Chapter 42: The Scent of Mud

The scent of mud on that stormy night was her earliest memory of the world.

The same smell came up to her now. Far below, the rain had turned the courtyard into a brown lake.

Selena sat on the roof of the bell tower with her boots over the edge. It was the highest point of the Academy. The wind kept trying to take her off the tiles. She let it try.

She wore her uniform and the polite smile she had copied from humans. Silverbolt crouched beside her, blue light along its seams.

She had climbed up here this morning with a lollipop. “Finally, the fun part begins,” she had told no one. She was on her third lollipop now.

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Her comm had not been quiet since.

“Mobile support. Report.”

That was Lesley. Under the Academy’s call, on the same channel, came the other one. For months it had flashed red on her phone, and she had swiped it away. Today she had answered neither.

Now the other one came again. This time it did not ask.

It burned in her cells. It was a recall from her own kind, a command etched into her body: come back to the Mother Matrix. Her hand closed on Silverbolt’s controls before she told it to. Everything Ender in her blood leaned toward the Citadel hanging over the Academy.

She held herself on the tiles.

“You know, a leash pulled too tight is bound to snap someday.”

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Minutes ago the field had swept over the tower. All across the city the Aspirants’ lights had gone out. In her, it found nothing to take. It hummed in her bones, and she knew that hum.

Above the Academy, something was coming down through the storm clouds. The huntress. For weeks Selena had known the huntress was crossing the sea of stars toward her.

“Right on time,” she told the wind.

Of the nest where she was made, she remembered nothing. She remembered the mud: standing barefoot on scorched earth in a dead woman’s nightgown, while people screamed in the rain. A lamp came swinging down the street, a flame behind glass. Karina, of the rescue team, gathered her up, and the child’s arms went around her neck before she knew why. Nobody came to claim the child, so Karina kept her. Later Karina took a fruit drop in a twist of paper from her pocket, and it was the first thing the child ever accepted.

That warmth made the Ender in her blood want two things at once. To conquer it. To cling to it.

In the days after, she picked a name for herself. Selena.

Everything since had been a game of pretend. People praised the dangerous things in her head as talent, and they were only what she was. She built Silverbolt from the same stuff she was made of.

On storm nights she let the purple spread over her arms and ran the roofs like a shadow. She sold salvage to Vexana, another pawn, to see how she would get out of the game. Karina covered every one of those nights and never asked.

From up here Selena had watched all of it. Vexana breaking with the Enders to save Guinevere. Guinevere refusing to give up on her, Ender robe and all. The charge. The two of them coming back out of the light.

Below, in the flooded streets, rescue-team lamps were moving. One of them would be Karina’s. Karina had one wish for her: to see her graduate. She had made a joke of it in class.

Selena looked away from the lamps.

Obey, and go back to the cold Matrix, where there was nothing but slaughter and control. Stay, and die for humanity like a hero in a story. She wanted neither. She wanted her own road, even if it ran through her maker’s throne.

If she refused the recall, her own kind would hunt her without end.

But so what?

“For my ambitions, this tiny little planet is just about right.”

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She looked once at the street below the Academy, and made up her mind. She pushed Silverbolt into overload. Its seams went from blue to white, and the whole machine shrieked.

“This so-called destiny... it doesn’t sound cool at all.”

The electricity left Silverbolt and ran into her. It surged through her body, and the uniform was gone. Black and purple plating closed over her, edged in silver.

The horns everyone had taken for Aspirant headgear had never been headgear. Her hair blew back from ears that came to points. Her eyes went red, and her smile showed fangs.

In a street at the Academy’s foot lay the pink-haired girl who would not give up on an Ender. She had earned one look at the truth.

Selena dropped toward her.