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“What’s your point?”

“That
the same thing probably happened . . . or is
still happening to her implant. It keeps malfunctioning, and maybe
the same thing that stuffed up her watch is causing that
malfunction.”

Carson
stared past Alicia at the city stretching out behind her. It should
have been a distracting sight. He could have forced his attention
to focus on the smooth, clean lines of the buildings stretching
high into the night sky. He could have turned his head up to stare
at the sleek, shooting shapes of ships zooming far
above.

But he
didn’t.

Instead, he let her words settle in.

She
was right; it did make sense.

“We
can’t just stand here on the street while you think about this,”
Alicia twitched her head in the direction of the
Academy.

“Yeah,
I know that,” he noted in the most patient voice he could manage,
considering the circumstances, “but, not to be rude,” he began,
about to say something very rude indeed.

“But
what? You want to know why I suddenly care about my flat mate, is
that it?”

Carson
nodded. “Yeah. Granted, I don’t really know you, but you don’t
strike me . . . ,” he trailed off. There was no
polite way to put this.

Nida
was nice. Alicia wasn’t. End of story.

Alicia
raised an eyebrow slowly. It was more of a twitch actually. A
challenging one. “What?”

“You
appear to come from different ends of the social spectrum,” he gave
a quiet cough.

“Yeah,
so do you; what the hell is your point? I’ll grant you, I don’t
really have much time for her. And, to be honest, I used to think
she was nothing more than a ditz. It was a mild embarrassment to be
sharing an apartment with the worst recruit in 1000 years. But hey,
she almost died a couple of days ago, and that had the odd effect
of forcing me to realise I was being a total bitch. She’s quiet,
she’s understanding, she keeps the apartment clean, she doesn’t
argue, and she hasn’t once stitched me up or ditched me, which
can’t be said for any of my so-called friends.”

He
didn’t interrupt Alicia’s tirade, and when it was over, he pressed
his lips together and shrugged his shoulders.

“What,
that’s it? This is the sum total of Carson Blake’s emotional depth?
I just admit to you I’m feeling guilty about how I’ve treated my
flat mate, and you stand there mutely and shrug your bear
shoulders?”

Alicia
was speaking too fast. Her lips practically jerked around her words
in her efforts to cram everything out as quickly as she could. Her
cheeks were blotchy too, and she kept on balling her hand into a
fist and tapping it against her stomach.

Which
made sense. She’d just seen her flat mate almost die. She’d just
helped Nida run from the club, and then Alicia had watched—unable
to do anything—as Nida had faded into unconsciousness.

A
tight, cold blast of a shiver shot across his shoulders, forcing
him to tuck his arms in and his head down.

If
Alicia was stressed and shocked, he wasn’t doing any
better.

All he
could do was tap his open palm against his thigh, remembering how
tightly he’d held onto that TI pole, but how it hadn’t mattered in
the end. It had slipped from his grip as if he’d possessed little
more strength than a child.

“We
should just drop this and hurry up. Travis is right; she’ll want
someone there when she wakes up,” Alicia started marching
forward.

Carson
jogged to catch up.

Alicia
was right, but she was also wrong. As hard as they were both
trying, neither of them were really Nida’s friends.

She’d
want her family. He didn’t, however, have the authority to call
them in; that decision would rest with the Academy Board. If there
were something radically wrong with her implant, they would want to
keep all news of it under wraps for now.

He
could call Cadet J’Etem though. So he did. Pulling back a little
from Alicia, he sent a quick message to the Cadet.

Then
he hurried forward.

He
might not have known Cadet Nida Harper for all that long, but he
was determined to find out all he could about what was happening to
her.

Determination, however, would not be enough.

Cadet
Nida Harper

She
woke up. Slowly.

It
took a long, agonising time to open her eyes, let alone
differentiate the sounds and feelings swirling through her
blackened consciousness.

In
fact, the first sensation to resolve was a deep, powerful tingling
right in the centre of her chest.

With
all the energy she could muster, she brought up a hand to touch
it.

“She’s
awake; registering conscious activity, but it’s still pretty low,”
a woman said from her side.

Nida
tried to open her eyes, but the effort almost sent her back to
sleep.

She
groaned. At least that she could manage.

She
felt like hell. No, worse than hell—she felt as though she’d been
plunged into some gut-wrenching realm of pain and agony from whence
there was no return.

“I
don’t like those readings,” someone snapped from her other side,
“get one of the technicians in here. This field needs to be
strengthened.”

. . . .

Field
needs to be strengthened? Readings? Where was she, and what was
happening?

She
rallied to open her eyes again, but gave up with another
groan.

“We
need to move fast to secure that thing before it sets off another
one of those pulses,” the woman spoke again.

Suddenly a blast of tingles surged in her chest, and Nida
sucked in a gasp.

“It’s
ramping up again. Where the hell are those technicians? We need
that field doubled, now.”

The
tingles in her chest kept building and building, pouring into a
single point.

She
tried to clutch a hand to it, but she couldn’t lift her
arms.

“Come
on, come on, come on,” someone snapped.

With a
twitch that travelled violently through her shoulders, back, and
arms, she screamed. But her voice was far off, distant, and no
longer sounded like her own.

In
fact, with a wash of detachment, the tingles raking over her skin
began to fade as she fell back into unconsciousness.

It was
the most welcome sensation she’d ever felt.

Then,
almost immediately, the dreams began.

She
walked through the halls of the Academy, forcing the walls to
buckle with a single outstretched hand. Then she made it to the
grass. It withered and died under her feet. Then, with a glance up
to the sky, the ships high above stopped, shuddered, and fell to
the ground in burning chunks of metal.

It was
horrible. Terrible.

Flash
after flash of destruction.

Yet
eventually it stopped, and she was back on the planet.

She
stared at the dust below her. She leaned down, picked some up, and
let it trickle between her fingers.

She
watched as the wind caught it and blew it away, the fine particles
tumbling into the distance until she could see them no
more.

She
looked up, tears filling her eyes, misting her vision as she stared
at the stars above.

One by
one, they blinked out.

Twinkle by twinkle, they flickered off like dying
fireflies.

With
every star that disappeared, she twitched. Her body rocked back and
forth as if she’d been shot.

Then
it started.

She
felt that by-now familiar sensation.

An
energy building in her left hand and shooting through her arm and
up into her chest.

She
barely had time to gasp before the dust by her feet kicked up into
the air as if caught by the strongest of gales.

Then
it pushed towards her, swarming down towards her chest.

She
screamed, swatting at it.

Then
she saw through it. To the world around her.

Gradually everything lifted into the air.

From
the barren rocks to the destroyed buildings. They floated up from
the ground, then hung in the air for several amazing
seconds.

They
did not stay there though. With a crack like a world being broken
in half, they shot towards her. All of them. Every rock, every
crumbled-down ruin, every pile and heap of dust. All of it. It all
shot towards her.

She
backed away, but there was nowhere to go. In every direction, dust
and rock and debris swirled.

With
one last scream, she stumbled to her knees. In a flash, she saw the
sky above.

The
lights of the stars were back.

But
there was something wrong.

They
were bigger, and growing bigger at an alarming pace until, with a
violent shudder that felt like it snapped every bone in her body,
she realised what was happening.

The
stars in the sky, the planets, the constellations, all were drawn
towards her.

The
night was dark, lit only by the incredible colour of the stars cape
above. But with every nanosecond that passed, that light grew and
grew.

The
swirling dust and stone cascaded around her, but did not touch her.
It merely twisted and span around her body, less than a few
centimetres from her face, chest, torso, and legs. But it left
enough of a gap for her to stare at the night sky.

The
stars kept getting closer.

She
could feel their heat. She could see the trails of light they left
streaking through the black sky.

Second
by second they neared, and second by second the debris slashing
around in front of her closed in too, until she could see nothing
but the tightly packed stones and dust.

She
fell to her knees and waited for the sky to fall and the world to
crush her.

Carson
Blake

No one
had any idea what was happening.

Not
the doctors, not the technicians, not the specialists being brought
in from the TI research facility. No one.

And
that included him.

He was
still at the hospital, for all the good it would do him. He wasn’t
allowed to see her—he didn’t have the clearance.

He’d
been right about one thing, at least—the Academy was keeping this
under wraps. Nida’s parents most certainly had not been called, and
though he’d told Cadet J’Etem to get to the hospital, she’d been
turned away.

His
rank provided him with the authority to be in the building, but
that was it.

Even
Alicia had been turned away, something she had reasonably been none
too pleased about.

Now he
sat there, for the second time that night, staring at the same damn
sparsely decorated waiting room.

With
his arms crossed and his body stiff, he leant against the wall.
Occasionally he tried to close his eyes and think, but nothing made
sense. No matter how he tried to analyse events, he could see no
reason, no pattern, no clue.

With a
heavy, almost hopeless sigh, he pushed up from the wall, did a
short tour around the room, then rested back against the same
spot.

There
was nothing to do but wait. Though multiple people had suggested he
simply go home, he couldn't.

He
wanted to be right here. Even if he couldn't see her and apparently
didn't have the authority to find out what was going on, he
couldn't walk away.

At one
point, he'd gotten the bright idea of calling Cadet Lai back to ask
about Nida's watch, but Lai hadn't answered. A senior technician
had, and the woman had promptly informed Carson that this matter
was no longer his concern.

The
Academy had found out about Nida's watch, clearly, and was treating
it with as much secrecy as everything else.

Though
Carson knew there was objectively little he could do whilst
standing in this terribly drab room, it would take an admiral to
pull him away.

He
would happily stand here assessing the situation from every
conceivable angle until it finally made sense. Yet he didn’t get
the chance. For, several minutes later, the door opened, and low
and behold, an admiral did walk in. Admiral Lara Forest, to be
precise.

It
took Carson entirely too long to straighten up, snap a salute, and
greet the Admiral.

Forest
marched in, her hands clasped tightly behind her back. Her usually
stern expression was even stonier than usual, and Carson fancied
that if she scrunched her lips any tighter closed she would shatter
her teeth and jaw.

“Admiral,” Carson nodded low.

Forest
did not return the nod. “What are you doing here? Go home,” she
commanded with a grumble.