The hollow beat of war drums unsettled the late afternoon dust. Intan yawned as one beat led to another, reverberating through the flimsy screen walls of the classroom. At the fifth beat, she looked up with a start.

"Rogue Doll on the grounds!" shouted the boy kneeling next to her.

Her other classmates leaped to their feet as they, too, deciphered the signal, and pushed toward the windows in a scrambling mass, each student straining for a view. Their professor shouted for order, to no avail.

Intan set down her writing brush and the bound text she had been pretending to follow along in. She stood, patting absently at the wrinkles in her uniform. Fished out a pair of cotton plugs from her pocket and stuffed them in her ears.

Then she strode over to the back of the room, picked up a mallet, and smacked the gong in the corner.

The gathered students jumped and turned. One of the girls actually shrieked before covering her mouth, blushing.

"Have you all forgotten proper protocol?" Intan said, serenely removing her earplugs once she felt the ringing of the gong fade.

In its place continued the drumming, a steady, unrelenting rhythm that rattled her very bones.

This is not a drill. Rogue Doll spotted in the first quarter. All students, return to dormitories immediately. This is not a drill --

The professor coughed. "Thank you, Cadet."

Intan ignored him and walked out the door.

* * *

Students poured out of the cluster of classroom buildings. They moved at a brisk but steady pace, heading toward the reinforced floating walkway that connected the main campus grounds to the dormitory complex on the lake. Instructors stationed themselves at waypoints, gesturing and barking out orders. All else was quiet but for the drums.

Proper protocol recommended marching together as a class, but Intan, still drowsy from the late afternoon lecture, let herself be swept away with the crowd.

"Just one Doll. Can't be that serious," muttered one of the upperclassmen walking ahead of her.

"I bet the Headmistress's already got everything under control," replied one of the girl's friends.

"Wonder what it's here for?" asked another.

"Test flight gone wrong, you think?"

Intan didn't think it likely for the staff to have sounded the war drums if the matter were so simple. A single Doll was no real threat, this was true, but it could still cause considerable damage if left unheeded. But she had seen no Dolls through the classroom window, could see nothing on the horizon even now. A few of the instructors seemed unusually tense, but Intan supposed that was just their natural state of being. She couldn't think of any good reason for such tension. Not when the island had been at peace for years.

She was still plodding methodically through the list of possibilities in her mind when someone screamed.

"Look!"

Intan and her fellow students halted in unison and glanced to the left, like a herd of startled deer poised in the moment before flight.

There, from beyond the wall, loomed the grotesque painted mask of a Doll.

"Keep moving!" yelled an instructor as the Doll rose and crashed into the western watchtower. Its smooth metal limbs jerked about unnaturally. For a moment it stopped, as if puzzled. Then it shrugged away the debris and started heading toward the neighboring engineering compound, from which students with the bamboo insignia emblazoned on their chests had been evacuating in orderly formations. They broke out of their formations now, scattering in a mad dash for the entrance of the walkway ahead.

Someone shouted, "What the hell is that pilot doing?"

"What the hell is security doing?"

"Wasn't it supposed to be in the first quarter?"

"A second Doll!"

Intan paid no heed. Students from her own division ran past her in a panicked mob, all training forgotten. But she stood for a moment longer and continued to watch the Doll in silence.

As the beat of the war drums changed to incorporate the new information, she turned on her heel and began to run in the opposite direction.

"Hey! You!"

Intan heard, but did not stop.

Two Dolls, she thought. One near the Headmistress's office. The other much too close to the dormitories for comfort.

And what strange sorrow in its unearthly dance.

* * *

There was a unguarded junkyard to the south of the classrooms, where retired training Dolls lay rusting. Intan had seen it on the campus tour, and she ran in its general direction now, humming a traditional fisherman's ditty from her village.

Her memory held true, much to her relief. Four old models lay there in a row, among piles and piles of scrap metal. The first two were so rusted over they looked like the skeletons of some strange sea monster. The third was missing an arm. The last, however, seemed more or less intact.

"Must have been retired recently," sang Intan under her breath.

She clambered up the Doll's torso, searching for the cockpit.

"O spirits of the island," she whispered. "O gods, o dragon lords of sky and sea. As the sun rises each morn, as moon and stars shine by night; as roots grow deep in the earth, as rocks stand firm against wind and age -- I beseech you: lend me such power as ye possess!"

The Doll's body began to thrum. The doors on its chest slid open, glowing faintly with light.

It was a real Doll after all, Intan thought fondly, though perhaps in need of a paint job. Not one of the miniature imitations the villagers sometimes used in the mines or in the fields, or out at sea with their fleets.

"Poor thing," she murmured. "Wonder why they abandoned you?"

She stepped into the cockpit and closed her eyes briefly, offering a silent prayer of thanks. When she opened her eyes again, the doors had closed, leaving her in darkness. She reached out, feeling for the controls. Much to her delight, the Doll whirred, strapping her into her seat, and the small space lit up once more, this time with a projected panoramic view of their surroundings. The controls were not so different from the Minis she'd piloted back home after all, she thought.

She pulled on the bulky headset. With a shift of her hand, the Doll rose unsteadily from its resting place.

They flew.

* * *

Intan laughed as they flew. The Doll, old and rusting as it was, moved with more than twice the speed and precision of the machines from her village. But when the smoldering ruins of the engineering division came into sight, she sobered.

A beep on the control screen alerted her to the presence of the rogue Doll. She twirled around to see it hovering over the shore beyond the wall, shooting haphazardly at the walkway and the dorms before crashing into the ground. It flailed around, sending clouds of sand into the air. After a while it stopped twitching and managed to stand. It proceeded to plod down the shore in the direction of the walkway before halting again, this time towering over a pair of straggling students and an injured instructor.

Intan shifted the control stick, raising the right arm of her own Doll. She pressed the trigger. Nothing happened. She remembered then that it was a training Doll, its guns loaded only with paintballs even at the height of its career.

Without a second thought, she barreled forward, tackling the other Doll into the lake. The impact jolted her head. For a moment she blacked out. When she came to again, she was locked with the other Doll in a stranglehold as they skimmed across the surface of the water, just barely avoiding the dormitory complex as it began to submerge.

She found herself relieved. Enemy or not, it was clear to Intan that the pilot of the rogue Doll was utterly inexperienced, and likely dealing with a malfunction. Without firepower it would be more difficult to disable her opponent, but Intan was glad. Without firepower, she would not risk the pilot's death.

Intan switched on the wireless.

"Hello? Can you hear me?"

No response. The other pilot had closed off communications.

The rogue Doll kicked and struggled in Intan's grasp. One of its blows connected with the head of Intan's Doll. The projected image of their surroundings wavered and blinked out. Intan released her hold in shock. Winced, as the rogue Doll rammed into her again.

She recovered swiftly and rolled away, but the cockpit remained immersed in darkness. Panic swept over her. Even the Minis she'd piloted back home had been installed with backup visual systems, and their heads were not so fragile as this one apparently was. But no windows opened. No new mechanisms whirred into action. She took a deep breath, then another. Closed her eyes. Held still, waiting for the next hit.

Behind. She gritted her teeth at the impact and steered in the direction of the shot, lashing out with her Doll's arms.

Contact. She grabbed. Held on and dragged downwards, angled and at full speed. Hit the expected resistance of water, then land.

"Come on, don't fail me now," she whispered.

As if in response to her voice, the view flickered, then faded. But it was enough. She punched at the rogue Doll's leering face with all the force her own Doll could muster. Again the image flickered. This time it held. Intan grabbed the head and twisted and twisted until at last it ripped off, plopping into the water some distance away. When she let go, the rogue Doll fell to its knees in the sand, successfully incapacitated.

Intan heaved a sigh of relief as the other pilot ejected, white parachute ballooning against the darkening sky.

She had only had enough time to wonder what was taking the school security forces so long to arrive when the headless Doll exploded.

* * *

Flames lit up the surface of the lake.

Intan powered off her Doll and leaped out of the cockpit. She ran. Half-melted shrapnel lay scattered across the shore, hissing with steam. The war drums, still beating out their solemn message, sounded far and distant. By the time Intan reached the fallen pilot, she could no longer hear the drums over the pounding of her own heart.

She recognized the pretty brown-skinned girl lying there as one of her fellow first years, though not from her division.

"Hey!" she said. "Are you okay?"

The girl turned to her with some effort, eyes dark and glassy. Intan recoiled as she realized the girl's face was covered in severe burns. Her body was tangled in her parachute; blood stained the silk dark and continued to pool around her chest.

The girl shifted her hand, as if to speak. Intan was struck again by the strange sense of sorrow in the girl's gesture, which seemed to echo the earlier, stilted movements of her Doll.

"Wait," said Intan. "Don't move. Don't say anything."

She ran again toward the lake, scouring through her rudimentary knowledge of first aid. Accidents happened often back home. But never anything quite so serious as this.

Water first, she thought. She scooped up as much as her trembling hands would hold. Ran back, splashed it over the girl's face. Better to move her to the lake, but with the girl losing blood so quickly, Intan dared not take that risk.

There was a familiar loud humming in the sky. Intan looked up to see one of the hummingbird medic transports hovering nearby. A sandy-haired man opened the door and jumped out.

"It's going to be all right," Intan told the girl. "Help's here."

But when she looked again she realized that it was no man, but rather a boy about their own age, dressed in the lotus-marked uniform of a student medic.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he shouted, shoving Intan aside without a second glance. He knelt down by the injured girl. Took out a curved knife and cut the tangled silk free. Then turned very, very still.

"Fuck." He stood, knife forgotten. Spun around, grabbed Intan's shoulders. "Do you even understand what you've just done? What the fuck were you thinking? Trying to play the damn hero?"

Intan stiffened, but did not look away from the twisted, desperate anger in his face. She said, quietly, "Because she looked so sad..."

For a moment he looked like he was going to hit her, or throw her to the ground. But he let go.

"You fool," he spat. "There's a fucking reason the protocol exists."

"Then why hasn't security arrived yet?" They should have come long ago, she thought. Even if they had been held up with the other Doll -- Only then did she realize that the war drums' beat had changed once more.

The other Doll had escaped.

The boy clenched his fist. Dropped it, as if coming to the same realization. He swore again.

A soft voice interrupted. "Please."

Intan and the boy both turned.

"Please," the injured girl repeated hoarsely.

"Shut up!" snapped the boy. "You're only going to make yourself worse!"

The girl's lips quirked into a shadowed smile.

Intan crouched down at her side. In the distance she could hear the screech of arriving ground transports, but she did not move away. The boy stood at her shoulder, silent but taut.

With some effort, the injured girl lifted her hand, as if pointing toward the heavens above.

"Ausos... must not be awakened."

A few shuddering breaths later, she was dead.