Seven Protectors stormed the room, some standing back while others marched ahead. One wrenched a student to her feet, a second barked orders, a third asked politely.
"You scaeg, Camilla, you ignored me and now you're getting what you deserve," a protector hissed at a pretty Empyrean girl at the front. The protector shook Camilla's shoulders. "You ignored me, and now you're going all the way down! You could have had a nice guy like me as your boyfriend—well, now we both know the truth, you were a filthy deviant all along!"
"Theo?" Camilla whispered. "Theo, is that you—stop, you're hurting me!"
Lex's blood ran cold as she spied the crimson-striped chest of Captain Rolland in the hallway, his eyes watching as his seven recruits dragged their targets—ex-classmates— away. Screams echoed from the halls as more armoured transports arrived outside.
"What was your assignment?" Bell said by her side. "Are you pure?"
"Second Floor," Lex said, rubber numb. "Passingly Pure." Bell's shoulders sank. Lex felt as if she had been shot. She had trouble thinking, a rising hate rushing up from the pit of her stomach. "I studied orbits of my life away. I did everything they asked … and I don't even get First. I don't get anything. I even sang their hades damned songs."
"You get to avoid their fate," Bell said evenly, and let the howls from the corridor do the talking. "I have a backup plan. Let's go somewhere quiet. The park?" She was worried about what the stress would do to Lex's heart. After the lies, after this purge, Bell still only thought of Lex's health. It infuriated her no end. This illness. She hated it.
Bell pulled her by the hand into the hallway. Lex didn't care about how improper it was, she was too busy staring at classroom after classroom half empty of students. The 'Passingly Pure' and above had their floorcodes scanned and told to scram. The rest were brought to empty classrooms, where their heads were shaved to the scalp. Then they were ordered to strip and put on grey jumpsuits. So much of the hair was Empyre red—half, by Lex's best guess—when Empyrean blood flowed through only a tenth of Hera High's students.
Unlike the Graexians, Lex was drawing attention. She was scanned again. Then a third time. The protectors stared after her as if waiting for an opportunity. As if there was a prize for bagging Empyreans.
So many refused to be scanned or shaved or taken away. And for them, FLEX batons swung with wild abandon. Electrocuted, they collapsed to the floor a twitching mess; their bowels loosened to add insult to injury. And again. And again. Until teenagers were stripped before their classmates as if they weren't human beings. The grey jumpsuits, combined with their bald heads, made everyone look the same, barely distinguishable, with a huge floorcode printed on their back. Just a swarm of deviants. Cattle.
They were herded out the back and into waiting trucks.
Bell pulled Lex through checkpoint after checkpoint. There were more than the new student protectors, there were real ones too. Angry, powerful and willing to use their power at the slightest sign of rebellion.
"We should help," Lex said, pulling against Bell's arm. They were shocking a Graexian boy relentlessly, his hunched backside shielding a small Empyrean girl convulsing on the floor—her eyes rolled into her head, her mouth slack and her hands clutching her chest.
Like Lex, she had Deployment Damage, leading to a weakened heart and stunted growth. Her hand grasped her own little auto-injector, filled with something other than Lex's crimson Serum. A protector—a predator—snatched the medicine from her hands before it could reach her neck.
"We should leave," Bell said, voice rising, hands only for Lex, eyes only for Lex.
"Bell, we need to—"
A blood-curdling scream filled the air. Gunshots. Five Empyrean students burst from a classroom with stolen snubguns firing at the protectors, riddling them with holes.
"We are Warcaste!" the youngest of them shouted, hades' fire in his eyes. "We do not lay down to die!" Down the hall, the Empyrean captives attacked the closest protectors. For a moment, the hallway was chaos and struggle. The warcaste, children of Empyrean Legionnaires, fighting as if it were all they knew. With tooth and nail. With a ferocity that fought down armoured men.
"We are—"
The boy's head was flung down the hall. Students screamed. His four compatriots turned their snubguns, but the crimson cyberblade slashed an amber plasma sword in a blur of orange and red. The students collapsed into smoking chunks of bloody flesh.
The cyberblade's sword lowered, the amber that flowed inside fading away to darken the ardite blade, the tubes connecting the ardite to the creature's spine still glowing bright orange.
"Stand down, or be destroyed," a Hunter Killer agent ordered, standing out from behind the cybernetical monster. He holstered his plasma pistol and raised an Omnibolter assault rifle in both hands, the honeycomb symbol of Omnicorp printed on the side. "You have three seconds to comply. Three … two … one …"
The Hunter Killer agent shot twice. Two streaks of death blasted through a string of students before burying in the far wall. Blood exploded everywhere, a dozen screaming as they fell to the ground, others praying on their knees, the protectors seizing the moment to beat the rebels bloody.
Protector whites were soon streaked with blood.
"Let's go," Bell said. "Before something else happens."
Lex collapsed, a burning pain blooming in her chest.
She came to in Bell's arms, as she was carried past trucks loaded to the bursting with deviants—with students. Behind them, the passingly pure and pure fled while truck after truck full of teenagers rumbled off into the streets.
Bell pulled Lex past the pylon, which lit the school grounds crime-scene blue. They crossed over a bridge, then stumbled down cracked stairs to a bubbling creek below, the polluted water ink black. Bell lay her down on a slimy old bench, Lex staring into the dark waters as the burning in her chest faded. Bell put the empty auto-injector into her pocket, along with the canister filled with a thousand more doses. She wished she had shared her Serum with that fallen girl; she was probably dead now. Lex hated herself for failing her.
But she hated the protectors more.
She willed them all to burn for their crimes. Such cruelty. She willed the world to explode just to match her rage. The Great Engine should scream and bend and break. But the Great Engine continued to send plasma into the steel sky, indifferent to a single girl's black anger.
"How could they do that?" Lex said. She tried to sit up, but Bell pushed her down. She couldn't resist. "Damn you, how are you calm? Why aren't you angry?"
"What were your grades?" Bell replied, pulling Lex's head onto her lap. Holding her there with iron fingers. "Your scores, your report card, what does it say?"
Lex blinked. "What?"
"Your scores, what are they?" Lex could feel Bell shaking, her eyes unfocused as she stared into a dilapidated concrete wall. "Did our studying pay off?"
Lex lifted her hand, froze, then lifted higher still. She touched Bell's cheek in a very un-Empyrean caress. Lex's face burned with the shame as her tortured heart quickened and her lips parted. Bell stilled, then leaned her cheek against Lex's hand, and cupped it with her own. Their fingers intertwined.
"Bell, are you okay?" Lex had never seen Bell like this. Bell was always fine. She had never shown weakness. She was strong. Always.
But now she was trembling. Eyes unfocused. Lips quivering.
"Touching," said a slurred voice from atop the cracked stairs. Loose stones fell to splash into the water and send the squib writhing in the dark. "So very touching."
Bell shot to her feet and Lex followed. Her head hammered, her groggy eyes seeing two of everything. A lone man stood on the bridge above them. He had a rotten yellow smile, curled brown hair, a chin covered in filth and stubble, and a snubpistol in one hand. The barrel pointed right at Lex's head. In the other hand he held a device that looked like a pen with a red button on top.
A trigger.
"To think I'd find you here." Manny Grave giggled. "The scaegs that destroyed my career. The gods must smile upon me. They must have organised all of this for my benefit."
"Where is it?" Lex whispered, far too low to be heard. "Where is the bomb?"