Page 53 of The Teras Trials

“Alright,” I say. “This is in the greenhouse. I don’t know what the next trial is, or even if it will involve this plant, but Thad wrote it down. So if we see some, let’s grab it.”

“For what?” Fred asks.

“You saw the page, I’m sure. It was burned. Your guess is as good as mine.”

No one replies to me. Mentioning this note was apparently a bad idea, because some unspoken anger settles over them, a tenseness even the damned automaton seems to notice.

“Shall I take the book from you, Mr Jones?” It says.

“Hang on.” I try to memorise it. I ask Fred and Silas to memorise it, too.

Cerberus Class, Arion Class, Nemean Class, Stymphalian Class, Caledonian Class. I can’t remember their dosages. The automaton prompts me again, and Silas and Fred are looking at me unhappily. All this over a note. I worry I’ve squandered this opportunity, and try one last time to get the dosages in my mind, but when Meléti prompts me a third time, I give it back without another thought, thank it, and walk down the stairs.

“You’re not going to address it, then?” Silas asks before I can wrench the library doors open.

“Oh, no, I plan to address it,” I say, pulling them wide. Bellamy startles, cigarette barely more than a burning stub. Leo is on the ground, knees under his chin. He scrambles to rise when he sees me.

I look back at Silas. “Just don’t want to have to repeat myself.”

“What did you find?” Bellamy asks, and I briefly tell them.

“Though it seems my brother’s letter has made you all hate me,” I finish.

A pause. No one breaks it, for nearly a minute. It’s still raining outside. I look around for the gun that was thrown out of the library’s doors. Leo proffers it from his coat.

“Thank you,” I say. He nods. “And my brother’s letter?”

This promotes an agitated rustle. Leo looks down at his hands—really, what was I expecting? He was too good to be true—and says, “What have you done with the rest of it?”

I laugh, but no one else is laughing with me. They’re all eager to hear, all agreeing with Leo’s line of questioning. So I sniff. “That’s all that was there. I swear it on my brother’s rotting corpse. It’s the only help we have.”

“You didn’t tell us soon enough,” Bellamy says. “Jesus, Cass. Aren’t we friends?”

I stare at him, because it’s a very good question. But then I think about the way he acted in there. The concern he had for me. And I’m ashamed immediately.

“Of course we are,” I say, and light a cigarette of my own. “But my brother used his dying words to get me into that room, and I wasn’t sure. . .” I trail off, because I don’t have much of a good excuse. “I’m sorry, alright? I know I pitched the whole working as a team thing, and then I’ve gone and pulled this, but now we all know as much as each other.”

If it was done to me, I would be furious. But I am hoping the nature of these trials means this lot will band with me despite the stunt I pulled. Fred and Silas keep exchanging looks, and I don’t think I’ve done anything to have them hating me quite so much—but neither can I fault them for not trusting me.

“Why didn’t you just ask us to come with you?” Victoria whispered. “You didn’t have to lie about running off to church.”

“I didn’t lie,” I say. And then the flash of the dead man’s body, lumps of viscera, broken bones. . . I swallow down my bile and sigh. “The gun I have. That’s from Thaddeus, too. I took it and I’ve had it on me all afternoon. And when I left the wing, I heard something.”

“Screams,” Leo offers. He glances at Fred and Silas. “A gunshot. We heard them, too. Thought maybe the second trial was starting. That’s. . . why I went through your things.”

I pretend like he hasn’t already admitted to spying on me as I found this letter beneath the boards in the first place, and continue the story. “I heard a thud, first, before the screams. A student jumped from his tower room,” I say, far too calmly.

Everyone freezes.

“What?” Victoria’s hand flies to her mouth. “He killed himself?”

“He tried to.” I dig around for the gun and open the barrel for everyone to see my five remaining bullets. “He wasn’t quite dead yet, you see.”

“You killed him,” Fred says. I can’t tell if it’s respect in her voice, or a resigned sort of disgust.

I shrug. “In the sense that I pulled the trigger.”

“Cassius,” Victoria says, and nothing more.

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