by Cheree Alsop
If there was surprise or compassion on her face, I didn’t see it. Instead, I saw blood on my fingers again. It was my blood, trailing down my arm from a knife wound MF270 had put there. I watched him be praised for the cut. We were seven. I couldn’t understand why my pain meant someone else’s reward. The world didn’t make sense.
I shook my head to clear the memory and looked at Ava. She took a step back as if shocked by what she saw. “You cannot choose your origin, Ava. You can only choose what you make of it.”
I was done. I couldn’t stand being inside the school one more minute. The walls felt like they were closing in. The bricks leered at me, laughing at the fact that a Galdoni pretended to be a student. I couldn’t breathe.
I shoved past Ava and ran for the door. I heard her call my name. I pushed the front doors open, one and then the other. Fresh air rushed against me. I fell to my knees on the sidewalk, gulping in huge breaths. Tears fell down my cheeks. I couldn’t control my thoughts. I couldn’t force the memories away. I was chained against a wall and beaten, the rattle of the chains loud in my ears. I was kneeling on cold cement breathing in warm air. I was lying in a puddle of blood, cringing against the laughter of the enforcer who had beaten me at six years old for taking an extra piece of bread.
“Reece?” Ava said softly.
I rose and spun; she backed off, her hands raised as if afraid I would hit her.
The look destroyed what remained of my will. “You don’t know me, Ava,” I said in defeat. “How dare you judge me when you have no idea what I’ve been through?” I gestured weakly toward the school. “You’re just like the rest of them.”
I raised my wings. I didn’t care if I was on school property. After our little talk, I realized Principal Kelley cared more about money for his school than one student he felt was beneath him. I was so tired of being beneath everyone. I flew into the sky.
Ava called my name again. I ignored her and flew faster. I dodged between buildings and forced my wings down harder. A faint cloud cover trailed over the sky, filtering the sunlight so that it reached below with only half of its strength. I broke through the clouds. Warmth bathed my face, drying my tears. I took in a huge breath and held it as I pushed my wings slowly to keep me in one place.
“I’ve never flown like that!”
Ava’s voice broke through the calm I had found. I let out the breath slowly and glanced at her. “You should be at the school.”
“You should, too,” she replied. “I’m so sorry, Reece.”
The warmth and regret in her apology ate at my heart. “You don’t have to be,” I said, turning my face back toward the sun so she wouldn’t see how her words affected me.
She touched my arm. “I am,” she said. “I shouldn’t have listened to them. You deserve more than that.”
“I don’t deserve anything,” I replied softly without looking at her.
“Everyone deserves a chance,” she said.
It was her tone that made me look back. Her eyes were lowered. Sunlight played along her black hair, bringing out red and gold highlights amid the darkness. It bathed her cheeks and gray wings so that she looked like an angel, an angel who had broken my heart.
Yet I didn’t feel pain when I looked at her, because her last statement hadn’t been for me. I saw it in the line of her mouth and the way her eyebrows drew together. There were tears in her green eyes that she refused to let fall.
“Everyone deserves a chance?” I repeated her statement gently as a question.
“Maybe not,” she said, meeting my gaze. The depth to her eyes almost made me forget to fly. There was so much heartache and pain, loss and betrayal that I wondered how I had ever been jealous at her easy entrance into Crosby High. If anyone needed a friend, it was her.
“Ava, what happened to you?” I asked quietly.
She shook her head. “I can’t talk about it. Not yet.”
I nodded. “You don’t have to.”
She let out a breath and turned her face toward the sun. “I feel so much stronger up here,” she said with her eyes closed. “Like the sun gives me strength.” A smile touched the corners of her mouth. “Like Superman.”
“Who?” I asked.
Her eyes opened and she looked at me. “Don’t tell me you don’t know who Superman is.”
I shook my head. “Kind of a pretentious name, isn’t it?”
She laughed, a wonderful sound that made my heart give a little skip as though it was delighted. I was sure that couldn’t have been good for me. I put a hand to my chest. “You should probably get back. They might miss you.”
She looked down at the buildings below, then glanced back up at me. Her eyelashes hid her gaze as if she was suddenly shy. “They might miss you, too.”
I shook my head, but it was with more amusement than pain that I replied, “Nobody misses me. I’ll go back eventually.”
“Promise?” she asked.
I nodded and she smiled at me. “I hope so, Reece.”
She tucked her wings and I watched her dive gracefully through the clouds. When she disappeared from view, I turned my face back toward the sun feeling just a bit better.
Chapter Six
That night I took my food up to the empty study hall. I felt so pent up that I couldn’t face the other Galdoni, even to eat. The silence pressed in around me, threatening to drive me mad. The elevator opened. I glanced up, then bowed my head again when Saro saw me hunched in the corner, my food forgotten on the table.
He sat down against the wall without a word. I avoided his gaze. Instead, I traced a faint scar across my knuckles a Galdoni’s teeth had left there at the Academy. I remembered the blood from my hand and his mouth. When it mixed together, it looked the same. I couldn’t understand what there was to fight about.
“Scars leave more damage on the heart than the skin,” Saro said quietly.
I glanced at him. He frowned, his attention on the window by my side. The darkness left little to be seen but his reflection.
“Sometimes I feel like I don’t have enough scars for the way I feel,” I replied in a voice barely above a whisper.
I saw Saro nod out of the corner of my eye. “At the Academy, it was the scars that defined us. It took me a long time to get past that.”
“Now what defines you?” I asked.
A slight smile touched his lips. He let out a small sigh. “I suppose it’s my stubbornness. Skylar says she’s grateful I’m so stubborn because I wouldn’t be here without it.”
“She’s glad you’re stubborn?” I repeated; a reluctant smile touched my lips at the thought.
Saro pulled up his shirt. My stomach twisted at the sight of a long, thick, ugly scar that worked its way from near his bellybutton to his back. His chest was covered in scars that made a thick patchwork of raised skin. There was a big round circle by his shoulder and another through his stomach that looked as though he had been stabbed by something.
I didn’t know what to say. Saro pulled his shirt back down as if he guessed as much. “Not a pretty sight, but I’m alive.”
“Did you get all those in the Arena?”
He shook his head. “Surprisingly enough, I got the majority of them afterwards.”
I tipped my head against the wall. “Sometimes I wish I had been old enough to fight in the Arena.”
Saro was silent for a few minutes. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Death should never be taken so lightly.”
I let out a breath. “I don’t want to kill anyone. It’s just. . . .” I searched for the right words. I held up my hands. “I just feel like there’s something inside of me waiting to explode. I’m worried if I keep getting pushed, I’m not going to be able to control it and someone will get hurt.”
Saro nodded. “Going against our nature isn’t easy. There’s a reason Kale picked you to be one of the first for the Galdoni integration program.”
Surprised, I glanced at him. “What’s the reason?”
I shook my head. “That was nearly two years ago. I had to fight and I trained like the rest.”
“But there was something that linked you, Kale, and me together. You hated hurting people. It was obvious by the way you fought, and you got beaten more because of it.” He chuckled. “The three of us definitely spent plenty of time in solitary.”
Things began to make sense. “Is that why he chose the other nine Galdoni that are at the other schools?”
Saro nodded. “We needed Galdoni who believed we can be more than we were told we could be. Fighting against hurting others at the Academy went against self-preservation and instinct. Those who were brave enough to do so were punished accordingly.” A slight smile touched his face. “It’s funny how punishment can sometimes feel better than giving others pain.”
I understood the sentiment exactly. “I knew if I was being punished, someone else was being saved the same.”
Saro glanced at me. “Kale chose wisely.”
“I don’t know about that.” I looked at my hands. “What if I can’t do it? What if I can’t control myself?”
He turned his attention back to the window. “We all have regrets. We each have our own trials and tests that set us apart because we’re individuals. Even though we were created in test tubes, we aren’t clones; we have our own drives and ambitions.” He smiled, but his eyes shone with what I realized were tears. “I have many regrets, Reece. My goal now is to live so that I don’t create any more.”
“You’re doing a better job than I am,” I admitted.
He glanced at me. “What makes you say that?”
I let the words spill out. “I’m afraid to live, Saro. I’m worried that if I let down my guard for even a second, I’ll mess up and everything you and Kale have been trying to accomplish will be destroyed. I’m afraid he chose wrong, that I can’t handle it.” I dropped my face into my hands. “I’m afraid of the part of me that wants to fight and longs to kill.”
Saro was silent for a minute. When he spoke again, his voice was soft. “When they made the Galdoni, they did so with the hope of creating the perfect soldier. But they messed up. We were too aggressive, but also too independent. They wanted soldiers who could fly with bombs and be undetectable by radar, but they also wanted warriors who would obey their commands without question. They messed up when they gave us human DNA. We had minds of our own and rebelled against control.”
I watched him, surprised at the details of our origin I didn’t know.
“The government had put so much tax money into the experiments that they couldn’t admit they had made a mistake. Instead, they figured out a way to make that money back.”
“Taxes from gambling on the fights,” I said.
He nodded. “And it worked. They made so much more than they ever put in.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Now, thanks to Kale, we’re free with the expectations of settling into society. It’s easy for everyone to assume we can shove our violent nature to the background, but it was a part of us the moment we were created.”
“So what do we do?” I asked.
He smiled. “Hone it. Make it work for you instead of against you. Take the aggression and put it into your drive to succeed. Show them that you’re more than the animal they expect you to be. You already proved that at the Academy. It’s easier now without whips ready to say otherwise. Go against the violent side of your Galdoni nature and create your own life.”
“I’ll try,” I said.
“I believe in you,” Saro replied, rising to his feet. He smiled down at me. “You can do anything, Reece. Believe in yourself as much as Kale and I believe in you, and you’ll be unstoppable.”
***
“Good; now break right and follow it with an elbow,” Lem instructed.
I did as he said, rolling from his grip on the ground and driving an elbow up at his face.
He blocked the blow and laughed. “If you break your opponent’s nose, someone’s gonna notice. I thought the point was to leave no evidence.”
I nodded. “Then how would you do it?”
He gestured for me to trade him places. With the same roll, he brought up his elbow, but instead of using it against my face, he brought it against the side of my neck while at the same time bringing his other hand to force the elbow that was holding up my weight to bend. The result slammed me against the ground and left me vulnerable to his follow-up. He had my pinned in seconds.
I chuckled with my face against the mat. “Who cleans these things?”
He laughed and stepped back to allow me to rise. “That’s how I would do it.”
I rubbed my neck. “A bit archaic, don’t you think?”
His eyebrows rose. “How would you do it?”
I gestured for him to take his place again, and dropped onto my hands and knees on the practice floor. I let him grab my right wrist and pull it behind me as we had started. The motion bent my wing, but I used the pain to focus my actions.
I grabbed his left hand and rammed my shoulder against him, throwing both our weights into it. He fell to his back and I rolled across him to a crouched position. I landed two soft taps with my fist on his chin, then followed it with a two-fisted slam to the chest that would have broken his sternum and ribs given the right amount of force.
He chuckled and pushed up to a sitting position. “How are you planning to explain that to the board?”
I shrugged. “I figured if I got desperate enough to do that, the board wouldn’t take the time to speak to me, they would just throw me in jail.”
He grinned. “Always the victim.”
Anger rose in my chest. I speared him with a look. “Never the victim.”
He raised his hands in defense. “Alright, alright; I’m just kidding. You’ve got to watch that trigger. With you, it’s words. You can’t take a joke. You’ve got to learn to let them roll off your shoulders as you would a punch.”
I shook my head. “It’s not that easy.”
Lem’s gaze grew serious. “It has to be that easy,” he replied. “If you get defensive every time someone says something that bothers you, that’s a weakness. Remember your training; some of it still holds true. If you reveal weakness, humans will prey on it as quickly as a Galdoni, except it’s a verbal attack instead of a physical one.”
As much as I didn’t want to admit it, his words made sense.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Shall we practice?”
I let out a sigh at the laughter in his tone. He was going to enjoy it. “Fine.”
***
After a full two hours of being called every rude name in the book, I was done training. Lem chuckled and rubbed his ribs where I had let my temper get the best of me; my back ached where he had answered with a punch hard enough to bruise ribs.
“Don’t give up, Reece. Everything takes practice,” he reminded me as we left the practice room.
“Except I think you’re enjoying our practice sessions a little too much,” I replied, grimacing.
“Words can be mightier than the sharpest blade,” he said.
I waved him off. He merely laughed and went to find Goliath. I was sure both Galdoni would get a kick out of the verbally abusive training regimen Lem had come up with to add to the defensive fighting techniques. Usually, the thought of others laughing at me made me upset; at the moment, I was too tired to care. Perhaps Lem’s lessons were starting to sink in.
Chapter Seven
I paused near the stairs. I couldn’t hear any sounds. I didn’t have a good reason to check on Ava, but I couldn’t fight the urge to make sure she was alright. I walked down the stairs and quietly opened the door at the bottom. My shoes sounded loud on the marble as I crossed the silent eighth floor. I paused before I reached Ava’s room.
“Is that you, Reece?” There was fear in her voice.
I walked to her door. “Yes, Ava. Sorr
y if I woke you. I was trying to be quiet, but—” I heard her sniff and pushed the door open further.
She was huddled in the same corner, her blankets askew and her hair mussed as though she had slept restlessly. Her eyes were filled with tears. I hurried to her side. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
She shook her head. “I’m not okay,” she said in a soft voice. I noticed that her hands were trembling as she tried to smooth the blankets around her without much success.
I caught up her hands in mine and slid onto the bed. She immediately scooted closer, leaning against me. She sat up again and glanced at me. I realized I had forgotten to put a shirt on again. My cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “I was training with Lem. We don’t wear shirts because we get too hot and sweaty.” I paused. “Which I now realize is the same reason I should have pulled on a shirt before I came here.”
She smiled in light of my discomfort. “It was nice of you to check on me.” Her tears shone in her eyes.
I looked down at her. “I hoped you didn’t need to be checked on.”
Something filled her gaze, an emotion that grabbed my heart and refused to let go. “You did?”
My thoughts fled as I stared down at her. “I, uh, well, I just wanted you to sleep good and I hoped—”
“That I didn’t need you?” she asked quietly.