It was Eagle custom to hold a feast here after every engagement, a reward for the winning platoons who’d gone above and beyond to win. Such traditions were necessary. They quenched the hunger for commemoration, provided honor for those who’d earned it, and gave them the incentive to keep winning.
The losers, on the other hand, had been forced to sit shamefully at the lower tables in the middle, where they ate in resentful silence, gnawing on stale bread, forced to wash it down with plastic cups of warm water, their eyes shifting upwards at the winning platoons with toxic hatred.
Among them, she spotted Roberto. He met her gaze for a moment, then strangely, raised a cup to her in toast. The side of his face was still bruised from where she’d hit him with her fist, but besides that, he appeared fine.
Luckily, the grenade she’d tossed behind her had detonated before the enemy recruits could reach the widened passageway. In a quick explosion, the three of them were caught in a storm of light and Sibylla had won the match for her platoon. She replied with a nod.
Sibylla had been spared this humiliation from the last engagement when she’d been knocked unconscious by Varya. Now that she was here on the winning side, she couldn’t help but be enamored by all the amazing food.
Roasted chickens. Barbecued pork. Fried fish. These were only a few of the many entrees that were being served. The food was passed between the hungry troops on metal platters, while baskets of fresh bread were spread out evenly amongst the tables, allowing recruits to grab as much as they wanted.
Sibylla reached for one of the pitchers nearby and filled her mug to the brim. She hadn’t tasted beer in years, not since her father had given her a sip when she was just in middle school.
Back then, the beer had been clearer, lighter, with a bitter taste. This one, on the other hand, appeared darker and frothier. Taking a sip, she marveled at the fruity aftertaste, comparing it to an aged grapefruit juice. Taking another swallow, she felt the change almost instantly. Her muscles relaxed, the world slowed, and suddenly things weren’t as important as they were before. She smiled.
Alcohol had been a staple of the Nest since the beginning of its inception. As her father had explained so eloquently, “Dead men need to stay sane.” Sibylla couldn’t agree more.
She reached to take another swig, then snatched a sesame bun from one of the baskets. Shoving it into her mouth, she quickly forked a chicken breast from one of the passing dinner trays and tore into it with her teeth.
“This is amazing,” she said, unconcerned with who heard her.
“You’re telling me,” Anais replied, as she cut into what appeared to be a prime rib steak with roasted potatoes on the side. As quickly as she ate, the Redhead’s plate was neatly arranged and clear of any crumbles, which was a far cry from the mess that surrounded Tayshaun’s plate.
“I’ve never been so hungry in my life,” he said through a mouthful of bread. “Thank God for this food.”
Sibylla hated agreeing with them, but they were right. This was nothing like what she was used to back in El Paso. Here, she could actually eat three times a day. Here, she could actually wake up in clean sheets and find clean water. But it also made her feel sad as well. She felt guilty that Dillon was out there by himself.
Dillon…
Thoughts of him had been becoming less and less by the day, forced out by the need to make room for the combat skills she needed to survive. Did he miss her? Would she ever see him again? The sudden panic evaporated her appetite.
“This is all your fault, you know,” Tayshaun said before taking another swig of beer. He patted Sibylla on the shoulder, with a sly wink. “If it hadn’t been for you, we might’ve gotten our asses kicked today.”
“What the heck are you talking about?” Yumiko argued. “We had them on the run.”
“At first, maybe,” Anais pointed out. “But who knows? Maybe we wouldn’t have been so lucky once we were inside the mountain.”
Yumiko let the roasted chicken leg she was about to eat plop on her plate. “They wouldn’t have retreated if I hadn’t have broken them.”
“Don’t you mean, if we hadn’t broken them?” Anais corrected.
Tayshaun seconded the thought by raising his mug. And an uncomfortable silence quickly followed.
“Look,” Sibylla said, trying to quell the fire before it got out of hand. “If Yumiko hadn’t given me the order to go in, I would’ve never been able to do what I did. It’s that simple.”
“Damn straight!” Yumiko declared with a proud nod. She reached for one of the pitchers of beer close by, poured herself another round and threw it back with one gulp. When she was done, she slammed it on the table and wiped her mouth with her wrist. “Glad to know there are at least one of you ungrateful jerks who knows what’s up.”
Sighing, Sibylla went back to eating. Having friends was getting to be a headache. It reminded her of how much she liked being on her own. Glancing upward, she noticed from the other side of the room, a middle-aged woman with dark hair and green eyes beaming a heated stare at Yumiko.
“Don’t look now,” Sibylla said, nudging Yumiko with her elbow, “but I think someone’s got their eye on you.”
Yumiko clumsily followed Sibylla’s gaze to the woman and snorted. “Yeah, that little honey’s been checking me out ever since I got here.”
“So?” Sibylla said. “Why don’t you hit her up?”
“Because,” Yumiko said, bringing her gaze back to Sibylla. “I’ve got my eye on somebody else.”
Sibylla scoffed. Whether it was the beer, or the fact that she’d become more confident, Sibylla wasn’t as threatened as she was once before. Angling her head to the side, she shot Yumiko a look that said, give me a break.
“Sorry, Yumiko,” Anais said as she pierced one of the roasted potatoes with her fork. “But I don’t think you’re equipped with the right weapon if you know what I mean?”
“Shit,” Yumiko slurred. “My weapon works on everything.”
“Says you,” Anais replied.
Tayshaun burst out laughing, his beer spewing from his mouth and over his chest. Anais quickly pulled her napkin from her lap to wipe his mouth, taking more than enough time to do so.
“Eh, forget this!” Yumiko said as she shoved herself from the table and stood up. “If you guys need me I’ll back at the barracks.”
Sibylla rose to follow. “Yumi, wait!”
“Don’t,” Tayshaun said, catching Sibylla by the wrist. “Let her go.”
“But she’s upset,” Sibylla said.
“She’s tougher than you think,” Tayshaun said. “She’ll be okay.”
“I don’t know,” Anais said. “I was kind of a bitch.”
“Kind of?” Sibylla asked.
Tayshaun shook his head decidedly. “Trust me. She could give a rats ass about peoples’ jokes.”
“Then what is it?” Sibylla asked. “Why’s she upset?”
“The truth?” he said to Sibylla. “You. You stole her thunder today, and now she’s all freaked out about it.”
Sibylla looked back and saw Yumiko already exiting into the hallway. “I have to talk to her.”
“You’ll just make things worse!” Tayshaun called after.
Rushing toward the doors, Sibylla traversed through the stumbling Eagles lifting drunkenly from their seats. She couldn’t let Yumiko be by herself. Not when her troops were enjoying themselves inside. Exiting through the doors of the Dining Hall, she found a long empty corridor where a dark figure was standing in the shadows.
“Yumiko?” Sibylla asked, stalking forward to get a better view. She’d only taken a few steps when she saw who it was.
Varya Sokolov rose from the shadows like a spirit from the grave, her long dark hair loose around her shoulders, enlivening the features of her perfect face and red lips.
In the darkened hallway, her porcelain skin took on a radiant glow, dampening the upside-down cross on her left cheek and bringing out the gleam of her blue eyes. If the devil had
been a woman, this is what he would’ve looked like. “Not quite,” Varya said smoothly.
Sibylla glanced back at the exit, wondering how fast it would take her to reach it.
“You wouldn’t make it,” Varya said. “I promise.”
“What do you want?” Sibylla asked.
“To offer my congratulations.” She sauntered closer. “I guess you’re more resilient than I thought.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sneaking into the mountain, figuring your way around inside.” Varya studied Sibylla under a suspicious brow. “You have a habit of impressing.”
“Which, let me guess, only makes you want to kill me more?”
“Actually,” Varya said, as she drew closer to Sibylla. “I’ve been thinking. Perhaps we can work together.”
“Sorry,” Sibylla said, her head tilting back as Varya leaned into her face. “But I’m not in the business of killing people.”
Varya feigned a look of puzzlement. “Are you sure about that? You are, after all, training to be an Eagle.”
“Not by choice.”
“Oh yeah,” Varya said, with an ironic smile. “You’re a criminal. Remind me again what it was that you did?”
“I punched a bitch in the face for getting too close to me.”
Varya’s eyes filled with amusement. “No, that’s not it. That’s not it at all.”
Sibylla flinched as Varya raised a hand, then stiffened as it landed softly against her cheek. Her nails were as sharp as knives. “Remember something, will you?”
“Sure,” Sibylla replied, holding the young woman’s gaze.
“Guns,” Varya whispered.
Sibylla narrowed her eyes. “What?”
“Guns,” Varya repeated. “Guns, guns, guns…” She rifled off the word in a hideous whisper, repeating it over and over until it was like the hiss of a snake.
Sibylla felt herself growing dizzy, and she reached out for something to hold onto, able to catch something like the frame of a door before she fell over. How’d she know? Who’d told her? Sibylla tried to think, but her mind was already reeling, stung by the simple word that had slipped through the mental defenses that she’d been building since her first day there at the Nest. “Please,” Sibylla said. “Stop it.”
Varya laughed. “So, the rumor was true. But why? Why don’t you like guns? Did someone hurt you?” She cupped Sibylla’s chin and turned her head to the side as if checking Sibylla’s face for bruises. “No, that’s not it. It was someone else, wasn’t it? Someone close to you. A brother? Tell me. I want to know.”
Sibylla’s grip tightened around the door’s frame. She was losing her balance, suffocated by Varya’s presence. On the verge of feinting, she steadied herself as she heard a deep voice.
“Am I interrupting something?”
Sibylla looked up and sighed in relief as she saw Koda standing in the hallway. He’d been watching them from a few feet away.
“Yes,” Varya said. “So, go away.”
“I think I’ll stay.” Koda reached for Sibylla and sheltered her beneath one of his big arms. Sibylla steadied herself against his massive body and stared back at Varya, who was already receding into the shadows.
“Fine,” Varya said. “I’ll go where my company is appreciated.”
And where’s that? Sibylla thought, hell? Sibylla watched as Varya walked away, disappearing somewhere down the hallway.
Koda waited a few seconds before speaking. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Great,” Sibylla said. “Never better.” But her hands were trembling, and her head was throbbing behind her eyes.
“You want to go back into the Great Hall then?” Koda asked.
“No,” Sibylla said. The last place she needed to be was in a crowded room with loud voices. She needed to go some place safe, away from everybody else. “I think I want to go outside.”
“You sure?”
“Only if you come with me.”
“I wasn’t going to give you a choice,” he said with a warm smile.
It was strange, Sibylla thought, falling into step with the large man as they headed for the exit. She would’ve never expected him to be so kind. In fact, the first she’d seen him on the transport, she’d feared him, startled by his rough exterior and strange demeanor. But now that she’d gotten to know him, she’d learned what a kind soul he had, and felt ashamed for ever feeling different.
Outside the air was cold. Sibylla took a seat at the top of the stairs and wrapped her arms around her knees, braving against the deep chill. The temperature gauge of her suit shifted into gear, and she was already feeling the skin of it heating along her body. Letting out a deep breath, she watched as it fogged into a strip of steam.
“It’s beautiful,” Koda said, as he sat next to her.
Sibylla tilted her head back and saw a night sky filled with blackness. She’d never seen it so dark before. It was as if every light in the world had been shut off and all that was left were the blinking stars hovering lightyears away. “I wish it was like this all the time.”
“Agreed,” Koda said. “But amongst my people, we have a saying: if the world were quiet, it would not be the world.”
“Then let it change,” Sibylla said.
Koda let the suggestion hang in the air before speaking again. “This morning…when you were touching the wall, what did you hear?”
Sibylla gave him a half-hearted shrug and turned away. “I don’t know. Nothing, really. I was just checking the rock.”
“So you told Tayshaun,” Koda said. “But I don’t think so. I think you heard something.”
“What makes you think that?”
Koda turned his gaze to the field. “In my tribe, there were those who could speak with the earth, descendants of ancients who could look past the boundaries of this reality. We call them spirit guides.”
Sibylla snorted. “I don’t speak to spirits. And I’m not Native American.”
“Maybe not,” Koda agreed. “But you do speak to something nonetheless.”
Sibylla held his gaze, frightened by the suggestion. “You think I’m crazy.”
“Not at all. Tell me, what have you seen?”
Sibylla thought back to the stream, when Dillon, or something that looked like Dillon, had visited her. Could she tell Koda what she’d seen? Would he judge her for it? Deciding against it, she turned to the Barracks across the field. “Nothing,” she answered.
“Very well,” Koda said as if sensing her unwillingness to speak further. “When you are ready to speak, I will listen.”
Sibylla reached for his hand. “Koda?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
He studied her a moment then smiled. “You’re welcome.”
Turning her attention back the sky, Sibylla let her gaze wander across the galactic landscape, wondering if there was any truth to Koda’s words.
25
Sibylla and Atra
Training was getting easier. Between the vitamin supplements and the quality of food she was eating, Sibylla found herself growing stronger by the day.
Even her bench press—the exercise she hated most—had increased by an astonishing fifty pounds, a feat that seemed consistent with the other recruits in her group. Yet, as amazing as all that was, it was still worrisome.
The human body wasn’t supposed to react like that, at least not naturally. Perhaps they were giving them steroids. Sibylla couldn’t be sure, especially when she show no signs of uncontrollable anger or increase of muscle mass. No. These were something else, something more…effective
“What are you waiting for?”
Sibylla lifted her gaze and saw Atra watching her from the other end of the dome. He was standing with arms crossed, a hint of a smile curling on his lips. He’d changed as well. His body, once wiry and lean, was now a chiseled masterpiece. Thick biceps. Muscled legs. A hard chest. In all honesty, she’d never seen a more perfect body.
Shoving the though
ts from her mind, she stared back at the mat before her.
Okay, she thought. You want to me to go? How ‘bout this? With heated focus, she raced out with her blade in hand, planting her hands against the matted floor and twisting into a backward somersault. Over and over she flipped, flying across the length of the dome toward Atra. When she finally landed, she turned around and aimed her blade into his chest.
He grinned. “You’ve improved.
Sibylla angled her head to the side, unsure if she’d heard him correctly. “Is that you being nice to me?”
“It’s me telling you the truth. But you still have a long way to go. “You’re leaning too much on one side. Also, you need to switch hands. You won’t always be able to carry your blade with your right. And you need to be in the moment. Remember: alert to all things.”
Sibylla sighed. Every time she felt as if she was making progress, he was always there to stomp on her success. Even so, she still wanted to impress him, to earn his respect. If only she could know what he was thinking…
“I know, I know,” Sibylla said. “But isn’t that what training’s for? To work so hard that I won’t have to think about things?”
“Instinct is necessary, but so is awareness. Remember, anything can happen. Anyone can harm you.”
“Even my trainer?”
He arched a brow at her. “Especially him. Now, if we are done here, perhaps you are ready to go to next level?”
Sibylla laughed. As much as his English had improved, he still struggled with some of the phrases that she’d taught him, sometimes coming across as awkward.
“What?” he asked, confused.
“Nothing,” Sibylla said. She coughed to clear her throat. “I was just…it’s nothing.”
He he shot her a stare before striding off toward the sidelines, where Instructor Williams was watching. Speaking for a moment, the two glanced back at Sibylla. When they’d finished, the instructor handed him something and Atra returned with a data scroll in his hands.
“What’s that for?” Sibylla asked.
“A new toy,” he said. “Something to blow mind.” He tapped the screen of the scroll, and a red apple suddenly appeared floating in the center of the dome.
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