Chapter 24
1975 Words
24
Scout stood frozen for far too long, her brain trying to make connections but repeatedly fizzling out.
The woman was still wearing black. Her cloak had done that same familiar spiraling swoosh when she had turned away from Scout. But if she wasn’t one of Bo’s employees, what was she doing on the ship?
Who was she here to kill?
That thought burst the jam in Scout’s mind, and she broke into a run. She turned the corner around which the woman had disappeared, but there was no sign of her. Still, unless she had gone through one of the doors, there was only one other way she could have gone: all the way down that hall.
“Where are we going, Scout?” Warrior asked, jogging alongside her.
“Who was that woman, do you know?” Scout asked. Where did this hallway end? It seemed to go on forever in front of her.
“Her name is Shi Jian. She runs the school,” Warrior said.
“Of course she does,” Scout said, all but spitting the words out as she leaned forward, pushing for more speed. “Bo swore to me she wasn’t here.”
“He must have misunderstood you,” Warrior said.
Scout wanted to argue the point, but she needed the breath for running. She had done too much lying around of late. She already had a stitch digging into her side. And Shi Jian had more body modifications than even the galactic marshals Liam or Gertrude. The last time Scout and her friends had lost track of the woman in black, her only avenue of escape had been through the vacuum of space. If she could survive that, outrunning Scout would be no problem.
Scout could hear voices ahead of her, a sea of voices all overlapping. The corridor ended where it crossed another, larger hallway, one end plunging deeper into the labyrinth of long passages of closed doors, the other leading out to the bright light of the open heart of the ship.
“Which way did she go?” Scout asked, stopping at the cross corridor as much to catch her breath as to make a decision. She didn’t seriously think Warrior could answer—surely it was a fifty-fifty guess—but she did.
“At this hour she must be heading to afternoon classes,” Warrior said. “I have access to her schedule. She is in the multipurpose room.”
“How do I get there?” Scout asked.
“Follow me,” Warrior said, heading down the left-hand corridor towards the constant hum of voices. Scout pushed the hair out of her eyes—it was even longer now than before—and followed Warrior into the heart of the ship.
They were in an open plaza at one end of the park. It would be the perfect place for an open market, although at the moment it seemed to be about to host some sort of entertainment. People were gathering in groups, the groups coalescing and then drifting closer to a stage on the far side of the plaza. Lights were spinning lazily about the stage, but no one was on it yet.
Warrior skirted the edge of the crowd, running along the tree line at the edge of the park to the far side of the ship. Scout ran after, occasionally colliding with people Warrior had danced around without a problem and having to apologize before pressing on.
The AI Warrior could at least act like she remembered that one of them had a solid form.
She finally reached the far side of the plaza. The crowd was sparser here behind the stage. Warrior was waiting for her at the beginning of another wood-paneled corridor. Warrior put a finger to her lips and then led the way at a fast walk. Scout jogged after. She hoped she was being quiet enough; there was no way to calm her labored breathing without stopping.
Warrior stopped in front of a pair of double doors but then seemed to change her mind, heading instead further down the hall to a narrower door and waited for Scout to open it before continuing up a narrow staircase.
Scout kept forgetting that Warrior had limitations. She could show Scout where to go, but she couldn’t open doors. She could probably float through walls, but could she see things on the other side when the box that contained her programming was still with Scout?
She might have access to ship systems. Scout had so many questions, but now wasn’t the time to ask them. She ran up the stairs after the AI Warrior.
The stairs ended in another door, and beyond that door was a little balcony overlooking a large room. Warrior put her finger to her lips again, although with all the noise rising up from below, Scout doubted anyone could hear any sound she could possibly make.
Scout took the warning to heart, though, bending double and creeping up to the rail that marked the end of the balcony. She stayed low and close to the wall, hoping no one below had any reason to look up.
The room was full of kids. They all appeared to be between the ten- and fourteen-year ages that Warrior had said attended school on the ship, so these must be Bo Tajaki’s orphans.
But it wasn’t a classroom. The room had the same warm wood paneling as the rest of the ship; the lights were turned up quite a bit higher, and the wood floor was covered in rows of thick matting.
Definitely not any kind of classroom Scout had ever seen in her own school days.
The kids were running at each other, catching and throwing each other down to the ground. Some of the older kids were sparring with real knives, even throwing them at each other with deadly intent.
Even the smallest kid’s body hit the mat with a loud thoom. These kids were heavy for their size, just like the tween assassins she had faced off against back on Amatheon. She bet they bled the same oddly colored blood as well.
She leaned closer to the rail, trying to get a better look at the kids more beneath her. Some of the kids were boys, but the vast majority were girls. They had a range of skin tones and hair colors, although they all wore the same red training uniform. A few had brightly colored hair, the kind the counterculture kids among the Space Farers preferred. Others had their hair in the simple braids favored by Planet Dwellers.
Where had these orphans come from? Both places? Why? So they could pull off assassinations in both those places?
Scout crept back from the railing to the top of the stairs where Warrior still stood.
“Where is she?” Scout asked, the lowest of whispers. Warrior had always been able to hear her no matter how softly she spoke. Scout reckoned that was even more true for her AI version.
“She’ll come,” Warrior said. Scout flinched at the sound of her voice speaking as loudly as ever, but of course no one could hear her but Scout.
She would have to ask how that worked. Later, when there was time.
“Attention!” one of the older girls below yelled, and the sounds of tumbling and sparring immediately stopped. There was the patter of bare feet rushing over the mats. Scout crept back to the railing to see the kids standing at attention in neat rows.
Shi Jian was walking down the center of the room, her cloak billowing behind her. When she reached the front of the class, she spun around to glare at all of them. Not one among them flinched or met her eyes; they just kept staring stonily ahead.
Then she broke into a wide grin, and the tension broke, although not a single kid below moved a muscle.
“Who’s ready to train?” she asked. Every hand in the room shot up into the air. “Excellent,” she said. “Travers, Daniels, are you ready to show me nerve pinches?”
Two girls in the front said together, “Yes, sir!”
“Outstanding. Lee, Roman, are you prepared to test out of knife throwing?”
A boy and girl in the middle of the room also chorused, “yes, sir!”
“And the rest of you?” she went on. “Are you prepared for a spontaneous hunt-and-capture drill? To chase down and subdue a potential spy? An infiltrator who may try to pass as one of your own?”
“Yes, sir!” the entire room shouted, the echoes amplifying painfully around the top of the room where Scout crouched.
“Excellent,” Shi Jian said. “You have just such an opportunity today. There is an infiltrator among us even now. Lurking. Spying. The usual reward for whoever can catch her and bring her back to me.”
The kids broke their strict attention to start giving each other the side-eye, but Shi Jian laughed.
“Oh no, not actually one of you,” she said. “She might have been, in other circumstances, but I fear she’s woefully ruined for our uses now. Far too old. Who among you can spot her?”
Scout crept slowly back from the edge, but not before an entire classroom of eyes swiveled up to pin her down.
And then they were all moving. Most spilled out of the double doors at the back of the room, but others lunged for the balcony, leaping improbably high into the air to catch the bottom edge and pull themselves up and over the railing.
Scout scrambled back and got her feet under her, making a mad dash for the stairs.
Shi Jian’s laughter chased her all the way down the stairs and into the hallway below. The kids streaming out of the double doors quickly spotted her and gave chase.
Scout hadn’t quite recovered from her last bout of sprinting, but now she was at it again, darting down the first cross corridor she reached, then again and again.
She didn’t look back. The sounds of soft-soled shoes on the wood floors told her just as well as her eyes could that she had not lost her pursuers yet.
“Scout,” Warrior said, jogging beside her.
“Can you help me?” Scout asked through ragged breaths.
“Not in any direct way,” Warrior said. “Although some of them have implants and can see me.”
“Take me to Bo,” Scout said.
“The library,” Warrior told her, then jogged far enough ahead to show the way.
Scout suspected the kids behind her were enjoying the chase. They could put on a burst of speed to catch her at any moment but seemed to prefer to keep driving her on ahead.
They probably enjoyed the wheezing sound she was making. Or the black stars erupting in her vision.
Warrior took another right turn, and Scout caught the corner with her hand to spin herself around into the next corridor. She would swear nothing around her was familiar, but then Warrior ducked down a side passage, and she found herself running down the long, narrow staircase to the library below.
She reached the balcony to see the library thick with kids in red training uniforms. They were pouring out from between the stacks, lurking on the tops of the bookcases, swinging down from light fixtures far above.
Scout ignored them all, trying desperately to put on more speed as she slid down the banister to the main floor and ran down the center of the room to where Bo had his office nook.
She felt hands grasping at the trailing edges of her overshirt, catching it but letting it slide out through their fingers. They were taunting her.
She reached the far end of the rows of bookshelves and collapsed in front of the desk, falling to her knees with her hands on her thighs and taking slow, deep breaths until the black stopped trying to swallow her vision.
When she was finally certain she wasn’t going to faint, she pulled herself up to stand in front of the desk, although she still had to grasp the edge of it with both hands to keep from falling back down again. Then she took one more deep breath and opened her eyes.
Bo wasn’t there.
She whipped around to look at the AI. Warrior just looked confused.
“I think there is a glitch in my programming,” it started to say, but Scout couldn’t stay to hear the rest of it.
She had to get to her dogs.
- Writer
