by Drew Hayes
“I understand. Now, back on the official record, can you tell me why you feel they would benefit from you moving in? Those students have lived together for two years now. They have a defined dynamic that a new tenant would likely upset,” Dean Blaine said.
“Aside from the obvious, that having a high-ranked Super to work and train with would help them overall, I believe I can offer exceptional value to one of them in particular,” Chad said. “Specifically, Vince Reynolds.”
“How so?”
“I’m aware he is under extra scrutiny following the Globe revelation. It seems to me that, if the dean were so inclined, the son of Intra willingly choosing to live next to the son of Globe could be used as an excellent mark of confidence in Vince’s integrity. No one here has more cause to hold a grudge over his paternity than I do, so if I, instead, show him friendship, it should speak great lengths to the quality of his character,” Chad explained.
“That it would,” Dean Blaine agreed. “But, by the same token, it’s also possible there will be conflict between the two of you over that issue.”
“No, there won’t be,” Chad assured him. “Vince is himself, and I am myself. Neither of us are our fathers. We made peace with it last year.”
“You’d better be sure of that,” Dean Blaine said. “Because all the good you moving in might do would be negated, and then some, if you and Vince had any kind of public conflict.”
“I’m sure,” Chad reiterated.
“Okay then.” Dean Blaine reached into his desk and pulled out a slim stack of papers. “You’ll need to fill these out, and get your mother to fill out the last two.”
“I am not a minor. I am legally allowed to sign for myself,” Chad pointed out.
“Yes, but she’s the one paying the bills, so she still gets some say in how the money is allocated. Don’t worry, though; if anything, I can probably swing having your housing cost lowered if we get you into Melbrook,” Dean Blaine said. “In the meantime, I’ll get the wheels in motion on my end. But no promises.”
“No need for promises,” Chad said, standing up. “I know you’ll come through.”
49.
Nicholas Campbell sat on a bench, a sandwich in one hand and a biology textbook in the other. He’d adjusted to life at Lander quite easily; the classes were simple (at least by his standards), and the environment was surprisingly enjoyable. The fly in his ointment was Nathaniel Evers, who, aside from their recent encounter, had yet to show his creepy-ass eyes anywhere near Nicholas. Jerome and Eliza were scouring for him, but it seemed he’d opted to back off after his initial opening move, waiting for his next chance to strike. Still, that would occur sooner or later, and Nicholas had other things on his mind until then. Though the book in his lap sat open, his eyes surveyed the campus and all the students wandering across it as he dined on his meal. He’d made it a point to eat in the same place every day for a week, watching the comings and goings of all the Lander students with a trained eye. Next week, it would be a different place, then another, and another, until he’d successfully mapped out the daily patterns of as many people as he needed. It would have been impossible to track everyone, even for him, but thankfully, the pool of people Nicholas was looking for was far smaller than the entire population.
He’d already charted two of them, recognizing their faces from the files even as his brain scrambled at the sight of them. This couldn’t be the way the memory wipes normally worked, and soon, he would need to do something about it. The upside to a world with Supers was that, somewhere out there, there was a person who could likely undo any other person’s ability. Nicholas had no desire to completely unmake the wipe, at least not until he understood why it had been needed; however, he would like to have it touched up in a way that didn’t give him a sense of mental vertigo when encountering old classmates. For now, though, he just had to work around it.
Idly, he wondered when he would run into one of his fellow former Powereds. It was inevitable that he’d spot one sooner or later; after all, he was exposing himself to the migration habits of the majority of the student body. There was no rush for now. In fact, if it happened too soon, he might not get all his prep work accomplished. Still, if, by the end of the month, he hadn’t run into any of them, he would expel a little luck to solve the issue. Nicholas was patient, but he knew he had an enemy out there somewhere, unseen. It wouldn’t hurt to have a bit of backup for when Nathaniel grew tired of playing coy.
Nicholas glanced down at the book from time to time, not wanting to give away the extent to which he was ignoring it. It was part of his tradecraft, instilled in him so deeply that the thought of varying from it never crossed his mind. It was, on the whole, a very good practice, but it did come with certain risks. Usually, a ten-second glance at a book will not cause a keen observer to miss important details.
Usually, but not always.
* * *
Mary would have noticed him. Hershel and Roy wouldn’t have. Vince . . . that one was up in the air. But Alice knew him as soon as her eyes fell across his familiar sandy hair. She’d gotten used to seeing past disguises, even if Professor Pendleton seemed to think she took nothing from Subtlety. Not that he was wearing one, or at least what most people would see as one. He looked normal. Boring even. So much a part of the scenery that if she hadn’t glanced in his direction, she might have walked by and never noticed. She’d been halfway to her meeting with Professor Stone, mind full of thoughts about what she would uncover, when the whole world had fallen out from under her feet due to a casual sweep of the eyes.
Alice immediately veered off to the side, further from his line of sight. She stared unabashedly, not caring what the people walking around her thought of her leering. The longer she looked, the surer she was. It was him. He’d changed his movements again, altered the way he held himself, even when sitting, but there was a little piece of him still shining through. Her breath caught in her throat as she kept watch, half of her wanting him to look over, half praying with everything she had that he wouldn’t. What would she say to him?
Nothing. She would say nothing, because he’d be a stranger. The breath that had been held leaked out of her at that thought; suddenly, her lungs didn’t want it anymore. The mere act of taking a fresh one seemed to make her chest ache. He wouldn’t know her, because he was gone. All the fighting, all the bad movies, all the sniping the two of them had exchanged lived only inside her mind. His had been purged.
Alice no longer wanted to be there, no longer wanted to look at him. It was too cruel. Having to watch someone who looked like her friend, but wasn’t. It hurt too much. She knew she’d missed him, though that was one of the many things she’d been working hard at keeping mentally sectioned off. She just hadn’t realized the extent of it until she’d seen him sitting there, like he belonged.
But Nick didn’t belong up here, eating on a bench. Nick belonged in the cafeteria with them, complaining about the food. He belonged in their dorm, constantly derailing everyone’s attempts to study or be productive. He belonged with her, calling her “princess” and trying to bait her into embarrassing situations. Nick never sat in the sunlight, alone, like it was the nicest place in the world. Then again, that wasn’t really Nick anymore.
All at once, Alice pulled herself up short. That wasn’t Nick anymore. Nick had sacrificed himself to help Vince, had willingly had his mind wiped to protect some unimaginable secret he’d deemed too dangerous to know. Nick had walked away from the HCP and Lander, burning the bridge with napalm as he left.
So . . . what was Nick doing here?
50.
“I don’t understand,” Alice said as the older woman’s hands fell away from her forehead. “What do you mean it’s not working?”
The two women were in Professor Stone’s office, sitting on a set of chairs facing each other. From the movement of the clock on the wall, it seemed a good thing the professor had advocated ample time for this procedure, as they had yet to make any progress in over an hour.
“Seeing memories is difficult,” Professor Stone explained to her, pausing the attempts to take a gulp from a glass of water. “Especially with some minds. Without getting too in-depth, some people’s mental defenses are naturally better than others. This can be trained to a certain extent, but much of it comes from how one is born.”
“I don’t have that,” Alice replied. “Mary never has trouble reading my thoughts, and Rich put me under with no problem last year.”
Professor Stone finished off her water. “Telepaths can only read surface thoughts. That isn’t so much invading your mind, as it is ours being tuned to the frequency where everyone’s thoughts are broadcasted. It’s receiving, not invading. Mr. Weaver’s ability is its own matter. I suspect part of his power shuts down the mind’s defenses, or turns them against itself. That is merely conjecture, though. I only know how his power works in a functional sense.”
With a minor grunt of effort, she got up and began walking around the room. “I admit I suspected this might happen when Mary told me about your experiment. Still, I’ve encountered resistant minds before, and they never pushed back against me this hard. I have to ask, are you sure you want to do this?”
“What? Of course I do. I’ve been trying to remember what happened in that dream for months,” Alice protested.
“I believe you, however, I feel like part of you is still actively fighting me. Are you sure there isn’t some secret you’re afraid I’ll discover while traipsing about in your head?”
Alice bit her lip in frustration. Stupid Nick. Stupid damn Nick. He was always doing this, making things more complicated, even when he was gone. She could have gotten her answers, finally, but now she was so scared about Professor Stone finding out he was back on campus that it was screwing with her head.
“Oh, is that all?” Professor Stone asked. Alice looked up in surprise, to which Professor Stone gave her a look of consternation. “It amazes me how easily you students can forget I’m telepathic.”
Alice would have blushed in embarrassment, if she hadn’t been so scared about what this accidental reveal meant. “Is he in trouble now?”
“No. I was already aware Mr. Campbell had chosen to return to Lander,” the professor informed her.
“How did you know?”
“Because we’re always made aware of these situations. Students who fail out, but aren’t expelled, frequently continue their academic careers at Lander, though that group is predominantly freshmen.”
“So, then, how do you make sure none of the other HCP students talk to them?” Alice asked.
“We don’t,” Professor Stone replied.
“But . . . the whole mind-wipe thing—”
“Is done for the protection of the students, especially those who go on to become Heroes,” Professor Stone answered, not waiting for the question to become fully cohesive. “We can’t allow someone to carry around that kind of inside knowledge indiscriminately. That said, your identity is your business. If you choose to rekindle that friendship, to reveal yourself for what you are, then it is your right to do so. And if he outs you, today or in thirty years, those are your consequences to bear.”
“Gotcha. So, he’s allowed to be here, and I’m allowed to talk to him, and nothing bad will happen,” Alice surmised.
“I never promised you that,” Professor Stone corrected. “However, there will be no repercussions from the staff, unless that activity leads to rules being broken.”
“With Nick, that’s more of a ‘when’ than an ‘if’ statement,” Alice sighed. “Okay, I think that at least puts me at ease. Should we try the memory thing again?”
“At this point, it would be wasted time,” Professor Stone told her. “Your mental defenses are unusually strong, and though you feel relieved, the effects of all that worrying will still linger in your mind. Besides which, I used up a lot of energy trying to crack through and see your memories the first time. We’ll have more success if we try again later.”
The professor walked to her desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a small book. “In the meantime, I want you to start working on meditation and clearing your mind. If you can learn even the basics, it will help a great deal in making the process easier for both of us.”
“Oh, yeah, Mary is learning this stuff too,” Alice said, accepting the small book and flipping through the pages.
“Indeed. You two should feel free to practice together. Give that a few weeks, and we’ll try again.”
“I’ll do my best,” Alice promised, tucking the book into her backpack and rising from her seat. She started for the door, but a sudden thought caused her to turn halfway around and face her teacher. “Hey, Professor Stone, if I have these awesome mental defenses, does that mean I’m immune to being mind-wiped?”
The older, smaller woman gave the blonde girl a gentle smile. “No, Alice. As I said, your defenses are unusually strong, but not insurmountable. The people who do the wiping have encountered such minds before, and there are a multitude of ways to overcome such obstacles.”
“Guess I should have figured,” Alice said, returning her teacher’s grin and heading out the door.
The parting question left Professor Stone with her own odd realization. Alice’s mind was unusually difficult to penetrate; though, had she been fogging memories instead of trying to pull them up, Professor Stone could have pulled it off. The odd part was that such minds were relatively uncommon. Yet, she’d encountered another particularly resistant mind just last year, one able to completely block her out of viewing certain memories.
Nick Campbell’s head had been nearly as tough as Alice’s. What were the odds that two people who lived together would share a rare resistance? Not high. Professor Stone knew that. People who had been fundamentally altered in the way the former Powereds had, on the other hand, presented a far more lengthy set of possibilities. Still, two out of five didn’t make for conclusive proof.
Five out of five . . . now, that would be something of considerable concern. Professor Stone got up from her chair and headed out the door. She’d need Dean Blaine to sign off on this, and it was not a conversation she cared to have in any other way but one-on-one.
51.
Professor Fletcher was just finishing up with a freshman when Camille arrived. Her knock echoed through the room, rousing the young man from the discussion.
“That’s my next appointment,” Professor Fletcher said. “Just practice what we talked about until we meet next week.”
“Will do. Thanks, Coach Fletcher.” The young man got up, opened the door, and allowed Camille to enter first before making his exit.
For his part, Professor Fletcher tried not to wince when one of the younger students called him that. He understood that it was tradition, that being able to call your instructors “professor” instead of “coach” was a mark that the student had advanced enough to learn, not just be trained and drilled. Nonetheless, something about it bothered Carl Fletcher; it seemed disingenuous. His predecessor had liked the tradition so much that George rarely allowed anyone to ever call him professor, though perhaps that had more to do with how he saw himself instead of how he wanted his students to see him.
“You wanted me to come by?” Camille asked, shutting the door and taking the seat that had previously been occupied mere moments before. In her hand was a notecard she’d found in her locker, giving her the time and room for this meeting.
“I did,” Professor Fletcher confirmed, mentally shifting gears. His last meeting had been with someone scared they weren’t powerful enough to make it in the program. This would be about the opposite. “It will be announced tomorrow, but next week starts the first round of testing in every class except Subtlety. They’ll go on throughout the week; Close Combat usually takes all five days to complete, due to how many students take the course.”
Camille had to agree, Close Combat was one of the most popular courses, right along with Focus. She suspected that would change next year, when everyone had to ch
oose the area they’d try to graduate in, but for now, it was too practical to forgo without good reason.
“The reason I’m telling you this ahead of time is that I felt it was only fair I let you know that the clock on your game has run out,” Professor Fletcher continued. “Last year, you did a good job of hiding your abilities, and make no mistake here, I don’t begrudge a student keeping an ace in the hole. But that’s only if they can really train themselves to the best of their ability while doing so.”
“If people know what I can do, it means they’ll be able to counter it,” Camille protested weakly.
“Which is why I’m telling you to quit hiding it,” Professor Fletcher said. “In the Hero world, that surprise will work once, maybe twice, and then everyone will know. The first two years, I agree, it served you better to stay covert. Then, you could use their ignorance to your advantage. But now is the time to learn to fight people who do know what you’re capable of. That will force you to learn how to counter their counters. It’s how we grow our abilities in a combat setting.”
“I understand,” Camille said. She did, too. She had known since the first day of junior year that it was only a matter of time until someone told her she wasn’t allowed to sandbag anymore. It had only been luck and cunning that let her hold on to her secret for this long. Still, knowing it would happen and hoping it wouldn’t weren’t mutually exclusive things.
“There is another option,” Professor Fletcher said gently. “Healers do benefit from Close Combat, but there’s also a case to be made for them learning Ranged Combat. You were doing well in that course until you chose to drop it at the beginning of the year. I spoke with Professor Baker, and she’d be willing to let you back in.”
“That’s surprisingly nice of her,” Camille noted.