“Vibe?” His blue eyes went wide then sharpened. “I thought you were taking her?”
“Nah. I’m leaving. Today.”
“You’re what?”
I shrugged. “No point in waiting for them to kick me out, is there?”
“Do you always have to do everything on your own terms?”
“Fuck yes. We can’t all grow up rich.”
“You think my life is so great.” Paladin shook his head. “You of all people should know better than to blindly believe what you hear.”
“Unless you spent your sixth birthday dreaming about your mom bleeding all over the kitchen floor, I don’t want to hear how fucking tough your life has been.”
“Fine. Whatever. Goodbye and good riddance. But why ask me to take Kayleigh to the dance?”
“So she’s not alone? Jesus, did they forget to program in compassion when they were upgrading your firmware?”
Honest truth; I didn’t know exactly what firmware was back then.
“I meant why me?”
Every time I shrugged, my too-big suit jacket flapped open. I made a mental note to be aware of that fact when I passed through the Hole’s security. Legion’s gun might not show up on scanners, but it was plenty visible to the human eye. “She thinks you’re cute,” I said absently. “I guess some idiots still have a thing for vid star looks and muscles. Also…”
“Also?”
I frowned. “You’re never drunk, and outside of last night’s truly awesome exception—” He started to say something, but I talked right over him. “—you’re never out of control. Maybe that’ll help mitigate the whole Empath thing… maybe it won’t… but I know one thing for sure.”
“And what’s that?”
“You’ll be a gentleman. Only dance of the year… I’d say Kayleigh deserves that.”
There was a long silence as Paladin just stared at me. Finally, he shook his head. “I don’t get you at all.”
“If you did, I’d be worried. So you’ll do it?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” I left him there with a confused look on his face.
Goodbye, Paladin. Turns out you weren’t my arch-nemesis after all.
Too bad. We could’ve had some epic wars.
•—•—•
Still fifty minutes left, even after that little conversation. Plenty of time, really, but not so much that I could afford additional distractions.
Like Silt waiting for me in the common room, for instance.
For the third time in as many months, that room was almost empty. Nobody but Silt, and with the vid screen off, it was the quietest it had ever been.
Guess that’s how she’d overheard my conversation with Paladin.
“What’re you doing, Skeletor?” Her muscular arms were folded across her broad chest, and she stood like a small boulder, directly in my path.
“What I can to make sure Kayleigh has a good time at the dance. Paladin’s self-control might help with Vibe’s Empath—”
“Kayleigh’s been in control of her power for almost two months now, you dumbass!”
“She… what?”
“Did you think you were the only one learning to control their power? That’s what being a first-year is about!”
“But…” I frowned. “Then why did she ask me to the dance?”
“I guess it doesn’t matter.” She looked me up and down and shook her head. “You never had any intention of going with her, did you?”
“I can’t.” I met Silt’s angry gaze. “I’ve got unfinished business elsewhere, Sofia.”
She blinked, recognizing the phrasing. “And it couldn’t wait until after the dance?”
“It can’t even wait until the last day of the Graduation Games,” I told her. “There’s a shuttle leaving Los Angeles in less than an hour, and I need to be on it.”
Her frown deepened. “Damian… today is the last day.”
“No it isn’t. The fight at The Liquid Hero was last night, so this—”
She was shaking her head. “There were so many injured that the Healers kept you all asleep until you could be treated. It’s been more than a day.”
Details I’d been ignoring started to seep in. Paladin’s odd comment: It’s been a rough few days. The look he’d given me when I said his punch had happened just last night. Even the unusually loud Graduation Games crowd.
It was the final day of competition. Day seven, not day six.
I’d missed my shuttle by almost twenty-three hours.
I was completely fucked.
•—•—•
I stood there for almost a minute, my thoughts running wild. Assuming President Weatherly’s so-called Reconciliation Day became an annual thing, I’d have another shot at seeing my dad the following year, but only if I found a job or some form of income. Maybe I could swallow my pride long enough to beg some cash from one of the well-off first years—Kayleigh, Evelyn, or even Matthew—but even then…
I stopped as a thought hit me.
“Sofia, where’s Wormhole?”
“In our room, last I checked. She made it back from the med ward a few hours ago. Why?”
“Because I need her help.”
CHAPTER 66
After almost a year, I still knew nothing about Wormhole’s power. The only time I’d seen her use it was in Control class, popping back and forth from one end of the narrow mat to the other. If that was the full extent of her capabilities, I remained totally fucked; it would take at least a million two-foot hops to reach the Hole, and I’d be crazy or dead of old age long before we got there.
But if that was all she could do, Evelyn would never make second-year, and from what I’d heard, her future at the Academy had never been in doubt. And she’d once told Silt she might be able to teleport her to Texas by graduation. My geography was pretty damn shaky for anything east of the Free States, but I knew Texas was a hell of a lot further away than the Hole.
As for why she’d help me, and how much I’d have to tell her first… well, I had almost sixty steps to figure all that out before we reached her room.
•—•—•
Evelyn was on her bed in Academy greys, browsing her Glass when Silt and I marched inside. I watched her face transition from welcome—when Sofia appeared—to suspicion—when I followed—to something approaching alarm as we crossed to her side of the room.
“Sofia? What’s he doing here?”
“Given that he just realized that the brawl fucked up his escape plan, and that whatever ride he’d arranged left almost twenty-four hours ago…” Silt shrugged. “I’m guessing he’s here about your power. Just don’t expect him to tell you any of the details. Turns out Boneboy’s not big on trust.”
I winced. Maybe it was a good thing my trip to the Hole was going to be one-way. I seemed to be burning bridges behind me everywhere I went.
“Escape plan?” Evelyn looked confused, then horrified. “You were going to leave the Academy yesterday? What about the dance?”
“If I never fucking hear about the fucking dance again…” I cut myself off in mid-tirade. “The dance is fine. I just won’t be here for it.”
“But Kayleigh…”
“Is going to learn shortly that she’s been set up on a date with Matthew Strich,” interjected Silt, “courtesy of Skeletor himself.”
“What?!?”
“That’s beside the point,” I said, shooting Sofia a glare. I’d done what I could to make the dance better for Vibe. What the fuck did she want from me?
“Right.” Wormhole folded her arms across her chest in an eerie reproduction of Silt’s usual gesture. “Because all that matters is what you care about. You’re leaving, and you want me to help you get wherever you’re going.”
I swallowed. “Yeah.”
“And why exactly would I do that?”
Turned out sixty steps hadn’t been nearly enough.
“I don’t know.”
“Fucking hell, Boneboy. That’s your sales p
itch?”
“Until ten minutes ago, I was taking a shuttle. This wasn’t part of the plan!” I turned back to Evelyn. “I don’t have any carefully thought-out arguments to convince you with. I don’t even know if you can help me, but the only other person I could ask is Caleb and he—”
“Hates you,” chimed both women.
“—can’t fly while carrying anything bigger than his own ego,” I finished. “But I’m not going to beg…” I paused. “Unless you think that will make a difference?”
“Where do you need to go?”
“Seriously? You’ll take me?”
She put her Glass aside and gave me a slow nod. “I won’t lie… I’m very okay with the thought of you not being here anymore.”
“Evelyn!” For someone still pissed at me, Silt was weirdly quick to come to my defense.
“He’s your friend, Sofia, not mine.”
Maybe that should’ve hurt, but even after all these months, I didn’t feel very close to Wormhole either. Having friends in common is a long way from actually being friends.
The Teleporter looked back to me. “Where do you want me to take you? It does matter.”
This was the moment I’d been dreading. I looked to the still-open dorm room door and lowered my voice. “The Hole.”
“The Hole? Why the fuck would you—” Silt turned to me, confusion vanishing from her broad face to be replaced by… something else. “Remembrance Day?”
“Or Reconciliation Day, as President Weatherly’s calling it. Yeah.”
“Your father?”
I nodded sharply, trying not to show the anger that rose up even at his mention. “Haven’t spoken to him in almost fourteen years. I’ve got some fucking questions.”
“Shit, Damian. I’m sorry.”
I didn’t know what she was apologizing for, but it didn’t matter, because Evelyn was already shaking her head.
“I can’t take you to the Hole.”
“Why not?”
“I can only teleport to places I’ve been. I’ve never been there.”
“But… you told Silt you’d take her to Texas.”
“After graduation, and I said I’d try. We don’t know if this is one more limitation baked into my power or if it’s just some sort of mental block. Either way, I can’t help you. Not yet, anyway.” She hesitated and then added, almost as an afterthought. “I’m sorry.”
There were no second-year Teleporters—third-years either, for that matter—but I was pretty sure there was a Flyboy or two. Maybe I could track one of them down and… convince them to fly a perfect stranger with a shit reputation all the way out to Black Hat prison…
Yeah, that plan had success written all over it.
“Fuck.”
“Hold on a second.” Silt had her own Glass out and was tapping its screen, a look of concentration on her face. “You and your family came from Flagstaff, didn’t you, Evie?”
“Yeah, when I was a kid. That was the longest week and a half of my life. Until this year’s exams, anyway. I swear the highway was more rubble than road. Why?”
“Because it looks like there’s a little town along what’s left of I-40 called Ludlow that you must’ve come through. It’s only forty-five miles from the Hole.”
For just a moment, I let myself feel optimistic. Then reality seeped in.
“Forty-five miles through the desert, Sofia. I’m not sure I could even survive that trip. I sure as hell couldn’t do it in a day.”
“Then it’s a good thing you won’t have to.” With a broad smile, Silt spun her Glass around and showed me what she’d found.
It was the route for the shuttle from Los Angeles. It would be making a brief pit stop in Ludlow the next morning.
“I could kiss you right now,” I told her.
“I’ll pass, not that you don’t look nice in your suit and all.” The smile morphed into the grin I was used to. “And freshly showered and blood-free, for once. What a catch!”
We both turned to Evelyn. This time, she was nodding.
“Ludlow. Yeah, I think I can do that. But it’s going to have to be soon, and I’ll need to come right back.”
I didn’t have a problem with either part of that, but curiosity pushed me to ask. “How come?”
“Because the dance is only thirty hours away, and with a jump that far, I’ll need every minute of it to—” She broke off with a blush, then shrugged. “You’ll see, soon enough.”
•—•—•
After that, things went quickly. Wormhole procured a water bottle from the depths of her over-stuffed closet, pulled out a pair of oversized pink sneakers that clashed horribly with her Academy greys, and excused herself for a trip to the restroom.
At first, neither Silt nor I spoke. I glanced around the dorm room she and Evelyn shared, learning more about them both in that minute than I had all year. Wormhole’s side of the room was pink. All of it, from the sheets and comforter she’d brought from home to replace the Academy bedding, to the flower paintings she had framed and hanging above her bed. Silt’s side of the room was almost shockingly stark by comparison. The only wall decoration was a black and white brush painting.
“What’s that?”
She glanced at the painting and then away. “The Rio Grande. Only thing between Brownsville and what used to be Mexico.”
I squinted. “Are there people in the water?”
“Yeah.” Her voice was quiet. “You’re not coming back, are you?”
“So they can kick me out? Why bother?”
“Were you even listening when Kayleigh and I said we’d figure out a way—?”
“To keep me here? The fact that anyone would even bother to try means a lot, but if I’m not part of the Cape program, I have to pay tuition, and I have no money.”
“How much money is no money?”
I gritted my teeth. “Six dollars and thirty-nine cents.” And I’d stolen all but a dollar of that from the slushy store’s cash register back in the day. “You think I wear Academy greys all the time by choice?”
“But…” she nodded to my suit.
“A hand-me-down from Jeremiah, in exchange for teaching him how to fight. Didn’t realize at the time it would come back and bite me in the ass.” I shrugged. “Anyway, no money means no tuition, and no tuition means I can’t be a student here, regardless of what anyone does.”
“Do they not teach Bakersfield kids about scholarships? You could—”
I almost let myself consider it, the possibility of a few more years at the Academy. Not as a Cape, sure, but still in the general vicinity of the handful of people I privately called friends. Then I remembered that this whole conversation was just a smokescreen. In less than a day, I’d be dead or taking my father’s place in the Hole, and all the scholarships in the world wouldn’t change that.
I forced myself to look amused and shook my head. “I’ve had tutoring every weekend since I got here, and I still think I failed my exams. Does that sound like scholarship material to you?”
Some truths are more evident than others. She blinked and looked away, broad shoulders sagging. “So this is it then.”
“Yeah.” I swallowed past the sudden lump in my throat. No tears—still no fucking tears—but something inside of me squeezed down like it was caught in a vise. “I guess so. Sorry I won’t be around to help in Brownsville. Thanks for everything, Sofia Black.”
“You’re a shitty friend, Damian Banach,” she retorted, wiping her own eyes, “but you are my friend. Take care of yourself.”
“I’ll try. Tell Debbie that if she doesn’t treat you right, I might just come back and sweep you off your feet.”
Silt snorted, but before things could get even more maudlin, Evelyn returned.
The Teleporter had pulled her dark hair back into a bun, and her face was scrubbed clean, but the first thing I noticed was that she’d changed into a fresh set of Academy greys… a set that could have easily fit the Viking. On someone as small as Evelyn, it was a
ludicrous amount of extra fabric.
“What the hell?”
She scooped up her water bottle, dropped it into a messenger bag, and swung that bag over one shoulder, extending her other hand to me. “You’ll see, soon enough. Shall we?”
I nodded and took her hand. It wasn’t as soft as Olympia’s, but in my limited experience, nothing was.
“You’re sure you can do this, Evie?” asked Silt.
“Yeah. I don’t even remember the town, but my power sees Ludlow just fine. It’s not going to be fun, but I can do it. See you in a bit, roomie.”
And just like that, the world faded around us.
CHAPTER 67
Every Power is different. That’s what the Academy says about us, and as far as I can tell, it’s true. Two Weather Witches of the same rank will interact with the world in different ways, with different strengths, limitations, and even methodologies. Flyboys all fly, of course, but some do so by pushing against the earth, some do so by nullifying gravity’s effect, and some, like Rocket, just do it through a combination of forward propulsion and vast quantities of speed.
So I can’t tell you what teleportation is like. I can only tell you what teleporting with Wormhole was like.
It sucked.
Imagine a pit where no light has ever penetrated, where the very concept of light has never even existed. Strip away oxygen, strip away form and shape and weight and sound and every other sense you’ve taken for granted all your life. Then, make it really fucking cold, because heat, like light, is just an illusion from another world.
Finally, give time a kick in the ass right out the door. I don’t know how long we were there, in that place. In the real world, only a few seconds passed, if that, but in that dark pit, it felt like days, or even years. When I realized I couldn’t breathe, I started grasping for my power. Was still grasping for it, months later, before I’d even started to exhale.
And then we were through, out into a desert sun that seemed impossibly bright, dry arid soil rough against one of my palms, and Wormhole’s hand feeling grossly distorted in the other.
“Shit. There’s no way in hell I’m going to be able to get Silt to Texas in one hop.” Even Evelyn’s voice seemed different after that long silence. Usually borderline melodic—though I’d never tell her so—now it was almost as rough as Her Majesty’s.
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