Surprisingly, Alexandre looked immensely sad and turned away. Yirella had followed the medical party as Dellian was carried into the treatment center. Now that the casualty team had finished with him, he was lying on a wide clinic bed, his wounds covered with long strips of surgical-grade a-skin, with various tubes emerging from blue blisters stuck to his arms. His munc cohort was snuggled up around him, drawing warmth and comfort from the touch—a scene reminiscent of puppies nestling around their mother. After spending her time on the resort island successfully playing the unattainable ice queen, she rather envied them and let out a sigh of regret.
Uma and Doony immediately tightened their hold on her legs, sensing her affection was being directed elsewhere. They only came up to her hips now, so they couldn’t see through the window. She stroked them again, down the nape of the neck, the way they enjoyed most, and cooed reassurance at them, body posture reinforcing the feeling,
The chief doctor emerged from the treatment room and came over to her. “You can go in now, if you’d like,” sie said. “You’ll need to be quick. The sedatives are already making him drowsy.”
“Thank you.” For a moment Yirella hesitated, then she shook her head at her own reluctance. After everything they’d been through, having to find courage to face Dellian now seemed ridiculous.
She flicked a finger up, indicating that Uma and Doony should wait outside. They pouted and hung their heads, but didn’t protest as she went in.
Dellian peered up at her and smiled in recognition amid his chemical-induced serenity. “Hey, you.”
“Hey yourself. How are you?
“Doing okay, I think.”
“Your poor arm.”
“ ’Sokay.”
“I hope the a-skin brings your freckles back. I always liked them.”
“We’re alone in a bedroom together…”
She twitched a smile. “So we are. Savi and Callum, together again.”
“You kissed me.”
“What?”
“Back there, when we were stranded all alone on the tippity-ippity top of the mountain. You kissed me.”
She took his hand and brushed the knuckles to her mouth. “I did, didn’t I?”
“Do I get another?”
“Maybe. If you’re good and do as the doctors tell you.”
“How’s that going?”
“The moroxes didn’t cut you too deep.” She arched her eyebrow. “How lucky was that? Unbelievable, in fact. I guessed right.”
“So am I boosting?”
“What?”
“This is my boost, right? I’m being implanted with all my super wooper fighting gadgets?”
“Wow, what are they giving you? I could do with some myself. We don’t start boosting until next week. That’s to give us time to recover from our test.”
He let out a long sigh, his head sinking deeper into the pillow as his muscles relaxed. “Are you testing me?”
“No. We never left, you know. Never got signed out of our training. The resort island, the fun we all had there, it was just the halftime break in another combat tactics game. That’s all. It’s never going to end, Dellian, not ever. Not for us.”
“All righty,” he mumbled as his eyes closed.
She gazed down fondly at the sleeping boy and kissed his forehead. “Get well. I need you.”
—
Principal Jenner’s office was at the top of the tallest building in the clan estate. Nothing as majestic as the skyscrapers in Afrata over the other side of the valley, but the view through the curving transparent walls was nonetheless impressive. The sight of the valley stretching away into hazy distance even roused Yirella from her mood as she stepped out of the portal door.
Alexandre was waiting for her and gave her a gentle embrace as soon as she entered. That was when she realized she was now a few centimeters taller than hir.
“How are you, my dear?” Alexandre asked, gesturing her to a couch.
“Absolutely fine,” Yirella replied stiffly. She gazed at Jenner, sitting behind hir desk. The principal was male cycling, dressed in a suit of some shiny ebony fabric with a slim white collar and scarlet piping, which made hir look more imposing than any head of a simple educational establishment should be.
“But then I was never in any real danger, was I?”
Jenner and Alexandre exchanged a glance.
“No,” Alexandre admitted with deep reluctance. “If you’ll indulge me: When did you work it out?”
“Why? So you can avoid making the same mistake with the next yeargroup?”
“That’s not quite as detrimental as you seem to think,” Jenner said. “We are all of us learning here. We simply wish to know if we should adapt our procedures and tell the girls in advance.”
“But not the boys?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“They are the point troops. You know this. They have to learn how to act together in a unit.”
“I think even the boys have got that by now,” Yirella growled. “Eighteen years of indoctrination tends to make that very clear.”
“We are not indoctrinating you,” Jenner said immediately. “This is a training facility, that’s all.”
“Training us to fight for you.”