“Noticed what, exactly?”
“Oh please, Nazirah,” Lumi scoffs, fidgeting with a strand of blond hair. She seems uncomfortable. “You’re not the only one here with a brain and two eyes. Adamek’s tattoo; it’s unusual.”
“You saw it too, Lumi?” Nazirah asks, excited.
“Obviously.”
“Do you know why it’s abnormal?”
“No idea.” Lumi shrugs her shoulders gently and Nazirah’s hopes deflate. “He’s got so many tattoos I didn’t even notice at first. But I noticed his dusza right away. That’s pretty impossible to miss.”
Dusza? Nazirah has never heard the term before. “What’s a doo-shah?” Nazirah asks, trying to pronounce it correctly.
“Really, Nazirah?” asks Lumi, peeved. “Didn’t you learn anything from your research on Zima?”
Nazirah looks at her guiltily.
“His dusza … his soul tattoos.”
Now Nazirah is beyond lost. “His what?”
“It’s an ancient tradition of ours,” Lumi says, “like the scratch marks on his hands. I can’t explain it too well to a southerner. Centuries ago, before our warriors fought in battle, they received the dusza. It’s an extremely painful ordeal, but it offered them protection, so they did it.”
“Protection from their enemies?”
Lumi shakes her head. “Zimans believe that when you kill, you lose a part of your soul. “The dusza … it’s an old wives’ tale that almost nobody takes seriously anymore. If you have it and you kill another, it’s supposed to protect you. Your soul remains intact. But it comes at a terrible price: unbearable guilt, the burden for the lives you’ve taken.”
“Why would Morgen care about getting Ziman soul tattoos?”
“Search me.” Lumi shrugs. “Like I said, it’s a fable, a bedtime story every Ziman child grows up with. I almost didn’t believe he actually had it, when I first saw it.”
“Lumi,” Nazirah asks curiously, “I’ve never seen this dusza on Morgen. Where exactly is it?”
Lumi stiffens. “On his back,” she says.
“When did you see his back?”
“God,” Lumi sighs, looking away in embarrassment. Nazirah gets an unsettling feeling in the pit of her stomach, as Adamek’s words ring in her head.
Don’t ask a question, if you don’t want to know the answer.
“Oh,” Nazirah says, realizing.
Lumi faces Nazirah, unusually vulnerable. “Don’t tell Cato, okay?”
“So you and Morgen are uh … dating?”
Lumi frowns. “No, Nazirah. We’re not dating.”
“But –”
“I really don’t get it!” Lumi interrupts, throwing up her hands. “I thought it was all an act, but you really are that naïve.” Lumi stands, wiping invisible specks of dirt from her legs. Nazirah remains seated, face aflame. This is the second time someone has said that to her recently. It must be true. “Cato cares about you a lot, you know,” Lumi says, before leaving. “Don’t mess it up.”
Nazirah sits alone on the grass, trying to decipher her torrent of clashing emotions. She feels compassion for Lumi, uneasiness about Adamek, and embarrassment for herself. But there’s more to it than that. Trapped in thought, she distantly watches the final plays of the ball game. A wave of sickening revulsion surges over her, once Nazirah pinpoints exactly what else she’s feeling.
Jealousy.
Chapter Nine
Nazirah walks into Territory History exactly one minute early. She was holed up in the library all last night, finishing her essay on Mediah. The rest of the class is already there, but Bairs is uncharacteristically late.
The recruits are lounging around, relaxing. They laugh and sit on desks, speaking easily with one another. Nazirah spots Cato and Lumi towards the back of the room. She heads over to them and takes an empty seat next to Cato. Nazirah motions towards the Bear’s empty desk. “What’s going on?” she asks.
“No one knows,” Taj replies, a few seats away. He raps on the desk with his fists, drumming an energetic beat to kill time.
Hadn’t Adamek said over the weekend that Bairs’s mother was very ill? Nazirah wonders if Bairs is visiting her or something.
Nazirah pulls out her finished paper in frustration. She holds it up, showing it to Cato. “Figures.”
Cato smiles sympathetically. “That’s the way it goes.”
Nazirah gets up and walks towards Bairs’s desk, wanting to at least put her paper into the inbox. The classroom door opens and Adamek walks in, holding a silver briefcase. He heads straight to the front of the room and sets the briefcase down on the desk. The class immediately goes silent.
Adamek doesn’t need to tell people to take their seats, doesn’t need to say a word. The recruits automatically rush to find empty desks. Nazirah is left standing in the front of the room, staring blankly, paper in hand. Adamek smirks at her. “Questions already?” he asks.
Nazirah pulls herself together, quickly walking the rest of the way to the desk. From the corner of her eye, she sees him enter a four digit code onto the briefcase’s keypad, unlocking it. Nazirah files the numbers away in her mind, placing her paper in Bairs’s inbox. “I was handing this in,” she mutters, not bothering to wait for a response before returning to her seat.
Lumi seems extremely uncomfortable and avoids looking at Adamek. He doesn’t even spare her a glance. Anger boils inside of Nazirah. It’s so typical of guys like Adamek to sleep with a girl and then move on to someone new. Nazirah shoots him a scathing look, which of course he notices.
“At the request of your Commanders,” Adamek says, his voice confident and easy, “I’ll be teaching this class for a while. Professor Bairs has taken an indefinite leave of absence.” The class whispers, until Adamek silences it with a look. “Now I, personally, don’t give a shit about the nuances of each territory.” Adamek touches the briefcase lightly. Nazirah recognizes it from Niko’s desk. “Though I’m sure there are many. As you are undoubtedly aware, the Medis have extraordinarily advanced technology, military, and medicine. But I don’t think you realize exactly how advanced.” He opens the case. All the recruits in the class crane their necks, trying to get a better look.
“What is it?” asks Anzares, from the front row.
“When Medi soldiers train for battle,” Adamek says, “they often prepare by using this device, called an Iluxor. Does anyone know what an Iluxor is?” He looks around the room, but no one raises a hand. “Nation?” He singles Nazirah out, picking up her research paper and flipping through it casually. “No idea? I know from our conversation this weekend how interested you are in Mediah.”
A classroom of eyes swings to Nazirah, shocked. Not many people know she and Adamek are on speaking terms. And they’re not … not really. Adamek is just trying to embarrass her, getting back at Nazirah for questioning his tattoo. Cato goes stiff beside her, looking carefully between the two of them. Nazirah unfortunately does remember reading about the Iluxor. “It helps soldiers channel and overcome their fears,” she says.
“Correct,” Adamek says, taking out a syringe full of clear liquid. “Any idea how?”
“No,” she snaps.
Adamek holds up the syringe. “This is a complex neurological serum. Once in the bloodstream, it stimulates the neurons in your brain associated with fear and memory. Used simultaneously with the actual Iluxor” – Adamek holds up what appears to be a large cube of glass – “which detects these enhanced brainwaves through sensory vibration – and under the guidance of someone who actually knows what he’s doing – we can channel these waves directly into the brain’s occipital lobe, allowing you to temporarily relive certain memories.”
The entire class stares at Adamek blankly.
Ansel Mays raises his hand. “So … we can watch our memories play inside our heads?”
“Basically,” Adamek confirms, placing everything back into the case and locking it.
A buzz of excitement goes through the class. The recruits look at the Iluxor in awe. No one from the territories has ever seen technology like this, has ever imagined something like this existed.