Ignition Point (3 page)

“How did you do that?” He kept his voice low. Low enough that no one else could hear, not even boys scooting past them.

“Do what?” Thomas focused on gathering the disassembled parts of the circuit board.

Alex leaned closer and gripped Thomas’s arm tighter. “I didn’t do that. I never made it past the first gate. I never do. How did you do that?”

Thomas shrugged with one shoulder. “I learned by necessity, not lessons. I just think of things different than the rest of you. It’s not a big deal.”

“It’s a big deal to me. Why’d you do it?”

“You helped me.”

“I
helped
you. I didn’t climb the wall for you. I got you time and motivation.”

Thomas nodded. “So did I. This is just an exercise. Exam’s tomorrow. By the time you go to sleep tonight, you’re gonna know how to run this through. I’m gonna show you the way I see it. If you can let go, follow the path
I
show
you
—can you do that?”

Thomas held Alex’s eyes as the Honor Ward stared back at him.

Finally, Alex nodded. “I can do that.”

Alex quickly rose, scooped up the pieces in front of him, and dumped them in their bins, leaving Thomas behind and joining the others as they all filed out of the room. Thomas watched him go then gathered up the components to be returned and followed.

He made his way through the packed halls, using his smaller size to weave through the others and get to the next class more quickly. While he moved, he kept his eyes moving, too, watching for the casual shoves and slaps he’d gotten used to dodging. He’d learned if he was already in his seat, busy and ignoring the rest of them, they generally left him alone in class. It was when he had to walk past them—

Thom felt his ankle catch as something—another foot—hooked around it and yanked up. Thomas sprawled face first, skidding along the floor.

He started to lift himself to turn over, to decide if he’d be allowed to get up or if he needed to roll around himself and wait for the passage of kicking, vicious blows to pass. Before he could complete the movement, there was a yelp behind him, and a hard thwack of skull on wall.

“Anyone else think they’re fucking funny?”

Thom flipped himself and stared up at Alex, who was balefully eyeing the cronies of the boy who’d slid down the wall, clutching his head. Alex took two steps and reached down to grab Thomas’s hand. Thom felt himself hauled to his feet and turned around. Alex gave him a push down the hall.

“He already proved himself on the course, assholes. So back off.”

Boys closed around them again as traffic flowed up and down the hall. No one harassed him. No one even muttered at him. Thom walked instead of wove, took his seat, and settled into the feeling of being just another Ward.

* * *

Thomas watched Alex try to set the capacitor into place again. It had to be manually settled in position then welded with a thought, the trigger that would make the Dust fuse the metals together. After spending almost a month teaching his new friend and watching him try again and again, Thomas was pretty sure understanding wasn’t Alex’s problem anymore. It was believing he could do it. Alex knew he excelled physically, but he’d allowed himself to be mentally limited by the Ward School’s emphasis on control.

An ancient old man in a wheelchair parked near their position on the floor of his room made a soothing noise. Thomas glanced up, and their gazes met. Sam winked at him, his amused eyes as bright and intelligent as those of any of the young men he taught.

Thomas had met Sam—one of the Guardians and easily the oldest man alive—in his first week at the school. The Guardian was responsible for teaching the youngest of the Wards the history of the Great Disaster. Thomas had been required to play catch-up on those lessons. Sam had impressed him as a cheerful and kind Guardian, one of the few he had liked immediately.

But it wasn’t until Alex had decided he really trusted Thomas that Thom had any idea just how kind, and how important, the Guardian really was. Alex spent every free moment he could with the ancient man. Sam wasn’t just a guardian to Alex. He was a father figure. Thomas had pieced together, from comments both Alex and Sam had made, just how lost and broken Alex had been when he’d arrived at the Ward School after being taken from his family. Thomas shuddered a little to think what Alex would have been capable of had the physically dominant and headstrong Ward not had the influence of Sam in his young life.

“I did it! Wait—did I do it? I did do it!” Alex stared down at the weapon in his hand.

Thomas stared down with him. The two boys looked at each other, then each whooped with excitement. The exam was a week away. Not only had Alex done it, but he had a week to perfect his technique.

He gave Alex another wagging-fingered salute before he noticed Sam’s sad face behind Alex. Thomas felt his smile fading.

“What’s wrong, Sam?” he asked.

Alex whipped around. “Sam? I thought you’d be excited?”

Sam nodded, the wisps of white hair on his head continuing to move after the old man had stopped. “I am, Alex. I am.”

“But?”

The old man smiled. Somehow, it was a sad expression. “But….” He sighed. “You’ve made a weapon, Alex. A
Council
weapon. It’s a heavy burden, and one I’m not sure boys your age fully understand. But of course, that’s what they intend.”

Thomas thought the old man’s eyes clouded over, as if he was lost in a memory or in pain. A moment later, Sam blinked it away. The uneasiness settling inside Thomas wasn’t so quick to dissipate.

“Well…yeah.” Alex held the weapon in his hand. “We’re training to be Council agents. C’mon, Sam. You’re helping to train us—”

“No. I educate the young about the history of where we came from and how we arrived at this point. I do not train agents.”

Thomas took a long, slow breath, suddenly uncomfortable, as if the room were too small for the three of them.

“What’s wrong with being a Council agent?” Alex’s quiet question reflected the same tension that Thomas felt in his chest.

Something was wrong. Thomas thought it was something Sam knew that neither he nor Alex were privy to, but just the suggestion of it was enough to trigger his memory. C-Notes trading hands. Crates of supplies and bags of grain. The soft crying of the Neo-barb woman who’d raised him as he was pulled from the slave pen that held the women and children who’d survived the Scav attack. So many hadn’t.

Thomas’s dinner rose in his stomach, and he swallowed spasmodically. It had only been months, but somehow he’d managed to push it away and make it seem long ago. He could pretend it had happened in another life or to some other kid. Until tonight.

Sam sighed again, a heavier sound. “Alex, the Council isn’t the perfect government you think it is. And you’re old enough now to know the truth, so you can weigh it with what you know and balance it with what you want. The Council is in the business of governing, yes. And part of that is the gaining and keeping of power. We Sparks, all of us, we’re a means to an end. We always have been. Some of us by what we can do for the Council to keep the people happy. Some of us by what we’re willing to do on behalf of the Council to keep the people compliant. Because of your…natural skills…you will likely be one of the second. Do you understand what that means? What will be required of you?”

Alex frowned. “I’m going to be a Council agent.” His gaze shifted over to Thomas. “We won’t be keeping people compliant, we’ll be protecting them.”

Thomas felt like he would choke on the lump in his throat. He couldn’t swallow it down. His stomach pushed it back up, coated in bile. He coughed instead. “Agents didn’t protect my people.”

Alex’s brows lowered. “What are you talking about?”

“It was an agent who bought me, Alex,” Thom told his friend quietly. “From the Scavengers. I was so sick they thought I didn’t know, but I knew. And they left—”

“There’s no way they bought you. They rescued you.” The denial was flat and immediate.

“They didn’t rescue me from the Scavs. They
bought
me—they paid in C-Notes and supplies. Food. They were supporting slavers, Alex. And they left everyone else from the tribe who raised me in those slave pens. They didn’t care.” Thomas lifted his eyes to Sam, and sympathy shone back at him. But not surprise. The old man knew. “Basically, the Council owns me.”

Alex opened his mouth to speak, but Sam cut him off. Sam’s voice was sharp, and from the look of shock on Alex’s face, it may have been the first time.

“Listen to what he’s saying, Alex! Listen. And
think
.”

Alex started shaking his head. He stilled for a few seconds and then completed the movement. “There’s no way the Council is helping Scavs. There’s no way agents are doing that. You’re wrong. You have to be.”

In the moment before Thomas flashed into rage, he saw Sam’s lips compress in disappointment. It didn’t matter, though. Thomas wasn’t disappointed. He was furious.

“I’m wrong? I saw them, Alex. I saw what they did. They paid for me. They paid the people who killed my family—
both
of my families. And that’s what they’re training us to do. All of these exercises and team-building and training—can’t you see what they’re training us to be? Their trained dogs—”

“Dogs? We’re going to be the best of the best. Senior Agents, representing the Council.”

“I don’t want to represent the Council. I don’t want to stay here.”

Alex stared back at Thom in disbelief. “You’d rather go be an orphan somewhere—”

“I’m an orphan no matter where I am,” Thom insisted.

“We’re
all
orphans, Thom! None of us has a family anymore except each other. You know what I mean. You’d rather be sent away than stay here with…” Alex stopped and looked away.

Had he been about to say “with me”? Had Thom’s friendship come to mean as much to Alex as it had to Thomas? He couldn’t tell, because Alex wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Alex reached down and pulled the Taser apart, ripping the delicate welding instead of using the Dust to melt it back. He tossed the parts into the box they’d been using to carry the gun components.

Thom watched him in silence. He knew Sam did the same. If the old man didn’t know how to get through to Alex, what hope did Thomas have? He was just a kid.

He looked down at his own Taser, completed and cradled in his lap. He lifted it, considered taking it apart, and then decided he didn’t want to risk damaging his weapon the way Alex had just done with his own.

Thom wanted to go, yeah. But the reality was….

The reality sucked. And he’d just made it worse. He wasn’t going anywhere, and he’d just pissed off the only friend he had.

He ducked his head and rose quickly to his feet. “I’m gonna go. See you back at the dorm.”

He didn’t wait for Alex’s answer, simply nodded at Sam without meeting the man’s eyes and scrambled out of the room.

He didn’t go straight back to the dorm, though. He wandered the halls, fingers clutching the Taser. He did want to go, didn’t he? It made the most sense. He didn’t belong here. He didn’t fit.

He didn’t belong anywhere.

Even if he was good at it? Because he was good at it. He was good at it all: the studying, the Sparking, the projects, and training. Well, not the physical stuff. But he’d passed that exam, and he didn’t have to be a field agent. That would be Alex’s thing.

Thomas jumped at the hollow boom of a door closing behind him. He turned a circle. How had he gotten to the auditorium? How long had he wandered the halls?

He should go back to the room, like he’d said he would. Except Thomas didn’t want to go back. He didn’t want to deal with Alex’s disbelief any more than he wanted to deal with the questioning looks of the other boys in their unit.

He glanced around the auditorium, and his gaze caught on the uppermost row of seats, far above the floor he stood on. He’d be safe up there—he could sit and think without anyone seeing him.

He crossed the big, empty floor to the stairs off to the side, and then crossed again to the closest of the three sets of stairs leading all the way up to the back wall, far above. Once he’d made it to the top, he turned down the row and walked all the way to the end.

In the corner of the top-most row, he sank down onto the hard bench, looking back at the floor below. He felt a pang of loneliness. This was it, exactly. This was his life. A huge room, meant to hold thousands, the space echoing around him as he sat alone. Rolling damp eyes at the thought, Thom turned and settled back, laying himself out on the bench. No one would see him.

As soon as he’d settled back, though, his thoughts returned again to the day the agents had come to the Scav camp. They’d come for him. They’d known he was there, and he was the one they’d demanded to see as soon as they arrived.

Alex was wrong. The Council
did
deal with Scavs. And they did it often enough that the Scavs had some way to get them word they’d found a Spark with the Neo-barbs they’d taken. They did it often enough that those agents had arrived days after Thomas had been taken. They hadn’t questioned. They’d arrived in the Scav camp and demanded to see the Spark. His mind worked every angle of the fragmented, feverish memory, trying to fit together what had been said until the puzzle pieces fell away into darkness.