Ninth City Burning (15 page)

“Mersh, what are you talking about?” Spammers asks.

I was about to say the same thing, but all of a sudden I'm having a hard time talking. I'm having a hard time breathing, too.

“Torro got called up on demerits, same as you.” Mersh looks from Spammers to me and back to Spammers, grinning like we're all in on some big joke together. “Come on, don't pretend like he didn't. I mean, I saw the list.”

The day after the draft, the Office of the Prefect always posts a list of everyone who got called up for having too many demerits, as like a reminder to follow the rules, because if you're bad for the settlement, here's what happens. They send you to the Front.

“When I heard the marshals got you, I went to the Town Center to look,” Mersh is saying, “and there you were. Spams, too, he had a whole pile of demerits, but you, Torro, you had even more, like ten times what it'd take to land you in the Legion. So I decided I'd sign up, too, and just in time. Almost didn't make it.” He points a thumb at the door where he jumped in.
I don't think I've ever seen the kid so pleased with himself, but I feel like I'm floating somewhere way up above the train, just going up and up and no matter what I do, I can't get down. This isn't possible. Really, it's not, because I didn't
do
anything. I mean, yeah, I did, I did a lot of things, but I never actually got caught, right?

Suddenly, Spammers says, “Shit, kid.” He lets out this long sigh and runs his hands over his head and face. “Shit,” he says again. “Torro, kid. You got flipped. Somebody flipped you.”

The Prips don't care how we decide who joins the Legion, not as long as we satisfy our quota for soldiers. So if you get drafted but then somehow the quota ends up filled, you don't have to go after all. “Flipping” is what we call it when you purposely get someone called on demerits, so they'll have to take your place at the Front. You never hear about its actually
happening
to anyone, though. It's mostly just a rumor. Even if a spot does get like miraculously filled, it only helps out the last person called in the draft, and it's pretty unlikely whoever's last on the list also happens to know someone they can sell out. But there are supposedly people who'll like collect information so they can go to whoever's been picked last and offer to flip someone for them. You can imagine what someone would pay to get out of going to the Front.

“How'd the list say he got his demerits?” Spammers asks.

Mersh shrugs. “Smuggling. Theft, trafficking stolen and illegal goods, the whole deal. Sounded like you were really into it, kiddo,” he says to me.

“Cranely,” Spammers hisses through his teeth. “That sneaky old turd.”

I go sort of berserk then. I can't help it. I really can't. I start like punching the seat in front of me over and over, just slamming my fist at it as hard as I can. I start yelling, too, I don't know what, I'm going so berserk. Spammers is right. Cranely knew enough to get either of us called up about anytime he wanted. He couldn't flip Spammers, though, because Spammers'd already flipped himself. So that left me. And you can bet old Cranely made some deal with Ghalo to keep from getting in trouble himself, probably gave Ghalo a cut of the price for selling me out. And all because I was dumb enough to do business with Cranely. I thought I could handle him, but it turns out I'm still just a sucker.

Spammers and Hexi are trying to hold me down, but it's hard because I'm going all berserk and whatnot. Eventually, I get tired, though. Going berserk really tires you out. “Easy, kid, just take it easy,” Spammers is saying.
But Hexi, she's not actually trying to stop me thrashing around. She's just sort of hugging me tight around the neck. I'm breathing pretty hard, and my nose is running, and I guess I've been sort of crying a bit. I'm about as tired as I've ever felt, so I just sort of curl forward and close my eyes and sit there like that while the train goes on rolling.

U
sually when something goes wrong, I can at least think, like try to work out a way through it, but right now I can't even do that. Inside my head, it's just a mess. All I know is I wrecked everything, just totally wrecked everything. I don't feel like I'm floating anymore. It's more like I'm sliding forward, or that's what I think until I realize it's the train slowing down.

I raise my head and look around, and it's true, the outside isn't whirring by as much, which is weird because I don't think we've been moving all that long. We've still got those tall fences running on both sides of the train, just like at Settlement 225, but beyond that it's all wilderness, trees and fields and hills and everything going on forever. Not a sign of Granite Shore anywhere. I'm thinking maybe I lost track of time, but everyone else looks pretty confused, too.

“What's happening?” I say to Spammers and Hexi and Mersh. My voice is real scratchy from all the yelling I was doing, and it kind of hurts to talk.

“Don't know,” Spammers says. “We can't have gone more than fifty kilometers, sixty at the most.”

We pass through a big gate beneath another very tall fence, then we're pulling into a station just like the one we left back at Granite Shore, like almost an exact replica, only instead of being surrounded by factories and warehouses and storage yards and so forth, it's in the middle of nowhere.

The train stops, and a few minutes later, the doors open, and the train goes quiet, and all you can hear is the wind and some leaves rustling. If there were really skeletons on this train, now's about the time they'd come out and like chew our heads off or whatever. But that doesn't happen.
What happens instead is the bivvies all get up and walk off the train, just walk right off like it's nothing, like whatever's out there can't be any worse than what's in here. Suddenly, I realize that's about how I feel, too. So I climb over the seat in front of me and follow the bivvies out.

Mersh catches up to me just as I'm leaving the train. “Hey, Torro,” he says, “I'm real sorry for what I said. I mean, I thought you knew you'd been called up.” He looks sort of sheepish, like it's his fault, what happened to me.

“I'm not mad at you, Mersh,” I say. “If you hadn't told me, I'd probably never have found out. Better to hear from one of your boyos, right?”

That makes him pretty happy, or maybe he's just glad I'm not still going berserk. “So listen,” he says, “Camareen, she gave me something for you. I would have showed you before but, you know, I wasn't sure what you'd do.”

He takes a little envelope out of his jacket and gives it to me. Mersh was right to hold on to it back on the train. I probably would have ripped it to pieces. Inside is a sheet of paper filled with dots and lines. One page of the music I gave to Camareen. At the bottom, in her handwriting, are the words “Come back.”

I'm not sure why, but seeing those words makes me feel a whole lot better. I know it's sort of crazy. No one ever comes back from the Front, right? But just then I get the feeling I could be the first one. A second ago, all I wanted was to get off that train, but now I know where I have to go. Home, to Camareen.

Once we're out on the platform, I can see the station really is just a few buildings inside a big, fenced-in circle with wilderness all around. Like, the tracks aren't just passing through to somewhere else. This is the last stop.

Over at the opposite end of the station, a couple of the smaller Prip flying machines are perched on little landing pads like the one behind the Prefect Building back at old S-225. There's a bunch of Prips gathered around, along with Naomi and the other kids from the train. One of the Prips, who's got these real bushy sideburns, is talking to them, gesturing to a bunch of big holes in the ground, more like funnels really, all evenly spaced and ringed in concrete and too deep to see the bottom. As I watch, the guy with the sideburns picks out one of the kids, a boy, and the two walk down into one of the funnels. A minute later, sideburns guy climbs back up, but the kid doesn't.

I'm pretty interested to see what's going to happen next, but some more
Prips, four of them, have shown up on the platform in front of us, and they're telling everyone from the train to form up in rows in an open space down below. They're pretty polite about it, those Prips, not bossy or anything, but they're not like making friendly conversation, either. They just follow us over to where this one lady is standing, and say, “Form up, Recruits!” Except for the bivvies, we've all been training with the settlement militia for years, so we know how to form up pretty good.

I guess this is the start of Legion training. I'm not happy about it, but I
am
just the slightest bit curious. In militia training, the next thing that would happen after forming up was the militia captain would tell us all what worthless turds we were, how we were all like a disgrace to old Settlement 225, and how if we ever went up against real hellions, we'd all probably be skinned alive. So when the lead Prip walks out in front of us, I'm expecting some more of that. She's not all angry and muscly like most of our militia captains were, though. Actually, she looks more like a schoolteacher, sort of thin, with fuzzy grayish hair tied up in a bun. You can tell she's in charge, though, just from the way she stands, so I get ready to be shouted at a bit.

But instead, the lady says, “Welcome, Recruits,” and sounds like she means it, to be welcoming, that is. Her voice is sort of soft, but you can still hear it pretty easy. I'm close to the back, and I can hear her just fine.

“My name is Optio Sorril,” she says, “and it will be my job to oversee your training and induction into the Legion of Ninth City.” She pauses and looks us over a bit. “I am aware that many of you are here against your will,” she says, looking right at me, I guess because it's so obvious ending up here wasn't part of my, like, plan for the day. Even Spammers at least had a shirt on when the marshals got him. “What I intend to impress upon you in the coming weeks is that your presence here is not some arbitrary whim. The Legion needs you. All of you. Make no mistake—I will turn you into fighters the likes of which you never imagined, but I will have failed in my duty unless, by the end of your training, every one of you considers yourself a volunteer.”

“Sounds like you're ready to graduate, Mersh,” Spammers whispers. I don't know how old Sorril hears him, but she does. If we were back in Granite Shore, Spammers'd probably end up doing push-ups or running laps until he fell over, but Sorril just sort of smirks at him and starts pacing back and forth in front of us, like she's waiting for something.

And there is
something
going on, something real strange. It's kind of like when there's a storm coming, only instead of the air swirling around, it feels like the swirling is happening
inside
of you. There's a weird smell, too, sort of briny, but also kind of electric, like you get when one of the machines at the factories shorts out. I'm pretty sure everyone else notices it, too. Only Optio Sorril and the Prips standing with her don't seem very surprised. Optio Sorril has started flexing her hand a bit, like it'd fallen asleep, and the feeling is just coming back.

“In a few moments, you will board the harvester that will take you to Ninth City's Limit Camp,” she says. “I suggest you watch as it approaches. Much of what you encounter in the coming days will seem alien to you, but I promise that, like our harvester, in time it will make its own kind of sense.”

She points upward, and, of course, we all look. At first I don't see anything, but after a minute I notice something way, way up in the sky. It's the huge Prip flying machine that always shows up just before the draft, only now it's so far away, you can hardly see it. It's getting closer, though, and fast, coming straight down, like a huge boot ready to stomp all of us standing around in the station.

Just then someone starts screaming. I think it must be one of the recruits, but when I look, I see it's Naomi. She's way over by those weird funnels in the ground, and she's just screaming her head off. A couple of Prips are trying to hold on to her, and she's kicking and clawing at them and trying to get away. The way she's screaming, it's like she's trying to tell us something, but I can't hear what.

The bivvies from the train all hear her, too, and right away they push through everyone formed up in front of Optio Sorril and set off running, going straight for Naomi. Optio Sorril calls for them to stop and come back, but she doesn't sound angry or even annoyed. If anything, she's like a little playful. The bivvies don't look back, though, since they're getting ready to grab Naomi and rip every Prip in sight to pieces.

And then something happens I really just can't explain. All of a sudden, Optio Sorril just crashes right into the pack of bivvies. One minute she's standing in front of us, looking like some frail old lady, and the next she's on top of them. She must cover fifty meters in about two seconds. She sends the two bivvies in front flying, though you'd think she'd just bumped into some empty cardboard boxes for how little it slows her down. The other two bivvies, the big guy and the mean guy with the beard, had been
going a bit more slowly, still limping on their hurt legs. Now they sort of circle around to come at Optio Sorril from both sides. But she just grabs each one and tosses him on the ground, easy as anything.

I look at Spammers to see if he has any idea what's happening, but he's just watching it all, his mouth a little open. Hexi, too. Mersh has never seen anything so fantastic in his life, you can just tell.

Somehow, the bivvies get back up. I don't know how, after the way old Sorril kicked them around, but they do. They come at Sorril, all four at once, and this time they actually hit her a few times, but it's like she doesn't even feel it. Even when the guy with the beard lands this real nasty punch, she hardly reacts. In a few seconds, the bivvies are all back on the ground, Optio Sorril just standing over them. To look at her, you wouldn't think anything had happened at all.

Little Naomi hasn't stopped screaming all this time. I was pretty distracted while old Sorril was throwing those bivvies all over the place, but now everything's gone quiet, and I can hear Naomi again. She was speaking that bivvie language of hers before, but now she's yelling in Aux, her voice echoing as the Prips try to haul her down into one of those pits. And what's she's screaming is: “Run! You have to run! These men are liars! They have brought you here to kill you!”