Legacy

Chapter 13: For our Greater Good

It had been approximately three days since the Partnership Activity when the guards stalked into my Healing lecture and barked at us all to be in the quad in five. The rush of a hundred students was like the force of the ocean: the surge of the waves, pushing you forward - and you're trapped in the flow. 

We all know what this means. 

"Kat," Alaysa said, catching hold of me before the sea of students could break us off entirely. Her hand reached for mine but she overestimated and scraped her nails across my arm. While the lecture hall exploded with exiting students, I used my other hand and tugged her to me, sighing in relief as she became locked to my side - and we were then pushed on forward relentlessly.

"It's the booster, right?" she asked me, her lips close to my ear as she tried to shout over the hurricane of sound. "It's true - we're getting the boosters for the Maze - " Alaysa was broken off, severed as the students surged out in the hallway. Space erupted between our bodies but there was a little more room here that we could recover, sticking close to the wall.

"Must be," I shouted back to her, passing an askance glance at a male student shoving through the crowd, clipping me on the shoulder. "They're implementing them this year. Official reason: they understand that our bodies are capable of extra power and with this, we can finally end the war with the Shadow."

"Real reason?"

I looked down from her, that frisson of fear a metallic taste on my tongue. The exact same fear that the thousand other students hurrying to the courtyard was feeling. "They're trying to hop us up on more power so we can just try and match the Shadow. We're losing this war, Alaysa. So they're going to make us gorge on power. Too much power."

It was like giving each student a taser and saying: Look, with this taser, you can finally have the ultimate weapon! Catch is: a couple of you will be given faulty tasers and will be promptly electrocuted.

We joined the crowds streaming into the quadrangle, the extra space giving us all a little more room to breathe. The physical dimension didn't seem to matter though - there were more than half the students with their exhales and inhales cut a little short: jerky, rapid - waiting. We were all waiting.

It was worse than just trying to overdose a couple thousand kids. We did that shit daily as it was, taking in clouds of illicit power to feel the buzz - our bodies could handle a little excess. It was the students that weren't matched for the power surge - the ones where the power looped endlessly inside them: building and growing and fighting for space in such a breakable, fragile body...

The ones where the power ruled them and broke their body from the inside out. That was the names we gave to the destroyers. Some people never really fit into the typical roles: soldier, leader or healer. Sometimes they could only match to the tragedy of being a destroyer.

But no one knows who.

The fear under our tongues, the frantic beats of swelling hearts, the sweat lining skin. The inevitable absence of breath, the beat of air inside you that you couldn't inhale and expel properly. A thousand different people sharing life inside this quadrangle and a thousand exact thoughts: will it be me?

I had the same thought - once. But growing up the Sol's Light's daughter gives you an advantage, it gives you an edge. I was born to lead and I had that certainty. Not everyone did.

"They say that as much as ten people out of a thousand can break under the boosters," Alaysa said, appearing by my side, her hands twisting into knots before her. "They've had this protocol early in Lantis - you know how it is out there. They needed the extra push over there."