Justice (7 page)

M eyed her old sparring partner and gave her a knowing wave to say that two could play at the staring game, but then Devon turned and said something to the others, and whatever she said, it wasn’t good.

M’s vision went black and a blaring static hissed into her earpiece. She lost her balance and came crashing to her knees, then ripped off her mask to clear the biting noise from her head and to regain her vision. Her friends rushed to her side.

Waving the crew off, M said, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ but the words caught in her throat when she saw the full height that she had climbed. Her world started to wobble and gravity tugged at the back of her neck, sending her tipping helplessly over the edge of the platform. M could see it all: the ropes course zipping by, the open peg holes gasping like onlookers as she plummeted, and the cuckoo clocks tweeting and singing out that her time had come.

But that didn’t happen at all. Because Cal’s firm hands grabbed the back of her suit. Dangling there above the abyss, M wished above all else that she could be invisible, even if only for a moment. But it didn’t work. The window held her hanging reflection high above the ground.

‘Should I still keep my hands to myself, M?’ he asked with a heavy laugh that sounded more like a sigh. ‘Now get your mask back on. Audience or no audience, we’ve still got to find a safe way back down this thing.’

CHAPTER 7

MAGNETIC PERSONALITIES

Two steps forward, one step back. That should have been the motto for M’s training. It didn’t matter if she was at the Lawless School or the Fulbright Academy; whenever she made giant leaps, she almost always followed them up with giant mistakes.

The climb down was long and quiet. M’s strength held up, but her confidence had been rattled by Devon and her shadowy cohorts. M had shown fear, let it slip through her cracks to surface like a geyser, and that had led to her suspended above the free-fall drop. Shame and anger shot through her like a bolt of lightning as her feet finally touched the base level’s solid ground. She was incredibly mad at the Fulbrights and even incredibly mad at Cal, though he had saved her life. But, if she was being honest, the person she was most frustrated with was herself. The suit had lured her into thinking that she was indestructible, when in fact she wasn’t. She hadn’t conquered her fear of heights; she’d masked it. M vowed that the next time, mask or no mask, she
wouldn’t be afraid.

To add insult to injury, Ben was waiting for them at the bottom of the course. With his ramrod posture and hands clasped behind his back, he stood miles taller than Keyshawn at his side, who held his head down like a scolded dog. Whatever came next, M knew it wouldn’t be a pat-on-the-back, mission-accomplished speech.

‘Masks off now,’ ordered Ben, and the crew obliged.

‘I’d really like to say,
Great job, everyone
, but we had a big snafu at the finish line, didn’t we?’ he said. His voice was quiet and controlled, but his eyes seethed with frustration. ‘First, look at the masks in your hands.
Never lose your mask in the field
, that’s a big rule to remember. Your mask is your identity now. It’s your new face. The you underneath the mask,
that’s
your disguise. That’s the boring person who walks unnoticed on the sidewalk and blends into the wallpaper.’

‘Like ghosts,’ said Merlyn, rolling his eyes. ‘We heard the same spiel at Lawless.’

‘No,’ barked Ben as his calm demeanor suddenly snapped. ‘Nothing like ghosts. I don’t care what you learned at Lawless. You’re Fulbrights now. A Lawless ghost is a coward, meant to disappear and never be seen. Fulbrights are meant to be seen by everyone as a warning.’

‘A warning about what?’ prodded Cal.

‘That justice is coming and it cannot be stopped.’ It was a cold line matched by the icy glare that Ben shot Cal. But Cal didn’t avert his eyes. Instead he stared down the direct with a snarled smile that could only mean trouble.

M could imagine how Ben’s words might be awe-inspiring
to other, more rule-abiding Fulbright cadets. How his speech might stir their blood and fire up a new recruit. But here, to this crew, his words were a threat. He wasn’t calling on them to defend the world from evil. He was calling on them to eradicate evil from the world by any means necessary. He was daring them to prove their allegiance.

‘And, of course, secondly, let me remind you that curiosity killed the cadet,’ said Ben as he zeroed in on M.

M clenched her mask deep into her fists, channeling all of her frustration there so as not to snap back at the direct. But she couldn’t help herself.

‘What was Zoso doing up in the skybox?’ she asked. ‘I thought she was your subordinate. Or does unleashing a devastating weapon get you promoted around here?’

Ben swiped Keyshawn’s tablet and tapped it harshly, unleashing the Medusa effect on all the Lawless cadets. It was a milder setting than M had previously been subjected to, but terror stretched across the others’ faces as they felt the constriction for the first time.

‘Ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to do and die,’ ground out Ben. ‘Do you really think that the Lawless School wasn’t planning to use the
umbra mortis
themselves? We simply beat them to the punch.’

‘Liar!’ yelled M. ‘Yes, Fox Lawless is a crazy man, but he gave the meteorite to me without using it. The game was over when you came crashing in. Nobody had to get hurt! Nothing bad was going to happen until Zoso came along.’

‘You can’t be sure of that, Freeman,’ said Ben. ‘This is a war, a war between the Fulbrights and Lawless that has
been raging for lifetimes before you or me or Zoso or even your own father came along. We needed a victory that day, so we took one.’

And you call yourselves the good guys,
thought M. She may have been disavowed by Dr Lawless, and she may have turned her back on what the Lawless School stood for, but this mindless belief that violent means could lead to a
good-guy
ending, it was crazy. How could her father have ever associated with such a cult?

There was one explanation. Maybe her father hadn’t been a true Fulbright, the same way he hadn’t been a true Lawless Master. Was it possible he was playing both sides? Was it possible that he himself was doing as the Fulbrights said but not as they did?

Ben turned his attention to Keyshawn and asked, ‘Noles, can I assume that these cadets have not been trained in the art of Magblast?’

‘No, sir,’ answered Keyshawn, snapping to attention. ‘Magblast training has been set for day four, sir, and given the cadets’ reaction times to the Maze, I advise against moving them along any faster.’

‘Oh, I didn’t know it was your job to advise me, Noles,’ said Ben with a venomous sneer. ‘Or perhaps I didn’t hear you correctly.’

‘True, sir,’ said Keyshawn. ‘You must have misheard me because I said that we could begin Magblast training whenever you see fit, sir.’

It was a bald-faced lie, but M could see the concern in Keyshawn’s eyes even through her own arrested frustration. The concern wasn’t for himself or for the cadets, though. No,
it was for his precious inventions.
What are these things to Keyshawn?
she wondered. At first she’d assumed he was after the bragging rights to a great creation, but now she was beginning to think there was something bigger at stake for him. And whatever it was, it was more important than anyone else in this room … himself included.

‘Excellent!’ said Ben with a skip in his step and a tap of his finger on the tablet, which released the cadets from their frozen states. ‘Then let’s have some fun now, shall we?’

Keyshawn escorted the quieted crew back through his lab and into yet another door, which led to a long and narrow room. Everyone seemed shell-shocked by Ben’s antics and the further insight into the Fulbright mind that he’d provided. If Merlyn wasn’t convinced that he needed to jailbreak their uniforms now, he was never going to be.

The new room looked like a car-crash test facility, complete with disturbingly well-dented and scratched gray walls. It was every bit as bruised a room as the mountain-pass runway that M had shredded up during an emergency landing on her first day at Lawless. Then M noticed a dark silhouette in the far corner of the room, standing silent as the deadened echo of the crew’s footsteps ricocheted off the crooked walls.

‘Ooh, shadowy stranger. So
this
is where you keep John Doe?’ joked Cal. But he didn’t have much time to appreciate his wit before he was unexpectedly thrust against the wall by an invisible force.

No, not quite invisible, M realized. She had seen a slight rippling effect, as if the air itself had been disturbed. And the disturbance had originated from behind her.

She whirled to see Ben standing in the doorway. He held up an ungloved, clenched fist, showing off the same thin silver ring M had noticed him wearing in the Glass House. ‘The Magblast,’ he began, ‘is a simple mechanism that’s been amplified. Remember when your parents put your report cards on the refrigerator? What did they use? Anyone?’

The group was in shock at the swift and mysterious violence that had just sprung on one of their own. M tensed, preparing for an attack, and watched as Cal shook the cobwebs from his head.

‘I take it from your silence that you all meant to say
magnets
,’ said Ben with a smile. ‘And you’d be right. Keyshawn, tell the ladies and gentlemen what they’ve won.’

Picking up the lesson in earnest, Keyshawn explained, ‘The ring Direct Downing is wearing is what we refer to as a Magblast. This is, as mentioned, a modified magnet. What that means is that the ring is designed to emit a wave of energy that pummels whatever is in its path. Case in point, Cadet Fence.

‘Now, these are powerful weapons. We do not allow most cadets to use these, as they are still, technically, in the experimental stage. The Magblast is difficult to aim and it carries a massive kick, so target practice is a must. We need you to hit the bad guys, after all, not each other.’

Hit the
bad
guys
, M mused, nodding along with the others as Keyshawn approached Merlyn. When the time was right, that’s exactly what she intended to do.

‘Now, if I may,’ said Keyshawn as he lifted Merlyn’s left hand and tapped his gloved knuckles. ‘Your Magblast is
located here. Well, technically it’s in the right glove for the rest of you. I’ve integrated the device into your suits, as just one of many upgrades. Until now, authorized Fulbrights wore rings like Direct Downing’s. The difference might seem minimal, but it means that you won’t ever lose yours in the field.’

‘How does it work?’ asked Merlyn.

‘It’s a feat of concentration, aim, and muscle coordination,’ answered Keyshawn. ‘Just like everything else in your suit, the Magblast is an extension of you, your will, your strength, perhaps even your emotions, if that’s where you choose to draw your power.’

‘Enough of the Zen speak, Noles,’ interrupted Ben. ‘I think it’s time to line up the targets and give the cadets something to channel their emotions toward.’

Keyshawn walked toward the shadowy figure on the other side of the room. It was only a mannequin, which he dragged slowly toward them. The scrape of the wheels across the floor reminded M of the School of Seven Bells, the ratty old mannequin that Lawless students used to master the art of picking pockets. But this poor mannequin was worn down not by time, but by pure aggression.

‘Noles, isn’t this target a little below standard for our fine new recruits?’ asked Ben. ‘Given the limited training time we have together, why don’t we throw them into the deep end of the pool with a good old-fashioned duel?’

‘Duel with who?’ demanded M.

‘With each other, of course,’ answered Ben. ‘Eaves and Freeman, you’re up first.’

Merlyn and M instantly protested in unison. ‘No way!’

‘I can always bring well-trained Fulbrights in for the duel, then,’ Ben offered. ‘Would that address your rather delicate objection to sparring with an equally matched opponent?’

‘Yeah, right,’ said M. ‘This magnetic toy of yours obviously did a number on these walls. And now you want us to turn it on each other?’

‘If I may,’ Keyshawn interjected, ‘Direct Downing does have a point. As beginners, you see, you won’t be able to achieve the full power of the Magblast. And since we know there’s a limited time for your training, the duel would create a more …
engaging
situation, greater incentive for you to master the tool quickly.’

‘Dude, we don’t need Devon coming in here and whipping us with waves of magnetic force,’ said Cal, rubbing his head where it had hit the wall. ‘Let’s just get this over with so we can learn our lesson.’

The blast may have rattled his brain, but Cal had a point. There was safety in fighting one another.
Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.
That was another Dad-ism that had stuck with M over the years, even though it had taken her a while to understand it fully. In hindsight, she wished she had remembered it when joining the Masters and leaving her friends behind. But the good devils, apparently, had a way of catching back up to you. In Germany, in London, and in the grip of the Fulbrights, M’s friends had always found a way back to her.

‘Merlyn, I challenge thee to a duel,’ declared M in her worst British accent – half to be funny and half to rub it in Ben’s face.

Following standard duel rules, M and Merlyn stood back-to-back
with their hands at their sides and their masks in place. Then they walked ten paces away from each other. M could hear each of Merlyn’s footsteps striking a half second behind hers. She wiggled her fingers, trying to feel for any sign of the Magblast in her gloves, but like everything Keyshawn had worked into the suit, it was next to impossible to know it was there until you experienced it.

Ten.

M whirled to her left, hoping to dodge Merlyn’s left-handed attack, and swung her right fist in a violent, uppercut arc. The room remained absolutely silent, but the air itself erupted in a gust of throbbing waves visibly parting the once-static particles of dust that hung around them. Her left arm was clipped with a stinging blast, but poor Merlyn took M’s attack on the chin and was knocked flat on his back.

‘Say you’re okay, Merlyn!’ yelled M, running to him.

‘Ugh, if I say it, do I have to mean it?’ asked Merlyn, who groggily sat up and massaged his jaw. ‘Kidding, M, kidding. I’m okay. Good shot.’

‘Score one for Freeman,’ cheered Ben. ‘Let’s see what kind of trouble Fence and Byrd can start together.’