Whitmore
A Blood & Steel Short Story
Hour 0
Autumn, 2182 | The Ossuary, Primary Training
── ❖ ──
The fourth time the ring struck the floor, Sham Whitmore kicked it.
It skittered under the neighboring table and stopped against someone’s boot.
“That help?” Elias asked.
“No.”
“Feel better?”
“A little.”
Elias nodded. “Fair enough. Pick it up.”
Sham stared at him, apparently hoping the instruction might change. It didn’t. He slid off his stool and crawled under the table, narrow shoulders bumping the underside.
Elias waited, and the room went on around them. Twelve stations in two rows, each a wooden board with a length of steel wire bent into three hard turns across it, a hook at the far end, and a battery box wired underneath that lit a red bulb if the ring so much as kissed the wire. Floor wax and machine oil, and the copper tang the ventilation filters gave off when they were overdue, which they had been since spring. Above it all, behind tinted glass, the observation gallery sat dark and occupied. One or two candidates glanced over and went back to their wires.
Sham came out with the ring between his fingers. “I’ve tried three times.”
“Four. You dropped it once before I came over.”
Sham scowled and surrendered the ring. Elias folded his long frame onto the vacant stool beside him and tugged his sleeve down over his wrist, out of habit. Gray had come early at his temples, and it showed against his dark skin under the chamber lights.
“Watch.”
He slipped the ring over the open end of the wire and carried it into the first turn without touching either side. Somewhere behind them, a small brass bell rang. His hand didn’t move. At the third turn, a sharp tone sounded in his earpiece, timed to catch him. He finished the pass and hung the ring on the hook.
“What’s it even for?” Sham said.
“Hands that shake when the noise starts get people killed.”
“Whose?”
“Usually the people standing next to you.”
Sham looked at the wire with new respect. “You’re better at it.”
“I’ve had twenty years to practice.”
“How long does it take to get good?”
“Depends how much time you spend kicking things.”
A reluctant grin. Elias slid the ring back to the start. “Your turn.”
Sham planted his elbow on the table and began.
“Stop. Your elbow.”
“It’s helping.”
“It’s holding you up. That’s different.”
Sham lifted his arm. The ring brushed the wire almost at once, and the red bulb came on.
“See?”
“I do. Try again.”
“I was doing better before.”
“You were using the table. Nothing wrong with that, if you plan to carry a table everywhere.”
Someone laughed behind them. Sham’s cheeks reddened, and Elias noticed two small blemishes along his jaw that hadn’t been there the week before. Eleven, perhaps twelve by the records.
The boy set the ring down. “I can’t do this.”
“You can’t do it yet.”
“What’s the difference?”
Elias stood. “Up. Push me. Both hands.”
Sham planted his palms on Elias’s chest, just below the dull metal plate set into the base of his throat, and shoved. Elias rocked back a step, then set himself, and the second push went nowhere. Sham’s shoes slid on the wax.
“You’re cheating. You’re stronger.”
“True. Look at my feet.”
One foot behind the other. Sham copied it and pushed again, and this time when Elias stepped aside, the boy stumbled forward but stayed up.
“What changed?”
Sham thought about it. “I wasn’t falling over.”
“You stopped spending everything on staying upright.” Elias pointed at the stool. “Same problem. You’re fighting your own body before you ever get to the ring.”
He squared the boy’s shoulder to the board, straightened his wrist, and set the elbow at an angle that would hold without the table.
“Hurt?”
“No.”
“Good. Now the ring.”
The first turn passed clean. The bell rang. Sham flinched, and the ring kissed the wire at the second. Red.
“Dammit.”
“Language.”
“Sorry.”
“You can be frustrated, Sham. Nobody’s asking you to enjoy failing. But being frustrated doesn’t change the task.”
Sham took the ring again. Elias said nothing this time. First turn. Second. The bell rang and the boy’s hand twitched and held. The ring came around the third turn without a sound, and he hung it on the hook.
Green.
For a moment Sham only stared. Then he turned, grinning so wide it looked painful. “I did it!”
“You did.”
“You helped me.”
“I showed you something. Who moved the ring?”
“I did.”
“Who kept going?”
A shrug. A smile. “Me.”
“Remember that. I can show you a hundred ways to do a thing. When you get it right, that’s yours. Not mine.”
Sham nodded with an earnestness Elias doubted would survive the afternoon.
“Now do it again.”
The boy groaned. But he reached for the ring.
A smaller boy named Tavin had the next station. He could clear the first turn and nothing after. Elias watched him reset, try, fail. Reset. Red.
Sham leaned over. “You’re holding your breath.”
“Leave me alone.”
“That’s what I was doing. You gotta breathe when the bell goes.” He lifted his own ring to show him. “And get your elbow off the table. Watch.”
He cleared the first turn and clipped the wire on the second. Red. Both boys stared at the light. Then Tavin laughed, and Sham grinned at him, sheepish.
“Well. It worked before.”
Elias hid his smile.
An hour later, it was Tavin’s fourth assessment. The chamber went quiet the way it always did, the other candidates finding reasons to watch without looking. Two trainers came over. One crouched beside him and talked low, the way you talked to a horse. The other slid the ring back to the start and told him to take his time.
Tavin took his time. Red.
The trainer said something kind. Tavin tried again, and the ring fell out of his hand before it reached the first turn.
Nobody said anything. The trainers and the two security officers at the door all looked up at the gallery glass, at the same moment, as if a string had been pulled.
Behind the glass, a shape leaned toward a microphone. Elias heard her in his earpiece, level, unhurried.
“That’s enough.”
One of the officers crossed the floor and took Tavin by the arm. He didn’t fight. He looked back once, at the wire, as if he might be allowed to finish.
Sham watched them go through the far doors. “Where are they taking him?”
“Home,” Elias said.
He knew which corridor those doors opened on.
At the break, Sham followed him into the hall outside the observation gallery.
“Are you nervous?” Elias asked.
“A little. They say it hurts.”
“Some of it does.”
“How much?”
Elias remembered this corridor, or one very like it. A physician fastening a strap around his wrist and telling him it was only a precaution. Eleven years old. The first fever had come quickly.
“Everyone’s different,” he said.
“That’s what the doctors say.”
“They’re probably right.”
“Probably?”
“I’m not a doctor.”
Sham gave him a doubtful look, and then something brighter crossed his face. Elias steered him toward the glass.
“What are you looking forward to?”
“Bending steel.”
Elias laughed. “I’m not sure you can do that yet… but if you push hard enough, maybe.”
“Could you?”
“Depends on the steel.”
“A door. A big steel door.”
“You’re determined to make me regret this conversation.”
Beyond the glass, a young man moved through a sequence against suspended targets. No partner. No wasted motion. Each strike landed, each recovery returned him to the same spot on the mat. He stopped, adjusted one target an inch, and began again.
Sham pressed closer. “That’s Jonn.”
“Yes.”
“He’s the best, isn’t he? Think I could be like him?”
Elias watched his former student finish the sequence and repeat it, dissatisfied with something no one else could have seen.
“Not many here are like him.”
“Does he ever get tired?”
“He’s learned not to show it.”
Footsteps behind them. The younger candidates near the corridor entrance straightened all at once.
Aerin Revalis passed between two security officers on her way to the restricted rooms. Seventeen now, or eighteen. Her braids were pulled back tight, a thin wire threaded through each one, and her sleeves came down low over her wrists. She looked at the corridor the way other people looked at weather. When her eyes crossed the children, they were amber, warm at the edges and very still.
She gave one boy a small nod. He forgot to breathe.
Sham leaned toward Elias. “What about the girl?”
“Nobody is like her.”
“Not even Jonn?”
“Not even Jonn.”
Evelyn Baeriss had stopped in the corridor behind them. White coat. Glasses settled precisely. Clipboard under one arm. The security officers found somewhere else to look.
She came to Sham, and for a moment Elias thought she meant to check his posture. Instead she bent and looked into his eyes, longer than Elias thought necessary. Green-hazel. Rust near the iris. She took her time, the way she read a gauge.
“No,” she said. “You are nothing like her.”
She straightened and walked on toward the preparation room.
“What does she mean?” Sham whispered.
“She has other…”
“Elias.” She hadn’t turned around. “Instead of storytelling, prepare him. Nothing more.”
Elias closed his mouth.
“Am I in trouble?” Sham said.
“No.”
“She sounds mad.”
“She’s not mad. She’s focused. Anger looks like weakness. Do you think she’s weak?”
“No.”
“Right.”
The preparation room was small and very clean. A narrow bed in the middle, cabinets on three sides, two attendants beside a covered tray.
Sham stopped inside the door. “I thought this was tomorrow.”
Elias glanced at the clock. “It’s almost tomorrow.”
“Not really.”
“No,” Elias admitted. “Not really.”
Evelyn set her clipboard on the counter. “Sit.”
Sham climbed onto the bed. One attendant rolled up his sleeve. The other fitted a cuff around his arm. Evelyn lifted the cloth from the tray: a sealed glass ampoule, the liquid inside a dark rose.
“That’s it?” Sham said. “The fever?”
“Yes.”
He swallowed. “I thought there’d be more.”
“There will be.”
She drew it up. Elias moved beside the bed.
“Remember the ring? One thing at a time. Don’t worry about what comes after.”
“Is this going to hurt?”
“A little.”
The needle went in. Sham winced. “Ow.”
“Finished,” Evelyn said, and handed the syringe to the attendant. She wrote down the time. “Hour zero.”
For several seconds nothing happened. Sham looked almost disappointed. Then relieved.
“When do I get the new blood?”
“When it’s required.”
“Whose blood is it?”
Her pen stopped. For the first time since she’d entered, Evelyn gave the boy her whole attention.
“I’m sure there are bigger things to worry over.”
“But whose is it?”
She turned to the attendant. “Begin continuous observation.”
Sham looked at Elias. His face said he already knew nobody was going to tell him, and that he was hoping someone would anyway.
Evelyn read the needle on the tube bank, then the attendant’s chart.
“Thirty-six,” she said, to neither of them.
The attendant entered it. Elias kept his eyes on the boy. Thirty-six hours before his body would start to quit and the blood had to go in. It was the standard figure for his stage and weight. Elias had hoped for more anyway.
“Call me if he departs from the expected progression.” She gathered her notes and left.
“What’s thirty-six?”
“Hours. How long the fever’s supposed to take before they give you the blood.”
“What if I go longer?”
“Then you go longer.”
Sham watched the attendants for a while. “Are you staying?”
“For a bit.”
“Until I fall asleep?”
“If you’d like.”
His face had begun to flush. “Elias?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to go home.” For Sham, home was the creche: a building of bunks and supervisors and other people’s children, the only one he’d ever had. “I think I can do this.” His voice cracked on the last word, and he cleared his throat. “If I fail, could I stay here and help you, do you think?”
Elias looked at the amber traces on the bank. The first faint red lines had surfaced under the boy’s collar, branching like frost on glass.
“Let’s get through tonight.”
“Okay.”
A few minutes passed.
“You never answered me. Did you ever fail?”
Elias rested his hands on his knees. Twenty-one years, and he could still feel the strap.
“More times than I care to remember.”
“But you got better.”
“Eventually.”
“Because you kept going?”
“Something like that.”
The boy closed his eyes. “Then I will too.”
Elias stayed beside the bed while the rose patterns climbed his neck.
Day 5
The Ossuary, Genetic Wellness
── ❖ ──
GENETIC WELLNESS · PATIENT RECORD
Candidate: G3–0211 (WHITMORE, SHAMUS)
Class: Medai, Generation III
Projected fever progression: 36 hours
Observed progression: 39.6 hours
Ferric donor: PB-0714 (restricted)
Rewrite duration: 72 hours
Status: Viable
Note: Held past projection unassisted. Ocular markers as expected. Advance.
Supervisor: E. BAERISS
The recovery ward was quieter than Primary Training and colder, kept that way for the bodies coming out of rewrite. Somewhere a pump cycled. Somewhere else a cart wheel needed oil.
The first thing Elias noticed was the boy’s skin.
The blemishes along his jaw were gone. So was the uneven color across his cheeks, every small imperfection that had made him look eleven. Faint rose tracings still showed under the skin of his forearms. He looked older. Not much. Enough.
“Elias!”
Sham sat straight up. An attendant turned at once. “You’re not cleared to sit without assistance.”
“I’ve been sitting for an hour.”
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“That doesn’t change your restrictions.”
Sham looked to Elias. “Tell her I’m fine.”
Elias pulled a chair to the bed. “I suspect she’s the better authority.”
“Everybody keeps telling me what I can’t do.”
“There’s probably a reason.”
“Because they won’t let me try.”
He sounded like himself.
“How are you feeling?”
“Hungry. And bored.”
“Both good signs. Taking your supplements?”
Sham made a face at the empty paper cup on the side table. “Yes.”
“Good.”
The rose lines on the boy’s arms were already fading. Elias had watched it happen dozens of times. He watched this one longer.
“They itch,” Sham said. “Did I do okay?”
“Better than expected.”
“Better than thirty-six?”
He’d remembered the number.
“Yes. Nearly four hours better.”
Sham looked disappointed. “That’s not very much.”
“It’s a great deal.”
Nearly forty hours at the edge of a fever that had killed stronger candidates. Elias had watched the readings climb, waiting for Evelyn to call for the blood. She hadn’t seemed concerned. At thirty-eight she’d changed the monitoring schedule. At thirty-nine she’d asked for another panel. Then the order came, and the blood came up from somewhere below the restricted levels, and three days of rewrite followed.
And now the boy was sitting up, complaining about breakfast. Elias found he was smiling at it.
“You worked hard, Sham.”
The grin came back. “Can I see the others? Is Tavin okay?”
Elias hesitated. “He isn’t here.”
“Oh.” Sham looked at his hands. “Maybe I can help him when he comes back.”
Elias didn’t answer.
The first session lasted eleven minutes. Elias didn’t call it training. He only wanted the boy to understand his body before the physical instructors got hold of it.
“Close your eyes. Tell me what you hear.”
“The air. Someone walking outside. A cart.”
“Anything else?”
Sham frowned. “Somebody’s crying.”
Elias heard nothing. “Where?”
“Past the doors. Down the hall.” The boy’s face pinched. “It’s a kid.”
“Don’t follow it.”
“But he’s…”
“You can’t help him from this bed. Let it go. You don’t need it.” Elias kept his voice even. “Remember the ring? What happened when you listened for the bell?”
“I hit the wire.”
“And when you stopped?”
“I got it through.”
“Same thing.”
Sham breathed. Again. Then his face changed, eased, went slack with something close to wonder.
“It’s gone.”
“Better?”
“It’s quiet.” He opened his eyes. “I didn’t know it could be quiet.”
Elias was smiling again before he knew it. The boy learned fast. His hearing reached farther than anything he’d had five days ago, and a footstep two corridors off could pull him loose. But each time Elias brought him back, he came back quicker. By the tenth minute he could hold Elias’s voice and let the building go.
“That’s enough.”
“I can do more.”
“I know. The physician said eleven minutes.”
“It’s only been ten.”
“Then you’ve got one minute to rest.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“It does to me.”
Elias turned to collect his notes. Behind him, a sharp metallic report.
Sham sat frozen. One hand gripped the bed rail, or what was left of it. The steel tube had folded inward under his fingers. He let go. The rail stayed bent.
“Oh.”
“What happened?”
“I was trying to move.”
“You’re not cleared to move.”
“I know! Everybody keeps saying I can’t!” His voice cracked upward, then came down. He stared at the rail. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t even push that hard.”
Elias took his hand and turned it over. No blood. No swelling. A clean bend in the steel, not torn, done with one hand.
“I’m sorry,” Sham said. “I got mad.”
“You did.”
“And I broke it.” His face tightened. “I know. Being upset won’t fix it.”
“No. It won’t.”
The boy took a slow breath, then another, and his shoulders came down.
“Can you show me how to stop doing that?”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
Sham looked at the rail again, and something crept back into his face.
“Hey. I bent steel.”
Elias stared at him.
“You said I could.”
Despite himself, Elias laughed. “Not quite what I had in mind.”
“But I did it.”
“Yes, Sham.” He rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You certainly did.” He nodded at the empty paper cup. “And that’s why you remember your supplements.”
Sham eyed the cup. “Do you take them?”
“No. I’m not required.”
“Then why am I?”
“You’re a different generation. The supplements govern you, so you don’t burn out.” Elias touched the plate at the base of his throat. “I came before them. This was all they had for us. It bleeds off what I can’t hold. It’s crude.”
“Why can’t I just have one of those?”
“Because you’d never reach your full potential.” Elias pressed his thumb to the plate, once. “Without it, I’d burn out. With it, I’ll never do what you’ll do freely. What you think is an inconvenience is a gift I’ll never have.”
Sham turned the empty cup over in his fingers for a while and didn’t say anything.
Evelyn came twenty minutes later. She examined the rail without comment. Then the boy’s hand. Then the needle on the bank.
“Good.”
“His strength is coming in faster than expected,” Elias said. “His control is going to need work.”
“Increase his sessions.”
“He came out of rewrite yesterday.”
“Gradually.”
She made a notation and left. As she passed, Elias saw the clipboard under her arm. One name on the page had been circled, once.
Day 40
The Ossuary, Primary Training
── ❖ ──
By the sixth week, the staff had stopped calling him Shamus. Whitmore was the name on his assessments, his schedules, his charts, his advancement recommendations. Evelyn used nothing else. Neither did the evaluators. The younger candidates used it too, carefully, the way they said Jonn.
Elias alone still called him Sham. The boy never corrected him.
The chamber hadn’t changed. Same boards, same wires, same tones at irregular intervals, same overdue filters. The exercises had gotten harder. The candidates were new.
A boy named Pell, ten and narrow and three weeks out of rewrite, failed before the second turn. He reset and tried again. Red. His hands had started to shake.
“Focus,” someone said.
Whitmore stood across the aisle, waiting for his assessment. There was no trace of rose left under his skin. He stood easy, weight balanced, and moved only when he meant to.
“He’s trying,” Elias said.
“He’s thinking about failing.”
Pell flushed. “I’m not.”
“Then stop doing it.”
“I can’t help it.”
“You can.”
Pell tried again. Red. He slapped the table.
Whitmore sighed. “You’re wasting time.”
Elias stepped between them. “Sham. Let him work.”
“He isn’t working.”
“That’s enough.”
Whitmore inclined his head and turned back to his board. No argument.
Elias pulled a stool beside Pell. “All right. Let’s see what we’re doing wrong. Watch.”
Across the aisle, Whitmore ran the course twice under two disturbances and finished without contact. Green. The evaluator noted a near-perfect score and handed the clipboard to Elias.
“Good work,” Elias said. “How did it feel?”
“Acceptable.”
“Only acceptable?”
“I made two unnecessary adjustments.”
“Neither one affected your score.”
“They affected the exercise.”
Beside Elias, Pell had gone very still over his board. He was trying the way Whitmore had told him to, all of him pressed down onto the ring. First turn. The bell rang, and he didn’t flinch. Second turn. His breath had stopped.
Across the aisle, Whitmore glanced over. His eyes went to Pell’s chest, which wasn’t moving, and stayed there a moment. Then he went back to his own wire.
“Breathe,” Elias said.
The ring touched the wire. The red bulb came on, and the ring dropped out of his fingers onto the board. Pell’s hand stayed in the air, fingers locked, shaking. A thin line of blood ran from one nostril. Then his legs went, and Elias caught him before his head reached the floor.
The alarm sounded. Two trainers came at a run. An attendant knelt, checked his eyes, and spoke quietly into her radio.
“Neurological overload,” a trainer said. “He couldn’t hold control.”
Elias lowered him onto a bench. Whitmore stood a few feet away, watching.
Pell looked toward the officers coming across the floor. “Am I in trouble?”
“No,” Elias said.
“Can I try again?”
“Not right now.”
High above, behind the gallery glass, a shape leaned toward a microphone. Every trainer in the room touched an earpiece at once.
One of the officers reached for his arm. Pell looked past Elias, at Whitmore, the oldest boy in the room.
“Where are they taking me?”
“Home,” Whitmore said.
No pause before it. Pell began to cry. The officers took him through the far doors, and Whitmore watched them go with nothing changing in his face.
Where are they taking him? Home. Elias heard his own voice say it.
“Sham.”
Whitmore turned. “Yes?”
“Why did you tell him that?”
“Because he asked.”
“Do you know where they’re taking him?”
“Medical evaluation. Afterward, reassignment or discharge.”
“Then why say home?”
Whitmore glanced at the closing doors. “That’s what you told me.”
Elias stared at him. The boy waited, patiently.
“Was I incorrect?”
Elias looked away. “No.”
Whitmore nodded. “May I return to training?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
Elias found him late in the afternoon in the secondary conditioning room, alone, working a sequence against a suspended steel bar. Every strike landed on the same point. Every recovery returned him to the same place on the mat. A variation on Jonn’s method. Elias would have known it anywhere.
“That’s enough for today.”
Whitmore finished the sequence before he turned. “I have sixteen minutes remaining.”
“You’re finished. Sit down a minute.”
Whitmore sat. Elias pulled a bench from the wall and sat across from him and looked at his face for whatever was left of the boy who’d kicked a ring under a table. The eyes were the same. Green-hazel, rust near the iris.
Elias rubbed his hands together. “There’s something I never told you. About the procedure.”
“Is it relevant to my training?”
“I think it is.”
Whitmore straightened.
“I was eleven when I went through it.”
“I know. Your records are part of the curriculum.”
“Of course they are.” Elias almost smiled. “There’s more than the records. I was terrified. I understood what it was supposed to do to me, as much as they told us, and I didn’t know if I’d live. I asked the physician if I could go home if I changed my mind. He said I’d already made my decision.”
“Had you?”
“Not really.” Elias looked at the floor. “The first night was worse than anything I’d imagined. I remember trying to keep my breathing even. I remember being thirsty. I remember wanting someone to sit beside me.”
“Did someone?”
“For a while. One of the attendants. I don’t remember her name.”
“Did she help?”
“Yes.”
“What did she do?”
“She stayed.”
Whitmore waited.
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Then I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me.”
“When you were frightened, I stayed with you.”
The boy was quiet a moment. Then he nodded. “I appreciate that.”
“Do you?”
“Of course.”
“Then why couldn’t you stay with Pell?”
“I told him what he needed to do.”
“You saw him stop breathing.”
“Yes.”
Whitmore’s chest rose and fell, slow and even. A full sequence on the bar and he wasn’t breathing hard.
“You used to tell people to breathe. You told Tavin.”
Whitmore considered it. “Tavin failed.”
Elias let that sit.
Whitmore watched him with the same attentive face he’d worn at the wire. “My first week, someone was crying down the hall. You told me I couldn’t help him from where I was. You told me to let it go. That I didn’t need it.”
“That was different. You were in a bed, a day out of rewrite. There was nothing you could do for that child. Pell was standing beside you. He needed more than an instruction.”
Behind Whitmore, the steel bar was still swinging, very slightly, on its chain.
Whitmore thought about it, honestly, the way he thought about everything now.
“Then he wasn’t ready.”
He said the next part gently. “I understand that you care about the candidates. But that isn’t always helpful.”
A soft tone sounded from the wall. The afternoon period was over.
Whitmore stood. “Am I dismissed?”
“Yes.”
He collected his jacket. As he reached the door it opened, and Evelyn came in with a chart. Her eyes went from Elias to the boy.
“Whitmore.”
“Ma’am.”
“Your results were satisfactory. Advanced conditioning tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She looked at the chart a moment longer.
“Good.”
Whitmore accepted it with a nod. Evelyn went back out to the next assessment, already reading.
The boy paused at the door. “Sir? Was there anything else?”
Elias looked at him for a long moment. Then at the clock.
“Almost six. Take your supplements.”
“Yes, sir. Good night, sir.”
Elias let him get as far as the threshold.
“Good night, Whitmore.”
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