Chapter 6
Quill
I’m still not dead when my alarm rings at five a.m. on Thursday morning.
I don’t usually depend on an alarm to wake up, because I don’t need much sleep.
But last night, I barely closed an eye. I tossed and turned for hours, Piper’s weird, neither blue, neither green eyes haunting me, and I only fell into an uncomfortable doze about an hour ago.
Groaning, I stand up, take a quick shower, and tumble into my clothes. It’s far too early to go to school, but I have no desire to wait around and deal with Dad.
But just as I open the door to my room, I hear him call my name.
“Quill,” he barks. “Get down here now!”
I hiss out in exasperation and walk down the stairs as slowly as possible, unwilling to hurry for the asshole who raised me. If the term raised can even be used to describe the regular beatings I’ve been taking since kindergarten, and which only intensified after Mom left.
They’ve gotten less frequent since I started high school, and I’d like to imagine it’s because Dad reads the silent promise in my eyes each time his fists make contact with my skin.
I’m going to kill you. Someday, I’m going to kill you.
Dad and Tragen are tight, and I assume that’s why Tragen favors me. It’s also why Dad is the first to know when I’ve fucked up, and I guess I’m about to get a beating from him before I go to meet my fate at Tragen’s hands.
Sure enough, I’m greeted by a fist to the face. I don’t even think to duck, merely accepting it and tumbling to the ground, where I wait passively for him to get out his rage in the form of kicking me repeatedly in the sides.
I don’t actually care. Especially not this morning, when all my thoughts are on the girl I won’t be able to protect if I get killed by Tragen.
I know soldiers-in-training don’t usually get killed.
Tragen’s definitely trigger-happy, but that fate generally awaits the full-fledged members of the society, those who are already accepting contracts, and have graduated from high school.
Though I’ll be getting my first contracts soon, I’ll be stuck in teams until I graduate and can work alone.
I really fucking hate teamwork.
But that’s just how it is at Devil. I don’t actually hate being a soldier most of the time, though I do resent Dad for forcing me to join what he calls a prestigious secret society belonging to the most powerful company in the state. Whereas it’s really just a glorified group of hitmen.
It’s probably good for someone like me to have a safe, protected way of killing people. Of dealing with my urges, so that hopefully I don’t kill the girl whom I’m starting to realize I care a whole lot more about than I should.
“Do you have a fucking death wish?” roars Dad. “You just fucking walked away from training! Do you know what happens to soldiers who do that? Are you fucking insane?!”
I close my eyes, willing for the storm to blow over. Or at least, for Dad to grow tired of kicking me, so I can get up.
“Your mom was right to abandon you!” he growls at last. “You fucking pathetic shit! What have I done to deserve a son like you?”
Bringing up Mom is always the sign that he’s ending the physical part of the abuse, and switching to a verbal, low-energy form. But I’ve heard him say those words far too much to get affected by them. I stand up, trying not to wince and show the jerk how much he’s hurt me.
“You’re fucking lucky Tragen doesn’t kill you,” he hisses. “He’s taken you off the team.”
“The… team?” I question, spitting out a bit of blood. But luckily, he punched my face only once, cutting the inside of my lip. It’s barely noticeable. Dad’s gotten very good at hiding the evidence of his beatings over the years.
“The prestigious team he wants to form inside the Devil soldiers,” he snaps. “You were going to have a bright career ahead of you, son. Everything was all set for you. You fucked it up.”
“Does that mean I’m not a soldier anymore?” I mumble, pushing my feet into shoes.
“Of course you’re a fucking soldier!” he barks. “Once you’ve started your training, the only way to get out is—”
I perk my ears up.
“—to die,” he concludes. “The only ex-soldier is a dead soldier, Quill. Don’t you forget that.”
_
Thursday morning is assembly, and today, I don’t really mind. It means we get to sit in the rows of cushioned fold-up chairs in the auditorium. I’m feeling pretty sore right now, and it’s nice to sit in something a little more comfortable than the metal classroom chairs.
The principal drones on for a long time about a fundraiser coming up, then the science teacher talks about the fair at the end of the month.
The vice principal reminds us of the serial killer at loose and tells us not to be out alone at night.
But he spends a lot longer going over school rules—only people with passes allowed in the hallways during class, no running or sliding down bannisters, no smoking weed in the bathroom.
I look around distractedly for the person I assume that last rule is meant for, but Finn Austen is nowhere to be seen.
Which vaguely reminds me of the syringe Cass stuck in his neck last night.
This time, it’s not a memory lapse but just not giving a shit that causes me to push the vision from my mind. And I forget about it altogether when, as usual, the vice principal asks if anyone in the student body has any announcements to make.
Occasionally, some of the overachievers do, but today, the person raising her hand is none other than… Piper motherfucking Day.
I stiffen in my chair, all my bruises forgotten, as I watch her stand up a few rows in front of me, then nervously walk to the platform where the vice principal waits, clutching a microphone.
The latter is clearly as surprised as the rest of us as she hands over the mic to Piper, who squeezes it in one hand while the other…
clutches a paper. Something tells me it’s the paper she took from Al Campbell’s office last night, and a very uncomfortable sense of foreboding rises in me as I take in her triumphant grin.
“Good morning,” she squeaks out in a nervous voice.
Shut up. Shut up, Piper. Get the fuck off the stage. Sit the fuck back down, Piper.
If telepathy were a thing, I’d definitely be able to get it through her thick skull that whatever she’s about to do is a terrible idea, from the way I’m thinking it with all the cells in my body. Instead, though, I watch helplessly as she brings the paper up to her eyes.
“I have an announcement,” she continues.
“I want to announce that, uhm… Ray Campbell… Ray Campbell did not get into college.” She clears her throat.
“He applied to, uhm… DS University… and his application got denied, probably because he’s very stupid, and he’s so bad at sports I guess he didn’t get a sports scholarship either.
Thank you. That’s all I wanted to say. Thank you. ”
She speaks so fast the words come out half-scrambled, and then she hurriedly lets go of the mic, letting it fall to the floor in a deafening sound, before scurrying back to her seat. There’s a very long silence which, for most of the students, is due to confusion.
But I’m not confused right now.
I’m freaking out.
Because those words she just said awakened a dormant memory.
DS University.
Devil Soldiers University.
I guess Piper wanted to get revenge on Ray Campbell for whatever reason. That’s why she went snooping around his dad’s papers. And when she found something appearing to indicate that his son didn’t get into college, she decided to use it to humiliate him.
But DS University is not a university. It’s the code name for the science experiments Al Campbell runs in the very heart of Devil Tower.
And of course Ray isn’t a part of any of them. His father has no qualms about fucking us soldiers over, but he would never turn his own son into a lab rat.
I groan, closing my eyes and sliding back in my seat.
I can’t fucking believe this girl. I can’t believe she just walked up to the front of the auditorium and cheerfully stuck a huge target on her own goddamn back.
Guess I’m going to have to clean up her mess. As usual.