The same talents which allows us to shield
cities and rebuild society.
This calling has only been recorded once in history.
Everything we use for power, communication,
and travel can be attributed to the same man.
It is truly remarkable how much we rely on a single person.
What I am saying is, it is incredibly hard to replace
everything you break. You absolute piece of shit.
—Virgil Clay, A Different Kind of Lecture
Every eye in the room locked onto Violet. “What do you mean?” Lineman asked. Violet shrugged nervously.
“Oh, well, it’s just… something Stephanie said. When she was explaining why she thought the pylon might not have enough clarity. And why there was a risk of a swarm,” Violet answered.
“Exactly how much did you two talk about?” Aubrey asked.
“Seriously, what is with you today?” Kiera cut in. “I have never seen you so hostile before! Can you let whatever bug crawled up your ass go and just let her answer the question?”
“Look, I’m just saying, that’s a lot of relevant fucking information that was conveniently only shared with one person! If our lancer was worried about a swarm, she should have called all of us out there instead of waiting until it showed up! No one else thinks that is weird?” Aubrey insisted. Violet paused, then audibly sighed.
“Hey, Aubrey,” Violet said with as gentle a voice as she could. “I’m not sure how you and I got off on the wrong foot. But I am happy to apologize for it, I am. Whatever I’ve done to upset you. Let’s just say we both could have handled ourselves better, and start over, yeah?”
“No,” Aubrey answered immediately. “You want to suggest a plan that everyone’s lives depend on. A plan based on information that was only shared with you. We need an explanation for why before we trust you with our lives. How else can we even know she said any of it at all?”
Guy rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that’s how I make amends too. Really nailed it there, Aubrey. Kiera’s right; you’re being weird today,” he groaned.
“No, it’s alright,” Violet said. “She didn’t want to start a panic. We are all just untrained kids, right? Any of us might have run if we knew a swarm was likely. She probably told me because she’d seen me stay calm in the mist before, and because I can see further in the mist than any of you. But if you doubt it, you can always just ask her when she is conscious. I’m sure she’ll wake up soon, even if she’s in no shape to fight.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Lineman cut in. “Just explain this fourth option. I can tell you if it’s reasonable or not, alright?"
Violet nodded. “Right, sorry. It was irresponsible of me to distract everyone from the task at hand. What I was saying was simple. When she saw how low on clarity the pylon was, she also explained the most likely cause. She thinks a nest must have formed nearby. One that gathered all the clarity in the area. That’s also where the swarm must have come from,” she replied.
“That makes sense,” Lineman responded. “Although it’s strange that a swarm would leave their nest unprompted.”
“But where there is a nest, there is a heart. That’s what we’d be waiting for anyway, right? The fourth option we have is simple. We go there, and we take it. Rather than waiting for someone to bring a new heart here. We can make it to the next station only a little late, and we’ll allow the pylon to start gathering clarity again,” Violet explained.
“You want us to raid a nest? We hardly know what we’re doing, and we don’t know where it is, if it exists at all!” Aubrey complained.
“We already killed most of the hedron, and we know what direction they came from. If we want to get everyone to safety with the least risk, it’s an option,” Violet replied.
“Fuck it. She did come home with a green heart last time. Might as well go for a red one,” Chase shrugged. Violet smiled, then looked Alex directly in the eyes.
“Thanks, Chase. I appreciate your support!” she said.
“Shit. We fought all of them anyway. I’ll go,” Guy agreed easily.
“I’d be a lot more comfortable if we had Stephanie with us,” Kiera noted.
“I wouldn’t. I thought she was gonna kill us out there! She panicked more than any of us,” Guy disagreed.
“Nevertheless, she is more experienced and stronger than any of you. Miss Mulberry is right. We need to know what state the lancer is in before we make any decisions,” Lineman interrupted.
“Is anyone keeping an eye on her, by the way? She was in pretty bad shape after that fight. We should really be taking care of her, shouldn’t we?” Violet asked. Lineman winced, and Violet didn’t miss it. “Isn’t there some sort of procedure for this? Surely, this isn’t the first time a lancer has been injured on a trip, no?”
“We… we’d typically use clarity to heal her. But she’d usually have another lancer with a medical calling, or a healing talent herself. Our tools are the backup plan for that. This was supposed to be a minor trip through relatively safe land. Our assigned lancer had a higher category and a regeneration talent. All this to say, yes, we have procedures for this. But we are about ten steps outside of every precaution we had in place,” he answered.
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Violet almost laughed. The prepared lancer had been switched with a weaker and injured alternative, the pylon had been nearly empty, and they’d been attacked by a swarm. What Lineman wasn’t saying, however, was that the conductors were clearly inexperienced. Category orange was lower than Violet expected, and lower than she understood to be common practice. Of course, if there was a shortage of lancer recruits lately, it made sense that there would be too few conductors, as well. Especially considering how specific the calling was. Picking up a few mandatory recruits from a couple of small towns in low-category territory hadn’t warranted their best.
It really was the perfect storm to get a bunch of teenagers killed. Of course, for all Violet knew, that was the goal. Her experience with the lancers so far made it hard to discern if the issue was apathy or ill intent. In reality, it was strained resources, poor luck, and perhaps a little personal malice that led them to where they were. But it was hard not to blame less charitable possibilities after her experiences with the lancers thus far. Violet didn’t laugh, but she did offer a sympathetic smile.
“R–Right,” she acknowledged. “Still, I’m a bit fond of her, after our last trip through the mist together. And we do need her input before we decide to do anything. She’s the most experienced, after all. Shouldn’t someone, uh, check on her?” Mr. Lineman sighed and nodded.
“Yes, you’re right, of course. But you really don’t need to worry. A yellow lancer isn’t going to be significantly hurt by red hedron. We’re just letting her get some rest while I explain the situation to all of you. We’ll check on her shortly,” he insisted. Violet was getting annoyed. Stephanie was dead, and the sooner everyone knew that, the sooner they could move on and commit to Violet’s plan. She also wanted to watch people’s reactions and see if she could identify who it had been to open the door before. The useless conductor was nothing more than an obstacle, by this point. Violet couldn’t exactly say that, however. So she dressed her smile with awkward sympathy and cast a sidelong glance toward the other volunteers. Everyone who’d actually been in the fight knew how badly Stephanie was hurt. Death by a thousand papercuts was still death, after all. Even Aubrey seemed to agree, and she spoke up in support of Violet.
“Violet’s right. Sitting around here discussing what needs to be done is fucking irresponsible. One of us needs to go and see if she’s alright, and then ask which plan we should make,” she agreed. Violet offered the girl a grateful nod, which was only answered with rolled eyes.
“You’re right, and either of you is welcome to go. Please, we need to make a decision sooner rather than later,” Lineman agreed. Violet looked down at her torn clothes and open wounds. The look was more for the group’s benefit than her own. She idly wondered if it was the conductor’s inexperience at play, or if all conductors would be clueless in this situation. This wasn’t their job, after all. A lancer was supposed to be in charge, not the drivers.
“I want to, and I am happy to go with whoever does, but I’m pretty scraped up myself. We should probably have someone with no open wounds see to her, right? I mean, just in case,” Violet suggested. If she were the one sent to check on Stephanie, it would pretty badly ruin her already-unstable alibi. She needed someone else to find the body. Aubrey would be ideal, but she couldn’t figure out a way to arrange that. It didn’t matter, so long as it wasn’t her. “Chase, any chance you’d want to help?”
“Fine. We should just do this instead of talking about it forever,” Chase agreed. “It’s been maybe a few minutes since she was brought on board, and she didn’t look too bad to me, but if it’ll make everyone happy, then fine.”
“Those of us who were injured should probably go too. Whatever our plan, we’ll want to at least bandage our current injuries. Especially you, Violet. Aside from Stephanie, you look the worst out of any of us,” Kiera added.
“That’s a good point,” Violet agreed cheerfully. “Oh, uh, that we should focus on healing up. Not that I look the worst. That was kind of mean, actually. But yeah, as long as we aren’t bleeding on an injured woman, by all means. Let us trek to the first aid kits.”
“R–Right,” Lineman agreed. “We’ll keep discussing what we need to do to get the train back.” The train, Violet noticed, was the only thing he seemed to really care about. It made her wonder about the nature of callings again. As Chase led the four volunteers to the door in the back of the car, Violet walked past her nervous and mostly silent boyfriend.
She leaned in with a sweet smile on her face and whispered in his ear. “Chase is coming with us, so at least in his absence, I was hoping maybe my boyfriend could stand up for my ideas? If it’s not too much trouble.” Alex winced and turned, looking her in the eyes. He glanced at the wounds all over her body, then broke eye contact completely.
“Violet, I’m sorry. I should have been out there with you,” he replied. Violet shook her head.
“That’s fine. I’m getting used to taking care of myself. Just push for my idea, so we can get to safety and you can write to your mom, yeah?” she pushed. Alex’s lips tightened, but he nodded.
“You can count on me. I promise,” he whispered. Violet tilted her head, and her smile widened. White teeth created an unsettling contrast with the red she was otherwise decorated by.
“That will be a very welcome change, my love. I’m looking forward to it,” she replied. She then lifted his face back up by his chin, forcing eye contact again. She leaned forward and gave him a soft, chaste kiss. Her smile was gone when she pulled away, replaced with a serious glare. She held it there for a long moment, then stitched her smile back on, and walked to the back of the car where the rest had already left. She was trailing, but she didn’t mind. It was worth it to tip the scales in favor of her plan, even if she wasn’t certain Alex would manage to speak up at all.
She frowned as she passed through the dining car, noticing a few spots where one of the others had touched something and left smears of blood or dirt. It would have been polite of them to avoid touching anything until they’d properly bandaged and cleaned themselves. That was where she was meant to eat, after all. She clicked her tongue, but continued. She took a deep breath before opening the door at the back and making her way to the final car.
The discovery had already been made when she caught up. She noticed with interest that the boy in the hoodie had joined them, despite not being injured or asked. Chase and Kiera were examining the body with clearly distraught faces, while Guy stood frozen. The boy in the hoodie may have been frozen, too, but she couldn’t see his face. She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been the earlier visitor she'd fled from. Aubrey was worse than any of them, horror on her face like a hundred years as she stared at the corpse.
“What… what happened?” Violet whimpered as she held one hand to her mouth. “How… she was fine, wasn’t she? She’s fine, isn’t she?” Kiera looked back toward Violet with a look of baffled sorrow and panic preventing her from responding.
“We… we don’t know,” Chase replied softly. “She’s… she’s dead. We don't know what happened. We don’t know.” He repeated the phrase as if it would make more sense if he said it enough times.
“You were right,” Aubrey whispered. “We should have been here sooner. We should never have left her alone.” Violet let her hand fall from her mouth and forced a tremor into her movements as she steadied herself on a nearby bunk. She shook her head.
“We couldn’t have known. It’s not our fault, we couldn’t have known it was this bad,” Violet whispered. She looked at the clearly-dead face of the woman who’d betrayed her. A thrill ran through her spine as she saw the bleeding ears and the foam at its mouth. “It must have been internal. We would have known if she was hurt this badly, right? We would have known.”
“We would have known if we had just stayed in here,” Aubrey cursed. “You were fucking right! This is our fault.”
“No,” Violet insisted. “We couldn’t have! Look at her. It was something with her brain. We can’t blame ourselves. It wasn’t our fault. Look at how her ears…” Violet trailed off. Her eyes widened as if in realization as she mentioned the bleeding ears. A moment later, she suddenly looked away. “None of us is to blame.”
Aubrey didn’t miss the implication, however, and neither did anyone else.
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