Galdoni (17 page)

I walked through the trees behind the house,
grateful for the darkness of a new moon. I had left my coat at the
house, a careless move, but I doubted anyone was out and it was too
dark to see clearly anyway. I found a clearing and took to the
sky.

The wind filled my wings as though the sky
had missed me as much as I had missed flying. It felt so good to
feel the air through my feathers. I beat down hard until I flew so
high the cold breeze ran a chill down my spine. Lights dotted the
houses below, warm windows where families slept unshaken by the
hypocrisy of their callous world.

The judgment was harsh because I was
entangled in the human world more than a Galdoni was supposed to
be. I wanted to be a part of it so badly, but I kept seeing AR527’s
face, still and cold as the high night sky. As good as it felt to
fly, I couldn’t chase away the foreboding in the back of my mind. I
knew I had to make it stop somehow.

I pushed away all thought and flew as hard
and as fast as I could. The wind rushed past my face, stealing my
breath as the crispness brought tears to my eyes. My wings ached to
fly faster and I obeyed. I dove and rose with the swells, circled
buildings and followed winding roads until I flew above checkered
farms and sleepy cattle. The scent of fresh-cut hay tickled my
nose.

I flew low enough to run my fingers along
sheaths of wheat, soft and ready for harvest. I followed the ditch
that watered the fields to the river that fed it. A few ducks and
drowsy killdeer started at my appearance, but I was gone before
they could make a sound. A beat of my wings brought me above a
quiet town of scattered houses and a lone church. I circled the
church once, questions crowding my head. I shoved them deep inside
and flew away into the night.

I kept telling myself that Brie, Jayce, and
Nikko would be better off if I didn’t return, that my presence
brought them danger and I didn’t want to hurt them. But Brie’s
voice was constantly in the back of my mind, her words a whisper
above my dark thoughts. I heard her say ‘I love you’ so many times
I almost let myself believe that it was okay, that I wasn’t a
monster, that loving me wouldn’t turn her into a monster, too. I
almost believed it.

Regardless of my intentions, I recognized
the buildings as the wind brought me back. I barely glided, my
wings heavy with the unaccustomed strain. They ached when I finally
landed in the small forest, but it was a good ache and my body
relished the feeling. I felt more alive than I ever had before, and
more torn by my two battling lives. It seemed that everything in my
life was a battle somehow.

All thoughts fell away when I stepped
through the trees and saw Brie asleep on Nikko’s back porch, a
blanket slid halfway off her shoulders and a flashlight lying dim
with low batteries next to her foot. Starlight played across her
face like tiny fairies soothing her with their soft songs of
midnight. Her hair, pulled from its braid, fell across her cheek,
the brown strands turned to gold by the faint light that spilled
through the window behind her.

At that moment, I didn’t want to go back to
the Academy so badly my chest ached.

I walked quietly up the steps and eased down
next to her. I opened my wings, grateful for the cover of night,
and pulled her close. Brie leaned on my shoulder for a few minutes
and I listened to her breathing change as she awoke. It reminded me
of when I first met her and a smile touched my face.

“
Kale?” Her voice was
quiet, disbelieving. She turned her face to look up at me and I saw
the tear tracks on her cheeks. “Kale? I came here to talk to you
and you were gone. I was afraid you wouldn’t come back.”

My heart constricted and I held my breath,
afraid of the feelings my heart already gave away. “I had to come
back,” I finally forced myself to say.

The tears in her eyes caught the starlight.
“Because of me?”

I shook my head. “Because I have a test
tomorrow.” Her brow furrowed and I smiled. “Of course, because of
you.” She laughed and slapped my shoulder; I pulled her close. She
rested her head on my chest and I imagined that she could hear the
way my heart skipped a beat just from being so close to her. “Brie,
I-I don’t want to hurt you.”

“
Then say you’ll
stay.”

“
You know I can’t do that,”
I replied quietly, even though I wanted to say the words she asked
to hear so intensely they almost came out instead.

“
I know,” she said after a
few moments, her voice muffled against my shirt.

I drew my wings in closer around us. “Brie.”
She looked up at the sound of my voice. I forced the truth past my
trembling heart. “Brie, I love you. I love you so much it scares
me.” Saying the words made a fear I had never experienced before
grab ahold of my heart like a clawed demon; it was the fear of
losing something I loved.

Brie must have seen it in my face, because
she held me tight as though she would never let me go. “I love you,
too. Just promise me that if we can find a way to stop it, you
won’t go back to the Academy.”

I rested my chin on the top of her head. Her
scent filled my senses. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“I promise,” I breathed into her hair. She held me tighter and I
closed my wings around us.

The silence, so perfect that I barely dared
to breathe for fear of breaking the spell that held us together,
finally drifted away when Brie sat up. She leaned against me, her
brow furrowed. “Tell me something about when you were younger.”

“
There aren’t many pleasant
memories,” I replied carefully.

“
Tell me anything. I feel
like you had to go through it all by yourself. I want to know what
you went through.”

I searched my mind for something that wasn’t
too dark or violent. One memory came to the forefront and I
hesitated. “Well, there is one.”

She nodded encouragingly. “Go on.”

I closed my eyes and saw the papers piled
untidily on a desk. They were covered front to back in a hurried,
tight penmanship, lines scratched out and tiny sketches drawn where
words failed.

“
Roommates were rotated on
a weekly basis so that we didn’t become more than acquaintances
with any other Galdoni. But one particular roommate, SR587, and I,
somehow skipped the rotation and stayed together for a couple of
weeks.” I could see him sitting hunched in the corner of his pallet
with a pad of paper on one knee as he squinted in the faint
light.

“
I’d never met anyone like
him. He didn’t talk much, which was fine because I didn’t either.
But he continuously paced around our tiny room like he was going to
explode. Then he would rush to the bed, grab his pen, and write
like mad until the next training session. Of course, he always hid
everything under his mattress in case the guard showed up for a
room check.”

“
What did he
write?”

“
Poetry.”

“
Poetry!” The surprise on
Brie’s face reflected how I had felt the first time I took a chance
and read one of SR’s poems.

“
He started to confide in
me,” I remembered. “He said that the poetry filled his thoughts to
the point that if he didn’t write it down, he couldn’t think
anymore. He had a book of poems one of the teachers had snuck him
and he hid it like it was gold.”

The well-leafed pages were soft with use,
the lines faded with the number of times he had run his fingers
over them in the faint light. I could see the dog-eared corners and
creased leather binding, its worn gold title and acknowledgment of
authors barely discernible on the cover and spine.

“
What happened to him?” she
asked quietly.

“
One day I came back to
find the room in shambles. The bed was overturned and pages were
everywhere. I never saw him again.” I toyed with a string that hung
from the sleeve of my shirt. “It felt wrong to leave the pages like
that, so I picked them up and sat them on the desk. I stared at
them for the longest time, sure someone would come and take them
away. But it felt wrong that they would be destroyed and no one
would know what he wrote.”

“
So you read
them?”

I nodded. “I memorized as many as I could.
The guards came sooner than I expected and I sat on my bed and
pretended like I couldn’t have cared less when they put the pages
in a garbage can and burned them in the middle of the Arena for all
the Galdoni to see.” The memory brought back a faint whiff of
burning paper and dreams.

She looked up at me. “Do you remember any of
them.”

I nodded. I quietly recited my favorite
one.

“
In its haunted hollow my
heart screams softly,

Give me voice and I will tear this
world;

But I dare not because the world is already
torn.

In a fit of silence my hands plead,

Give me a weapon and I will be break you
free;

But I dare not because the world is not my
home.

In the prison cell my wings call my
name,

Open me and I will give you flight;

But I would not because I have no
dreams.

In its quiet slumber my spirit whispers,

Hear my words and I will give you peace;

But I could not because I have no soul.

In the Arena grand the sword beckons me,

Your life is mine and I will take what you
owe;

But I prevail, because as nothing I cannot
die.”

Brie sat in silence for a few minutes. “How
old were you when he was taken away?” she asked softly.

“
Not sure. We didn't really
keep track of our ages at the Academy, but it was before my first
kill.”

She shook her head and leaned back against
me. A slight breeze stirred her hair and I raised my wings to
shield us from the night.

She tucked her head under my chin and I felt
her breathing slow as she fell to sleep. I was about to nod off as
well when she whispered, “You promised.”

“
I know,” I replied
softly.

Chapter Twelve

I found Nikko the next day at the kitchen
table before sunup. “What are you doing?”
He glanced at me sheepishly. “Looking for a way out.” He turned the
computer and I saw the Arena from one of the inside cameras. It
looked forlorn and empty in the low light.

“
Whoa. How’d you get
that?”

“
I breeched their security
site; a couple tricks I picked up from a friend.”

I watched as he switched from one camera to
the next. It took us in an entire three hundred and sixty degree
view of the Arena. “Guess they didn’t want to miss a good
shot.”

“
Guess not.” He ran a hand
through his hair and blew out a breath. “The problem is, I can’t
find a way out. I’ve studied every view and that place is
tight.”

I glanced at him and saw the circles under
his eyes. “How long have you been doing this?”

He gave a tired smile. “Since
yesterday.”

I stared at him in surprise. “Through the
night?”

He nodded as he tabbed through the screens
again, faster this time. “But there’s no point. Everywhere I look
there’re bars, electrified walls, laser security- it’s tighter than
the White House.”

“
Afraid to let their lab
pets get back into society.”

He turned to see if I was joking, and gave a
weary laugh when he saw I was. But his smile quickly vanished.
“Kale, I don’t see a way out. We have to stop this before you get
back there.”

“
We’ll find a way,” I
reassured him, touched by the urgency in his voice. “There’s got to
be a way.” I turned back to the screen before he could see the
doubt on my face.

“
Kale?” He waited until I
looked at him. “It’s wrong, you know?”

I nodded, but his brows drew together in
frustration.

“
No, I mean, it’s really
wrong. My father’s a doctor, and he’s taken an oath to do no harm.
Yet here are other doctors of medicine creating life in order for
it to be destroyed for entertainment?” He shook his head. “If
that’s not an example of doing harm, I don’t know what is.” He
rubbed his eyes in agitation.

I put a hand on his shoulder. “Nikko, you’re
not responsible for this, and neither is ninety-nine percent of the
rest of the world. You didn’t create it, and the people who
actually watch this stuff probably don’t stop to think about what’s
really happening.” At least, I hoped that was the case.

Nikko shook his head. “They know deep down
that it’s wrong. They must. I hope that they have a conscience that
tells them watching somebody die for their entertainment is wrong;
otherwise, I’ve completely lost faith in humanity.”

I gave a small smile. “You know, when I
first learned from Brie that the Arena battles were aired for
gambling, it destroyed my vision of what life was like outside the
Arena.” I gestured at Nikko’s house. “But being here and living a
real life of my own with friends and,” I hesitated, then said,
“Love. It’s like nothing I could ever have imagined.”

Nikko smiled and put a hand on my shoulder.
“It’s good to have you here. There’s got to be a way so you don’t
have to go back to the Academy.”

I shrugged. “Regardless of what happens,
this has been worth a lifetime behind those walls.”

Nikko turned back to the computer, his brow
creased with determination. “I’d rather give you a lifetime in
front of them instead.”

After school, Jayce joined us with his own
computer. Nikko helped him hack into the Academy security system,
and he was able to single out cameras in the individual cells.