Ignition Point
Authors: Kate Corcino
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Ignition Point
COPYRIGHT © 2014 by Kate Corcino
No part of this book may be reproduced, copied, stored, scanned, transmitted or distributed in any form or by any means, including but not limited to mechanical, printed, or electronic form, without prior written permission of the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.
Contact Information: [email protected]
First paperback edition October 2014
Cover Art © by Regina Wamba at Mae I Designs. All rights reserved.
Publishing History
First Edition, 2014
Print ISBN: 978-0990732815
Published in the United States of America
C
o
ntents
For my family.
Finally.
A collection of three related short stories,
Ignition Point
offers a glimpse of the lives and stories of characters from the upcoming book,
Spark Rising
.
Two hundred years after the cataclysm that annihilated fossil fuels, Sparks keep electricity flowing through their control of energy-giving Dust. The Council of Nine rebuilt civilization on the backs of Sparks, offering citizens a comfortable life in a relo-city in exchange for power, particularly over the children able to fuel the future. The strongest of the boys are taken as Wards and raised to become elite agents, the Council’s enforcers and spies. Strong girls—those who could advance the rapidly evolving matrilineal power—don’t exist. Not according to the Council.
“Ward” introduces Thomas, a thirteen-year-old boy rescued from Scavengers, marauding slavers who murdered both his biological and foster parents and sold the highly powered boy to the highest bidder—the Council of Nine. Dumped at the Ward School to train his abilities, Thomas must learn to survive among a new breed of savages…the boys who have been training there since they were five and the men who must hone them into weapons.
“Blood and Water” is the story of Lucas, a young man who has spent his childhood shunned by his powerful, religious family for the crime of being born a Spark. On the cusp of attaining his place in the world his grandfather intends to re-shape, Lucas will discover the heavy price of belonging. Will he pay it, or will he count the costs and deem them too high?
“Ghost Story” shows how lives lived on the edge—of society, of safety, of sanity—intersect. Lena, a highly powered runaway, fled a life of hiding from the Council. Elias is one of the so-called New Barbarians, those who choose to live free, if hard and dangerous, lives. Wounded and dying, he hunts the Scavengers who killed his family and took his brother to sell. A chance meeting in the desert of what was once New Mexico will change them both forever.
The Ward School
Thirty-three years before the events in
Spark Rising
...
Blood flowed from his nose, across his lips, and down his chin, the metal tang of it thick in Thomas’s mouth. He didn’t care. He wouldn’t change a damn thing.
“We have inspection in five minutes, and you pull this shit?” The Honor Ward’s hard gaze bored into the other boy, and his hand still fisted against the back of the kid’s shirt.
What were their names? Thomas couldn’t remember. He hadn’t been listening the night before when he was introduced to his new dorm mates as a rescued Scavenger victim. The air of hostility and menace toward him hadn’t been his imagination.
Technically, all three of them were the same general age as the other five boys who watched silently. The Wards in their room ranged from thirteen—Thomas’s own age—to fifteen. But the Honor Ward gave the impression he was years older than the rest of them. And it wasn’t just how the Honor Ward carried himself and spoke to them. He was twice as big as the next largest of them. He towered over Thomas.
He was also obviously pissed. His shoulders, already broader and heavier than the rest of them, were back, his chin down and out. He’d told them he’d be right back, after checking the hall to see how soon they’d be hit with inspection. The other kid had taken that opportunity to mess with Thomas, and the Honor Ward had stepped back into a ring of boys chanting, “Kill the Scav! Kill the Scav!” He must have shoved through them to separate the bloodied fighters on the floor to pull a bigger kid off Thomas.
“He started it! Scavenger freak. Who knows what kinda Spark he is, trained by slavers?”
It was the stupidest thing Thomas had ever heard. A Spark was a Spark. They all had the same ability to make the Dust spark, creating the electricity that had otherwise been absent from the world for the last two hundred years. The fact that they were all stronger than most other Sparks had sent them there. The Council culled the strongest Sparks—always boys—when they were children. They were brought here to the Ward School to be raised and trained into the Council’s elite agents.
That
was the only way Thomas differed from the rest of them, and the personal history that was still a raw wound had nothing to do with his Spark.
The other kid swiped at his nose, the back of his arm coming back crimson. Thomas had known it would probably be the only blow he’d land. He’d made it a good one. And now he was glad he’d made solid contact. These boys thought they were better than him because they’d come here at six, right after Testing Year. No one came to the Ward School later. You tested strong when you were little and earned the school where the Council’s elite agents trained, or you stayed in the relo-cities to learn to power their utilities.
That’s what was supposed to happen. Unless your caravaner family was murdered on the road in a Scavenger attack three months before your testing year was to start. Unless you hid in the burned out caravan your parents had died to protect until Neo-barbs found you a week later and took you to raise as their own. Unless years later they were killed, too, by the same Scavengers, and you were spared again because you were a Spark, and branded, and sold.
Thomas thrust his tragic past away. He’d never share it with any of them, these privileged Wards who thought they’d show him what tough was because he was physically smaller than all of them. What a joke.
And the kid Thomas had just hit was a liar on top of a bully. Thomas had lunged at the other boy first, sure, but he’d been taunted. One of the things he’d learned with the tribe was you never backed down from a threat. You might have to take a beating, but you didn’t walk away. He’d struck first. But it had only taken seconds for him to be overpowered and curl into a ball on the floor while the other kid pummeled him.
What’re the chances the Honor Ward’s just blaming that asshole for the fight?
Thomas had his answer seconds later.
“And you!” The biggest of the Wards snarled. “You’ve been here like five minutes. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Scav scab, but this is
my
unit. Fuck with me, and I won’t beat you.” He leaned down to get right in Thomas’s face. “I’ll bury you.”
Thomas held the Honor Ward’s eyes and didn’t bother wiping his nose. He just let the blood drip. He could feel a thin line of it snaking down his face from the tender new skin on his right cheekbone. After the caravan driver’s wife had told him he was free now, despite his being bought and paid for, he’d taken a knife to the brand mark that had been there. The blood didn’t matter now. If the new skin had split, it would just make another scar to replace the raised burn he’d sliced away. He let it flow, too. He’d be damned if he’d let them think he was weaker because he was small.
Thomas had arrived at the Ward School late the night before. He’d had less than a day to figure out these boys, but he knew who was the boss. The kid in front of him was the highest ranking Ward of this room of juniors. He wasn’t just the biggest and the oldest, he was the fiercest, and the most dedicated. One way or another, Thomas would have to deal with him.
Before he could open his mouth, though, the kid was already in motion. He spun around, barking orders like someone much older.
“You and you—get rags from your boot kits and get this blood off the floor. You, wipe up your face then change your shirt. Now.” He spun back to Thomas. “Dust, Scav, we don’t have time for you to just stand there and bleed. Get that blood off your face.”
Thomas shook his head. “We? What do you care if I get in trouble?”
The Honor Ward’s face darkened. One of the boys came back with rags and pushed at Thomas’s foot so he could smear the blood on the floor. But it was too late—there was a quick four-note knock at their door. The other boys leaped into position beside the foot of their bunks, one each to either side of the beds.
Thomas scrubbed at his face with his sleeve as he crossed to the bunk he’d been assigned. He could feel his heart racing. He was about to fail his first inspection. What would the Guardians do to him? Would they send him back? And if they did, what would he do then? Would the caravan he’d been given to even have him back? The agent who’d bought him had told them to leave him at the school in Zone Seven for testing, and that’s what they’d done. If he showed up, they’d know he was a failed Ward, an untrained Spark. He was a caravaner’s boy, yes, but one raised by Neo-barbs, then stolen by the Scavengers who hit villages, outposts, and trade caravans indiscriminately. Those the Scavs didn’t kill or keep for personal use were sold—as laborers, as breeders, as chattel. Thomas had been sold to the Council.
No, he decided, the caravaners wouldn’t want him. He didn’t have a place in the damn world. Did that make him stupid for not wanting this one?
The door swung open. The question was lost in a wash of anxiety as a Guardian with narrow eyes and a jaw like a fighting hound stalked into the room, flanked by Senior Wards. All hope any of them might have entertained about passing the inspection was immediately dashed. The shiny gear, the sheets pulled tight over mattresses, even the otherwise spotless floor—none of it mattered. The Guardian stalked directly over to the blood smears and straddled them, looking down at the stained floor between his feet.
He tilted his head, following a line of bright droplets to Thomas. He considered Thomas’s dripping face for a moment, and Thomas steeled himself, waiting for the questions. He expected accusations. But the Guardian merely flicked his eyes around the room until he found the other bleeding boy. He made a small sound.
Suddenly he turned, moving around the room and calling out numbers to one of the Seniors behind him, who made notations on a sheaf of papers with a wax stick.
“Fifty-two,” he said, running his finger along the top edge of a locker and examining it. “Pass.” He turned at seeming random and opened another boy’s locker, looking inside at the neatly folded garments. “Thirty-eight. Pass.”
And on and on, until he had made a circuit of their small dorm and stood before the Honor Ward. The boy, who’d seemed so huge to Thomas moments ago, now seemed small beside the bulk of the man in front of him. The kid might be bigger than the rest of them. But he was still a boy.
“Ward Room Eight.” The Guardian stared into the boy’s face. “Fail.”
Thomas watched their Honor Ward nod slightly in acceptance of the decree. Thomas’s stomach sank. He tried to breathe through his nose, so even the sound of his quickening breaths would bring no more attention to himself, but he couldn’t. His nose was swollen and still bleeding. The first exhale sent bright bubbles flaring from his face and then sliding down his lips and chin again.
No one was paying attention to him. Everyone in the room was focused on the Guardian and his soft words.
“Perfect. All but two.” His tone left no doubt in anyone’s mind to whom he referred. “Twenty-seven and Eighty-four.”
Thomas recognized the number he’d been assigned when they processed him the day before. He was officially Thirteen Eighty-four. The first was his age group. The second his rank in the class by matriculation. He was the eighty-fourth thirteen-year-old to join the class. And all of the other eighty-three had been in school together since they were six.
“They earned you a fail; your very first one,” the Guardian continued. “What do you think I should do to them?”
The Honor Ward shook his head, a tiny movement. “Nothing, sir.”
The Guardian barked a laugh and turned to share a disbelieving look with each of his Senior Ward assistants. “Nothing?”
“Nothing, sir. If they were fighting, it was my mistake. The Wards are my responsibility. I should be punished.” The Honor Ward spoke without inflection and kept his eyes on the nodding Guardian before him. A long moment of silence followed his declaration.
“I agree, Alex. Step into the hall, please.”
Alex. That was the Honor Ward’s name. Alex turned and walked from the room without looking back. Thomas wouldn’t forget his name this time.
The Guardian turned to them, and his narrow eyes found each of them. Thomas shivered when they fell on him.
“No talking. No free time. Lights out.” The big man paused. “And no more
mistakes
. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Guardian.” Six other voices joined Thomas’s.
Long after the door had closed behind the Guardian and his assistants, Thomas found himself looking back again and again, waiting for Alex to reappear. He did as the others did, in the same sullen, ashamed silence—peeling away his clothes and pulling on a plain, long shirt then tucking the dirties in his basket beneath the lower bunk. He climbed up to his bed and lay still, pinching his nose with one hand and using the wrist of his other hand to push pressure onto his cheek. Eventually, both wounds stopped bleeding. He moved his gaze from the ceiling to the door, waiting, even after the lights went out.
Why had Alex done it?
Thomas had been ready to take the blame for his actions. When he’d lunged forward to hit that other kid, he’d known there would be repercussions from both the Guardians who taught them and ran the Council’s school and the Wards around him. If that’s what it took to earn the respect to get them to leave him alone, then so be it. He just wanted to be sure no one could take anything else from him.
Plenty of people had taken things from Thomas in his life. Scavengers had taken his parents, his world. Neo-barbs had given him his life back when they’d found him, but they’d taken plenty, too, refusing to return him to the city that had been his home so they’d have use of his power over electricity. When the Scavengers crossed paths with them again, five years later, they’d slaughtered or enslaved them all. They’d taken the only people he knew. They’d taken his freedom.
But when the people he’d thought would kill the Scavs had ridden into camp and started negotiating instead of rescuing—when they’d handed over C-Notes and supplies to
buy
Thomas, and then let the filthy slavers ride away with the rest of their human cargo….
Those damn Council agents had taken his trust. They’d told him they were giving him a new life. Power. Freedom. But not a single one of the chain of people who’d passed him along until he got to the Ward School had asked him what
he
wanted. It was just another way of taking.
Now, Alex had taken the blame Thomas needed to get them all to leave him alone. He gusted a sigh and rolled onto his side then burrowed down, yanking up the scratchy sheet around his face and squeezing his eyes shut. A moment later, they popped open again.
The door to the dorm had eased open, and Alex was silhouetted briefly against the dim light of the hall outside. Alex made his way to his own bunk, the bottom one closest to the door, and eased down onto the thin mattress. He changed his clothing, his movements deliberate. Was he moving slowly to keep the rest of them from waking?
Thomas shook his head at himself. Alex was moving slowly because he was in pain. Whatever they’d done to him in Thomas’s and the other boy’s stead, it hadn’t been pleasant.
A moment later, Alex’s silhouette rose from the bed. He lifted his arms to slip on his night shirt. A soft groan slipped out, as if he hadn’t been able to hold it back. It was quickly muffled. Alex cleared his throat, still and tall in the dark, and then he turned.
