SHARD: Book One of The Shard Trilogy (A YA Sci-fi Teens with Powers Series)

by A. M. Pierre

  Dice shook his head sadly. “That is downright tragic. Three and a half hours in an empty room and your brain’s already turning to mush.” He grinned as he set his backpack on the floor and unzipped the front pocket. “You wanna try and speed that process along?”

  Connor smiled in spite of himself and propped himself up on his elbows to get a better look. “What have you made this time?”

  “Oh, nothing much. Only . . . THIS!” Dice pulled out what looked like a thick pair of wraparound sunglasses. A maze of circuitry and wires wound over everything, even the wearer’s field of vision. Two small circular disks hung down from the arms of the glasses, one from each side, where they would dangle right next to the person’s ears. “Isn’t it cool?”

  “If by cool, you mean ‘bizarre and without any function I can see,’ then yes.”

  “That’s only because you haven’t seen it in action. Watch and learn, grasshopper.”

  “Grasshopper?”

  Without another word, Dice plopped the ungainly contraption on Connor’s face. “Great,” Connor said. “Now I look like a freak and I’m blind.”

  “Give me a second, will ya?”

  “Seriously, Dice, this better do something soon because otherwise—whoa!” The two opaque lenses in front of his eyes had exploded with color, creating a three-dimensional world stretching as far as he could see. Waves of blue-green grass rippled across rolling plains. A nearby stream gurgled and splashed and created miniature waterfalls. Snow-capped mountains loomed in the distance, their peaks stabbing into a clear blue sky, and a flock of birds flew in formation overhead. It all looked so real that Connor was tempted to try to touch the grass beneath his feet. He turned to look in every direction, and the world tracked perfectly with him. He took a step in place, and the world responded, moving him a step forward. “This is amazing,” Connor murmured.

  “What, that? That’s nothing. A screensaver I made to pop up between games. Once I get plugged in, I’ll show you what these babies can really do. I’ve just never felt the commercial VR headsets had enough ‘pop’—not to mention my frustration with the requirements of controller-based motion and my own lack of confidence in their solutions to the vergence-accommodation conflict.”

  “The what now?”

  “The . . . never mind. What matters is the others don’t let me do this.”

  There was a slight pop like a sudden shift in air pressure to Connor’s left—a samurai warrior in full kit had appeared next to him. That would have been unusual enough, but this particular samurai had neon lights in a dozen colors trimming every edge of his armor and a sword made of fire to boot. Connor had only one response. “What on earth is that?”

  “My avatar.” The neon samurai posed proudly, both hands on his hips.

  “I know it’s your avatar. What have you done to it?”

  “Made it cool, obviously.” The samurai nodded towards Connor. “Check yours out.”

  Connor looked down to see a long Victorian-style jacket over blue pants, a ridiculously ugly plaid vest, and a giant floppy red bow instead of a tie. The icing on the cake was a multi-colored striped scarf that wrapped around his neck but was long enough to reach the floor on both ends. “You’ve dressed me as The Doctor, you git!”

  “Doctor who?”

  “I swear, Dice, if you don’t change this in the next five seconds—”

  “Oh, relax. You never could take a joke.” The ugly clothes flickered away and reappeared as a plain white t-shirt and jeans. “Happy now, my oh-so boring friend?” Dice clucked his tongue in disapproval. “No sense of style. No flair. No panache.”

  “No patience. You were saying something about a game?”

  The samurai clicked his glowing yellow and purple fingers, and they were suddenly standing on a tower high above a labyrinth of stone which wound across an area the size of several football pitches. Inside the maze were hundreds of glowing orbs hovering in lines down the middle of each corridor, with a few larger, brighter orbs positioned at the far corners of the maze. Floating along the winding paths were four spherical objects of different colors, each with large blinking eyes like those of a cartoon character. It all seemed so familiar somehow. Wait a minute . . . “Is this that old game—what was it called—Pac-Man? It is! You’ve made a massive life-size virtual Pac-Man!” Connor couldn’t help grinning. “That is brilliant.”

  “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. This is, in point of fact, Cap-Man. Ta-dah!”

  Connor turned to see the samurai’s neon lights had all shifted color to a brilliant yellow and that, instead of a helmet, he now wore a giant baseball cap. The cap, also trimmed in yellow neon, had an over-sized trout and the words “I’d rather be fishing” embroidered on it.

  “Cap-Man, you see, has to pick up all the energy orbs while avoiding the bad guys who want to steal his cap.” Dice pointed out the four floating blobs. “I even gave them names: Blicky, Icky, Picky, and Cliff.”

  “Okay. Just one thing,” Connor said, “why on earth would they want to steal that cap?”

  The samurai tilted his head slightly, managing to look puzzled even though his face was hidden. “Who wouldn’t want a cap as awesome as this?”

  “Forget I asked.” Connor looked over the huge stone maze. Running in place like a crazy person and not thinking about anything besides beating a glowing samurai fisherman? Connor smiled. Sounds like exactly what I need.

  An hour later, they both were sitting on the floor—a floor which was, thankfully, covered with a soft rug instead of the lava flows they saw through their headgear—and both were soaked with sweat and breathing hard. “You really outdid yourself this time, Dice.”

  “Which game was your favorite?”

  “Dodging giant falling buildings in Metris was fun, but I liked fighting the massive dogs in Petroid better.” Connor felt around the glasses. “How do I turn it off or get out or whatever?”

  “You take the glasses off, duh.”

  “But I thought you had to disconnect in some special way or your mind would get trapped in the virtual world.”

  Connor couldn’t see the samurai’s lips, but he heard him blow a raspberry. “Only in the movies,” Dice said. “In real life, you just pull off the glasses, look around, and say, ‘Whoa, that looks different.’”

  Connor pulled the contraption off his head. The booby-trapped lava fields disappeared to be replaced by his very ordinary room. “Whoa. That looks different.”

  “Told ya.”

  “Thanks, Dice, that was great. Really, I mean it. And not just because now I won’t have to risk running into Kaia in the gym this evening.”

  “Speaking of Kaia, what exactly happened with her this morning?”

  Connor frowned. “Why can’t we play our games and hang out like two normal blokes? Why do you have to bring her into it?”

  “I knew you weren’t going to talk about it if I didn’t say something.”

  “Yes, and there’s a very good reason why. It’s because,” Connor said, enunciating each word clearly, “I don’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Dice, I really don’t understand why this is such a difficult concept. ‘A guy who doesn’t want to talk about his feelings’ isn’t exactly news-worthy. Can we please drop it?”

  “You always do this, you know.”

  “What? Try to make friends and get shot down almost immediately? Refuse to discuss deep personal feelings when I’d rather be playing video games? Yes on both counts.”

  “That’s not what I meant. You always seem to—”

  “Am I interrupting something?” Ms. Smith’s voice blared from the speaker on the wall.

  “No, ma’am,” Connor said. “Dice stopped by to talk about his feelings. He’s done, though.” Out of the corner of his eye, Connor saw Dice make a face at him.

  “I don’t recall saying you cou
ld have visitors, Mr. Rhys.”

  “With all due respect, ma’am,” Connor continued, “I don’t believe you specified one way or the other.”

  She paused. “You are correct, Mr. Rhys. I didn’t. Since you’re in there, Mr. Yamamoto, I might as well pass on this little update to the both of you. Having reviewed Ms. Davis’ stellar performance this morning—her slight aberrations with Mr. Rhys notwithstanding—I’ve concluded she’s ready for the next phase of training.”

  “Already?” Dice interrupted. “Usually it’s weeks before the noobs are approved for Phase Two.”

  “Very true, Mr. Yamamoto, but the data indicated Ms. Davis has a far stronger response than new recruits usually have. We ran a follow-up scan this afternoon which confirmed it—she is already able to detect her element with an unexpected proficiency. Given such obvious potential, we are fast-tracking her training. In short, Mr. Yamamoto, you will be in charge of teaching her basic element manipulation starting tomorrow morning.”

  The intercom clicked off. Dice was uncharacteristically quiet. Connor grinned. “I’d bring back-up if I were you.”

  Connor was reading a book in the rec room. It was nice and quiet for a change—Ezio’s team was doing last minute mission prep, Vladimir was probably in his room watching his beloved movies, Gabby was studying in the med center, Mikaël was doing . . . whatever Mikaël did, and Dice was training Kaia.

  Connor actually enjoyed reading, but he didn’t often get the chance. Living here was like having a bunch of brothers and sisters, most of whom had an uncanny knack for popping up at inopportune times. Not that he was complaining about the company. Not at all. He’d never say it out loud, but he’d grown rather fond of his flatmates. Of course, it didn’t mean he was overjoyed when they crashed into his quiet time when he’d been there less than ten minutes.

  Dice crashed on the sofa opposite him, clearly wanting to vent about something. Connor sighed and set down his book. Six minutes. “So, how’d training go? Wait, what happened to your face?” Connor said, catching sight of several scratches and scrapes.

  Dice rolled up his sleeves and held his arms up in front of him. “Not just my face.”

  “Kaia did all that? Surely it wasn’t on purpose.”

  “No, of course not. Doesn’t change the fact it happened, though. She’s got raw skills, that’s for sure. We started with some basic exercises—moving bottles and handfuls of sand—but she was doing so well I thought I would try something bigger. Next thing I know, she starts talking about hearing someone singing, and we’re dodging the Flying Sand Cloud of Doom. It’s pretty simple—she got going on an elemental adrenaline high and lost control. Fortunately, I was able to yell her out of it and, while slightly flayed, none of us were seriously injured.” Dice winced as if he’d said something wrong.

  Which he had. “‘None of us?’” There was a definite hint of glee in Connor’s voice. “Who else was in there with you?”

  Dice refused to look at him. “Vlad and Mikey. I thought they might want to see our newest operative in action.”

  “Really? Sure it wasn’t ’cos you wanted . . . back-up?”

  “Whatever, yes, I thought it couldn’t hurt. And it didn’t—hurt, that is. Didn’t help, either, but I guess that’s beside the point.”

  Connor leaned back on the couch, a smug look on his face. “She didn’t try to claw your metaphorical eyes out or anything?”

  “No.” Dice had a smug look of his own. “She was perfectly nice to us. Apparently, it’s only you she can’t stand.”

  “Nice. So if she didn’t verbally eviscerate you and the battle wounds were an accident, what are you upset about?”

  Dice massaged his temples. “One of her early blasts took out the cameras, and, to make matters worse, she shredded the hard drives storing the visual data, too. Fortunately—or not, depending how you look at it—the audio recorders and hard drives survived.”

  “You record the audio and video separately? Why?”

  Dice raised one eyebrow. “Given what just happened, I think the answer would be self-explanatory. The bad thing is, Ms. Smith wasn’t watching the live feeds, so now I have to go over a transcript of the whole debacle with her.”

  “Ah.” Connor grimaced. “That is a bit of bother. When do you have to do that?”

  “I’m not sure, but I hope—” Dice tilted his head as if listening intently. “I’m being summoned, so right now, I guess.” He interlaced his fingers and set them on top of his head, leaning back to stare at the ceiling for a minute. After a couple of deep breaths, he jumped up off the couch and left the room at a trot. He gave Connor a cocky wave of his hand as he left.

  Connor waved back. At least Ms. Smith seemed to like Dice. More than she liked Connor, anyway. He sat there with his book closed on his lap, feeling fairly ashamed at how glad he was that his best friend was reporting to her and not him.

  * * *

  Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock. “It’s me, Gabriela.” Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock. “Kaia, are you in there?”

  Kaia cringed and pulled the covers over her head. Leave me alone. Let me feel guilty in peace.

  “Actually, I know you’re in there. The question should be ‘Why aren’t you answering?’ Are you sick? Vladimir, I think you should break the door down.”

  “I’m here! I’m fine! Stop—please don’t break anything!” Kaia lunged at the door handle, half-tripping over the bed sheets that had wrapped themselves around her legs. She threw open the door . . . and saw Gabriela standing all by herself in the hallway. “You—you tricked me!”

  “Yep, sure did. And now we’ve proven you’re not at death’s door, so you can come to dinner. We’re all waiting on you. Well, not everyone, exactly, since Ezio and Alizée have already left, but everyone who’s currently here right now is waiting on you. Not that I mean they’re, like, in there stomping their feet and mad at you because they’re all hungry and can’t eat until you get there. Well, they are all hungry and they really can’t eat until you get there, but there’s no foot stomping involved. They are calmly and hungrily waiting for you. I’m sure you’re hungry, too, though you don’t look all that calm. Did I mention we’re having pizza? It’s a Friday night tradition. Not in France. Just here. I mean, I’m sure there are French people who eat pizza on Fridays, but I don’t think it’s ever been established as the ‘thing to do’ on a national level.”

  A second passed before Kaia was sure she was clear to talk. “I’m sorry, please tell everyone to go ahead without me. I don’t feel like eating.”

  Gabriela grabbed Kaia’s hand and pulled her down the hall anyway. “Of course you do. After using your abilities so much, I know you could eat a horse. Or at least a pizza shaped like a horse.”

  Kaia jerked free from her grasp. “It’s not that I’m not hungry—I am. I don’t feel like eating with everyone.”

  “What? Because of your little power hiccup this morning? Please, that’s nothing. We’ve had far worse. Trust me, no one would hold a grudge because of that.”

  Kaia gave her a sideways glance. “Really?”

  “I promise. It’s not like I would lie to you and tell you everyone’s fine when in fact they’re all really angry and waiting to throw mashed potatoes at you—although that would make a very effective practical joke. Effective, not funny. Why do people think practical jokes are funny, anyway? It’s only a practical joke if you do it to someone you like, right? If you did it to someone you hated, it’d be a vicious prank or revenge or something. So why would you do something mean to someone you care about and then laugh at them?”

  “I don’t know, maybe it’s because—” Kaia shook her head, interrupting herself. “I mean, if you’re absolutely sure nobody’s mad at me, I guess I’ll go to dinner.”

  “They’re not mad. Though if we keep making them stare at pizza without being able to eat it, that might change.” />
  * * *

  “You know, they probably wouldn’t notice if I took one small slice. I’ll spread out the remaining slices in an equidistant manner so the loss of the one is no longer apparent.”

  Connor grinned. “It’s good to see you’re applying your intelligence to such worthwhile goals as nicking a slice of pizza, Dice, but keep it together for another minute or two and you can have all you want without resorting to petty deception.”

  “Hey, I resent that—it wasn’t petty, it was actually quite creative.”

  “Stow it, I can hear them coming.”

  As if on cue, Gabby strode in with a head-ducking, hair-twirling, necklace-yanking Kaia following behind her. “We’re here, everyone!”

  “Finally!” Dice grabbed a slice from each of the three pizzas closest to him and stacked them on his plate. “Itadakimasu!”

  “Not so fast,” Gabby said. “We have a little something we need to discuss first.”

  Dice threw his hands up. “You have got to be kidding me. Connor said we would all get to eat as soon as you two showed up. Those were his exact words—I heard him. Didn’t you hear him, Vlad? Mikey, you heard him, too, right? See, they’re nodding, because that’s what Connor said. I was promised pizza, and pizza I shall have.”

  “This will only take a second, I promise. Kaia has a question. I told her the answer, but she still wants to hear it from you guys.” Gabby moved to one side. “It’s okay, go ahead.”

  Kaia tilted her head so far forward her fringe hid her eyes. “Are you all mad at me?”

  Dice looked confused. “Let me get this straight—you’re worried about us being mad at you for keeping us from eating our pizza, so your solution is to ask us if we’re mad, thus making us wait even longer?”

  “No, that’s not what I meant.” Her head rose up, her eyes imploring. “I meant about earlier today. About what I did.” She gestured to the sticking plasters on Dice, Vladimir, and Mikaël’s arms. “You guys are covered in cuts and Band-Aids because of me. Because I couldn’t control myself.”