Super Powereds: Year 3

by Drew Hayes

  “Halt!” Chad’s hand stopped halfway toward delivering another punch, and he stood frozen as the professor hurried over to check on Roy. He was okay, or as okay as someone could be after that kind of beating, but he was too far gone to keep fighting. “Roy Daniels has lost this match. Chad Taylor is the winner. Camille, please hurry ov—”

  The professor’s words were cut off by the sound of Chad Taylor, having attained his victory, collapsing onto the ground next to her in an unconscious heap.

  220.

  Alice’s eyes fluttered open, and she immediately realized two things: this wasn’t the room she’d been put under in, and she was hellishly thirsty. Thankfully, the second issue was easy to correct, as a hand with long, bony fingers reached out, offering her an open bottle of water. Alice accepted it gratefully, throwing back the liquid and guzzling it down as quickly as her throat would allow. Only when it was completely drained did she try to sit up and get a sense of her surroundings.

  They were in the infirmary, though curiously, none of the usual healing students were on hand. There was a woman Alice had caught sight of from time to time, but didn’t recognize, as well as Dean Blaine and Professor Pendleton. Alice’s hand groped around of its own accord, grasping at nothingness with frustration. It took a moment for Alice to realize she was looking for Mary, whose absence suddenly became the most important issue at hand.

  “Where’s Mary?”

  “With the others,” Dean Blaine said. “She has more experience with being handed unexpected information, and will join us when Ms. Wilkins’s testing is done.”

  “You . . . you kept this all going?”

  “Perhaps you’d have preferred we alert everyone in the room to the fact that you had a visitor burst into your head, declare that the Powereds were going to usher in a nightmare future where we were all at war, and charge you with somehow preventing it,” Professor Pendleton said. “Since you had a history with ‘bad reactions’ to Rich’s power, we simply said you’d had another and took you to the infirmary to recuperate, thereby ensuring your secret.”

  “You’re right, sorry I—” Alice stopped mid-apology, staring at the tall, scarecrow-like teacher who’d clearly been trying to drum her out of his class since she was first put in it. When she next spoke, all softness was gone from her voice. To Alice’s ears, it sounded like a different person entirely, though not an unfamiliar one. In truth, it sounded like the voice she heard from within during the bloodiest parts of a battle.

  “Get out.”

  “Alice, you’re right to be a bit upset about us putting you under, knowing that Abridail might come intruding,” Dean Blaine began. He didn’t get the chance to finish however, as Professor Pendleton was suddenly five feet off the ground and dangling helplessly.

  “You’re my uncle. My mother’s brother.” Her words were barely above a hiss as she glared at Professor Pendleton, who looked oddly unfazed by his impromptu flight. The words, however, caused an expression of sheer shock to break through his stoic facade. “You’ve been around me for two years, and never once did you try and tell me. Did you even treat me like family. Hell, you clearly have fucking hated me from day one. Well, I’ll take that from an old bastard who might have a grudge against my father, but I will be goddamned if I let it stand from you. Now, get out before I throw you out.”

  Alice raised her hand to prove the point, but Professor Pendleton dropped to the ground unexpectedly. She was confused, but only for a moment. Dean Blaine was in the room, after all. It had only been a matter of time before he cut off the use of powers.

  “Alice . . . listen, I don’t have a good—”

  “Sean, perhaps you should take a walk for a while. Go check on the other students.” Dean Blaine helped his friend and colleague up from the ground, but the grip he used made it clear that this was not a request.

  “Yeah. Maybe that’s a good idea.” Professor Pendleton chanced one last look at Alice, who refused to meet his eyes, and then walked out of the infirmary and down the hall.

  “I’m surprised Professor Stone didn’t tell you I’d been given a heads up,” Alice said, once he was gone.

  “We only had a few moments to speak as you were transferred to the infirmary. She no doubt put more importance on what Abridail showed you than on discovering part of your hidden family tree.”

  “Part of my . . . right, Professor Hill too.” Alice shook her head and wrung the blankets between her hands. “Is there anyone in my life that’s not keeping some sort of crazy secret from me?”

  “Knowing the company you keep, probably not,” Dean Blaine said. “Though, it seems you and Mary now have one of your own.”

  “I just wanted to know what the hell happened to my mom.” The ferocity that had ballooned in her when she saw Professor Pendleton deflated, and in its place, all she could feel was the familiar emptiness where her mother was supposed to be. “Now I find out she’s on some weird future vision-quest, doesn’t want to see me, and that, oh yeah, my existence might accidentally trigger a war between the different species of humans. This was a terrible Saturday.”

  “If I may offer some advice,” Dean Blaine said. “I would like to remind you that, from a fundamental standpoint, that knowledge changes very little for you. You are already here, in the Hero Certification Program, because you want to make the world a better place, to guide it to a more peaceful future. Abridail’s warning doesn’t change that; it only reminds you of the stakes you’ve always been playing for. As a Hero, if you don’t succeed, then people die. The scale may vary, but that is always true.”

  “This isn’t making me feel much better,” Alice said. “Though I appreciate the effort.”

  “You have my apologies. For all of what you endured today.” Dean Blaine adjusted his glasses slightly. It was the only way he could force himself not to look at the floor. Right now, Alice didn’t need a dean who was ashamed of what had been done; she needed to feel that her trial had been worth it. “And I promise that, as we try and run down every bit of information we gleaned from Abridail, I will keep you in the loop should we uncover your mother’s whereabouts.”

  “Thank you. It’d be nice if one good thing came from this.”

  “Alice . . . you know we’ve been searching for your mother for nearly a year now, ever since we learned she was still alive. Sean—sorry, Professor Pendleton has been tireless. I’m sure you have a lot of anger and questions regarding him right now, but please know that, at least in terms of wanting to find your mother, you two share common ground.”

  “I guess I’ll try to keep that in mind.” Alice reached over to the side table, where more bottles of water were piled up and guzzled one down. She would do her best to keep her word to Dean Blaine, but she couldn’t imagine reaching a place of understanding with her Subtlety teacher.

  Alice had been lied to for so long, by so many people, that her tolerance for it had just about run dry.

  221.

  Vince was staring at his book, pencil tapping lightly on the cover as he scoured his mind for something to put down about it. Literary Analysis wasn’t a hard class per se—since everything was interpretation, there weren’t exactly “right” and “wrong” answers. Any idea was valid, so long as it could be backed up by examples from the text. Unfortunately, the professor adored symbolism and the deconstruction of it, which may as well have been advanced calculus as far a literal brain like Vince’s was concerned. He was still trying to be diligent, to do his work to the best of his ability, but as Melbrook’s door opened and he heard people coming down the hall, Vince’s mind immediately shoved all thoughts of classic literature out of his head in favor of whatever his dormmates might be up to.

  Roy and Chad stepped into the common area first, with Camille right on their heels. Vince didn’t even need to ask about what they’d been up to. Bad as he might be at understanding what the color of a rug meant in terms of a protagonist’s emotions, he was easily as adept at recognizing anything related to combat. Both young men
had the drained expressions and slightly shuffling gait of having had the hell beaten out of them, only to be healed back to normal. Camille could take away all the physical damage in the world, but she couldn’t undo the mental strain that came with it. Were Vince the betting sort, he’d have put down a heavy wager that within ten minutes, both of his friends would be passed out.

  “Hey,” Roy mumbled. He didn’t break stride, continuing right on to the boys’ side of the dorm and the bed contained therein. Chad only gave a small nod and kept following after Roy.

  “Afternoon,” Vince replied. He watched both of them walk through the steel door, and then turned to Camille. “What the heck did those two do? Roy has stamina for days, and I’ve never seen Chad get that worn down before.”

  “Roy wanted to see whether he was better with his fists or a bat.” Camille headed the rest of the way in and took a seat in a chair near, but not next, to Vince. “The end of the year is coming up, after all. He has to make a decision about what he’ll try to major in.”

  Vince nodded, though it wasn’t a struggle he had to deal with. From the beginning, he’d essentially known that he would be in Close Combat. It was where he excelled physically, and allowed a great amount of use for his abilities. “Did he get an answer?”

  “Oh yeah, I’d say he got a very definitive answer. I haven’t seen every match that’s ever taken place, but I think Roy just became the person in our class closest to actually scoring a win against Chad.”

  “That is . . . impressive.” Vince felt something inside him buck at that idea. Not that he doubted Roy was capable of such a feat, rather that he wished he had been there, testing how well he stacked up against them too. Sadly, that was impossible as things stood. The sons of Titan and Intra could have a friendly match, and it didn’t matter; the sons of Globe and Intra would be another matter altogether.

  “It really was. But you and I have more pressing matters to deal with,” Camille said.

  “We do?”

  “That’s right.” Camille resisted the urge to flee from the subject like she had so many times before. She could do this. It was just dating. “We’re both off work tonight, and I think it’s high time you quit dragging your feet and took me out to dinner. Doesn’t have to be nice or fancy, but I want it to be just us.”

  “I see.” Camille worked very hard to hide the amusement that bubbled in her as, for once, she got to be the one seeing Vince with a slight blush rising in his cheeks. She didn’t know why he was moving so slowly, being more careful with her than he had been when dating Sasha, but she’d decided it was time to get things moving along. For a moment, Camille was afraid he was going to chicken out, or come up with an excuse. Instead, Vince swallowed hard and looked her in the eye.

  “What are your thoughts on Italian?”

  * * *

  “Nick would understand.” Mary lay on Alice’s bed, watching her friend crimp, tease, and style her hair until it looked much the same as usual, only more accentuated. “That’s one of the perks of dating someone who is in on all this stuff with us. If you tell him you went on a dream adventure, discovered secrets about your family, and were informed there’s the potential for a nightmarish hell future on the horizon, I bet he’d let you reschedule.”

  “I’m sure he would,” Alice agreed. She laid down the hair straightener and turned her attention toward choosing a set of earrings. She’d expected to have to force all these actions after the ordeal she’d been through, but oddly, the act of getting ready for her date was putting her more at ease. Perhaps she was just getting used to dealing with these sorts of events.

  “But that’s the thing, Mary. There’s always some hidden threat, or recent trauma, or mental wipe, or blah blah blah. We don’t have normal lives. That’s a choice we made, and I don’t regret it. Well, most of the time, I don’t. It does mean that we have to accept the fact that our lives are rarely in peaceful, ideal situations though, and if we really want something, we have to learn to go after it despite all the complications. So yes, Nick would let me reschedule, because obviously, this is a good reason, and I’d let him next time, when he was attacked by mutant ducks or something, and we’d keep on going like that until it’s graduation and we’re going off to different places without ever getting so much as a single date squeezed in.”

  “I’m not sure if I’m more amazed at how determined you are about this, or depressed about the fact that you’re right,” Mary admitted. “Guess Hershel and I were lucky we started dating before things got quite so crazy.”

  “Right, you two began courting when we were being pitted against each other in ranking matches, after being abandoned on a mountain by our two supposed guardians.”

  “Point made.” Mary slid off the bed and stretched—her back was sore from all the time spent incapacitated during the afternoon. “One thing I should say before I leave you to your primping though: I know you don’t want to talk about what we saw, your thoughts are crystal clear on that, but sooner or later, we probably need to.”

  “There’s nothing to say. We were shown what might be, but without any guidance or idea of what causes what future, there’s nothing we can do.”

  “We can be mindful of the impact our actions have,” Mary replied. “And we can make sure that we represent former Powereds in a positive light.”

  “Of the five people chosen for the test batch, one has been expelled for supposedly trying to kill other students, and another is the son of one of the most wanted former Heroes in the nation,” Alice said. “We’re off to a great start.”

  222.

  “Someone knows how to clean up well,” Nick said. This was a cardinal sin of understatement, as Alice could have caused a wreck if she strode through an intersection looking the way she appeared when stepping out of her car. Pink dress, high heels, and styled hair, along with actual makeup, had transformed a woman who was already beautiful into something truly spectacular. It helped that Alice carried herself with the sort of confidence owned only by the brilliant, the bold, and the battle-hardened.

  She smiled at Nick, admiring how well the suit he wore hung off his lean frame. He grinned back at her, and for just a moment, they were simply two stupid college kids excited about testing the romantic waters of something new.

  “You know, you start this date with one strike already, since I had to pick you up,” Alice pointed out.

  “I thought we all agreed that me keeping my distance from Melbrook was for the best,” Nick countered.

  Alice walked across the parking lot and gave him a hug of greeting, one that lingered a bit longer than their normal embraces. “So what? You’re Nick Fucking Campbell; don’t tell me you couldn’t have come up with some way to pull it off if you really needed to.”

  “Maybe, but then you’d have had to hide in the bushes and signal me with a flashlight, and I think we both know there’s no way the princess is willing to dirty her shoes for little old me.”

  “Ah, our first date has barely started, and you’re already being a dick.” Alice wrapped her arms around one of his and leaned against his suit-covered body. She let herself take a second and enjoy the sensation of leaning against him, of letting her mental armor down for a few moments.

  “Alice . . . is everything okay?”

  “Not really. I had a very long afternoon, and there’s more stuff on my plate because of it, but I don’t want to think about that right now.” Alice begrudgingly pulled herself away from him, though she kept his arm ensnared by hers even as she straightened her posture.

  “Anything I can do?”

  “Just keep being a douche,” Alice replied. “Right now, I need to laugh or I’m going to dwell. Besides, I’ve waited a long time for this date. I expect to be wowed.”

  “That much I can certainly promise,” Nick said. “How do you feel about strip clubs and steak buffets?”

  “Like you’ll be getting kicked in the junk.”

  Nick chuckled, though he took the threat somewhat seriously. “I s
uppose I do have a backup plan, or two . . .”

  * * *

  The date wasn’t actually all that different than how things were when they normally hung out. Vince was not a person with a great many layers, after all. It wasn’t in him to change who he was or how he acted just because the social context of their time together had changed. That was, in fact, one of the many things that Camille loved about him.

  Italian might have been a bit of a stretch when Vince described where they were going; pizza and spaghetti hit the mark much closer than the word that conjured ideas of fancy pastas and white tablecloths. The food was good though, and after the first few minutes, Camille realized she was glad that Vince had picked such a casual place. It made her feel more comfortable and at ease, whereas, if they’d gone somewhere upscale, she’d have felt all the more pressure about the fact that she was out, on a date, with Vince.

  He was nervous too, that much was apparent, but it was the sweet kind of nervous that led to him knocking over a parmesan shaker and stumbling over his words a bit. Even that faded after the first hour they spent together. The two of them had been friends for some time, and once the jitters went away, they remembered that they knew perfectly well how to be around, and enjoy, each other.

  The date wasn’t actually all that different than how things were when they normally hung out, and Camille wouldn’t have changed that fact for any price in the world. After all, she loved how Vince normally was. She didn’t want some overly careful or suave version of him.