“I don’t really feel like it,” I tell her.
She ignores my frown. “Come on,” she says, jumping to her feet.
She grabs my hand, pulling me up and leading me into the kitchen. The rackets are on the table. Zo pulls the ball out from her pocket and tosses it to me.
“You have first throw,” she says, taking a racket and swinging it lazily back and forth.
We walk out to the cliff and turn our rackets on. They buzz with electricity. The ball will never touch the racket itself. I feel the weight of the ball in my hand, then throw it into the air. It changes in color, from blue to red and back to blue. I swing my racket and the ball flies through the air. Zo hits it back to me, and I run toward it, reaching my arm out, feeling the satisfaction of my body moving, the way my heart pounds.
We play for hours, stopping only once the sun sets. We put the rackets back on the table. Zo leaves the ball on the counter, next to a bowl full of apples. I stare out the window, looking past my reflection in the glass.
The ocean is where it always is, the horizon even and unchanged.
Earth spins on.
I am still here.
The next three weeks blur together, one day tumbling into the next. I wake up, I train, I come home alone. Every night, I dream of Ryn. I see him walking through crowded streets, his hair catching the light of the sun. I wake up reaching out for him. When I open my arms, there’s nothing there.
One afternoon, I pass by the training compound just as Akia and Braxon go inside together, Braxon’s hand resting on the small of Akia’s back, guiding her through the door. The way he’s touching her unsettles me. I hesitate for a moment, then follow them inside, slipping unnoticed into a corner of the room. The compound is filled with other cadets, everyone lifting weights, running, shooting.
I watch as they walk over to the climbing wall. Braxon leans in close to her, whispering something in her ear. She tilts her head back and laughs, her eyes shining. She reaches up and puts her arms around his shoulders, lifting herself onto his back and wrapping her legs around his waist. He grabs onto the pegs and lifts himself off the ground, climbing the wall quickly, not faltering once, even with the weight of Akia’s body on his. When he reaches the top, Akia lets go, flying down to the ground, a flash of silver in the air. Braxon leaps down after her, his arms spread out like wings.
Maybe it’s nothing and he’s just showing off, I think. Still, the sight of the two of them together, alone, unnerves me. I wonder if Zo knows. I wonder if she’d care. Braxon leads Akia over to the weight-lifting station at the far end of the room. I walk around the edge of the compound, keeping my eyes on them. Akia picks up an illuminated weighted disk and lifts it up above her head. Braxon comes up behind her and places his hands on her hips, spotting her as she raises and lowers the disk. After a few repetitions, she drops it to the floor. Braxon keeps his hands on her hips for another few seconds. My uneasiness grows deeper with every move he makes. Finally, he drops his hands and the two of them settle onto the floor to stretch out. I see their mouths moving, but I’m too far away to hear what they’re saying.
I move across the room and slip into the seat of one of the conditioning machines, my back to Akia and Braxon. They can’t see me, but I can see their reflections in the metallic paneling that lines the wall.
Braxon jumps to his feet, reaching down and pulling Akia up. They face each other, holding their fists in the air.
“Imagine you’re the enemy,” Braxon says. “If I want to overpower you, I’d get you in a position where you couldn’t hurt me, right?”
Akia nods, bouncing from one foot to the other, circling Braxon, just out of his reach.
“So either I’d get you on the ground, like this,” he says, and swings a punch toward her. She ducks, closing her eyes, and Braxon sweeps his leg out under her legs, tripping her. She falls to the floor, landing hard on her knees. She jumps back up, putting her fists in front of her face once again.
“Or I’d want to get behind you and hold you, taking you out that way,” he goes on. Akia lunges for him and he grabs her waist, spinning her around and wrapping his arms around her.
“Now, you try to take me out using the tactics I just showed you,” he says, and lets go of her waist. Akia turns to face him, her cheeks flushed. She throws a few punches, but Braxon is quick on his feet, jumping out of the way.
“So,” he says casually, blocking her half-hearted punches easily. “Are you with anyone?”
Akia smiles, dropping her fists to her sides.
“What’s it to you?” she asks, her voice light, teasing. She darts toward him, fists up, but he catches her hands in his before she can land a punch.
“Are you with anyone?” she asks, and Braxon laughs.
“What’s it to you?” he mimics.
They keep sparring, and I stand up and make my way toward the door. Braxon didn’t lie to Akia about dating Zo, but he wasn’t honest about it, either. I don’t know whether I should tell Zo what I saw.
As I’m walking out the doors of the compound, Ryn walks in. He pauses, standing next to me. I study his profile in the light. He’s so beautiful, I think, and so far away from me now. He turns to look at me. We’re face to face; we can’t avoid each other.
“Hey,” he says coldly.
“Hi,” I say. There’s so much I could tell him, if only we were together, if only he were still mine. Before I can say anything, a shadow passes over his eyes, and he walks away.
I miss you, I think as he turns away.
“I miss you,” I whisper, too quietly for him to hear.
* * *
—
After lunch, I get to the station just as Magister Sethra opens the door to let everyone inside. I step into line between Ranthu and Nava. I look at Ryn, taking in the broadness of his shoulders, but he doesn’t look back.
“For your second practice simulation, you will be split into pairs,” Magister Sethra tells us. “This mission depends on your ability to work together as a team.”
A small part of me hopes I’ll be with Ryn, but then she divides us up, pairing me with Braxon. Perfect, I think, my heart sinking. Braxon looks over at me, his jaw set. Sethra watches as we all move to stand together, waiting until we’re side by side to continue explaining the sim.
“You will be placed in hostile enemy territory, tasked with collecting military intelligence. This is a reconnaissance mission. You must complete it as quickly as possible without being detected.”
She doesn’t explain the sim any further. She takes us to the back of the room, onto a panel set into the floor. The panel lowers until we’re beneath the station in a room lined with glass booths. She leads each pair to a booth. Braxon and I step inside ours, the walls reflecting distorted slivers of our faces. We stand in silence, waiting. Without any warning, the lights turn off and the simulation begins.
At first it’s so dark that I’m not sure where we are. Braxon and I are close together, our arms almost touching. A control panel ahead of me flashes on, filling the space with strange blue light, and I realize where we are. We’re in a submarine, deep underwater. I slip into the seat facing the main control console, relegating Braxon to second-in-command. He gives me a look but doesn’t say anything. I look down at the panel, surveying what’s in front of me.
The screens are full of charts and lights. We had courses on navigational tools in school, but it’s been years since I’ve studied them in detail. I struggle to think back, to remember what everything is for. The screen on the bottom is for depth and sonar, and those on top chart our course. The upper monitors blink rapidly, mapping out our path.
“You don’t even know what we’re looking for, do you?” Braxon mutters under his breath.
“We’ll know it when we see it,” I say, trying to sound more confident than I feel.
We sit in silence, pushing through the dark waters. I make a few tiny adjustments on the screens, but I feel useless. I don’t know where we’re heading or how far w
e should go.
“We should use our sonar, to get a better sense of our surroundings,” I say finally.
“Bad idea,” Braxon says. “If we do that, we’ll reveal our presence. We’re on a stealth mission, remember? Hostile enemy territory? Were you even listening to Sethra?”
His tone is harsh, but he’s right. Of course the sonar would give us away. I should have thought of that myself. Desperate to do anything at all, I turn on the manual piloting, hoping that by changing our course, I might see some hint as to why we’re here and what we’re looking for.
Kelp streams by the window, a bright electric green. We sink lower in the water, crossing over an abyss. This could be some kind of underwater cavern, I think, a place where the information we’re seeking is hidden. I hesitate, then steer us deeper into the canyon. Rock formations loom on both sides of the windows, their shadows overwhelming.
“So,” Braxon says, leaning back in his seat. “I’m seeing your sister tonight.”
“Are you asking my permission?” I say. “Because Zo can do whatever she wants.”
“Oh, I know,” he says, and the way he says it makes my skin crawl.
“I saw you at the compound with Akia,” I blurt out.
He stares at me, the flicker of recognition in his eyes so quick I almost miss it completely.
He shrugs. “All you saw was me training with another cadet.”
“That’s not all you were doing, and you know it,” I say. “When I tell Zo—”
“Actually,” Braxon says, cutting me off, “I don’t think you’re going to tell Zo. I don’t think you want to have another fight over her being with me. We both know you’ll lose again.”
My throat tightens. I grip the controls so hard that my knuckles whiten. Zo told him about our fight? Braxon is the last person I want knowing anything about me. What was she thinking?
“She told you about that?” I ask.
“She’s my girlfriend. Of course she told me,” he says. “And I don’t think you want to risk messing everything up just because of something you think you saw.”
He’s so smug, so sure he can get away with anything. I turn away, peering out the window at the darkness around us.
“Besides,” Braxon says quietly, “even if you do tell her, what makes you think she’ll believe you?”
I look over at him, not sure I’ve heard him correctly. In the shadowy light of the submarine, his eyes look sinister, unnerving. He leans closer to me, his knee brushing mine. I’m about to ask him what he means when the navigation screen begins blinking rapidly with bright white light.
“What’s it say?” he asks, peering over my shoulder.
“We’re in uncharted waters,” I say. “We have to go back.”
I’ve been so distracted that I haven’t paid any attention to where we are. I peer through the window, seeing only the empty canyon. I look down at the navigation screen. It flickers once, twice, then goes dark. I stare down at it, trying to quiet the panic rushing through me.
“Our transmission is out,” Braxon says, looking at the blank screen before him. “Our thermal imaging is shot.”
He leans back and looks over at me.
“What now, Cadet?” he asks.
I take a breath, holding it deep in my lungs. I can’t let Braxon see how nervous I am. My mind races through every action we could take. We can’t release an emergency signal, for risk of being detected by the enemy. Maybe there’s a way to redirect power, but we can’t just sit here while we try.
I shift the controls in my hands, steering the ship up above the canyon, back in the direction we came from. Braxon moves beside me, flicking switches, trying to force a signal through.
From a distance, I see light flicker, so quick I almost miss it. I keep my eyes on the space the light came from, waiting to see if it flashes again. I don’t notice the wall of the canyon jutting up before us, too steep to avoid, until it’s too late.
I pull back on the controls, but I can’t stop the ship. With a sickening jolt, we crash into the rocks. The ship rockets sideways and we sink to the ocean floor. Sand billows up around us, thick and black. The lights in the submarine cut out. I can’t see the controls or my hands wrapped around them. I can’t see anything at all.
The emergency lighting along the ceiling clicks on, casting our faces in a dim glow. A crack spreads over the front window, a spiderweb across the glass. The water will break through soon, trapping us inside, suffocating us. This isn’t real. I breathe again and again, trying to slow the rapid beat of my heart. Braxon stares at me, anger radiating off him.
The submarine disappears; the ocean evaporates. The sim fades away.
“What did you do that for?” Braxon shouts, pushing open the door to the booth.
“Obviously I didn’t mean to crash,” I say sharply. “If you hadn’t been distracting me, it never would have happened.”
“Oh yeah?” Braxon sneers. “If you hadn’t been such a complete—”
Magister Sethra cuts him off.
“Clearly, Cadets, your mission was compromised by your inability to work together,” she says, her voice cold. “I expected better from both of you.”
Braxon storms away, slamming his fist against the wall as he leaves. If he didn’t hate me for calling him out on Akia, he certainly hates me now, I think, watching him walk out of station. Magister Sethra stands in front of me, her arms crossed over her chest, her expression unreadable.
“Cadet Li, come with me,” she says. “There are some things I think we need to discuss.”
* * *
—
Magister Sethra opens the door to her office and I sink into a chair, steeling myself to be reprimanded by the person I respect most. Sethra stays standing, her arms crossed over her chest, staring down at me.
“What happened back there, Li?” she asks, not unkindly.
“I don’t know, Magister,” I say, my voice shaking slightly. “We couldn’t determine the goal of the mission. We didn’t know what we were looking for. I thought I saw something in the water, but then I just lost control of the ship.”
I don’t tell her what happened before the crash, the casual way Braxon threatened me when I said I would tell my sister what I saw.
“Just because you’ve done well during Assessment so far doesn’t mean you can relax your efforts,” she says. “If today had been the actual examination, both you and Cadet Braxon would have failed. If today had been a mission, you would have died.”
I stare at the floor, searching for the words to make this right, finding none. I think back to the day I met Magister Sethra, my first year of school. It was the first time I’d been away from the safety of my family, out in the world on my own. I sat through her class trying to focus, to not let anyone see how scared I was. After the day ended, she took me aside. She gave me books to read and told me that she could tell how smart I was, how much success I would have as her student, if I was willing to work hard, if I could open my mind to learning all there was to know about the world. She was always proud of my commitment, my focus. Sitting before her now, I can’t help but feel that I’ve disappointed her, that I’ve failed not just myself but her as well.
“I know how badly you want to make officer,” she says. “I want that for you, too.”
“Thank you, Magister,” I say, hope rising quietly inside me.
The maps on the walls shift from one planet to the next, and stars glitter on the surface of the screens. I close my eyes, as though I can disappear.
Magister Sethra studies me, her face still.
“You’ve been distracted these past few weeks,” she says, leaning back against her desk. “Is something going on?”
She waits for me to speak. I don’t know what to tell her. I can’t focus on anything. Everything feels like it’s falling apart around me, the world dissolving completely. My heart is shattered into pieces in a way I don’t know how to mend. My sister is falling for someone I can’t stand, and all it does is remind
me that I can’t be with the one person on this planet I’ve ever wanted.
“I’m just…under a lot of pressure,” I say.
Sethra murmurs in agreement, her eyes thoughtful.
“Leading troops is never easy,” she says. “Being an officer means you have to make difficult decisions in an instant, decisions that don’t have a clear right or wrong.”
“How do you know what the right decisions are, then?” I ask. “How do you know you’re doing the right thing?”
Sethra smiles, clasping her hands together.
“You’re already thinking like an officer,” she says. “There are no simple answers to those questions. You’ll learn as time goes on how to trust yourself and your instincts.”
I nod, even though I’m not sure I believe her.
“I really do want to make it,” I say. “I’m sorry I let you down.”
“This isn’t about letting me down,” Sethra says. “This is about what future you want to have.”
She walks across the room and presses her hand to the door. I stand up and walk behind her.
“I promise I’ll work harder, Magister,” I say.
“I know you will, Li,” Sethra says, and I step out of her office, the door sliding shut behind me.
As I walk home through the forest, Sethra’s words run through my head. This is about what future you want to have. I run my hands along the leaves that line the path, remembering walking here with Ryn. I saw a future with Ryn then. When I close my eyes and feel the wind around me, I wonder if the future is something we can still share.
I walk up to the house just as Zo slips through the door, holding her shoes in her hands.
“Where are you off to?” I ask.
“I’m meeting up with Braxon,” she says. “He beamed me and said he had to see me.”
She bends down, slipping her shoes on, her face flushed with excitement. I think about what happened during the sim, the cold way he looked at me, the sharp way he laughed. I remember the way he held Akia to him, like Zo didn’t exist at all.
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