by Drew Hayes
Thomas spun on his heel and ran like hell.
* * *
“Now that, I was not expecting,” Nick admitted, his breathing still surprisingly even for the speed at which he was moving while hauling along a prisoner.
“He really did what it looked like, right? He just absorbed Thomas’s energy,” Camille said, unable to keep the shock from her voice. She’d thought knocking away Chad had been the game-changer they were hoping for, but this was on a whole other level. Energy absorbers were rare, but Vince was hardly one of a kind. Her own type of absorption was far less common than his, in fact. That said, his kind were almost always limited to certain types of energy, and natural kinds at that. For him to be able to absorb such a broad spectrum was one thing. For Vince to be able to absorb the crafted energy of another Super, that probably put Vince in the top tier of known Supers.
“He did it all right,” Nick said. “Now let’s just make sure everyone gets the implications.” He came to a stop before a female form lying on the ground. It fluttered its eyes open at his approach; clearly the seeming slumber had only been a facade meant to make her appear helpless.
“How are you feeling, Amber?”
A painful groan was all that met their ears - clearly either the shock or the fire had impacted her ability to speak - though Nick noticed she was moving the fingers on her left hand into a position to snap if needed.
“No need for that; we come in peace. In fact, I’m going to offer to make you feel a lot better. You see, this is going to be over pretty soon, and when it ends there are a lot of people who need healing. You’re in pain, but you’re far from critical, so who knows how long it will be until your turn comes up? If you do me a small favor, however, I’ll have Camille heal you right here and now. Poof, no more burned skin.”
Amber stared at him with hard eyes; however, she moved her fingers in twirling motion, indicating for him to continue.
“All I want is for you to amplify my voice. I have an announcement to make, and it’s going to take a lot to be heard over this ruckus.”
She continued staring at him, giving no indication of acceptance or rejection. Nick could see the wheels spinning in her head, trying to figure out if this was some trick.
“We’ve only got around thirty seconds left, and if you think me yelling is going to do anything that Vince’s rampage hasn’t then you give me far more credit than even my impressive ego thinks I deserve,” he told her.
Finally Amber nodded her agreement. The nerves on her shoulder were too damaged to feel the light touch of Camille’s finger, but she immediately noticed the sense of relief as her pain began to wither into nothingness. Nick allowed her to be almost entirely patched up before motioning he was ready to begin.
He took a deep breath and surveyed the landscape one last time. His friends, still battling fiercely as time ran low, the scent of burning foliage that had become thick through the arena, the familiar sounds of combat, even as the point of it all became increasingly obscured. This was a madhouse, a place of carnage and insanity and utter disconnection from the real world. He’d loved it here.
“HEY, YOU FUCKING SUITS WATCHING THE SHOW!” Nick yelled, his already-hollered words blasting through the arena with incredible clarity. Amber definitely lived up to her side of the bargain, no question about that. He adjusted his tone slightly to allow for variation. “This is Nicholas Campbell. The silver-haired demon I've mind-controlled into beating the shit out of everyone who gets near him is Vince Reynolds. Former Powered. Adopted son of the villain Globe. Ass-kicking machine. My best friend.”
The last words Nick said more to himself than his audience, although Amber’s power carried them just the same. A brief chime sounded as the beam centered on the depository turned back to red. The window was closed. The match was over.
“You all just watched him knock back several top ranks, including Chad Taylor, our current king of the combat mountain. So I just wanted to ask you a quick question, while I had the opportunity.” Nick filled his lungs and raised his voice for one last bit of his speech. “WHO’S MIDDLE OF THE PACK NOW, MOTHER FUCKERS?!”
188.
“If I didn’t know better I would swear your real ability is creating giant shitstorms,” Dean Blaine said as he walked in the door. He was worn and weary; the last few hours had taken a toll equivalent to several days’ worth of work. Professor Pendleton was hot on his heels, shutting the door behind them as they entered. To his credit, Nick sat calmly at the table where he’d been restrained since the climax of the match.
It had been about three hours since the incident that had left a large chunk of the arena smoldering and many of the sophomores bound for the infirmary. Dean Blaine had done his best to handle the fires, both literal and metaphorical; however, the surprisingly nonplussed young man sitting in front of him was still the biggest issue to deal with.
“I don’t think I need to tell you why you’re here,” Dean Blaine continued, taking a seat across from Nick. Professor Pendleton chose to remain standing. “However, for the sake of procedure, I’m obligated to do so anyway.” He produced a small device from his pocket and clicked a button near the top. A red LED light flickered on immediately. Nick had seen enough recording devices to recognize them with ease. This one hadn’t been concealed at all, and he had no doubt there were a few scattered around this concrete room purposely placed out of sight.
“Nicholas Campbell, you have been accused of threatening the life of Rich Weaver, using improper force on a clone of Julia Shaw without confirming whether it was the real student, and overtaking Vince Reynolds’ brain then making him use dangerous levels of force on his fellow classmates,” Dean Blaine recited. “Do you understand the charges that have been leveled at you?”
Nick spoke at last, the first words he’d uttered since his amplified monologue on the battle field. “Not only do I understand them, I confess to all of them.”
Dean Blaine resisted the urge to show any outward signs of surprise. “Are you sure you want to do that?”
“Positive,” Nick replied. “I told Rich I’d cut his throat with the broken plastic shard from my sunglasses. You can check my coat pocket if you don’t believe that I’ve got it. I whacked Julia in the cranium with enough power to do serious brain damage if it hadn’t been a clone. I might have even killed her. As for Vince... well, I think my confession there has already been witnessed by plenty of people. Still, for the sake of record, I admit to forcing Rich to place Vince in a delusion where he believed he was fighting inhuman beasts to protect someone innocent. Vince is no more accountable than any other victim of mind or body control; any crimes he committed are considered to be mine under the precedent set forth in The State versus Magical Mind Master. If you need to check the case for it, I believe it occurred in nineteen sixty seven.”
“Of course you already memorized the legal precedents,” Dean Blaine muttered to himself. “Okay, Nick, you’ve confessed. I don’t suppose you’d care to tell us why you did all this?”
“The first two crimes were merely to facilitate the third. Vince needed the chance to show what he could do. I wanted to give him that chance. This was the best method I could come up with.”
“Bullshit,” Professor Pendleton snapped. “I’ve taught you for a year, I know how brilliant you really are. There were other ways to do this, and you could have found them.”
“Maybe there were better ways,” Nick conceded. “Then again, maybe those ways came with different costs. Ones that I didn’t think were worth paying. Or maybe I’m not quite as smart as everyone seems to think, and I couldn’t find them. I guess we’ll never know.”
“Actually we will,” Dean Blaine corrected him. “This investigation will certainly merit the use of a telepath.”
“I think my lawyer will disagree,” Nick replied. “Telepaths can only be officially used against the subject’s will when they are under investigation. You can’t claim to be investigating me, I already confessed. In fact, official use
of a telepath on any of the parties involved in this, now that all the charges have been confessed to, would be a violation of their fourth amendment rights and grounds for a very aggressive lawsuit.”
Dean Blaine felt his hand clench into a fist involuntarily. “Let me guess: you’ll be sharing your legal resources with all involved should that occur.”
“It is the least I can do to make amends for my awful actions in the arena today,” Nick said, sincerity all but dripping from his voice. The educators were not impressed.
“I suppose that’s all there is to say then,” Dean Blaine noted. He reached over and turned off the small device with a casual gesture. Once the light was off, he turned back to Nick with a firm look in his eyes. “All right, Nick, now it’s just the three of us. You want to tell me what the hell you were really thinking out there?”
“The truth is very close to the lie,” Nick said. “I wanted to help my friend. This was the path that minimized risk and maximized potential for success.”
“So you torched your potential future to try and save Vince’s,” Professor Pendleton summarized.
“Gentlemen, the time for deception is over; let’s not pretend I had a clear path to graduation. I might be smart, fast, and adaptable, but my power is never going to place me in the same class as people like Chad, Vince, or Alice. I probably would have made it through this year, and even that would only be due to Professor Pendleton’s glowing recommendation. Passing third year would have been a long shot, and making it into the final ten was almost a certain impossibility. I was never going to walk down the stage and hear them call me a Hero. Vince, on the other hand, has a real chance at that dream. More importantly, he’s the kind of person who should be wearing that title.”
Nick paused for a moment, a rare unintended theatricality. Honesty was hard for him; it took actual effort to coax the words forth.
“It’s no secret to you two where I come from or how I was raised. I spent most of my life believing everyone had an angle, that even the best people in the world were still capable of selfishness and deception. Vince is the first person I’ve ever met who doesn’t fall into that category. He isn’t perfect, but most of his mistakes are due to lack of understanding or fear of hurting someone else. I’ve seen him put other people first without a second thought more times than I can count. The way I see it, if someone is such a decent human being that he can make a guy like me have a little faith, then that’s the kind of person who people should be looking up to and calling Hero.”
“I get it,” Dean Blaine said, much of the fire gone from his voice. “Sean and I came up through this program, too. I understand how you can arrive at the decision to put someone else’s well-being above your own. The problem facing us right now is how to deal with the fallout from your actions.”
“You have to expel me,” Nick said plainly. “I have to be forcibly ousted from the Hero Certification Program.”
Dean Blaine and Professor Pendleton exchange a brief glance. “That would be standard protocol; however, there is something you need to understand about what happens when we do expel a student.”
“I figured it out already. I’ve known since freshman year.” Nick sighed and reached up to adjust the sunglasses that were no longer on his face. Well, at least he didn’t have to worry about breaking that habit.
“You’re going to erase my memory.”
189.
Vince heard the door to the infirmary open softly then close quickly. He didn’t bother opening his eyes or getting up from the bed where he was laying. It was time for another round of questioning. They’d been coming at irregular intervals to ask what had happened, what he had seen, why he’d done the things he’d done. No one really seemed to like his answers. It wasn’t his fault that the details were fuzzy; it had been a hectic battle. Add in the natural strangeness of coming back from a Rich hallucination and it was a miracle he could remember anything besides the hellish fighting. He hadn’t even believed their accounts of his actions at first; they seemed well beyond the limits of what he could do. The videos they showed him silenced those objections immediately.
“Hey, Silver, how you feeling?”
Vince’s eyes shot open and he jerked upright. He’d been expecting a professor or the dean again, maybe even one of his teammates. The absolute last person he’d expected to step through the door was Nick, who was currently walking toward him at a careful pace. That was understandable; Nick probably didn’t know how Vince would react to what he’d done. For that matter, Vince wasn’t all that sure either.
“Healed, but shaken up,” Vince replied honestly. “They let you come see me?”
“I convinced them I wanted to come apologize,” Nick lied. “Sort of a last request, since there’s no time to cook me a meal.”
“They’re kicking you out.” For once Vince was quick on the uptake. Nick was thankful for that; he hadn’t been looking forward to walking him to the appropriate conclusion.
“Yeah. There are people at Melbrook packing my bags as we speak. I’ll be on the road before sunset.”
“That’s so quick. Isn’t there some sort of trial or investigation they have to go through?”
“There would be, if I hadn’t confessed,” Nick replied. “I admitted guilt on all charges and offered no excuse for mitigation. My expulsion was pretty much a lock anyway; I just saved people the time and energy they’d spend justifying it.”
“Oh.” Vince looked down at his sheets, idly wondering how many times he’d been in this infirmary during his second year at Lander. He seemed to have lost count. “So, are you going to do it?”
“Do what?”
“Apologize.” Vince looked up, meeting his friend’s eyes without the tinted plastic divider. “You took over my brain. You made me hurt our classmates. Some of them were even our friends. And the things I saw... it was not a pretty vision.”
“I didn’t imagine it would be,” Nick admitted. “I made Rich give you a structure that would get rid of that pesky need to hold back you’re always plagued with. I had a feeling it was going to be something nasty. I’m sorry for the guilt you feel, Vince. That I can say with honesty. As for the rest, I wouldn’t recommend holding your breath.”
“You don’t feel bad about it?”
“I don’t feel bad about most things. Until I got here I could say I felt bad about almost nothing. For all the things I have begun to experience guilt over, this will never be one of them. Yes, I gave you the fuel for some nightmares, but you already have plenty of that. Yeah, I added some guilt to the burden you walk around with, but it’s a fraction of what was already there. That stuff sucks, but you know what doesn’t? Right now everyone is talking about how to deal with me, and whether the battle system needs reform to stop the kind of hijinks I used from being repeated. You know what not one person is talking about? Vince Reynolds being cut from the program. Because after what you did in that arena, no one is so fucking stupid to think that suggestion could get any traction.”
“What I did in the arena,” Vince repeated. “What I did in there was brutal. It was horrible. I didn’t even think about if the enemies I was attacking could withstand the attacks I was giving them.”
“Yet everyone survived just fine,” Nick pointed out. “I’ve been telling you, these people are stronger than you give them credit for. That said, when you finally went at it full force, you were unstoppable.”
“I was a monster,” Vince said, his voice somewhere between a whisper and a pained sigh.
“Vince, do you know what the difference between monsters and angels is? It’s whether they’re on your side or not.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Sure it does. Let’s take you, for example. You say that you were a monster out there. I won’t deny that. The power you displayed, the things you accomplished, they were inhuman. So yes, when you stop holding back, you could most certainly be considered a monster. Now, let’s look down the line. One day, ten years from now when you’r
e a professional Hero, you get a call about a Super trying to rob a bank and taking hostages. You show up, pissed off, and you show him the same beast that everyone saw today. To that criminal, to that poor stupid bastard, you would certainly be a monster that haunts him for the rest of his life.”
“If you meant this to be comforting then you really missed the mark,” Vince interrupted.
“Let me finish,” Nick said. “The point is that to him, you are a monster. To the hostages in that bank, on the other hand, you would be an angel. The same things that make you so scary to the bad guys will make you comforting to the innocent people. When someone says you’re on the way, everyone in the right will know things are going to be okay, and everyone in the wrong will be getting on good terms with any god that will have them. Don’t be afraid of how dangerous your power makes you. That fear belongs to the people who have to reckon with you.”
“You have a knack for speeches,” Vince said, shifting his gaze slightly.
“One of my many talents. So, do you forgive me?”
“I thought you weren’t apologizing.”
“I’m not. But since when have you needed an act of contrition to forgive someone?”
Vince smiled at his friend. “I forgive you. And thank you for helping me. Not to mention showing me what I could do. For the life of me I can’t figure out how you knew I had all that in me. I didn’t even realize I could absorb sound or created energy.”
“Honestly, I didn’t know any of that either,” Nick admitted. “I just had faith in you.”
“That is some impressive faith.”
“I learned from the best.” Nick patted his best friend on the shoulder. He was going to miss this crazy bastard. Vince definitely made things less predictable. “You know that from now on things are going to get harder, right? I’ve worked in the background to try and keep you guys sheltered from a lot of crap, but I won’t be able to do that anymore.”