…a man…Lochmore. He said nothing, arms folded, observing.
The rest of the images were fleeting—naked lightbulbs flashing by overhead, waking in a strange, unfamiliar room, the overpowering urge to vomit. Now, lying on the faded red and gold cushions of a couch, his body drained, Salla wondered what exactly had happened. The answer arrived within seconds, clear as the open sky he might never again stand beneath as a free man. The power of the Eyes of the One and the Magsem had somehow revolted against the tephic implant. It was as though they were living things, capable of sensing a threat to their perpetual war for Salla’s mind and body, lashing out to crush the intrusion before it took hold.
Salla felt a tear slip from his eye, cutting a path down the side of his face. The Eyes and the powerful traces the Magsem had left behind were determined to tear him apart. Nothing, it seemed, would prevent it. He didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to think, to find a glimmer of hope in some dark recess, only to have it snatched away again and again. He just wanted it to stop. All of it. One way or another.
***
The next day arrived, and with it came Iriscent to fetch him for training.
“Feeling better?” she asked from the doorway, grinning with bright eyes. “Time to get up.”
Upon the couch, Salla did not move. “What’s the point, Iris? What’s inside me isn’t going to let this happen. Might as well stop wasting your time, do as your Majdi Chamber wants, and put me back downstairs until it starts to smell down there.”
Her smile turned to bemused incredulity. “Are you joking? That was just our first try. Don’t be so eager to throw your legs up and die, Salla.” She paused. “And it’s Iriscent. Nothing personal—I like you just fine and you’re good-looking in that damaged sort of a way, it’s just a name I like to save for my friends. Anyway, I talked to Lochmore, and he agreed to let me personally administer your tol’kaa from here on out. Nobody knows what’s going on inside you like I do, am I right?”
Against the tide of overwhelming certainty that he had resigned himself to an inevitable death, Iriscent’s optimism proved infectious. A smile cracked its way across his face as well, and the ijau broke out into bouncing, clapping laughter.
“That’s what I wanted to see! Now get those hideous clothes on and let’s get those implants figured out!”
Salla did so. With the gloomy pall that had cast itself over his thoughts lifted, his lingering curiosity at last got the best of him. “Where am I, anyway?”
Iriscent gave a disinterested shrug. “Rho’s lounge. It’s a sort of nice place for Lochmore to stuff the visiting rhos while they wait their turn for reviews, that sort of thing. On my second stay here, I used to sneak out of the barracks and sleep in something close to style. So I figured, since you haven’t been assigned a bunk yet, that this room was as good as any to let you recover a bit in peace.” She gestured him to join her. “You ready?”
He nodded, and the two made the short trek to Cereporis Hall. Rising levels of conversation greeted them as they crossed the threshold into the House foyer. The dilapidated open space before the double doors of Cereporis Hall teemed with gray-garbed men and women. In an instant, it was as though a vacuum of air swallowed the idle talk floating about the foyer as all eyes again returned to Salla.
A fresh bloom of heat spread throughout his body. Just as it did, the cooling touch of Iriscent’s hand wrapped about his wrist.
“Relax,” she whispered, eyes fixed upon the two dozen or so Majdi and ijau standing silent before them. “You had a reaction to the implant. That’s all.”
One of their number broke away from the others, chuckling as he approached. He was olive-skinned and blond-haired, tall and lean, but there was a definite strength behind the man’s poise as he stopped only feet away from Salla and Iriscent.
His eyes went to the girl first. “Iris. Tell me—”
“Only my friends get to call me that, Joht.”
The young man before them feigned some muffled laughter. Behind him, about a third of the others started snickering as well. Rubbing his hands together, the stranger shifted his focus to Salla. His eyes went cold and filled with scrutiny, though a bemused grin continued to twist the shape of his lips.
“I can abide by that, Iriscent. I have to admit it hurts a tiny bit that you don’t consider me a friend, though.” He choked back more laughter. “So, how about telling me about your friend? You know, this one right here, who cost us all an extra day in this dismal little shanty because he couldn’t handle a simple implant?”
Salla refused to shrink from the confrontation. He had seen this sort of man dozens of times in his life and even played the part more times than he could count. Most scrappers survived by projecting an overabundance of confidence and swagger that acted as a preemptive strike to raid victims who even considered standing up to them. This Joht character was no different.
His fists clenched, but he felt Iriscent’s grip on his wrist tighten in response.
“Do I look like I’m wearing gray rags anymore, Joht? All it takes is one word to Lochmore from one of his assistants—yeah, that’s me, by the way—and your stay in this little shanty can get a lot longer.”
Joht smirked, backing away as if afraid. “Little girl, all it takes is one word to my rho, and I’ll be out of here and you’ll be back in gray quicker than it takes you to tie that pretty braid every morning. I’m here because anyone who’s got any real mettle as a sariff does a run in here.”
“You’re not a sariff yet. You’re barely a full Majdi, in fact.” She drew in a pronounced, languid breath. “Oh, and you know what else? You’re boring me. Go back to your friends.”
Joht
’s attention shifted to Salla, his stare sharpening to a point. “Seems the Majdi’s bringing some new blood into the mix. Unfortunately, looks like the pool of those worthy to join the Order’s gone a bit shallow. I suppose now all it takes to become an ijau is to have a girl to hide behind.”
Those who had echoed Joht’s laughter earlier did the same now. But the noise was quick to abate when Salla tore his arm loose from Iriscent and launched himself at the tall Majdi. He connected with an elbow to the jaw before he became tangled up in Joht’s arms, and the two went tumbling to the floor.
Grappling for position and thrusting fists when the chance arose, Salla quickly found himself on the losing end of the struggle. Joht was a powerful adversary, turning a handful of Salla’s attacks into opportunities for his own counteroffensive. One punch ended when Joht grabbed him by the wrist, wrapping the arm across his body and using the back of his fist as a hammer against the side of Salla’s head. An attempted knee strike to the Majdi’s abdomen was snatched by an arm and held fast. A second later, Salla was hoisted into the air and dumped back onto the floor like Joht was emptying a sack of trash.
In a daze of pain, Salla glanced over to find Iriscent. The girl looked stunned, her mouth hanging open and eyes aglow with excitement. A booted foot came down hard on his chest, a costly reminder that Joht was not about to let up even for a second.
The tall man’s hands had him by the shirt, heaving him into the air to hold him upright on wobbly legs. Joht’s head reeled back for what had to be a headbutt, but Salla buried his fist in the other’s sternum first. The Majdi staggered, loosening his grip, and Salla snatched a fistful of hair before flattening his hand to chop upward at Joht’s throat.