Chapter 1

Way at the back of the Lawndale High auditorium, out of mind and almost out of sight for the theater kids wiling away their lunch break on the stage and the front rows, stood Shane and Mason, up to no good.

Shane, his greasy brown hair hanging limply on the sides of his forehead, reached into his coat pocket.

"You ready, man?" he asked.

Mason, his greasy brown hair hanging in front of his eyes like a matted veil, smiled.

"Hell, yeah."

Shane kept one eye on the theater kids as he took a fat Dune sandworm-sized joint from his pocket. It was primo stuff, courtesy of his cousin, who had the best hook-ups. But what he really looked forward to, even more than the high that'd last him through the rest of the school day, was the plan.

Still watching the stage (where he figured they were talking about Shakespeare or whatever it was theater kids talked about), Shane reached into his backpack and took out a straw and a cardboard box with a jagged puncture hole in the side.

"Here it is, my friend," he said.

Mason blinked.

"I don't get it?"

"Come on, man. Isn't it obvious?"

"It's a box and a straw."

Shane shook his head. "No, man. So, we can't smoke in here because of the smoke alarms, right?"

"Uh huh," Mason said, nodding.

"But, if I breath the smoke out through the straw and into the box, it'll just go into the box. And then we can, like, let it out later."

Mason lowered his head, and it was almost like Shane could see his brow furrowing behind his hair. "Won't it like, leak or something?"

"No, man! Come on, you think I haven't tested it? It didn't set off the smoke alarm in my folks' place."

The one he was pretty sure still worked.

"Okay, dude. If you say so."

"Just watch."

Balancing the box on his knee, Shane took out a lighter from his pocket and switched it on. Holding his breath, he held the tip of the joint over the flame until he heard the telltale sizzle of burning paper. He raised the joint to his lips and breathed in, not too much, just a bit.

Oh, it tasted sweet.

Lowering the joint, he stuck the straw into the box, put his mouth to it, and breathed in. Wisps of the gray spilled out the sides of his mouth, but most went right into the receptacle.

"See?"

"Oh, man! You're a genius! Let me try!"

Grinning, Shane handed the blunt and the box over to his friend. Mason took a long drag and exhaled into the tube. He didn't notice the burning embers falling onto the box. Nor did he notice the oily smoke seeping out from the gaps in the box, including the straw's entry port.

"This is why I hang out with you, dude," Mason said. "You're like, a brain. But not in a lame way."

Shane smiled. "I got my moments."

Mason handed the set up back to Shane, who took a deep hit. The tip of the blunt glowed bright red as his whole body relaxed.

He opened his eyes to the sight of fire consuming the lid.

"Oh, shit!" he exclaimed, dropping the burning box onto the cheap nylon carpet.

"What'd you do, man?" Mason demanded.

"It was the box! It was like flammable or something."

A bright little blaze now burned at their feet, pumping a thick stream of smoke up to the alarms above.

"Stamp it out!" Mason shouted.

"You stamp it out, you jackass! You started it!"

"Nuh uh, butt-head!"

Both tried to stamp it out at the same time. Mason's foot knocked Shane's foot out of the way, and then Shane retaliated by kicking Mason's shin.

"Hey, do you smell smoke?" one of the theater kids asked.

Shane and Mason kept struggling over who'd be the one to stamp the fire out, their feet clashing over the growing flames.

Then came the ear-piercing shrieks of a smoke detector on full alert. Like any good smoke detector, it relayed its findings to the overhead sprinkler, which cooperated by spraying water down on the auditorium and everyone inside it.

Too focused on the fight to notice they were drenched and had a dozen students staring at them, Shane and Mason continued to kick each other over the soaked and smoking remnants of the box and the blunt.

Conscript Viktor Adamos of the Cadian 15th couldn't believe what he saw before him.

The din of weapons fire and the cries of the dying faded to a distant hum as he took in the details of the gilded icon of the God Emperor painted on the shrine's plascrete wall. Here He was in all His divine glory, radiant through war and strife.

No commissar needed to tell him to kneel, but kneel he did, his head bowed in reverence at this holy work.

The click of a primed lasgun made his breath catch in his throat. Stupid, stupid, stupid to let his guard down. Was death by ill-timed prayer acceptable because it was reverent? Or contemptible because it was careless? He wasn't sure.

He braced himself for the sharp whip-crack of laserfire and the darkness of death. But nothing came.

He opened an eye and saw her, a young civilian woman about his age, with bobbed black hair and blue eyes brighter than anything else he'd seen on this forsaken world—or any other world, for that matter. She held the gun like someone who at least had some familiarity with it. The shrine's flickering candlelight glinted off the three rings in her exposed ear.

"As a faithful servant of the emperor—and one who spent a lot of time painting this icon—I'm shooting any heretic who gets close," she said.

Viktor exhaled in relief. "It's okay. I'm no heretic," he said. "Conscript Viktor Adamos of the Cadian 15th."

The woman kept the gun trained on him. "Jane Lane. Local artist," she said.

"You did this?" he asked. "It's… amazing. You should be making icons on Holy Terra!"

She shrugged, still holding the gun. "I serve the Emperor as best I can."

Indeed, she did. The Imperium had no shortage of grunts like Viktor. But visionaries like Jane? In a mere instant her art had inspired him more than any priest's sermon. He knew at that moment he had to get her to safety. Duty gave him no other choice—the Imperium needed her.

It's not like he was just thinking that because she was the most breathtakingly gorgeous woman he'd ever seen, and that he'd give up his life before letting anything hurt her.

A loud bang echoed through the shrine as something hit the barricaded door.

"Destroy them! For Chaos!" the voices screeched, their cries mingling with a groaning chant to the ruinous powers. With that, another cry, this one not human.

Readying his gun, Viktor hurried behind the altar as Jane took position next to him, her face as lovely as a saint's, and just as fearless—

The school fire alarm blared to life and Victor snapped back to reality with a start. His movement sent the pencil in his hand flying to the ceiling. He lunged to catch it and the pencil bounced off his palm. Trying to grab it with his other hand, he missed by millimeters, the pencil passing so close that he felt the wood grain brush against his skin.

"Fire!" the librarian yelled, running to the door.

Victor's pencil landed on the carpet as the fire alarm wailed again and again, the sound like spikes being repeatedly jammed into his eardrums. Grimacing, he leaned down to retrieve his pencil and then grabbed his backpack and his graph paper (where he'd half-finished the upcoming weekend's battle plans before letting his mind wander) and then hurried up the stairs.

Next to him, Priscilla took long strides toward the door, her Bible under her arm and her expression suggesting that the alarm had offended her on both a personal and a theological level.

"Are they actually having a fire drill at lunch?" she demanded as they marched down the stairs.

"Uh, I don't know," Victor said, hating how high and breezy his voice sounded whenever he talked. "I think this might be for real."

"Or it's another one of Principal Li's surprise readiness drills."

Victor didn't need to look at Priscilla to know she'd rolled her eyes. The two of them didn't normally chat, but they did both hide away in the library during each lunch period. He didn't know Priscilla's reasons for sequestering herself.

People didn't tell things to Victor, as a general rule.

For him, the library was a sanctuary. He hated the cafeteria, where the noise of a thousand jabbering voices assaulted his ears as steadily as a World War 1 artillery barrage. Worse was sitting down at the edge of the table where the nerds congregated, where he had to keep enough distance from Gary, Nate, and Paul to let everyone know that the three of them didn't see him as a friend or an equal.

But the books of the library didn't judge, and the librarian didn't give a damn. So that's where he'd spent lunch ever since his second week at Lawndale. There he read, drafted strategies for the Saturday 40K games at the Dragon's Tower, and sometimes thought about the one classmate he actually did want to know better.

Ten minutes that felt like an hour later, and he stood outside with the rest of the school's student body under the gray sky. He shivered under the loose, too-thin fabric of his striped V-neck sweater. No smoke marred the air, so it was either a drill or a false alarm. Li was already doing her martinet's strut as she barked orders.

Finally, she grabbed a microphone.

"Students of Lawndale High!" she proclaimed her voice tinny in the outdoors. "I'm pleased to announce that the fire has been extinguished and you are no longer in danger. I am less pleased to announce that the fire was started by a pair of your classmates! Rest assured that proper disciplinary action has been taken.

"However, given this reckless disregard of safety, not to mention this insult to the honor, and glory, of Lawndale High, I have no choice but to institute new rules! As of today, all students are required to spend lunch in the cafeteria where we can keep an eye on you."

Victor tensed up. No, no, no, don't take away the library, he thought. Next to him, Priscilla's scowl deepened.

"The auditorium, the gym, all classrooms, off-campus locations—"

Not the library, not the library. People needed that to study! Victor needed it to stay sane.

"—and the library may only be used during class hours! That is all!"

Victor buried his face in his hands and groaned.

Senior year was going to be Hell on Earth.