Spectrum

  This mage remembered Scarlet? Moreover, she held onto resentments for six ages?

  The woman moved close enough for me to perceive the general outline of her face. It was Commander Crimson Cerise of the System Water Forces.

  My eyes shifted to the soldier beside her. It took a moment to decipher the mage’s dark, brown face framed by long, white hair.

  “You are dying, Cease Lechatelierite,” Cerise’s comrade carefully tried out my name. Her Ichthyothian was slower and more accented than her commander. “We can help you, if you agree to answer our questions.”

  “Agree? Gabardine, look at who he is—at what he is!” Cerise burst in Conflagrian, which sounded to me like nothing but a slur of long, drawn-out vowels. I would’ve found the language beautiful if I weren’t distracted by the fact I was slowly dying in a prison cell, tied to a chair, at the mercy of my enemies. “Just give him the truth serum, right off!”

  “Ma’am, the serum is very potent; it might kill him,” the soldier called ‘Gabardine’ said in her strange tongue. It sounded like they were arguing. What a time to be arguing. “He’s in critical condition.”

  I coughed up some blood, then; I felt something sticky, hot and bitter dribble from my lips, down my neck and collar.

  “There’s no point resisting, Ichthyothian,” Gabardine said in my language. “Your nation is losing the war, no matter what. Your Air Force and Ground Troops have already expressed their intent to surrender. And, your divers just lost their last carrier and their only good leader. There’s no way your people can fight us, now.”

  “Oh, yes, they will fight,” I mustered, struggling to stay conscious. “They do have a good leader. A great one. And, she won’t surrender.”

  “I told you he won’t cooperate, Gabardine!” Crimson screamed in her tongue. “Administer the serum, now!”

  My dulled senses picked up a stale stench. I felt a hand clamp my jaw, pry it open and thrust a nozzle into my mouth. Gabardine poured something slimy and yellow into the top of the funnel and frothy acid began eating its way down my esophagus.

  “Now, tell me, Ichthyothian,” Cerise barked, “why did Nuria disregard the Isolationist Laws and allow your carrier to refuel in their port?”

  How did they know we stopped at the gulf? How did they know to prepare for our attack, at all?

  I tried as hard as I could to fight the word-vomit—I pressed my lips together and bit down on my tongue—but, it was no use. My jaw muscles obediently relaxed, throat opening and lips curling: “Ichthyosis and Nuria are allies, as of last fall. Nuria is hiding its involvement in the war from the Second Earth Order to evade blacklisting.”

  There it was. After nearly an age of careful concealment, Ichthyosis’s greatest secret was divulged to the enemy.

  Cerise started talking again, but halfway through her sentence, my ears stopped working. Colored blobs and points of light swam before my eyes then turned to black.

  Fair Gabardine

  The Ichthyothian slumped in his ropes. Blood trickled from his open mouth and contributed to the grotesque puddle on his lap.

  The great Commander Cease Terminus Lechatelierite. The Leader of the Ichthyothian Resistance. The legendary diver who was feared by Principal Tincture himself. The man who was responsible for the death of hundreds upon hundreds of my people.

  He didn’t look so mighty, now.

  But, we couldn’t let him die. Not yet. Not until we had all our questions answered. He had invaluable intel. He wasn’t just a foot-soldier; he was privy to every secret the alliance had.

  I trembled as I untied him and took him into my hair. It was easier to handle him before I knew who he was. Even while unconscious, he intimidated me. Aside from Crimson and I, had any Conflagrian ever come this close to Lechatelierite and lived to tell of it?

  I sent a steady stream of spectrum from my hair into his weak frame, giving life to the man who’d kill me with without question, if given the opportunity.

  Cerise dared to touch Lechatelierite’s sweaty forehead with her bare hand, pushing aside his thick, dark hair. Then, she pressed her fingers against his neck. I shuddered. I couldn’t imagine touching his skin willingly.

  “He’s hot and his pulse is weak. Move him to a rime room.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Rime rooms were where we kept long-term prisoners and those in critical condition. Even healthy Ichthyothians had a low tolerance for any temperature too far above the point in which water froze. A Conflagrian child could handle cold weather far better than the strongest Ichthyothian could a little heat. We mages could moderate our body temperatures with spectrum. Ichthyothians were frail, magic-less beings who relied on external ‘technology’ for everything. It was their greatest weakness.

  I carried Lechatelierite into a rime room, Crimson at my heels. I couldn’t believe the man was still unconscious despite the amount of healing spectrum I gave him. Dread surged through me—did the serum kill him, after all? I channeled even more of my aura into his limp frame. Please wake up, I thought, feeling my promotion slip away with his life. Please stir, twitch, do something.

  At last, I’d reached my limits; I didn’t have a photon left to spare. I stumbled. It was hard to draw breath.

  “Gabardine?” Crimson’s voice seemed strangely faraway.

  Suddenly, something tugged hard on my hair, snapping my head back. From the corner of my drooping eyes, I saw Lechatelierite spin out from my locks. Oh, Tincture! He tricked me! How was I so stupid?

  He jump-kicked a very surprised Crimson in the head; I heard the sickening snap of her neck breaking as she dropped to the floor like an anvil. Her blood showered him, speckling his white suit with vivid red. Then, he rounded on me, unfocused silver-grey eyes glinting dangerously as I sank to the floor, dizzy and breathless. As he advanced, he pulled a metallic band from under his collar and snapped it across his face. Cease Lechatelierite could see me clearly, now; he could see his next victim lie helplessly at his feet.

  He loomed over me, I braced myself for his blow of death to fall. But, instead…

  “Where are the other prisoners?” he barked in Ichthyothian.

  I opened my mouth, but only to gasp at the frigid air. He responded to my silence with a swift kick in the ribs. I cried out.

  “Where are they?” he shouted.

  Whimpering, my mind raced to find the Ichthyothian words to answer. The speech tumbled from my mouth. He took his utility belt from my swathe, strapped it on, turned and raced from the room, leaving me battered and bleeding on the floor beside the corpse of my commander.

  Cease Lechatelierite

  I bolted down the corridor. The white-haired mage called Gabardine said there was only one other Ichthyothian prisoner at this facility, held in rime room two.

  I banged on the door. “Whoever’s in there, stand as far back as you can!” I yelled.

  I drew my weapon and quite literally blew the door off its hinges. Before the smoke could clear, I dove into the icy cell. A man in a yellowing, torn diving suit turned to face me. He had olive skin, blue eyes and brown hair.

  It was Inexor Buird.

  “Cease!” he cried.

  “You’re alive!” I breathed, stupidly. “But, the Underwater Fire…?”

  “UF can only catch onto large masses, like crystallines and vitreous silicas, not lone swimmers,” he explained in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “Well, come on!” I ushered him. “I just killed the Water Forces Commander—it won’t be long before the whole army is on our tail!”

  “You killed Crimson?” he gasped.

  “Yes.” Why did Inexor sounded so stricken? This was good news. “Now, move it!”

  We sprinted down the hall and were confronted by a fork.

  “This way!” Inexor scurried left.

  But, my eye lingered on the door of rime room one.

  “Wait,” I said.

  I ran into the cell, groping my utility belt for my weapon. But, it was gone—it must’ve fell off
in Inexor’s room. No matter. I didn’t need it. I jumped over Crimson’s corpse and stood over her comrade’s flaccid frame. She whimpered as I grabbed her neck.

  “Cease, no!” Inexor appeared in the doorway, face colorless. “Leave Fair; let’s go!”

  “She knows too much.” I glared at Fair Gabardine, visual band slipping to the end of my nose. “I can’t let her live.”

  “Please, Cease,” he pleaded. “Don’t kill her. Just drop her and come with me. Please.”

  What? “Why?”

  “There’s no time to explain, now; we’ve got to get out of here. Just trust me, Cease.”

  I trusted him. I didn’t understand what was going on in his head, but if Inexor didn’t want me to kill her, I wouldn’t.

  Yet.

  “She’s coming with us, then.”

  I bound her arms and hair with a length of deadline and, though she was far taller and larger than me, slung her over my shoulder. I followed Inexor to the hanger. We kicked in the window of a dragon ship and clambered inside.

  “You know how to fly this thing?” I asked Inexor as I eyed the unfamiliar console.

  “You think the mages teach their prisoners to fly their ships?” he cried.

  “Well, where’s the ignition?”

  Inexor pointed to a knob. “Probably this thing.”

  I stared.

  “The ship is powered by magic, Cease,” Inexor said. “They don’t use keys, remember?”

  I snapped my fingers. The ship needed human spectral input to start up. Spectral input from an authorized System soldier. Like Fair. I wrapped a lock of Fair’s long, white hair around the knob. And, sure enough, the engine whirred to life.

  We flew in silence for the next few hours. I tried a couple times to make conversation with Inexor—after our long separation, I had a lot of questions for him—but, he regarded me with cold eyes and didn’t speak a word. I couldn’t begin to guess why, as I had no idea what his life was like for the past age. Was he in shock? Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder? The doctors at Icicle would surely have their hands full with him.

  His gaze only softened when he looked at Fair, whose gasps and cries accompanied us all the way home.

  Scarlet July

  My parents’ faces flashed through my mind. Over and over, I watched them turn to ash. Amytal and Caitiff showed up, too—their blue and yellow auras dissolved into a sickening green blob, which then formed the shape of a vitreous silica, gyrating toward the headquarters of the System Fervor Sea Base. A small, helmeted figure in a white suit tumbled from the manta ray’s broken windshield. The helmet exploded off the diver’s head and I stared into Cease’s pale face and lifeless silver-grey eyes—

  I twisted in my sheets, rolled right off my bed and landed heavily on the cold, metal floor. I gasped, trying to purge the haunting images from my mind. This was no vision, just a nightmare regurgitated from the bowels of my guilty conscious. How strange it was, that the five people closest to me all died on the twenty-fifth of July, exactly six ages apart. I trembled as I hoisted myself back onto the hard mattress. I wiped my face with my nightgown, wet with cold sweat, lacking the energy to cry. Lying in a fetal position, I listened to the silence—the noticeable absence of Cease’s rhythmic typing, next door—and began to think of what I had to do in the morning. It was the responsibility of the Leader of the Nurro-Ichthyothian Resistance to surrender to Conflagria on behalf of the alliance. Cease was given the order.

  It was my job, now.

  I joined the military last fall for the purpose of liberating my people, and now, I had to submit two free nations to the wrath of the oppressive System.

  What would Cease do? I rolled over, arms wrapped tightly around my thin pillow as though trying to draw comfort from it. Cease refused to stand down. He took us back into battle. Cease wouldn’t want me to surrender. He’d be ashamed I even considered it for a moment. I felt yet another surge of irrational anger toward him—how dare he get himself killed and leave me to clean up this mess!

  I took a deep breath, shut my burning eyes and glanced at my digital clock through my closed lids. Two minutes to trumpet call.

  The mess hall was mute, just as it was the dawn after Apha Edenta’s death. We sustained several casualties since Apha, but the Commander’s mandated a special silence. Just silence, no talk. No one here ever talked about the ones we lost. I was disgusted. Even in Conflagria, non-Useless deceased were publicly honored. The System itself took upon the burden of arranging funerals. But, here, we were worse than the System. Here, even the death of the greatest commander to walk North Ichthyosis was practically ignored.

  At seven-twenty-five, five minutes before breakfast would end, I marched to the front of the mess hall, holding the infamous letter to Cease. I was going to be straightforward with everyone; I would tell them exactly what it said. Even if we decided to continue the war on our own, my men deserved to know the truth.

  “Attention!” I called into the silence, like I didn’t already have it from the moment I stood up. “Yesterday morning, the Commander received a notice from the Trilateral Committee, informing us of the current state of the war, with special orders from the Ascet and Briggesh administrations.” And, I read the letter aloud, words seeming to echo off the metal walls.

  I watched how my soldiers took the blow. Many forgot their discipline, pushed back their plates and put their heads in their hands.

  Illia’s head was still up. “The Commander got this yesterday morning? Then, what about the battle?”

  His question spurred a murmur that spread like Underwater Fire through the hall.

  “You mean Lechatelierite lied to us?” Illia continued.

  The buzz grew louder.

  “No!” I interjected into the hubbub. “No, he didn’t lie, Frappe. He did what he thought was right with the information he was given. He was being strong for us—”

  “Strong for us?” Illia stood up, empty water glass in hand. He was obviously thinking of when Cease knocked over his, about this time yesterday. “I was with Lechatelierite when he read the report. I didn’t know what it said, but I saw his reaction, and let me tell you, it was anything but strong. He started shaking and he jumped out of his seat, eyes all wide and afraid. He didn’t ‘do what’s right with the information he was given.’ He acted on a crazy impulse and took us into a stupid, pointless battle and got himself killed for absolutely nothing!”

  “That’ll do, Frappe,” a cold voice sounded from the far right.

  Every eye turned to the entrance of the mess hall. Framed in the doorway was Commander Cease Lechatelierite in a blood-stained diving suit. All the color drained from Illia’s face as he sank to his seat.

  I was feeling faint, too, but in a good way. Cease was alive! I couldn’t believe it. He was alive and breathing and standing right here, right in front of me! Before I could think the better of it, my legs carried me to him and my arms threw themselves around his tiny frame.

  He immediately stiffened, recoiled and shoved me away; I hit the floor with a dull thud.

  “Attention!” he called, not even looking at me.

  Oh, Tincture. I just hugged my commander. In front of everyone. How unprofessional. Inappropriate. Stupid. I should be court-martialed for not only breaking the Laws of Emotional Protection, but for being a total imbecile with no dignity. I returned to my seat, horrified and embarrassed, feeling dozens of eyes on my back.

  But, there were greater issues to deal with at the moment than my idiotic lapse in self-control.

  “I just returned from Conflagria,” Cease said. “While there, I made one rescue, one capture, and I took care of the Water Forces Commander, Crimson Cerise.”

  I blinked. He took care of the Commander? I stared at the front of his diving suit and realized not all the blood could’ve been his—he looked like he got splashed. And, there was no weapon in his holster, either. He killed her with, what, his hands? His boot? I turned away, the few spoonfuls of oatmeal I just ate
threatening to escape from my stomach.

  “We no longer have access to diffusion technology, since we lost our last vitreous silica,” Cease continued, strapping on his visual band, “so, our prisoner is in a regular cell. I’m going to need the leader of each unit to assist me with the interrogation. Now.”

  Eight of us got to our feet. Illia obeyed without so much as a glance at the Commander’s face. I was astonished Cease would trust Illia so soon after catching him badmouthing in front of the entire fleet, but I didn’t question Cease’s judgement. Cease led us down the corridors, silently. I looked at my boots as I marched, to avoid staring at the bloodstains all over his back.

  We arrived at the cell. Cease asked five of the unit leaders to stand guard outside the door, while Illia, Nurtic and I would follow him inside.

  “The prisoner doesn’t speak Ichthyothian very well; I need you to translate,” Cease said to me before opening the door. I nodded.

  We entered behind him. I couldn’t see the prisoner right away, because my view was obstructed by a big, brown-haired Ichthyothian diver I’d never met before. When he turned around, I recognized his tan face and blue eyes from a memory I’d stolen from Cease’s mind. It was Inexor Buird, Cease’s long-lost best friend and former second-in-command. My jaw unhinged. He’d been presumed dead since last summer.

  “Step aside, Inexor,” Cease instructed.

  Inexor hesitated. Why?

  “Dismissed,” Cease barked.

  Inexor’s feet stayed planted. “Sir,” he objected. Oh, Tincture, it took a lot of guts to defy Cease like that.

  “I said, dismissed!” Cease growled. “Hospital, now. You need a medical scan.”

  When Inexor finally got out of the way, I could see the prisoner. I saw her mahogany face and long, lily hair. I saw her dark-orange and olive-green System uniform. I saw her oil-black eyes, glaring at me in shock and horror.

  It was Fair Gabardine. My old best friend. The one who betrayed me six ages ago, yesterday. She was a System soldier. She wasn’t one of the innocent Conflagrian civilians, ignorant of the war and oppressed by the totalitarian government. She was one of them. One of the oppressors. The real enemy.