As I entered Tower Two, I deposited my Tower One guest sticker in a bin and let a private
smile ease onto my face. The research staff's surprise and excitement had reinvigorated
something inside me that had been badly strained over the last couple of days. I owed
Hanna a thank you for dragging me along.
I wove through clusters of the lower-level employees that congregated in the skybridge
lobby, unable to follow their famous ardent superiors across the bridge, which gave
Lightbridge Towers its namesake, into meetings with top members of the Conglomerate in
Tower One. The lounge, with its gold-quartz tiles, crystal windows, and raden-powered lights,
was a popular place for gossip and politicking—not exactly my scene.
"Excuse me," I murmured a half dozen times before bypassing the elevators and heading
into the stairwell.
Sneakers beating a drum beat, hand barely gliding along the rail, I used the stairs as a
warmup for the day's training.
It was a long descent. The stairs hadn't been designed for convenience but rather as a
feature cutting through the fancier floors, like the grand, two-story lobby in the center of the
ardents' rarely used offices. A few clerks and secretaries startled as I passed, but I didn't pay
them any attention. I was busy replaying the conversation in the labs.
My smile slipped as another memory intruded: Seth's voice, telling me I could climb higher in
Tower One.
"But I wouldn't have known any of that if I'd been fetching coffee or even locked up in a lab
somewhere," I muttered.
The stairs bisected an enormous ballroom, currently dim and full of stacked tables and
chairs: a place for big wigs to throw their galas and host the commoners once or twice a year
at company holiday parties.
Moving down through the cafeteria made my breakfast of eggs shrivel in my stomach. The
food court was huge, housing a dozen restaurants and commercial kitchens to feed the army
of hungry ardents.
Directly beneath the kitchens, the stairs turned and dropped into the lobby for the medical
bays. Chemical disinfectant warred with the smells of fresh food.
Remaining focused on my jog, I raised my knees high, forcing the blood to pump through my
body.
Near the ground floor, I entered the clamoring, three-story gymnasium. Over the constant
hum of thousands of raden-powered machines rang the colliding sounds of grunting,
crashing weights, and the splashes of ardents swimming laps.
I visited the gymnasium to hit the sauna every once in a while, but I never trained there.
Beneath the ground floor lobby lay the departments I frequented in Tower Two: its armories,
foundries, and furnaces, and the many dimly lit rooms that had been converted into storage
over the years.
Although the armories were kept under constant surveillance and security remained tight,
the underground hallways lacked the bustle and shine of the rest of Tower Two. There were
no glowing tubes full of raden, only plain corridors lit by flickering fluorescent lights.
Passing the foundry where I'd be expected to clock in later, I flashed the antiquated barcode
on my keychain to enter a locked door marked "ARDENTS ONLY" in faded letters.
As the door opened, I was hit by a wave of cool air and the smells of sweat, body odor, and
cleaning chemicals. The gym beyond was mostly a single large room segmented by the
arrangement of the equipment. Gray tiles made up the floor everywhere except around the
racks of physical weights, where thick, shock-absorbing mats padded the ground. Ridged
tubes ran back and forth across the ceiling of exposed girders, delivering cooled air with an
audible rush.
Only a handful of ardents worked at the equipment, making the gym feel almost empty. Seth
and I preferred it that way.
I quickly scanned the faces, hoping not to see anyone from the incident at the rift the day
before. There were a few familiar faces, regulars down here, but no one that had been on
hand to watch me almost get eaten by a veilgator. A couple of ardents—mostly the forty- or
fifty-somethings—worked out old-school, their muscles bulging as they lifted the specially
designed barbells totalling hundreds of pounds rep after rep. The equipment, though it
looked mundane, was specially designed to hold up against the tremendous amount of
weight they tossed around.
A couple others practiced footwork maneuvers on raised, omni-directional treadmills. One
held a bonesword in her hands, moving smoothly through a series of blocks and cuts that
coincided with her shifting stances.
When the woman spun left, I spotted Seth beyond her.
My brother stood at the heart of a cable crossover station tricked out with thicker cords and a
number of electronic components. Seth lowered into a squat between two cables that came
up from the floor to either side of his feet, pulling a handle gripped tightly in each fist. As he
slowly lowered, a visible glow emanated down the metal leads—Seth's own raden
empowering the resistance.
When the cables had retracted fully back through their reinforced pulleys, Seth held position
for a couple of seconds as the golden light of the cables brightened, then he exploded
upward. The machine creaked, and I would have sworn I felt the vibration through the
reinforced concrete floor.
The raden faded, and he let the bone-handled grips fall to the floor. He shook out his hands
and took a single long, drawn-out breath before noticing my approach. His focus and
concentration slipped, giving way to a frown as he glanced at the clock that displayed the
time in large red numbers above the doors.
Grabbing a towel, he wiped his face and said, "Limber up."
"I already did," I answered with the same brusqueness.
He regarded me with his hands behind his back.
Sighing, I did as he said, pushing deep into each movement to ensure my muscles were
appropriately warmed up and stretched. For the first minute or two, I watched Seth watch
me, but then his words from the ride home returned—you're investing time and energy into
something you'll never succeed in without raden.
After that, I looked anywhere except at him until he said, "That's enough." Turning away, he
indicated one of the private rooms. "Come on. We're going to start with some pressured
footwork drills."
"No omni-tread today?"
"We're starting late."
Following Seth in, I closed the door behind us. We used this same private training room
almost every morning. It was little more than a twenty-by-twenty box with a padded floor and
walls.
"Before we start, put those on." He pointed toward what looked like a pile of black plastic on
the floor. I picked up the topmost piece from the pile: a carbon fiber breastplate, weighted to
make it heavier for training.
I didn't normally pad up for footwork drills, and this armor was much heavier than my
sparring gear. "I'm not strong enough to—"
"This is only slightly more weight than you'll be carrying in a live-rift situation," Seth said over
me. "If you can't train in this, you aren't ready to step into an uncleared rift."
My nostrils flared as I blew out a frustrated huff and donned the heavy uniform. It took a
couple of minutes, during which Seth pulled out the notebook he was always scribbling in
and took a few notes. He'd never let me so much as peek at the book's contents, so
naturally, I was itching to read it.
Probably something like, 'Torrin too weak to properly don armor,' I thought in resignation.
Finally outfitted in what I knew was a lot more weight than my usual gear bag, I began
moving through the steps of a footwork routine choreographed to hone my agility, like atongue-twister for my feet. I'd been practicing the same sequence for the last couple of
months, but it had taken me over a year to advance to this level. It was even harder with the
heavy plates on. Seth gave me a couple of repetitions, then began his part of the drill.
He stepped in quickly, somewhere between a kick and trip aimed at my right ankle. I shifted
both my feet and body to dodge while simultaneously attempting not to break rhythm. Seth
followed up with a swift stomp that almost caught my left foot. Burdened by the heavy armor,
I wobbled and was forced to catch myself on the wall as I pivoted away.
Seth picked up the pace.
My carefully choreographed sequence fell to pieces as I focused solely on avoiding Seth. I
struggled just to maintain clean footwork to stay upright, much less weave in proper form.
Twice he stepped on my foot, causing me to collapse to my knees. I was sweating
immediately and my legs were screaming within minutes.
He pushed me through five more repetitions of the drill, only stopping when I sank to one
knee and began coughing uncontrollably.
"That's sufficient for a warm up," he announced, as if being magnanimous.
I wiped sweat out of my eyes and forced myself to stand straight, my hands on my hips and
my chest wide to help me breathe. I always trained hard; I had to, just to keep up with the
raden-channeling forgers and carvers. Most of those guys did the bare minimum physical
fitness required by the company because they didn't need to try to be strong and fast, at
least compared to me. But Seth was pushing me harder than ever this morning.
"Losing your footing isn't the most dangerous thing that could happen to you in the rifts,"
Seth said, pacing like a drill sergeant. "The real danger is in losing your nerve." He paused,
cutting a serious look my way. "Training your body is important, but survival is about
willpower. If you do come face to face with a parabeast again, and that fear overtakes you,
even an ardent's strength won't save you."
"I'm not a coward," I snapped.
"If that veilgator had ripped out your throat yesterday, you wouldn't be anything at all," Seth
deadpanned. "My point is that you have to think just as quick as you move, if not faster. Look
for a way out, a path to escape. There is no reason to fight when the outcome in any conflict
is your inevitable death."
"Thanks for that vote of confidence," I muttered, knowing he'd ignore the comment anyway.
"I heard you having nightmares last night," he said, eyes like iron.
My face flushed.
"Stress can make you stronger, or it can break you. One day, you'll find yourself in front of a
rift and your muscles will lock up. Your mind will go blank of everything but the teeth and
claws waiting on the other side, and you won't be able to step through."
I started to point out that Seth wanted exactly that, but I bit back the comment.
At first, I'd figured he was pushing me so hard as punishment for not bucking my promotion,
but that didn't match up with his words.
So instead I admitted, "I dreamed about Lyman."
Seth stiffened. "What about it?"
"The night the rift exploded."
With a low, acknowledging grunt, Seth looked at the floor, his hand drifting to rub at the
half-hidden scar on the back of his head that never let his hair lay quite right. A scar he'd
gotten that night.
"Do you remember a waterfall?" I asked, trying to parse what had been the dream and what
had been reality.
A rift bursting was a rare phenomena, especially nowadays, with the monoliths, ardents, and
more effective military action. Back then, rifts were monitored, but no one went in them. Our
family and neighbors had known next to nothing about the one that appeared over our tiny
rural town. It had just hung there, expanding inside its useless military cordon, until it was too
late. I'd found very little information in terms of articles or news coverage, so I'd been left to
tack together snippets of dreams and my three-year-old self's scattered memories.
"It grew out of the school," said Seth after a moment's pause. "Or more like it replaced half
the school. Like two pictures slapped together."
"Yeah, exactly." My mind drifted back through the dream, ticking off all the oddities. "And that
tree—the one that hit the car—it shouldn't have been there."
Seth shook his head. "Came out of nowhere," he said, voice tight. "A branch is what got me,
I think." He tapped the scar hidden by his hair, his eyes distant.
The memory was hazy after that. I hadn't remembered Seth bleeding. How had I not been
hit? How had we gotten out of the car? I thought back to the tree in the headlights, and then
it came to me: a shadow crossing my vision right before impact, the soft cotton of Seth's shirt
on my right cheek while glass stung my left. He'd curled his body over my car seat, protected
me. Even at eleven, he'd had an ardent's instincts. Of course, he'd also had some
ardent-like strength, already able to harness raden even if it hadn't filled him out yet. If that
tree branch had hit me, though…
He'd saved my life.
I stared at him, thoughts swirling. I must have stood there for too long because he cleared
his throat and said, "We should get back to work."
As much as I wanted to say something, even just "Thank you," the words hitched behind my
teeth. Instead, I muttered a pleading, "Bodyweight exercises?" as I peeled off the black
plates.
"No, we'll go straight into sparring."
I suppressed a groan, but as he crossed the mat, headed for a rack of padded polymer
plastic training swords, I studied the cowlick behind his left ear, seeing what it meant for the
first time. I pulled the armor back on, resetting the straps.
A sharp crack across my upper arm drew a hiss from me, and I stumbled back, flexing the
stung muscle beneath the armored shell. "What the hell, Seth?"
In answer, he twirled the training sword he'd whacked me with in lazy circles.
"The fear of pain—fear of death—might help the average person survive, but in a rift, it gets
you killed," he snapped, back in drill sergeant mode.
The length of padded polymer plastic whipped toward me. I staggered again, arms flailing to
keep my feet.
Seth raised a questioning brow again.
I glared back, adopting a loose stance, my right foot slightly behind my left. "You know, we
spar almost every day, but you've never encouraged me to train with my crossbow. If you're
so hung up on my safety, maybe helping me with target practice would make more sense
than Seth-jitsu."
"You play with your toy enough without me pushing you," he said, eagle eyes inspecting my
stance.
"It may not be a shard gun, but that toy can still pierce through a parabeast's thick hide and
raden," I snapped back. "Besides, the crossbow is way more accessible and a hell of a lot
cheaper. With some more refinement to get the bolts sturdier and a bit of actual funding—"
"Which it'll never get," Seth interrupted. "The bolts still won't be able to sustain raden after
it's been fired so its use is trivial at best." He shook his head. "Enough. Just get yourself
ready."
I bit my tongue and focused on Seth's weapon. Despite its padded edges and my armor, a
good hit still hurt like hell. The padded walls, the gym outside, all of Lightbridge Tower melted
away. The training blade twitched, and I dodged back wildly. The blow missed me by a foot
or more, and I knew what came next. A second strike, much too fast for me to evade,
thudded against my armored thigh.
I swallowed back a yelp and put all my weight on the smarting leg.
"Control. Spatial awareness. Your reactions should be calculated, not simply avoidant." Seth
reset, and I followed his lead.
"I know, I know." I'd heard the same instruction hundreds of times. I tried to loosen up, letting
my years of training and muscle memory take over.
Seth's shoulder switched, and I pivoted just as a swing cut down overhead, narrowly missing
me. He drew back the weapon, and his weight subtly shifted forward. Seth's eyes flickered,
and I froze, hesitating mid-step.
The tip of the padded sword hit me dead center in the chest. I toppled, my back smacking
the mat. I clawed at the armor futilely, struggling for breath.
Seth stared down at me. "Don't second-guess yourself."
"I think you… cracked my sternum…" I moaned once I'd caught my wind again. Slowly, I
rolled onto my stomach—a sharp pain stabbed me in the chest—and struggled to push
myself up.
"No I didn't. Back on your feet."
Thirty minutes later, I was again laboring to breathe. The floor was slick with the sweat my
sopping shirt could no longer soak up. The armor lay in a stinky heap beside me.
My lungs and thighs burned, and blooming bruises throbbed all over, broadcasting my
failures. I'd taken fewer lumps than I'd feared, though, and by the end I was avoiding three
out of every four strikes with smooth efficiency.
"Listen, Torrin. To survive, you have to react faster than whatever is trying to kill you," Seth
said as I went to one knee and tried to catch my breath. "But eventually, something will take
you by surprise, or be too fast, or catch you wrong-footed. It isn't just your ability to react that
will keep you alive, but to act. Analyze, interpret, take action."
He paced back and forth for a minute. I decided to be charitable and assume he was letting
me rest. That is, until he swapped his padded "longsword" for two shorter pieces of padded
pipe. My forehead scrunched. He'd never been a dual wielder.
"Next, I want to do something a little different. Before we start the exercise though, I want
you to analyze me. Tell me—"
"Easy," I snorted. "You're strong, you're an asshole, and you don't care what I'm saying right
now because you've already decided my answer is going to be wrong."
Seth's exhale was almost a chuckle as he shook his head. "No, examine my strengths and
weaknesses. Look at my stance, posture, the positioning of my hands, and predict my next
move".
By the time I noticed he'd shifted into a combat stance, he was already coming at me, both
swords slashing in an X like he meant to take off my head. I turned my clumsy duck into a
decent rollout and came up swinging for his kidney, but his sword smacked hard across my
wrist.
"No. No fighting back. This exercise is about predictive dodging. Assess my stance, know
where I'm going to be and how I'm going to strike at you before I even move."
I frowned at him but took in his position, one foot advanced and facing forward, the other
back and at a diagonal, his left shoulder lowered for a rush or maybe a quick, long lunge.
"Every time you get hit," said Seth, "I'm going to come at you harder. Now reset."
Although I wasn't thrilled about this new exercise, at least I'd managed to catch my breath. I
danced on the balls of my feet, taking in his wider stance, watching where he shifted his
weight, noting the angle of his blades.
Instead of the confident lunge I'd imagined, Seth darted forward in two erratic, zagging
strides, and instead of the quick cut I had expected, he brought the practice weapons around
and down across the back of my legs. My knees buckled.
"Damn it!" I cursed, pressing my fists down into the padded floor. "You changed what you
were going to do."
"I didn't. You're limiting your predictions to one guess, based solely on assumptions about
your opponent, rather than deciding every place my strike could meet you and making sure
you're in none of them. If you act alongside your enemy instead of reacting to them, then
you'll stand a chance at survival, even against an irrational enemy that is both stronger and
faster than you."
Gritting my teeth, I stood and rubbed the new welts forming across my hamstrings. "Yeah,
okay, but do you have to hit so hard out of the gate?"
"You'll live," Seth said, with the barest hint of a smirk on his face. "Now, let's go again."
Already physically exhausted, I now added mental strain to the mix. Seth had abandoned his
usual moveset entirely, and each analysis I made was plagued by second-guesses. It didn't
help that he kept taking cheap shots, following up any hit he landed fairly with a sudden
wallop to the back of the helmet or to the ankle while I tried to recover. As my frustration
rose, my attention faded. Instead of carefully examining Seth's posture, I started predicting
based on what he'd done before, which resulted in a painful strike each time. By the end, I
was pretty sure I'd gotten worse, not better.
Still, Seth's expression remained emotionless throughout, which was a damned sight better
than simmering disapproval. "Okay, I think that's enough. Go clean upA tremor ran through my body as I relaxed for the first time in the last ninety
minutes—maybe even in the last twenty-four hours. Too tired to say anything, and uncertain
how I was feeling anyway, I opened the door of our small private room, but before I could
step out into the gym, Seth spoke again.
"Torrin. Be honest with me."
I stopped with my hand still on the knob and looked back at him.
"Why do you feel like you have to do this?"
I puffed up, ready to defend myself, but then I processed his tone. It wasn't judgemental or
dismissive, or even emotionless. He sounded like he really wanted to know—to understand.
"Right before I came down here, Hanna took me to see some of the researchers over in
Tower One. Because of my time in the rifts, I was able to show them something they'd never
noticed before." I swallowed, struggling to think of the right words now that Seth seemed to
be giving me a chance to explain. "I want to be right at the forefront of innovation, in all of
it—the rifts, raden, parabeasts, equipment engineering, you name it. It's something I can do
just as well as anyone else, maybe even better. But I need this experience to do that."
Seth's eyes cut a downward slant, not meeting mine. "Eventually, the danger will catch up
with you. You have to know that."
I shook my head, then had to wipe sweat out of my eyes. "Maybe, but I'm not trying to be an
ardent, throwing myself at the rifts until my luck runs out. With enough experience—the right
kind of experience—I don't have to do it forever." I cracked a smile. "I have a niece I need to
see grow up, after all."
His gaze lifted, and he stepped closer, lips parted and one arm raised as if to settle on my
shoulder. Then his brows fell, pupils shifting over my shoulder.
I turned.
The other ardents in the gym were all staring at the entry door. Red light flashed through the
crack beneath it. A moment later, the muted buzzing of a siren sounded.
"A red alert…" I muttered, shocked.
Seth was already moving, crossing the gym floor in a second. He opened the door, and the
full shriek of the warning siren filled the gym.
"Get your stuff. We need to move," Seth ordered, snapping into military precision mode.
The other ardents jumped into action as if he'd been speaking to them, but I hesitated.
Too slowly, I stripped off my training gear, staring as Seth grabbed his bag and threw it over
his shoulder. I almost asked him what he had been about to say when he tossed my duffel
bag at me.
"Keep up," he said, breaking into a run.
We hurried out of the gym and darted down the halls, which flickered wildly. "Code red's an
external emergency, right?" I panted. "An approaching mob, an incoming missile, a rampant
parabeast…"
"Or worse," Seth answered curtly.
"Could this be a drill?"
"I doubt it." Seth reached the elevator before me and used his ID card to override its
controls. The doors closed behind us with a mechanical whir, and glowing veins of raden lit
the interior as we shot skyward through Tower Two.
An automated voice came through an unseen speaker, broadcast in a clear but calming
voice. "Repeat: This is not a drill. All staff report to the auditorium. Attendance is mandatory.
Repeat: This is not a drill…"
The elevator stopped and opened in the hectic upper lobby. Orders were being thrown
across the room, visitors and outside personnel were whisked toward exits, and two suited
staffers manned the entrance to the skybridge, checking badges to ensure everyone who
tried to rush through was staff.
Seth and I flashed ours and raced onto the bridge. Raden pulsed in exposed luminescent
pipes, making the space hum like the set of an old pre-rift science fiction movie.
Halfway across, though, the lights started to flicker, and a low rumble like a jet engine shook
the walkway beneath our feet. I braced myself against the wall as the towers shuddered in
unison. The luminescent skybridge quaked like it all might come down on our heads.