Elemental Rush (Elemental 0.5) by Elana Johnson Page A

experience we needed in the dangerous job of being a Councilman’s sentry.
    I wanted to please my brother. Last week, he’d been selected as the Supreme Elemental’s personal sentry. The Supremist was vamping up his security, and Felix got to handpick his crew. I was hoping to be on it.
    As an assigned sentry, I wouldn’t have to endure training anymore. I’d move out of the barracks and into the fortress. And to be assigned to the Supremist himself? I’d have everything I’d worked for over the past twelve years.
    So I dialed out Felix’s thoughts. I’d learned to quiet them by the age of five, when it became necessary for me to focus on only what someone said, not what they thought. I’d begun sentry training as a six-year-old, and I learned quickly that I didn’t want to know what my trainers thought of me.
    With silence in my mind, and my attention drilled into the target, I aimed the laser and fired. Felix completed his assassination a split-second after me, and together we lowered our weapons.
    He grinned at me, his face nearly identical to mine though he was six years older. He’d protected me after our parents died. Natives of Gregorio, a city-state a few hundred miles north of Tarpulin, they’d been journeying to the capital for my dad’s new assignment.
    Wolves, combined with a terrible storm, caught them on the plains, where they both died with their bodies caged around me and Felix. He kept me warm. He fed me the food he’d taken from our parents’ frozen bodies. He got us to Tarpulin safely.
    I was a year old; he was seven. He started in the sentry-training program immediately, and he only asked that I be assigned as soon as I was of age. I’d lived with a widow until I turned six, and then I’d moved into my studio. Felix fed me for the first few years, but by age eight, he started insisting I learn to cook and take care of myself.
    “Nice job,” he said, clapping me on the back. I wanted to be a good sentry for him. I craved his approval.
    “Nice enough for the Supremist?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.
    He scrutinized my long hair, which fell into my eyes. “Maybe if you cut that hair.” But he said it with a smile, and I knew I wouldn’t have to cut my hair to be on his squad. I’d do it if I had to, but he wouldn’t require it.
    At least I hoped not. My hair was the one thing about myself that I liked. I could kill a man twice my size with my bare hands. I could pick any lock with a pin I had tucked under the top layer of my skin. I could endure more pain than anyone else, except maybe Felix. I knew, because I received transmissions through my electronic tattoo, which hurt with a hot, white pain every time I sent or received information.
    All sentries were masters at controlling pain, masking emotions, hurting others enough to get the information we needed to protect our Councilman. Felix always said someone had to do the dirty work, and that was what we sentries did.
    I’d never served a Councilman, so I wasn’t sure exactly how dirty my hands would get. But I wasn’t stupid, and I’d been taught so many diverse ways to torture that I knew what my role would be when I was assigned.
    Some sentries went mad as they progressed through the training. Weak-minded, Felix called them.
    Some trainees killed themselves when they realized they’d spend their lives killing others. Fragile, Felix labeled them.
    He constantly told me we would’ve died on the plains between here and Gregorio if he’d been weak-minded or fragile. He wasn’t either of those, and I didn’t want to be either, lest I should disappoint him.
    “I’m going to talk to the Supremist this afternoon,” he told me as we left the training facility and made our way to the mess hall in the sentry barracks. As we went, the windows became smaller and farther apart, effectively blocking the light and air I craved.
    I didn’t say anything to Felix’s remark. He already knew what I wanted; it was the same thing he