STORMGATE

BRINK ERA, BOOK TWO

Preface: The events of this story intertwine with the e-novella Beyond The Brink (Brink Era, Book One). We recommend you read that story first.

THE CODE

by Jack Bentele

CHAPTER ONE

2111 CE

My name is Lilla Nassar. And this is the story of how I died. 

Now, I’ve stared down death a few times in my life to be sure. That’s the line of work. It’s not for everyone–but I guess it was good enough for me. 

I was born with the world’s demise already diagnosed as degenerative. Sure, there was Sigma, but my home town didn’t see much benefit from that initiative. The future never quite came to Detroit. The wave of funding that revitalized the country’s central plains sputtered out as it stretched toward the lakes up north. Our people could leave to find new opportunities, but it always had a cost. A cost I’ve since paid in full. 

If I had never left home, maybe I wouldn’t now be writing my last will and testament. Maybe I never would have looked into the eye of the storm. But what’s the use in wondering? I’ve made my choices. All I can do now is write ‘em down… and see if they damned me. 

My first real brush with the reaper came after I completed my postgraduate studies and accepted a research tenure with a Sigma laboratory based out of a skyscraper in Downtown Los Angeles. Our goal was to harness the energy-rich potential of what was known as POP-FAME molecules, derived from certain bacteria. Sigma scientists had recently developed a large-scale production technique for these molecules aimed to generate enough for feasible, clean-burning biofuels. The grand Exodus Armada and the rest of Sigma’s space projects required a record amount of fuel production. It wasn’t only the Solar System that they planned to populate with self-sufficient stations but an outbound interstellar fleet targeted towards the nearest habitable planet–theoretically habitable, of course. And it was our responsibility at the POP-FAME laboratory to ensure this process would not further accelerate the cause of such an escape. The world was on the Brink, and humanity balanced upon a thin line–between responsibility for what we already had, and that which carried on into the future. 

In other words, it was worthy work, if tedious in comparison to some of the other Sigma Initiative projects. Our lab in particular served as an optimization point, away from the primary rocket production hubs. Each day, we worked from sunup to sundown, making minute adjustments to the Sigma-patented formula to further increase these molecules’ fuel efficiency. I looked around me and saw people dedicated to a cause higher than themselves. Parents, sacrificing precious time with their children in the hope of providing them a better future. Husbands and wives letting their relationships wither for the betterment of the masses. Despite its scientific focus, in that place I saw the singular, obsessive drive of belief. It was a feeling to which I strongly related.

But I believed in something bigger. I had a higher purpose within this laboratory. Once the most efficient formula was developed and perfected, I would spirit a sample of it away and send it to my handlers. For there was more to this world than Sigma, though my colleagues did not know it. I served the Keepers. And, to be honest, at that age…I believed I was invincible. 

Until I heard that sound. Like a freight train, or an ancient beast pushing its way up from the depths of the sea. A sound that wasn’t a sound at all, but a guttural feeling inside my body that awoke a natural instinct. Fear. Doom. Destruction. 

I think that’s when it hit the first building. All I know is that by the time I turned around to face the wide bank of windows at the far end of our lab, the skyscraper three blocks away was obscured behind a swirling vortex of glass, concrete, and sheer, chaotic airflow. And it was closing in fast. 

Panic always begins with a moment frozen in time–before it explodes into wildfire. Every scientist in that laboratory turned to the exit. Gone were any previously held notions of unity. Suddenly, in the face of death, the stakes became everything or nothing. And in all honesty, that was what first entered my mind too: survival. 

Survival, and my mission. I turned to the nearest lab station. Our sample batch of the biofuel was far from perfect, but it would have to do. I pocketed a vial and readied to escape. 

But then I heard a pained cry behind me. I turned and saw Gina Galbraith, our most senior bacteriologist, stumble and fall, sprawled across the lab flooring. While our terrified colleagues shoved their way towards the exits, she was left behind. With her fall went all of her willpower, as the nightmarish distance between herself and any chance of safety grew larger. 

It was the voice of my mentor Devi that sounded in my mind: we respond to existential threats, whatever form they take. 

And here it was, existence in the balance. Gina’s, and my own. A quick glance out the window proved there wasn’t much time to act. I didn’t know the specifics then, but that was the catastrophic visage of an F-5 tornado ripping toward us second by second. Instinctively, my hand reached up and pressed against my lab coat, feeling for the crystal pendant hidden beneath the fabric. 

I closed my eyes and time briefly held in place. I went into the no-place beyond the chaos of reality and found myself there. One breath, then another–I envisioned the lab. The approaching tornado. Dr. Galbraith, grasping for safety on the ground. And I saw myself too, as action took over. Instinct. Intuition. Moving in flow with the Code. Showing me what I must do next. And then I opened my eyes and faced the world as it was.

Eliminate blind spots. 

We were on the twelfth floor, which unfortunately happened to be positioned just so for a perfect collision with the titanic upsurge of debris caught up in the tornado’s momentum. Those glass windows were the highest order on things that were soon about to be the death of us, not to mention the plethora of lab equipment that would join the party. Yet there were about five rows of lab station benches between us and the windows. 

Create your own advantage. 

I slid behind the closest bench so it would serve as a barrier. Gina, still lost in panic, crawled toward the exit–but there was no way she would make it. “Dr. Galbraith!” We locked eyes. “There’s no time! Over here, take cover!” The windows rattled. It had arrived. The lab bench shook with the approaching violence of the wind. It wasn’t going to withstand such power. 

Use knowledge of the battlefield. 

I reached out one hand for Gina’s own and used the other to open the lower cabinet of the bench. Inside were its steel guts, a cage of piping that was deeply anchored into the floor’s foundation below. It might hold. Might. But these were odds I couldn’t refuse. I hooked my arm around the densest section of piping, and turned back to Gina–still out of reach. Seconds to spare now. 

And never forget, Lilla. We’re always stronger together. 

I stuck out my leg as far as I could, past the protection of the lab bench in an attempt to reach my compatriot. “HOLD ON!” With her last ounce of strength, Gina shoved forward and grabbed me just below my thigh. “DO NOT LET GO – !” 

Sound itself was sucked away when the tornado hit. It couldn’t even be classified as noise, that primeval roar of nature’s fury. The Brink was no longer abstract. It was very, very real and it wanted to consume me. The exterior of the bench was shredded, by either wind velocity or spinning refuse I don’t know. I saw Gina’s body lift off the ground. I felt her fingers dig and tear the flesh of my thigh. I knew our shielding was gone, and all that held us to life was the quaking, groaning pipes that scraped raw into my elbow through my lab coat. My own body floated up in ascension and my vision filled with static. Reality lost definition. We were in the heart of it now.

The last thing I saw was Gina lose her grip on me. One moment there–the next, gone, up, out, her screams mute in the face of the storm. 

The last thing I felt was the glass that shred through my leg and lower torso, as I slipped free from the pipes and slammed against the far wall. 

And then I knew nothing at all. 

That was not how I died, though it was a nice taste of the sensation. 

I woke up in an emergency hospital set up outside of downtown. The remnants of skyscrapers stood like dying trees stripped of bark. Emergency sirens chorused the air. I learned that my tornado was but one of eight that spontaneously touched down in the Los Angeles basin due to the convergence of a freak blizzard in the San Bernardino Mountains and hurricane-force winds from the Pacific Coast. Even the medical teams remained stunned in the aftermath, the realities of our new world made so clearly manifest before us. 

I was lucky, they told me. My leg had been spared amputation, though it would take me weeks to walk again. The scarring on my torso was only superficial. When the rescue workers found me unconscious in the unstable frame of the Sigma building, my clothes were scraps and my skin could barely be glimpsed beneath the blood. The sample vial was nothing but a stain on the wall. Yet it was like the hand of a higher power, they said, had guarded me from the worst of it. 

The body of Dr. Gina Galbraith was never found, and I still bear my scars in her name. My futile efforts, writ large across my body. 

When my eyes regained focus and all the words coming my way finally started to make sense, the first thing I did was reach up to find the necklace gone from my neck. “Oh,” my nurse noticed. “Are you looking for this?” Apparently the rescuers had found it clutched in my hand, where the crystal had burrowed and left its own small scar. She handed it over. 

I could have lost everything and anything else–but here it was. Evidence of my purpose. When I finally left my makeshift hospital bed, I made my way through the wreckage of the city back to my small apartment. It was the only apartment still standing on my block, but a government sign had been pasted across its windows: CONDEMNED. I went inside, opened the safe hidden beneath my bed, and took out my transmitter. I sent out a short burst of a message, coded and encrypted as it made its way to the Keepers. I only hoped my failure was not the end of the road–for it had been a long one.

I’m alive.

Sample specimen irrevocably damaged.

Awaiting further orders.

I packed my spare belongings and left Los Angeles for good. 

I don’t remember my mother. I never knew my father. As far as memories go, they begin with the HAST. Us kids preferred that to the “Home for the Advancement of Skills & Talent.” HAST sounded much more metal, and for a bunch of youth without parents, it was toughness and strength we hoped to cultivate most. This was Detroit, after all, at the curtain call of the world and the frozen ass-end of the North American Federation. 

There were orphans of all ages, ranging from wide-eyed infants to teenagers who had been passed over too long to retain much innocence. Yet our guardians at the HAST were not the kind to let us sit back and flounder. While they worked with adoption agencies and fosters to place as many of us as they could, they wanted to make sure our time at the Home was well spent. We lived beneath a strict regimen of skills training that spanned far beyond the education regulations set by the Federation. From mathematics to art, and chess to martial arts, the HAST instructors wanted to instill a thirst for knowledge and growth–and to prepare us for a world on the Brink of disaster. 

As a girl with no parents, this direction was all I had. I latched onto the mission of the HAST as my only lifeline and set out to accomplish my goal: to be the best, no matter what it took. Luckily, many kids around me felt the same way–although there were certainly some who thought all of our try-hard efforts would be for naught. It made for a creative and competitive environment. Even in off-hours outside of class, we would often devise trials and contests to test our standings amongst ourselves.

I recall one such relay race with shame, run across the HAST grounds. It was a cold June morning on campus, a former Detroit high school now repurposed for kids like us. Snow still coated the world, a usual occurrence at this point in the Brink. We were used to it, and the instructors kept us well bundled in winter clothing purchased by the HAST’s mysterious benefactor. We pushed our thermals to the limits over a course that wound in and out of our stark and wondrous buildings, faded remnants of our city’s old architectural glory. 

I was to carry the last leg, a task I relished. Outside the auditorium, I danced from foot to foot to keep warm. That only earned me a death stare from my soon-to-be competitor, Scotty. A diminutive boy, Scotty was neither an academic nor athletic star. He was the runt of our oddball litter and it nursed a sharp defensiveness inside of him. I knew just how to prod and poke. “If you give up now, we can cut to the chase and go get cocoa in the mess,” I offered. 

He didn’t like that. When our relay partners reached us, Scotty’s team made it first. He took off in a dead sprint around the auditorium and into our history hall. I smiled at the challenge. I saw my bunkmate Kate turn the corner, red in the face. As soon as the baton reached my hand, I was driven by a single purpose. My long strides soon caught up to Scotty, as we reached the stairs to the second floor–and the final dash to the finish line. I winked as I passed him by and took the first step–the second–the third…

My ankle twisted as I pivoted in the stairwell for my final bounds. It didn’t break, but I felt my muscles tighten and ignite with pain. I gasped but kept going, now with a limp. I could hear Scotty behind me, gaining ground. My secondhand sneakers squeaked as I made it to the upstairs hallway, a gauntlet to run past the myriad trophy cases of HAST success stories past. 

I was slowing down. Even the heaving Scotty would be able to catch me now. I didn’t need to turn around. He knew it too–I could feel the smile on his face. I could imagine the disappointment of my teammates. I saw so clearly how I was going to lose. 

Call it instinct, call it deceit, call it what you will–but as we passed one of the racks of gleaming trophies, I stuck out my arm and toppled it. It spilled out across the hall behind me, catching Scotty by surprise. “Hey, that’s not fair – !” 

And then he tripped and fell. While my finish wasn’t fast, I got there first. Kate and the rest of the kids soon found us. My team surrounded me, lifted me up, and praised me for my wit, my cunning, my victory. At that moment, I even felt proud of my tactics. Justified. 

So no, I was not always the heroic type. 

But I was the one who got the job done. No matter what. That was what mattered most…right?

It was Devi who made me think otherwise. 

She called her class ‘The Way of Focus,’ but the rest of us had a different name for it: fight club. Every kid who reached age twelve without leaving the Home attended Devi’s class. Before then, it was spoken about in hushed whispers. We’d watch kids leave the class with black eyes, busted bones, and tear-stained faces. 

When it was finally my time to attend, I boiled with excitement and anxiety alike. Yet upon stepping into Devi’s dojo, there was nothing but peace. It was spartan and devoid of much style. A well-used mat stretched across the floor, ominously darkened by stains of past battles, with cushions for the students to sit on circling around the room. And there was Devi herself, humbly kneeling before us, simply dressed in gi with her smooth, straight, dark hair tied in a ponytail that draped down her back. 

“Please. Sit.”

Devi and her teachings were nothing like I expected. Yes, it was martial arts that she taught, and sometimes such lessons ended in pain. But Devi quickly cooled any temper that rose and soon enough I realized that was the core of her true lesson. She taught us how to fight. How to grapple. To defend. Taekwondo. Kung Fu. Judo. Wing Chun. Jiu-jitsu. 

But Devi’s primary lesson was about control. Focus. Finding a way to guide our souls in periods of stress and imbalance. I soon learned that the tearstained faces of her students were often caused by inner pain rather than outer. The unearthing of the trauma and feelings of abandonment that haunted us, and the fire inside–the desire that pushed us through everything at the HAST. 

“These problems that you have in your heart? They are not liabilities. They do not mar you, so dispose of any such notion. They can be harnessed through proper discipline. But, at the same time, they are not you.” This was the lecture that changed the course of my life. Devi held out her arm and flexed it, turning it, showing us her full range of motion with a slow grace. “This is you.” She bent down and leapt into the air, and landed in a deep split like a dancer on some stage. “And this.” And when her teaching assistant snuck from behind and tried to hit her with one of the practice swords, Devi swung around, disarmed her, and vaulted over her shoulders to land in the position of power behind. All of us were stunned into silence. “What we do, moment to moment. When we master ourselves and find our deepest capabilities at our fingertips. That is who we are.” 

When Devi stopped speaking and her eyes fell upon me, I knew that she saw me straight. Acceptance, full and total. But not tolerance–not of my misbehavior. Of my ego. Of my untamed inner self. That would need to be earned. 

And so I went to work. Outside of classes, I spent my time reading the books that Devi gave to me. Practicing my forms. Steadying my mind. I even tried apologizing to Scotty and others that I had wronged over the years, though that particular step was met with mixed success. Looking back on it, I’m not sure how genuine my effort was, or if I was only trying to impress the first adult who seemed to understand me for who I was. Maybe it doesn’t matter. I did learn self-discipline. Meditation. Proper nutrition. Philosophy. And, yes, Krav Maga. 

But all of it I did because I wanted Devi to be proud. 

One evening, she told me to stay behind while the rest of the class departed. At first I thought I might not be living up to her expectations, but her smile remained gentle and easy as she sat me down across from her on the floor. 

“Look at your body language, even now,” she observed. “Even after how far you have come, I still see the tension in you. Your anger is sublimated into self-criticism and doubt.” 

I tried to erase any sign of it, yet this obviously only made the tension more apparent. “I…I just want you to know that I’m trying to really learn...and hear you. To…understand.” 

Devi put her hand on mine. “Lilla, you’re not trying. You’re doing it. Each and every day. But you can’t carry it like a burden.”

“I…don’t know how else to do it.” That was the truth. Unvarnished. Ugly. “When I look inside myself…that fight…that opposition…that need is always there. The second after I gain control…it all burns away again.” 

Devi’s eyes seemed pained by my words, but she did not scold me. “That’s the battle within all of us. It doesn’t make you broken. It makes you human.” She held up her other hand and opened it. That was the first time I saw the crystal pendant hanging from its silver chain. And the symbol engraved within the blue surface of the stone, like a star within a star. 

“This was given to me, years ago, by my own teacher in such matters. I was like you. I felt alone in the world and I felt a great urge to fight against the inequities that beset me. That was my survival mechanism. But I needed a place to go in those moments of tumult, a safe haven where I could exercise what I had learned. Where I could take a breath. And act.” 

She placed the pendant in my own hand and folded my fingers to cover it. Despite its sharp edges, it carried Devi’s warmth. “Close your eyes.”

“Devi – ”

“I know. It seems silly. But try it.”

With the crystal grasped in my hand, I closed my eyes. I thought of my lessons. Of the work I had put in so far. I let my dreams fade and my desires go with them. I felt my breath. I stepped into a safe haven I had never known to exist. 

I searched for my true self–and I found her there, awaiting me with a smile. As if she was telling me that she would always be here to show me the world we could make possible together.

When I opened my eyes, Devi’s were shining as she beamed at me. 

“There you are.” 

I realized that tears were falling down my own cheeks. I opened my palm and looked down at the pendant. “What…what is this? What is this symbol?” 

“I follow the Code of the Velari. And if you would allow me, Lilla, I would like to teach it to you now. As it was taught to me.”

Our purpose is to become the greatest warriors that we can be, so that we may respond to existential threats that arise, whatever form that might take. 

We commit to the continuous improvement of our skills and the elimination of weaknesses and blind spots. 

We are strategy polyglots, training across every style of combat and self-defense–for diversity creates our advantage. 

Knowledge is power. Preparation is power. The battlefield is like any book of study. It can be read to help us survive–and save lives.

For we are stronger together. When one adherent of the Code encounters another, there is unity in our bond. One’s strategy belongs to all. 

Yes, the tenets of the Code spoke to me, but the fact that I was chosen? That I was deemed worthy of such a category?

I will not lie to you. That was what appealed to me most. It infused my life with meaning that I had before not thought possible. 

It put me on the path toward becoming a true warrior.

My schooling in the Code was the undercurrent that flowed beneath my everyday reality that otherwise seemed unchanged. At the HAST, we all grew used to the usual rhythms of life. But the year I turned sixteen, those rhythms were finally interrupted. 

The headmaster called us to the auditorium to announce that Enoch Hart, the Home’s elusive benefactor, was going to visit us in the coming weeks. While he attempted subtlety, the implication was clear–Enoch sought something from the children he had sheltered and educated. But what could he want with orphans like us? 

We had our internally developed lore for the man, as kids do. The most popular was that he was the scion of a fallen Detroit steel dynasty…and an ageless vampire. Whatever the case, he was more myth than man–until now. It just seemed so strange: why did Enoch Hart spend such considerable resources on keeping this place afloat, even in the face of the Brink? “If he’s a vampire,” Kate whispered to me late one night after lights-out, “maybe he’s just going to eat us.”

I took it to Devi. “How often does Enoch come to the Home? He must be coming for a reason, right? To test us.” She remained mum on the subject despite my incessant questions. Kate and I stayed up late in the dorms, trading thoughts and bragging about which of us Enoch would select from our lowly ranks and elevate to…what? His adopted child? His protege? As Kate thought, his last meal? For those of us in our late teenage years, anywhere seemed more exciting than the HAST. Here was our chance to shine. And there I was, when all the lights were out and the conversations died down, clutching my pendant and focusing my mind on a singular goal: to be the one chosen, whatever my fate might be. 

When the weekend of Enoch’s visit arrived, it was the pendant that helped me keep my anxiety in check. Wherever I was, I could close my eyes and go somewhere safe, where my thoughts were ordered and my mind clear. It was hard to get a read on Enoch himself. We first saw him at the far end of the mess, sitting with the rest of the instructors. I noticed that he and Devi sat right next to one another, and that she often leaned over to confer with him. His movements were minute, a head nod here, or a scratch of his long tangled beard there. It was impossible to guess his age from that distance, but he was a solid man, over six feet tall and wearing a tasteful suit that was nonetheless quite plain. Just as enigmatic as we all had assumed.

The tables in the cafeteria were arranged for a chess tournament, which would be the first round of our collective competition. It would last all day, a true endurance run of the mind. But I was ready. Outside of Devi’s class, chess was my preferred method of combat. I could read pawn structure like a children’s book, secretly pin down half of my opponent’s board before they knew what was happening, and execute my opening Danish Gambit without breaking a sweat. I was assured, and whenever I slipped from focus, I had my pendant in my pocket. I had my safe haven. I had my Code. 

Halfway through the day, I had advanced to the semi-finals. I sat down against Scotty, grown taller and more scraggly in his teenagehood–but the chip on his shoulder remained familiar. “Look who it is,” he mumbled, not even meeting my eyes. Fair enough. I took it that he knew the battle was already over. And it was, in nearly record time. I did not try to hide my smile as I watched Scotty stomp off, defeated–but it evaporated from my face when I spotted Devi looking directly at me. She gave a small shake of her head to convey her disappointment. I was pinned down by that disapproval, like a trifling pawn on the board. 

In spite of my ego, and the fact that I was no grandmaster, I did win the tournament, even as Kate gave her best efforts in the final game. When her queen was gone, she shrugged, shook my hand, and it was all over. The rest of the school burst into applause, but Kate and I sought a particular sort of approval. We both looked to the table where Enoch had been sitting…

But he was already gone.

That evening in the dorms, as we tried to expel all the energy we had kept buttoned up all day, we slowly took account of the fact that some of us were missing. Three, to be precise, including Scotty. Not even their belongings remained. 

Kate pulled me into the corner of the room, a conspiratorial look on her face. “I saw Scotty earlier in the nurse’s office. They were drawing his blood, Lilla.” 

I rolled my eyes. “Be serious for once – ”

Kate rocked up and down, her teeth gritted, her eyes wide. “I am serious. The headmaster was there too, and so was…Enoch.” When they caught Kate spying, she was chased off, but she swore it to me–Scotty was looking quite pleased with himself. “But I think he’s gonna get eaten.”

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I knew Enoch was not a vampire, but Scotty had been selected on some special basis. He hadn’t even gotten through the semi-finals! What was the point of this competition if it didn’t even make any sense? I went to Devi’s classroom to run through my forms, but found her there as if she had expected me. “Kate told me about Scotty. They were drawing his blood. What is this all about – ? 

Devi held up her hand and I fell silent. “How many lives do you have, Lilla?”

I grumbled, but gave the practiced response. “One.”

“And for whom do you live it?”

“For myself. Because I am one, and we are all, and, yes, Devi, I know the Code, trust me, I’ve memorized it line by line, but Scotty never has! You know Enoch. I can see it. What aren’t you telling me? What makes him so special?” 

Devi was of two minds, that much I knew. She seemed on the verge of admitting some truth to me, but held herself back at the last moment. “Tomorrow. The martial arts competition. In the championship round. Do not hold back, Lilla. Promise me.” 

“Why would I?”

Devi smiled. “There she is.” 

Ten hours later, my nose bled. My back ached. I was certain that Sang-hee had left a ring of bruises around my torso from the force of her final, desperate grapples before I pushed her out of the arena. But there I stood, at the top of the tourney, ready for the mysterious final round. 

We all had a better look at Enoch now. A special arena had been set up outside on the grounds, and the instructors sat close to the edge to best judge our bouts. He wore the same clothes as the previous day and displayed no hint of emotion in his pale eyes. I still could not gauge his age. He could have been fifty, or seventy, or, yes, perhaps even an ageless vampire. But it was my goal to get some sign of emotion from him before the day was done. 

I climbed into the arena as my name was called for the championship fight. I grasped my pendant and closed my eyes. I was close. I was on the edge of something. I remembered Devi’s words. Do not hold back. I heard my opponent step into the ring. 

I opened my eyes and Devi stared back at me, calm and steady as always. My mouth dropped, but there was nothing to say. I was surprised, but I wasn’t confused. Somehow, this felt right. This felt like what I had been waiting for my entire life. 

Devi nodded to me, and we began. 

It felt more like a dance than a battle. She did not hold back, and neither did I. Each move I made was reciprocated in kind, as if Devi could read my mind. Of course she could–she taught me everything I knew. We would meet face-to-face, in the midst of some grasp, but then we broke apart again, chasing our momentum, trying to find ourselves in the chaos. It was painful. It was beautiful. And truthfully I knew that I was going to lose.

But –like the day of my shameful race against Scotty–I suddenly saw it. When I faltered, and Devi had an opening to fling me from the ring, she hesitated. Her emotions overtook her processing. But mine had not. My next motion came from within, from that place I went when I meditated on the Code. Or maybe it was that old drive to be the best, wearing a new face. Whatever it was, it was pure, instinctual. It was me. 

I cut Devi’s legs out from under her, and still from the ground, reared back and kicked her fallen form across the arena’s barrier. It was over. 

There was shocked silence from the crowd. Devi rolled over, and I could see the surprise on her face too. But then someone began to clap. Slow, definitive, full. It rang through the morning air. Enoch Hart applauded me, and soon everyone followed his lead. 

Devi pushed herself to her feet and helped me stand. She brought me close and hugged me. She had never done such a thing before. My arms remained at my sides, my mind stuck in limbo from what I had just done. 

“Listen to him when he speaks,” Devi whispered. “But live whatever life you want to. And always remember how you feel right now. This is who you are meant to be.” Devi pulled back and looked deeply into me as if I wasn’t already a puzzle she had solved years ago. And that made me realize maybe she never had. Maybe I was a bet she was making with the universe. Maybe the hardest part was still to come. Then Devi let me go and turned me toward the crowd. To Enoch Hart. 

Enoch blew on the steam that rose from his cup of tea. He had requisitioned the headmaster’s office for our meeting together, the night that followed my fight with Devi. So far, he had not spoken a word. I assumed this was some final test, but I no longer had the time for this billionaire’s theatrics. 

“Where did they go? Scotty, and the others? Is that where you want me to go too?”

Enoch took a sip of the tea and the corner of his lips turned up, yet from the flavor or my question I wasn’t sure. “May I see it?” He pointed to the pendant around my neck. “I see that you’re an adherent of the Velari Code. I love the way it takes on the light, don’t you?” Enoch raised his cup for another sip and I saw it now, the ring on his finger. The same engraved gem, on a muted gold band. So Enoch Hart was an adherent too. 

“That’s how you know Devi…” 

“That’s a story for another time. But I must admit, I didn’t expect her to have an apprentice such as yourself when I arrived. Devi is…quite picky.” 

“Is that what this is? Devi told me about the larger society of the Velari. Adherents, all around the world. Working to spread the Code.”

“The society of the Velari is vast, this is true. Loosely knit, but unified in purpose.”

I couldn’t stop the righteous indignation that swelled in my tone. “So why was Scotty chosen? He’s never heard of the Code in his life, I don’t understand – ”

“No.” Enoch paused my rant with a single adjustment of his posture. There was great power coiled within him, and though no aggression was on display, the possibility of his strength was more than enough to intimidate me into silence. “This is beyond the Code of the Velari, Lilla.” I watched a subtle change come over Enoch’s face. It wasn’t severe, or frightening, but it was sudden and undeniable. I was here to listen, not ask questions. “We cannot understand everything in this universe. We can only – ”

“Understand the battle that lies before us,” I finished for him. 

“Lilla, you are not like the children that left yesterday. You will never be like them.”

Even without understanding exactly what he meant, those words stung my soul. 

“But there are many purposes to serve in life. Some are not so remarkable, and there is nothing wrong with that. All deserve a chance at a good life. It’s why I opened the Home in the first place. But some…some have unique destinies reserved for them alone. Should they choose to embrace the call.” 

I leaned forward, already far too desperate for such a purpose. “It’s what I want. I promise, it’s the only thing I want.” 

Enoch breathed deeply and looked out the window into the darkness that fell over Detroit. “Many say that. Until their destiny asks them to put it all on the line. To serve its purpose over everything else. Every other life they could have lived. Instead of a person who chose to live as one willing…to die for their cause.” 

My mind raced. The military? Sigma? Our world was full of righteous causes. All I needed was one. But…I wanted it to be something more than the rest. Something special. I wanted my destiny to want me back. 

“You’re young, Lilla. You may think you want this,” Enoch began, as if reading my mind–but then he froze. His body tensed and his neck spasmed as he looked up toward the high ceiling of the office. 

“Mr. Hart, are you…” I stood up and moved around the desk. I knew I should call the headmaster, get help, but the tone of Enoch’s skin held my attention. A faint shimmer undulated atop his pale flesh, the texture of a horizon’s mirage. Watching that shimmer brought my attention to the tattoos that began on both of his wrists and ran up beneath his sleeves. Thick, tangled lines, like the text of some ancient tribe. I was wasting time, giving up precious minutes that he might need, but what I wanted to do more than anything was reach out and touch – 

Enoch gave a start, shocked back into himself. I flinched backwards, embarrassed and unsure now of the spell that had seemingly fallen across us both. He kept his eyes closed and brought his hands together. I saw his forefinger caress the embedded gem on his ring. While he briefly calmed himself, I took my seat. 

He opened his eyes and began again as if nothing had happened at all, with that same stately demeanor. “I represent today a unified order that we shall call the Keepers. And I will tell you what I can about the opportunity on offer. You would remain a ward of the state until you are eighteen, but you would begin preparations for higher learning immediately. There are several paths that may be chosen, be it mathematics, biology, or psychology. You would never know the full context of what you serve, but you can know this now–there are few higher orders. This will be a test of blind faith. And I understand the burden of such a thing for a girl of your age. Yet knowing that you already live by the Velari Code as taught to you by Devi…you are exactly the type of person that the Keepers need most. With us, you would serve the future of mankind. And perhaps that of all life in our universe.” 

With that, Enoch raised his cup and took another sip. 

I should have questioned him more or taken the night to think. Perhaps I never should have even entertained the proposal at all. But when I took hold of my own pendant to consult my true self, the answer arose in my mind, clear as day. “Okay. When do we start?”

I could tell you of leaving Detroit behind at eighteen. Of my accelerated path through university, first in biology and then my graduate studies in biochemistry. I could regale you with the trials of my PhD dissertation. Of the friendships and romances I never let bloom. Of how I never saw Devi again. But there is no drama in a life lived for a single purpose. There is no tension in a person transformed into an engine. For the next decade of my life, I became an unquestioning servant of my higher order: the Keepers. 

My communications to them were limited, strictly through the small, angular transmitter that Enoch had entrusted to me on that night years ago. Upon close examination it seemed both ancient and unprecedented, though from afar no one would pay it much attention. It was through that transmitter that I was assigned my position at the Sigma laboratory in Los Angeles. But in the wake of the tornado, it was completely dormant despite my missive confirming that I had survived. And that I had failed to secure the sample. 

I was sleeping in a motel somewhere in the Sonoran Desert, waking up and staring at the small screen each day. Had they forgotten me? I examined my scarred body. Was I damaged goods? I’ll admit I began to spiral. The threads of my life had been wound around the Keepers for years and without such direction, I unspooled. I felt like a little girl again, without direction. I felt like an orphan, lost in an uncertain world. Even my pendant failed to bring me peace. The Code slipped away, replaced with a sucking desperation that emptied me to the core. 

Finally, three months after I had sent in my last status report, my transmitter lit up. I scrambled from bed and took in the message from my faceless handlers. 

Travel to Sigma Central.

New position acquired. 

Instructions to come.

It was more than enough for me. Sigma Central was the beating heart of the Initiative, where some of their most top-secret projects were developed. It was said to be a wonderland of science and innovation. And now the Keepers had placed me there, to be their eyes. To be their hands. To serve the highest order. To live with purpose. 

And, if need be, to die for a cause I could never understand.