Across the field, Colonel Tesarik’s smirk practically screamed that he expected Gerrit to fail. At his side, a frown creased Iveta’s brows like she was worried.
You should be worried, Gerrit wanted to tell her. You won’t be Father’s favorite for long.
Shutting his eyes, Gerrit put his hands behind his back, preparing to pull against a combat nuzhda. He imagined rope cutting into his wrists, pinioning his arms. Singularly focused on that sensation, true-life’s muddy field tunneled away.
Fear and an animal desperation surged with the memory, and Gerrit became the boy he’d been four years ago.
Breath harsh in his throat, Gerrit struggles on his side. The dirt road beneath him is frozen stone-hard. Rope cuts into his wrists as he works his arms around his feet, fighting to get his bound hands out in front of him. His pistol fell to the ground mere meters away, and the resistance scum didn’t notice—or didn’t think a thirteen-year-old enough of a threat to care. If he can reach it, he might be able to save his mother.
Icy air burns his sinuses, and he shivers violently, his uniform no match for winter’s hard freeze. The gritty stink of diesel smoke hangs in the air from the idling motorcar—though Gerrit’s driver and the guard are dead. The rezistyent filth who shot them have turned their backs, surrounding Gerrit’s mother, metal pipes flying as they beat her. Mother fights like a thunderstorm, but blood already blackens her olive uniform. She can’t win against so many—not alone.
The memory’s visceral reality warped Gerrit’s sousednia. Lonesome wind no longer howled across diamond-white snow; instead, sousednia resounded with the sick crack of pipe on flesh. The pine and ice scents of his core sousednia morphed into diesel smoke and frozen earth, and combat nuzhda oozed like crimson oil from the pores of Gerrit’s sousedni-shape.
Screaming with rage, Gerrit wrenched his focus back to true-life. His attention split: in that brutal memory, he finally twisted his hands around his ankles; in true-life, he noticed Tesarik beneath the bozhskyeh storm’s bruised sky.
Twisted by his combat nuzhda, Gerrit’s lips skinned back from his teeth. Tesarik had ordered Gerrit whipped dozens of times, had grinned while the lash fell and Gerrit bit back screams. Just see how the sleet-licker smiled once his blood drenched Gerrit’s blade.
Drawing his belt knife, Gerrit lunged.
Someone caught his arm. “Stop!”
The combat nuzhda urged Gerrit to tear free, to drive his blade deep into the chest of the boy holding him. But training made him freeze.
“Your nuzhda’s too strong.” Dimly, Gerrit recognized Filip’s voice. True-life had become blurry, dream-like, overlapping with sousednia until the neighboring reality nearly drowned out the muddy field. In sousednia, Gerrit crawled across the frozen dirt road and finally closed his bound hands around the revolver.
His weapons were different in true-life and sousednia—knife and revolver—but his intent was the same. He had to imbue; had to fight. Tesarik would order him whipped again; in memory, the resistance scum would beat his mother to death unless he saved her.
But years of training had conditioned Gerrit to listen to Filip. “You’re safe,” Filip said. “You’re standing in a muddy field, cold rain drumming on your cap.”
The words focused Gerrit on those sensations, and the warmth of Filip’s hand on his neck anchored him. Filip kept speaking, and the rain’s rush and hiss drowned some of the resistance scum’s shouting. True-life sharpened, and Filip solidified, his olive drab uniform dark with rain.
The panicked need to save his mother blurred into the sunlit clearing of Gerrit’s core sousednia. From that alpine safety, Gerrit built rough granite walls around his combat nuzhda’s panicked desperation.
In training, Gerrit had built nuzhdi from the terrors of his past a million times; for years, he’d always retained enough control to build these mental walls on his own. He’d never stood beneath a bozhskyeh storm before, though.
Scripture warned about bozhskyeh storms amplifying the weakest need, sparking minor arguments into murderous rages. Gerrit had believed those warnings exaggerated. He’d been wrong.
Filip shifted around to grip his face in both hands, and Gerrit fought to focus on his best friend’s touch. This close, Gerrit could feel the slow rhythm of Filip’s inhale and exhale, and he struggled to mimic it. That calm gave Gerrit the strength to tighten the granite walls around his memory, diminishing his desperation until only a sliver of his self snarled and raged.
In true-life, he sheathed the knife at his side.
“There.” Filip’s nod confirmed Gerrit’s own assessment of his nuzhda. “Category One.”