by Drew Hayes
115.
After two years in the Hero Certification Program, every student who still remained had come up with some manner of pre-exam ritual, a method of preparing, mentally and physically, for the trials that awaited them come sunrise. The evening before the junior class’s semester final saw people preparing in different ways.
Some went to the gym, doing workouts meant to keep their muscles limber without overtaxing them. They might not have known what they were facing, but soreness wasn’t going to help them with any type of challenge.
Others took the night off completely. They planned movie marathons, had lavish dinners, or found other methods to get their minds off the next day’s coming challenge. This was their way of both distracting themselves, and having what might be one last hurrah. People usually weren’t cut at this point in the program, but what they’d been learning since Day One in the HCP was that anything was possible.
Vince was in his room, trying to block out the excitement he felt over seeing his friend and their plans for the following evening. He needed to be calm for this to work. It was a technique he’d only discovered recently, during his daily fights with George in the desert. It had taken him months of practice to learn to use it reliably, and tomorrow might be his first opportunity to use it in battle. The key was to calm himself, to push past the usual fire he felt when engaged in battle. Keeping himself steady and detached would be the hardest part of the exam tomorrow, but he had to do it. He wouldn’t let Nick’s sacrifice be for nothing.
Roy and Chad were sparring down in the gym. Though it was still difficult for Roy to land blows on Chad, his blond opponent could no longer dominate Roy the way he once had. True, Chad would always be faster and more skilled, but Roy’s own growing strength and coordination made counters more dangerous. Neither considered this a true match, as both were holding back plenty in reserve. One day, they’d have an all-out brawl to determine who was stronger, but not on the night before an exam. Doing well was more important than stroking their ego by proving dominance. That fact alone, more than any other, spoke to the growth Roy had experienced since freshman year.
Alice and Mary were doing basic exercises to work on their precision. While both might have benefitted more from a bout of actual battle, it was too risky to strain their bodies the night before a match, since neither possessed healing abilities. Instead, they focused on sharpening their skills. That would be what made the difference tomorrow. Physically, each was skilled, but not terribly imposing. They could handle any civilian with relative ease, yet, by Super standards, they were weak and vulnerable. Add in their ability, however, and either young woman was powerful enough to send the smart criminals fleeing for the hills.
Camille, Thomas, Will, Jill, and Violet all had a simple dinner that night. They set a table, cooked a variety of dishes and toasted to the friend who was no longer with them. If Stella had been around, they would have all been training as well, striving for an extra iota of power to use in the coming trials. But Stella was not there, and as such, they had learned that there were better uses of one’s time than just training. For example: having a night with friends, making memories that would last, even if not for all of them.
Curiously, it was a Super who was no longer in the HCP that had the strangest night, and following day, of the lot.
* * *
Nicholas was downright impatient when he “woke up” in the dreamscape. He leapt up from the ground, spinning about until he spied Nick, who was standing nearby and looking somewhat confused.
“Right then, let’s get this over with. I don’t care what the game is; I’m not letting you beat me at this one. Your emotions were already leaking all over the place when dealing with Vince. Any more, and I’ll end up so dim and dull I may as well be a civilian.” Nicholas spat the word “civilian” as though it left a rancid taste across his tongue.
“Coming out of the gate swinging, I can respect that,” Nick replied. “Unfortunately, you wasted your bluster. I don’t think we’re playing a game tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I’m just guessing here, but I’m basing it mainly on the fact that I can’t seem to manipulate our dream-reality anymore.” Nick extended his hand, trying to conjure a table or chairs like the ones he’d called forth previously. Nothing happened; the mist and fog merely swirled about.
Nicholas did the same, attempting to produce nothing more than a pack of playing cards, items he was so familiar with he may as well have been conjuring his own fingers. As with Nick’s efforts, there was neither a shift in the world, nor cards in his hand.
“Curious,” Nicholas noted.
“Fucking annoying,” Nick countered. “I really wanted to beat you again.”
“No chance. I went to sleep tonight intent on winning.”
Nick rolled his eyes, a gesture hidden by the sunglasses on his face, and looked around. There was nothing to signify what came next, only an empty, expansive landscape completely covered in swirling white fog. Then, as he swept his gaze around once more, there was suddenly something in front of them. A small female figure that hadn’t been there previously. It took Nick a moment to place her, which was forgivable. He’d never taken Focus, and the woman looked thirty years younger than the professor he’d only seen in passing.
“Are you ready to begin?” Professor Stone asked.
“Begin what? What is this? Who are you?” Nicholas looked torn between taking a swing at the small woman and getting down and pleading with her. “Can you finally end all this? Please?”
“Are you ready to begin?” The words, the tone, the facial expression, all of it was an echo of the first time she spoke. Nick quickly assembled the clues before him.
“She’s not real. Well, she’s real in that she exists here, but she’s not an actual telepathic projection. Are you, Professor Stone?”
“Are you ready to begin?”
“That pretty much answers my question.” Nick turned to Nicholas. “Maybe she’s an implanted memory or something, it doesn’t really matter. She’s clearly the next step in whatever this crazy bullshit is we’re going through.”
“Vince was the last of them,” Nicholas said slowly. “No more games and memories. This is a new trial.”
Nick nodded and adjusted his sunglasses out of habit. “Maybe it’s the endgame, maybe it’s not. We do know one thing about it, though.”
“What’s that?” Nicholas asked.
Nick flashed him a wild, hungry grin, the sort of expression he would never show outside of a closed Family meeting. “It’s going to be interesting.”
Nicholas allowed himself a smile of his own. That was true. For all the differences he and Nick had, it was clear they both still shared some personality traits. Most dominant among those was the part of them that had defined so much of their lives and the man they’d grown into: the inability to resist a good challenge.
The identical yet different young men looked to the small woman, who took the cue.
“Are you ready to begin?”
“We are indeed,” Nicholas said.
“Hell yes we are,” Nick said.
The landscape around them shifted dramatically. In the blink of an eye, the woman was gone. In her place was a massive stone entrance leading down. The walls of the enclosure were lit, but even straining, neither Nick nor Nicholas could see more than twenty feet down.
Wordlessly, they both wandered into the cave.
116.
Dean Blaine always felt a strange glow of pride when he looked at the older students before an exam. Seeing them grow from uncertain or overly prideful freshmen into competent warriors reminded him that, as frustrating as his job could be at times, he was still helping to make a difference. The young men and women gathered before him were no longer undisciplined Supers with a disproportionate sense of their abilities. They were staring at him with eyes that, while nervous, still shone with controlled calm and preparation. These were the eyes of people prepared to walk into ba
ttle. These were the eyes of future Heroes.
“Good morning, everyone.” Dean Blaine’s voice boomed through the gym, falling on the ears of waiting students and eager professors. “As you all know, you are here to take the semester final for your third year in the Hero Certification Program. I want to take this moment to wish each of you the best of luck. Though some will score higher than others, I hope each of you will use your abilities to their fullest potential. That, ultimately, is all anyone can ever ask from you as a Hero.”
The students nodded their understanding, but made no comment. Tension practically radiated off every one of them. They were ready to hear what they would be facing; all other sentiments were secondary concerns.
“Now then, let’s get on with what I know you all really care about: the details of your exam.” Behind Dean Blaine, a large white screen lowered from the ceiling. “As you know, the focus of your third year’s training is predominantly on handling multiple opponents on your own. Today’s exam will offer a real life situation to test how well you’ve absorbed that knowledge. You are all Heroes who have gotten a call about a gang of criminal Supers holed up in a building. They are planning to commit acts of serious destruction, and all other Heroes are engaged in other assignments. It is up to you to neutralize these threats. And what exactly are these threats? Let me introduce you to a training tool used by HCP upperclassmen as well as actual Heroes: the Simulated Super Automated Battle Droids, or Sims, for short.”
On the screen behind Blaine appeared images of several mechanical beings. Some were large, easily eight feet tall and wider than a pair of vending machines, while others were human-sized or smaller. The one trait they all shared was a colored light in the center of their chest.
“Sims come in a variety of builds, meant to emulate the powers of several basic Super categories. You’ll find that, depending on your particular suite of abilities, some will go down easier than others. Sims are a key part of training, but they do come with a very obvious flaw in that Supers with technical control abilities will find them laughably easy as opponents.”
Jill kept her face as neutral as she could manage. The sight of robotic opponents had made her want to bust out in a smug grin, but two years of this stuff had taught her that nothing would be that simple.
“For that reason, during this exam, it will be forbidden to use any abilities on the Sims that do not also work on humans. Case in point: Jill Murray will not be allowed to simply overtake them and power them down; however, she is free to use her ability on anything else in the training field.”
“Doesn’t this actually make it impossible for some of us though?” Rich Weaver asked. “My power doesn’t work on robots, so I’m basically going in there as a human.”
“I was getting to that,” Dean Blaine said with a sigh. “Sims wouldn’t be very useful tools if they couldn’t register situations where non-physical abilities are utilized. We have calibrated these to record the triggers that would constitute power use, eye-contact in your case, Mr. Weaver, and they are programmed to respond appropriately if those conditions are met.”
“Sorry,” Rich said, looking suitably ashamed for his outburst.
“It’s all right, I understand the concern. Without those capabilities, these would not be useful for a true test of your skills,” Dean Blaine said. “There is still one more thing I need to tell you about the Sims before we move on. Many of you must have noticed the light in their chest. This is not merely an aesthetic choice. When you get onto the exam’s field, some of these lights will be glowing yellow, while others will be glowing red. A yellow light indicates that the Sim you’re facing has not been identified as a high-level threat, and that lethal force should only be used if absolutely necessary.”
As a whole, the group didn’t react to that, though some of the smarter ones did show changed expressions as they realized what red lights would likely indicate.
“If the Sim is showing a red light,” Dean Blaine continued. “Then it means that Sim is a high-level threat, a serious danger not only to the Hero fighting it, but to the entire area around it. Those can, and often should, be killed on sight.”
This time, there was a reaction; there always was when they got to this exam. Eyes widened, feet shuffled, and a few loud gasps were heard. Dean Blaine waited for the first wave of noise to cease before he went on.
“This is a training exercise used by Heroes. Real Heroes, with real lives on the line and real civilians to worry about. If you wear that title, this is a situation you will encounter more frequently than any of us would like. Some Supers are just too powerful to let run wild. If they turn criminal, people will die. Sometimes a few, sometimes hundreds of thousands, but any amount is too much. That is why we have damage-level assessments in the first place, so Heroes can prioritize threats and know how to react to them. I’m not saying you have to kill the red-light Sims on sight, but for some of you, it may be the only way to neutralize them, and they must be neutralized. If anyone cannot make peace with what this implies about their future careers, I understand completely. You can leave this program right now with no ill-feelings and all my blessings. If you stay, then make no mistake, you will be learning to kill. How fast or often you do so in the field will be your calls to make, but it is a skill you will either graduate with or fail out because you lack.”
Dean Blaine waited, giving the students time to let his words sink in. This was a breaking point for some Supers, when they were confronted by the reality of what they were training to do. Others would fall further down the line. After a full minute with no one volunteering to leave, Dean Blaine decided they were all committed to going forward, at least for now.
“How you fight these Sims is going to be up to you. Use weapons, strength, abilities, whatever you like. You will be judged on how effectively you neutralize your enemies, what strategies you employ to do so, and if any are allowed to cause collateral damage. Any questions?”
His question was greeted only by hard, determined stares.
“Then everyone to the lifts. We’re going down to the exam level.”
117.
“What’s the bet?”
Alice, Mary, Chad, and Vince all looked at Roy rather than responding to his question. The Melbrook residents were clustered together as the HCP juniors rode down to the exam waiting for them.
“The bet?” Vince asked at last.
“Yeah, you know, the bet about what the winner gets. Don’t you try to bullshit me and tell me you all weren’t planning on treating this like a competition.”
“It is a serious assessment of our abilities,” Chad said.
“And we all want to be the one with the highest assessment,” Roy replied. “You guys realize this is our first chance to go all-out since last year? Hell, it’s even more free-range than that. No foam tips on your weapons, no specified conditions, no holding back. Today, we get the chance to prove what we can really do in the field.”
“I think most of us are just worried about passing,” Mary said.
“To hell with that. I say we worry about excelling. I’d rather go in thinking about having to beat you all, than trying to just scrape by. Besides, I’m genuinely curious about how strong we’ve all gotten. I want to see your new cards.”
At that reference, Vince and Alice smiled in spite of themselves. Roy was right; they were too grim and tense. Nick would have told them to loosen up; he would have distracted them so they couldn’t get too caught up in their thoughts and fears.
“Lowest score in the house cleans the lounge for a month,” Alice suggested.
“I think whoever scores lowest will already be feeling down,” Chad said. “How about we offer a boon to the winner instead?”
“I’m all ears,” Alice told him.
“Winner chooses where we eat lunch after the trial?”
“I’m pretty sure we’ll eat at the dining hall,” Vince said. “Mary and I have class after this, and there’s not enough time to go off campus.”
/> “Lunch doesn’t work,” Roy agreed. “But Chad was right about doing something for the winner instead of against the loser. How about king for a day? Winner picks a day where they get to choose what we all do and where we all go. FYI, if I win, we’re going on a whiskey distillery tour, and that’s just breakfast.”
“I could get behind that,” Mary said. “It would be nice to drag you all to a museum, or something with a little culture.”
“Screw culture, I’m going for couture,” Alice added. “A day at the boutiques for custom ensembles, and dinner at a proper restaurant. I can already picture how I’m going to dress you all.”
“Sounds like we’ve got a bet,” Vince said. He didn’t have any idea of what he’d do if he won, but since he was going to be competing against Chad, it seemed silly to plan on victory anyway.
“Can I get in on this?”
The Melbrook residents turned to find Camille standing next to Alice. She looked at each of them, refusing to allow her eyes to linger on Vince. “I think I’ve got a decent shot, and I could think a few places to drag you all to.”
“Of course you can get in,” Alice replied. “I would have tried to weasel you into my shopping day, anyway.”
“Alice, much as I commend your enjoyment of fashion, I’m afraid I will have to do my best to ensure that you are not victorious,” Chad warned.
“Bring it on, bone boy. I was already planning on using this as my big unveiling. This just adds a cherry to the top of the ass-kicking sundae.”
As Alice finished speaking, the lift shuddered to a halt, and the large doors opened. All twenty students began filing out, but six of them were far less stressed than when they’d entered. They weren’t just focused on passing or getting by.
They wanted to win.
* * *
Eliza slid the front door open and closed it behind her. Nicholas had never actually provided her or Jerome with a key, since that would express the sentiment that they were welcome in his home, as well as take away their opportunity to practice lock-picking when they wanted to come over. Normally, she let him have his precious privacy, but it was already nine in the morning, and he’d yet to make contact or pick up his cell phone. Security protocol demanded she make sure he was okay. If he’d been killed or kidnapped, then retribution and maybe rescue efforts would need to be kicked into gear. If, as she suspected, he was just taking advantage of the opportunity to sleep in, she’d get the rare joy of kicking the lazy sack awake.