Call to Mission: Heart of the Splicer 1

  Part of her wanted to prove him wrong and to take the lead on this mission. If she could spot the Dioledians first and see them safely home without facing any real trouble, maybe she would earn a little respect from him and around the Ether Edifice when they get back. She wanted this so much that she tried to imagine each step on that dusty trail bringing her closer to that goal.

  Then again, though, she didn't really care about the splicers anymore, and she certainly didn't care about making people see what they were capable of as a group. The last thing she wanted was for another little girl to be inspired by Logan's displays of power and then end up just like her, who felt such an overwhelming sense of alienation because of her gray aura, her feeble bursts, and her desire to never return to the Ether Edifice now that she was out with no guilt for having left.

  The sun was beginning to set and they wouldn't be able to see the trail for much longer, especially once they reached the nearby woods.

  "We should stop for the night," she said.

  Immediately, Logan removed his rucksack from his shoulder and set it amid the grass along the road. He extended an arm behind himself and plopped down on his haunches.

  Sophie tilted her head towards him. "Wow. That was easier than I expected," she said.

  "What?" Logan asked, looking curious.

  "I just thought you would want to push onward, you know? I mean, you're the gold standard of splicer students, right? So, I just expected more determination - not that I'm complaining. That's all."

  Logan rested his arms on his knees with a blade of grass in his fingers. He ripped it apart and then doubled the segments over and did it again until he had to grab more grass and restart the cycle.

  "It's the smart decision," he said, distracted by the grass.

  "Okay. Well, I'm going to go gather some firewood."

  Sophie walked away, considering the option of just running away now and saving herself the effort of actually going through with the mission.

  "Whatever. Don't let me stop you," Logan said. And Sophie was glad that he could not see her growing so angry with his rude attitude again that she imagined herself with a fierce red aura.

  Soon, she disappeared into the woods, mumbling to herself; deciding that, yes, she would leave now and find a new home.

  Preferably somewhere far from the splicers, please.

  Four

  WHILE SOPHIE was gone, Logan rifled through his rucksack and found the stakes and cloth to set up two tents for the night. He had been sure to pack the extra materials so they wouldn't have to be near each other any more than absolutely necessary.

  He knew exactly why Illoso had sent the girl with him on this mission.

  Yes, Logan did feel some anxiety about not being able to relate to these outsiders, but the real issue was that Sophie wasn't really benefitting at all from her time in the Ether Edifice.

  Logan himself had started classes with her three years ago and had watched everyone surpass her one by one while she remained no better at splicing energy than a brand new recruit. He felt sympathy for her. Okay, so she was pretty in a sort of aloof way and he thought that if they were given a chance to be friends, he would really like her.

  But as months go by, she had steadily alienated herself from others and become rather sarcastic when addressed. He had become extremely focused on learning that he also had forgotten about how attractive she was... until today. And so it was an issue either way.

  The problem was the fact that Illoso clearly wanted Logan to become a better splicer through working together. That was the nature of splicing energy to begin with, after all. He simply wished it could be with someone who was as serious to the craft as he was.

  While he used one stake as a hammer to drive another into the ground, Logan thought about how she must have just simply never understood what exactly they were doing when they were learning to bind their energies together and detonate their auras. The whole idea had always seemed so simple to Logan once he heard Illoso explain it the first time.

  His mentor had explained that the first man to bind energies with others - that man that had awakened the power within people and had founded the splicers - had told his people that they needed each other to be powerful. The first splicer had said that whenever two of them gathered together and recognized this energy to be real, they would feel that power he had awakened within them.

  Logan's mother had been a gardener. She was the first one who taught him what that truly meant. A year before Logan had left to join the splicers in the Ether Edifice, his mother had brought him into her garden and had shown him a dying plant next to a thriving one.

  "Look here," she had said, and she had then sheered pieces of the two plants diagonally and grafted them together, scion to stock. "This is what you will be doing when you leave me to go to the tower. These plants are going to both live now because they're bonded together. You can't always save others without sacrificing a piece of yourself, but you have to be willing to go that far sometimes."

  So she was the reason why he understood the concept so much better than others. Her words were the reason he had succeeded in every challenge that the mentors at the Ether Edifice had presented to him.

  Now, as he drove the last stake into the ground, he thought maybe noone had thought splicing the way his mother did to Sophie. Maybe he could explain this all to her, if she would be willing to listen. He could explain that her gray aura was the same thing as that dying plant in his mother's garden. Though he was still worried that he could never be as good at teaching these ideas as he had been at learning them, he still hoped he could help Sophie thrive, to splice with the same energy and skill he had gained over the years.

  First, she would have to decide to open up. But he honestly worried that this would be very difficult for her, given how difficult it was for her to befriend everyone at the school. If that were the case, she would never know what it was like to be so filled with that energy that you could burst with it, sending you flying with the bliss of that unity between yourself and others - or yourself and the first splicer. That joyful feeling, which allowed them to put on a show for people from so many different villages, was the true show, as far as Logan was concerned. Even though the feeling itself could not actually be seen, it was a spectacle without comparison. Even the emerald bursts did no justice to that feeling.

  Logan began to glow with a subtle green tint while he worked, feeling himself recharged from the events of the day. The light surrounding his body meant that Sophie was still close enough for him to splice with her energy, even if she couldn't reach the same level of power that he could.

  Someday, she would, he decided.

  "Yes," he said after finishing the last of the preparations for their campsite. He settled down into his tent and looked out at the darkness that had descended around him.

  The woods themselves were invisible now, and he wondered how much longer Sophie would be before she returned with the firewood. His hands were beginning to feel chilly from the wind still rushing forth through that trail between the tower and the world that he had never seen before.

  Soon he grew tired and fell asleep, failing to notice the dimming light of his emerald aura as Sophie fled farther and farther from him...

  SOPHIE TRUDGED half-blindly through the black expanses of the woods while its scraggly briars snagged her leather clothing with each step.

  Above her, the moon shone through the brittle leafless canopy of skeletal limbs in wedges of pale light, and she tried to stick to the visible places it spared along the forest floors. What little she could see from the moonlight through these narrow gaps was also buffeted with a torrent of wind pouring through the gaps. She was chilled to the point that her fingers ached and her hair became disheveled, forming a kind of canopy of their own over her eyes.

  She pushed onward still and dodged tree roots as best she could, even though her boots had long since become heavy with mud. Half of her footfalls were exaggerated with the crackling of d
ry leaves that had somehow taken refuge from the dew that had begun to coat the night. The other half of her steps were quieter under the sound of her labored breaths.

  The sore pangs of her muscles reminded her only of the exhaustion she used to feel after each failure at trying to successfully splice energy with others at the Ether Edifice. Despite how much her legs burned and slowed her, she felt nothing but further motivation to keep running away from Logan and from the splicers altogether.

  She could see the path growing darker as she moved deeper into the woods, but there was no way to find her way back now anyway. Her vision was no longer any more useful than all the training she had received as a splicer, and so she embraced the curtain of shadows that was draped all around her.

  She could almost feel it, running its fingers through her hair roughly with the strength of the breeze, weighing down on her eyelids as if to tell her she could finally rest and not have to worry about impressing Illoso anymore, because now, she could simply live a normal life like everyone else outside the Ether Edifice.

  This darkness was welcoming to her, and it finally descended completely around her as the branches above closed, first into a web-like silhouette, and then into a total void.

  Five

  UP AHEAD, a light appeared that caught Sophie's eye.

  She moved toward it automatically at first, and then slowed herself down and cautiously looked around to be sure that she hadn't accidentally doubled back and headed toward Logan or, worse, the Ether Edifice itself.

  A few shrill cries filled the air. She ducked, scared that she had been caught and would have to face whatever punishment the splicers had for runaways. She couldn't be sure what exactly that would be. After all, no one had ever run away before.

  She crept forward on the tips of her toes and felt around for a bush to hide behind. Even if it was too dark for her to see, cover was a valuable thing to have. She couldn't let herself doubt the abilities of the elder splicers like Illoso, or the better students like Logan.

  More shouts arose, nearly muted against the wind. These voices were much deeper and sounded far more aggressive, and her stomach grew tight as if it were a drum for her heart to beat against as it hastened to an almost violent pace.

  She tucked her knees into her arms and remained very still to try to muffle her breaths and steady her heart, listening for another cry and hoping that none would come.

  But again, that sound pierced the soft creaking of insects.

  She rose up and looked beyond the briar, beyond the trees that eclipsed her view. It was a lantern that had been the source of light she must have seen just moments earlier fell to the earth and burned upright against its lopsided, murky glass. And it helped. She finally saw them - several figures moving about one another and tugging at straps to leather bags, brandishing daggers, thrusting other shadows to the ground.

  The bandits that haunted these woods and outlands even this close to the Ether Edifice had found new victims.

  She tried to calm herself, to control her breathing so that she could decide what to do, but she couldn't help but gasp with every blow the victims took. She could hear the strikes now. She had to cover her own mouth to keep from crying out herself, until silence replaced the barbaric sounds.

  "Oh, please. Don't let them be dead," she whispered to herself. They went to watch the performance at the school, and because of that they were exposed to danger.

  The bandits now stood evenly on both feet and scanned the woods, their blackened faces turning toward her, pausing, and then moving past her. She was paralyzed by the thought of being discovered. When their heads finally seemed to turn the other direction, she ducked down once again behind the bush and crawled back from one tree to the next.

  Her fingers dug into the dirt as she clawed backward, sparse blades of grass catching under her fingernails and tickling her skin like countless insect legs. The sensation tensed her muscles more and spurred her to her feet.

  Sophie found herself running with renewed energy through the woods, away from the dying glow of the toppled lantern, and back to Logan.

  LOGAN WOKE to a cold midnight and knew right away that Sophie had abandoned him along the road. He stood slowly, his rigid body refusing every motion he tried to make. The unforgiving ground had left his muscles aching, and the fact that there was still no fire had not helped him stay limber either.

  How could Sophie just leave? But there was no use asking. He would have to go into the forest now and gather kindling and firewood himself or he would have a very miserable night.

  As he moved slowly and uncertainly through the dark, he wished that he could say that he would be fine, but this turn of events was honestly the worst outcome he could have imagined. He had feared this from the beginning. The notion that he would leave the Ether Edifice, a place where community was everything and be stranded in the road with no one to help him and with only thieves and wild animals awaiting him on the horizon had been one that caused him much concern.

  He realized that his splicing power was useless now because Sophie was gone, and he wanted now more than ever to explain to her just how much damage she could do to everyone around her by not participating, by being so selfish that she had left him powerless.

  It was a hopeless case, of course, since she had, indeed, left.

  For some time, he pulled at mossy logs that were crawling with camouflaged insects in their amorphous swarms. His hands slid across them and the moss alike and made him cringe from the slimy feeling under his palms. The smell of rotten wood was so strong that he could actually taste the grainy splinters as if they were lodged into his nose. He shied away from the bigger branches to seek bushes and fallen twigs instead, even if they might not burn quite as long in the campfire. Better a slow and small fire than being bitten by snakes.

  He really wasn't very sure that he could start a fire to begin with, having so little training in anything besides splicing itself. If only his aura produced heat rather than simply light and sonic booms, but even splicing to create an aura was impossible at this point now that Sophie was gone. He would have to do. He wasn't someone who would give up easily, especially if it involved his survival.

  Soon, his arms were full with sticks and small logs that shed their bark-like scales on his arms, and he could hear the dirt and grit slipping from his forearms and littering the ground like a dead, dry rainfall. He looked up and saw the clear sky and exhaled slowly, relieved that at least he didn't have to worry about trying to shield the fire from the weather.

  He listened again to the steady cascade of bark fragments wherever he stepped and wondered what type of trail he was leaving that thieves could possibly follow to his campsite. He tried to push that thought to the back of his mind instead and just focused on getting back and warming up so he could start thinking clearly.

  He also realized that he had to decide if he was going to continue the mission or not. Illoso had said nothing about what to do if Sophie abandoned him before they were even halfway to Dioled. How was he supposed to show them his power and convince the villagers there to form a trusting union with the splicers of the Ether Edifice if he had no one that he could, with absolute certainty, splice energies with?

  He could feel his nerves turning his stomach already. What would Illoso say? Would he blame him for Sophie's running away? Should he have somehow felt something that could have prevented this? He felt guilty for failing this first mission even though it was largely Sophie's fault than his. On the other hand, had he tried to learn more about her, maybe he could have observed that something was wrong? Maybe he could...

  He stopped thinking of maybes when he finally saw the two pinnacles of the tents he had made for them after cresting a hill. Logan quickened his pace a bit more. He stumbled in mechanical steps down the hill, using the bases of dying saplings to maintain his footing and stay upright. He reached the foot of the hill once again and walked out of the line of trees and dropped the sticks in a heap by the tent.

&
nbsp; He stood with his hands on his hips, looking down and wondering how he would start the fire when Sophie had been the one to pack the tools. She had taken her bag with her, of course, but along with the tools in it. She was the one with the knowledge for the more technical jobs like building fires, while he was the one with the skills to speak and splice whenever necessary.

  He sighed in frustration. The simple fact of the matter was that he had never wanted this mission to begin with.

  And now, he knew why.

  Six

  LOGAN TORE DOWN Sophie's tent in a few swift motions, the fabric ripping away from the stakes, which he left buried in the soil like little headstones.

  He folded it over and turned it into a makeshift blanket, then rummaged through his own bag for a while, looking for more blankets to keep him warm when suddenly, he found it.

  The flint and steel were there, as if he had packed them himself. Sophie was kind enough to slip those materials into his rucksack before she had taken off into the woods.

  He smiled, but even that small movement hurt his face because of the cold trying to freeze him motionless. He had to start that fire now.

  As he built the fire, he could barely tell in the dim tongues of flame if the white air hanging in front of his face was smoke or his own hot breath on the autumn night. Soon, he could taste the smoke in his mouth and felt as if his very lungs were smoldering themselves, now that he could begin to feel heat against his chest.

  For a while he sat still, facing the fire in a half-crouch, his nose directly pointed toward it and becoming less numb in small degrees. He waited until he finally felt sweat beading on his brow and under his thick hair. He spun around to warm his back, too, and stared out into the woods again, which appeared in flickers about his massive shadow that was cast upon it.

  Nothing moved but the flame behind him and the light against the trees, and he noticed the smoke lingering above him as if forming a cavern to protect him from the wilderness. His eyelids grew heavy for the second time that night as he stared off into the depth of his own shadow.

  And then, Sophie suddenly shambled out from among the trees, a mess of tangled hair and frantically moving hands. Her eyes reflected the scarce light of the fire and she took steps slowly while her body shivered out of rhythm with the rest of her.

  Logan had stood upon sight of her. He studied her, wondering if he had simply fallen asleep and was imagining this, perhaps about to fall back into the flame and wake with his body lit in a glow much more destructive than his aura.

  "Bandits!" she said breathlessly, and then staggered and pointed back through the woods where their shadows disappeared into the consuming night.

  Bandits...

  Logan turned, stamped out the flames, and ran to her.

  "Show me."

  NO MORE than an hour later, Sophie and Logan's pace had brought them back to the briar where she had hidden and the dirt road that lay beyond the tree line.

  She could feel herself growing weak after all the rushing back and forth she had done. She wanted badly to be back in the Ether Edifice and away from the bandits. For all she knew, they could be awaiting them, preparing an ambush that they had no way of anticipating.

  As they peeked over the briar together, she noticed Logan's hands beginning to radiate the dimmest of emerald auras - too dim for anyone beyond the woods to see but still more than Sophie had ever been able to generate.

  "We have to go out there and look around," Logan finally whispered.

  "What if they're out there waiting for us?" Sophie whispered back.

  Logan shook his head in the dark. She could only see it by the light of his glowing hands. "I don't know. I'm not even sure what to do if they're out there."

  They broke away from the cover of the bush and walked cautiously into the open field near the road. Logan stood in front of her, his arm extending slightly in her direction like a ward against whatever might appear and try to hurt her. She wondered if he did it to protect her or if he was trying to make sure he could draw off her energy and splice an aura out of their proximity at any moment in case they were attacked.

  Oh, me and my distrusting nature, she thought. Why was she even thinking about this right now, when splicing was the only thing she knew that could save them if they get in trouble with the bandits? She remembered the horrible screams she had heard when the travelers they were supposed to follow and protect were being taken. They need to save those people, too. How could they if they couldn't splice?

  The wind filtered through the field without hindrance, funneling between the woods at each side. It pressed away from the Ether Edifice to the north and blew the loose ends of their clothes free from their skin until they pointed like arrows toward the southern land where Dioled awaited them.

  Logan whirled around in the grass, his head down and pale blue eyes visibly scanning the ghostly landscape with a lunar lens cast over its entirety. He turned to her, colorless now except for the moonlight and its shade.

  "Are you absolutely certain that you saw something?"

  Sophie nodded as she too searched for any kind of evidence of the attack. "I don't have to put up with your doubt, you know?"

  Logan craned his neck up and then down the length of the borderless road. "Then why did you come back to get me?" He paused as if to let the words settle over her, the same way his achievements as a splicer had always loomed above her failures, and then he began a slow gait away.

  "Where are you going?" she asked. She had tried to hide her exasperation, but her tone was sharper than she intended.

  "Dioled - where I was told to go. Unlike some people, I can actually keep my word."

  She cringed at first, then threw an angry glance at his back.

  Of course, you wouldn't understand. Of course, you wouldn't know how it feels to be a failure because you're faultless.

  But she never said a word about it as she followed him. He didn't have to understand. She wouldn't go back to the school after this, anyway. There was no way that she was going back and let be the subject of whispers when everybody learned she had abandoned Logan before this fiasco even began.

  Seven

  THEY WERE WALKING all night along that stretch of road when finally they came upon a campsite.

  The low embers of the strangers' fire caught their eyes first. Judging by the amount of smoke pouring into the sky, Sophie could tell that the flame had just been extinguished with great haste, as if they were hiding something or trying not to be seen.

  She knew that whoever had been camping there would not be anywhere near the fire as they approached. In fact, whoever it was surely had the drop on them already. They were probably hiding out, around the scarce trees and bushes scattered throughout the field, awaiting the chance to attack.

  If they waited any longer, Sophie knew that it would only give the strangers more time to prepare.

  "Hurry," she said and ran ahead of Logan.

  "Wait," he called out in a half-whisper, but she was already closing in on the campsite, kicking up dirt from the road that trailed her with a dusty twilight glow.

  She slid to a stop in front of the tent nearest the dead fire and tried to listen for any movement inside. The night was still and the only motion she saw was the skin of the tent swaying lightly in the breeze. The dust she had unsettled began to catch up with her, and with it came Logan, panting and twisting his head around on the lookout for an ambush.

  "Are you an idiot?!" he whispered harshly.

  "Just be quiet for a second," she said.

  He grabbed her arm and tried to pull her back, away from what little light the flame still offered, but she stood firm and flung her arm until he released her.

  "Is anyone here?" she called out to the tents. Logan flinched and backed away, his hand ahead of him and ready to emit their emerald bursts.

  No sound came from the campsite for a moment, and then Sophie approached the biggest one and grabbed the flap. She looked back once to Logan to make sure he
was prepared.

  He lit up slightly with his green hue, and shed a dim light toward Sophie. She knew he couldn't keep up this technique for long, especially since her energy was the only power source available to him out there, so she wasted no time casting the flap wide open.

  Logan's body flashed bright to catch whoever might be inside off guard. Sophie buried her eyes inside her elbow then slowly lowered her arm to look inside.

  A bearded man huddled in a mess of blankets on the tent floor looked up at them. He kept a hand over his eyes to block out Logan's aura burst and moaned as if he had just awakened.

  "Help! Thieves!" he cried out.

  "Wait," Sophie said. "We're not thieves. Look!"

  She turned back to Logan, who dropped his hands and dimmed his light to let the stranger see more clearly.

  The man backed away to the farthest reaches of the tent and kept his knees and hands up and faced them as a shield.

  "Don't come any closer," he cried, his breath panicked and shaken.

  "We won't," Sophie said. She raised her own hand with her palms facing him and tried to show him that they were harmless. "Sorry we startled you. We're just looking for the travelers from Dioled who were at the Ether Edifice yesterday. Have you seen them?"

  He looked confused for a moment, as if trying to decide exactly what to say and said, "Yes, I have. I mean, that's my group. We're from Dioled."

  Logan began to inch closer and moved ahead of Sophie. "I don't trust him," he whispered to her.

  Sophie put her hand on Logan's to keep him from going too far, and perhaps from trying to hurt the poor traveler that they had just rudely awakened. "Logan," she whispered to him. "That's not a good way to start making them like splicers. Relax."

  He still seemed uneasy, his hand twitching against hers. He drew it away from her and stepped forward again. "I don't recognize you," Logan said, "and I was one of the performers." He turned back to Sophie. "Don't you find that a bit suspicious?"

  "Look," the traveler said. "I don't want any trouble. I'm just trying to get some sleep."

  Logan whirled on him. "Where then, are the others who were with you? There were kids and women, too. Where are all the people who were in these tents? That aura burst should've woken up everyone here."

  The man clenched his jaw, his face lit with Logan's increasingly bright emerald glow.

  "Boys!" he shouted suddenly.

  As the man reached back and lifted the skirt of the tent up and slid out the back, a group of shadows converged on the campsite.

  And they came quickly, with weapons that gleamed in Logan's light and reflected it back... one long, metallic sheen after another, coming closer and encircling Sophie and Logan. She felt someone grab her hand and she tried to pull away but discovered, as the moonlight began to fade away and be replaced with a powerful aura, that it was Logan who had seized her and was drawing off of her power.

  In a flash that blinded her from the shadowy bandits who had ambushed them, Logan's aura burst. The light was only a precursor to the sonic boom that followed - the real strength of his ability. A concussion that rivaled any Sophie had ever felt swept across the campsite, finally killing the last of the smoldering embers in the campfire and knocking the tents over in a wave of impressive force.

  The stakes and sticks holding the tents up clattered together in arrhythmic percussion before flying headlong into some of the bandits who had tried to sneak up behind their cover. Bodies were strewn everywhere around the campsite, some of them still bouncing along the earth from the wave of energy that had just battered them.

  Logan dropped to one knee. The light was gone, and Sophie could sense through his power channeling through her that he was nearly powerless now. His hand fell from hers and rested on the ground, Logan needing it to fight gravity as well, as if these people ambushing him were not enough.

  Most of the bandits were motionless or rolled only slightly around, feeling bones that may have shattered in the explosion. Some were gripping their heads that were surely throbbing from the whiplash into the ground that Logan's attack had given them.

  Some still moved though, and tried to regain their bearings. Sophie couldn't tell how many were still conscious in the new darkness without aura or flame to light the scene, but she knew it was more than she could handle alone.

  "We have to go," she said and tucked her arm under Logan's own to lift him.

  She stumbled away from the site, back toward the woods where they might find cover. As she approached, more forms came from the tree line and stepped forward like living darkness that would not let them escape.

  There were only two that she could see, but the other bandits behind them were already beginning to call out between each other to reassemble their ranks.

  Eight

  SO SOPHIE RAISED Logan up higher until he was back on his own feet.

  "Come on, Logan! You have to do that one more time," she said.

  His voice came as a raspy whisper. "I don't think I have it in me."

  "You've got to try," she said and faced him, her eyes closed to block out all the danger that had surrounded them. She focused hard on channeling her energy through her body, down her arms and through the tips of her fingers - all of it pushing toward Logan to give him everything she had to offer, even if it wasn't much at all.

  Suddenly, she felt herself being pulled away from him. Logan too, had been seized by the bandits as they dragged him toward the decimated campsite, laughing and jeering, "What you gonna do now, little splicer? Hmm?"

  The bandit who had grabbed her looked her in the face, his breath hot and foul against her skin. She tried to pry away from him and closed her eyes once again. Her gray aura had lit his face, which she immediately regretted. His skin was pocked with scars and craters, and his teeth were little more than stubby yellow daggers jutting out in a jagged mess along his gums.

  "This one only glows gray," the man said. He grabbed her chin with calloused hands and turned her face from side to side. "Attractive little thing though. Shouldn't be any trouble at all." He wrapped his meaty fingers around her shoulders and tossed her to the ground a few feet away. "Toole," he said, "keep an eye on her while we deal with the pretty boy."

  As her gray glow faded, Sophie saw a slender form appear above her. The moon had begun to fade out of sight behind him from the light of daybreak polluting the dark of night. His boot raised and then rested on her stomach. She could feel the tread of its sole and the mud caked between the indentions.

  "No problem," Toole said, smirking down at her.

  Sophie could hear Logan calling out wordlessly into the sky. With the weight of the man's boot on her, she didn't have enough strength to do the same.

  SOPHIE LOOKED out through the rusty bars of her cage at the other prisoners, some of them lapping at their bowls of water like animals and spilling drops on their ragged clothing. The others sat with vacant dark eyes, stoic with the look of broken minds. She could tell by the droppings scattered around her and the small holes dug near the bases of the cage that she was being kept in the same place as the bandits' dogs.

  The other captives' cages were each equipped with a chain, and at the end of their rattling lengths stood large hounds with slobbering jaws. They pressed at the outsides of the cages as if furious that they had been evicted for these outsiders to stay in their rightful places. The prisoners kept to the farthest reaches of their cages, away from the droplets of spit that flew any time the dogs grew frenzied at the sight of them.

  "Sophie...?" she heard Logan say through strained breaths.

  She looked over to his cage, surprised he had finally woken up. His normally bright eyes were hard to see through the bruised swelling around them. His clothes were tattered and loose, hanging from the frame of his body like the peeling of an apple.

  Between them was another cage where a hooded man sat in dark solemnity, his knees raised in front of him and his hands resting on his thighs. He never turned his head, as if he was locked in a
trance. His back rested upon the cave wall behind each of their cages.

  When Sophie was first thrown into the cage, she thought it had been built into the very structure of the stone itself. But she grew to realize that the metal bars had simply been pressed against the cave wall for so long that they had taken on a coating of the dust from the jagged rocks.

  Logan's personal prison was huddled against two walls of stone, one to the back of it and one to the far side. For Sophie, the sun's heat was impossible to escape in any shade other than the dark outlines of bars that draped over her, but Logan's cage was nearly enveloped in shadow. She hoped that he would at least find some comfort in that.

  "How long has it been?" he asked.

  She looked away from him, ashamed to keep seeing how badly he had been beaten. "Only a few hours."

  "How many of them are there?"

  "I'm not sure."

  The hooded figure suddenly spoke with a gravelly voice. "Six of them. The rest are gone for now. Hunting trip." He turned his head finally, though his face was still hard to make out in the cover of his hood and he nodded at Sophie's cage. "The dogs that would usually be in your cages are gone, too. Enjoy the peace for now. They'll be back soon enough."

  Sophie thought that the man reminded her of someone from the night before. Maybe he was one of the victims from Dioled that the bandits had ambushed. She couldn't quite figure out what his grizzled but strong face reminded her of, especially since the entire night before was a blur of darkness and unrecognizable figures either attacking her or being attacked by others.

  The hooded man stood and stretched his legs. She looked at his clothing. It was in remarkably better shape than that of the rest of the prisoners. His boots were especially sturdy, though the mud covering them was thicker than she would have expected for someone who would have been in captivity. Rain hadn't fallen for several days in this side of the Ether Edifice either.

  She looked once more at his boots and realized who it was immediately - the man who had held her down the night before while they battered Logan into unconsciousness.

  It had been too dark to see his face then, but she did remember one thing about him.

  His name was Toole. That was what the ugly raid leader had called him just before he started swinging the blunt side of his dagger into Logan's head.

  Logan, still unaware of what she now knew, rose from the dirt and brushed off his pants.

  "So, what are we going to do to get out? Any ideas?"

  Sophie glanced at the hooded man and then shook her head. "We shouldn't talk about this until we know if they're watching us."

  Logan looked around at the open space outside their cages. It was a flat span of valley that was only marked by more cages a dozen yards away, with the side of another cliff standing behind those, too.

  "I don't see anyone. I think we need to start figuring things out now," he concluded.

  "Just trust me," Sophie argued, and cut her hand through the air as if to severe his vocal chords entirely.

  The hooded man raised his eyes to meet hers and then looked away.

  "She's right, you know," said one of the captives in a cage across from them. He was cradled against one side of the cage with his hand reaching between the bars and holding a woman's hand beside him. The woman's face was streaked with tears running through the grimy dirt and she didn't look at the man or at them even as they spoke. "These bandits may not be kind, but they're not dumb either," he continued. He pointed from Logan to Sophie and back. "Look at how they were smart enough to separate the two splicers."

  Logan's eyes widened slightly behind the blue-black curves of his brow. "You know we're splicers?"

  "Oh, yes. Absolutely. I remember you from the performance at the tower." He glanced over to Sophie. "Don't recall seeing you though."

  The words stung her a bit as she remembered that she had actually been punished and forced to work that day instead of being able to participate in the activities. She didn't feel the need to explain herself now. They had bigger problems than her hurt pride. Wasn't that what landed them here to begin with?

  If she hadn't run away from Logan and stumbled upon the bandits in the random road she had found, then none of this would have happened.

  Nine

  "SO, you're from Dioled, aren't you?" Logan asked.

  "Born and raised," he said. "Name's Caleb. And you're Sophie and Logan from the Ether Edifice."

  Sophie raised an eyebrow.

  The man laughed. "I just heard you two talking, and I also remember the names that were announced at the performance. You could say I'm a good listener." He smiled, the dirt on his face sinking into dimples and wrinkles by his eyes. Then his face turned serious. "I also listened to what they were saying about you, particularly the big ugly one that killed my friend. They've got plans for you. Some kind of ransom they want to work out with the other splicers."

  Logan wrapped his hands around the bars, his knuckles caked with dry blood. "If the tower finds a ragtag group of bandits, they'll destroy them. There won't be any ransoming."

  Caleb tilted his head and sighed. "If you say so. But I don't think you know ol' Silvertongue like the rest of us know him."

  Logan's shoulders relaxed. "Silvertongue?"

  Caleb released his grip from the woman's hand and approached the front of the cage, ignoring the violent barks of the dog that guarded him. "The ugly one. He's the one that leads the raids. Baerik Silvertongue. You know why they call him that?"

  Logan and Sophie shook their heads slowly.

  Caleb glanced back at the woman who still stared blankly. He turned back to them and said in a hushed voice. "It's his signature way of killing people. He stabs you through the back of your head." As he said this, he took his hand, knife-edged it, and pointed it against the back of his skull. With a quick thrust, his fingers disappeared into his hair. He continued. "The blade comes through the back of your head, and sticks out of your mouth like a tongue." He looked back once again. "That's what happened to her brother last night."

  Sophie felt sick, and she looked to Logan, whose knuckles were showing bone-white through the bits of blood still clinging to his skin.

  His face was expressionless. The hooded man between them had returned to the back of the cage by the cave wall and was suspiciously silent.

  If he was just a spy, she wondered if he was proud of what his leader had done to these people.

  "We have to do something," Logan said. His hands lowered from the bars and rested beside his legs steadily as if he had complete control and strength in himself again. "Look, you're right that we're splicers. And that means we can do something if you help us. You're close enough that you may be able to help me do some damage to these guys when they show up again."

  Caleb's face contorted with confusion. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean that if you let me teach you some things about splicing and let me borrow some energy, I may be able to save us all."

  "Logan," Sophie said, her hand held up toward Caleb as if to apologize. "These people just went through a tragedy. Weren't you listening? We're all eating out of bowls and beaten up. What energy do you think they have left to offer?" she reasoned, her face growing slightly red in the small gaps of light between the shadows of the bars. She hoped she hadn't embarrassed Logan when he was just trying to help. But it bothered her that he was being pushy even with outsiders. She had worried about this when they were assigned to find the Dioledians and to try to teach them how to splice. People wouldn't be as accepting of their ways of life if they tried to force it upon them, like he was doing to Caleb now.

  She also didn't want Logan getting their hopes up. The odds of him being able to save even himself in that condition were slim.

  The hooded figure had stood up again as if listening closely to how this planning would play out. Sophie worried, too, that even if they could convince the Dioledians to lend them some energy to fight their way out of the bandits' hideout, this man next to her might fin
d a way to sabotage the whole thing or reveal their scheming to Baerik.

  "Look," Logan said, "I'm sorry to hear about what happened to her brother. But we still have to find a way to deal with these criminals. We can't just be complacent and hope for the best when it comes to people like them."

  Caleb nodded. "Dioled has had to deal with these murderers for years without any help or any retaliation. That's why I led this group to the tower to begin with. I wanted to show them that the splicers could help us deal with criminals and protect our people." Caleb stopped, arched his neck back to look into the sky. With a semblance of defeat in his eyes, he laughed. "But look at us now, trapped here with two splicers who can't even agree with each other."

  "That's quite enough talking," a voice called, banking in harsh echoes along the stone walls.

  Around the curve of the cliff side, Baerik appeared with a small group of five other bandits. His face was even uglier in daylight, Sophie noted, and he seemed to have his bloodshot eyes focused on her.

  "Hello, sweetheart," he said and winked at her.

  She shuddered and spitefully looked away.

  "Aw, you don't have to be so mean. I'm only here for your boyfriend. You and I can get to know each other later."

  She turned to Logan who gritted his teeth and held onto the bars like weapons. The hooded figure that she knew to be Toole backed away from Logan's cage, as if even the bars between them would not be enough to keep him safe from whatever was about to happen.

  Sophie drew closer to Toole. She prepared to reach through the bars and wrap her arm around his neck in case he ended up revealing himself to be a traitor, trying in any way to help Baerik do any kind of harm to Logan.

  As Baerik stepped toward the line of cages, Logan's body began to glow a faded green. Sophie could see by its color and dim light that he was much weaker now than she had thought. Baerik must have known that, too, because he approached without any sign of concern or fear, his face a twisted and scarred grin.

  "Would you like me to let you out, pretty boy?" Baerik asked Logan as he leaned an arm on the cage, and crossed one leg in front of the other. He was completely calm and amiable, as if he was there to rescue Logan himself.

  Logan didn't blink. He didn't move at all except for his chest and shoulders rising and falling in heavy, hateful breaths.

  "I asked you a question, little splicer," Baerik said. His smile began to fade. And then he suddenly thrust his arm through the bars and straight into Logan's eye, knocking Logan back into the corner of the six-foot-long cage. Logan quickly held his face to nurse his eye, hissing pain out in those same intense breaths that made Sophie wince.

  Then Baerik removed a ring of keys from his pocket and unlocked the cage. He opened the door and looked in at Logan, who slowly lifted himself into a sitting position against the cave wall. He scowled at Baerik, his hand still covering one eye.

  "Here's the deal, kid," Baerik said, and she realized that Logan looked more like a kid than a young man at that moment. "I'm going to stand outside this door, and you're going to stand against that wall. Whenever you're ready, you can try to get out of that cage before I shut the door. If you make it out, you'll be free. If I shut it and you're still in, you can bet that you'll never step foot outside that cage again until the dogs get bored with your bones. Sound good to you?"

  Logan stood and faced Baerik. His emerald glow returned with more power behind it this time. Baerik backed away, no longer smiling but never turning his eyes away from Logan.

  He held the door wide and said, "Whenever you're ready, kid..."

  Sophie could feel Logan drawing energy from her and trying to splice as much power between them as possible. He was preparing to dash through the door and then to hopefully escape to the Ether Edifice for reinforcements. But she couldn't offer very much strength from her distance. He would have to use a burst to get through, relying on the propulsion to make it past the door.

  However, she knew that if he did make it through the door, he would still have to deal with all the bandits, all the hounds, and all the miles between this secluded hideout and the tower and the farther Logan moved away from her, the less she would be able to help him.

  Logan surely knew all of this, too, but as his aura brightened -- he was going to take that chance. In an overwhelming burst of light and a wave of air, she felt him release all the energy he could gather from within himself and Sophie.

  He flew forward as a blur of green light and streaming tatters of clothes, until suddenly Baerik did not even try to close the door, but instead raised the scabbard of his sword out near the base of the cage.

  The hazy image that was Logan clipped its knee against the scabbard and went tumbling out into the hollow between the cages. When he finally stopped rolling, he tried to lift himself with shaky arms that gave out on him, and left him with his lips pressed against the dust.

  Ten

  THE BANDITS ALL LAUGHED heartily, and Baerik grabbed Logan by his shirt and dragged him back to the cage. He threw him just inside its perimeter where he lay propped against metal, as limp as a corpse.

  Sophie had seized ahold of the bars so hard by then that her bones hurt inside her hands.

  "Guess you lost the game, didn't you?" Baerik said.

  Suddenly, Logan's body regained its firmness, and he rolled onto his back and burned intensely with the power of his aura.

  Sophie thought she heard Baerik cry out before the burst caught him in its concussive wave, and slammed him against the bars of the cage with brutal force.

  Immediately, the other prisoners were rushing to the fronts of their cages and calling out in indiscernible cries. Sophie joined them from where she stood, throwing clots of dirt toward the bandits to keep their attention away from Logan, who looked even more worn out now.

  In a few moments, the guards had opened the other prisoners' doors, and let the dogs run around and into the cages. The guards stopped the dogs just when they were barely out of reach. The hounds growled and barked at the ends of their chains, silencing the prisoners just as they were before Logan's attack.

  A second bandit moved into Logan's cage and stood in front of him as if waiting for the splicer to stand up before he attacked. Behind Logan, Baerik was beginning to move again, and Sophie realized the other bandit was simply making sure Logan didn't escape while his boss was recovering.

  Sophie knew Logan didn't need to be hit anymore. He was already visibly struggling just to raise himself from the ground.

  The hooded figure stood completely still next to the border between his and Sophie's cages. She saw the tension grow in his shoulders as Baerik drew a dagger from his belt and crept up behind Logan, who was now being held up on his knees by the other bandit.

  If only Sophie were in the next cage, she could reach through and grab the blade out of Baerik's hand. But what could she do on her own? She reached out between the cages and pulled the hood off of the man beside her and yelled, "Do something!"

  He looked to her with panicked eyes, and she knew without any doubt at all that he was one of the bandits who had helped capture her. Something in his terrified stare didn't make him seem capable of the same maliciousness that Baerik had shown, and she asked him again, almost too quietly to hear this time.

  "Do something, Toole. Please."

  Baerik's blade turned in his palm, the point directly behind the back of Logan's head while the other bandit held Logan by a fistful of hair and nodded at Baerik.

  Without moving from where he stood, Toole reached a hand out toward Logan just as Sophie stretched an arm through the bars and as far into Toole's cage as she could, wishing she could only reach her friend and save him.

  Logan's aura flickered but could not stabilize, only providing a pulse of color on the faces of his assailants which made them seem all the more sinister. Baerik's arm pulled back to ready the dagger, and Sophie cried out and closed her eyes and tried with every bit of her mind to draw energy from Logan if he couldn't borrow it from her
in that state.

  She suddenly felt a surge of strength from somewhere and opened her eyes to see a green veil hanging over the world around her.

  Beside her, Toole was glowing gray and still reaching out. Their arms were touching at the elbow, where energy poured out of him and into her, culminating in an ever-brightening glow that she concentrated on until, finally, her new emerald aura erupted.

  Sophie saw everything as silent, brief flashes. The bars by her face had bent ever so slightly outward. The door of her cage was hanging lopsided off its hinges.

  And then a tide of dust rushed away from her in every direction. The man holding Logan's head up was thrown with it, bouncing his own head off the bars in the corner of the cage. Baerik was again thrown by the blast and collided with the opposite side of cage. His unconscious body flattened against the edges of rocks that jutted through the railing.

  And then Toole collapsed in front of her. The green haze over the world receded. At last, she heard air return to the space around her to pound against her eardrums. The other four bandits who had been knocked onto their backs stood and looked at their leader who was now out cold next to Logan, and then fled back around the curve of the cliff side.

  Sophie quickly stood and rushed out of her cage. She ran over to Logan. His body was dangling against the bars almost lifelessly, and she shook him until his eyes opened to show his pupils rolled back at first and then slowly appearing with a few blinks.

  He regained consciousness and looked at her exhaustedly.

  "I think I won," he said and then groaned and draped an arm over her shoulder to lift himself up. When he was on his feet and somewhat stable, she let him go. She moved over to Baerik quickly and gingerly searched into his pockets and the pouches on his belt until she found the keys to the cages.

  "What do you need those for?" Logan asked, weak and curious. "The cages are already open."

  The Dioledians were indeed all tucked in the backs of their cells with the hounds still snapping at them.

  She shrugged. "It's just an idea." She walked over to Toole's cage and unlocked it.

  He was still lying on his stomach, drained by the energy she had borrowed from him. She wasn't sure how he had offered her power when even doing that kind of splicing required training, but she would need to keep him around to find out.

  Working his arm around her neck, she lifted him as best she could and then dragged him toward the nearest Dioledian, a young girl. The dog that was there guarding the dirt-clad little girl inside turned to face Sophie as soon as she was within its reach. It snarled at her and bared its teeth, and she waited and waited, their eyes locked together and unblinking.

  It lunged after her in rabid haste. Without wasting a moment, she twisted abruptly and put Toole between herself and the dog. Her eyes were squinted shut to protect them from the animal, and her chin was buried against her sternum as she prayed the hound wouldn't tear at her throat.

  Just as she expected, though, the dog didn't fall upon her or chew into her skin or rip at her with its paws.

  Instead, she opened her eyes and glanced past Toole's body to see the dog simply standing still and growling. It looked to Toole and sniffed at his clothes and then returned its menacing glare to her.

  Ahh, I knew it!

  She did not bother with words, and bobbed her head sideways to signal at the little girl. While the dog was distracted, the young Dioledian managed to rush past the dog and escape to safety. She repeated this same process again at each of the cages while Logan watched her, obviously impressed and nodding but still glancing around on the lookout for any bandits who might have returned while he himself started working, though slowly, to put the unconscious Baerik the other bandit in the same dark cage where he had been kept in captivity. He then locked the door. Logan pocketed the key and handled Baerik's dagger, and then hid this, too, in one of the other pockets in his trousers.

  When the last of the Dioledians were free, she carried Toole over to Logan, and he too draped an arm over himself to help her carry the man out.

  "How did you know they wouldn't attack him?" he asked her as they all made their way out of the hideout.

  "He's one of them," she said and then turned to face Baerik one last time, smiling to herself. "And now, we have a hostage..."