He reached both hands over the railing, gripping the boy's forearm. “No you don’t!” he said.
Back in the main room, Ry, Gara, and Mav watched Kaydin Reflect. Apart from slight twitches, grimaces, or eyebrow raises, he remained still.
Eventually Kaydin opened his eyes.
“So?” said Ry. “We noticed your reactions.”
Kaydin itched his scar. “The sentinels, they seem…faster."
"How so?" said Ry.
"The second one’s shadow image was preparing a jump at me from a considerable distance—it would have been quite the attack.”
Gara tapped his hammer on the table. “If they can jump further and move faster, they are that much more dangerous."
“I still managed to strike it true,” said Kaydin, rubbing his wrist. He passed his gauntlet to Gara, who said he would mend the damage it too had taken against the sturdy skull of the sentinels.
“Maybe they are adapting,” suggested Mav.
“Maybe…but how?” said Gara.
"Don't know," said Kaydin.
“Keep that in mind,” said Ry.
“I will,” said Kaydin. “If we have to fight them again, I’ll remember.” I’ll use Amplify to strengthen these memories.
“I wish we could kill those bastards,” said Gara.
Ry slammed his fist against the table with such force that the stone cracked. “What did I say about that, Gara?”
“Sorry, Ry, I forgot. I was just caught up in the moment.”
“Anything else?” asked Ry.
“That boy evaded the first sentinel’s lunging attack. It’s as if he saw it coming.” The room went silent. “I’m curious myself,” offered Kaydin.
“We’ll look into it,” said Ry.
They started to rise.
“Wait, there’s one more thing,” said Kaydin. “You might want to sit down.”
“Well, what is it?” said Ry.
“I noticed a fifth sentinel.”
The bags below Ry’s eyes sagged deeper. The thin pair of lines between his eyebrows and across his forehead suggested surprise. Not the unexpected kind. The dreaded, knowing, inevitable sort.
“I’ve seen the fifth sentinel before,” said Ry. “Over fifteen years ago.”
“This is heavy,” said Gara.
“All these years,” said Ry, “I thought Dag might have had his way with it.”
Dag cut the beast’s eye. Ry thought he killed it when they tried to escape the city. “It could be a new one, couldn’t it?”
“We don’t know where they come from,” said Mav, “so it’s a possibility.”
“It seems odd,” said Kaydin, “that after all these years the Rahz couldn’t have raised a new one.”
“These aren't your average crevice lizard,” said Mav.
“Sorry to have to say so Kaydin,” said Ry, “but we don’t know where they come from, so ‘raising one’ is only one possibility among many. We don’t know enough about them. Kaydin, I do want to see that memory, though.”
“Sure,” said Kaydin, “but Inspire takes turma.”
“It’s worth it,” said Ry, “to know if it is the same sentinel or not.” Ry leaned back, closing his eyes for a moment.
This must bring it all back for him. The Dag days. His brief relationship with Mirai. His tension with Dylan. The failed escape. Despite the pain, Ry had raised Kaydin from before he could walk.
“So how are you really feeling?” asked Ry, opening his eyes and addressing the three.
“Excited,” said Gara. “We’ve got a new member to train.”
“Once he’s back to health,” said Mav, “but I’ll take care of that in the morning.”
“A new member,” said Kaydin, “and maybe something more. I can’t believe the sentinel didn’t kill him.”
Chapter 10
The worker dreamed of slowly falling. Tumbling weightless through gray light. Shadows swarmed in violent rushes of air, their eyes yellow. But unlike in his toll visions, they didn’t attack. They simply watched him, as if preparing to lunge but biding their time. Waiting for his most vulnerable moment. The worker couldn’t escape this endless descent, and his anxiety increased. The eyes, the hexagonal scales lighting up, the swish and flick of their tails. Suddenly he wanted them to attack him. He wanted out. He wanted it to end. The gray light faded, but he fell further. Let it…end. Then he struck bottom, and liquid rushed him from all sides.
He woke breathing heavily, sweat streaming along his lizard-skin clothes. There was hard stone beneath him. I’m back in the workers quarters. His neck felt odd, though. There was something under it. A rolled mat.
No, I'm not in the workers quarters.
His eye throbbed. Dried blood on his cheek. The cloth wrapping the wound. He remembered.
I was saved from the Abyss. These people helped me. They wrapped my wounds.
The worker tiptoed down the hallway back to the main room centered by the large black-stone table.
“You get any shut-eye?” asked Kaydin, looking up from a bowl of soup. He, Ry, and Maryn sat around the obsidian table.
“Yes,” said the worker.
“We’ll solve that soon,” said Ry, gesturing to the bandage. “Mav is getting things ready as we speak—why don’t you eat something first?”
I am quite hungry. “Sure, that’d be good.”
He needed to thank them. Then he needed them to return him to Growing Room One. He was probably late for work by now. The turma plants needed to be tended.
Maryn hopped up and went into the adjoining room, and soon returned with a bowl for him. “You might recognize this,” she said, setting down the bowl of green goop.
The worker smile.
“What's so funny?”
“The last two times I was offered this I poured my bowl on the floor.”
Ry wrinkled his brow. “You did?”
“That’s pretty brave,” said Maryn, brushing her yellow hair back.
“I think this soup makes me sleepy,” said the worker.
“Not our version,” said Mav, entering the room from a second hallway.
“What’s the difference?” asked the worker.
“This one won’t make you forget,” said Kaydin.
“You may not have noticed,” said Ry, “but the same plant that keeps you alive keeps you asleep.”
“What do you mean?” asked the worker, even though he was starting to understand; he had to be sure.
“The turma plants that you tend to—or that you used to tend to—contain turma powder, or turma,” Kaydin explained. “We refer to their quantities in doses, or parts.”
Ry nodded. “The turma improves our senses. But the turma root dulls them. In proper doses the root removes sensory memories as early as the previous day.”
“Day?”