Page 93 of The Teras Trials

“I thought you wanted that, too,” I tell him. “You came all this way—to live. You talk to me after Bellamy because you say you understand the necessity of it. But you scare me, Leo, if you think you can go into the trial tomorrow and sacrifice someone to buy yourself time. Which is what happened last time, let’s not sugar-coat it. That’s what Bellamy’s death did for us. It bought us time.” I pause. “I don’t want you to lie to me and act as if you won’t do whatever it takes to secure a spot here. I know—that you would have left them both. Victoria. And I don’t judge that; I’ll have no leg to stand on if I judge it. But. . . that cannot be your first thought.”

I’m scared of him disagreeing with me, or talking back, somehow diluting the importance of what I have to say to him. I’m scared of this ruthlessness he’s talking about being who he really is. Scared he is not the man I thought he was. So before he can reply I’m halfway across the quad and pushing open the doors to the library.

It is as we left it. All the lights are on and glowing. The automaton is nowhere to be seen, like the first time I stumbled here. But there is someone else, propped up on the table to the right, completely alone. I pause when I see him. He looks up at me, despondent. Peter Drike.

He is walking death. I think I have never seen someone so close to slipping out of life entirely. His paleness is otherworldly, beyond sickness and near translucent. Blue veins criss-cross beneath his skin. The apples of his cheeks are pockmarked red with old acne I’ve never noticed before. Somehow he looks like he’s lost half his weight in the four days I haven’t seen him.

And he is, like me, sporting a prosthetic. Only his is not the porcelain-and-gold beauty I have at my side. His is wood, I think. Leather. His knee still functions, but he has the leg up, spread on the chairs. The joint looks painful, or else it’s the shock of it.

I see the realisation written in the wrinkles of his skin, and like me, I know he is contending with the change, too.

“I don’t know what to give it,” Drike murmurs. He’s alone. I wonder if everyone else in his room is dead.

“Peter,” I murmur. “Are you alright?”

His face twists and I expect him to shout at me, say something awful, call me a faggot. But the fight drains from him. It’s too much energy, being nasty. And he’s a shadow of himself, body and soul.

“You don’t know what to. . . give Meléti?” Leo ventures. He sighs and rubs his face, and I feel his frustration emanating. Coming here, with him, was stupid. “What will it know? It just knows the books. What can you possibly hope to learn about the next trial?”

Drike stares at him, brows buckling together immediately. It’s his one hope, I want to say. Just like it’s ours.

“Meléti,” I call. My voice echoes in the library, and I summon the thing. It speeds towards me, frighteningly quick.

“What would you like, Mr Jones?”

“Archives. Diaries, journals, anything from past students completing their trials.”

The automaton whirrs its head. I think about this coveted, protected knowledge. What price will I pay for learning? What am I willing to give? In the end, this is another trial. Another teras thrown at us, another chance for the University to press on our necks, to remind us how much we need them. The automaton is here for a reason. The University could have made this space public—it chose not to.

I say, “I’ll give you another memory. More knowledge.” Another part of myself, another trauma, something intimate you shouldn’t have and can hold over me.

But to my surprise, Meléti says, “There is nothing of the sort in the library.”

I feel Leo’s stare at the back of my skull, that growing I told you so on the tip of his tongue. But I feel, too, desperate, the same kind of desperate Peter Drike is feeling. My whole cohort is feeling. In amongst all these books there is no lesson about how to survive this place. Nothing at all in this entire temple to knowledge. Academia is a cesspit for lauding men as gods—is that it? Is that all it is?

So what the fuck am I meant to do? What am I meant to do?

The panic is intense and immediate and I stand there clenching and unclenching my fists, feeling the hot prick of tears at my eyes. I have to bite my tongue and whisper to keep my voice from cracking. “Then how do we prepare for the final trial?”

And Meléti doesn’t answer, because what is there to say? Leo is right.

There is no preparing for this trial.

The only hope is being ruthless.

* * *

The instant we are back at the apartments I light three cigarettes. Two of the cigarettes are for me, to smoke one after the other in quick succession, and the other is for Leo. It is the end of my tobacco, and I know I’ll regret it later when the cravings hit me like a brick, but I’m so—so—furious.

No one else is back. These apartments are skeletal and haunted, dark and creaking. I frantically light the cigarettes, new prosthetic fingers struggling to hold the matches. Finally I hand one to Leo, and drag him to my room.

I put both cigarettes in my mouth and dump the matches on the desk. I kick off my shoes. I start immediately taking off my shirt, and it takes forever, again because of the fingers. So I am angry, and frustrated at myself, and frustrated about this place, and wishing I could go back just a handful of weeks to order myself, “Do not come here.”

And then what? You might as well have raised the gun and shot mother in the head.

Maybe that would have been better. What has she ever done for me?

It’s an impotent feeling and it has nowhere to go except to fester in my stomach. The University feels inevitable. I had no other choice. All this, everything that has happened to me—was there ever any other outcome?

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