Bastion 2 - Chapter 13

Going back to class was hard. I wanted to work on Mae’s device and start unlocking its possibilities. More than that, I wanted to give Mae more than just a corner of quiet. Yes, I wanted her out of my head so I could have a single private thought for once in the last year, but more importantly, she needed her own space. Something to call her own.

Ko-nah needed extra assistance with his zo calm exercises before bed that first night, and before I knew it, I found myself waking up before dawn for another day of class. I cursed myself and Mae piped up.

“We have time, we’ll get to it. Don’t worry so much,” she said with kindness that made me hate myself more.

I wiped a hand over my face as I looked around the room of sleeping boys. ‘No, we don’t have time. Every day I waste, my mother is one day closer to death.’

“What do you propose, then?” she asked.

I couldn’t just abandon Ko-nah, but perhaps I could co-opt his progress. Hana could work on zo and ry munje with him, Cho could help with li, and Yuri en. I would still mentor him through ma and be present for meditation sessions. Would he accept this, though?

Mae hummed. “I think your first question should be, would Hana be okay with this?”

I sighed. ‘Good point.’

So, what was left? Let my schoolwork suffer, or progress painfully slow on Mae’s second device. What else could I cut out? Sleeping and eating, but that didn’t seem viable. There was nothing else I could sacrifice to get ahead.

“I have something we could try,” Mae said with trepidation.

I nodded as I hopped out of bed and started the early morning routine.

“We’ve become well synced over the last few months, and I know this is an uncomfortable topic, but what if you gave me control to move and manipulate your ma munje?”

I didn’t like that idea, and not because I didn’t trust Mae, but because it was me, my autonomy. The munje was something that was part of me and having her push and pull it around at her will made me and my control obsolete.

Mae awed with pity. “You’re not obsolete just because I know how to manipulate your munje. I won’t overstep my bounds, I promise. This is a way we can get this device fixed while you still help Ko-nah, do well in school, and get appropriate down time. Come on, Jiyong… do you really think Hana would help Ko-nah? She despises him.”

‘It wouldn’t be helping him, it would be helping me, and I think she’d do it to the best of her ability.’ I thought with a bit of heat and I felt Mae shrink back.

“You’re right, I’m sorry.”

I splashed cool water over my face and neck, feeling the cold shock of it down to the bottoms of my feet. I sighed. ‘No, you’re right. Giving you control is the best way. What are you doing in here anyway? Just watching me go about my day. This will give you something productive to put your time toward.’

Mae made an excited high-pitch scream. “Thank you, thank you! You can’t imagine how boring it gets—I mean, not that you are boring—but I have nothing to do!”

‘Calm down. Boundaries; just like with everything else. You can use my ma and en, and ask me to generate more, but you cannot command my core. The core is mine.’ I thought carefully as I dressed in my school dobok.

Mae was gleeful as she said, “Yes, I agree. I wouldn’t want to do something wrong with your core anyway. You’ve learned to use it on instinct, a reflex, and I’ve watched you—”

‘No,’ I cut her off flatly before she could go on. I wasn’t going to be made obsolete…

“Yes, of course, right. No core command,” she said, and made a sound like inhaling sharply. “This is exciting!”

‘Very exciting. Let’s practice.’

I could feel Mae dragging my munje from the reservoir and leading it down my arm into the cool metal in my pocket. I sensed the munje working in the device, but if I didn’t focus on it, I didn’t get sucked into the information. Mae successfully directed my munje like I did, ordering repairs where she saw fit, and I didn’t have to do anything but provide her more.

A great feeling of unease shivered through me as I thought of the consequences once again. If Mae could learn to manipulate my munje, could anyone?

“Very unlikely,” Mae piped up.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be fixing the device?’

She chuckled. “I am. I can also talk. Talking is very low effort. In any case, I’m faking your mental signature to utilize your nanites, and it’s nearly impossible that any other human could figure out how the nanites work, let alone figure out how to fake someone else’s mental signal. Trust me, we’re the only ones who can do this.”

Some thought tickled the back of my mind at that. Faking someone’s signal… ‘Mae, what about that weird signal reburb or something?’

She giggle again. “A signal reverb, as in reverberation. Yes, but that’s not the same as this.”

I sighed. What was the difference between my signal and the signal from the drugs?

“I could teach you about my science—everything I know at least—if you wanted,” Mae offered as she sent cute smiling faces up through my vision.

‘Maybe next year. I think I’ve gotten myself in enough for now.’

“I agree. Ko-nah’s been awake for about two minutes, by the way,” Mae mentioned, and my hands clammed up. I pulled the device off the bed and put it into my pocket. There, Mae could work on it all day without anyone seeing—hopefully.

‘Why didn’t you say something sooner?’ I demanded as I pulled back the covers and made my bed.

“He’s quite good at masking it. I only just realized when I noticed his heart rate and breathing shift was not a temporary change,” Mae said as I made my way over to Ko-nah’s bed.

I looked down at him and couldn’t tell the difference. He could’ve been dead for all I saw, apart from the tiny breaths he took that lifted his chest. Why would he keep faking sleep when I stood right over him?

“Ko-nah,” I said gently, but he didn’t stir. “Ko-nah,” I said again with more force and he popped open one eye weakly.

He pulled the sheets up over his head and rolled away with a groan. “It’s too early.”

What was he playing at?

“It’s the same time as every morning. Let’s go,” I said forcefully.

I went through the morning meditation with great interest as I felt Mae moving munje all over my body and into the device. It made concentrating on clearing my thoughts difficult, but no one else seemed to notice my distress. We made it through breakfast with less complaining than the previous weeks, for which I was grateful.

With a few minutes to spare, we made it to Li Alchemy I only to see the door had been sealed shut.

“What is this?” Cho asked with outraged concern. He pushed on the door, pulled, and then scowled. “I’ve never been locked out of the alchemy lab before!”

I smirked. He’d only been using the alchemy lab for a few weeks but had already become quite attached to it.

Cho knocked with annoyance. “Excuse me! It’s time for class!”

Nothing moved, and no one answered from the other side. Cho tapped his foot and crossed his arms.

“Little Pak getting his sogosin a bunch?” Tae-do jeered and his entourage chuckled.

Cho turned to him, red-faced and ready to spout something that might get him in more trouble than he wanted. I put my arm around him and turned him back to the classroom. “Ignore him. He’s an idiot.”

Cho gave a resigned, “Yeah,” as the other students sniggered behind us.

The warning bell rang and there was a clicking of locks on the other side of the door. It slid back, and Cho marched forward, his chest puffed up.

“Take your seats without comment,” Sung-ki said from the dais at the front of the well-lit room. The windows pointed out over the garden, but backless shelves crisscrossed the spaces between and over the windows. They were lined with different herbs and fungi. Those of them needing lots of light were positioned over the windows, while those plants that liked the dark were hid away in blackened alcoves.

We filed in and I took my place next to Ko-nah at the back. Why he had selected the farthest back seat in every class was beyond me. It was like he was trying to fail out.

The room was quiet apart from the pattering of feed and the scooting of stools. Because we had to work with toxic substances, we had tall, metal desks and backless chairs—ones we could run away from faster in case of emergency.

I remembered from my first year that minor accidents happened with some regularity, and serious ones occurred about twice a year. The most memorable from my first year was that the whole alchemy room had filled with black foam from an unexpected mixture, forcing me and the other students for the ry class out onto the balcony. That was where I fought wansil-yu Jun’s guard and Hana lost her name…

Sung-ki cleared his throat, then spoke in a condescending tone as he said, “There are always students snooping about the alchemy lab,” he said as he eyed me, then Cho. “There will always be lying thieves in our midst.”

I assumed he meant last year when Mae and I went through the storeroom looking for substances to help my regeneration, but we hadn’t stolen anything. My eyes shot up to the door to the alchemy closet behind Sung-ki. It was barred and locked up, an ominous sign that there was something far worse than just a little bit of snooping around going on.

He turned on his heel, looked at every student in turn. “Lying thieves don’t just get thrown out of my class… they get expelled. Permanently.”