“I’m trying. It keeps —” His hands were tingling. Not numb—the opposite. Too alive. His fingertips were buzzing and his palms were hot and the robe fabric against his skin felt like a hundred tiny mouths breathing on him. He could feel every thread.
Then he blinked again and they were on the teaching path, halfway to the greenhouse, when a night safety guide stepped out of the shadows. They did that sometimes when Cass tried to get out of night meditation.
“Brother Matthias? Is everything all right? Your face is bandaged.”
“Brother Rath.” Brother Matthias’s voice came out almost normal. Almost. Cass could hear a slight thinness that could have been anything, really. “Yes, everything is fine. We’re taking this seeker to the infirmary. He had an episode during evening counseling.”
Brother Rath looked at Riot, then at Cass, his hand drifting up to fiddle with the gold pin at his collar. “Berserker episode?”
“A small one,” Honey said, stepping forward. Her voice was the voice of the welcoming advisor she’d been for three years. “I was assisting with his spiritual assessment when it happened. Brother Matthias thinks the infirmary should evaluate before morning.”
Brother Rath’s eyes moved to Cass.
Cass leaned against Riot, and he tried to stand straighter. Tried to make his face look normal. His face didn’t want to cooperate.
“Is Brother Cassiopeia all right?” Brother Rath asked. “He looks—”
“Exhausted,” Brother Matthias said, and his voice had that quality that made Cass’s stomach ache. It was a voice that saidI shouldn’t have to explain this to youand it always hurt. “The seeker’s episode was distressing, and you know how sensitive Brother Cassiopeia is. He’s been sitting with our extraordinary new seeker for hours to help calm his earthly aggression. The seeker needs evaluation, and Brother Cassiopeia needs rest, and we’d like to get both of those things done before the third bell, I’m sure you understand.”
Brother Rath straightened and nodded. “Of course.”
Cass blinked again and then they were further along the teaching path. The ground was further away than before and the walking was becoming a thing he had to think about—left foot, right foot, don’t lean, don’t fall, keep moving. Riot’s hand was still on his back, but the hand was doing more work now, and Cass was doing less, and the balance between those two things was shifting in a direction that scared him.
“I’m okay,” he said. He wasn’t sure if he’d said it out loud or just thought it.
“I know,” Riot said. So he must have said it.
The greenhouse appeared at the end of the teaching path like a glass ship in the moonlight. Large. Curved roof. The panels catching the light and throwing it back in soft fragments. Inside, Cass could see the shapes of plants that had grown in the absence of care. No one had used that greenhouse in years, but it seemed the plants in it had thought about the neglect and chosen life anyway. He was never going to smell this greenhouse again.
The thought hurt. The drug tried to take the hurt away and Cass held onto it. He wanted to keep this one. He wanted to remember that leaving hurt, because that place had been real and he had good times here. Not everything had been bad. He had his best friend. His little blue house. His mission to the Neutral Zone…even if it started because of a failure that left a weird door in his mind, that was how he met Riot.
Not everything was bad.
Honey moved to the side door. A keypad. Green numbers glowing in the dark. Her fingers were fast—she knew the code the way she knew her own name, without thinking, the numbers living in her hands.
She punched in the sequence.
The light turned red.
Honey stared at it. Punched the code again. Red.
“The code changed,” she said.
“When?” Sage asked.
“I don’t know. It was correct two weeks ago.”
“Can you—”
“I need a minute.” Honey’s fingers were hovering over the keypad. “The rotation follows the lunar calendar. Current cycle, minus the day offset, plus the master sequence—”
Cass’s vision went soft, like someone had put gauze over the world. He could still see the greenhouse and the keypad and the moonlight on the glass, but it was all very far away. And very quiet. And very warm. He was leaving, his mind was pulling back from the surface of things, sinking into the warm, soft place the drug had been building. Like falling asleep, except he was standing up.
“I’m sorry,” he said from very far away. “I think I need to sit down.”
Riot’s words were becoming shapes now, not sounds. Pretty shapes. Warm shapes.
Honey’s fingers on the keypad. Moving. Fast. The green numbers reflected in the glass.
