Cillian dreamed of flames.


    Orange and blindingly bright, even through his tear-streaked eyes, and rushing in like a wave out of nowhere, consuming the spider before him. The flames never touched him directly, but the heat was unbearable. Hell itself had seemingly opened its gates to collect him.


    He dreamed of throwing himself at the far end of the coffin and covering his head. Dreamed of shrieking in agony and hopelessly pounding the wall, trying to get away. The flames might not have touched him directly, but he still felt ablaze.


    Then a laugh came – an inhuman laugh, an entire chorus of inhuman laughs, each slightly different from the rest, but every single one creepy and hoarse. And a man, in a metal mask and a hat tilted low, kneeling and peering through the circular opening.


    With a screech, the roof got torn off, revealing a dozen pairs of mocking eyes glowing sickly yellow and glaring down at him, while the rest of the world went up in smoke.


    Cillian woke with a gasp.


    He abruptly sat up, mouthing for air and frantically looking around with wide eyes, clutching his right shoulder, ready to bolt. Spiders and flames and the man with pitiless eyes and… mother. Where was his mother? He had to–


    No.


    Stop.


    He closed his eyes and exhaled with a shudder, then folded in half, moaning quietly and trying to force himself to breathe normally. There was no smoke, no need to struggle for air. Also, no man, no monsters, no pain. And no mother. Just his room.


    This dream again.


    He sagged back on the pillow.


    It’s been a while. And I haven’t missed you one bit.


    Cillian released the shoulder and felt an urge to check his back for burns but resisted, instead stretching both arms down and lying still. After almost a full minute of making himself stay as if stone, calmness and clarity came back to his mind, and, in a manner that felt strangely routine, he reached for a cup on a low table next to the bed, drained it in three big gulps, and padded his sweat-covered forehead with a towel waiting for him under the pillow.


    Rare or not these days, the dream always brought back old pain and never failed to make him thirsty. It paid to be prepared.


    He swung out of bed and went to the bathroom, shaking his head in a vain attempt to get rid of the lingering images of his savior. Those intense blue eyes, somehow sparkling even in the dim light, and that mask… like a weird combination of a masquerade and a gas mask. On one hand – dark metal richly inlaid with gold threads weaving meaningless patterns around a single oblong eyehole, narrower down the middle and featuring a thin rim made from the same gold. On the other – a bronze-colored plate curving over the man’s nose and stretching down to cover the mouth. It protruded forward, as if there were supposed to be exhalation slits cut into it but weren’t, and also featured two circular air filters, presumably decorative, sticking out on both sides of the mouth.


    The masked man and his companion – a monstrous amalgamation of a horde of hideous bodies; the myriad of heads all cackling in delight. They had come to save him from the spiders.


    What a joke.


    Cillian washed his face in cold water and peered into a mirror. He looked tired. With bags under his brown eyes and a wrinkled forehead beneath dark hair, he appeared much older than his eighteen years. A shadow, which he’d neglected to shave yesterday, didn’t help either. He massaged his face, trying to coax it to relax. It was no good.


    He returned to his room, checked that both alarms were still set to 6 o’clock, and took a single sleeping pill, knowing from experience that he’d need it if he wanted to fall back asleep. Otherwise, the fretfulness and the eyes wouldn’t let him doze off now and would likely follow him for the rest of the day. Today, of all days, he couldn’t afford that.


    Cillian sat down on the bed and glanced out the window. The Everstorm – a shining vortex forever raging in the sky far Heavenward – greeted him, only partly visible through the dense cacophony of buildings even from the seventh floor. It was still noticeably blue – light blue – growing paler closer to the core; the fading color letting everyone know that the gleambout was over.


    Yes, today, on the 6th day of the blue surge, he absolutely had to get as much rest as possible.


    The final interview awaited him in the morning.


    He lay down and tried to loosen up his rigid muscles, cursing the blue-eyed man under his breath. More out of habit now rather than real bitterness. He’d made his peace with the past. The chevalier hadn’t been truly at fault; he was just late.


    Once a chevalier himself, Cillian would always strive to do better than that.


    <hr>


    The tram slowed down, opening its back door, and he jumped out without waiting for it to come to a full stop. He wasn’t in a hurry but why wait? After checking that his fedora was still safely tucked into the overcoat''s belt behind his back, Cillian cleared off the road and looked up.


    The skywalkers – far, far above everyone’s heads – were crawling along their daily route from Rim to Lemwise, shining down on insignificant humans hurrying about their oh-so significant errands. Judging by the walkers’ current position and provided level of illumination, he estimated it wasn’t yet 7 – plenty of time to get to his target location.


    He crossed the wide road to the other side of the street, skirting right in front of a motorwagen and eliciting a curse from its driver in the open cabin. He waved an apology and, once on the sidewalk, began ambling in the direction of the center of Lua. His mood was a bit mixed – one part excited, one part weary. He hoped a long walk in the cold would do him some good.


    Cillian loved this time of day. Pale yellow light from the skywalkers, reflecting off brass doorknobs, copper pipes, and glass windows, not too many people around, newspaper and poster boys scurrying this way and that on bicycles, ringing their bells in warning – what’s not to love? And to think, he was walking toward an interview that could spell a complete transformation for him.


    Most of the world didn’t have an engineering marvel in the sky creating a convenient day and night cycle and was drowning in eternal dimness, instead. Most of the world didn’t have any sort of civilization or culture. Most of the world was infested with beasts.


    He had to step out onto the road to bypass a trio of workers in brown overalls, who’d taken the entire width of the sidewalk with their strewn about boxes and instruments. The ladders, ropes, and a huge signboard, leaning on the wall, suggested they were about to install the latter above one of the shops. A motorwagen honked at him.


    He cursed. On the other hand, most of the world also didn’t have nearly as many people as Lua. Good enough reason for a city boy to go out and fight monsters?


    Moryah.


    As unwanted doubts began invading his mind, Cillian looked down at his attire to forcibly switch the topic of contemplation. He’d been over this countless times before, alone and with father. No reason to doubt himself now; his decision was final. He was just feeling nervous.


    The damn tie sat uncomfortably around his neck. He’d never worn it before as the school uniform didn’t include one, and it’d taken him five minutes just to put it on correctly. Father’s suggestion. That and the black low-heeled shoes adorning his feet – brogue shoes, apparently. Father had told him the tie and the brogues would make him look like he meant business.


    Cillian didn’t know about that. What he knew for certain though was that the tie was strangling him, and the shoes were hindering his every step. Why was it important to wear both for the final interview but not for the previous ones, he didn’t understand.


    The rest of his clothing was the same as the last time – pleated trousers, a crisp dress shirt, a double-breasted vest, and the high-collar overcoat. The shirt was white; everything else – dark grey, with the vest being a notch lighter. Cillian frowned when he crossed paths with a man in his thirties dressed very similarly and realized he probably looked just like any other corporate ant, if a little younger.


    His hand leaped to his face in a sudden alarm. But no, he had remembered to shave.


    Relax, mucker, why are you so fidgety? There’s nothing to fear; just another interview.


    He eased his shoulders. Aye, just another interview.


    Cillian walked across a stone bridge spanning a canal, with the tram he’d taken only now noisily passing him on the right, then strode in between two crumbling sections of the original wall and into the inner ring proper, not for the first time wondering why they wouldn’t just completely demolish the old thing.


    He kept diligently following the sidewalk – early hour or not, the traffic could be pretty chaotic as loud whistles from patrolmen attested to – but soon found himself with a roof over his head anyway, because the building above him extended all the way to the road, creating a sheltered walkway with a succession of contiguous arches serving as the outer wall. As he walked, Cillian saw shops and cafes on the ground floor begin to give signs of life. That was interesting as they normally didn’t open so early.


    A massive black-and-white banner made from light fabric, as its gentle rippling in the wind suggested, reminded him of the likely reason. It covered almost the entire side of the next building and was tethered to the row of snarling gargoyles sitting below the edge of the steep tiled roof. The contents depicted a larger-than-life three-headed canine monster cowering at the feet of an even larger silhouette of a man.


    Right. Today wasn’t just his final interview day – no one but him and his father cared about that – today was also Foerstner Academy graduation day.


    Graduation.


    Should I come?


    It’d been a while since the last time. He’d stopped coming after the incident, but he remembered enjoying it very much with his parents, and, if he passed, it would actually be relevant to him.


    Although, would they tell me the results right away?


    Cillian judged it unlikely, but he was already going toward the center; might as well swing by the ceremony after.


    The deeper he went into the inner ring, the more grandiose the buildings on both sides became. It was sometimes difficult to believe that the half rusted, half rotten slums, littering the edges of the outer ring and getting barely any light from the skywalkers even in the middle of the day, were located in the very same city as these ostentatious structures he was seeing right now.


    Every building here had to have a distinguishing feature, it seemed. Be it a covered gallery or gargoyles, like in the buildings he’d passed earlier, or, say, a collection of huge circular balconies completely replacing one of the corners and, instead of protruding outward, appearing as if carved in stone, one above another. There had to be something differentiating you from the neighbors – that was the unspoken agreement.


    And he was still half a dozen kilometers away from the true craziness.


    Cillian reached an intersection and had to stand by until a patrolman gave him and others a signal. While waiting for a couple of open-wheel motorwagens to approach and then hurry past, he spied a trio of lifting cranes standing on top of a half-finished structure diagonally across the street and noted that it was already an entire level higher than last time, which he found mighty impressive. The cranes almost seemed to be constructing the building around themselves and rising with it.


    He thought he should like this place. Many decorative moldings above doors and windows, covered porches, and, in particular, fake columns integrated into corners of most buildings, giving an impression as if every floor stood on a foundation supported by four columns stretching from the floor below – all of it provided plenty of hand and footholds for climbing. But, in reality, everything here was simply too tall.


    Most buildings in the inner ring weren’t that much higher than those in the midring on paper – if one were to merely count levels. However, it wouldn’t take you long to realize after coming here that every floor, every window, every arch, and even every roof – all architectural elements were somehow stretched vertically. Not by much but, taken together, enough to make reaching between one hold and another a difficult proposition.


    Not to mention city guards zealously running after the homeless, hooligans, and would-be climbers. Also, smoke. Thick pillars were rising from most roofs while smog was sinking down low. Even this early in the day it was thin but noticeable and unpleasant. For a reason unknown, the midring often had significantly less smog than the other two.


    None of it had stopped Cillian from scaling buildings here in the past, of course. But it was dangerous without a partner, and he never had one these days.


    After fifteen more minutes of traversing the streets, he came in sight of his destination. A pretty boring structure by the standards of the inner ring – it had a distinct central portion ending in a massive dome with a cupola at the very top and two wide wings mirroring each other, both sporting traditional gable roofs. The tall, long-defunct light pillars, four of them, proudly standing guard at the “corners” of the dome marked it as a very old building. Or, more likely, marked the owner as a pretentious tool who had erected the pillars there purely for show.


    Regardless, his target loomed ahead menacingly by virtue of being situated on top of a small rise, its dark roof shimmering in the warm light.


    He walked down the long, gradually declining street leading up to it, reached a wide perron consisting of three flights of low steps and flanked by two marble statues, both depicting some famous individuals he didn’t care about, climbed to the top, shielded his eyes from the intensifying skylight, and checked his pocket watch. He was early.


    Following verification of his identity with a guard, Cillian entered through the building’s main doors and proceeded into the vast space. He walked past the burgundy-colored walls, featuring white arches leading to nowhere, some of which were used as frames for more busts of noteworthy people, and then under a massive chandelier somehow suspended at the level of the fourth floor instead of hanging from the very top. The sights and sounds engulfed him. That and people. Despite the early hour, they were hastening left and right, making him feel like an intruder.


    Also, rather self-conscious.


    At first glance, no one here appeared to be dressed significantly better than him. But look and listen more closely and you’d see and hear the many jingling and sometimes even ticking metal trinkets. The women had small golden chains and ornaments decorating their predominantly dark corsets and layered skirts; their necklaces and earrings glittered in the light, and velvet chokers covered their entire necks.


    A couple of ladies, who were practically flying across the hall in a hurry, wore fake vambraces on top of their white blouses and had fancy chainwork adorning the tops of their tall, heeled boots. The ensembles made an appreciable tinkling sound when they intersected his path. Cillian fancied you could distinguish one woman from another just by the walking noises they made.


    As for the ticking, it came from a gentleman sitting on a bench near the entrance. He was reading a newspaper all the while the gears on the front of his leather jacket, stylized to look like a worn-out soldier coat, kept rotating – the middle gear snapped to a new position every second, causing the two smaller ones to follow suit.


    Fake. Everything here was fake. Sometimes even aether-powered fake. But pretty, Cillian had to admit.


    Should I wear a fake of my own?


    To null with it, he decided while clicking his shoes on the dusky stone floor, polished to a mirror-like shine, fetched a bracelet from the pocket of his trousers, and put it on the left hand. Might as well.


    Although, classifying it as a bracelet was likely incorrect. There was a loop wrapping around his wrist, but most of the object took the form of a skeletal hand laid on top of his hand. Only missing fingertips. Cillian didn’t like wearing wristwatches or anything else adding weight to his arms, but this golden contraption, from a distance appearing as if his very bones shone through the skin, had attracted his attention. Yes, sometimes he liked silly baubles as well, sue him. It would serve to liven up his otherwise all-too-serious look.


    Cillian quickly climbed the stairs to the now familiar office on the third floor, where an assistant greeted him and told him to wait. She grimaced when a train rumbled past the pair of wide windows, and he laughed quietly to himself. Don’t like it much, do you? Now imagine taking a written evaluation with trains constantly running back and forth on the stupid overpass.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    The building likely didn’t belong to Foerstner, and they were simply using it for the interview season. Not that it mattered.


    Cillian sat on a chair and glanced at a clock on the wall. Twenty minutes.


    Twenty minutes til my fate is decided. No sweat.


    He took off his coat and relaxed the shirt’s collar slightly.


    Aye, easy as falling off a log. No sweat at all.


    <hr>


    “I have the results of both your medical and psychological evaluations. Which would you like to begin with?” Mr. Byrne, his interviewer, asked him.


    “Medical,” Cillian replied at once. He wanted to get it over with.


    “Medical it is.” The man nodded and dropped a folder on a low table between them.


    The two were sitting at the end of the room opposite the window, on a pair of comfortable upholstered sofas facing each other, which was different from all the previous times. Then, Cillian had occupied a much less agreeable chair on one side of an imposing walnut table while his interviewer, or even several, had towered on another, backlit by the skylight.


    He much preferred the current arrangement. Good sign?


    Mr. Byrne opened the folder and read out loud, “Third-degree burns all over your back; lacerations on your arms, shoulders, and chest; nose broken multiple times; and, from your own words, broken left leg, which we don’t have any records of. Does that cover it all?”


    “It does.”


    The man eyed him for several long seconds, perhaps waiting for more, then continued, “Naturally, I understand the burns and the lacerations – you were one of the many unfortunate victims of the so-called ghost-train incident – but broken nose and leg? How do you explain it? Are you clumsy, Mr. Shea?”


    “No, sir.” He thought about how to better phrase it. “The nose… umm, I used to get into fights,” Cillian confessed reluctantly.


    “Get into fights?”


    “Aye.” Don’t they have records of it? Foerstner owns the damn school! Or is it another test? “Age 13 to 14, I used to get into many.”


    “But not anymore?”


    “Not anymore, no. Not in yonks.”


    “And the leg?”


    Cillian grimaced. “It was a climbing accident a couple of years back. You don’t have a record because a physician my father knows treated me at home. It healed well, no problems. At school, I said it was a bad strain.”


    Mr. Byrne frowned. “Why lie?”


    He shrugged. “It was stupid, really. I just thought it would look less suspicious that way. They never stopped watching me closely because of the history of impropriety.”


    “Fighting, you mean?”


    “Aye, fighting. And a lack of proper respect shown to the authority figures,” Cillian elaborated candidly.


    The man hummed. “I see.” Then adjusted his glasses – big round lenses, likely fake again, with very thin bronze rims – and repeated, flipping the page, “I see. For all your escapades, you don’t seem to have any injuries limiting your range of movements.”


    “Lucky, I guess.”


    “Lucky, indeed. Lucky not to be expelled and, before that, lucky not to get punctured anywhere vital, lucky not to burn alive. Also lucky to avoid poisoning.” At Cillian’s confused expression, he explained, “Many of the initial survivors of the ghost-train incident who’d had physical contact with an acromantula later died from poisoning. You didn’t know that?”


    The boy shook his head. “The details were hard to come by. We’ve tried.” Perhaps now was his chance to get some answers from someone in the know. “Speaking of the incident, the chevalier who saved me…” He thought he’d done a remarkable job of keeping bitterness out of his voice. “Umm, what was his name again?”


    Mr. Byrne chuckled. “Nice try, but no. The details of the event are confidential.”


    This again.


    “Alright.” Experience had taught him not to pry.


    “In any case, surviving a face-to-face confrontation with a beast is a good experience to have. Of course, no one can corroborate your account of the events, but it reads cohesive enough to me. Onto the next topic then,” the man pivoted. “As I mentioned, there are also results of your psychological evaluation to consider.”


    Another document binder joined the first one on the table, this one significantly thinner.


    “Let’s start with ‘Temperament and Character Inventory’. Should I remind you of the dimensions?”


    “No need, I remember.”


    “Good. Notably, you scored very high in ‘Novelty seeking’ – ‘Exploratory excitability’ subscale, in particular. You also scored high in ‘Self-directedness’ – ‘Purposeful’ and ‘Resourcefulness’ scales stand out to me. At the same time, your ‘Harm avoidance’ score is noticeably lower than the mean, and the ‘Ambitious’ subscale of the ‘Persistence’ dimension is strangely low, too. Does that sound right to you, Cillian? May I call you Cillian?”


    He nodded absentmindedly, taking time to think about the question, playing back the pronounced assessment in his mind. Eventually, he replied, “Sounds right, more or less. I mean, I don’t understand why I am considered unambitious – I’m trying to become a chevalier, aren’t I? – but everything else? I don’t seek harm, of course. In fact, I think I have a good sense for danger–”


    “How confident are you about that?” Mr. Byrne interrupted.


    Cillian blinked. “Umm, what do you mean?”


    “I mean, are you sure you don’t intentionally plunge into perilous situations?”


    Now Cillian furrowed his brows and replied tersely, “I’m sure I don’t.”


    “I don’t mean to offend, Cillian, but look at it from my point of view. I see a young man who, from his own words and written testimonies, regularly gets into trouble and acts recklessly. Climbing a decommissioned blast furnace, fighting an acromantula in close quarters, brawling with your schoolmates, now you’re telling me you treated a broken leg at home instead of going to a hospital. And don’t think we don’t know about your jaunts to the Wall, trying to sneak in and go up. You’ve done it twice, and I suspect there might have been other attempts when you saw the futility and turned around on your own rather than being caught, am I right?”


    “Four,” Cillian answered swiftly. “Four times in total.”


    The frowning man sat back, took off the glasses, and rubbed at his eyes. “At least, you seem to be honest.”


    There was a lull.


    “Are you finished?”


    “Excuse me?”


    “Are you finished telling me what I already know? Can I defend myself now?”


    Mr. Byrne smiled and made an inviting gesture. “By all means.”


    “First of all, I agree with the rest, but not going to a hospital for the leg wasn’t an instance of reckless behavior or anything of the sort. It was just a matter of convenience. Second, you don’t see a young man doing all those things – you see a young boy. The boy who’d had too much curiosity and too little sense and, aye, sometimes had lacked discipline.” He shrugged. “The young man I am today hasn’t had any problems with the aforementioned things in years.”


    “And you are telling me all of your issues are now gone? Nothing left at all? The very high score in ‘Novelty seeking’ paired with the low score in ‘Harm avoidance’ tell me otherwise, Cillian.”


    The boy shrugged again and dropped back to rest on a cushion himself. “I don’t know what the tests are telling you, don’t know how much you can rely on some questionnaires, but what I do know is that you can rely on your records. You seem to trust them well enough regarding my misconducts and such, so it’d be fair to also trust what they say about my improved attitude, no?”


    “They don’t say much.”


    “They say I’ve scored well in the finals. But I meant the absence of any recent records indicating improper behavior.”


    “Indeed, there are none. The last one dates back to almost four years ago, which could be interpreted in a couple of ways, actually, but, for the sake of moving things forward, let’s say I believe you for now.” Another folder was added to the growing pile. “This one’s related – mental health evaluation.”


    Mr. Byrne began slowly scanning the pages, clearly only for show. Cillian resisted an urge to sigh. It was the fourth time he’d been here, not counting the medical examination, which had taken place in a different facility. The first was a general “Getting to know him” interview, followed by the said medical and two rounds of psychological testing. And, of course, the finals at school, which he knew were very important. He wondered if Foerstner performed such rigorous screening procedures when hiring in all their divisions, or if it was specific only to the “Companion”. Cillian had never asked father about his hiring process back in the day.


    “You don’t seem to exhibit signs of hypochondria, paranoia, or any other severe mental disorders,” the man finally carried on. “The only one making me slightly concerned is your moderate score in ‘Depression’, which doesn’t necessarily mean you suffer from one but might indicate a general dissatisfaction. So, are you dissatisfied?”


    “Dissatisfied? Dissatisfied with what?”


    “You tell me. With your education, with the way the company has been treating your family, with life in general – anything.”


    He looked at Cillian, expecting a prompt answer, so the boy obliged, “Well, I suppose I am dissatisfied with my life. Isn’t everyone?”


    “In what regards? Don’t you live in comfort?” Mr. Byrne fixed him with a cool gaze. “The spots in the academy are limited, as you know, and becoming a chevalier is fiercely sought after. Why should a slot go to someone who already has everything?”


    Cillian felt incredulous at what he was hearing. Most students will be brats from the inner ring; what in the aether is this tool babbling about?


    “With respect, sir, you’re talking like I’m trying to buy an exclusive ticket to an opera or something of that sort. Pure pleasure. But being a chevalier is not about privilege alone, is it? There’s a rake of responsibilities attached.”


    “True. So you want to do your part in advancing Foerstner’s interests, is that it? Or are you one of those “keep people safe” types?”


    Something in the man’s tone and eyes seemed mocking and really tickled him, so, despite his best efforts, the words came out a little aggrieved, “I’ll do what’s necessary, sir, as long as I get to leave this null-damned prison for once.”


    “You feel shackled in here?” Mr. Byrne sounded surprised. “Lua is a very big city, and there are many other professions that allow one to go outside.”


    “Aye, other professions. Go outside all the while shaking in fear, you mean. Hiding behind corporate soldiers.”


    “Security forces, not soldiers,” the man corrected firmly.


    “Apologies. Obviously, that’s what I meant.”


    “Obviously.” He put his glasses back on. “So you want to go out and not feel fear? Why not join our ‘Security’ division then? They go beyond the Wall all the time.”


    “In huge convoys, maybe.” Cillian had never seriously considered turning into a corporate soldier. They had no real freedom as far as he could tell.


    “And you feel the need to what, fight against beasts single-handedly?”


    “That’s not what I said, I–”


    “No, see, Cillian, I think you’re lying. To me or to yourself, I’m undecided. I also think you’re wasting the company’s time.” The man picked up the lone folder still remaining on the sofa, got up, and walked behind it, sounding callous all of a sudden. Before the boy could say anything in response, he continued, “You know what else I think?”


    Cillian shook his head, too put off by the unexpected development.


    “I look at your history, and, believe me, I can infer a lot from what wasn’t added to your school record as I very much doubt that your activities were limited to a few brawls and unauthorized excursions – I know how these things work. Then I look at your low ‘Harm avoidance’ and high ‘Depression’ scores–”


    So it’s ‘low’ and ‘high’ now whereas before they were ‘below average’ and ‘moderate’.


    “–and all of it taken together makes me think that you want to somehow go out swinging, that is, recklessly fight monsters until, very soon, one terminates your intolerable existence. Or maybe,” he fetched some paper and started waving it, too fast for Cillian to discern the contents, “you only wish to attend the academy out of some misplaced sense of injustice done to you by the company. Maybe you want to get in and start digging or try to sabotage Foerstner from the inside or other such foolishness.”


    What?!


    “It’s a copy of your essay, Cillian. The one about your plans for the future. The one where you express an intense desire to dismantle Foerstner Group for unwittingly bringing the monsters to Lua and then not coming to your rescue until it was too late. Ring any bells?”


    Cillian blinked. Shit. He buried his face in his hands. I forgot about it.


    “I see it does.”


    The boy mumbled, “I was 14 and very, very angry.”


    “I understand that,” the man replied. “And what of your habit of asking incessant questions about things you have no good reason to ask about? Yes, I know about that too. Is ‘I was young’ your excuse here as well?”


    He placed his hands on the back of the couch and leaned forward, eying Cillian intently.


    “Which one is it, Cillian? Are you suicidal or an idiot?” His eyes narrowed. “I personally think you’re angry at the world and want to kill yourself. Kill yourself and waste the company’s resources invested in you in the process. And why wouldn’t you?” He gave Cillian a nasty smile. “I’ve read your account of your mother’s and Aidan Moore’s deaths, and it made me sick. You killed both of them, you realize that, don’t you?”


    As blood rushed to his head, Cillian’s consternation transitioned to shock before swiftly turning into nascent fury. “What did you just say?” came out in a murderous whisper.


    “You disagree? Here.” Mr. Byrne fetched another document and handed it to him. “A copy of your report, word for word. Do you even remember what you wrote? Or do you recall things differently now?”


    “I–”


    “You were the one who dragged Mr. Moore to the abandoned furnace and, therefore, to the epicenter of the attack in the first place. Wasn’t that the case?”


    “Yes, but–”


    “Your best friend, in your own words, dead. Because of you. You were also the one who decided to grapple with the acromantula that attacked Mr. Moore even though it was clear that it was already too late, and that you couldn’t help him in any way–”


    “He was still alive!”


    “–and, in doing so, you severely injured yourself, which necessitated for your mother, Mrs. Roisin Shea, to carry you, therefore considerably hindering your collective ability to move, which, in turn, directly led to her gruesome death. Torn apart by the monstrous spiders. Because of her own son.” He tutted. “Does that sound about right? You are the reason they are dead.”


    Somewhere in the middle of the man’s tirade, Cillian sprang to his feet, breathing heavily and almost vibrating with rage.


    “Or do you disagree?” Mr. Byrne pronounced slowly and scornfully as if talking to a simpleton, not looking threatened in the least. “Why would we even consider admitting someone with such a magnificent track record of bringing death to others because of his ineptitude?”


    Do I disagree? Cillian felt sick and in pain all over again. He imagined jumping over the furniture and throttling the man or, better yet, smashing his stupid glasses so the fake lenses shutter and dig into his skin.


    Anything to wipe away that smug smirk.


    But it was a familiar territory. Cillian closed his eyes and forcibly pushed his toes into the floor as if trying to burrow into it – fancy brogues and all – until it hurt.


    Do I disagree?


    He’d been over this so many times the count was probably in the hundreds. If not thousands.


    But no, he didn’t disagree. Cillian had never doubted his fault. But he also knew that he’d been just a child.


    He’d long accepted his share of the guilt, despite rationally knowing that the only ones truly responsible had been the monsters. And even they had simply done what monsters always did. Cillian hated them, sure, but those acromantula were all dead. Slaughtered in a three-day hunt that had followed. Just an awful twist of fate. He’d done what he could, and there was no reason to loathe himself.


    Perhaps, one day the boy would even believe it.


    “We done?” he asked quietly, glaring at the tool, and made to grab his coat and fedora from a stand and leave the office.


    “Please, sit down, Cillian,” Mr. Byrne replied, suddenly jovial once more, circled back around the couch, and did so himself. “We aren’t finished.”


    “I think we are.”


    “I apologize for my words; I meant none of them.”


    Cillian didn’t turn around.


    “Sit down,” the man repeated, more firmly this time. “Just a test. Yes, another test. I know you’re sick of them.”


    “A test?” The boy clenched and unclenched his right fist, still facing the door.


    “Aye. I honestly thought that I’d laid it on a wee thick. Sit down, let’s continue our talk. Some harsh words aren’t enough to deter you, I hope? You didn’t try to punch me – even though I can see you really want to – didn’t start screaming obscenities, or blaming someone else. You didn’t lose your temper – that’s what I wanted to check. Good enough for me.”


    Cillian breathed in and out sharply, contemplating if he should stay, then, reluctantly, shuffled back to the couch and dropped on it, without looking at the eejit, lest he did something unwise.


    “No evidence of misconduct in years is a good thing, but a better thing is when there is evidence of the opposite – of proper behavior, of self-control. A chevalier is a significant position with serious responsibilities, and it’s my job to whittle down the undeserving early. Of course, getting admitted to the academy is not a guarantee you’d become a chevalier.”


    He could only nod stiffly in response.


    “Your handling of that awful situation wasn’t ideal, but you were very young; you’re still very young. And you can learn; I think you have potential. As long as you aren’t trying to join in a misguided attempt at revenge against the beasts. It’d be pointless – there are always more of them.”


    The boy shook his head. Pointless, aye.


    “And, between you and me, there’s nothing wrong with some recklessness here and there. After all, people call it bravery when it succeeds, don’t they? If it succeeds.”


    Mr. Byrne collected the folders and dropped them back on the sofa.


    “Alright, let’s discuss other more pleasant matters, shall we? Your father, Mr. Brendan C. Shea, works in our ‘Motorwagen’ division. You also graduated from one of our schools. So, in regards to your loyalty score…”


    Cillian felt a wee unsettled at another sudden change of mood and did allow a sigh to escape him this time. More questions.


    What a surprise.


    A train rumbled past, and his tense shoulders sagged.


    Aether help me.


    The torture continued.