Steel Lily ARC (11 page)

Without another word, he turned on his heel and left us standing at our door. Alice focused her attention on the door and her key, but I watched him walk away. Not thirty feet down the hall he stopped.

“And for the record, I said
‘Many fear their reputation, but few their conscience’
back there,” he said, not looking at us. In the low light of the candelabras I saw him brandish his own key card and jab it through the reader by the door. Before he disappeared into his room, he cast one long glance back to us. The shadows danced across his face, creating the illusion that he bore one massive bruise on his left side. I wondered if he felt that way inside, too.

Alice tugged at my hand. “Avery, come on,” she urged quietly. “I want to see our room.”

‘Room’ wasn’t exactly what I’d call the arrangement behind the door.

We stepped in and were at the top of a small staircase. It was on a much lesser scale than the entrance to the Academy, but designed the same. Swirling patterns were inlaid in the granite. A massive, full-length window sat at the other end of a spacious sitting room, and the moon cast a cool glow over the whole area. The flecks in the granite twinkled against the moonlight and made me feel as though I really were looking into a night sky. It gave me a sense of vertigo.

Alice took the steps two at a time and turned left into the open-area kitchen. Her hands ran along the grey marble island in the center of the kitchen, where a bowl of fresh fruit sat.

She grabbed an apple and waved it at me, her face alight with excitement. “They have
food
here, Avery!”

“We had food at home.” I gestured to my body. “We’re not skin and bones, by any means.”

There was nothing that could curb Alice’s excitement when she got going, so I left her in the kitchen to search for a bathroom. I walked through the living room that contained three large overstuffed couches. A butterfly-shaped coffee table was littered with books. I ran my fingers across the edges of the coffee table and examined the massive bolts that pinned the two panes of glass together with mahogany wood outside. Inside the wings were gears and ratchets, and they turned systematically with a
tick, tick, tick
. The body was solid wood and monogrammed with C.A., which I assumed stood for Chromelius Academy. No detail was spared.

A curved, carbon fiber archway housed a grand fireplace nearby, where coals clung to their final glowing embers. Red holographic letters flickered and scrolled across the mantle,
Don’t forget to snuff out the coals
, then went on to say,
Welcome to Chromelius Academy, Avery Pike.
They obviously hadn’t been planning on Alice.

My eyes roamed to the window that covered the expanse of the far wall. I walked over and pressed my palm against the cool glass — the Twin Cities were colder than my dome. The lights of the academy twinkled and glinted off the broken windows of buildings nearby, and the silence of the night was like a soft blanket over the area. The false moon hung high overhead in the sky and illuminated the lightly swaying grass. Was that a hologram, or truly grass? Probably the former; there was no place on earth that survived the damage of our own greed and vindictiveness.

My mind reeled from the day’s events. In the absence of noise, my thoughts seemed to scream out even louder. There were no people, no bustle of the seedy nightlife like Dome Four. No cries of hunger, of homeless people looking for a dry spot to avoid the damp humidity under an overhang.

The silence was deafening.

I turned, and two bookcases as big as the ones in the library lined the wall. There was a doorway in the middle and led to a hallway. I peeked through and saw additional doors on either side. I assumed those were our rooms.

There was a bathroom situated between the bedrooms, complete with a claw-footed bathtub and a huge shower with two showerheads. A mirror ran the length of the left side of the room with multiple sinks. In the far back corner were three wide stairs that led to a whirlpool, with a fireplace situated into the wall beside it. Huge brass vases filled with metal flowers sat on either side of the fireplace, and ivy wound around the sides of the whirlpool. A wrought-iron shelf sat beside the ostentatious display and held fluffy white towels. Seriously, who in the world needed this?
The governor probably didn’t even have this kind of a setup
, I thought to myself.

I left bathroom to find the room on the left now had light streaming out of the closet. Alice was already in there, poking and nosing around, murmuring to herself about good fortune. Personally, I kept thinking of our old home and how it was better, even though it technically wasn’t.

She jumped when I walked behind her in our massive walk-in closet. Brass pipes lined the ceiling and hummed with electricity.

“Ah! Avery, I didn’t hear you come in.” Alice waved her arms to the garments that lined the walls. A center island ran the length of the closet and held more shoes of different varieties than I’d ever seen. “Can you believe all of these clothes are
yours
? And look, it seems like Mr. Riggs took care to give you some things you’d actually like. See?” she pulled the arm of a green military jacket similar to mine away from the throngs of clothes, then turned to the shoes. “There must be five different colors of everything. I can’t wait to see what he gives me.”

She pulled out a pair of black pinstriped heels, complete with gold designs along the heel and toe. She gave me a guilty smile. “I know you won’t wear these. Would you mind if I took them?”

I nodded. Lack of sleep coupled with the overload of everything that had happened was finally catching up. I yawned and made a bigger deal out of it than needed. “Take whatever you want, Alice. You know what I’ll wear, and that’s next to nothing in here. Go wild.” I said while stretching. “I’m going to go find a bed and sleep.”

“I think there’s only one bed in here for now,” Alice said, not meeting my eye. She fingered the lace that lined the high-heeled shoes she’d become attached to. “Would you mind if we slept in the same bed tonight? It’ll be like home.”

The constant hum of hovercrafts patrolling the streets unnerved her back home. We had spent many evenings curled up in the same bed, reading and hoping to not be found before I snuck back to Wutherford.

How odd it would be to not have to worry about that tonight.

“Sure, sure, that’d be great,” I said, genuinely meaning it. “I need some company to get used to this place.”

“It’s something else, isn’t it?” she said in wonder as she took in the closet that was bigger than our living room at home.

I wasn’t sure if I liked the ‘else’ that this was, but I would try for Alice’s sake. “It’s something, that’s for sure.”

***

“Come on then, get up!” urged a voice in my ear.

I swatted at it like a fly. The voice squealed in annoyance. “Really, is that necessary? We gotta go. Breakfast is in twenty minutes!”

I reluctantly opened my eyes. The bed was softer than anything I could remember sleeping on. The cream coverlet was filled with down and more than warm enough for both Alice and me. It was a welcome change from the frayed and moth-eaten blankets Alice struggled to keep out of complete disrepair.

I reached beside me to push Alice, and realized she was gone.

My eyes flew open. Before me stood a girl I’d never seen before.

Her eyes were hazel and squinted as she blocked the sun from her eyes. Her strawberry blonde hair was cropped above the shoulders in chunky layers, save for a long, shocking pink braid that was tucked behind her right ear. A pair of light pink leather goggles held back wisps of stray hair.

“Welcome to the land of the living,” she said amiably. “I’m Sari. And no, not like the garment Hindu women wore when we still had multiple religions in the world.”

I pulled the covers up around my neck. “I don’t remember a time there were multiple religions in the world, let alone what people wore according to their customs.”

She shook her head, but the smile never left her heart-shaped face. I gave her a once-over and felt my mouth drop.

“What?” she asked, looking very amused. “Did I grow a second head?”

“No, it’s just you’re dressed…”

“Like you!” squealed Alice from behind her, making both Sari and I jump.

It was the truth; Sari wore a white t-shirt that showed her skinny midriff and bellybutton piercing. Suspenders held up her bulky black pants that had pockets all over them. Her hands were covered with fingerless leather gloves. Underneath the gloves a swirling tattoo wound its way up her arm and onto her bicep. I instantly liked her.

She extended a gloved hand and helped pull me out of bed. “Let’s get you showered and dressed, and we’ll head out. Sound good?”

I sighed as I headed to the shower. My feet prepared for the cold tiles that lined the shower floor, but instead I was greeted with warmth.
Heated tile floors
, I thought to myself.
How much more extravagant could Mr. Riggs possibly be?

I enjoyed the dual head shower against my will. Heat filled the room, fogging the floor-to-ceiling glass as I hummed tunelessly. A dozen bottles of soaps and shampoos sat at the ready in the little cubbies that were along the wall of the shower. I picked a bottle based on the propaganda on the label. It smelled of powder and lilac.

In our dome, there were two smells: clean and stinky. There was no time to spend on such vain conveniences like perfumes. Everything here was overwhelming.

Alice banged on the door before I could towel off completely. “Did you leave me any water?”

I strode past her with one towel wrapped around my body and another wrapped around my head. “Yep. And it’s hot water.”

Her voice went up three octaves and she bounced on the balls of her feet. “Oh, my God, seriously? This place is heaven on earth.”

That’s all it took for her to disappear into the fog-laden bathroom. I wondered if we’d have to send a search party in there for her later. It was possible that she’d prune herself to no return before she’d get out of something so novel as a hot shower, and that was before she found the perfumed soap.

The thought brought a smile to my face as I headed back to our room.

Sari managed to find me clothes that looked like what I’d wear…almost. These felt too new, too tight, too clean to really be mine. By the time I was dressed, Alice was out of the shower and giving me a pep talk on why these clothes were wonderful, and Sari seemed nice, so I went with it. I wiggled around to loosen them up as we walked down the dormitory hallway toward the atrium.

“So right now we’ll have breakfast with all the students,” Sari informed us as we walked, “Then we’ll have a bit of free time to spend reading, meditating, or whatever strikes your fancy.”

“What if I want to parachute off the Academy? Is there a place to sign up for that?” I said, trying to crack a joke.

Sari looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Why in the world would you want to do that?”

“Because she’s a nutter,” called a voice I’d recognize anywhere, much to my chagrin.

“Jaxon,” I said stiffly.

Sari laughed. “You call him Jaxon? Weird. We all call him Jax.”

“Like I said,” he replied with a wave of his hand, as though I’d proved a point, “she’s a nutter.”

I shook my head and kept following Sari. Jaxon fell in step with us. “Looking forward to some real food?”

Alice squeaked with excitement, but cut it off after I shot her a withering look. The last thing Jaxon needed was encouragement.

Jaxon laughed. “Oh, come on Pike, admit it, you like having me around.”

“I like having you around about as much as sitting in a tub full of rusty scissors.”

He winked. “Sticks and stones, love. Don’t you remember how it was in the schoolyard when you were young? The girl that claims that boys have cooties always ends up being the one that gives it up first.”

“If you mean gives up on diplomacy and hauls off and clocks the boy in question, then yes, you’d be correct.”

He rolled his eyes and opened his mouth with what promised to be another retort when an ear-splitting alarm began to sound. A booming voice echoed off the atrium walls. It was Mr. Riggs. “
A noncitizen of Dome Three has been sighted outside. I repeat, a noncitizen was sighted outside. Please return to your rooms until the threat has been eliminated.
”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Jaxon lamented, “today was french toast day.”

I glanced between Jaxon and Sari, who both looked suspiciously excited. “I take it we’re not going to breakfast?”

Jaxon shook his head. “Nope, we’re doing something more fun.”

“Which is?”

He acted like I’d asked the dumbest question ever. “Sneaking out the academy and finding the noncitizen, of course.”

Oh, of course. That made perfect sense. Go get ourselves killed after avoiding imprisonment in our own dome. Sounded like a great plan.

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

Jaxon grabbed my hand and held tight. An unfamiliar zing of electricity surged through me at his touch. I
liked
it. I glanced at Jaxon for a split second to find him looking at me with a curious expression. Did he like it, too?

As quickly as the thought surfaced, he squashed it by releasing his hold. I felt an inexplicable pang of loss. That moment we touched…it was unlike any touch I’d experienced before. I locked the feeling far in the back of my mind. It was
Jaxon
. Nothing about him was nice. Well, besides his looks, and the lilt of voice…I shook myself mentally.
Get a grip, Avery. The Academy is on lockdown and you’re panting after a guy you don’t even know.

He pointed at Sari. “Take Alice with you. I’ll take Avery. We’ll flank either side of the building.”

Sari nodded and pulled her gloves higher on her hands. She put a hand on the small of Alice’s back and whispered something in her ear. Alice looked like she was going to throw up.

“What are we flanking?” I asked, never looking away from Alice, whose knees were now shaking.

“The intruder, of course,” Jaxon said.

My mind immediately raced back to two nights ago when the Polatzi rained down on us. Panic settled in my stomach. “That’s not what Mr. Riggs said to do.”