Authors: Zachary Rawlins
“Not long. We’ll teach you that soon. A couple of weeks, on the outside,” Rebecca said dismissively. “Don’t worry about it right now. You need to start with the fundamentals, and then learn the applications, you know? That’s what Michael is waiting out on the practice ground to show you.”
Alex looked down at himself oddly, then back up at Rebecca.
“So this is it, huh? I’m actually going to do this. Be an Operator, I mean.” Alex’s voice was filled with wonder and doubt. “I’m a little bit scared.”
“Don’t be.” Rebecca beamed at him, her brown eyes warm. “Trust me, Alex. You’re going to be more than fine. You’re going to be amazing. You are going to be better at this than you’ve ever been at anything.”
Alex stood up. Despite himself, he found that he was smiling.
“Thanks, Rebecca. I guess I’m ready. Where do I go?”
--
Alex was again awed by how huge the Academy was – he followed the map Rebecca had drawn through a number of green practice fields, a handful of low stone buildings, and one long stretch of what appeared to be rolling, forested hills. It took him a quarter hour to find Michael.
The gap cut crudely into the side of a hill had obviously been a quarry at some point in the past, though it looked to have been abandoned years before. Alex walked along the ridge on one side and then down a hand-carved path into a deep depression that narrowed by long, circular steps, with one narrow, uncut ridge rising in the center of the quarry, about half the height of the depression. Michael stood on the edge of that ridge.
The path so narrow that Alex didn’t feel comfortable walking up it. He didn’t think he’d actually fall off of it, but he felt as if he might, and it was a long way down to the still water at the bottom of the quarry. The rough-hewn walls of rock all around blocked out the sun, and it was quite cool. The pebbles that rolled away from Alex’s feet rang musically against the limestone ridge, falling eventually into the dark water below.
Michael stood at the edge of the ridge, his arms crossed, smiling companionably. Alex was grateful to find that the path widened out in front of him, and sat down with obvious relief on a large rock next to Michael.
“How’s it going, Alex?” Michael’s voice was hushed, but the sound still echoed within the old quarry. “How was your first day?”
“It isn’t over yet, so it’s too early to say,” Alex shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”
“Fair enough,” Michael agreed. “Let’s talk a bit about that altercation at the cafeteria. Did that work out the way you wanted?”
“What do you think? I mean, I knew something like that would happen eventually, with all the stories everyone has apparently heard about me. But, I didn’t want it to happen before I had a chance to talk with most of my classmates.”
“Uh huh.” Michael nodded and waited for him to continue.
“And yes, alright.” Alex waved his hands agitatedly. “I didn’t expect him to turn to stone. And that’s obviously going to be a problem, since he’s probably thinking about ways to kill me, right now. Unless,” he said hopefully, looking up at Michael, “you were planning on teach me how to fight a living statue today?”
Michael looked at Alex oddly for a moment, and then laughed.
“Not exactly what I had planned today, no. You have anything else you’d like to say about it?”
“Well, actually, I do,” Alex said softly. “Why did you pick Vivik to introduce me to everyone?”
“You don’t like Vivik?” Michael looked surprised.
“He’s a nice enough guy,” Alex allowed. “But that isn’t the point. He’s clearly the least popular kid in the class, not counting the two who apparently aren’t even human. So why pick someone that everybody already hates to introduce me to everyone? Are you trying to set me up for this shit? Or is this some kind of test?”
Michael looked at Alex for a long moment, and then had another laughing fit.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Michael wiped his eyes and composed himself. “It’s good that you’re thinking that way, Alex. A little paranoia will take you a long way at the Academy. But that’s a bit petty, for me. I like to think my plots are a bit more elegant.”
“So why Vivik, then?” Alex demanded.
“I thought you’d like Vivik.” Michael spread his hands innocently. “He’s a smart kid. He has some ideas you might find interesting. Plus, it had to be an orphan, right? Otherwise I really would have been setting you up.”
“Emily seems nice enough…” Alex said resentfully.
“I warned you about this, Alex.” Michael’s voice turned grim. “Emily is nice enough. I’ve been her teacher since she came to the Academy, and she’s a wonderful student and delightful person. She’s also an empath, Alex, and she was born into the Raleigh Cartel. They are one of the Hegemony’s oldest and most important cartels, as I’m sure you are aware. Did Rebecca tell you much about empaths?”
“She said that they tend to be in charge of things.” Alex kicked at the ground nervously. “Because people can’t help but like them.”
“That’s right. Even a moderately powerful empath is pretty much guaranteed to end up in leadership role in their cartel – empaths are rare, so there are more openings than empaths to fill them. Moreover, they’re inspirational and charming by nature, and like you said, pretty much impossible not to like. Born leaders, most of them.”
Michael reached absently for a pebble, and then tossed it out into the quarry, bouncing it off the rock face and down, into the water.
“Yes, empaths tend to rise to the top. Except for when they’re class-B empaths, that is. Like, say,” Michael rolled his eyes, “your new friend, Emily.”
“So? Doesn’t that make her even less of a threat?” Alex brushed his bangs nervously back from his eyes. He’d needed a haircut before he’d come to the Academy, and he hadn’t had time to ask about getting one, yet. “If she’s so weak, then I don’t see what the problem is.”
“Emily’s future, as a class-B empath in the Hegemony, is to be a housekeeper and plaything for some middling-important cartel functionary. Most empaths don’t have much in the way of combat potential, and she’s no good with the sciences – though she is an accomplished humanities student,” Michael added positively, “and she has excellent taste in literature. But good qualities aside, Emily has a long, mundane lifetime to look forward to. Keep in mind, too, that her father is an important man in the Raleigh cartel, and she’s been raised as part of the upper crust – a position, as an adult, that she cannot maintain without consenting to an arranged marriage.”
“That is,” Michael added slyly, tapping his forehead, “unless she figures out a way to become a much more powerful empath. The kind of empath who can’t help but rise to the top. What do you figure the best way to do that might be, Alex?”
Alex felt ill in the pit of his stomach. His interactions with Emily flashed before him in rapid sequence, as he reinterpreted them all, with newly suspicious eyes. She had seemed, in a vaguely haughty way, quite friendly. Could he really have misread her so badly?
“Keep in mind that doesn’t make her bad person, Alex,” Michael said gently, “or that she doesn’t have your interests in mind, too. Actually,” Michael added speculatively, “an empath might make a very good partner for you, down the road. Their abilities would be complementary…”
“I don’t want to talk about this stuff,” Alex said, troubled. He didn’t accept Michael’s interpretation – not wholeheartedly. But he didn’t like it, or the implications.
“Fair enough. Can I remind you to be careful, then, Alex? You’ve got to exercise restraint if you want to make it here. You have tremendous potential, son, but right now you can’t even defend yourself,” Michael said, straightening up and yawning. “Try and only pick the fights you can win, if you must pick fights.”
“That’s it? That’s the whole lecture?”
Michael grinned at him evilly.
“I already arranged for the consequences,” he said, shaking out his dreadlocks and then tying them back again. “You’ll know them when you see them. I guarantee you won’t be so cavalier about knocking people’s teeth out in the future. Particularly not when the Academy’s kindergarten class could probably take you in a fight.”
“Maybe we should do something about that,” Alex suggested. “Why are we in a quarry, anyway?”
“To limit damage to the surroundings. I think,” Michael said, his face lighting up, “that you’re going to like this part, Alex.”
--
Edward knocked politely before entering her office. Anastasia looked very small behind her mammoth desk, a laptop sitting open in front of her.
“The in the quarry is online,” he said quietly.
“Just in time,” she said, with obvious satisfaction. “This should be interesting. Edward, please tell the cook that I am ready for lunch.”
He closed the door so quietly on his way out that she didn’t even look up.
--
Alex stared at the crater in the quarry wall blankly. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then glanced over at Michael’s outstretched hand, blue smoke trailing from the palm, his fingers blackened from volatized carbon, and then looked back at the smoldering indent in the rock.
“Holy fucking shit,” Alex said breathlessly, turning back to face Michael with the biggest grin he’d ever seen on the kids face. “I mean, like, fuck! Man, just… wait. Wait, wait,” Alex said, rubbing his forehead, “so if you can do that, then…”
Michael let him trail off helplessly before he took pity on the obviously overwhelmed boy.
“Why am I not in the field?”
His expression was gentle, rather than was sad.
“Right,” Alex said, nodding. “I mean, can’t you just go blow those fucking werewolf things up or something?”
Michael laughed, but he tried to make sure that it didn’t sound unkind. He didn’t want Alex thinking that he was laughing at him – the kid had already proved to be sensitive, and Michael didn’t want to deal with him moping around for the next week because he’d taken an offhand comment personally.
“Good question, actually. Until you got to the ‘werewolf thing’ part, anyway. I can only do that once every so often, Alex,” Michael said, smiling and attempting to shrug off the ghost of past embarrassment at the fact. “Whether I knock over a matchstick or level a mountain, it takes me a long while to build it back up.”
“What,” Alex asked suspiciously, reaching down to finger one of the quartz fragments that had been scattered all around them by the force of explosion, “you mean like once a day or something?”
“I wish. It’ll be two or three days before I’ll be doing anything like that again,” Michael said, rubbing his hands against his pants to remove the soot. “So now do you understand what makes being M-Class so significant? You might not necessarily be able to wield as much raw power as me in a single instance, but you can do it over and over again.”
Alex tossed the sparkling piece of gravel in the air a couple of times, catching it midway down and then tossing it up again. He looked like he was thinking about things as he did so, so Michael let it be.
“That was telekinesis, huh?” Alex asked.
“I prefer psychokinesis,” Michael said, “but sure. Same thing. Moving things by force of will alone.”
“I still don’t understand how that’s related to, well,” Alex tossed the rock away and frowned, searching for words, “whatever it is that I can do.”
Michael had to think about it for a minute before he started, trying to couch it all in a way that Alex would be able to follow.
“I’m not going to ask you to understand it all. I don’t actually understand some of it all that well myself. But you don’t have to understand it all to make it work for you. There’s this guy, an Auditor here, his name’s Xia. He’s a pyrokine – basically, he can start fires by thinking about it, right? Well, for a long time, they thought that a telekine and pyrokine were two completely different things, so when we were going through the Academy, Xia and I barely even saw each other. These days, we’d be in all the same classes. Turns out what I do in my head, pushing against things, basically, isn’t so different from what Xia is doing when he starts fires. He’s just exciting the molecules within a flammable object until he gets them so energetic that they burst into flames. Same root concept applies to the protocol I just showed you.”