A Soldier and a Liar

by Caitlin Lochner

  I climb under the desk and wait. And wait. And wait.

  Did I get the day or time wrong? Was the room changed last-minute? Maybe I should use my gift to see if I can find anyone nearby who knows where the Councilors are meeting.

  But then I hear footsteps in the hallway and freeze. They’re here.

  I hold my breath as the footsteps grow nearer, nearer, then stop. A door creaks—the door to the room I’m in. The officer leading the Councilors scans my room but doesn’t enter. Not like there’s anyone going to listen in on a typical briefing session. And the Councilors’ guards are more than enough to take care of anyone who might try attacking them.

  The officer’s thoughts are the only ones I can hear, but from the sound of shuffling footsteps out in the corridor, I’d guess there are about six people besides her. Right. The Councilors never go anywhere without their selected guard. They have no reason to suspect I’m here, though, so I shouldn’t have to deal with them. I hope.

  The officer returns to the others and they move to the meeting room next door. Chair legs scrape against tiles. Formalities are exchanged. I strain my ears as the officer begins speaking.

  “The rebel base we spoke of last time has now been requisitioned thanks to Team One’s successful strike. As for the stolen technology we were able to reclaim, there are a few things worth noting…”

  The officer recaps my team’s recent mission, but I know all of that already. I lean in on her thoughts instead, but she’s fully focused on giving her report without mistakes and thinks of nothing else.

  She goes over what the military was able to reclaim from the base—not much, due to Johann’s fire—then moves on to discuss a trail frequently used by rebels that the scouts recently discovered, as well as plans to send Team One to investigate after further confirmation. It’s interesting, and good to know what our next mission will be ahead of time, but nothing noteworthy. Nothing I couldn’t have found out from reading the thoughts of one of the scouts. Nothing worth sitting on this cold, hard floor, hunched up under this desk for.

  The officer finishes her report, the Councilors give their thanks, and I think this is it. It’s already over. Great going, Lai.

  But then I hear one of the Councilors say, “Thank you for your time. If you could leave us to discuss some private matters?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  There are footsteps, the sound of a door opening and closing, polite goodbyes as the officer thanks the Councilors’ guards outside the door and then proceeds down the hall.

  My heart starts racing. What could the Councilors want to talk about privately? Surely it wouldn’t just be about the briefing, right?

  “Things are progressing as planned,” the Councilor who spoke before says. His voice is slightly nasally and gives me the impression of someone self-important. Or maybe that’s just my bias. I shove my ear against the wall to hear him better. “We should soon have the demons under our control.”

  “Indeed,” the other Councilor says. Her voice is smoother, silkier than the first. Maybe it’s just my general mistrust of the Councilors, but something about that voice turns my stomach. Something that says not to trust her. “The improvements have been advancing smoothly. The newest prototype should be perfected before the month is out. It took a long time, but we’re nearly there.”

  “And it’s only a matter of time before the rebel children slip up and we’re able to reclaim the fruits of our experiments,” Nasal says. “Once they’ve been put down, Sector Eight will be invincible.”

  Long-term experiments? There isn’t anything like that that I know of going on in the military. But I can’t imagine they would bother talking about it if it wasn’t important. What did they mean they’d have Nytes under their control? Did they mean the rebels? They did mention them. How are they related? Are the Councilors working on some kind of weapon to defeat them?

  Damn it all, if it weren’t for their stupid starlight, I could just read their minds and find all this out for myself. I hate mysteries.

  “It won’t be long before we rein in the demons,” Don’t-Trust says. Her voice is barely above a murmur. If it weren’t for my face crushed against the wall and my Nyte’s level of hearing, I would’ve missed her words altogether. “Then everything will be as it should.”

  A chill runs down my spine.

  “Finally,” Nasal mutters.

  The door to the hall opens and the Councilors rejoin their guards. I sit very still in my spot under the desk, long after their footsteps have receded down the hall.

  What was all that about? Experiments, a goal that involves getting Nytes under the Council’s control. Everything about their conversation spoke of ill intent, of wrongness, but the information came in only bits and pieces. They spoke too vaguely, too familiar with the topic to explain details. What is happening within the Council? What are they plotting? And how is it related to the rebels?

  I can’t bring my heart rate down. I can’t tell whether it’s racing out of fear or excitement. Finally, I’ve found something useful. If only I knew what it was.

  10

  LAI

  AT LONG, AGONIZING last, the day finally comes that I’m allowed to leave the infirmary. Free again. Sort of.

  It took all my willpower not to sneak out to the Order’s headquarters the last two nights. I need to tell Fiona and the others what I heard. It’s too much to communicate telepathically, especially with that many people, so I forced myself to wait. But tonight’s the night. I’m finally going back.

  But before that, there’s one last thing I need to take care of.

  I head straight for the officers’ quarters, the rooms of which take up the top three floors of one of the back buildings. Only, this time, I’m not headed for my room.

  Team One’s first mission was deemed a success, but if anyone else had been there to see our awful teamwork, I doubt our evaluation would have been so kind. It worked out fine enough this time, but what about the next? I need to get everyone on the same page. However unwillingly they might be there.

  I stop in front of Johann’s door and knock. “Johann, you in?”

  For a long time, there’s only silence. I can hear thoughts on the other side of the door, distinctly Johann in both content and tone. Pretending to be gone, then.

  I continue to knock. And knock. And knock. I don’t stop until Johann wrenches the door open from under my still-raised fist. If irritation could be worn, Johann would be killing it in style. “What?”

  Instead of answering, I slip under Johann’s outstretched arm and into the room beyond. If I hadn’t already known this was someone’s living quarters, I would have thought it a gym. A collection of training equipment is spread out around the space. Johann’s cot, dresser, and desk are shoved into a corner to make way for a punching bag and bench press, and without a roommate to occupy the other bed and desk, Johann has clearly been using them as weight holders.

  “What do you want?” Johann asks with a scowl.

  “Well, I’ve been thinking,” I say. “Kitahara and Mendel room together, and I’m getting lonely in my room, so I thought I should move in with you. Wouldn’t things be more fun that way?” Even though I know it’ll make sneaking out harder, I also know that I can’t stand my old room. Besides, this arrangement has its benefits.

  If we were based in one of the smaller command centers, like Eastern or Northern, sharing rooms wouldn’t even be a thing. But Central is so crowded, and has seen such an influx of gifted officers, that most of us who are ranked still have to share a room. The only reason I don’t right now is because no officer will take the “cursed room.” And while I don’t believe in Etioles’ ridiculous superstitions, recently, it’s begun feeling cursed even to me.

  When Johann’s mouth opens to shut me down, I add, “I already talked to Austin about it. He thought it was a great idea. Good ‘team bonding,’ he said.”

  “I don’t want you for my roommate,” Johann says immediately. Just because Austin thinks
it’s a good idea doesn’t mean I have to go along with it.

  “He liked the idea sooo much he said he’d make it an official order.” I knew Johann wouldn’t accept me just like that, so I requested Austin’s help when he came to visit me in the infirmary. He’d shaken his head with a smile. And then he’d agreed.

  “What? Why haven’t I heard about it?”

  “He said he’d leave it to me to deliver the news. Won’t this be fun?”

  Johann’s thoughts quicken like an adrenaline-rushed heartbeat. Why would he do this to me? I thought we had an agreement about my living situation. But there’s no refusing an order from the general. Johann’s frown deepens. “I’ve got some pretty strict house rules, you know.”

  I stretch my arms behind me straight as they can go, fingers laced together, as I start walking around the room. “Mm.”

  “For one, no weirdos.”

  “I can handle that.”

  I almost trip over a pair of weights on the ground. Johann’s eyebrows rise. “Two, no getting in the way.”

  “Yes.”

  “Three, you leave me alone.”

  “Okay.”

  I can feel Johann’s eyes on me as I meander around the room. I’m careful not to trip over anything this time.

  Maybe I should talk to Austin about getting her put somewhere else. “You know I still don’t accept you on the team.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to talk Austin out of your assignment until he gives in.”

  “But I can still stay here?”

  Johann sighs. “You seriously want to room with a guy?”

  “What do you mean? You’re a girl, aren’t you?”

  Johann stares at me.

  And then, in the time it takes me to blink, she’s suddenly in front of me, fist bunched in the fabric of my shirt. “Who told you? Was it Austin?” Her thoughts pound by too fast and too furiously for me to keep up with without getting nauseous.

  “No one told me,” I say. “I noticed it on my own.”

  I’ve known from the start Johann’s a girl who’s been pretending to be a boy ever since she joined her home sector’s military nine years ago. The day our team met for the first time, she’d been thinking about how much time had passed since she’d started hiding, and how little ground she’d gained in her search. It was a lucky coincidence that I’d caught it all.

  “Have you told anyone?” Johann asks.

  I shake my head.

  She takes a deep breath. Then another. Her fist is still attached to my shirt, keeping me in place. “This stays between us, understand?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want anyone else to know.”

  “Yeah, but why?”

  She thinks of her brother, a hazy, indistinct image now with how much time has passed since she last saw his face. She thinks, too, of her fruitless search for him, begun when she entered the military and all but given up now. And she thinks of how she doesn’t want to get sent back to Sector Eleven. “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “Just promise you won’t say anything.”

  “But I can be your roommate?” I ask. “And if you trust me enough to keep your secret, that means you’ll accept me on the team and follow the major’s orders?”

  Johann hesitates. Did Austin set this up? No, he likes to meddle in others’ business, but he wouldn’t blackmail, and Kitahara doesn’t seem this sneaky. This is all Cathwell.

  A long time passes before Johann finally says, “All right.” Her fingers tighten in my shirt before releasing it entirely. I know she wants to throw me against the wall rather than say what she has to. “Yeah. You can room with me, and I’ll do like Kitahara says. So don’t tell anyone I’m a girl, all right? If you do, I’ll kill you in your sleep.”

  I smile. “Whatever you say, roomie.”

  11

  LAI

  I TELL JOHANN I need today to get my things together and that I’ll come back tomorrow to move in.

  After I’ve packed my few belongings and gathered all the notes I’ll need for tonight, it’s still pretty early, so I head for the training hall to get some practice in after my week in the infirmary. Once I return to my room, I check in with a few members of the Order telepathically and go over our tasks for the night.

  When the sky has been dark for some time, and I can’t hear any thoughts coming from the hall outside my door, I head for the underground tunnels.

  The thing about the tunnels is that the military didn’t make them. Much like the underground farms and the underground tunnels beneath the Order’s home base, they were here long before anyone can remember—a relic of the civilization before, and what they left for us to use. Maps of them are scarce and unreliable. Parts of the tunnels have caved in, rendering them unusable. And some tunnels are hidden.

  Luke and Sara and I used to explore the tunnels all the time. It wasn’t strictly allowed, but it wasn’t strictly forbidden, either, and we enjoyed it. With Luke’s gift of invention, he made a machine that allowed us to find and map the hidden tunnels. We would search for ages for the trick to open fake rock walls, the catch that would slide a slab of rock into the ceiling and reveal the dark, twisting path beyond. It was a puzzle, a maze, a game.

  Now it’s my ticket out of Central. The maps we made then are long burned and gone, too dangerous to keep in existence, but I remember the routes well and go over my memorized version of the maps daily. I can’t afford to forget them.

  Thanks to my gift, I encounter no one on my way to one of the meeting rooms on the ground floor. The tunnel entrance I’m headed for is unknown to the military, so there are no guards posted. It’s the only secret entrance I know of, and what with the room’s function, I can only really use it at night—and I’ll have to return well before morning, before anyone might be there.

  The meeting room itself is much like all the others in Central, save for the addition of several monitors lined up on one side of the room. There’s a panel of switches that controls them all by the door. I flip the switches on and off, in careful order. Fourth, second, first, fourth, third, first, second, fifth. Then I turn them all off. A hollow click resounds through the air. I head for the back corner of the room.

  Four tiles are glued together over the trapdoor that unlocked after the combination of switches. Luke, ever the inventor, explained to me and Sara once how the electric currents that operated the room’s power also operated the door’s lock, but I didn’t really get it. I’d nodded and pretended that I did and Sara had nodded and probably actually did.

  The memory weighs heavy. I carry it with me as I descend into the tunnel below, careful to shut the trapdoor precisely in place, and then face the pitch-black pathway.

  For a moment, panic washes over me. Everything’s too close. Too dark. I can’t get out. I can’t move.

  I fumble to pull out the necklace tucked under my shirt and touch the electric-yellow power crystal hanging on it. Light immediately spills into the space, momentarily blinding me as it illuminates even the tiniest of crags in the walls. Syon’s gift is going strong as ever.

  I give myself a few seconds to calm down. Everything is okay. These walls are sturdy. I can move just fine. There’s nothing wrong, so don’t dwell on it.

  A strange nostalgia for sneaking out of the prison steals over me. It was so much easier. Why did I think this was a good idea?

  But then I remember what I overheard the Councilors saying. I make my way forward.

  With every turn I take and every route I choose, I’m careful. My gift picks up no one else. The rare silence in my head only serves to make me more on edge, though. I double-check my memorized maps, but self-doubt creeps in. If I’ve misremembered even one path, I could end up stuck in a pit or lost. Two and a half years is a long time in which to forget details.

  But eventually—thankfully—I reach the ladder set into the dead end that I was looking for. I climb it and slowly open the trapdoor above, but I don’t see or hear anyone around. I push it o
pen the rest of the way.

  I’m in the back room of Mr. Clemente’s bookstore. The first time Luke and Sara and I discovered this concealed exit, we nearly scared Trist and his father half to death. That took a lot of explaining. And pleading for them to keep it secret. But funnily enough, that’s how the three of us met and eventually befriended Trist. Even through his surprise at a bunch of Nyte soldiers coming up through the floor of his father’s bookstore, he was still nothing but kind to us.

  Now I greet Mr. Clemente on my way out. He waves without looking up from his book, having already gotten a heads-up from Trist that I’d be coming. And then I’m out in the cool, cool night, sucking in lungfuls of fresh air. Nothing compares to being aboveground.

  The route from there is easy enough. Through Market, now closing up, and past the high-end apartments and shops before taking a side street to the warehouse district. Various voices hum in my head along the way, and I tap my fingers against my leg to stay focused.

  Normally, I’d head straight to the Order’s home base from here. But tonight, I need to help screen potential recruits. And so I keep walking down twisting side streets that grow ever narrower until I reach an alley packed with hole-in-the-wall bars.

  Neon lights glow in dirty, dusty windows, raucous laughter echoes off the close walls, people stumble out of one bar and into another. Everything is bright and loud and crowded as I duck through the scattering of people and knock on the door of a bar marked by a sign overhead as THE CROOKED BOOT.

  A light voice asks from the other side, “Password?”

  “Peace over war,” I murmur. The door clicks open.

  The inside is as small as you’d expect from seeing the outside. A bar counter takes up most of the space, with room enough for about ten bar stools and the tiniest of raised platforms in the very back. The lights are low, and unlike the alley outside, the space is quiet, subdued. The owner and I exchange smiles as she resumes her place behind the counter and I slip inside. The eight people seated look over at me, and from the raised stage at the back, identical grins split the pale, freckled faces of a pair of lanky, sandy-haired twins about a year younger than me.