by K A Riley
And then, at 6 AM, the gold and white lights blast us awake, and we start the routine all over again.
No one in my Cohort has ever been to a real school before, so it’s all new to us. Other than our lives in hiding, imprisoned in Processors, or isolated in the Tower of London like I was, we don’t really have a lot to compare it to.
But sometimes, one of our teachers—usually War or Mayla—regales us with stories about what school used to be like.
“Before the Eastern Order, before Krug, before the drone strikes, the techno-genetic experiments, and the Atomic Wars,” Mayla tells us one day when we’re gathered in the Infirmary for our daily dose of medications, casts, and bandages, “kids your age went to school for around six hours a day.”
“That’s all?” Ignacio asks with a snooty grunt. He jumps up from his floating mag-table and inspects the biotic plasma stitches Mayla just threaded through the length of his right thigh.
“Well,” Mayla sighs, “they were usually training for citizenship or careers or for university. They weren’t training to fight to save what’s left of a post-apocalyptic wasteland.”
“Did they live in their schools like we do?” Mattea asks.
Mayla shakes her head but doesn’t look up from the thin blue stitches she’s now weaving into my forearm. “Not usually. And they mostly went to school for five days a week.”
She looks up from my arm when she realizes we’re all staring at her in quiet anticipation.
“Oh, right. You don’t really know about weekends, do you?”
Libra thrusts her always-enthusiastic hand into the air. “I do. Kids didn’t go to school on Saturdays and Sundays, right?”
The words sound strange to me: Saturday. Sunday. Sure, my parents used to talk in terms of days, weeks, and months—all with a specific name to designate a certain block of time.
But that faded over the years. When every sunrise means a new threat and every sunset inspires a silent prayer of gratitude for not being dead, things like names for days of the week sort of go out the window.
It’s not like we’ve never heard of the names for days of the week and for the months of the year. Kress and her friends still use them from time to time.
But any real meaning they might have had in Mayla’s day has been made mostly pointless in a world where time is measured in how long it will take for you to succumb to the Cyst Plague, get hacked to pieces and eaten by the Unsettled, get vaporized in a drone strike, or starve to death once your food and water run out.
As someone who spent the first twelve years of her life living with her parents and seven ravens in a thousand-year-old castle, the idea of a strict military routine is strange to me.
Growing up in the Tower of London, I was pretty much free to do what I wanted.
My parents took care of the ravens and tried to teach me as much as they could about the world.
But the world they knew—the one they talked about and kept hoping would come back—was long gone.
The stories they used to tell me about “the good old days” gave way to the reality of drone strikes, septic water, Cyst Plague, radioactive smog, murderous gangs, and all the disease and death that are bound to happen whenever a few people seek absolute power, leaving hundreds of millions to scrounge for scraps.
In the Tower, we had a storeroom full of rapidly aging, canned rations and skunky but drinkable water.
Because of the drones and the gangs that started popping up, leaving the Tower was strictly forbidden.
“Under no circumstances,” my mother always told me. “Stepping beyond the Tower’s walls…you might as well just kill yourself and save the Banters, the Royal Fort Knights, and the Roguers the trouble.”
“Listen to your mother,” my dad would inevitably add. “We may not have much behind these walls, but we do have life. That’s more than we can say for the piles of corpses outside.”
It was a terrifying, soul-sucking thing to hear and an even worse vision of Hell to imagine.
“You’ll be safe here,” my mother promised. “Just stick with us here on the castle grounds, and you’ll be safe.”
The first time I left, I was eight years old.
I was supposed to be securing the motion sensor on a perimeter fence as instructed by my mum. Instead, I got tempted by the outside world and gave in to curiosity and the possibility for adventure. I unlocked one of the small access panels, deactivated the motion sensor, peeled back the sheet of laser-wire, and slipped out into the night.
Easy-peasy.
A drone strike must have happened right before I left the Tower, because everything outside was quiet and smoldering.
I expected to hear screams and to see people running for their lives.
Because of the stories I’d heard from my parents, I was braced for explosions, battles, shrieks of agony, and rival factions fighting for survival.
But the quiet was creepier than all the noise of my imagination.
I didn’t go far that first time. Just far enough to have a look around and see a bit of the world outside our walls.
The pavement was buckled into long, jagged-topped ridges with huge sinkholes pockmarking the roads.
The buildings and shops around the Tower were windowless and black with ash. In the distance, skyscrapers, most with their tops sheared off, stabbed up into the sky like shards of broken glass in an old, warped windowsill.
The south end of the Tower Bridge was in the Thames where it formed a horrific dam of twisted steel with a few hundred dead and bloated bodies pressed against it.
The slimy white corpses bounced and bobbed in the briny current, rolling and basking under a blistering hot sun. And I had the strangest thought—the kind only a little girl living in wartime isolation could have—that they must be happy.
The next time I snuck out, I saw living people for the first time and got a taste—from a safe distance—of what life was like.
I slipped into an abandoned building and watched from one of the empty windows as two groups of teenagers made a circle around a chubby boy with an iron pipe and a bone-thin girl with barbed wire wrapped around her hands and forearms. The two teens fought until they were both bloody and shredded and the girl was dead.
After that, I snuck a few blocks over and followed another gang of kids, watching while they rummaged through the rubble of old stores looking for building supplies, food, and weapons.
When a small fleet of scissor-shaped drones with pulsing red eyes skimmed overhead, everyone scattered for cover.
I ducked down, too, and breathed a sigh of relief when the drones disappeared around a corner.
A split second later, the sound of explosions and screams startled me alert, and I poked my head up just enough to see another set of drones—bowl-shaped with a stem on top and larger than the first fleet—firing a hail of plasma bombs at dozens of fleeing kids.
I scampered down a set of broken stairs and found a place to hide toward the back of the building. I was fast enough to avoid being seen but not fast enough to escape the sound of the kids’ screams or the smell of their burning, melting skin.
I don’t remember being scared. Or even angry about the slaughter I’d just witnessed.
No. More than anything else, I remember being offended. After all, the sky was the true home for the ravens of the Tower. It belonged to them. To see it hijacked and violated by whirring, weaponized chunks of metal…that was the mother tragedy that spawned all the offspring tragedies that followed.
I think that’s why I had revenge on my mind as I climbed down into a dried-up underground sewer line and made my way back home to the Tower.
I left the safety of the Tower a bunch more times after that. And I never got caught. Not by my parents. Not by the drones. Not by the roving bands of Scroungers and desperate teenagers doing anything they could to survive.
Back then, my life was my own. Which meant my routine was my own. Except for the daily tasks my parents assigned to me, I had almost total f
reedom.
Now, I’ve traded that in for the daily routine of the Academy.
And, honestly, I don’t mind. Oddly enough—and I’m only realizing this now—what I was really escaping from before was safety.
For most people, safety’s a good thing. For me, it always meant isolation, loneliness, boredom, and the feeling my life was being wasted and flushed down the loo.
The Academy may be safe from the outside world, but inside, we’re under constant siege. And that’s totally by design.
As dean of the Academy, Wisp has made it crystal clear that she’s not pulling punches with us.
And, with the year divided into four terms under the instruction of some of what have to be the toughest and most powerful Emergents in the world, we have ample opportunity to be punched.
Every day, in fact, carries a whole new host of dangers.
Usually, it’s Libra who wakes up first, stupidly excited to begin the day.
Today, it’s me. And that’s because today is the first day of the second term, which means Alternate Weapons Training and Weapons Selection with Brohn.
Sure, Unarmed Combat was a blast. And we all have the scars, sprains, and broken bones to prove it. But learning about Medieval and makeshift weapons—and then getting to pick our own—should be a whole new level of brillie fun.
“Are you excited?” Libra asks as we get dressed.
“Does it take as little as five seconds for a person to die from a severed carotid artery?”
Bare chested and in blue and white checkered boxing shorts, Ignacio steps out of the bathroom, a towel around his waist and a toothbrush jutting out from the foamy corner of his mouth. “There is something seriously wrong with you.”
“Don’t listen to Mr. Grumpy-bum,” Libra says through a snarly smile. She tosses my red leather jacket over to me and heads for the door. “Come on, Branwynne. Let’s go get some nice deadly weapons into those pretty little hands of yours!”
12
Weapons
We’ve come to know the Academy’s third floor pretty well over the past couple of months.
From our Unarmed Combat classes with Kress and Brohn in the Combat Skills Training Rooms to our weight-lifting and cardio workouts in the Fitness Center, the third floor has practically become our home.
(Not counting the Dorms where we sleep or the Infirmary where we’ve become constantly wounded regulars.)
Today, we’re introduced to one of the rooms we haven’t been in yet.
The Weapons Training room is narrow but long, like an extra-wide hallway with floating target stations set up at the far end.
Brohn is down by the stations, and he turns and strides toward us to greet us as we enter.
Without missing a beat, he launches into the first lesson.
“Guns are getting harder and harder to come by,” he tells us, his tone practically apologetic. “Krug destroyed millions of handguns and rifles to stop them from falling into the hands of people who would use them against him. Millions more weapons were scavenged, stolen, hoarded, stored away, damaged, or lost. The Wealthies kept most of what was left for themselves.”
He gazes at the six of us, as if to ensure he’s got our attention. Which he has.
“To survive, we’ve had to find alternatives. In this class, you’ll learn about alternate weapons—where to find them, how to make them, and, most important, how and when to use them.”
Brohn stops his pacing for a second and turns a stone-hard stare at Sara, who’s fidgeting with one of the Kevlar plate-pockets on her combat vest.
She catches his eye, flushes coral red, and apologizes.
“Later on,” Brohn nods, continuing with his slow, powerful pacing, “you’ll select a weapon that feels best for you. Not the weapon that looks the best. Or the one you think makes you look the best.”
He locks eyes with Ignacio, who puffs out his chest in silent defiance but who, like Sara, quickly blushes and averts his eyes.
“We’re about function, not fashion. Your weapon of choice needs to be an extension of you. Of your mind, your body, and your style. It needs to reflect and amplify the way you move, the way you strategize and think. A good weapon won’t just be an appendage, a back-up, or a means to gain an upper hand in combat. The right weapon for you will be one that has the potential to become part of your body, something that moves as you and not just at your command.”
Brohn slaps a fist into his open palm. “I’ll say that again. Your weapon is not a slave. You are not its master. Fighting of any kind—open hand or with a weapon—is a partnership, not a rivalry.”
Trembling, Libra raises her hand halfway. “A partnership? You mean between us and the enemy?”
Brohn’s lips turn up ever so slightly at the corners, and his eyes flash that glittering glacier blue. “No. It’s a partnership between you and yourself. Between the self you are now and the self you have the potential to become. As you continue to develop your Emergent abilities, your weapon of choice should be one that can and will develop, grow, and evolve along with you.”
Brohn points us to a rack along the wall. “You’ll find a variety of bladed and club-type weapons, Medieval weapons, and even some makeshift weapons we put together and tested out over the past few years.”
“This is our firing range,” Brohn explains, tilting his head toward the far end of the long room. “We’ll be using it for some of your long-gun sniper training in the future. But first…” He hauls an enormous crossbow out of a large black case on the floor and snaps its two arms into their open position. “Among other things, you’ll learn about this.”
“Crossbow,” Mattea mumbles.
“It’s called an arbalest,” I correct her as Brohn passes the huge weapon to Sara who groans under its weight and looks like she might actually fall over.
I laugh out loud, and she glares at me. I tell her I’m not laughing at her, but who am I kidding? Of course I am.
Sara grunts the arbalest over to Libra who also struggles to hold it without having it drag her to the floor.
Ignacio snatches it out of her hands and smirks. “Light as a feather!” as Libra obnoxiously inspects her fingernails for cracks.
Showing off, Ignacio bounces the heavy weapon in both hands. I notice him glancing down at his own tight forearms and bulging biceps as he passes the arbalest to Arlo.
Arlo, quiet, sullen, and with his hood perpetually pulled up and shading his face, somehow takes the weapon with one hand, the handle of the huge arbalest pinched between his forefinger and thumb. He doesn’t even look at it as he passes it to me like it’s a stick of kindling.
The weapon is super heavy, and I hope no one hears the strain in my voice when I say, “Thanks” and lug it back over to Brohn.
I’ve seen him use it before. We all have. Back in London, when we were just kids, we got a small sample of what Brohn and this weapon are capable of.
But as the only one of us who traveled with Brohn across the divided nation once known as the United States, I’ve seen him use it more recently. I’ve seen him use it to save lives and to take them. Knowing for the first time that it practically weighs more than I do makes his easy use of it that much more impressive.
“The arbalest goes back to the twelfth century,” he tells us. “The word ‘arbalest,’ comes from two Latin roots: arcus for bow and ballista, a term meaning ‘a missile-throwing engine.’ The same root that gives us the word ‘ballistics.’ And yes,” he nods to Mattea, “it’s in the same family as the traditional crossbow. But Branwynne’s right. It’s called an arbalest. I’ll let you play with some smaller versions of it—actual crossbows—in a minute. Historically, the arbalest came along a little later than the crossbow, and, as you’ll see, it has its advantages but also some disadvantages. The goal for this course will not be about making you proficient in this particular weapon.”
Brohn cradles the huge weapon to his chest like it’s his newborn baby. “This is one of a kind,” he says with a pretend scowl. �
��…and it’s mine. Instead, you’ll be taught to find the strategic capabilities of any unfamiliar weapon, overcome its drawbacks, exploit its advantages, and add it to your own personal arsenal.”
Brohn has us line up behind a strip of pink holo-lights embedded in the floor and points us toward the target, which, I’m guessing, as I squint down the firing range, is somewhere between five or six million miles away.
I’ve got great eyesight, and I can barely see the target at the end of the range. How the others are going to manage this exercise is beyond me.
First, Brohn demonstrates the arbalest. With rapid-fire hand-speed too fast for our eyes to follow, he loads the weapon and fires off bolt after bolt at the target at the far end of the impossibly long shooting gallery.
The targets at the end ding and plink with light as his bolts find their mark.
After that, we queue up so we can each have a go.
One by one, we line up, load the massive arbalest, and fire.
One by one, we miss by a mile.
Libra, Sara, and Mattea are terrible. I’m almost as bad. Arlo doesn’t really try.
Ignacio isn’t great, but he’s better at it than the rest of us.
After getting a few tepid compliments from Brohn, Ignacio’s head swells up like a hot-air balloon, and he gets a bit too keen on “helping” the rest of us.
And his help is annoyingly hands-on.
Brohn gives each of us our own fiberglass crossbow, much smaller and lighter than his arbalest.
While he’s showing Mattea a trick for loading one of the crossbows, Ignacio stalks around the room, inspecting our technique and making “Hmmm” noises like he’s the teacher.
One by one, he sidles up to each of us as we stand in a line facing down range.
At least he’s an equal opportunity jackass.
When Arlo has trouble with the fast, double-bolt loading technique Brohn taught us, Ignacio shuffles over to help. He puts one hand on Arlo’s shoulder and the other on his wrist.