The Wraith's Story (BRIGAND Book 1) by Natalie French, Scot Bayless Page A
Authors: Natalie French, Scot Bayless
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would place his hand for the briefest of moments on my arm, and I relished in the roughness of his skin. It was pleasant .
I always wore the standard issue gray exoderms, semi-sentient fabric that molded to my small body like a second skin, only with multi-factor sensors and holographic camouflage. All of my vitals, heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, were monitored by the suit. Which meant I always had to control those vitals.
I had to remain calm. Always.
I had one friend, Subject 82. We got along well, for Wraiths. Our socialization consisted mainly of discussing the blandness of our daily protein cubes. Hers were always smaller than mine due to the two percent body mass she was constantly trying to shed. Wraiths must be fit and small. And calm.
Calm is all.
I never endured restriction of my protein cubes. If anything, I was occasionally instructed to consume an extra ration. I didn't care for that, but I complied. 82 and I whispered about food – real food. The kind we read about, that you could find outside the Templum — with the people. We said we wanted to try food, but I think we were really more curious about the people.
I learned ballet, gymnastics, fencing, linguistics, and etiquette. Being the smallest of my Cohort, even in my age group, flexibility and athleticism, came easily to me.
So did the pockets. Before we even were introduced to them in our training regimen, I had already mastered the pockets. But I chose not to tell anyone – the only one of the Templum's rules I did not follow. The Bishop had taught me early on the value of silence.
The only way to describe the pockets to someone who can't see them is little rips in the world — voids between energy and cells. Normal human eyes can't even come close to perceiving them but, with the right talent — and discipline, some Wraiths can. With training, we can learn to step into them. Those of us with exceptional talent can move between them, from pocket to pocket. To the untrained, it might look like invisibility, or teleportation. But it's not. It's just physics and biology and discipline. Our instructors said that the best of us would, in time, be able to pocket jump two at a time. By my seventh year I had already managed three in a row.
Mastery of the pockets was something only a few of us would ever achieve. The real secret of the Wraiths, I knew, was that most of us, however skilled, were primarily masters of illusion. With full-body exoderms, we could camouflage ourselves. We used tricks of perspective, psychology, light, anything that could deceive the untrained human eye, to hide in plain sight. With deft application, our training could, for the briefest of moments, make us seem to move through time and space.
Pockets were different. The skill of a true Wraith, seeing and stepping through the pockets — the fugue — as some of the instructors called it, is a rare talent. I think only a tiny number of us can actually see the energy. Only a handful of us have the right combination of perception and instinct to delicately tug at the fibers of matter and slip through spaces so small that we cannot be detected. The energy slips are not long. Or perhaps they are and I am not brave enough to travel long within them.
But I do travel.
I never told anyone but the Bishop. We were in the garden, on one of my rare forays there. The weather screen high above simulated sun and sky so well that sometimes I could pretend it was real. The plants were real. The iridescent water molecules drifting in the air from the lush ficuses with the tiniest flecks of purple, were real. I breathed them in and pretended they had a different taste from the protein cubes.
Anything different.
I wondered about the texture of taste. I experienced the physical sensation of it during our poisons classes. We ingested simulated sweet, savory, and salty protein cubes. And gradually consumed small doses of poison — nothing quite fatal of course. The quicker you
I always wore the standard issue gray exoderms, semi-sentient fabric that molded to my small body like a second skin, only with multi-factor sensors and holographic camouflage. All of my vitals, heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, were monitored by the suit. Which meant I always had to control those vitals.
I had to remain calm. Always.
I had one friend, Subject 82. We got along well, for Wraiths. Our socialization consisted mainly of discussing the blandness of our daily protein cubes. Hers were always smaller than mine due to the two percent body mass she was constantly trying to shed. Wraiths must be fit and small. And calm.
Calm is all.
I never endured restriction of my protein cubes. If anything, I was occasionally instructed to consume an extra ration. I didn't care for that, but I complied. 82 and I whispered about food – real food. The kind we read about, that you could find outside the Templum — with the people. We said we wanted to try food, but I think we were really more curious about the people.
I learned ballet, gymnastics, fencing, linguistics, and etiquette. Being the smallest of my Cohort, even in my age group, flexibility and athleticism, came easily to me.
So did the pockets. Before we even were introduced to them in our training regimen, I had already mastered the pockets. But I chose not to tell anyone – the only one of the Templum's rules I did not follow. The Bishop had taught me early on the value of silence.
The only way to describe the pockets to someone who can't see them is little rips in the world — voids between energy and cells. Normal human eyes can't even come close to perceiving them but, with the right talent — and discipline, some Wraiths can. With training, we can learn to step into them. Those of us with exceptional talent can move between them, from pocket to pocket. To the untrained, it might look like invisibility, or teleportation. But it's not. It's just physics and biology and discipline. Our instructors said that the best of us would, in time, be able to pocket jump two at a time. By my seventh year I had already managed three in a row.
Mastery of the pockets was something only a few of us would ever achieve. The real secret of the Wraiths, I knew, was that most of us, however skilled, were primarily masters of illusion. With full-body exoderms, we could camouflage ourselves. We used tricks of perspective, psychology, light, anything that could deceive the untrained human eye, to hide in plain sight. With deft application, our training could, for the briefest of moments, make us seem to move through time and space.
Pockets were different. The skill of a true Wraith, seeing and stepping through the pockets — the fugue — as some of the instructors called it, is a rare talent. I think only a tiny number of us can actually see the energy. Only a handful of us have the right combination of perception and instinct to delicately tug at the fibers of matter and slip through spaces so small that we cannot be detected. The energy slips are not long. Or perhaps they are and I am not brave enough to travel long within them.
But I do travel.
I never told anyone but the Bishop. We were in the garden, on one of my rare forays there. The weather screen high above simulated sun and sky so well that sometimes I could pretend it was real. The plants were real. The iridescent water molecules drifting in the air from the lush ficuses with the tiniest flecks of purple, were real. I breathed them in and pretended they had a different taste from the protein cubes.
Anything different.
I wondered about the texture of taste. I experienced the physical sensation of it during our poisons classes. We ingested simulated sweet, savory, and salty protein cubes. And gradually consumed small doses of poison — nothing quite fatal of course. The quicker you
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