The Academy (19 page)

Michael paused for a moment, kneading out a cramp in his calf, and looked almost sad.

“Anyway, we start with what we know you’ll have with you. Once I’m confident you can use that, then we move on to the more likely suspects.” Michael grinned at Alex. “That okay with you, Mr. Warner?”

“You ask me like you care,” Alex said, finishing his bottle and putting it aside.

The pace of the workouts was exhausting, but somehow never quite past what Alex was capable of. Michael offered constant instruction, critiquing his form and movement at all times, tweaking and refining, patient and infuriatingly calm. Alex’s own frustration was muted by sheer exhaustion, and by a growing suspicion that something was not quite right. In the course of a few weeks, Alex gained a few pounds of muscle and a much more prodigious strength. He was somehow, faster, stronger and more capable than he had any right to be.

One day, after a particularly grueling set of wind sprints, Alex asked Michael about it.

“It’s the machines, son,” Michael said with his trademark toothy grin, panting beside Alex on the grass next to the track. “All those little machines inside you, they’re latched on to your nervous system, and they take instruction from your brain, as if they were part of you. So they know what you’re doing, and they’re facilitating the process, helping your body manufacture new tissue, augmenting your reflexes, repairing all the damage that gets done to that sad little body of yours, my friend.”

Michael lay down near where Alex had collapsed, hands behind his head, looking up at the sky and seeming, to Alex, to be genuinely happy.

“For me, it’s the best part of the deal. I played football, you understand, and I wrestled and ran track. I always liked this stuff,” Michael said, sounding almost bashful. “And then when I came here, they taught me how to fight, and it all came together for me. I can push myself so much harder now, and those little machines clean it all up for me. Our ligaments don’t tear, Alex, our tendons don’t snap, and if they did, why, you’d be better in a couple of weeks. As long as you remember to give your body raw materials, you won’t ever overheat or have glucose problems. Plus, those machines enhance performance – they can carry oxygen, or remove dead cells, or form seals around injuries and subcutaneous bleeding. They can tailor nutrients and deliver them. They can even process lactic acid and reduce muscle cramping.”

“Wow,” Alex said, looking dreamily at the hand he held up between his eyes and the weak afternoon sun.

“Yes,” Michael agreed, standing up. “But they can’t do the work for you, Alex. Up and at them. We aren’t done here.”

“I start class tomorrow,” Alex said.

Michael looked surprised, then nodded.

“Was it like this, for you?” Alex asked, looking stricken, his fingers knotting with anxiety. “Were you this nervous when you started, Michael? Did it all feel this weird?”

“Yes,” Michael said seriously. “I think everyone feels that way.”

--

It took so much effort to get up off the bed, to walk across the room on his aching legs, that Alex gave serious consideration to the idea of ignoring the soft, insistent knock. He only didn’t because he was fairly sure that Vivik would stand there, knocking gently in patient intervals, until the door fell down. Because Michael had told him to keep an eye on Alex, no doubt.

Alex opened the door and then limped back to the bed, leaving the door behind him open and Vivik to make his own way in. He barely had the energy to keep his eyes open.

“You look terrible,” Vivik said, taking the chair at Alex’s writing desk. “They must be pushing you real hard.”

Alex nodded wearily.

“I’m almost happy that class is starting,” Alex said, “because that means only three days a week with Michael, instead of six. I think any more of this might actually kill me.”

“I doubt it,” Vivik said, grinning, “if you’re important enough for them to pull a Board member and department head away from his classes for three weeks so he can personally tutor you, I doubt very much that they would kill you and waste the investment. Or allow you to die at all, for that matter.”

“Well, that’s a comfort. Not to be a dick or anything, but,” Alex nodded painfully at his sprawled body, “since I’m in a lot of pain here, and was thinking pretty hard about bed, did you have anything you needed, Vivik?”

“What? Oh, no, nothing big,” Vivik hedged, toying nervously with a pen from Alex’s desk. “Are you worried at all, about tomorrow? I was pretty scared, my first day. And nobody knew who I was, or anything.”

“Wait a minute,” Alex said, attempting to sit up, and then abandoning the effort partway, when he realized that inclining his head was the most he was currently capable of. “Why would that be any different for me?”

“Well, as a matter of fact,” Vivik said, smiling nervously, “it seems that pretty much everyone knows that you are starting class tomorrow, Alex. Most of them heard about it a couple weeks ago, after you were evaluated and graded. That you spent the last three weeks in seclusion, training one-on-one with Michael just added to the mystique, I think.”

Alex groaned.

“It’s not so bad, Alex. A bunch of the girls want to meet you,” Vivik offered helpfully.

“Yeah?” Alex tried to make sure his voice sounded nonchalant, but he wasn’t sure how successful he was, based on Vivik’s sly smile. “Why would that be?”

“Please. You can’t be serious.” Vivik did a double-take. “Wait. Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” Alex said, nodding as best he could. “I don’t get it. Whatever it is.”

Vivik sat back in the chair and crossed his legs, looking very much like he was planning on staying. Alex was a little annoyed at this, but he’d realized a few days before that knowing Vivik meant putting up with his somewhat deficient respect for personal space, so he let it go.

“I heard about you the first time while you were still in the infirmary,” Vivik said, clearly relishing the opportunity to tell the story. Alex got the distinct feeling that Vivik didn’t get the chance to talk to people much. “Some guys were saying that they’d found you in L.A. somewhere, that Mitsuru brought you back after a big fight with the Weir. They also said that you were some sort of anomaly, an M-class, and that you were capable of some kind of unique protocol, something that no one had been able to do before – and that all the cartels were interested in you. And that you were going to be in our class.”

Alex perked up a bit, despite himself. It couldn’t hurt to know a bit more about what he was getting into.

“Of course, they also said you were big and tough and cool-looking,” Vivik said, smirking. “So they got that part wrong. But things had been quiet around here for a while, and when things get quiet, people start to tell stories. I figured that this was more of the same, and that you’d show up in class eventually and turn out to be just like everyone else here. But when I walked into the cafeteria that morning, Alex, half the empaths and Anastasia had rushed back home!”

Vivik paused for reaction, and then shook his head when Alex continued to stare blankly.

“God, you still don’t know anything? What is Michael teaching you, anyway?”

“How to hit stuff.”

“Great. That should come in handy when you run out of things to say,” Vivik said, rolling his eyes. “They were the important people, Alex, the whole future leadership of the various cartels. They’d been brought back home in a hurry, to get instructions – instructions about you.”

“Am I in some kind of danger?” Alex asked, puzzled.

Vivik gave Alex a pitying look.

“Only of being wined and dined,” Vivik said with a hint of scorn. “They don’t want to hurt you, Alex, they want to recruit you. They brought back all those kids because they knew they would be your classmates, and therefore the people who would have the most contact with you, and the most likely to be your friends.”

“That’s kind of creepy,” Alex observed, stretching out a yawn in the hopes it would serve as a polite suggestion.

“You should get used to it,” Vivik said sternly. “Because it’s going to be that way until you give in and join one of them. Then everything is reversed.”

“Wait, what?”

Vivik sighed and stood up.

“Everyone will love you as long as you are a free agent. As long as you stay undecided, everyone in Central will fall all over themselves to help you out. So you had better be prepared for that,” Vivik admonished. “But you need to be ready for what happens after you commit. Because as desperate as the cartels are to get their hands on you, Alex, they will be even more desperate to make sure that no one else does. You need to be ready for it, because it’s going to be weird. At first everyone will be your ally, your confidant, your friend and potential lover, but you won’t be able to trust any of them. And then one day, inevitably, the tables will turn on you, and then suddenly all of these people who have cared for you and been close to you, well, they will turn on you. I see things, Alex. I’m a remote viewer. Does that make any sense?”

Vivik waited for a response, but Alex said nothing, his eyes hidden behind his folded hands. After a moment, Vivik stood up, pushed the chair in quietly, shook his head at the sleeping boy, and left the room, closing the door silently behind him.

“You seem disappointed,”
Vivik observed, leading him along a cement path through spindly birch trees, a small creek gurgling beside the walkway.

Alex blinked uncomfortably as the sun broke the through the leaves. It was bright out, and no one had thought to grab his sunglasses from the trailer. Alex walked with his hands balled up in his pockets, shoulders hunched in the unfamiliar blazer. The uniform still felt weird to him, even if everyone around him was wearing a variation on it.

“I was hoping the skirts would be shorter,” Alex mumbled, staring at a group of teenage girls sitting by the creek side. The wind carried the muffled sounds of their conversation and fragments of their laughter.

“You watch too much anime,” Vivik grinned at him. “I think all uniform skirts are around the knee, no matter where you go. I did the British boarding school thing for a while, you know. Much worse. All guys.”

Despite the sun, Alex was enjoying the walk. The campus was beautiful, and the Indian kid was friendly, something that Alex was still trying to adjust to. Michael had told him that his record had been wiped completely when he was admitted to the Academy – a fresh start, as he had put it. He’d even offered Alex the opportunity to change his name, and he entertained the thought briefly, but couldn’t see learning to respond to something else. Michael had warned him that the wipe wasn’t absolute, that if someone had the time, inclination and resources that they could dig it up – but he’d also assured him that no one would care.

That had seemed to be true, at least so far. Vivik hadn’t asked him any questions at all about his past. Rebecca had asked a few questions here and there, but she was the school councilor or something, so that was only natural. Anyway, Alex had to admit that Rebecca was almost impossible not to trust by her very nature, empathy be damned. Alex even felt like maybe Michael was someone he could trust a bit, that he was probably even learning to like. Alex smiled to himself. So that was three, already. Three potential friends. Three times the number that he’d had before… or, wait, did that make sense? If he’d had no friends before, then…

Alex was so caught up thinking about this that he didn’t notice Vivik’s friendly chatter, pointing out interesting sites along their walk, and he didn’t notice when it stopped, either. Or that he was abruptly walking alone, Vivik having stopped in his tracks several feet back, with the rest of the people who were paying attention to what was going on around them. He didn’t even see Mitsuru until he’d practically walked into her.