ARC10

Chapter 7.3

Dean calls after me, but I ignore him.

I move my feet forward while my brain pieces together the fumes of a forming plan.

I can't take the same route as I did before. Dean will block it again.

My trigger-happy fingers grip the papers that are hot and explosive at my side. They belong in Hayomo's hands, not mine. There has to be another way to reach Combat Room 4.

Ambling civilians spatter the Rotunda, even at this hour of the night. They live a life they don't understand will inevitably end in one destructive fashion or another in the next few years. Whether it is going to be at the hands of the greedy, soul-less Invaders or a friendly few of honorable races with the best intentions but worst luck. What comforts they wear in their day-to-day lives is going to be stripped from their vulnerable and weak human bodies. Without our machinery, without our explosives, and without our immense desire for self-preservation, we humans would have been a race of corpses long ago.

I am not going to let myself be part of that race. No way.

My head is up. My pace is swift. But my mind is three floors above me already seated at the U-shaped table in Combat Room 4. I practically skip past the Level 7 sign and realize my destination is coming closer by the—

"Watch where you're going!" I shout at the idiot who has collided directly into me.

I'm thrown backward onto my ass. The skid against the grated metal floor burns a bit, even through the thick material of my ash-gray pants. The back of my head is still pounding from where it hit the pipes, but now my back and legs pulsate in pain. I'm about to jump to my feet and start screaming at the pile of numb nuts and bolts who got in my way, but I'm struck backward again by the flutter of a million butterflies.

Kai watches me with one blue eye. He scans me from head to toe as he stands above. "I thought you might need some security detail. I heard rumors that you picked a fight with a giant, scowling hornet's nest, so I figured you might have come back here or something."

I roll my eyes. If anything moves with haste through the URE, it's gossip.

"I'm not going that way." I hope he'll drop the entire conversation and head to Combat Room 4 on his own. Picking myself from the ground, I slap the dust and the pain from the bottom of my thighs.

"Why not?" Curiosity peeks through his swollen black eye.

"I've got to find an alternate route."

"Let me guess. The old ball-n'chain-n' contract won't let you through?"

There is a little part of me that wants to say Yes! Isn't that awful? But instead, I neither acknowledge nor deny anything with a blank stare. This is awkward.

"Yeah, I sorta figured as much."

When we pause, my hand touches the bruise on the back of my head.

The air thickens with our dense silence. Kai flexes his fingers. He looks me over. I don't know why he's here or what he's thinking. If his cracking knuckles are any hint, I can't imagine it's anything sterling about Dean.

"Despite how it looks, he didn't do this on purpose."

"Isn't that what all the battered women say?"

I sigh, exasperated. "I'm going to the meeting, I just need to move." My body smolders with the fire of immediacy at my tail.

When I slide past him, he reaches out to brush his fingers against mine.

"I don't know about you, but I love a big entrance."