Chapter 6: All Rested Up?

The roof had lost its north parapet. Layla sat on the south one with her boots over a two-story drop. Below, the rescue crews’ floodlights went up the dark avenue in pairs and stopped at each heap of rubble.

A medic had taped her cheek and wrapped her left forearm in gauze. She could not remember being cut. She remembered only her hands on Fanny’s ribs, shoving her clear of the beam.

Fanny had come up the stairs a quarter hour ago. “Mind if I stand?” she had said, and stood. Now she was at the broken edge with one hand taped. Neither of them had said anything useful.

Layla’s wristband buzzed.

“Roger,” she said. “Professor Joe’s awake. Two ribs and the shoulder. He wants to know if the girl got out.”

“She got out.” Fanny did not turn. “I left her behind a van. Her mother was running to her.”

Layla typed Yes and sent it. From the side street came a thin sound that had not stopped since dusk. She listened to everything else very hard instead.

“Well, I’ll admit you’ve got skill.” She said it to the avenue, not to Fanny.

LaylaVoice line

“Thanks.”

“It’s an assessment. Don’t get used to it.”

“All right,” said Fanny.

Layla had meant to say something else. “You know, we’d probably get along if you weren’t so competitive all the time.”

“I could say the same of you.”

Layla opened her mouth to say that was unfair. She looked for the unfair part and could not find it.

“... I have an elder brother ...” Fanny said it to the dark too. “An incredible fighter who I respect above anyone else. His name is Tigreal.”

Layla waited for the part about herself. It did not come.

“I’d longed to join him on the battlefield since I was just a kid. But the thing is.”

Fanny’s taped hand closed and opened. “I could never quite reach his level... I’d think... Maybe if I just gave it my all in each training, kept on improving... I’d be good enough to fight alongside him one day.”

She was never looking down on me, thought Layla. She was looking past me, at him. The shouted offer, the invitation at the drill hall door, the throw with the promise to teach it: every one had been an offer. Layla had filed each as an insult.

And that afternoon Fanny had answered “No!” to her face, out loud, in front of an Ender. Layla could not remember the last time she had told anyone she could not do something.

That left the grudge. It had been a good engine. It had kept her in the VR Battlefield until two and got her up before five. Its target stood on a broken roof talking about her brother. She would need a new reason to get up.

She tried three ways to say it. All three sounded like losing. The fourth sounded like an order, and an order was not asking.

She slid off the parapet, faced Fanny’s back, and spoke the way she spoke to her drones.

“All rested up?”

Fanny turned around.

“If so, let’s get back to our training!”

“Huh?” Fanny stared. “Since when were we training?”

“Since right now!” Layla was smiling and had not agreed to it. Fanny was too.

“We’ve gotta get stronger,” they said together. “After all, we’re the protectors of all humanity.”

Neither had planned it.

Layla went first. She climbed onto the parapet and dropped into the dark street, and her boots jarred her to the teeth. Both suits were drained, but Fanny’s thrusters had one burst left, enough to beat her down by a full second. She jumped instead, and landed a step behind.