Dove Arising (11 page)

The rhythm feels natural; my strides have become longer. It feels as if springs on the bottom of my boots propel me higher and farther. Although the rubber was engineered to give lift, I like to think my burgeoning muscles contribute as well.

After jogging in a huge circle for exactly twenty-nine minutes, I manage to log five kilometers. My clothes are damp, my knee joints smart, and my throat is grainy with thirst.

Fizz, I forgot my canteen in the barracks.

This place is quiet without my footfalls, allowing my ears to pick up another set of steps somewhere behind me. I dare to look.

Wes Kappa flits to me, jogging in place. He looks ridiculous, trying to be courteous while maintaining an elevated heart rate. “Hey.”

I open my mouth to say something, but only a rough
whoosh
comes out.

“Want to get some water? I’ve been running on the floor upstairs for a while now, so I need some too. You can come with me, if you’d like.” He takes off.

Somehow, I have it in me to match his pace. The exertion gives me a rush that energizes me like a caffeine tablet. Maybe it’s the thrill of unofficial competition with the best of us.

“One suggestion,” he says through even breaths, watching my feet. “Actually, I have two.”

Nod.

“Don’t land on your heel so much; aim for the middle of your foot. Better already. Also, don’t turn your toes inward. I used to run that way, before I got knee problems. Whenever I took a step, it felt like my ligaments and bones were getting into fights.”

I angle my feet outward until they’re pointed straight. The pounding in my joints lessens significantly. I didn’t even know I was pigeon-toed, or that it could affect my stride so much.

Wes gives me a thumbs-up.

Many painless seconds later, we reach a set of double doors, sealed so tightly that not even air can enter the space they guard. To my bewilderment, Wes marches up to the fingerprint scanner on the wall and presses his thumb to it.

When he sees my look of amazement, he says, “Remember? I worked as an assistant in Medical, so I’m solid in the health care system.”

The first set of sliding doors part lengthwise, the second up and down, revealing a dark room that lights up in our presence.

We’re in a high-caliber lab. My fingers ache to tinker with the scales, which are rumored to be accurate to the microgram, and to slide cell samples under the electron microscope. Hundreds of years ago, these microscopes took up a whole room, but now they’re fifty centimeters high and can achieve magnification in the tens of millions. If I ever join the Bioengineering labs, I’ll be able to do so much more than stare.

Stop that
, I tell myself. Survive Militia first. Save your family.

Wes taps me on the shoulder and shoves a standard cylindrical plastic canteen at me. I hadn’t even heard him fill it. I nod my thanks and force myself to drink slowly. But I take one desperate gulp too soon, before my epiglottis closes, and I cough until the precious water threatens to squirt through my nose.

Wes raises a hand, as if he’s going to pat me on the back like Umbriel does. But he seems to think better of it. “You’re funny. You choke louder than you speak.”

I laugh through a series of coughs, using a hand to hide my smile. After I’ve stopped making hacking noises, he says, “Want to stretch? Otherwise our muscles will make a racket when we wake up tomorrow.”

With legs straight, he rolls down to place his palms flat on the ground and drums a rhythm of sorts on the white floor. We stretch every muscle, every tendon in our bodies. Wes’s joints are silent as he arranges them in extreme angles, while mine crack from the unfamiliar twists. Each time it happens, he chuckles, feeding my envy.

We return to a sitting position and simply breathe. Wes inhales and exhales as steadily as if he were sleeping, while my befuddled mind keeps interrupting my rhythm.

Why’s he being so
nice
? Does he feel guilty for dragging my mother off to a hospital bed? He’s not naturally extroverted; on the contrary, he prefers solitude, like me. But he’s giving it away in favor of my company.

On the other hand, I’m so quiet that I might as well not exist. Mom says that people who talk less have more stories to tell. I used to think she was trying to console me about my silence, but her aphorism is applicable to the boy beside me.

The object of my befuddlement opens his eyes, and I detect a spark in them. But he quickly looks down at his hands, folded in his lap. “Will you practice sparring with me tomorrow? I need a partner so my skills don’t deteriorate.”

Fascinating—I may have formed an alliance with the number one trainee. It was much easier than I’d expected.

“Okay,” I mutter.

Wes gives me a huge smile, pleased that his new accomplice isn’t mute, and one side of his mouth pulls up farther than the other to expose slightly crooked teeth. It shocks me more than anything he could have said.

11

THERE’S A CERTAIN ITCHINESS IN MY BLOOD that results from being alone in a dark hallway with someone who could incapacitate me in a matter of milliseconds.

We may have been sparring on and off for fifteen minutes or fifteen hours. It’s hard to tell time when Wes is aiming fast but light jabs and kicks at every part of my body, and it’s all I can do to deflect them with my forearms and shins. Anyone listening to our handscreen feeds would hear only whacks and grunts. What bothers me more is that Umbriel would lecture me ad infinitum if he saw me putting myself at the mercy of this combat machine.

“Try not to step back so often. Find a way through my defenses.”

It’s difficult. His feet change positions about three times a second, and he has already hit me twice: once on the cheek, once in the gut. In frustration, I lash out with my right foot and whack his knee.

“Good!” His voice is throaty, betraying the pain behind the compliment. Using his vocal cords distracts him, and I manage to elbow him in the chest.

But my victory distracts
me
, and Wes gains the upper hand again, pushing me back until I hit the wall. As I slump against it, he backs away. Unless he’s pummeling me, it seems, he can’t stand being within two meters of my person.

“That was much better than last time. Although you should try harder to shield your face with one hand or the other. Good work. I think we’ve had enough for one night.”

I retrieve my canteen from the side of the hallway and zip up my jacket. According to my handscreen, we’ve been here for an hour.

Wes gazes off into some unknown place, possibly daydreaming, and makes no move to leave. I question him with my eyebrows:
Are you coming?

“I think I’ll stay here, if you don’t mind.” He kneels on the floor and stretches his left hip flexor. “I like the quiet.”

After waving good-bye, I amble out of the Medical quarters, wondering what in the universe he’s doing there—poking around, maybe, or practicing his Medical skills. Most likely, he’s exercising even more, outworking people like Jupiter in order to outplace them in the end.

I wish he wouldn’t, because he’s crossing into the realm of the inhuman. It would be a relief if he revealed his physical limits—providing he has any.

This week, the trainees exercise for no more than two hours a day. We spend the rest of the time sitting on our behinds learning about the Militia’s arsenal of weapons. The most devastating, hydrogen bombs and intricate bioweapons, require large groups to coordinate and deploy; only top-ranking officers go near them, and only Base I has them. The Bases have never had occasion to use one, so we’re not even sure how much damage they can do. Another weapon, the Gamma gun, generates rays that cause radiation sickness and death within a day. We’ve never used that one either.

More standard arms include the popular laser blasters: sleek, transparent weapons small enough for a soldier to carry on a utility belt. They’re not difficult to aim and almost never need recharging, so like generations of trainees before us, we affectionately call them “Lazies.” The manual warns us in red letters of their one weakness:
SHOOTING AT A REFLECTIVE SURFACE MIGHT CAUSE BACKFIRE
. Wasn’t that obvious, by the nature of the laser mechanism? I suppose some unfortunate trainees who didn’t read the manual or forgot basic laws of optics fired at glass or steel and blinded themselves—perhaps projectile weapons make better arms for people like them.

To guard against metal Earthbound bullets and the electromagnetic waves from the lasers, we carry heavy ballistic shields to supplement a special type of body armor. But despite the wealth of technologically advanced arms at our disposal, the training dome is devoid of them on the first day of weapons instruction.

“We’re going to start with this.” Yinha draws a small, straight knife from her boot, and the trainees groan. “Unlike our other weapons, the dagger has been around since Earthbound prehistory. It’s an excellent tool for building reflexes. And in actual fighting, it’s useful as a backup in case a Lazy runs out of power. Good for close combat. You can also throw it. And if you look at your boots, they have cool little pockets for storage.”

The instructors pass out standard daggers to all of us—silver, symmetrical, made of the lightest, strongest polymers available. The weapon in my hand is the size and shape of my old trimming knife—but I won’t be pruning plants with
this
.

“Partner up with someone you trust. We’re going to study basic form. To further your training, I’m also going to deactivate some of the grav-mags, so get ready for moon-grav. Am I understood? Cool.”

Nash grabs my hand. The gravity settings in the training center shift until I feel as light as I used to in the greenhouses. My eyes close; I can almost smell the soil and the unripe-fruit scent of my best friend. Mom would be waiting for us at home with a small but intricate dinner, listening to Anka’s chatter while prompting Cygnus to look up from his trigonometry homework and talk about his day at Primary. . . .

No. Until she leaves Medical, she can’t be more than a muddle of wonderful memories.

We arrange ourselves two by two in a line. Wes picks the fourth-place trainee, Orion, and twirls his dagger around his forefinger while he waits for instructions. Instinct makes me want to tell him to stop lest he slice his hand open, but—he’s
Wes
. He knows what he’s doing.

We ease into thrusts, strokes, and parries. With a certain degree of focus, I find a rhythm in using the dagger and a grace I never felt in the greenhouses, where every cut, precise to the millimeter, met with arboreal resistance. Now, with no plant fibers in the way, I feel as if this weapon were designed specifically for my use—it’s small, silver, and silent, exactly like me.

Not everyone experiences the same affinity.

“This thing is useless,” Nash grumbles as she parries at an angle twenty degrees too far clockwise. “And the moon-grav doesn’t make it any better.”

I disagree. The ease of the blade, along with decreased gravity and Wes’s nightly help with hand-to-hand sparring, makes this feel like dancing. I jump over Nash’s head multiple times and even manage to do a forward roll in midair.

“Hey, don’t kill me.” Nash retreats with a distressed expression.

I freeze.

“Where’d you learn to be so good at this?”

Shrug.

“Okay. How about I attack, you parry. That way I won’t end up in the Medical quarters again.”

We chuckle as she makes a haphazard slash in my direction.

“I’m not actually going to use this undersized knife in the field. Right now, it’s for the giggles—hey, Stripes,
check that out
!” Nash points over my shoulder.

Orion is attacking Wes with perfect form, his right arm elegantly parting the air. Both boys laugh as Wes evades every stroke, spinning on his toes or swinging his dagger with a series of flourishes to block Orion’s. Every now and then, he jumps and twists in midair, folding and unfolding his limbs like the petals of a black morning glory. When Orion catches a break, which is rare, he fans himself with his thin shirt, exposing a well-defined chest that I’m sure distracts Nash a good deal.