“See anyone?”
“All clear.”
A conversation pierces the veil around me in broken fragments.
“So what are we going to do when we get back to the dorm?”
“I don’t know.”
I recognize the voices. At least I think I do.
“Zorrah barely has a pulse, and my sister—I can’t find her. I mean, I can’t hail her.”
It’s Olin. I recognized my brother’s voice through the fuzzy barrier surrounding me like a jumbo-sized ball of cotton.
“Never mind the fact we can’t even touch her without getting zapped.”
The other voice belongs to Neca. And earlier I had heard Cera. Suddenly I remember the mission. I remember the voice of the mysterious man in my head. I remember Zorrah stretched tight with electricity. Emblazoned across my thoughts, the image serves as a new road marker in my life. Rage and fear buzz beneath the surface until I’m able to reconnect with my body.
My fingers move. My lips twitch and I croak inaudibly, “Zorrah.” With raspy voice I repeat the word, this time out loud, “Zorrah.” The barrier containing me jerks to a stop. I realize I’m floating in some sort of stasis.
“Calli’s awake,” Neca says. He’s the one closest to me.
I force my eyes open. Their faces are blurry, but I recognize Neca and then Olin. My brother is carrying Zorrah. The tiny girl seems only a husk of the warrior I remember.
I reach for her, but a swimming light swells to prevent me from making contact.
Olin withdraws defensively. “She’s alive, barely.” He moves around me while maintaining weary eye contact. “What happened in there?”
“Come on,” Cera interrupts, “we should keep moving.” As she hobbles past, I realize she’s supporting a wounded Yetic. He’s mobile but silent.
Neca nods. “Cera’s right. We can figure this out at the barracks.”
We all start moving, me still in stasis.
I lift my hand to my face. The shock of what I see rises like an ocean wave and drives me beneath the surface. I gasp for breath. The solid quality of my skin has been replaced with light and color, like the gleaming yellow of a cat’s eyes against the black of night.
I cough and my breathing comes in fits. I writhe within the containment field. I need to feel something solid. This isn’t real. How can any of this be real?
“Calli, relax.” Neca moves into my field of vision. Light streams from his hands, blurring his face and adding to the dreamlike quality of my surroundings. “We’ll be back to the barracks in a few minutes.”
“Put me down,” I snarl.
“I don’t think that would be—”
My right hand spasms, forcing me to clutch it with my left. As I do, a large plume of living fire pulses against the inside of the containment field nearly bursting it. My awareness flickers as a cacophony of voices and unbridled thoughts assail my mind. I fumble for which voice to possess—for which fork in the road to travel in order to affirm the identity of Calli Bluehair. The ocean waves rise again and push me under.
Olin, help.
“Set her down,” Olin demands.
“But—”
“She’s losing control. Do it now!”
Knocked to the ocean floor, the waves roll over me. But finally I’m grounded. I feel something cold beneath my palms—not the sand and silt of the ocean, but the plasteel of the academy. I know where I am—Masa.
“I am Calli Bluehair,” I say out loud. I leave my eyes closed a moment longer. Drawing a full breath into my lungs, I let the odor of the academy reaffirm my reality.
What happened? Olin appears in my thoughts loud and clear.
His presence brings further comfort. It was a trap. The man from the interview booth—he’s testing us. I shake my head. No, he’s testing me. Zorrah, I shiver as I see her ablaze in my mind’s eye, was collateral damage.
What do we do?
I open my eyes and stand of my own will. The corridor quivers in my peripheral vision. Objects and people steady when I stare directly at them. Cera shifts her feet, growing tired under Yetic’s weight. I try to catch Yetic’s eyes, but he refuses to look at me.
Neca and Olin are the only two who choose to engage me directly. I realize I’m emanating the same terrifying effect the queen had borne the night of our first encounter in the Shadows. How much worse it must be to see the transformation occur to someone close—someone you thought you knew.
Finally my eyes fall on the unconscious, possibly dying, Zorrah cradled in Olin’s arms. With a tear in my eye, I remember the words the queen had spoken over me before restoring my braid—the burden of responsibility I had so gladly accepted. Zorrah is my responsibility.
I am Calli Bluehair. With a final shiver, I shed the invading presences from my mind and latch onto my present mission. I extend an open hand toward Zorrah.
This time my brother doesn’t flinch.
The quickening flames are gone—my skin returned to normal. My hand on Zorrah’s cold forehead, I know what I must do. “The rest of you are to return to the barracks as if none of this ever happened. I’m taking Zorrah to the one responsible for her condition.”
Olin shakes his head. “You can’t.”
“Remember, we haven’t broken any rules. How can we when there aren’t any rules to break?” I run my arms beneath Zorrah’s negligible weight. For a moment, both Olin and I are holding her. “Everything we’ve done tonight will be part of our evaluation.”
I dislodge Zorrah completely from Olin’s grip. “But there is still one thing they need to evaluate.”
“And that would be your hard-headedness?” Neca winks, indicating he understands even as he gibes me.
I breathe deeply. “I won’t rest while one of mine is hurt. Not until it’s made right.”
“But the tournament,” Yetic speaks up for the first time since the control room—since, I’m assuming, I unknowingly crippled him. “We didn’t fix anything.”
I look him in the eyes. Now that my skin no longer creeps with flame, he returns the gaze. “With any luck, we’ll be back by tomorrow’s tournament.” I glance up at a nearby clock. Its hands glow lightly in the blue-lit corridor. “Check that, by the tournament later today.”
Yetic grimaces. “So after all this, we’re just going to take it as it comes.”
“They’ll make sure each victory is harder than the last,” I nod. “They’re testing our limits. We need to show them we don’t have any.”
With that, I stride smoothly down the corridor, leaving the others to stare at my back as I go. I’m heading for a door at the far end, a couple hundred meters distant. All I know about my final destination is that the door between here and there reads, “Administration only. No admittance.”
I shrug to myself and shift Zorrah’s weight in my arms. Perhaps those words represent a rule after all. The only rule in Masa Academy—the rule I’m about to break.
END Episode Seven
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