Chapter 70: On Purpose (Part 2)

He whipped his head around.

Crouched over his ammunition, Paul passed over the balls and picked up a brick. Nothing in his demeanor suggested he had noticed who they had been matched up against.

Maigh’s lips curled into a smirk. A black-haired girl positioned herself behind the far line, beginning to stack bricks in the crook of her arm.

"Look at that," the boy called. "Someone’s got himself a rock."

He slid a knife out of the strap at his hip.

Milo’s eyes locked on the blade.

It had passed the inspection, so it was a Common piece at most, unless it had been a Crude one all along, as he’d once guessed aloud to their faces.

But a sharp edge against a baton? The grade hardly mattered there. All Milo had to put between that knife and his skin was a... stick made of stone.

One precise slash could sever an artery, while three of his hardest blows would likely fail to break even the thinnest of bones!

Perhaps he should give up already and start packing for the clerk’s desk. On the other hand, Paul likely wouldn’t let him walk away uninjured if he were to put up no fight at all.

Yet the clarity had accompanied him all the way from the building and stayed wherever he went on the Turning land. Back when he’d wandered off to the far edges in pursuit of omens, it had stayed too.

Always.

Maybe the cured still did carry the particles.

They could’ve been merely switched off, and Maigh had lain among the sickest of them. Or maybe the Turning left this soil unclean, and everyone digging in it since Thursday had been infected all over again.

What he knew for a fact was that there were particles within fifty meters of him.

...In whom?

Again, an off might not mean gone.

If even a few of them were hiding in that smirking boy’s puffed-out chest, then Convulsion—one spasm in one person of his choosing, at the right second—might do it.

Maigh rolled the knife over his knuckles and bent his knees.

Milo’s eyes darted to the instructor supervising their square.

The man only nodded and lifted the whistle to his mouth.

SCREEEECH!

The whistle shrieked, and Maigh sprang off the paint.

Milo darted right. Steel sliced the space his stomach had occupied, but the boy’s shoulder clipped him and spun him halfway round.

In the corner of his sight, a pale shape swelled.

The black-haired thrower.

Milo wheeled to swat the black-haired girl’s throw. Landing on the baton, the brick split in half with a crack that stung his scraped palm.

Deflecting it, however, had left his ribs open to Maigh.

The knife was already on its way when a second pale shape approached from the opposite side.

THUNK!

A brick launched by Paul smashed into Maigh’s forearm.

Still, it failed to stop the lunge.

Once the blade hissed past and tugged at Milo’s jacket, Maigh shook the arm out and turned his glare to the redhead, then to his actual opponent.

"You heard Cald, Ashpicker. How bad this gets is up to you."

Not once throughout the sequence had the bully looked at the baton.

Those two had settled far more than their roles before the match was called. A brick to turn him, a knife into the turn.

Plans were as steady as the temper carrying them out, and Maigh had barked at instructors over a crawl. Give him a loser to chase, and the girl would have to invent her angles as her reckless teammate pivoted back and forth after the rat.

So, like the coward they had always taken him for, Milo ran straight down the edge of the paint.

"There he goes!" Laughter followed him, footfalls pounding afterward. "That’s the Ashpicker I know!"

A brick thumped into the turf at his heels, spraying dirt up his calves.

Sure, the police had been all over this dirt. That didn’t mean they’d scrubbed every particle out of it. Perhaps they’d merely thinned them, leaving them too weak and too scarce to make anyone sick.

Behind him, the laughter was running short of air. His own lungs had yet to gasp at the sprint.

Where the paint cornered, he pivoted on a heel full of gravel and folded to his knees.

The knife blew over his hair.

Milo’s left hand snapped up and clamped the wrist behind it, skinned palm burning against a pulse twice as fast as his own. With his whole weight, he pulled on that arm from below, body pressed to the side the girl couldn’t see.

Across the box, her arm cocked.

"Maigh, right! Go right!"

"Get off me!" Maigh wrenched.

"Hold him there!" Paul shouted.

At last, the split the redhead had chosen came into play.

Knees carving two trenches in the grass, fingers only tightening around the wrist, a boy who had crawled a kilometer without panting pinned the target in place and let the strong hands do the throwing.

"You heard Cald," Milo said into the elbow thrashing above his nose. "How bad this gets is up to you."

"Fuck y—"

THUNK!

The rest of the word choked out as a grunt. The jolt of Paul’s brick traveled down Maigh’s arm into Milo’s fingers.

By then, the girl had shuffled down her line for a clear point of view.

Swish!

He whipped the baton at the shot. Red crumbs burst against the stone, pattering down his collar.

Try that with a knife, ha! A stick made of stone was good for something, after al—

Cold unzipped his left forearm.

Having flipped the blade over in his trapped hand, Maigh raked it along the forearm holding him.

From elbow to cuff, the sleeve gaped. Heat welled up shortly after, and a red line no wider than a pen stroke began to bead.

There went the jacket.

Milo released the wrist and leapt back. Bunched in Maigh’s other fist, his collar stayed behind.

"My turn."

Shit.

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⋆˚࿔ Coming right up: "On Purpose (Part 3: Finale)" ... ⤵︎ [!]