“In here!” Yalena shouted, causing Dena to jump in shock. “I’m in here! In the boy’s locker room!”
Then she took off at a dead run, dodging the remaining baseballs underfoot and whipping through the locker room and showers. She ducked through the doors on the far end, emerging into a corridor that carried Yalena past the wrestling and weight-lifting rooms, up into the main gymnasium, again. She dropped to a carefree stroll across the gym and reached the girls’ locker room via another staircase that mirrored the one she’d just used. That corridor led Yalena down past the trampolines and balance beams used by the women’s gymnastics team.
Yalena slipped quietly into the girls’ locker room, changed into her C.O.R.P. uniform, and reached the practice field only four minutes late. Once there, however, she found it difficult to concentrate on sensei’s lesson. Her emotions were beginning to catch up to the rest of her, fractured emotions that ran the gamut from icy rage to shaking fear that she’d be expelled — or jailed — when those little bastards woke up and thought about pressing charges. Woven through all of that was the agony of grief she had not yet purged and might never leave behind. Her mother had been murdered by men just as brutal as the gang she’d laid out on the locker room floor.
Hatred had propelled every single blow.
If Dena’s friends hadn’t come down the stairwell, would she have stopped? Could she have stopped? She had wanted to kill them. And knew, as well, that she could have. All too easily. The cold, lethal hatred that was shaking through her, now, spoiled her balance and ruined her concentration. Some officer’s candidate I am, she told herself savagely. Dad never mentioned what a good officer’s supposed to do after the fighting’s done. Or what to do when the hatred that makes you want to vomit…
She managed to limp through the lesson, mostly because it was interrupted partway through by the arrival of Vishnu’s peacekeeping officers and several ambulances. She watched with the others as those ambulances pulled away, lights strobing as they headed to the nearest hospital. Yalena fully expected to be summoned by the officers, who were speaking with other students and teachers, but no one called her over or even glanced her way.
Invisibility had its uses.
She waited all night, in fact, for the questions to come but no one came to the apartment and no one called her father, either. Yalena watched the local newscast, which gave her a clue as to the unexpected lack of legal attention directed her way.
“A hate-motivated crime was broken up this afternoon at Shasti High School when a Jeffersonian Granger refugee was attacked by a gang of students whose parents hold positions of authority in Jefferson’s POPPA Party. The attack, which was broken up by Granger students who came to the victim’s rescue, has prompted Vishnu’s Minister of Residency to revoke the educational visas of the young men charged with the assault. No formal charges have been levied, at the request of the student and her family, but the students named in the case will be deported as soon as they are released from the hospital.
“The Jeffersonian ambassador has protested this decision, charging the Minister with bigotry and cultural bias. The Minister has issued a formal statement warning that visa applications for family members of Jeffersonian officials connected to POPPA will come under sharper scrutiny, given the rise in tensions and the increasing number of violent incidents between Granger refugees and POPPA Party affiliates on Vishnu. The entire Chamber of Ministers has made it clear that Jefferson’s internal wrangles will not be tolerated on Vishnu’s soil.”
That was the whole report. Yalena sat wrapped in thoughtful silence as her father said, “It’s about time Vishnu did something about this mess. I’m surprised worse violence hasn’t broken out before now. I hope the kid they attacked will be all right. And I hope to hell there aren’t reprisals against Grangers still trapped on Jefferson.”
Yalena swallowed hard. She hadn’t thought about that. Hadn’t stopped to consider the long-term effects of her enraged actions, this afternoon. It had felt right, at the time. Still felt right. But she hadn’t thought it through and people would suffer for it, as a result. She hadn’t had much time in which to decide, given the danger Dena was in, which helped assuage her tremors of guilt. It also gave Yalena a new and visceral appreciation of what her father had been talking about, when he’d tried to explain the purpose of C.O.R.P. to her. She had made the best decision she could, under the circumstances. And now she — and others — had to live with her decision and the actions flowing from it.
Command, she discovered in that moment, was a bitch with spurs.
The next day at school, she was aware of a sharp and silent scrutiny. Not from the POPPA brats, but from the Grangers. All of them seemed to know. It was eerie, to be stared at everywhere she went, by people who had literally ignored her for two and a half years. At lunch, she found herself staring back into Granger eyes, driven by pride and smouldering anger into holding gazes until the others’ glances dropped away, puzzled and discomfited no small amount.
By the time school was over for the day, Yalena was ready to disappear into whatever sanctuary she could find, but was duty bound to return to the C.O.R.P. practice field. She did nearly as badly as she’d done the day before and ended up on the ground time and again, sprawled in a winded heap where her instructor and fellow students had sent her flailing through the air. She wouldn’t have to worry about proving her worthiness for combat, because she was going to flunk out of basic training.
By the time the session was over, Yalena was ready to do something else violent, just to burn off the frustration. When she emerged from the locker room, having showered and changed into street clothes, Yalena checked abruptly. Fifteen Granger students had formed a barricade across the hall and the stairwell. She considered taking to her heels in a repeat of yesterday’s escape through the men’s locker room. For long, fraught moments, she looked at them and they looked at her. Then one of the boys, a tall, rough-looking kid named Jiri Mokombo, whom Yalena had seen around school, but hadn’t shared classes with, breached the silence.
“How come you did it?” he demanded. “You’re one of them.”
Yalena didn’t have to ask who “them” was. “That’s my business,” she said in a flat voice, angry and scared and determined not to show it. She didn’t want another fight. And she didn’t have anything in her hands, this time, except air. And courage. Which wasn’t a whole lot when outnumbered fifteen to one.
“Your business, huh?” Melissa Hardy, who was in one of Yalena’s classes, pushed her way through the others to meet Yalena’s gaze. “You’re wrong. You made it our business. Why?”
Yalena took her measure, silently, trying to gauge not the physical dimensions of an opponent, but the psychological dimensions of the exchange. The emotion that burned in Melissa’s eyes was more puzzlement than anger. Yalena shook her head. “No, you’re wrong, Melissa. I didn’t make it your business. I made it mine. Frankly, I didn’t much like the odds. Or the assholes involved.”
Someone at the back of the group muttered, “You know, she’s never made up to any of ’em. Not once. I noticed. And none of them have ever tried to make friends with her, either.”