How to Kill a Phoenix

CHAPTER 7: TRAIN AND WRECK

CHAPTER 7: TRAIN AND WRECK

*

"Soldiers trust each other. That's what makes us an army." – Steve Rogers.

*

"Well, they're just a people that evolved from cats that evolved from hairy sharks that evolved from jellyfish," Rain said over his bowl of steaming broth. "I already briefed Go about the comparison between a human and a Cene, plus the special abilities of each of our quantum weapons."

"Quantum weapons?" Emily scratched her head. She was standing opposite the boy at a wooden table, Rain looking as if he was distancing himself from the rest of the crew in the dining room. Only three other people were still eating: Rachel, Fox and a bespectacled boy Emily was not yet acquainted with.

"Like Narsil, weapons that manipulate matter, energy and space to create magic-like effects," Rain answered, trying to scrape away flesh from the fishlike bones. "Fox's gun, Tanya's fish, Rachel's scythe..."

"Do I get one?"

"We only have ten," Rain didn't look up.

"But I ate a QT. I gained some weird abilities," Emily said, staring at the palm of her hands.

Rain paused, finally looking up. "Put it this way: you've seen one of those medieval role-playing games of sword and sorcery, right? The quantum weapon is your weapon. The QT is your mana pool, for your spells."

Bending forward, Emily gave a playful smirk and whispered, "Doesn't that make you the most useless person among us?"

Her heart skipped a beat when Rain shot her a venomous glare. But she took a deep breath and continued, "You're not bringing me with you guys just because I have both your QT and your weapon?" She sighed. "You can't stand being useless, huh."

Rain rose abruptly from his chair, pacing round the table towards Emily. Her eyes widened, and the boy forcefully extracted his sword from her mouth. Emily fell onto her hands on the floor, coughing and spluttering.

"Maybe you're right," Rain muttered between clenched teeth, pointing the cold, sticky blade past Emily's stunned visage. It touched her neck. "I really considered killing you and taking back what is mine." But then he realized that everyone at the table was looking at him -- Rachel looked visibly horrified. "Sorry," Rain said, his cheeks flushed. "I'm really sorry."

He pulled Emily up and gave her a brief but firm hug before shutting the door behind him, leaving his half-eaten meal.

Emily stood stock still, flustered herself.

Rain, I think there's a spot of my drool on your shoulder.

She didn't move for a full sixty seconds.

*

Emily was fully aware of the suspension bridge effect.

A classic example of misattribution of arousal, it was based on the situation that when a person crossed a suspension bridge and saw someone of the opposite sex, his fear of falling down caused his heart to pound. He then mistook the heart-pounding feeling for falling in love with the other person.

A dubiously sketchy theory! Most unscientific!

But knowing of a psychological concept and considering it unscientific didn't make a person immune.

He might want to kill me.

But he cares enough not to. He could've left me behind or... I don't know, maybe freeze me in a slab of carbon?