What is happening to me?
Then, as the fires died, and his skin no longer seethed like an open canker, he had enough. Reaching over with his right arm, he pulled out the white line threading into his arm. Blood oozed out of the attachment site, but he sat up and staunched it with the white sheets.
“Hey, you’re awake.”
Cam drew up the sheets as if to shield himself. When he saw Jahx standing by the doorway, he relaxed a little.
“What are you doing here?” he croaked, his throat scratchy and dry.
Jahx looked over his shoulder, as if he was breaking a rule. “Thought you’d like a visitor.”
Shaking his head, he tried to regain some sense of time and orientation. “What day is it?”
Jahx walked over to the cabinets until he found a sterile specimen cup and filled it with water from the sink. “The seventh.”
He did the math twice, to make sure it wasn’t just his clouded mind as Jahx handed him cup.
“It’s been two weeks,” Jahx confirmed as Cam took a sip, then gulped the rest down.
Two weeks?! It couldn’t have been that long. When he looked down at his body, at the thin frame beneath the sheets and the fading pink spider-marks interconnecting across his arms and legs, the weight of the reality sunk in. Two weeks…
“I made you something,” Jahx said, pulling up a work stool next to the bed and taking a seat. He pulled out a dataclip from his jacket pocket and handed it to Cam.
“What is it?”
“My notes from both classes. Stuff you missed, homework help, research for our study paper…” He trailed off, shying away for a moment as he wiggled in his seat.
Cam held the dataclip between his first three fingers. Even touching the cool plastic made his skin tingle. He tightened his hand around the clip, making his hand and arm buzz.
“I’ll never catch up,” he whispered. Tears stung his eyes, but he blinked them back. “I can’t…”
(Kara. I’m so, so sorry.)
Jahx regarded him, soft blue eyes assessing what to say. “Let me help.”
Guilt tightened down like a vice around his heart. “Why would you do that?” He thought of Colin, of kindness and sacrifice. “Why…?”
I don’t deserve that.
Jahx twirled the black hair at the nape of his neck, sending waves of déjà vu rippling through his stomach.
“You helped me. You helped my sister, Jetta, in that sim.”
“But you don’t have to help me,” he replied. “I’m not anything. I’m just a…nobody.”
Jahx tilted his head. “Who made you believe that?”
Cam looked away from him, discomfited by his innocence.
“Look, I’ll go through my notes with you between classes.”
“You really believe you can help me?”
“You need to trust yourself more,” Jahx said, pulling himself closer with the side rail to the bed. “I’ve seen your 4.85 rating.”
“Just because I’m good at killing—”
“No,” Jahx said, touching his fingertips. Prickling sensations shivered up Cam’s arm. “You’re good at figuring things out, even with everything stacked against you, like the teachers not explaining how the battle sims work. You’re good, Cam. You just don’t see it.”
A lump forming in his throat, Cam covered up his embarrassment with a chuckle, withdrawing his hand. “You sound like my sister.”
“You have a sister?”
“Well, three. Younger twins and an older sister. The twins were really close. Annoyingly so.”
Jahx grinned. “I can relate.”
“But you’re triplets. I figured you’d all be close.”
“We are,” he said, voice dropping to a whisper.
Jahx didn’t have to say it. He’s still the odd one out. Cam wasn’t sure what that meant, or why Jahx felt that way, only that he seemed pained by it beyond what his blue eyes showed.
The words blurted out of his mouth before he could stop them. “They’re dead.”
“Your family?”
“Except…except for my older sister, Kara. She was taken by the USC.”
Jahx thought for a moment before speaking. “Is that why you’re here?”
“She’s all I have.”
Jahx didn’t say anything, studying him with a long gaze, his hands resting on the siderail.
Bending his knees up, Cam allowed himself to be pulled back into memory, into his final moments with his sister. “She used to always sing this stupid song, Blue Sky Tomorrows. It was like her promise that things would somehow get better, even when things were the worst. I guess I used to believe in it because she believed it.” He closed her eyes, imaging her face, the soft, melodic hum of her voice. “She was always fighting, always doing the right thing for us, me, everyone around her. She always believed things would somehow be okay because of the good people of the world. Good people like her.”
“Would you…” Jahx stopped, his voice cracking.
“What?” Cam didn’t believe the pain he saw in Jahx’s face.
“…could you sing that song?”
Cam scoffed, but when Jahx’s eyes, now misted, met his, he cleared his throat. “Um… Rain drops a fallin’ today, washin’ all our tears away. But the sun will come again, and take away our sorrows. Just hold out, my love—”
He stopped, blinking back the tears before speaking the last words:
“—for blue sky tomorrows.”
A long silence stretched out between them.
“That’s beautiful,” Jahx finally said, wiping his eyes with the back of his uniform sleeve. “I needed something like that.”
Cam frowned. “Come on, really?”
“I’m afraid,” he said, eyes darting back to the door, “of the future. It’s hard to talk to my sisters about it. We don’t always agree about things.”
Cam bunched up the sheets in his fists. “Kara would know what to tell you. She’d give you hope.”
Jahx’s response sounded weighted, strange, full of wistful longing. “I wish I could see her memory.”
“Yeah, right,” Cam said, waving him off, “then you’d be a chakking leech.”
Silence.
What? Cam looked at Jahx, at the way his blue eyes iced over, his hands slipping off the siderail.
“I’d better get going,” Jahx said, walking to the exit. He paused at the door, forcing a smile. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
“Jahx—” He reached out, as if to stop him, though he didn’t know what he wanted to say. He didn’t want him to go, but he knew he’d hurt him somehow, more terribly than he even knew. I’m sorry. He pulled back his hand, hiding it under the sheets. “Um…see you later?”
“Yeah, sure,” Jahx said, giving a slight wave before heading out.
Cam laid back, listening to his heart beep on the monitors, reciting the promise he made to himself.
“No tomorrows…”
The words fell against him, hollow and fragile, breaking against whatever sorrow still lingered in the room.
***
One of the doctors came in fifteen minutes later, scolded him for removing the medication line and replaced it with the aid of a nurse.
“When can I get out of here?” Cam asked, trying not to show how much even simple touch pained him as the nurse wrapped the new line around his left upper arm and the doctor restarted the drip with a transparent liquid.
“If you’re lucky, in a few weeks,” the doctor said, pinching the line below a port as he screwed a syringe. He drew down the medication from the bag and into the syringe, released the line, and then pushed it through. A salty taste spread out across Cam’s tongue and touched his nose. “If you’re lucky.”
Cam’s heart sank. In a few weeks, the academic semester would come to an end, meaning he’d back into class right in time for finals. And if he failed—
I’ve got to get out of here.
Cam gripped the siderails to the bed, and with a grunt, swu
ng his legs over the side of the bed. The second his bare feet touched the ground, he screamed. Daggers lanced up toes and exploded into his calves.
“Nurse, get a sedative—”
“No!” Cam said, gritting his teeth as the doctor helped him reposition his legs back on the bed. Where the doctor touched him felt scorched, burnt to a crisp, even though his skin appeared intact. Cam hyperventilated, unable to tolerate the movement or the stimulus.
The nurse, returning from medicine cabinet from across the room, handed the doctor a hypo as the monitors alarmed of his rapid heart rate.
“No!” he screamed as the doctor accessed his medication line.
“We’re just trying to help you, Cadet.”
“He said no, doctor.”
Cam’s breath hitched in his chest at the sound of Rogman’s voice. All eyes turned to the darkened man standing in the doorway, his hands clasped behind his back.
“But, Commandant—”
“Leave us.”
The doctor and the nurse scurried out, leaving Cam alone with the Commadant.
As he tried to slow his breathing, Rogman walked over, taking his time, cold indifference in his face as he watched Cam struggle.
“Quite the feat you pulled off in the arena, Cadet.”
Cam couldn’t tell if he meant it as a compliment, or an insult. Unnerved by his dark gaze, Cam rushed to fill the silence. “I did it for the win, sir.”
“And at cost,” Rogman said, nodding to spider-like irritations covering his skin. “I’m impressed.”
Still sitting up, Cam scooted back in the bed on his knuckles, too terrified to mind the pain.
“Pathetic, though, that a soldier like you would take orders from a launnie.”
The change in his tone, the sharpness to his pronunciation of the word launnie, shocked any response right out of him. Cam stared at the Commandant, unable to comprehend his sudden shift.
“The Drachsi triplets are a disease,” Rogman said, emphasizing his disgust with a twitch of his mustache, “their marginal performances and ill-effect on other students jeopardize the entire academy.”
“B-but sir, it was Jetta’s strategy that won that match.”
“Jetta’s strategy?” he said, eyes narrowing.
“Yes sir,” he said, stomach twisting as the Commandant studied him.
“Are you saying that they’re underperforming in class?”
The heart rate monitor ticked upward. Cam clutched the bedsheets in his hands, sending electric needles into his palms and wrists.
“I-I don’t know, sir. I’m only in class with Jahx.”
“And what have you observed?”
Cam’s heart fluttered in his chest. Gut screaming at him, he didn’t want to share what he knew, not when he didn’t know the stakes. But Rogman, his dark eyes cutting through him, dissecting his silence, threatened him with authoritative power that promised swift punishment for any defiance.
“He’s avoiding fights,” he blurted.
“Avoiding fights?”
Stupid. His cheeks heated with anger. Why did I say that?
“Uh… I mean, he’s figuring out ways to stay out of trouble.”
Rogman straightened up a moment. “I’m aware of your report.”
“But I haven’t submitted it—”
Rogman’s lips compressed into a strange smile. “You don’t think I’m always watching?”
Cam gulped, his hands extending out, releasing the sheets.
“You’re a true soldier, cadet; hardened, brutal. I suggest you display those skills outside the arena as well – unless you’re planning on being sent to the front lines, too.”
The Commandant bent down, mustache tickling Cam’s ear. “Show me what you’re really capable of, cadet.”
As the Commandant left, hands clasped behind him as he marched out the door, Cam didn’t relax. Instead, he stayed upright in his bed, breath caught in his chest, unsure of what he just witnessed.
Rogman knows more than he’s telling me.
The observation felt oversimplified, and did nothing to quell the dread burrowing into his stomach.
Looking at his hands, at the inflamed tracks that branched across his palms and down his arm, he realized a more terrifying truth. I am a monster.
Ready and willing to do anything for the kill, for the win. For his sister.
But Rogman didn’t know everything. He never filled out his observations after the training simulation about the other cadets. Or Tomia and Iggie.
Or Jetta.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to keep the Colin’s face from flashing across his mind as it had when he defied Jetta and took aim at the second outpost.
His chest tightened. Rogman doesn’t know what I saw…
Should he?
He considered Jahx’s strange reaction not an hour ago when he made a racist remark.
No, he decided, lying back down on his bed, allowing his weakened muscles to relax. Rogman is the enemy.
Quietly, as he stared up to the ceiling, skin buzzing, he decided he couldn’t afford to trust anyone. Not now, not when he sensed Rogman about to change the rules again to shake out the dead weight.
Everyone here is my enemy.
He thought of Tomia, Iggie. And Jahx, the boy with the kindest smile and bluest of blue eyes. His heart aching, he reaffirmed his intentions out loud, fingers digging into the specialized mattress. “Everyone.”
***
As soon as he saw the second shift nurse coming down the hall toward his bay, intravenous medication bag in hand, Cam feigned sleep, letting his head loll off to his left.
Heavy boots thumped against the tile, but paused at the door, then proceeded inside lighter, softer.
Breathe… he thought, relaxing his muscles as best as possible, trying to keep himself steady. The medication pump to his left chimed, then popped. Cam opened his eyelids a crack, stealing a glance of the nurse changing out the medication drip. He shut them again, waiting what he paced out in his mind as fifteen seconds, then ventured another look. He caught her as she fiddled with the settings, and the pump chirped.
“Identification, please.”
Even from the side, unable to see the actual keypad, he deciphered the numbers from the sound and the angle from which she entered the passcode.
113775, he thought, closing his eyes again. She fiddled with the monitor above his head and checked the vital signs scanner arcing over the bed, but he didn’t care about those things. As soon as he heard the soft click-click of her typing away on her datapad, he dared peek open an eye again. Sitting at his bedside, her head down as she worked, she charted away, blue and yellow light reflecting off her face.
And her glasses…
It took him a moment to adjust to the image mirrored on the lenses. Words like neuroregeneration and doperidenimium 50mg stumped him at first, but as she flew through her charting, he grafted more and more from the reflection.
The nurse checked her sleeve, noting the time, and glanced at the door. Cam shut his eyes, sensing trouble. A moment passed, then he heard her typing again.
He peeked only one eye open. The images reflecting off her glasses changed into pictures of people in uniform, news breaks, social media feeds, and videos. At first the idea of her taking a break in his room irked him, but a headline captured his attention.
“Sightings of Deadwalkers Near Homeworlds Raises Concern.”
Deadwalkers.
He’d heard the name before, long ago, when his sister got involved with one of her many political protest groups. Even Kara’s most liberal friends spoke of the unusual biomechanical species in whispers, as if too afraid to share their fears out loud. Something about them being reanimated corpses. Something about their suffering, he thought, trying to remember the details.
“Bloody filth,” the nurse muttered under her breath as she scrolled through the article. When she stopped on the picture of a man twisted by machine, half of his face punctuated by wires, his heart ra
te spiked.
That face—
Not that one, but something similar. Something he just saw—
(A red eye, burning in gray flesh.)
No, he shut his eyes, not wanting to see more, just a dream!
The nurse clicked her tongue, then whispered: “If you know what’s good for you, cadet, get out. Now.”
Confused and already terrified, his heart rate doubled.
The nurse’s voice rose in pitch. “F-ferros?”
“Nurse!” a sharp voice said, cutting through the steady beep of the monitors. Cam jumped a little, but kept his eyes closed, hoping his movement didn’t get noticed. “This is not your assigned break time.”
Something tipped over, smacking against the hard tiles. “S-sorry, doctor.”
Holding his breath, Cam opened his eyes just enough to see the nurse, head bowed as she righted the upturned chair, drop the datapad on the opposite counter and scuttle out of the bay. The doctor wavered a moment, hands on his hips, looking back and forth at the nurse and Cam. Finally, hands jammed in his white lab coat, he hurried after her.
After a few calming breaths, Cam sat up with a groan. The medication dripping into his arm made him sleepy, his head spin with even the slightest movement.
Not anymore.
Leaning over the siderail, angering the left side of his ribcage, he caught the edge of the medication pump with his fingers and dragged it toward him. Turning the face of the device toward him, he brought up the keypad and typed in 113775. The device menu opened up, giving him access to everything from the drip rate to the bolus amount.
What are you giving me? He scrolled down to the concentration and obtained the name. Cryoxotin.
After pausing the pump, he talked himself into a terrible – but his only – idea.
Only a minute left.
This is going to suck.
He swung his legs over the bed again. As his bare feet and legs, atrophied and covered in spidery streaks, poked out from his patient gown, he prepared himself for the worst.
This is going to really suck.
He touched his right foot down on the floor first, then his left. The pads of his feet lit on fire, shooting flames into his calves and burning up his thighs.
No—I can’t—too bad—
Blue Sky Tomorrows Page 11