The Seek (12 page)

‘We have a new team member,’ she said, quickly and flatly.

‘What do you mean?’ It was Reetor, the dark, quiet boy with the soulful eyes, who reminded her too much of Hendax — Hendax, who’d died in the same place she was about to take these boys. ‘We have a team. We don’t need anyone else.’

‘Wrong,’ Kyn said. ‘You need twelve.’

Reetor shook his head. ‘That’s not how it works. We — ’

‘That’s how it works now,’ Kyn snapped. ‘Everything is changing, Avengers,’ she said, knowing she had to find a way to prepare them for what she was about to do. ‘What are we, Avengers?’

The question reached into their collective consciousness and plucked out the correct response. The one that she had drilled into them for three months.

‘We are strong, we are adaptive, we are survivors,’ they yelled at her, their voices taking on a chant-like quality. She thought about the times she’d made them scream it as they were fighting, marching, freezing. It was closer to them than their own names; than their mothers’ faces. Carved into their brains in the heat of pain and combat.

She clucked her tongue. ‘You don’t sound it,’ she said quietly. ‘You sound like whiny babies.’

Eleven chairs scraped back as one; eleven young, strong bodies leapt to attention in front of her; eleven voices screamed it again, right into her face, their own faces full of conviction and fury. ‘We are strong, we are adaptive, we are survivors,’ they bellowed.

‘Good,’ she said quietly. ‘So sit down, survivors, and listen to me.’

They did as they were bid, their faces flushed and bodies still tense with adrenalin. She had connected them to their training — pain, sacrifice, persistence. They would listen properly now.

‘What does it mean to be adaptive?’

Reetor cleared his throat. ‘It means you shift what you do, depending on the circumstance,’ he said.

He was so clever, that one. In some other life, he would have been an academic. In this world he could have been an explorer, one of the best, in time, Kyn had no doubt. But instead he had been chosen. His long, strong body was as flexible and clever as his brain, and Avengers took precedence. They got the pick.

‘Yes it does,’ she said. ‘And we’ve been floating out here a long time now. Folks can get comfortable. Think because something has been a certain way a while, it’s gotta be that way forever. Well this shit don’t work like that.’ She paced in front of them. ‘What we need — what we need to survive — are the best. The best people, the best strategies, the best team.’

A few of them shuffled in their seats, and she could tell they were trying to see where this was going.

‘Being adaptive means sometimes you need a new plan,’ she said quietly. ‘We all know the Avenger code. The best. The best young men, right?’

They nodded.

‘Except you, Magister,’ Kendis said, his eyes shining at her.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Kyn knew where he was heading, but she wanted him to spell it out. Not from vanity. It had been a long time since Kyn’s ego had been her friend.

The boy flushed and stammered a little. ‘I meant the young men bit. The best, yes. But you’re not…a man.’

‘No shit, genius,’ the little redhead joker Rexas said. Then he stopped. ‘Are you trying to — ’

But Kyn cut him off at the pass. She held up a hand and pressed her fingertip to a small square beside her on the wall. The door to the cube opened and Mirren stepped in. She was in full Avenger red, as Kyn had dictated, and her sharp bob was tucked neatly behind her ears. She moved smoothly, no trace of nerves or anxiety, but no dimples on display either. She looked young, strong, and quite beautiful, even with the bruising around her eye. She came in and stood beside Kyn, her eyes trained precisely on the wall behind the class.

Rexas whistled slowly and Kyn stepped smartly over to his chair, tipped him out so he fell flat onto the floor, face-down, and stomped the heel of her hutanium boot into the back of his calf. She couldn’t damage him — she needed him fighting fit — but he squealed satisfyingly regardless.

Kyn placed a boot on the small of his back. ‘Do that again, Rexas,’ she said slowly. ‘And I will break your spine.’ She pushed down a little with her boot to ensure he understood that she could do it. ‘Are we clear?’

A muffled agreement came from the direction of the floor, but she didn’t remove her boot. ‘Anyone else care to share their opinion of an Avenger?’

Ten heads shook vigorously. She had fought all of them at various times, and while some of them had become good, none were in any doubt that she could — and would — take them apart if they crossed her.

‘Sixty-eighters,’ Kyn said slowly, releasing her boot from Rexas’ spine and moving back beside the girl. ‘This is Mirren; she’s your twelfth. You will treat her and protect her as your own.’

Ten sets of eyes glared mutinously at Kyn. Rexas was still groaning at her feet. ‘Yes Magister,’ they yelled as one.

But she was not convinced.

She sighed. ‘It really is extremely tiresome to have to do this,’ she said, in the tone of a schoolmarm berating her charges for chatting during class. She leaned across to the wall again and pressed her fingertip against another square, stepping back as she did. The space in front of the desks opened up to reveal a heliomat.

‘Kendis,’ she said, motioning to him. ‘Here.’ She motioned to her right side.

Kendis was at her side in a second. ‘Training kit,’ she said, pointing at both Mirren and Kendis. ‘And take your places.’ She pointed at the two red crosses marked on either side of the mat.

The two took their time disrobing, and Kyn sensed them trying to size each other up. In the tight black pants and stretchy singlets, their well-muscled forms were evident to all. Mirren’s fine white arms were heavily muscled, and Kyn wondered briefly why. What work had she and her family done before she was plucked from there to here, for this? Kyn had understood they were traders.

Mirren stood on the red cross first, her eyes levelled at a point on the opposite wall. Her eyes were a very intense blue under the purple bruise, and the singlet top showed off the swell of her large breasts. As Kendis took his place, she was sure his eyes flicked towards his opponent’s chest as well. Having fought her, Kyn knew he would be better off focusing on her arms and eyes — that was how she would take him down.

Ever since the incident with the Hydrentians, Kendis had been different. He still had that knowing sadness in his long-lashed green eyes, but he had shrugged off some of the veil of disinterest and superiority that had made him such an irritating little shit. Standing there like that, awaiting her order to go, she had a clear view of him. Not a tall boy — not much taller than Kyn — he nevertheless had some kind of impressive presence. Kyn thought again about the way he had called to mind a dancer on the day she had beaten him. She wondered how this fight would go, between these two agile young people, both with a certain grace.

The two eyed each other and the room seemed to hold its breath. A small frown creased Mirren’s brow as her eyes swept over him, and then back again. She was an observer, like Kyntura. She saw it too: the lightness in his stance, the coiled spring of his musculature. Mirren noticed things, and Kyn knew she would have noticed this.

For his part, Kendis shifted a little uneasily on his cross. Kyn didn’t doubt why. Mirren was intimidating. Beautiful, sure, and young and virile, and all the things that would turn a young man’s head. But there was a lethal quietness in her stance, and a direct courage in her stare that was even more intimidating.

Except Kendis didn’t look intimidated. He looked impressed. A frisson of something young and hot slid between the two Avengers as Kyn watched them size each other up. She almost groaned before turning to the class, who were watching her closely. ‘What do you think, sixty-eighters?’ she asked, her voice innocent. ‘Ice?’

Rexas, who was back in his seat and appeared to harbour no hard feelings about the beating she had dealt him, grinned. ‘Fire,’ he said, his face malevolent.

Kyn rolled her eyes at him. ‘Reetor?’ She prompted the clever, dark young man. He considered the two carefully. Kyn knew that he, along with Kendis, was an opinion-maker in the group. She needed him involved in this, engaged. She watched as he sized up the mat and the opponents. ‘Clagg,’ he said, and Kyn felt disproportionately proud of him. The evil mud was monstrous to fight in, but it also rewarded agility over strength. He wanted a fair fight. She would have kissed him, if she hadn’t already been making far too much of a habit of kissing young Avengers lately.

‘Clagg it is,’ she said neutrally, pressing the square carefully until the helio lit yellow then settled into dark green.

She stood at the edge of the mat, partway between the two Avengers, her two charges. She stood on the far side, so she could watch the class.

A subdued Rexas spoke, his voice a little breathy from the recent assault. ‘Permission to stand to observe, Magister?’

She nodded, and in a heartbeat the ten young men were gathered on the other side of the mat. She could feel them willing their champion on. She momentarily quailed, worrying for Mirren, then she steeled herself. The girl had been required to go through nothing that these boys had. She needed to be tested, by them, in front of them.

Kyn reached into her pocket and extracted a vientamite tube, glowing green with life-giving energy. She tossed it onto the mat carefully, and it rolled to dead-centre. ‘First to return the tube to me wins,’ she said, then she raised her hand and lowered it.

Kendis charged forward towards the prize, the Clagg sucking and dragging at his legs the moment he stepped onto it. But he was good. He kept his body mobile, and managed to move through it, even as the viscous muck pulled him in to his knees. Those old, sad eyes fixed on Mirren, but she didn’t move. She simply watched him for a few seconds.

Kyn was almost vibrating with impatience. It did not pay to underestimate Kendis, but as she watched the girl she realised this was not some tortoise-and-hare tomfoolery. The girl was observing him. And while she was not moving, and while he was fighting through the muck to the centre of the mat, her view was uninterrupted and her focus singular.

But Kendis was almost at the prize. He dragged his strong body through to the tube, and Kyn knew the combination of the effort of keeping his muscles moving against the force of the suction, and the effects of the slow poison that Clagg leeched into your skin, would have tired him badly, even after a short moment.

But still Mirren did not move.

Kyn watched the class; a few lips curling in disdain; a few prematurely triumphant smiles creeping onto their faces. It wasn’t hard to see what they were thinking.

And then, as Kendis reached down to grasp the tube, wrenching it from the Clagg, she sprang into action. The whole thing was so fast and so entirely surprising that it was hard to follow. Mirren’s feet seemed to dance across the muck before she vaulted into a single leap and landed on Kendis’ shoulders, forcing him further into the ooze.

Kyn had a horrible memory of that Hydrentian on the boy’s shoulders, so recently, but the thought evaporated just as quickly as she watched the action. Kendis had been caught by surprise, but he was a strong fighter. He grabbed Mirren’s hand as it closed on the tube held in his own and prised her middle finger backwards to make her release it. Kyn knew how painful the action would be, but Mirren responded quickly. She jabbed a brutal upper cut into the side of Kendis’ head with her spare hand, forcing him to release her finger.

Kendis spun wildly on the spot to try to shake the girl off, but his moment of inaction had seen him sink deeper into the Clagg and he didn’t have the freedom of movement he had the moment before. But he had strength. As the tube fell to the Clagg, he reached up with both arms and pulled at Mirren’s neck. She stood like an acrobat and vaulted off his shoulders before he could get purchase, landing in a light squat near the tube as ten voices groaned.

Kendis wasn’t done. He managed to extricate himself from the suck and drag, and propel himself forward as Mirren picked up the tube and made to vault the length of the mat to where Kyn was standing. His face was a dark mask as he advanced on her, blocking her trajectory to her Magister. Kyn watched as she weighed her options, before feinting to one side, then the other, faster and more together than the usually agile Kendis, whose grace had been slowed by the effects of the Clagg. The boy grabbed for her like a wounded bull charging wildly, but she sidestepped him and stepped lightly across the Clagg towards Kyn.

Not lightly enough. Her right foot sank deep into one of the treacherous uncertain pockets of the evil stuff, trapping her on the spot. And Kendis was upon her, twisting one arm up behind her back while he plucked the tube from her other. He carefully skirted her as she made for Kyn, but the girl was too fast. She shot out a surprisingly long arm and jabbed a finger deep into his diaphragm, forcing the breath from him and arresting his progress. The sharp, unexpected pain caused the tube to drop once again, and before Kyn could follow what and how it had happened, the two Avengers were rolling together on the Clagg, landing blows on each other’s bodies and faces in a vicious battle.

Finally, Mirren rolled on top of Kendis, one hand gripping an ear while the other landed a brutal punch on his jaw. Kendis grabbed for her hand as it drew back again and used it flip her onto her back. But she landed closer to the tube than he had expected and rolled swiftly to claim it.

Kendis reached out for her, but she was up and launching in a second. One forward roll and she was standing in front of Kyn — the tube held aloft, her eyes bright, her vanquished classmate reaching for her from the Clagg.

Kyn took the tube quietly from her hand. Mirren turned and extended a hand to the struggling Kendis, dragging him from the muck effortlessly. The boy stood panting before her, his shoulders rising and falling. But it was Mirren’s face that Kyn was watching.

How would she play it? How would he react? Her eyes briefly flicked to take in the faces of Kendis’ classmates, which were generally wide-eyed and close-mouthed.