by John Dixon
And then it was over.
She lay there, hurting—but not from the blows, she realized. A ball of fire pulsed at her center. She didn’t dare to move. She couldn’t risk blowing something up and getting in trouble.
“Welcome to The Point,” Hopkins said. “Square yourself away, show us respect, and stay away from Kyeong. He is tore up from the floor up, a bona fide broke-dick washout.”
“Bona fide,” another cadet’s voice echoed in the hall.
Hopkins said, “You cop an attitude, you’ll pay. You’re not safe here. You’re not safe anywhere. You aren’t even safe locked behind a metal door. Do you understand, New Cadet?”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
The flashlight clicked off. Her tormentors moved down the hall. She heard them laughing and calling at another door.
Scarlett lay there, moaning. The burning energy within her throbbed, demanding release. Her muscles twitched and screamed. She gritted her teeth, fighting the fire filling her body. What in the world have I gotten myself into?
“YOU DON’T BELONG HERE,” THE hulking, heavily scarred drill sergeant said. He was the most muscular person Scarlett had ever seen, like a prize bull, with muscles on top of muscles, all swelling and striated bulges taut against bronze skin. His head seemed small atop the broad shoulders and thick neck, and his face was skull-like, an emaciated mask of scar tissue. An unlit cigar stub jutted from the corner of his mouth. His nameplate read LOPEZ.
Scarlett stood halfway back in the row of new cadets. They were lined up single file in the corridor outside the gymnasium. The air was thick with perspiration. Before Lopez’s arrival, the upperclassmen had smoked them with push-ups, jumping jacks, and sit-ups for the better part of an hour. Even the smallest mistakes justified punishment here.
“Compared to the real West Point cadets, you are abominations,” Drill Sergeant Lopez said, pacing back and forth, his voice deep and garbled, as if born of flexed muscle. “They earned their way here. You, on the other hand, are nothing more than genetic freaks. You did not earn this placement.”
True enough, Scarlett thought. She hadn’t earned it…or asked for it.
Lopez squared himself with them. “Keep that in mind when Colonel Rhoads throws around words like special and powers.” He exhaled sharply through his nose. The sound was loud and shockingly abrupt, like a big rig’s air brakes or the bloodcurdling screech of a diving hawk. Scarlett’s muscles, still sore and weak from the hazing aftermath, leaped involuntarily.
“You see my unnatural physique,” Lopez said, “you might think I’m one of you, that I’m going to wrap up with some feel-good story, how I remember being in your shoes and went through the same stuff and hung in there and how it changed my life, made me all hooah, and how I believe in you and all that happy horseshit you’re hoping to hear. Well, you can shoot that little notion right between the eyes.”
Upperclassmen chuckled. A few new cadets faked laughter. Scarlett knew she should, too—don’t stand out; hide in the middle—but she couldn’t even fake a smile. After getting hazed and listening to this guy, she was suffering from a severe case of screw-this-place-itis.
Lopez reviewed again the rules of dining, which sounded like an enormous pain in the ass. Every table would hold eight people, two from each class. New cadets served the upperclassmen, and there was a highly specific way to do everything, from announcing the beverage of the day to cutting the dessert. If seven people wanted cake, the new cadets had to figure out how to cut a rectangle into seven equal parts. Inwardly, Scarlett groaned. She was not cut out for any organization that placed this much value on pointless attention-to-detail nonsense.
On R-Day, they’d eaten C-rations in the gym. From this morning forward, however, Lopez explained, they would take their meals in the West Point mess hall alongside real cadets. “You will be polite and respectful, New Cadets,” he said. “Over time, you will learn professional bearing from your surface-dwelling superiors. And if any of you uses your powers—even to pass the fucking salt—you will take a trip to the Chamber.”
When it was time to eat, Lopez and the guards stayed behind. Fuller escorted the cadets. They left The Point, passing back out through the blast doors, and took an elevator that deposited them above ground, ten at a time, in the lobby of what appeared to be a barracks.
Once all sixty-some cadets had assembled, they left the dormitory. From the outside, it looked like a narrow row house squashed between two much larger barracks, one old, one new.
Scarlett drew her lungs full of fresh air. It had rained in the night, and the air was cool and damp. A light mist cloaked the river. The rising sun crowned the Hudson Highlands in red. She wished she could break ranks and hang out for a while, soak in the dawn. She’d been underground for less than twenty-four hours, but it felt like a week.
They marched across campus, passing between buildings of gray stone. Other formations appeared from all sides. They passed the library and joined hundreds of cadets forming up on the apron outside the mess hall. She noticed the neat ranks and perfect postures of the real cadets. Lopez’s strange voice echoed in her mind: They earned their way.
The doors opened. The cadets entered the mess hall in an orderly yet purposeful fashion.
It’s the Great Hall from Harry Potter, Scarlett thought, taking in the high-vaulted and coffered ceilings, massive stone pillars, and medieval archways. Hundreds of tables in neat rows filled multiple wings of dining space. Colorful flags and banners hung everywhere, and a huge mural covered one wall.
The cadets reported to their assigned seats, eight to a table, and Scarlett groaned inwardly. Hopkins sat at the opposite end of her table.
* * *
—
AFTER EATING, UPPERCLASSMEN marched them back to the strange dorm between dorms.
As bad as the whole serving-the-upperclassmen setup had sounded, the reality ended up being far worse. Announcing and distributing the cold beverages, Scarlett messed up countless times—in all fairness, how could anyone remember everything they were supposed to say and do?—and the upperclassmen took great delight in insulting her and forcing her to do things over. Making matters worse, she’d shared serving duties with Bentley, this nervous kid who messed up even more than she did. Before they’d even finished feeding the upperclassmen, the thirty minutes was up, so she and Bentley went without breakfast.
Scarlett was in the final group to take the elevator. Her chaperone was DeCraig, the tall bespectacled cadet who’d played Kyeong in chess.
Waiting for the elevator, DeCraig told the new cadets about the strange barracks. It served as a secret portal but was also a real dormitory. Firsties from The Point roomed in the upper floors. “There’s a little motivation for you, New Cadets,” DeCraig said with a grin lighting her face. “Senior year, you room above ground like civilized folk.”
On the ride down, DeCraig told them to relax. “It’s a short walk back to The Point, but it’s the best part of your day, so I expect to see slouching and smiling.”
Scarlett grinned and slowed her pace. DeCraig was cool, and even this small freedom felt great. As they strolled along, it was possible to hope that things here might chill out a little.
Up on campus, the upperclassmen had moved stiffly and seemed almost nervous. Down here, they once again swaggered with bravado. Their conversations grew louder. She heard laughter up ahead from Hopkins and his friends.
Ahead of them, Kyeong walked alone.
Hopkins called to Kyeong. Scarlett couldn’t hear much, just Hopkins’s mocking tone. Without looking back, Kyeong lifted a fist and extended his middle finger.
Scarlett grinned.
Then, out of the blue, Kyeong stumbled and sprawled to the ground.
Hopkins and his pals cackled. They had tripped him with their minds.
“Hey,” Scarlett said. She started forward, pissed—and
jerked to a stop. Someone had grabbed her shoulder.
She whirled and found herself face-to-face with DeCraig, “Leave it, Winter.”
“They tripped him,” Scarlett said, shaking free.
DeCraig shook her head. “You go barking up that tree, Hopkins will make your life a living hell. Guaran-friggin-teed.”
“You think I care?”
DeCraig raised her brows. “Pace yourself. Okay? And trust me, if there’s one person here who can take care of himself, it’s Seamus Kyeong.”
SCARLETT STRUGGLED THROUGH ONE MORE rep and racked the barbell. Her spotter was Dunne, the yearling who’d shoulder pressed an I beam and two cadets during orientation. He had the face of a country boy and a Southern drawl to match. The outside world might assume he’d grown huge by tossing hay bales and drinking raw milk.
“One thirty-five for eight,” Dunne called to another meathead, who scratched on a clipboard.
Scarlett couldn’t help but smile. Eight reps with 135 pounds. Not bad, considering she hadn’t lifted weights in about a million years.
But Dunne chimed a singsong “Not wor-thy,” and the other meatheads echoed him. “Not wor-thy!” They roared with laughter and slapped high fives with their calloused, chalky palms, just as they had with the cadets who’d come before Scarlett.
Another test, another unremarkable result. Great.
Earlier in the week, she’d cranked out a mile in five and a half minutes, knocked out fifty push-ups, eighty-three sit-ups, and seventeen chin-ups, and thrown a basketball nearly ninety feet from a seated position, but none of these scores was good enough to impress the cadre here at The Point. The mental tests had been difficult but not overwhelming. A lot of the stuff she just didn’t know. Higher-level math and grammatical minutiae were tough when you’d spent high school baked out of your gourd. Not knowing stuff didn’t mean you were stupid. It just meant you weren’t prepared.
Most of her classmates seemed smart, fast, and strong, but each test identified genuine outliers, such as the guy who’d run the mile in under four minutes and the girl who’d benched 500 pounds, earning hoots and high fives from the meatheads.
One by one, the new cadets were finding their places. Not Scarlett, though. Maybe she’d no-score her way out the door…and straight into a prison cell.
Dunne handed Scarlett her paper. “Head over to Room 20, weakling.”
“I’m strong for my size,” she said.
Dunne laughed, gave her a light shove that sent her halfway across the floor, and called “Next weakling” to the lean kid who was next in line. Jakes, Scarlett thought, remembering the kid’s name from when she’d seen his nameplate during a meal. Jakes didn’t look concerned as he approached the bench and didn’t seem to mind being called a weakling. No surprise there. After all, Jakes had won his hundred-meter heat by about thirty meters.
Heading toward Room 20, Scarlett jerked to a stop. Someone was screaming in Room 17.
“Keep moving,” the guard posted outside Room 17 said.
Arriving at Room 20, she signed in at the door and entered a classroom with desks and a white board and a few new cadets waiting silently to be tested.
She sat next to Perich, the pale redhead with the blue tattoo. Perich was wearing a nervous half smile.
Scarlett smiled back. “Hey.”
Across the room, a scowling guard pointed his nightstick at them.
A pretty brunette cadet whose name tag read CRAMER sat across the teacher’s desk from Vernon, one of the hulking new cadets. Thin wires ran from a black box between them to what looked like a pair of acupuncture needles half buried in Vernon’s thick forearm.
Cramer twisted a dial. Vernon tensed and grunted.
“Sorry,” Cramer said, turning back the dial. “The juice always burns you meatheads.”
Vernon shook his head. “I don’t juice, ma’am.”
Cramer looked confused for a second, then grinned. “Oh, my,” she said. “You thought I meant steroids. It’s okay, New Cadet; you just sit there quietly, and we’ll get you back to your heavy things real soon, mmm-kay?” She removed the needles and called out numbers to the upperclassman recording results. Turning back to Vernon with a friendly smile, she said, “Typical meathead numbers.”
Vernon shrugged his huge shoulders. “I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam, ma’am.”
“Only speak when spoken to, New Cadet,” Cramer told him, but she said it with a grin, not the hard-bitten delivery favored by so many of the upperclassmen.
“Yes, ma’am,” Vernon said.
“Haul your thick self over to Room 11, where you will no doubt fail like a champ.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Vernon said, grinning. He’d pumped out ten reps with 455 pounds and was already receiving good-natured ribbing of the “not bad for a girl” variety from the other meatheads. He’d found his tribe.
Next up was Perich. As always, she looked nervous.
Cramer smiled and told her to sit down, and Perich gave her sheet to the upperclassman with the clipboard. “A little pinch,” Cramer said, and inserted the thin needles into Perich’s arm. “Juice on,” Cramer said, and twisted a dial.
Scarlett waited for Perich to stiffen, but she giggled as if someone had tickled her.
Reading the meter, Cramer smiled and raised her brows. “Let me guess,” she said. “It started with an animal?”
Perich tilted her head. “Ma’am?”
“A pet got hit in the road, or maybe a bird flew into the bay window, and you helped it.”
Perich shook her head.
Cramer pulled the needles free and looked at the redhead with waiting eyes.
“My grandmother,” Perich said. “She fell on the ice last winter.”
“Broke her hip?”
Perich shook her head. “Her wrist.”
Cramer nodded. “You can tell me the rest of the story later. I have a feeling we’ll be working pretty closely.” She returned her paperwork and smiled brightly. “Your electrical impedance numbers are fantastic.”
Perich beamed. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“All right. Head on over to Room 11. Don’t let the TKs bother you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Perich left with a satisfied smile, her characteristic anxiety nowhere in sight.
“Next,” the tester said.
Scarlett sat down, handed Cramer her paper, and smiled.
Cramer gave the sheet to a cadet with a clipboard. “Okay, Winter,” she said, all business now. “Little pinches.” Her touch was soft, and the needles slid home with very little discomfort. “All right,” Cramer said, inspecting the needles and wires. “You might feel a little burn.”
Scarlett braced herself as Cramer twisted the dial, partly in anticipation of the burn, partly in hopes that this test finally would reveal her calling.
A subtle trickle of warmth dribbled into the muscle near the needles.
Cramer gave a confused “huh” and told Scarlett that she had to adjust the needles. “Killing the juice,” she told the clipboard cadet.
“Numbers?”
“None for now,” Cramer said, and pulled the needles. She touched Scarlett’s arm for a second, pressing two fingers into the muscle close to her elbow. Scarlett felt a little patch of warmth where Cramer pressed. “Right here,” Cramer said to herself, then, robotically, “little pinch,” as she reinserted the needles. This time it did pinch a bit.
“Let’s try this again,” Cramer said. A few seconds later, she stopped the test, removed the needles, and gave Scarlett an annoyed look. “What are you made of, rubber?”
“No, ma’am,” she said, confused.
“Zero,” Cramer called over her shoulder to the cadet with the clipboard.
“Zero?”
“Zero,” she said. Turning back to Scarlett,
she said, “If you broke my machine, New Cadet, I’ll have your head. Room 11.”
Scarlett left, more confused than ever. Whatever test she’d just taken, she’d failed yet again. Out in the hall, passing excited new cadets, she felt like a kid waiting to get picked last in a game of kickball.
Inside Room 11, Hopkins took her paper and pointed to a clipboard. “Sign in, Winter.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and wrote her name.
“Wow,” Hopkins said, looking up from Scarlett’s sheet. “You take mediocrity to a whole new level. You’re not strong or smart.” His eyes scanned the sheet. “Normal…normal…normal. I’ve never seen a less remarkable recruit. You sure you even belong here, Winter?”
“No, sir,” she said.
Hopkins handed her the sheet. “Ten bucks says you blow this test, too.”
She didn’t have to wait long. Perich drifted past, unperturbed as a spring breeze.
“The Winter of my discontent,” DeCraig said from behind the desk where she sat, and gestured to the chair across from her. A strange assortment of items covered the desktop: a deck of cards, a pen, a canteen, and two pieces of green yarn.
When Scarlett handed her sheet to the results taker, her heart gave a flutter.
Kyeong slipped the sheet into a clipboard, not even sparing her a glance.
Don’t read it, Scarlett thought, suddenly embarrassed.
DeCraig picked up the cards and started shuffling them with the nonchalant precision of a Vegas blackjack dealer. “You qualify yet, Winter?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well, maybe this is your lucky station.”
“I hope so, ma’am,” Scarlett said. In truth, she wasn’t so sure. On the one hand, DeCraig was the coolest person she’d met here, and qualifying as a telekinetic would mean training around Kyeong, getting to know him. On the other hand, Hopkins and his crew were also TKs.
“All right,” DeCraig said, “bear with me. I’m going to ask you to try a few things that might sound kind of crazy. Just give it a shot, okay?”