Academy 7 (3 page)

His gaze dropped to the clothes at her side. “I should leave you to try those on.” But he did not move. Instead, he glanced toward the textbooks, then stretched his right hand and closed it in a fist. “You might want to begin to study. As I said, the Alliance funds the education of all its
citizens.
”

And then she understood what this man had done: thrown her a chance, a single chance at a future, in the form of a test she should never have been allowed to take. Could she do what he was implying? Pretend to be a citizen of a world she had never known existed? But what other choice was there? She had no one, and nowhere else to go. If this was her chance, she must take it.

Her chin lifted.

And he stood, unfurling his fist against the smooth surface of the wall. “You have a month to prepare before your arrival.” He waited a moment, as if expecting her to say something, perhaps the name of the school for which she had been selected.

But Aerin was not yet ready to share.

The captain turned away, the hatch door sliding down behind him.

She remained seated for a minute, then moved to the wide glass hanging on the wall. The face she saw in the reflection was already a stranger. Her sun-bleached hair had darkened, its natural brown strands brushed clean and straight. Her once bronze skin had paled around her high cheekbones and pointed chin, and though her ragged dress revealed the sharp points of her shoulders, elbows, and ribs, already the meals on board had begun to fill in the flesh around her bones.

She looked back at the black shirt, slacks, and boots on the bench. What person would she be when she changed into them?

Slowly her fingers reached up to slide the gray headband off her forehead. Even as she gazed down at the dyed V on the front of the band, she could still feel its imprint. Could she truly slip out of her past so easily? Relinquish it with the tattered rags?

Then her eyes flitted to the folded letter on the bench. She picked it up and tucked it into the bottom corner of the mirror. Could she brush off her memories and the last six years for a future thick with the unknown? Nothing could be worse than what she knew already. She wanted nothing left to remind her of the fields, the platforms, and the lasers. She would scrub them all away like she had the dirt from her bare feet. When she was done, there would not be a single sign of where she was from. Except for the brand on her shoulder, dark bars showing now where her wide neckline dropped down.

 

Dane awoke to the harsh creak of cell bars sliding across one another. He rolled slowly over onto his back, the hard springs of the dusty cot digging into his spine. His muscles ached from the long night at the police station, and his mouth tasted like smoke.

He had dreamed of fire: white-hot flames licking his face and eyebrows, heat burning his chest, smoke dousing his nostrils and clotting his air passages. The same smell now filled his pores, his clothes, and the uncomfortable jail cell mattress.

“Guess it helps having friends in high places.” A mocking voice propelled him up off the bed. Outside the doorway stood a sallow-faced guard, a wide smirk on his lips.

“What do you know about it?” Dane replied.

The man twined a hand around a bar and rattled the open door. “You’re outta here,” he said.

With deliberate slowness, Dane stood, rubbing his knuckles along the side of his face. Soot as dark as his hair smeared the backs of his tan fingers. “What’s wrong? You guys can’t afford the soap to clean me up?” he cracked, then slid past the guard, sidestepping a stain on the cement floor, and sidled down the hall.

The waiting room greeted him with a display of smug police photos and the scent of burned coffee. Between the row of empty chairs and the front desk stood a familiar figure: a slouched sixty-year-old man in greasy coveralls, hands buried in wide pockets. Dane smiled.

“I don’t know,” the overweight cop at the front desk was saying. “Mr.?”

“Pete,” replied the figure, dismissing the need for a surname.

“It’s against policy to release a juvenile to someone other than a parent or legal guardian.” Beefy arms crossed over a bulging stomach, and the cop leaned back in his padded chair.

Dane opened his mouth to protest that he had known Pete all his life. The aged mechanic had taught him to fly, checked in on him when his father was gone. And had been there for Dane when things got tough. Really tough.

But Pete held up a hand, halting the protest before it began, then straightened and gave the cop a hard stare. “His father is not on planet, as you well know. He won’t return from his mission for another six weeks. But by all means, wait. See how he reacts when he hears his son has been locked up without any formal charges.”

“Without—?” Dane started to ask.

“Sit down and shut up,” ordered Pete.

Dane sat.

The cop’s face bloomed red, a double chin jutting forward. “All right, but this is the last time I make an exception. The man redirected his gaze at Dane. “You hear that, Madousin? Show up here again after your seventeenth birthday, and we won’t cut you another break, no matter what your last name is.”

Dane gritted his teeth but let Pete’s firm grip guide him out through the grimy station doors before he could word a comeback. The heat outside assaulted him. He banged his thigh on a rusty railing and glared with annoyance around the Gray Zone. No one else stirred amid the cramped trio of buildings designated for both city and base use, and not a single aircraft rested on the empty gravel landing pad.

“
Gold Dust
?” Dane questioned, suddenly worried about his new plane.

“You know you’ve been fired, right?” Pete growled.

Dane shrugged. Firefighting was not exactly his dream job. He knew better than to dream.

But damn it!
he thought. “I earned that plane.”

“It’s back in the hangar,” said Pete. “You’re walking home, and you’re lucky the police didn’t impound her.”

“They had no right. You know I didn’t deserve to be—”

“Oh, I know all right. I know I’ve seen you in that place too many times.” Pete marched his charge through the gate in the barbed-wire fence that separated the Gray Zone from the rest of Chivalry Military Base.

“For what? Reckless endangerment?” Dane argued, without sparing a glance for the armed patrol members lining the fence. “Come on, there’s no way they could make that stick, not when the plane belonged to me instead of the fire company.”

“This isn’t about the plane.” Pete’s grip clenched on Dane’s shoulder as they headed down a narrow passage. The high walls of the Allied Air Force facility rose up on the left. On the right, a ball game stood frozen, its young players absorbed with watching the passersby. Pete ignored the stares. “You’d still be sitting in that cell if the man you saved hadn’t been a retired colonel.”

“Because most people who save lives are treated as criminals.” Sarcasm filled Dane’s voice.

“Most people don’t fly into a hot zone after being ordered out of it.”

“So what if I am a few days underage to fight a level four? I’m a better flyer than most of those guys.”

“You didn’t go into that fire to save someone’s life,” Pete said, “and you know it. Reckless endangerment is an apt term whether or not the charges were dropped. Stop trying to kill yourself, or one of these days you’re going to succeed.”

Maybe,
Dane thought. There were worse things. Like living under his father’s control.

An uneasy pause stalled the conversation.

Even at this early hour, the base was never silent. The shouts of personnel, whirr of running motors, and beeping of traffic signals filled the air. And the cement surface did little to absorb the sound or the flashing lights from the spinning security tower at the heart of the action. Dane had a flashback to the wilderness he had flown over the previous day and felt a sudden urge to escape. He pulled away.

“Wait.” Pete let out a slow sigh, the muscles on his worn face easing as he dug a hand into his pocket and held out an envelope. “This came for you. The housekeeper gave it to me when I stopped by to tell her I was picking you up. There’s a package that goes with it.” The gold seal gleamed at Dane.

Without taking the envelope, he began to walk down the long slanted edge of the airstrip. The glaring sun formed visions of deep puddles floating on the wide diagonal runway, and a solid wall of wire fencing loomed in the foreground.

Pete came up behind him, pointing at the envelope. “You know what this is?”

“The letter with my A.E.E. scores,” Dane said, stepping purposefully on a crack. “Only the Council cares enough about secrecy to use traditional post.”

“You plan to open it?”

Again Dane’s eyes flew to the security seal. He couldn’t open it, couldn’t let himself care. “No.”

“Then you won’t mind if I do?” The words were a request.

“It’s not as if some test has anything to say about me.”

Pete retrieved the envelope’s contents. His head jolted back slightly as he began to read; then his shoulders relaxed and he handed Dane the letter. “If the test isn’t worth anything, why put forth the effort to place well?”

The name of the school curled its way through Dane’s mental defense system, and he had to struggle a moment to regain his shield of disdain. “Paul,” he answered. “When he took the A.E.E. two years ago, he failed to earn a spot in Father’s alma mater.”

“Ah. And sibling rivalry is always a priority over pretending to be stupid?” Pete said.

Hell, yes.
In Dane’s entire life, his brother had never failed at anything, at least not in their father’s eyes. Until the school’s rejection. And even then, it had been the school that had taken on the blame. Not the golden son, following in their father’s footsteps.

Dane tossed the letter to the ground and continued walking. “It’s not as if I’ll attend.”

“What?” The mechanic came to a sudden halt.

“My father hates that school.” Dane flung the truth at the older man. “You don’t really think he’d let me go there.”
Never in a millennium.

Anger and confusion flashed across Pete’s face, then disappeared, crushed beneath derision. “
Let
you? Like he
let
you join the fire company, or he
let
you earn a spot in the base holding cell? Since when do you do anything your father wants? He won’t even be back here by the time school starts.” Pete made a sharp gesture toward the fallen paper. “That is your future, kid. You’d better pick it up.”

 

Dr. Livinski reread the unsigned invitation on her office desk. She paused, running a hand over the tight bun at the back of her head, and adjusted the wire rims of her glasses. Then with a brisk movement, she signed the form and pushed away the paper.

That was the last of them. Fifty invitations. Another full class of first-years.

Her hand closed tightly around the coffee mug to her right, and for a moment she held still, daring the heat to burn her palm. Steam rose up from the dark depths, then evaporated before reaching her face.

Fifty new students. Another class of cocky, naïve first-years who had never faced a challenge they could not meet. But some of them would face one here, half of them in fact. At least half.

Because that was how she wanted it. Her gaze flew back toward the final form letter. The word
Congratulations
seemed to stare at her. She would not have chosen to begin the letter that way. It set up false hope. As though the students had been invited to a party with frosted cake and colored streamers.

No, it was the last line Dr. Livinski preferred. The one that gave warning. She had been quite clear to the new secretary about that line. She just had not thought to tell him about the first one.

Too late now, though. She had signed half the forms without paying attention, and by the time she had read one, many were already in the general post. Nothing to do at that point but send out the final letters. It would not take the students long to learn that Academy 7 was no pastry confection.

With a thin smile, she straightened up in her hard oak chair, stretching. Her auburn tweed jacket strained against the movement, and she lapsed back into normal position, then focused her mind on the high stack of student files at the edge of the desk.