free to read
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“You knew him?” Medicus asked as he held pen to paper. He didn’t sound surprised. I had no idea what he was thinking, but man if I could have peeled Medicus’s brain open and got a dig at what was turning in it, I would have paid my right ball for the opportunity.
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The chuckle that followed me into the dark left my skin tingling. Maybe I’d gained some bit of respect from Rowan. I’d never hit someone before and my fingers throbbed enough to tell me Wallace hadn’t either. I didn’t really want to repeat the experience.
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Morning graced my window, illuminating the room in soft orange cream. I went to stretch and bumped into something. I drew in a startled breath, only to remember that Sanctus had climbed into bed with me last night. His breathing was soft, but told me he was on the verge of waking. I eased up…
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“A little Simil for a big Simil?” I posited to the Mad Hatter. “Benefit the system, and the system benefits you.” He plucked at a grape. It slipped past his fork to roll to the other side of his plate. Baffled disappointment creased his features.
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Dressed back into my trench, I directed Sanctus to the door. “Thanks, Medicus. I’ll drop by in the morning,” I said over my shoulder as I let us out of the clinic.
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It seemed that the hallways were perpetually empty. Maybe it was that the complex was so vast that it distributed people well enough to make it rare for more than a couple of people to occupy the halls at any one time. I was perpetually amazed at the layout of the tunnels. There were no…
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I woke where I had been left. The shore trees, backlit, cast long afternoon shadows. The water had receded to my feet, leaving me covered in mud and leaves.
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Jarl wasn’t joking about the don’t drown bit. At the front steps of the boarding house, a floor down, I encountered a world turned on its head. The water level lapped three steps up. Murk and gunk drifted in the high water.
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I waited for Claude at the base of the stairs. I didn’t know if I was slotted for more quizzes, or if I could go, but I knew that I wasn’t going to wait very long to find out. I may not have memorized a lot of books, but I could at least remember enough…
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Well toward midnight, the group came across a shallow hole in the side of a hill that led into a stump of a cave. The group collapsed at the edge of the darkness, neither eager to bury themselves in pitch-blackness nor be left out in the open.
Chapel Orahamm 