Chapter Ten
Cara made several key discoveries over the next week, mostly involving her brother. She learned the reason he loved those nasty cabbage-flavored protein packets was because they reminded him of sauerkraut, which he’d grown fond of during a brief assignment in Germany. During a game of truth or dare, Troy confided that a servicewoman called Melanie Maloney had broken his heart, and that he’d lost his best friend in an ambush two years ago. He showed Cara the scar on his left calf from a friendly fire incident he’d never told Mom and Dad about, and he confessed to watching The Muppet Christmas Carol when he was homesick during basic training.
It was like Troy had this whole other life, and she’d never known him until now. Cara spent every spare minute glued to her brother’s side. She’d even convinced Elle to let Troy bunk with them for his last week on L’eihr. His snoring kept them awake, but Cara didn’t mind. Who needed sleep?
At that moment, he slept flat on his back with one arm hugging a pillow against his chest and the other arm resting beneath his head where the pillow belonged. His metal dog tags hung over his cot and stirred with the breeze from the open window, creating a light tinkle.
God, she was going to miss him.
Cara tried reminding herself that she could go home to visit every year, but twelve months seemed like forever with multiple galaxies stretched between them. She wished they could get back all the time they’d wasted on Earth, holed up in their bedrooms watching Internet videos or texting friends who hadn’t lasted beyond the school year.
The room alarm interrupted her moping in three long, buzzing bursts that rattled her teeth and vibrated the furniture. Cara flipped back the covers and stood, then tugged Elle’s arm. The alarm wouldn’t stop until they’d both scanned their nano-chips and reported awake. Troy didn’t have a chip, so he grumbled a curse and stayed beneath his blankets, scratching himself like a typical guy.
Elle thrust her wrist beneath the scanner affixed near the door, and in response, the system replied in L’eihr, “Elyx’a of the first Aegis, you have no notifications.”
Cara followed suit, expecting to hear the same message in English. “Cah-ra Sweeney,” the computer said, “return after your morning meal and await further instructions.”
Cara made it halfway back to her bunk before she absorbed the message. “Wait. What?” She’d never had a notification before. She turned to Elle, who didn’t appear to understand it, either.
“That’s odd.” Elle pulled off her nightshirt without a care for the male in the room. “But I wouldn’t worry. It’s probably an administrative matter.”
“Maybe I’m getting a new com-sphere,” Cara said. Her transmissions were getting through to her parents and Aelyx, but she kept missing alerts, like the emergency assembly the headmaster had called last week. She’d reported the issue to the devices department, who in turn had promised to look into it.
“I hate to leave you alone, but I have to attend classes.” Elle unfastened her ponytail and ran a comb through her hair. “Troy, can you stay with her today?”
Troy pushed onto his elbows and glanced across the room, then went slack-jawed at the sight of Elle’s bare chest. “Holy God!” he shouted, blocking his view with one hand. “You could’ve warned me!”
Elle laughed and refastened her hair at the nape of her neck. “You humans are amusing. Such a prudish view of your own bodies.”
He peeked through his fingers. “Are you saying it wouldn’t bug you if I strutted around here buck naked?”
“Whoa.” Cara held up one finger. “It would bother me!”
“Go ahead.” Elle swept a permissive hand toward Troy’s cot. “Yours wouldn’t be the first male reproductive organ I’ve seen. They all look the same to me.”
Troy threw a pillow on his lap while trying not to ogle Elle’s boobs. “I’d better stay put for a few minutes.”
Gross. This was why siblings shouldn’t share a room. Cara gathered a towel and a clean uniform, deciding to make a run for the showers before she saw something that would scar her for life. But when she reached the communal washroom, she wished she’d stayed behind.
“Look,” Dahla said in flawless English, glancing at Cara from the enzyme mouth-washing station. “It’s our resident chimpanzee.”
Odom spat his enzyme rinse into the sink and jutted out his bottom lip, then made a weird growling noise in his misinterpretation of monkey chatter.
Refusing to let them intimidate her, Cara strode toward the shower. “Chimps don’t sound like that. And besides, you have just as much of their DNA as I do.” She glared at Dahla and flashed her best f-you grin. “Sister.”
The girl’s eyes turned to slits. In one massive step, she blocked Cara’s way until they stood toe-to-toe. “A handful of sacred mud doesn’t make us sisters. You’re an insect, and when the alliance fails, no one will even notice the extinction of your race.”
“Don’t you mean our race?” Cara asked sweetly. “You know, since your ancestors are from Earth.”
Dahla’s hands clenched, but Odom pulled her aside and communicated something in Silent Speech, probably a warning that the consequences of a fistfight weren’t worth it. The two gave her the L’eihr middle finger and stomped away.
When Cara had finished washing, she returned to her room, pleased to find Troy alone and fully clothed, lacing up his combat boots.
“I’m starved. You ready?” Troy patted his belly. “By the way, you missed a call from Mom. She said Tori’s going to sneak away tomorrow to talk to you.”
“Really?” Cara perked up as they made their way toward the cafeteria. It had been too long since she’d heard her best friend’s voice.
“Alex called, too,” Troy said with an eye roll. “I told him to get a life.”
“You’d better be joking.”
“Nope. When you didn’t answer your sphere, he tried mine.” Troy led the way inside the dining hall and grabbed a tray. “Total stalker.”
“You dillhole!” she hissed. “He’s worried about me because of what happened with the tablet.”
“Whatevs.” Troy dumped a ladleful of ground meat over his flatbread. “Just say the word and I’ll introduce you to a couple of my friends. They’re jackasses, but at least they’re not stalkers.”
Cara grabbed the ladle and positioned her plate near the steaming vat of meat. She hated t’ahinni, but her muscles would ache for protein once she joined Satan on the intermediate course in a few hours.
She’d just sat down opposite her brother when Dahla swooped in and lifted Cara’s plate from the table. “Thank you, sister,” she sneered, then took her ill-gotten breakfast to the table she shared with her friends.
“You gonna put up with that?” Troy asked.
Cara remembered all the times Aelyx had turned the other cheek during his portion of the exchange at Midtown High. She could be mature about this. “I like to think of it as being the bigger person.” But on her way to fetch another serving, she strode by Dahla’s table, licked her finger, and dipped it in the little thief’s t’ahinni.
Maturity was overrated.
After breakfast, she and Troy had just slid their plates into the sanitization chute when shouts drew their attention to the other side of the dining hall. Dahla had fallen to the floor in convulsions and lay on her side moaning in pain. She lurched, and the breakfast she’d stolen came back up.
Elle and her medic friends rushed to Dahla’s side and assessed her while someone called for help. Soon the kitchen supervisor came out to investigate, and Cara moved closer to see if the girl was okay. Dahla was a total jerk, but Cara hated to see anyone suffer.
After pricking Dahla’s finger with a handheld machine, Elle frowned at the screen. “She has poison in her blood, a neurotoxin from the h’urr blossom. She’ll be all right, but we’ll have to cleanse her system.”
Odom pointed at Cara and loudly announced, “The human put something in Dahla’s food. We all saw her.”
Cara froze.
Everyone at that table confirmed it, and without bothering to ask for Cara’s side of the story, the supervisor ordered her to report to the headmaster’s office. Her first instinct was to stay and defend herself, but Troy tugged her elbow.
“Come on,” he whispered. “You don’t want to be here if things go south.”
When Cara glanced around and noticed all the hostile glares, she understood. She was a scapegoat, and with emotions running high, it wouldn’t take much for her classmates to turn on her. Probably best to hang out with the headmaster and wait for tempers to cool.
They’d barely taken a dozen steps when Aisly intercepted them in the lobby.
“Where are you going?” Aisly asked, gesturing toward Cara’s room. “You’re supposed to report to your quarters so I can fetch you for our outing.”
“What outing?”
The girl grinned and leaned in as if sharing a secret. “Jaxen will be back momentarily with our shuttle. Then we have a surprise for you.” Her chrome eyes twinkled and she bounced on her toes, reminding Cara of a child eager to present a gift to her parents.
There was something odd about Aisly. On the outside, she resembled the other clones, maybe a few inches shorter than most of the girls. However, much like Jaxen, she seemed almost human, but with an icy edge that made her every bit L’eihr. Cara sensed another difference in the siblings, but the answer lingered just beyond her grasp, making her wonder for the hundredth time what gifts they possessed that had earned their positions in The Way.
“I can’t go. I’m in trouble,” Cara said. Or at least she thought she was. She kept forgetting that Jaxen and Aisly trumped the headmaster by about a thousand steps on the hierarchical ladder. “Maybe you can talk to the headmaster for me.”
“What did you do?” Aisly asked.
Cara explained everything, making sure to mention all the times Dahla had bullied her. “I didn’t put anything in her breakfast. As much as she hates me, I wouldn’t be surprised if she poisoned herself to make me look guilty. It’s easily cured, so she wasn’t risking anything.”
“I’d believe that,” Troy said.