To live or die at loreli.., p.11
To Live Or Die At Lorelight Academy, page 11
But he isn’t moving at all.
There are sweat stains under his shirt, and a cooking apron is falling infuriatingly past his shoulder.
Then the man moves.
Slowly, fractions of an inch at a time, he twists his spine and cranes his neck to look at me.
At the same time, my eyes fully adjust to the brightness, and I realize the colors of the motes around him are familiar.
Pink and orange, purple, blue, and white.
But mostly pink and orange.
The colors of sunset.
The colors of the Infection.
One strained eye turns enough to meet me. My heart skips and my finger involuntarily twitches near the trigger of the crossbow. It isn’t yellow and reflective, but I see the rim of the Infection around the iris.
The eye is strained and bloodshot, with red veins traveling all throughout as if he’s been awake all night
His arm is trembling.
He’s…stuck in place.
And I think it’s by his own choice.
It must be saving him. I don’t know how, but by moving as little as possible, he’s staving off the Infection.
Somehow.
For now.
“Who…are…you,” he says, moving his jaw as fractionally as possible.
“William Seong,” I say, stupidly. “I’m a new student.”
“Late.”
He doesn’t sound particularly angry about it. I notice the colors of his robe. Black, blue, and red, with stoles and stained glass where plate armor would go. A Scholar. A high-ranking one. Maybe even an Archscholar. Faculty, certainly.
The Baker is a professor.
“Late,” I repeat. “For better or worse,” I whisper.
He chuckles out a huff of air, and the particles of light around him twitch in response, as if honing in on his location.
“Russ. Nice to neet you, Nillian,” he says. The lack of jaw movement makes his voice flat and unaccented.
“What…status…campus?” Russ asks.
What is the status of the campus?
It’s fucked, as are the both of us, I’m afraid.
“It’s everywhere,” I say. I don’t know whether I mean the Infected people or the Infected buildings. “The crystals.”
“Right.”
He sighs, careful and controlled.
“There’s a…there’s a big horde of Infected students. Some attacked me. I think…I think they’re dead,” I tell him. “But the crystals are bringing them back to life. Keeping them moving.”
“I see,” he says. “Dead.”
“I had to…hurt some of them,” I say.
I don’t know why.
A burden I’ve been holding on to unraveling from my hands.
A small tear forms at the man’s eye.
“Dead,” he says again. “No hurt. Dead.”
It’s what I want to hear.
Need to hear.
But I can’t believe it.
I shake my head.
“They are dead. Trust,” he says. “Truss Russ.” And the barest smile twitches at his lips.
Truss Russ.
Then his one visible eye, strained with red veins, flicks downward, and I notice something I didn’t before.
There’s a…body on the floor of the kitchen, face down on the tile, wavy red hair sprawling out of a pale scalp.
I can’t see whether or not she’s got crystals growing from her. The light motes don’t reach this part of the kitchen. In fact…
Despite their semi-aimless wandering, the motes stop at an invisible wall halfway through the kitchen, with Russ inside their collision paths. Outside the invisible wall is the second half of the kitchen, including the doorway where I now stand.
The body lies on the floor between us, and even though her torso should be within the “Infected” half of the kitchen, it is protected by a clean bubble of air.
The random distribution of light motes makes the protective bubble all the more visible.
“Kitt,” Russ says, after meeting my gaze. “Sase…”
I frown.
“Trotected,” he tries again, still trying not to move his jaw.
Then I get it.
Safe.
Protected.
“Asleet.”
Asleep.
“Do you want me to drag her to this side of the kitchen?”
Relief spreads plain across Russ’s face.
“And then…” He pauses, and twists a fraction more. The motes respond to the movement like hunters.
“Cross dough…” he says.
Dough?
I look around the kitchen.
“Not dough,” he says, and the large man, despite having spent the last who knows how long forcing himself not to move, forcing himself to stay bent at the oven, is clearly trying not to laugh.
The laughter in his eyes is still there, slightly, but it fades a bit, and the professor glances down at my waist.
“Kitt sase, away. Den crossdow.”
Oh.
Crossbow.
“Crossdow…kill ne…forehead.”
I swallow.
I think I understand.
I can’t help but glance down at Kitt, on the ground.
Russ thinks I’ve misheard him.
“No!” he snaps, and the motes of dust in the air around him hone in on him, seeking him, zooming toward him until he stops moving again.
“Kill ne,” he says. “Kill ne, Russ. Not Kitt.”
“I understand,” I say, voice quiet. “Get her safe, and then…yeah.”
I put the poker and crossbow down, and get low to the ground, staying in the field of air clear of the motes. I make my way over to Kitt and drag her by the ankles out from the protective bubble on Russ’s side of the room, and onto the “safe” side of the kitchen.
If anywhere on Lorelight’s campus can be called “safe.”
The relief is clear on Russ’s face.
He closes his eyes, and I nearly leap back as Kitt stirs.
“Wh…” she says, holding her head.
She blinks.
“Farah,” Russ says.
His voice is clear, authoritative, and strong.
The girl takes a few moments to adjust, holding one hand over her forehead as if it hurts.
Crossdow…kill…forehead…
I swallow and shove the thought away.
“What’s going on?” she asks, and takes a step forward.
“Keep her still!” Russ commands, and the motes grow closer.
I wrestle Farah by the wrist and keep her in place.
“Ahh!” she blurts, and tries to stagger away. “Who are you?!”
“William Seong,” I say, helplessly.
My name will add tragically little water to the deep well of information the girl is lacking.
Russ decides to do some of the work there.
“Disaster,” the Scholar says, and something in the tone of his voice stiffens Kitt.
She seems to look him up and down for the first time.
“Pr—Russ?” she says. “Disaster?”
“Magical Infection. Many dead.”
He’s not afraid to talk normally now, even though the motes move just a little bit closer every time he moves his jaw to form the words.
Kitt swallows.
“For real?”
“Yes.”
“Wh…wh…”
She looks around the dark kitchen as if searching for answers. She finds none—there are none to find. Just motes of light, like…
Spores.
The thought occurs to me just before Russ says it.
“Spores.”
Kitt works her mouth silently.
“Crystals,” Russ says. “Sampson. Life. Air. Death sorcery. Others, don’t know which. Real piece of magic, here. He’s at Albright. I’d bet his research is, too.”
“Research?” she asks, looking around. “How about revenge?!” She balks. “You always knew Sampson was up to something! You always knew! You—”
Kitt doesn’t need to ask. She understands.
“Is it…reversible?” the young woman asks.
“Don’t know.”
“Has it spread beyond the campus?”
Russ pauses at this.
“The gates were closed shortly after I arrived,” I fill in, to the relief of both others in the room.
Trapping me in here.
I don’t quite share their relief, though the thought of whatever this is spreading isn’t a good one.
“It is…shockingly violent,” Russ says, meeting Kitt’s gaze with the single, stress-strained eye we can see. “Kills, and then transforms.”
“But are they…” Kitt starts to ask.
“Are they still people?” I interject again.
“No.”
I sag my shoulders, slightly.
“Nice to neet you, Illian,” Russ says. Then the Scholar smiles a little, and laughs.
“Kitt—” the big man says.
Then he turns to face us fully, rising from his slumping twisting position over the oven. He stretches, and joints pop and creak as he sighs with relief. He cracks his back and his neck.
“Ah, that feels so much better,” he says.
The motes are on him, attaching onto his skin.
“Farah, William here is a new student. Show him a warm welcome,” Russ says in a rich, comforting voice, smiling.
“Try to get out, if you can, Farah. You’ve got a future ahead of you. Anyone can see it. It doesn’t end here. I know it doesn’t. You too, William. Good luck, both of you.”
The voice is soothing.
Confident.
Strong.
Strong like bear.
I’d set this man up with Burta in a heartbeat.
Oh boy, would I.
I can imagine their life together.
Two giant people, being kind and strong like bear together deep into old age.
Except that won’t happen.
Because now that the Scholar is facing us, we can see the massive stretches of crystals sprouting along the left side of his body, encroaching on the left side of his face.
Maybe there’s hope for him. I don’t know.
I don’t know anything about magic.
This is just my first day.
“Welcome to Lorelight, William Seong,” Russ says. “Now, then. Forehead please. Forehead, before she realizes what I’m asking you to do.”
I pivot to the side.
“No!” Farah screams, but it’s too late.
I’ve been ready.
I’ve already lined up my forearm, and pointed Philip at Russ’s forehead.
I pull the trigger.
The bolt flies through the air, passing through the short ten feet of the kitchen.
Impossible to miss.
The bolt slams into Russ’s forehead.
The moment I pull the trigger he closes his eyes, ready to die at peace.
I think, no matter what, he did.
He did die in peace.
But the bolt wasn’t enough.
Farah screams.
Russ sways slightly, his eyes opening.
Not, not Russ swaying—not Russ opening his eyes.
The Infected creature that was once Russ opens yellow-reflective eyes that stare at us with a hungry, predatory ferocity.
He roars, an inhuman sound ripping from within him as crystals swarm and sprout at his neck. All night he was bent and twisted at that oven, focused on protecting himself and his student from the Infection that had already claimed him.
All night he staved it off.
And now, all at once, it catches up.
Like a porcupine growing all its spines at once, massive spikes sprout from Russ’s back, on the back of his head, and along the back of his legs. Like crooked teeth they poke and jut, including from his knuckles, uneven and crowded against the knucklebones.
I drop Philip and it swings against my hip where I’ve latched it for just the occasion.
I drop the fire poker, too. It’s not going to stand a chance against Scholar Russ.
Mitchell is up from my hip and in my hand in an instant, and I’m loading a bolt as the Infected Scholar charges his former student.
Paralyzed with fear, Farah Kitt can do little more than take a single step backward, dazed, amazed, and horrified as her former professor shows her just how true his words from earlier were.
“Are they still people?” I asked less than three minutes ago.
“No,” Russ said.
His arm swings for Farah’s head.
A twang fills the kitchen.
And a thunk.
Russ stiffens and sways. This time, the bolt has caught him in the eye.
He snarls, twitches.
And he doesn’t quite go down.
Shit.
“…Russ?” Farah asks, in a weak voice, her back to the kitchen wall.
I grab the fire poker from the floor, and sidestep to my right along the tile of the kitchen.
There’s a short counter that lips the wall.
With the poker in both hands I take one step up to the lip of a cabinet along that counter. My boot digs into the wooden knob handle. It’s about an inch and a half. Not very big. But enough to get a bit of foot grip.
I jump and kick off, gaining as much height as I can from the little counter knob. It’s just a few inches, but it’s enough to line up the middle prong of the fire poker with Russ’s temple.
The Scholar turns, bolt in forehead, bolt in eye, and waves his hand at me.
A gust of air blows me backward, slamming my back against the wall, sending my butt to the counter and knocking over a drying rack of dishes with the collision.
Pain erupts from my back.
Keep moving, keep moving!
I scramble for the crossbow once more, and find a bolt.
“Russ!” Kitt pleads, and the professor barrels toward her, crossing the kitchen.
She takes a step back, holding up her hands and wincing, cringing back, as Russ heaves a heavy arm back, ready for the crystalline claws on his already giant hand to rake and rend the girl to shreds.
Another twang.
Another thunk.
My heart stops.
My index finger is curled tightly around the hand-crossbow’s trigger. The bolt I loaded now extends from the back of Russ’s head. It almost lines up with the one sticking from the front of his forehead to form one rod connecting the front and back of his brain.
Russ collapses to the ground.
Not Russ, I tell myself, out of respect for the dead.
I didn’t know Russ for very long.
But boy, did I like him.
I bet a lot of people did.
And I knew Russ, and I know this Infection, well enough to know that…thing at the end wasn’t Russ.
He falls to the ground, and the crystals at his back, as they always seem to do, begin the process of becoming Concentrate, shrinking and turning their now familiar deep-purple color.
Farah sobs.
And now the motes are gone, leaving the kitchen considerably darker than it was before.
Chapter
Ten
After a few minutes of silence, I left Kitt to process things, and started getting to work solving my—our—survival-related problems.
After several back-and-forth trips, I’m finally rolling the last water barrel out of the kitchen stockroom, down the hallway, and into the lounge.
Kitt rises to hold the door open for me, but is otherwise silent.
I’ve salvaged what I can from the kitchen.
She offered to help, but the shock to her system is still a bit too much. I told her not to worry about it, and to take a few minutes while I gather everything we need in the lounge.
Everything we need.
A stupid concept.
I’ve salvaged everything I can get, everything that might possibly be useful, everything we can safely eat, safely drink, and safely use.
But the key word is “need.”
We need to escape, and nothing in the kitchen is going to help us do that.
Just live a little bit longer.
“Want a hand with that?” she asks softly.
My arms are tired and I’m struggling to lift the barrel.
“Nope,” I say with a grunt of exertion, pushing up with my knees. “Shit.”
The barrel rocks on its base and falls over, pumping water onto the floor of the lounge with a glug, glug, glug sound.
“Damn, sorry, I—”
Kitt rises to her feet gracefully and circles around the other side of the barrel.
“Sorry, I just, I’m—”
I start rambling, but she shakes her head.
“It’s fine. We’ve…we’ve got plenty of water,” she says in a low voice as she stares straight ahead into her own thoughts.
It’s true.
This is barrel number four.
We’d die eventually, but all things equal, we could spend a long, long time in this room.
Kitt is not adjusting well.
She isn’t adjusting horribly, but she isn’t taking it like I am, which is, admittedly, remarkably in stride.
I asked her a few of my questions about what exactly happened, but the last thing she remembered was a look of alarm on Russ’s face and a few screams from far away.
Then all went black, and she woke up to me standing over her in the kitchen and her favorite professor looking half-monstrous and delivering his short message to her.
The whole situation is almost unbelievable. But between seeing Russ transformed before her eyes and peering out of the lounge window to witness the horde and Infection outside for herself, she’s pretty much caught up.
She hasn’t seen the gates shut, I suppose.
That is an experience unique to me.
She doesn’t know we are “trap,” as Burta might say.
I don’t want to imagine Burta thinking about this situation. The sympathy and horror she’d feel for me is too heartbreaking.
I need her strength, instead.
So—Kitt intellectually understands that we’re trapped here.
But not the way I do.
She wasn’t lying on the grass, traumatized and shocked, watching the gates shut themselves before her very eyes.
Not like me.
But she’s trying to process.
Maybe that’s why she’s staring out into nothing and I’m rising to my feet to gather water barrel number five.
