“You need to leave,” he said. “Get away from the School. You cannot save the world if you worry yourself to death. Get a change of scenery, visit one of your friends. Take a break, Jace.”
Leaving the School seemed like a terrible plan. I needed to get back to the library and research this new threat. When I told that to Hahen, he scoffed and pushed me toward my dorm’s door.
“Get. Out.” He kept pushing. “It will do you a world of good.”
I finally relented and made a phone call before hitting the shower. He was right. It would be nice to get away from the School.
My plan was to hop a portal to Dallas, take Rachel to dinner, and catch up on how things were going with the hollows program. I’d only be gone for a few hours. Easy peasy.
The trouble began with the portal. Transit fees had gone up over the summer, and the attendant warned me the price would go up again in a few weeks, thanks to all the heretic activity. The PDF had to pay for security to guard the network, and that meant a lot of oboli burned on overtime.
I felt a pang of guilt when I heard my mother was making life even harder for everyone. As much as I wanted to deal with her, that wasn’t a problem I could fix on my own. My clan was working hard to shut my mother down, but it wouldn’t happen overnight. Until they gave me something concrete to work with, my hands were tied.
Not to mention that I had much bigger fish to fry. Dealing with my mother would have to wait until I’d finished the Flame’s quest.
After I touched down in Dallas, I hired a lifter to carry Rachel and me up to a swanky Italian restaurant in the overcity. For the first time in months, I relaxed and enjoyed myself. I splashed oboli around like water, offered lavish bribes for the best table, the best service, and to convince the waitstaff that, yes, we really were old enough to be served alcohol. We ate too much, had a little more wine than was wise, and were out enjoying a lazy walk through the warm summer night when Rachel asked to head back to the undercity.
“I want you to see the annex,” she said as we walked past the labor camps. “Try not to judge it by how it looks, okay? We’ve stretched our funding as far as it will go, and it’s still not enough.”
Rachel’s words stirred up memories from my childhood. The labor camp where my mom had raised me was a couple blocks over from the street Rachel and I were walking down. My old home was hidden behind enormous algae reclamation tanks that provided both sewage containment and the raw materials for the meals that laborers choked down twice a day. A whiff of the fumes off those bioreactors brought the ugly taste of reconstituted green bricks back to me. I swallowed hard, trying to dispel the horrible flavor.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not judging anyone.”
Rachel gave my hand a brief squeeze. Most people who saw us would never guess our real backgrounds. I, the dirt-poor kid from the labor farm, was decked out in fancy robes provided by the School of Swords and Serpents. Rachel came from the upper crust of Empyreal society but wore clothes in sync with the grungy undercity street style. It made it easy to forget, sometimes, who we really were.
“And here we are,” Rachel announced, her finger pointed at the place where she’d spent most of this past year.
The Dallas annex of the School of Swords and Serpents was an ugly brick rectangle crouched between an algae dispensary and a bookstore with boarded-up windows and a heavy padlock on its door. Someone had planted a simple wooden sign in front of the annex that read “SSS A1,” and someone else had knocked it flat. Metal mesh covered the annex’s windows, and alarm tape surrounded every point of entry.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected this place to look like, but I hadn’t anticipated a cross between a prison and a labor camp.
“Hey, Teach,” someone called from behind us.
Something about that voice raised the hairs on the back of my neck. My palm tingled as my instincts prepared to summon my fusion blade. I bit down on that reflex, though. If this was just a panhandler or a kid looking for some money, flashing my sword around was an excellent way to escalate things to a place I didn’t want to go. I took a breath, let it out, then turned to face a pair of goons crossing the street toward us.
“Oh great,” Rachel grumbled. “These guys again.”
Before I could ask Rachel what she meant, the burly gentlemen planted themselves in front of us, in our personal space.
Big mistake.
If they’d bracketed us between them, they might’ve had a chance. Too bad for them they weren’t that smart.
“You don’t want to do this,” I said, amplifying my voice with a jolt of jinsei.
The bigger of the two men looked confused that I’d been the one to speak first. He glanced toward his partner, who was eyeballing me, then shrugged.
“We’re here to talk to the lady,” the big guy said. “You should take a walk and come back when we’re through. We won’t be long.”
The remnant of the Eclipse core that had once lived inside me urged me to deal with these thugs, permanently. The call to sudden and final violence was attractive. Both of the men had adept-level cores, which was impressive for most people, but they were no threat to me. I could take them both out. I just wasn’t sure I could do it fast enough to keep Rachel safe. If I was too slow, she could end up hurt, maybe dead. I needed to get her out
