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Chapter I: Smoke and Fears
The streets—empty. The shops—closed. The trees were all withering or dead, except for one lonesome willow with a spiraling trunk. The sky was dark with clouds of ash, and small beams of light pierced through from a ball of dancing blue and black flames up above. A single bird flew overhead as a fire raged throughout an otherwise empty city. A wonder, a calamity, a beautiful sight—all at once.
“Good morning, cadets,” a merry voice shouted from a muffled speaker. “This is a reminder that Evaluations are just around the corner, so study hard over the break.”
A boy lifted his head and forced open his eyelids, back to reality from the world of his dreams. Wednesday, October 7, 2122, by Kasside R. Cissine was written neatly in black ink on the top right corner of a piece of lined notebook paper. The 19-year-old boy brushed brown hair away from his pale forehead and held his head in his hands as an excessively loud bell rang throughout the building. A portion his hair was blue and looked unnatural from the rest. His eyes were golden in color, comparable only to the morning sun.
“Have a good day, see you tomorrow,” a thin, well-dressed, middle-aged woman with narrow black-rimmed glasses and a blonde ponytail said with unconvincing enthusiasm.
A plaque that read Ms. Gleenate sat on the woman’s wooden desk. Ms. Gleenate sat in the front of the classroom, her desk pushed away from the door. She wasn’t much of a teacher, as she never actually taught anything, by definition. Her class was comprised of journal entries that focused on demanding (and often morally questionable) hypothetical situations which served to evaluate each cadet’s personality.
Another cadet approached Kasside’s desk as his classmates packed their belongings and left the classroom. A small black book with an intricate red symbol on the cover closed in the boy’s right hand as he placed his free hand on Kasside’s shoulder.
“Get up, it’s time to go,” the boy said sternly.
Kasside turned his head to see his friend Maron giving him a blank and bored stare.
Maron was dressed in a dark green shirt and gray pants (the standard uniform for cadets over the age of 13). He wore a white undershirt that showed near his neck and at his wrists. His hair was long and black, neatly tied back with only a few strands of noticeably white hair hanging down in the front. Unlike Kasside, Maron’s skin was tan, and his eyes were a blue-gray color.
Kasside arched his back and rolled his neck. He grabbed his bag and hooded jacket, slowly rose out of his seat, and followed Maron into the hall. Maron waited patiently, holding the door open until Kasside stumbled through. Maron opened his book as they strolled down the wide locker-filled hallway and kept his eyes on the pages.
“You need to get more sleep,” Maron stated. “Although I appreciate your help, I can do plenty by myself if your schedule suffers that badly.” Maron licked his finger and flipped a page in his book.
Kasside yawned and stretched out his arms, “I get plenty of sleep at my desk.”
Cadets were buzzing through the hallways, opening and shutting doors and busily jogging up and down staircases. A girl with dark skin, fiery-red eyes, and a ponytail of red and yellow burst through a nearby door and shoved inattentive peers out of her path. The girl was Tethia Entagie—Kasside’s girlfriend of three years. Tethia made her way to Kasside’s side and walked beside the boys without saying a word.
They approached double doors at the end of the hallway. Light pierced through dirt-stained windows and hit the tile floors in front of them. Tethia and Maron simultaneously pushed the doors open as sunlight aggressively greeted their eyes. The three cadets walked down several steps to ground level and kept on the paved path between two fields of grass.
“I need coffee,” Tethia mumbled as her knees bumped her low-hanging textbook.
“You’d both greatly benefit from a regular sleeping pattern, and perhaps a proper diet,” Maron suggested.
“No, I’d benefit from a damn cup of coffee,” Tethia spewed. “And what would you know about any of that?”
“Getting good sleep would be easier if I didn’t have to be up during ungodly hours of the day,” Kasside said, shielding his eyes from the sunlight.
“Most people hardly consider seven in the morning as an ‘ungodly’ hour,” Maron replied.
As they walked along the paved path, a group of cadets in shorts and t-shirts came into view, running along a circular track around the back of the buildings. Two of the cadets suddenly fell to the ground, causing several more to topple over their bodies. As the cadets stood back up, they began to shout and cast blame upon one another, pushing each other’s shoulders as level-headed peers tried to calm the tension.
A few more cadets fell to the ground, this time gripping each other’s shirt collars as they exchanged fists and rolled around the track. Several armored soldiers rushed toward the group, shouting at them to separate and cease fighting.
“At least you have that to look forward to, Kasside,” Tethia said.
“I can hardly contain myself,” Kasside replied.
They approached an intersection of walkways in the middle of the buildings and patches of grass around them. In the center was a bronze statue of a man in a long coat and wearing circular-rimmed glasses, standing heroically on top of a small pile of rubble.
“All right, see you later, losers,” Tethia said. She quickly kissed Kasside on the lips, turned around, and walked toward a building to their right side.
“I’ll see you during history,” Maron told Kasside.
“Yeah, see you there,” Kasside responded as they parted ways.
Kasside turned walked toward a curved building as another bell rang throughout the campus. Small groups of cadets hurried along the pathways and in and out of the entrances as armored soldiers watched with careful eyes. Kasside entered the building through a plain door with a blue triangle painted on it. As he came to a dim hallway, several people pushed their way past him without making eye contact.
In the next room, thin streams of light beamed down through small windows that ran across the top of each wall. The light cast down upon the dull rows of gray lockers that filled the room. Several boys were inside, changing into gray shirts and green shorts before slamming their lockers and heading through the far door. An armed guard stood near the exit and scanned the room carefully with his hands clasped over his waist.
Kasside found his locker and quickly changed into the shirt and shorts that were tucked inside. He felt the chilling gaze of action-ready eyes behind him. Keeping his head down, he exited through the back of the building, which led him back into the harsh, unblocked sunlight that warmed the rocky pavement beneath him. A few other cadets were sitting in a circle, stretching their arms and legs while two men in gym clothes watched with crossed arms. Kasside could see the red gravel track running along the border of the academy, only several yards away from the trees that blocked his view to the outside world.
“Let’s get moving, cadets,” one of the men shouted.
Most of the other cadets shared Kasside’s same worn-down look on their faces. The two men turned and began to jog toward the track while the cadets followed close behind. Kasside stayed in the back of the group and hid behind one of the larger cadets in front of him.
“I hate running,” Kasside mumbled to himself as their feet crunched along the gravel.
Kasside stared out above the trees. He watched as two birds gracefully looped around in the air—a perfectly choreographed performance the birds never intended to perform. He watched for a few uninterrupted minutes without thought or care, and followed the sounds of grinding gravel to keep him on the track.
Suddenly, the sounds stopped, and the only noise that remained was that of his steps. Kasside looked back toward the group just before running into the back of a fellow cadet.
“Sorry,” Kasside said as he maintained his balance.
The cadet didn’t respond. The entire group was now standing completely still, staring at the side of a building in silence.
A small boy was sitting against the wall of the building, motionless and covered in dark red blood from head to toe. The two men leading the cadets walked up to the boy and examined him closely.
“Son, can you hear me?” one of the men asked in a soft voice.
“I’ll go get CROSS,” the other man said. He briskly jogged around the side of the building and out of sight.
“Frainer, have the group finish the lap and wait on the pavement until I get back,” the first man said.
The cadets continued their route without looking back at the lifeless and beaten body.
“Any idea who that was?” one of the cadets asked.
They each shook their heads.
“I think he was wearing red, so he must be one of the younger kids. Then again, it might have just been all the blood,” another said.
“If he’s dead, that will be the third death this year,” a third cadet glumly remarked.
“All right, that’s enough,” the leading cadet said.
“Just in time for winter break,” Kasside said to himself.
After finishing a lap around the academy, they came back to the paved area behind the locker rooms and patiently waited for the instructors to return. Some of the cadets continued to exercise while others found refuge from the sun in shaded spots. One cadet was crying into her hands as another consoled her. The rest of the group seemed hardly affected and even less surprised.
Over half an hour later, one of the instructors finally returned just as the bell began to ring. The cadets waited as he approached with his head down.
“You are dismissed,” he said.
“Is he going to be all right?” a cadet asked.
“Let me worry about that. Go get changed,” the instructor replied.
Kasside sighed and trudged back to the locker room, feeling unaccomplished and unmotivated. He quickly changed clothes and slammed the locker door shut. He exited through the door with the blue triangle and walked through the large groups of conversing cadets. He entered one of the nearby buildings and made his way up a flight of stairs and into a hallway that connected two buildings together. The walls of the hallway were made of glass, making it the best possible view in the academy without having to sneak to the roof.
Inside his next classroom sat a large number of cadets, including Maron. History of the States was a class strongly monitored and incredibly important to the graduating status of any cadet, which explained the high attendance rate. History represented the cadet’s ability to comprehend the mistakes and triumphs of those before them, according to the academy.
A short-haired woman came into the classroom and set her shoulder bag down at the front desk. She was wearing khaki pants and a white shirt with a tie. The majority of her face was covered with blistered acne scars.
“Hello cadets, please take your seats,” the woman said. “Mr. Janner is going to be out today, so I will be taking his place. Some of you already know me, but for those who don’t, my name is Mrs. Phelligher. Feel free to call me by my first name, Ninda. We’re all adults here.”
If Ninda Phelligher’s scent didn’t give it away, her voice was a sure fact that she had been smoking for some years. The rasp of her voice hit the ears hard and was unpleasant, to say the least. Her resting face made her look confused and frustrated. As she opened the blinds in the classroom, the light showed her damaged and wrinkled skin that looked like a crumpled grid of thousands of defined lines.
Ninda looked down at a small white card, “He didn’t leave me a lot to go on, but finals are next week, so we will be focusing on review and an educational video. Who can tell me what was happening just before the Alchemy War?” Her grin hardly helped her face look any less angry.
A few cadets raised their hands.
Ninda used her index finger to scan the room and selected a cadet, “You, the girl in the back.”
“Alchemists were being attacked and blamed for a lot of the issues during that time,” the girl said. Her voice was soft, and her attempt at projecting across the classroom fell a few cadets short of success.
Mrs. Phelligher began strolling between the desks, “Does anyone else have a different answer, or anything to add?” She waited only a few seconds before taking it upon herself to explain, “The few years preceding the war were detrimental to the future of our country’s welfare. Alchemists were using illegal practices and holding secret meetings, thought to be terrorist plots. When the government caught wind, they intended to keep it from the people, in lieu of an uprising. We all know how that worked out.”
She turned on a projector that beamed at a large screen in the front of the class. The projection showed a bullet-pointed sheet of notes covering the topic of war. Thousands of dust particles danced through the beam of light, distracting each attention-deficit eye.
“When these Alchemists started being arrested,” Ninda began to enlighten again, “it was discovered that a number of them were here illegally from The Coalition of Independence. In response to the invasion, we sent our own special forces in to neutralize the enemy quickly and quietly. Unfortunately, a few of them were caught and held hostage by COI military in what was formerly Texas.”
She paused to set herself against the wooden desk, putting her arms behind her and grabbing the edge to support the rest of her body. “Now, someone tell me about the trade,” she said in a raspy voice.
A few cadets raised their hands once again.
“You, boy in the blue shirt,” Ninda said.
The boy cleared his throat, “The Coalition offered to trade our hostages for theirs, but the hostage turned out to be one of their spies, and uh—” the boy answered as he flipped through a book, searching for more information.
“Do you guys know who figured all that out? You should know this,” Ninda said. “Cepher Zsiel was the answer. As you should know, Cepher was a relatively unknown military scientist at the time, and according to his own statements, he knew there was something off about the soon-to-be-discovered Alchens. He had suspected a traitor among them and even reported her before the trade, but his words went unheard. Luckily, Zsiel was at the trade and recognized signs of alchenergy production from the traitor, Jacquel Hermita. Early morning on January 3rd, 2032, Hermita—a name you’ll need to remember for the finals—was about to be traded back to the States. She started to glow and lifted her hands to commence a surprise attack on our forces. She had already killed several men before Zsiel was able to stop her,” Mrs. Phelligher said in a serious manner, as if she had been there at the time it happened.
Kasside rolled his eyes and twirled his pencil in his left hand.
“Cepher Zsiel died an American hero, and don’t any of you forget that,” Ninda said. “That war destroyed many states and created this very island, but things could have been much worse, so consider yourselves lucky. Now, take notes on this video about the secession. You never know what will be on the test.”
The movie hadn’t yet ended when the bell rang out at the end of class. Unknown to Mrs. Phelligher, the cadets had seen the same movie multiple times in the past few weeks, but watching a movie was infinitely more pleasurable than listening to her voice.
Kasside and Maron waited for the rest of the cadets to exit the classroom before they entered the hallway.
“Did you hear about what happened?” Kasside whispered to Maron as they made their way down the halls.
“Word travels fast,” Maron replied as he opened up his book. “It was your class that found him, then?”
“Leaned up against a wall and covered in blood. He couldn’t have been over thirteen,” Kasside said.
“That makes three deaths this year,” Maron commented.
“How do you know he’s dead?” Kasside asked.
“When are they ever left alive?” Maron quickly retorted.
Just outside of the building, Tethia was waiting for them with her arms crossed and eyes to the ground. She looked up as they came near and waited for a group of passing cadets before approaching them.
“You guys hear about the dead kid?” she asked.
They both nodded as they continued to walk down the paved pathway.
“Any more deaths and we’ll be on full lockdown. I don’t think even Leo can help us get out at that point,” Kasside said.
“Let’s hope that’s not the case,” Maron said, flipping to the next page of his book.
The streets—empty. The shops—closed. The trees were all withering or dead, except for one lonesome willow with a spiraling trunk. The sky was dark with clouds of ash, and small beams of light pierced through from a ball of dancing blue and black flames up above. A single bird flew overhead as a fire raged throughout an otherwise empty city. A wonder, a calamity, a beautiful sight—all at once.
“Good morning, cadets,” a merry voice shouted from a muffled speaker. “This is a reminder that Evaluations are just around the corner, so study hard over the break.”
A boy lifted his head and forced open his eyelids, back to reality from the world of his dreams. Wednesday, October 7, 2122, by Kasside R. Cissine was written neatly in black ink on the top right corner of a piece of lined notebook paper. The 19-year-old boy brushed brown hair away from his pale forehead and held his head in his hands as an excessively loud bell rang throughout the building. A portion his hair was blue and looked unnatural from the rest. His eyes were golden in color, comparable only to the morning sun.
“Have a good day, see you tomorrow,” a thin, well-dressed, middle-aged woman with narrow black-rimmed glasses and a blonde ponytail said with unconvincing enthusiasm.
A plaque that read Ms. Gleenate sat on the woman’s wooden desk. Ms. Gleenate sat in the front of the classroom, her desk pushed away from the door. She wasn’t much of a teacher, as she never actually taught anything, by definition. Her class was comprised of journal entries that focused on demanding (and often morally questionable) hypothetical situations which served to evaluate each cadet’s personality.
Another cadet approached Kasside’s desk as his classmates packed their belongings and left the classroom. A small black book with an intricate red symbol on the cover closed in the boy’s right hand as he placed his free hand on Kasside’s shoulder.
“Get up, it’s time to go,” the boy said sternly.
Kasside turned his head to see his friend Maron giving him a blank and bored stare.
Maron was dressed in a dark green shirt and gray pants (the standard uniform for cadets over the age of 13). He wore a white undershirt that showed near his neck and at his wrists. His hair was long and black, neatly tied back with only a few strands of noticeably white hair hanging down in the front. Unlike Kasside, Maron’s skin was tan, and his eyes were a blue-gray color.
Kasside arched his back and rolled his neck. He grabbed his bag and hooded jacket, slowly rose out of his seat, and followed Maron into the hall. Maron waited patiently, holding the door open until Kasside stumbled through. Maron opened his book as they strolled down the wide locker-filled hallway and kept his eyes on the pages.
“You need to get more sleep,” Maron stated. “Although I appreciate your help, I can do plenty by myself if your schedule suffers that badly.” Maron licked his finger and flipped a page in his book.
Kasside yawned and stretched out his arms, “I get plenty of sleep at my desk.”
Cadets were buzzing through the hallways, opening and shutting doors and busily jogging up and down staircases. A girl with dark skin, fiery-red eyes, and a ponytail of red and yellow burst through a nearby door and shoved inattentive peers out of her path. The girl was Tethia Entagie—Kasside’s girlfriend of three years. Tethia made her way to Kasside’s side and walked beside the boys without saying a word.
They approached double doors at the end of the hallway. Light pierced through dirt-stained windows and hit the tile floors in front of them. Tethia and Maron simultaneously pushed the doors open as sunlight aggressively greeted their eyes. The three cadets walked down several steps to ground level and kept on the paved path between two fields of grass.
“I need coffee,” Tethia mumbled as her knees bumped her low-hanging textbook.
“You’d both greatly benefit from a regular sleeping pattern, and perhaps a proper diet,” Maron suggested.
“No, I’d benefit from a damn cup of coffee,” Tethia spewed. “And what would you know about any of that?”
“Getting good sleep would be easier if I didn’t have to be up during ungodly hours of the day,” Kasside said, shielding his eyes from the sunlight.
“Most people hardly consider seven in the morning as an ‘ungodly’ hour,” Maron replied.
As they walked along the paved path, a group of cadets in shorts and t-shirts came into view, running along a circular track around the back of the buildings. Two of the cadets suddenly fell to the ground, causing several more to topple over their bodies. As the cadets stood back up, they began to shout and cast blame upon one another, pushing each other’s shoulders as level-headed peers tried to calm the tension.
A few more cadets fell to the ground, this time gripping each other’s shirt collars as they exchanged fists and rolled around the track. Several armored soldiers rushed toward the group, shouting at them to separate and cease fighting.
“At least you have that to look forward to, Kasside,” Tethia said.
“I can hardly contain myself,” Kasside replied.
They approached an intersection of walkways in the middle of the buildings and patches of grass around them. In the center was a bronze statue of a man in a long coat and wearing circular-rimmed glasses, standing heroically on top of a small pile of rubble.
“All right, see you later, losers,” Tethia said. She quickly kissed Kasside on the lips, turned around, and walked toward a building to their right side.
“I’ll see you during history,” Maron told Kasside.
“Yeah, see you there,” Kasside responded as they parted ways.
Kasside turned walked toward a curved building as another bell rang throughout the campus. Small groups of cadets hurried along the pathways and in and out of the entrances as armored soldiers watched with careful eyes. Kasside entered the building through a plain door with a blue triangle painted on it. As he came to a dim hallway, several people pushed their way past him without making eye contact.
In the next room, thin streams of light beamed down through small windows that ran across the top of each wall. The light cast down upon the dull rows of gray lockers that filled the room. Several boys were inside, changing into gray shirts and green shorts before slamming their lockers and heading through the far door. An armed guard stood near the exit and scanned the room carefully with his hands clasped over his waist.
Kasside found his locker and quickly changed into the shirt and shorts that were tucked inside. He felt the chilling gaze of action-ready eyes behind him. Keeping his head down, he exited through the back of the building, which led him back into the harsh, unblocked sunlight that warmed the rocky pavement beneath him. A few other cadets were sitting in a circle, stretching their arms and legs while two men in gym clothes watched with crossed arms. Kasside could see the red gravel track running along the border of the academy, only several yards away from the trees that blocked his view to the outside world.
“Let’s get moving, cadets,” one of the men shouted.
Most of the other cadets shared Kasside’s same worn-down look on their faces. The two men turned and began to jog toward the track while the cadets followed close behind. Kasside stayed in the back of the group and hid behind one of the larger cadets in front of him.
“I hate running,” Kasside mumbled to himself as their feet crunched along the gravel.
Kasside stared out above the trees. He watched as two birds gracefully looped around in the air—a perfectly choreographed performance the birds never intended to perform. He watched for a few uninterrupted minutes without thought or care, and followed the sounds of grinding gravel to keep him on the track.
Suddenly, the sounds stopped, and the only noise that remained was that of his steps. Kasside looked back toward the group just before running into the back of a fellow cadet.
“Sorry,” Kasside said as he maintained his balance.
The cadet didn’t respond. The entire group was now standing completely still, staring at the side of a building in silence.
A small boy was sitting against the wall of the building, motionless and covered in dark red blood from head to toe. The two men leading the cadets walked up to the boy and examined him closely.
“Son, can you hear me?” one of the men asked in a soft voice.
“I’ll go get CROSS,” the other man said. He briskly jogged around the side of the building and out of sight.
“Frainer, have the group finish the lap and wait on the pavement until I get back,” the first man said.
The cadets continued their route without looking back at the lifeless and beaten body.
“Any idea who that was?” one of the cadets asked.
They each shook their heads.
“I think he was wearing red, so he must be one of the younger kids. Then again, it might have just been all the blood,” another said.
“If he’s dead, that will be the third death this year,” a third cadet glumly remarked.
“All right, that’s enough,” the leading cadet said.
“Just in time for winter break,” Kasside said to himself.
After finishing a lap around the academy, they came back to the paved area behind the locker rooms and patiently waited for the instructors to return. Some of the cadets continued to exercise while others found refuge from the sun in shaded spots. One cadet was crying into her hands as another consoled her. The rest of the group seemed hardly affected and even less surprised.
Over half an hour later, one of the instructors finally returned just as the bell began to ring. The cadets waited as he approached with his head down.
“You are dismissed,” he said.
“Is he going to be all right?” a cadet asked.
“Let me worry about that. Go get changed,” the instructor replied.
Kasside sighed and trudged back to the locker room, feeling unaccomplished and unmotivated. He quickly changed clothes and slammed the locker door shut. He exited through the door with the blue triangle and walked through the large groups of conversing cadets. He entered one of the nearby buildings and made his way up a flight of stairs and into a hallway that connected two buildings together. The walls of the hallway were made of glass, making it the best possible view in the academy without having to sneak to the roof.
Inside his next classroom sat a large number of cadets, including Maron. History of the States was a class strongly monitored and incredibly important to the graduating status of any cadet, which explained the high attendance rate. History represented the cadet’s ability to comprehend the mistakes and triumphs of those before them, according to the academy.
A short-haired woman came into the classroom and set her shoulder bag down at the front desk. She was wearing khaki pants and a white shirt with a tie. The majority of her face was covered with blistered acne scars.
“Hello cadets, please take your seats,” the woman said. “Mr. Janner is going to be out today, so I will be taking his place. Some of you already know me, but for those who don’t, my name is Mrs. Phelligher. Feel free to call me by my first name, Ninda. We’re all adults here.”
If Ninda Phelligher’s scent didn’t give it away, her voice was a sure fact that she had been smoking for some years. The rasp of her voice hit the ears hard and was unpleasant, to say the least. Her resting face made her look confused and frustrated. As she opened the blinds in the classroom, the light showed her damaged and wrinkled skin that looked like a crumpled grid of thousands of defined lines.
Ninda looked down at a small white card, “He didn’t leave me a lot to go on, but finals are next week, so we will be focusing on review and an educational video. Who can tell me what was happening just before the Alchemy War?” Her grin hardly helped her face look any less angry.
A few cadets raised their hands.
Ninda used her index finger to scan the room and selected a cadet, “You, the girl in the back.”
“Alchemists were being attacked and blamed for a lot of the issues during that time,” the girl said. Her voice was soft, and her attempt at projecting across the classroom fell a few cadets short of success.
Mrs. Phelligher began strolling between the desks, “Does anyone else have a different answer, or anything to add?” She waited only a few seconds before taking it upon herself to explain, “The few years preceding the war were detrimental to the future of our country’s welfare. Alchemists were using illegal practices and holding secret meetings, thought to be terrorist plots. When the government caught wind, they intended to keep it from the people, in lieu of an uprising. We all know how that worked out.”
She turned on a projector that beamed at a large screen in the front of the class. The projection showed a bullet-pointed sheet of notes covering the topic of war. Thousands of dust particles danced through the beam of light, distracting each attention-deficit eye.
“When these Alchemists started being arrested,” Ninda began to enlighten again, “it was discovered that a number of them were here illegally from The Coalition of Independence. In response to the invasion, we sent our own special forces in to neutralize the enemy quickly and quietly. Unfortunately, a few of them were caught and held hostage by COI military in what was formerly Texas.”
She paused to set herself against the wooden desk, putting her arms behind her and grabbing the edge to support the rest of her body. “Now, someone tell me about the trade,” she said in a raspy voice.
A few cadets raised their hands once again.
“You, boy in the blue shirt,” Ninda said.
The boy cleared his throat, “The Coalition offered to trade our hostages for theirs, but the hostage turned out to be one of their spies, and uh—” the boy answered as he flipped through a book, searching for more information.
“Do you guys know who figured all that out? You should know this,” Ninda said. “Cepher Zsiel was the answer. As you should know, Cepher was a relatively unknown military scientist at the time, and according to his own statements, he knew there was something off about the soon-to-be-discovered Alchens. He had suspected a traitor among them and even reported her before the trade, but his words went unheard. Luckily, Zsiel was at the trade and recognized signs of alchenergy production from the traitor, Jacquel Hermita. Early morning on January 3rd, 2032, Hermita—a name you’ll need to remember for the finals—was about to be traded back to the States. She started to glow and lifted her hands to commence a surprise attack on our forces. She had already killed several men before Zsiel was able to stop her,” Mrs. Phelligher said in a serious manner, as if she had been there at the time it happened.
Kasside rolled his eyes and twirled his pencil in his left hand.
“Cepher Zsiel died an American hero, and don’t any of you forget that,” Ninda said. “That war destroyed many states and created this very island, but things could have been much worse, so consider yourselves lucky. Now, take notes on this video about the secession. You never know what will be on the test.”
The movie hadn’t yet ended when the bell rang out at the end of class. Unknown to Mrs. Phelligher, the cadets had seen the same movie multiple times in the past few weeks, but watching a movie was infinitely more pleasurable than listening to her voice.
Kasside and Maron waited for the rest of the cadets to exit the classroom before they entered the hallway.
“Did you hear about what happened?” Kasside whispered to Maron as they made their way down the halls.
“Word travels fast,” Maron replied as he opened up his book. “It was your class that found him, then?”
“Leaned up against a wall and covered in blood. He couldn’t have been over thirteen,” Kasside said.
“That makes three deaths this year,” Maron commented.
“How do you know he’s dead?” Kasside asked.
“When are they ever left alive?” Maron quickly retorted.
Just outside of the building, Tethia was waiting for them with her arms crossed and eyes to the ground. She looked up as they came near and waited for a group of passing cadets before approaching them.
“You guys hear about the dead kid?” she asked.
They both nodded as they continued to walk down the paved pathway.
“Any more deaths and we’ll be on full lockdown. I don’t think even Leo can help us get out at that point,” Kasside said.
“Let’s hope that’s not the case,” Maron said, flipping to the next page of his book.