by V. St. Clair
The Augenspire
Origins of Elaria: Book 1
V. St. Clair
1
Ana Crumb
The Augenspire.
Ana stared up at the tallest structure in Silveria. A black, menacing metal tower, it was visible even among the other skyscrapers in the capital due to its placement on the bluff overlooking the city. The rest of Silveria was beneath the bluff, and she imagined the people looking out from on high in the Augenspire saw the rest of the great capital as a giant fishbowl beneath them.
Not that I’ll ever know for sure what those monsters see when they look at us.
Being summoned to the Augenspire was typically a one-way trip for the Gifted, and at eighteen, Ana had no desire to die a painful death just for a panoramic view of the capital.
She touched her emblem reflexively, now hanging at the end of a long, thick golden chain around her neck resting halfway down her torso. The sun was rapidly setting, and Ana forced her gaze away from the oppressive monument in favor of moving indoors. The Academy was supposed to be safe, but strange and horrible things occasionally happened to the people who lived there if they were out alone at night.
The Gifted area of Silveria—called the Academy, even though the school itself was only a part of it—wasn’t roped off or guarded by men in turrets. There weren’t electric fences all around it or bars on the windows of the buildings. In fact, the Viceroy of Elaria went to some effort to make the surveillance on the Academy appear minimal, which was almost worse than the alternative because Ana could never decide if they actually weren’t being monitored at all times, or if it only seemed that way.
For all of this effort to appear inviting and safe and welcoming, it was still a prison.
No skyscrapers were allowed in the borders of the Academy, ostensibly so those working in the Augenspire always had a direct line of sight on the Gifted below, though Ana privately suspected the Viceroy wanted to make them look as distinctly separate and alien as possible in comparison to the rest of Silveria—just in case anyone was foolish enough to forget they were outsiders, rebels, and freaks otherwise. After all, it had worked for his ancestors, who knew the Gifted had the power to overthrow the government if the general populace ever sided with them in a war, and worked tirelessly to keep the Gifted as second-class citizens.
Ana sometimes wondered if the wide circle of land sitting directly below and to the side of the Augenspire was even visible to the Viceroy and his Provo. It wouldn’t be easy to see individual people with the naked eye from such a height and distance, but perhaps they had sufficiently powerful binoculars or Talents by now to manage it; elarium-based, no doubt.
The buildings of the Academy looked more like giant cubes than towers, mainly due to the height restrictions imposed by the late Vicereine however-many years ago. This was in stark contrast to the rest of Silveria, which seemed to be in competition over which building could hit outer space first. In fact, the skyscrapers these days were now so tall they were forced to rework the entire infrastructure of Silveria to accommodate them.
Still, even the tallest buildings at sky-level remained below the Augenspire. It was one law that no one had dared to violate. The ruling Viceroys had always insisted on a constant reminder to Silveria—and all of Elaria—that they and their Provo sat above them all, always maintaining order, always watching.
The Augenspire itself was a modest three-hundred stories high. Built in the earlier days of Silveria’s colonization, and with the advantage of being placed on the bluff above the city, any other building in the city would have to top five-hundred floors to rise above it.
While lost in thought, Ana passed the Anomalies tower without noticing and automatically turned towards Building-9, where she was currently rooming.
She glanced up at the clock-tower at the heart of the Academy and saw it was nearing eight o’clock. With the clock-tower in the center, and given that the entire Gifted part of town was in the rough shape of a circle, it wasn’t surprising they had named the dormitory buildings and landmarks by their relative position on the face of a clock. Building-9, where Ana stayed, was on the western side of the Academy, northwest of Building-6 and southwest of Building-8. While this contrived naming scheme might normally annoy her—it showed a distinct lack of imagination on the part of their founders—it had proven convenient for giving directions to others, as the Academy was huge and easy to get lost in without the helpful clockwise orientation.
Ana entered Building-9, passing through the routine security check without issue after holding up the emblem of the eye on her necklace for the guards to see. She probably needn’t have bothered, as she knew both of them quite well, but protocol was protocol.
“You’re in early tonight,” one of them, Xavier, said in passing. He was sitting behind the front desk with his legs propped up in front of him, looking up from a book at her entry. “You usually don’t make it back until just before curfew.”
Ana shrugged and said, “I have homework to finish before tomorrow and I’ve barely started it,” without slowing down to invite further discussion. Building Security might be friendly, but they were not her friends—a fact she would never forget as long as she valued her life.
It was true she usually stayed out until nearly eleven, out of defiance if for no other reason. The night shift was usually left biting their nails until she showed up at Building-9 with less than a minute to spare, typically making her the last unaccounted-for resident of the day. A few times she had even been late, just to see if she would get in trouble.
The first time she tested the boundaries of curfew by two minutes, nothing happened to her, so the next night she became bold and stayed out late again—by ten minutes this time. After being locked in a cramped cell with no food or water for two days by an angry member of the Provo-Minor, she hadn’t tested their patience again, though her roommate enjoyed having the room to herself while Ana was being punished.
Some people didn’t have to share a dorm room with anyone else, but she wasn’t one of the fortunate few to escape the burden of a roommate. She supposed it depended on how much the Provo valued a person’s Gift—or feared it—that determined what effort they were willing to go to in order to keep an individual happy and comfortable at the Academy. Building-9 had more single-person rooms than any other dormitory because all of the Anomalies students were housed there, and the Provo tended to value those rare gifts beyond the more common ones in Physman, Deco-Reco, and Illucept.
If I had temporal-manipulation capabilities, I’d probably have my own suite.
The Provo always had a healthy respect for time-based Gifts, though Ana knew she was fortunate not to be under such a high level of scrutiny by the government. The temporally-Gifted had the highest rate of being murdered by the Provo out of all of the disciplines here combined. Ana could see the Viceroy’s logic in this, even if she didn’t like it; people who could mess with time would make dangerous enemies.
Ana’s roommate was pleasant enough, though they rarely saw each other due to conflicting schedules and because Ana was a bit of a troublemaker. Her roommate, Shara, wanted no part in any of it, so they mostly left each other alone and coexisted peacefully. Ana opened the unlocked door—more proof that the Gifted were second-class citizens at best—and collapsed onto her bed, still fully-clothed.
She hadn’t planned to fall asleep, merely to rest her eyes for a few minutes, savoring the first night she’d had off in two weeks, but she was suddenly blinking away daylight, groaning because her legs hurt from dangling awkwardly over the edge of her bed all night. She sat up and brushed a lock of brown hair from her face, glancing at the clock on top of her
dresser.
“Are you kidding me?” she lurched out of bed groggily, stumbling around the room as she tried to wake up. There was no time to change clothes, let alone shower, because she was almost certainly going to be late for class as it was.
And being late for lessons in the Academy was a very bad thing for the Gifted.
She grabbed her tote-bag and pulled it over one shoulder on her way out the door, the books inside smacking against her hip as she ran. She hadn’t finished her homework—she hadn’t even brushed her hair—but neither of those things would draw as much attention as skipping class without a good excuse.
She barreled down the stairs and out the front door of Building-9, knocking into a boy and a girl who were kissing near the entrance without slowing down to apologize.
It’s their own fault for being all gooey near a main walkway, Ana thought sourly, turning south and sprinting towards the Anomalies tower as fast as she could, cutting across the dull red grass and ignoring the paved pathways entirely. If her dormitory wasn’t conveniently located so close to the Anomalies tower she would have had to take a bus to get there.
Since Anomalies dealt with those Gifts that didn’t fit into one of the three major disciplines, Ana had always found it odd that it was the tallest of the buildings in the academy, though it was also the narrowest so it had far fewer classrooms than either Physman or Deco-Reco, which were both massive.
She clutched a stitch in her side as she thumped up the stairs to the second floor, thankful she wasn’t forced to wait for the elevator to get to one of the higher levels. She entered the classroom just as the bell rang, trying to catch her breath as she heaved herself carelessly into one of the only open chairs, in the front of the room.
“You were very nearly late, Ana,” her instructor, Mrs. Kya, greeted her testily, though she looked relieved to see her.
“I’m never late,” Ana smiled, still trying to catch her breath. “I would never show such blatant disrespect for this fine establishment of learning without calling in sick first.”
Mrs. Kya’s eyes flickered briefly to the side, a reflex she had never been good at shaking. Unlike the rest of the Academy, the recording devices in the classrooms weren’t hidden at all; everyone knew the footage of their lessons was being live-streamed to the Augenspire and recorded. Ana often wondered whether people were actually assigned to watch the footage from every classroom in every building in the Academy each day, or if they used it mostly as a scare tactic. She was sure they kept the video files so they could use it later to justify the execution of rule-breakers, whether they had to fabricate the charges against them or not.
“I’m glad to hear you have such great enthusiasm for learning,” her teacher replied evenly, before addressing the class to begin today’s lesson.
They both understood that the only reason anyone was afraid of being tardy too often or missing class entirely was because they didn’t want to come to the negative attention of the Provo. People who didn’t take the threat of the ruling elite seriously—or who tried to hide the true nature of their Gifts from them—were punished severely. This, more than anything, told Ana they were at least watching the classroom tapes on some regular frequency, if only to do spot-checks for compliance.
Given that some of her nighttime activities would be enough to justify her murder if they were discovered, the last thing she needed was to draw the negative attention of the Provo.
While Viceroy was the official ruler of the planet Elaria—a legacy of the days before the Isolation, when he was intended to be an extension of the actual ruler of humanity—without the might of the Provo backing him, he had no real power. Divided into two factions, the Provo were the administrative branch of the Viceroy’s military force. Though there were millions of foot-soldiers and trained field techs spread all around Elaria, ready to answer the Viceroy’s call to war if it ever came, the Provo who directed them made up a much smaller group. The first faction, the Provo-Minor, was the clerical arm of the military, addressing logistics, troop movements, supplies, paperwork of all kind, and so on. They were also the ones who monitored the Academy, watching classroom footage and conducting audits to ensure all known Gifted in the world were registered, accounted for, and—most importantly—they posed no threat to the government.
The few Provo-Minor Ana had met were scary enough, so she could hardly fathom what it must be like to encounter a member of the Provo-Major. In the entire world of Elaria, there were only sixty of them, all stationed at the capital in Silveria, residing within the Augenspire itself. The gossip about the Majors’ work was terrifying, and though Ana had never actually seen one of them in person, the trail of dead bodies left in their wake was proof enough of their power. The top one-percent in the entire military, the Provo-Major were the best strategists and fighters in the world, though they were also the only ones equipped with elarium-based Talents, which gave them an enormous advantage over everyone else. They were what waited in the Augenspire to deal with Gifted who got out of line, the bogeymen to those who flouted the government’s authority.
I’ll probably die at the hands of a Major someday, she thought grimly. She only hoped they made it quick; she’d heard of people being tortured for months in one of their basement cells before being allowed the courtesy of death.
“Ana,” Mrs. Kya interrupted her musings. “Since you feel comfortable not paying attention in class, perhaps you can explain Reye’s Law of Proportionality to us all?”
Ana grimaced and mentally cursed herself for letting her mind wander during lessons. Math was never her strongest subject, and the only thing she remembered about Reye’s Law of Proportionality from the reading assignment was that it had something to do with proportions. Hardly helpful right now.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Kya,” she answered woodenly. “I can’t.”
Hearing what she had doubtless expected to, the instructor said, “Well, then, perhaps you should begin taking notes, as I’m getting ready to explain it to the class.”
Resolving to pay better attention, Ana bent over her notebook and began writing. If she could just endure two hours of math, the rest of her day would be relatively easy. Her second period class was Anatomy, followed by a long lunch break in which she could cross over to the other side of the Academy to meet her friends. After lunch it was over to Illucept for a Perceptions practicum, and then she was done for the day.
She made it through the remainder of Mrs. Kya’s class without drawing any more negative attention to herself, and since Anatomy was a particular strength of hers, she was able to keep up there without issue. Finally, mercifully, it was time for lunch.
Trying to shake her fatigue—despite a long night of sleep—she left the
Anomalies building at a long stride and broke into a jog when she realized the bus was already at the stop partway down the street. Her wavy brown hair broke free of its clasp on one side and cascaded over half of her face as she picked up the pace, while her tote bag smacked repeatedly against her leg in time with her steps. She spit hair from her mouth but otherwise ignored the annoyance until she was within hailing distance of the bus, waving her arm to flag it down as it was about to pull away from the stop, crossing a patch of lawn to get there faster. The buses made a continual circuit around the Academy, so she never had to wait more than ten minutes for another to come, but she would rather have more time with her friends at lunch than waste it here at the stop.
Clomping up the steps in a whirl of disarray, she carelessly held up the emblem on her necklace for the driver to see and then went to find a seat. She tossed her bag onto an empty chair while she herself stood, glad for the chance to stretch her legs after four straight hours of lessons. While she attempted to fix her hair without the use of a mirror, she clutched the overhead strap with her free hand to retain her balance as the bus pulled away from the stop and began to make its circuit of the main educational buildings of the Academy.
“Shouldn’t you be in Illucept with an emblem li
ke that?” a boy she didn’t know asked conversationally, pointing to the elarium-carved eye at the end of her necklace. “Or do you have double-skill in Illucept and Anomalies?”
“None of your business,” she replied tersely to discourage him.
The boy looked surprised by her rudeness, but held up his hands in a gesture of surrender and then promptly ignored her while the bus took a turn at speed, knocking several bags off of their racks. Judging by the less-than-usual smoothness of the ride, Ana assumed the bus hadn’t been charged properly overnight and was running low on battery already.
After making sure the boy wasn’t watching her anymore, Ana contemplated him more fully, stealing a sideways glance at his angular, haughty features. It certainly wasn’t the first time someone had questioned her emblem, though she wished people would stop doing it in places where they might be watched by the Provo’s surveillance cameras. Every Gifted person was required to wear a necklace like hers with an emblem at the end, wrought from the blue-grey elarium that was the base metal for so much of their technology on this planet since its colonization. The unusual shape of her emblem wasn’t a personal choice, either, and the price for not wearing it was death. The boy who had questioned her had an emblem shaped like a flower in bloom.
Ana remembered her own testing with painful clarity, even five years after the fact. It wasn’t the kind of thing a person was likely to forget, no matter how much time passed.
Her mother had looked worried, her wavy brown hair pulled away from her face in a way that made her features look more severe in a face prematurely lined with age. She clasped both of Ana’s hands in hers and told her she was sure everything would be alright; they had never had a Gifted person in the family before, so Ana was statistically-unlikely to test positive. Her father, whey-faced with worry but trying not to show it to prevent her from worrying, had simply patted her a bit too hard on the back and muttered a gruff, “Good luck,” as she went to join the line of other thirteen-year olds for testing.