THE TAMER WHO REWROTE EVOLUTION

Chapter 8

Ethan opened his mouth to answer, and found that he did not have the words yet. He was about to find out. He went to the kennels that night, because he could not sleep and because the Remedial Wing was the only place on campus where nobody watched him.

The long hall was dim and quiet. A few lamps buzzed at the far end. Somewhere a sleeping dog huffed and rolled over. Gravel, the gray dog with the missing ear, lifted his head when Ethan walked past and thumped his tail twice against the straw.

"Hey, you," Ethan whispered. "Go back to sleep." He was heading for the water barrels when he heard it. A thin, dry scratching, like a fingernail on stone. It came from the last kennel, the one nobody used. Ethan crouched by the gate. Inside, in a corner of cracked cement, lay a small gray lump the size of a loaf of bread. It had a hard, ridged shell, six stubby legs, and a crooked horn on its head. One leg was bent the wrong way. Its shell was split down the middle by a long, ugly crack.

A Stone Beetle. Trash rank. The label on the gate said DISCHARGED, UNCLAIMED. PENDING DISPOSAL.

Ethan's stomach turned. "Oh, no," he whispered. "Nobody told me you were here."

The beetle scraped its horn weakly against the floor. It was trying to dig. Trying to hide. Ethan unlatched the gate and knelt beside it. Wick crawled out of his collar and landed on the beetle's cracked shell, antennae quivering.

"Can you see its tree?" Ethan murmured. "Wick, can we..."

He had not even finished the thought when the mark on his chest woke up.

It did not burn at first. It went cold. A thin silver chill spread from beneath his ribs, like someone dripping icewater down the inside of his chest. The cold crawled up into his throat. It slid along his collarbones and down both arms, and the hair on his skin stood up in waves. Then the cold became a different thing.

It was the kind of cold that is so sharp it feels like fire. His fingertips began to sting. His breath came out in a cloud, though the night was mild. A taste like old coins filled his mouth. [Host detected. Target: Stone Beetle (Trash).] [Evolution Path unlocked. Essence required: 40%.]

The branches unfolded in the air above the beetle, silver lines on black. Ethan stared at them. They looked like the veins in a leaf.

Forty percent," he whispered. "Of what?" He knew the answer a heartbeat later, when he reached out with his shaking hand and touched the beetle's shell. Something was pulled out of him. It was not blood. It was not breathing. 

It was a feeling like pulling a plug in a bath, a slow, steady drain starting somewhere behind his heart and running down through his arm into the beetle's body. His fingers went numb. His knees began to shake. The warmth in his face slid away like water down a window.

That's heat, he thought dizzily. It's taking my body heat.

His teeth chattered. He clenched his jaw so hard that his skull ached. Then the second thing arrived. It came through the touch, quiet at first, like a sound heard through a wall. A dull, grinding ache in his own left leg. A crushing dread that had no reason in it, only weight. The sharp, terrible loneliness of being put into a corner and forgotten.

Ethan gasped. The pain in his leg was not his. His leg was fine. But he could feel the bent bone, the crack in the shell, the dragging hours of waiting. He could feel the beetle's fear as clearly as if it had been poured straight into his own chest.

"Oh," he breathed. "Oh, you poor thing." Tears stung his eyes. He was crying again and had no idea when it had started. I'm not afraid, he told himself. This isn't mine. It's not mine. It's his. But the line between them kept blurring. Every second that he held on, he felt a little more of the beetle and a little less of himself.

He understood something then. The System did not just take warmth, or strength, or breath. It took the wall between him and what he was trying to save. It made him stand inside the creature's suffering and carry it for the length of the change.

There was no way to do this without feeling it. "It's okay," Ethan whispered through chattering teeth. "I've got you. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere." The beetle's cold shell warmed against his palm. He chose the branch.

[Evolution: Stone Beetle → Boulderback.]

The light came up from underneath, gold and heavy, like sunrise through a stone window. The crack in the beetle's shell sealed with a sound like a whispered word. The bent leg straightened. Layer after layer of gray plates slid over each other and locked into place, thick as a castle door. The crooked horn grew and curved and sharpened into a smooth, blunt ram.

The creature that stood in the kennel was twice the size it had been, as wide as a washtub, with a back like a small hill and four pillar-thick legs. It looked down at Ethan with two small, steady black eyes. Then it nudged its warm flat forehead against his chest.

Ethan fell over.

He lay on his back in the straw, staring at the ceiling beams, which swung in slow circles. His chest rose and fell in short, ragged gasps. His hands would not stop trembling. He tried to lift one to wipe his face, and it came back red. Nosebleed. "Great," he mumbled. "Very heroic."

[Evolution complete. Essence spent: 38%.] [Host condition: Severe fatigue. Body temperature: low.] [Bond established: Boulderback.] A warm weight settled against his side. The new beast had lain down beside him, huge and quiet, shielding him from the cold floor with its own body. Wick perched on its back, glowing gently, looking tired but pleased.

"I'll call you Pebble," Ethan said hoarsely. "Because you were so small." The Boulderback let out a long, deep rumble that shook the straw. "Yeah," Ethan whispered. "I thought you'd like it."

His eyes drifted shut. The ache had settled into a hollow place in the middle of him, a bare empty room where something had been poured out. He was cold, and tired, and strangely full all at once, as if he had cried himself clean and been handed a heavier heart in exchange.

He was nearly asleep when a voice spoke.

It did not come from the System. It was not the calm, bright voice from the Rift. This one was low and slow, and it seemed to come from somewhere very far beneath the floor. "Slower," it said. "You are spending more than you earn."

Ethan's eyes flew open. The kennel was empty. Gravel slept. Wick and Pebble were silent. The lamp at the end of the hall flickered once. And from the dark behind the water barrels, something very softly began to laugh.