CHAPTER 4 LEE
CHEERING ECHOED through the stairways, the timbres vibrating through the tips of his fingers, as Lee hastened down through the Heptagon the following morning.
The Gammas would be up soon. He’d have to head down to the Spectrum to take his place before long.
But first he had somewhere he needed to be.
Lee turned off the stairs when he reached the central skywalk, taking up a spot just inside the main hangar doors to wait.
A transport had arrived only this morning, unannounced. But he’d known, the moment he learned of it, what it was for. Or rather for whom.
He nodded towards the hangar manager who monitored the commercial ship. It should be any minute now.
“Lee.”
He looked up at the low, cloudy voice, the tone like rolling rain, as Levy stepped out from the skywalk.
“Hi,” he said. And for a second he just stared at her. The picture was all wrong. Her lavender hands hung by her side, muted beside the grey-weave of her hoodie and olive pants. She carried a single duffle under her arm, which, catching himself, Lee promptly offloaded from her.
“Figured you wouldn’t get much of a sendoff,” he said, tucking her bag under his arm. The duffle was light in his hands. His and Kat’s would probably be the same when they eventually left the Academy.
“I’m glad I ran into you, I didn’t have a chance to contact anyone. I had to turn in my hyperband last night,” she explained as he walked with her the short distance to the transport ship.
Lee didn’t ask about why she hadn’t messaged him any of the other nights.
He’d been doing the same thing, hadn’t he?
Outside of the health surveys and his due diligence as a squadron lead, he hadn’t contacted any of the squadron, either.
He was still getting his bearings with being back here at the Academy and accepting their circumstances for what they were.
“Do you have somewhere to go? Someone to meet you at the docks?” he asked instead, turning to the logistics.
“It’s all arranged,” Levy said, recognizing the crutch for what it was, a gentle smile tugging on her dark lips. But there was also another emotion layered in there. He couldn’t tell if it was more determination or acceptance of her resignation from the program, but he envied the finality of it.
“Four days, huh?” he asked, sensing the goodbye on the horizon and feeling the exhaustion from those days settling in.
“They must really want me gone.” Her joke fell flat, but her voice was steady, the ever-rolling summer rain. He hoped wherever she was headed she might get to enjoy some of that weather firsthand and enjoy her new lifestyle.
“You could still stay, you know,” he tried anyway, even knowing she’d already made up her mind.
But she shook her head, and he had to admire her for it. “I couldn’t.”
As he met her dark eyes one last time, he thought of so many things he wanted to say to her—pleas both for her to stay and for her to make him understand.
This was her future she was setting aside.
She would have made a brilliant raider. But those wishes and those wants didn’t belong to him.
Just as her future was not his to decide.
The dock workers finished loading their cargo onto the ramp, and with only the pilot left waiting to escort Levy onto the ship, it was time for her to go.
The three of them. That’s how she was making her bold departure.
Lee extended a hand out towards her, gripping her hand tightly with his. “Take care, Levy.”
She covered it with her own. He wished her the best, whatever was in store for her. They’d become friends, somehow, through the thicket and tangle of their messy relationship. And as much as she’d complicated things for him and Kat, he would miss her.
“Say goodbye to everyone for me, will you?” She smiled, the sparkle there behind her dark lashes. “And Lee?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t let her string you along forever.”
He cut her a sharp grin, not caring how many of those skittering sparks and heated looks from the past couple of days made it onto his face.
Oh, he didn’t plan to.
By the time Lee crossed into the stairways of the Heptagon again, another outbreak of cheering was cresting up from the levels below.
But instead of that energy thrumming in tune with his blood, it seemed to push against it, having the opposite effect. Every step was heavier than the last, and he found himself dreading the entire spectacle of the sport.
The dread had settled low in his gut by the time he reached the starboard doors to the Spectrum. It was time to face the music, whether he was ready or not.
As expected, the moment he stepped inside, the cheering hit him with a wall of sound, each fresh wave grating against a very raw resolve.
The darkened, starlit stands were packed, but he could pick her out from anywhere. Her long, vanilla-blonde ponytail bobbed from one of the top rows of benches, where she would have sidled in a manner she deemed unnoticeable. Except, Kat never went unnoticed.
“Hey,” he said, slipping up beside her. He held a finger to each of his ears, covering them as one of the remaining contenders in the arena tumbled down to the steamtrap below to more hurrahs. Only three Ultras now made their stand for victor, with the X-ray class waiting on deck, meters below.
“Did you get to see her?” Kat asked, a knowing concern in her voice and in her eyes as they skated over his face.
“I did,” Lee said, amazed as always by the woman beside him.
“Good. She needed someone.”
They’d both turned back to face the competition, their little fingers brushing.
And as the stands around them went wild, she linked her pinky with his.
Likely remembering, like he, the mission that had led Levy to decide to leave.
And the feeling when they’d just needed that physical connection.
He sunk into her touch as everything else faded to background noise, dulled in comparison.
The Xs claimed the arena next with a vivacious display of talent and discipline.
Somewhere in his brain, Lee was faintly aware that those cadets painting the arena were the future of the Academy.
They would be Gammas before long—the next set of cadets to take on the mantle of prepping future raiders.
If he’d kept a closer eye out, Lee could have picked out the slouched form of Jed and the mischievous workings of the twins. And Nikola and Hanna would be a force to be reckoned with.
He’d put his trust in their hands anytime.
His squadron.
He clung to where he and Kat’s pinkies touched as he watched them battle for rank. She didn’t blink a match later, when he broke away to select a lighted vest further down the deck by another appreciated face.
“Hey, thanks for the tip-off this morning,” Lee murmured to Whistler as he pulled on a vivid violet lighted vest.
“Don’t mention it,” Whistler said, fishing his braid away from the buckles as he adjusted his own burnt-orange vest. “Starla says hello, by the way.”
“How’s she doing?” Lee asked, trying to remain detached from the welfare of their late cruiser as he let his eyes wander up the line of Gamma cadets getting ready to claim their islands.
Near the end, Flyn talked strategy with Ness and another Gamma, Marco.
Lee nodded briefly towards them when they glanced his way.
“They put her through the ringer with their investigations. The Commanding General ordered a full sweep of the premises when they got her back.”
“And now?” He zeroed back in on Whistler.
“She cleared,” Whistler said vaguely. Something about the idea of the General poking around their ship rubbed him the wrong way. Something to unpack later, because right now they had a match to play.
“Good luck today,” Lee called as he went to find Kat again.
Her bubblegum pink vest was already claiming an island by the time Lee weaved back through the throng. He hopped up to the nearest one as the steam trap below them gave a hiss. And as the arena around them awoke, the islands took their ascent fifteen meters into the air.
Lee had his hand on one of the glowing holodisks and was waiting on the buzzer when his neck began to tingle, like someone was watching him. He rubbed at the spot above his spine as he glanced around him, first at the glowing vests of the other Gammas, then over to the stands.
His eyes landed on the pale, cream-colored pantsuit of his Commander. Beside her, every muscle of his body rigid, stood her secretary, Nolan. And on her other side...
There.
The cold, dark stare of their Commanding General bored into him. He was still on the ship, then.
Lee knew that venomous look all too well by now, knew of what he was capable.
And even through the dim lighting of the arena, the General’s eyes gravitated towards him and his fellow cadets.
A reminder and a warning of just how insignificant they were in his eyes.
Cadets could be dismissed. Raiders, replaced.
And activity that flew too far to the wayside, erased from history.
The General’s gaze grazed over Lee again. As if frenzied from finally finding the source, the prickles along his neck intensified, climbing up to his face, but Lee met General Narron’s gaze and held his stare, refusing to back down. Not here. Not on his turf.
As the countdown on the holo-screen overhead finally began its ticking, Lee dragged his eyes back over the arena, pretending to survey the other cadets and mark faces.
“I’ve seen that look a time or two. Any game plan I should know about today, Waters?” Kat asked.
Lee wasn’t sure whether or not she had seen the Commanding General out there in the stands, or how much she had read from his body language. But he slid another disk from the stack at his feet, testing his grip on each before flicking his eyes over to Kat, her hair glowing faintly pink at the ends.
“I’d hang wide, if I were you. You might catch some strays,” he answered.
As the buzzer sounded, Lee began the opening movements of his little orchestration. If it was discipline the General wanted to see, it was discipline Lee would give him. This was the Laser Rounds—Lee had practically written the playbook.
Glowing holodisks zipped around him from all directions. A neon melee to the untrained eye.
Lee swiped a disk from the air, keeping his momentum as he sprinted to the edge of his floating island and launched himself away from the clusterfuck of holo-madness.
But they were seasoned Gammas. He’d had to take much more care than that in setting up this particular ruse.
His boots bit turf as he landed, releasing a tempered breath as he scooped up a second holodisk. This one he also carried with him as he aligned his next strike.
Whistler winked as he danced into the fray nearby with his signature aerial interception. Almost deliberately shielding Lee from view as Lee moved again, stealing down to the island a half level below. Working his way around the playing field.
He took a moment to catch his breath, collecting the glowing disk from an errant throw.
His plan had worked out nicely thus far. They were down to a fraction of the Gamma cadets. Nearly all of the natural co-squadron biases and ally-ships had been broken thanks to Lee’s little process of unnatural selection.
Aside from he and Kat, that is. Her bubblegum pink vest danced along the far edge of the arena, hanging wide, as he’d suggested. A blur of grace and speed.
And Flyn and Ness.
Lee tracked the latter as she claimed a new island at the edge of the jumble. Right on target. Mirroring Zane a quarter way around the arena, who he’d shadowed, unseen and just out of range for most of the match, Lee closed in on Ness.
As Zane scooped up a fresh disk, Lee sent the first of his careening into her from the side. Her lighted vest went dark.
This time he lingered long enough for Zane’s stormy gaze to land on him. It was a shifty strategy, and he knew it. But it had been the only way to make it feel earned, to make it feel real. Teaming up would have been too obvious to everyone watching.
One of them needed to win today. He. Kat. Whistler. Zane. It could have been any one of them, it didn’t matter who it was. They just needed the win. He needed to prove to himself—to prove for them, that they knew what they were doing and who they were.
Lee pushed past the guilt settling in as Ness jumped down into the steamtrap below.
And as the soft hiss met their ears, Lee hurled his second disk at Zane.
Spinning on his heel, Lee hurtled off of the edge of his island, knees quaking and turf spraying as he landed on a neighboring island, taking cover among the handful of cadets still battling at the heart.
He dove as a disk whizzed near his head. The sticky black fibers grazed his cheek. He’d been anticipating Zane’s retaliation.
But they weren’t quite done, yet. He had one more big encore performance on deck.
Scrambling back to his feet, Lee tallied the remaining players on the field. They were quickly bleeding through numbers, now. He hadn’t even seen Whistler go out.
He had singled out Flyn and was closing in as he caught the glow of Zane’s blizzard blue vest from the corner of his eye.
Taking the running leap, Lee flipped up to an island a level above, detouring to another opponent, leaving Zane to take on an agitated Flyn.
Payback for Ness, and the rest of Zane’s presumed glory throughout the match.
Lee had been sowing that tension and animosity since the Rounds began.
“Damnit, Waters,” Zane bellowed.
Already knowing he’d be answering to the void for that one, Lee snatched the holodisk from his island to go clear out the rest of the arena. He was too far away to backup Kat as a couple of cadets honed in on her. But he made quick retribution when he at last emerged from the shadows.
It was but the work of minutes to pick off the rest of the cadets. And then they were three.
Lee spun the lightning yellow disk between his fingers as he stole a glance out at the dark stands beyond the arena.
“I hope you’re watching,” Lee murmured. Ignoring the stitch in his side and the fire burning in his limbs, Lee started sprinting to make one final go of it.