Dove Arising (9 page)

Jupiter stalks backward, putting a distance of ten meters between us, and charges again with the speed and certainty of a missile, arms outstretched to prevent a rolling escape on my part.

I should tire him. If I were fighting Wes, with his steely endurance, I’d try something else, but Jupiter looked exhausted by the end of yesterday’s workout and probably won’t last more than ten minutes running.

I shuffle toward him this time, but veer to the right seconds before we collide. He swears on several human anatomical features and pursues me, losing momentum all the while. I run in a circle, leaning my torso inward to gain speed and maintain balance.

But because he’ll eventually attack, I zigzag across the floor at full throttle. Jupiter grunts in frustration, dumbly rotating his head to find me. I sprint behind him and knee him in the groin, which elicits another roar, this time of pain.

The crowd hoots in approval at my dirty trick.

I’ll do what I must.

While Jupiter’s incapacitated, I back up and shoot toward him, planning to push him over. But he swivels around, grabs my arms, and throws me down. Before my head hits the floor, I realize that I must have missed his essential organs, and that he’s a better actor than I had supposed.

I land hard. It feels like several of my ribs have swapped places. I also may have bruised my brain.

“Sorry, little birdy.” Jupiter thwacks me on the nose, and I taste iron in the blood trickling into my mouth. Fighting to stay conscious, I watch his black boot press into my chest.

“And that’s three seconds,” announces Yinha. “The victor is Jupiter Alpha!”

I hear a few lonely shouts of approbation before blacking out.

8

I OPEN MY EYES TO BEHOLD WHITE everywhere. Spots of color float above me; I blink, and the dots unify into one blob, which materializes into Eri’s face. Vinasa loiters by the door; she approaches when she notices that I’ve woken up.

“Hey,” Eri mumbles through a yawn. “Thanks so much for helping Wes earlier. . . . That was real brave.”

It wasn’t brave as much as stupid, but it’s earned me respect—if not fondness—from Eri. I’d underestimated the depth of her puzzling infatuation with Copper Head.

“Yeah, and it landed her here in the Medical quarters.” Vinasa turns to me, extending a hand.

I extend my hand too, touching her handscreen with the pad of my thumb so that it can register my identity.

“Phaet. That means ‘dove,’ right? Associated with peace throughout Western Earthbound culture. Don’t know how much that name’s going to help you here.” Vinasa looks at my stats once more, and her mouth forms a little
O
of surprise. “You’re . . . you’re only fifteen? I knew you were young, because you weren’t in our Primary class, but . . . wow. I’m not saying you can’t get through training, though. Some of the nonaligned floating cities—Dakota and Benthos, specifically—have used child pirates for centuries, and they’re really fierce.”

Vinasa’s breadth of knowledge takes me by surprise—like Ariel, she has a mind structured more like a database than a calculator.

“Vin’s big on History; she’ll work there first chance she gets.” Eri smiles sadly at her friend. “If there are any spots left.”

“You heard the Committee cut another fifth of the department last month?” Vinasa pouts. The Committee only pays big money for what’s essential to the Bases’ survival: administrative essentials, as well as scientific discovery and innovation. “Journalism and Visual Design are having the same problem. My dad thinks a nonscience Specialization is a ticket to Shelter, only the ride’s longer.”

“There’s still time to change your mind, Vin.” Eri looks at her handscreen, frowning. “Canopus says we have to leave by 18:00.”

How long have I been unconscious? It’s 17:56. Seeing the worried look on my face, Eri says, “You weren’t out for too long. Everyone else is having dinner. I brought you some!” She shoves two slices of stale brown bread at me. I peel them apart to check for anything suspicious. Between them are four slices of lab-grown chicken egg with crumbling grayish yolks. There’s also an apple, some water, and a few dietary supplement pills.

“Thanks.” I gratefully bite into the bread. “Have you eaten?”

“Yeah, we did,” Vinasa says. “
Very
quickly. Set new records, I think, but the Militia doesn’t track stuff like that.” A smile darts across her face. “The rest of the matches weren’t as entertaining as yours. Nash scratched me on the cheek.”

“But the Medics fixed Vin in a minute!” Eri says. “And Wes beat Ganymede Zeta with your knee-in-the-manly-areas idea.”

Ganymede is one of Jupiter’s meatier cronies, with a shaved head and a skinny snake tongue.

Eri sighs. “Callisto gave Jupiter crap for beating up a girl—don’t know why she puts up with him.”

“Callisto?”

“Jupiter’s girlfriend, the one with the pimples. They fight a ton.”

I’ve seen the girl hanging off his arm—her face, though finely formed, is cratered with acne scars like the moon of her namesake. Her hair has stripes like mine, brown and yellow rather than black and silver.

“Oh—Wes came in here about an ankle sprain that turned out to be nothing,” Vinasa says, eliciting a frown from Eri. “He hung around and asked us if you were okay.”

I stop chewing and gawk at her.

“Probably wanted to congratulate you on nearly sterilizing Jupiter,” Eri says defensively. “Those two never liked each other. Wes transferred from Base I when we were all fifteen, ’cause our Medical Department had a better job opening. He had to apply for a transfer permit and everything. Well, Jupiter ignored Wes until he saw him run in conditioning class, then tried to pick on him, but Wes almost kicked Jupiter’s teeth out. Since then, Jupiter’s steered clear of him . . . until today.”

People rarely relocate from one base to another—I suspect that the Committee tries to thwart interaction among the bases so that trouble on one doesn’t slither into the other five. If the other bases didn’t appear in our news reports and history texts, we’d risk forgetting they exist. As the first transfer I’ve ever met, Wes might as well be an alien.

“You sure Wes transferred for a job?”

“It’s all he ever told anyone.”

I’m down to the calcium pills, which I swallow without the aid of water.

“How you feeling?” Eri gives my hand a squeeze.

“Better.” My vision blurs again, and my eyelids threaten to fall of their own accord. The food had a sedative in it, maybe melatonin.

“It’s nice that they give us the nights off,” Vinasa says. “Why don’t you take a nap? It’s still early, but we should get some sleep ourselves.”

Before I can respond, everything dissolves again.

I wake to a dark world, energized. If every object weren’t in such sharp focus, and if my bladder weren’t so uncomfortably stretched, I’d believe this was a dream.

After using the toilet, I tiptoe through the empty hallways and find a domain of wonders—no security pods in sight. Curiosity about the Medical facilities takes over, and because curfew doesn’t go into effect for another twenty minutes, I decide to explore.

The hall is devoid of Medics and patients alike. Because we haven’t fought real battles in so long, fewer active Militia members are getting hurt. Most Medics are in the civilian Medical Department, contending with a recent bout of influenza that has afflicted a good part of Sanitation. Those moles get sick a lot.

Before I get to the end of the hall, footfalls approach. They’re too frequent to be the echoes of my own. Sudden dread seizes me—what if it’s someone who will tattle to one of the instructors and guarantee me negative points before the first evaluation? If that happens, I won’t be able to pay Mom’s Medical bill; the prize money of a low-ranking trainee can’t even buy her a maintenance robot to keep her company. I press myself against the wall, heart pounding, as a shadow sprints around the bend.

“Hello?” calls a male voice.

He approaches. The emergency lights on the floor illuminate copper-wire hair.

He shouldn’t be here. He’s not in recovery; he’s nothing but an overly ambitious trainee—
oh
,
Medical assistant
. That’s how he broke in.

“Stripes? What are you doing out of bed?”

My right toes cross over my left foot, and I pivot to face the way I came. My bare feet carry me away from him.

“I don’t feel that I thanked you enough today—won’t you come back?”

Considering his speed and strength, it may be useful to put my distaste aside to observe and analyze his training methods. I pivot again and walk until I’m close to him—but not too close. The fingers of my right hand itch to wrap around my handscreen; his forearms twitch as well, because this upcoming conversation may hint at sensitive matters. Blocking one’s handscreen is a gesture of trust; it communicates to the other person:
let’s keep this between us, and no one else
.

There are few people I distrust more.

As we size each other up, I try to appear as alert as he does. When I stand my straightest, I’m exactly his height. He holds out a hand for me to shake, which is polite but unnecessary, because he’s been to my home and probably knows my name. Though his palm is calloused like the bark of a sapling, the contact is gentle. Mom says that soft handshakes indicate soft personalities, which I’m good at dealing with, but I still don’t like him.

Moments later, my handscreen reads “Wezn Kappa,” followed by his stats, which I examine for my own safety. He has an above-average IQ and zero policy infractions; his mother and father reside on Base I, apart from him. Fittingly for a Medical assistant, he has blood type O negative, the universal donor—but it would mean more if the practice of donating blood still existed. We manufacture the stuff by the liter now.

Looking down at my information, he says, “Nice to meet you again, Phaet.” Again, his slow, deliberate speech pattern catches my attention. Maybe they speak differently on Base I. “You took some blows for me today—even though there was no need. Much appreciated.” He rocks awkwardly back and forth on his heels. “I thought, er, it was only polite to learn more about you.”

I want to know what he’s doing here. I question him with a raised eyebrow and a jerk of my head down the hallway.

“Oh, just running. It’s not curfew yet . . . I should be fine.”

Perhaps he doesn’t see me as a threat to his supremacy, even after viewing my academic stats. Wes wears a neutral, if not pleasant, expression—although he seems averse to looking me in the face.

He’s your competition
, my prudent side reminds me.
And he took your mother
.

But why not learn something from the most capable of the fifty of us, despite my unhappy associations with him? With Wes’s old job in Medical, and the wide-ranging contacts he must have in other departments, he could find out how Mom is doing—if I ever become comfortable asking him for favors.

“
I
should’ve fought Jupiter. . . . He has no mercy—bludgeoning someone
half his mass
.” Even though his eyebrows are knit in consternation, Wes doesn’t raise his voice above a murmur. Maybe he
does
want to keep this chat from prying ears. “Stay away from him—please?”

Nod.

“You’re a talkative girl.” While examining something on the spotless floor, he dimly smiles, a passive expression that doesn’t involve parting his lips. I don’t see the point, because it’s like switching on a neon lamp and throwing a cotton sheet over it.

“Well. I’m going to keep running—please don’t tell anyone. Thanks again for earlier and, er, see you tomorrow!” He sets off at a pace that would induce cramps in anyone else.

As that dim smile fades from my mind, I decide to keep him close. He could help me get what I need.

9