Secondborn by Amy A. Bartol

Author:Amy A. Bartol [Bartol, Amy A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781477848357
Publisher: 47North
Published: 2017-07-31T21:00:00+00:00

I’m startled awake. The visual screen above my head is still on. Commentators discuss the deaths of several of the champions from the Fate of Seas, burned up in a fiery crash when an incendiary device ignited their ultra-light aircraft in the aviator challenge. A fist bangs on my door, and Hawthorne’s voice calls, “Roselle?” I scoot down to the panel and open the door outward. He gazes at me from the ladder.

“Hi.” He fakes a smile. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I just had a coronary. I thought you were Agent Crow.” I rub sleep from my eyes.

“He’s back at the Stone Forest Base,” Hawthorne says, a look of hatred in his eyes. “We’re in the air, en route to the Twilight Forest.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“You missed breakfast and lunch. It’s fourteen hundred.” He hands me a silver foil ration pack. “It’s turkey pasta—one of the better ones. You know you can come out now? We’re no longer on lockdown. Whatever was worrying them while we were docked at the Base has passed now that we’ve left. We were cleared for active duty.”

“You’re serious?”

He’s worried, but I’m relieved. It’ll be harder for Agent Crow to get to him. After Agnes, I don’t know how to protect him, beyond not telling him anything about the thousands of monikers hidden in my locker. He can’t be involved in that.

“Would you like to go for a run with me?” Hawthorne asks.

I nod, set aside the ration pack, and climb out of my capsule, meeting him on the catwalk. We head to the locker room, where I pick up a workout T-shirt and sweats from stacks of them. No one here is shy, I’m learning. Naked bodies, male and female, walk around for all the air-barracks to ogle. I take my clothes to a bathroom unit and change there.

When I come out, Hawthorne is leaning against my locker with his arms crossed. “Do you intend to do that every time you change your clothes?” he asks with an amused grin.

“Yeah. I do,” I reply. I kneel on one knee and secure the straps of my running boot.

“Why would you want to hide your body? Do you have an ugly mole or something?”

“Uh, no. No mole.”

“I can lend you some merits to get that thing removed, you know.”

“Hawthorne,” I say, my face reddening by the second. “You’ve been getting naked with these people since you were ten. I’ve never changed my clothes in front of anyone since I could change them by myself.”

“Your access feeds showed you training, your diet, your lessons, almost every aspect of your life, but they never showed us your room or anything like that.”

“That whole place—everything you saw—those were all my rooms. I had an entire wing of the Sword Palace to myself.” We exit the locker room and walk along a row of capsules to a heartwood. We step on facing each other. It takes us down to the lower floors.

He leans toward me. “What was that like?”

“It was lonely, Hawthorne.

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