The Point

by John Dixon

  “Seamus, stop. This is—”

  The bell rang.

  Seamus’s face twisted, and an arc of force smashed her across the back. In all the sparring and hazing and training she’d endured, she’d never felt such incredible force. The abruptness and ferocity of his attack surprised her so much that she didn’t have time to channel the force, which boomeranged out of her. A wall locker crunched inward and toppled, spilling gloves and headgear and sending dozens of rolled hand wraps rolling across the mat.

  “What the hell, Seamus?” she said.

  “They tell you to kill, you kill,” he said. “Period.” And he launched another attack.

  She circled the edges of the ring like a rangy boxer against a heavy-handed puncher, ducking and dodging, but Seamus was relentless, and his invisible blows came from all directions.

  “You’re giving them everything,” he said, pressing forward. “You’re ruining your future.”

  She absorbed a tremendous slashing attack, channeled it into her bones, and opened her mouth to dispute his claim. At that second, he blasted her in the lower back, another surprise attack that ricocheted out of her. A ring post turnbuckle exploded in a spray of vinyl and foam. The remaining force splintered outward, clipping Lopez and bowling him over. “Watch your fucking aim, Winter!” the hulking sergeant bellowed.

  “Hear that?” Seamus said. “Watch your aim. Good weapons shoot where they’re pointed.”

  “Please stop,” she said, panting with effort. “This is crazy. You have to understand.”

  Lopez shouted for her to fire back, but she refused. Seamus wanted her to blast him. He was so stubborn that he’d get himself killed just to prove a point.

  He chased her, blasting away with blistering attacks and a scathing monologue.

  She was selling her soul to Rhoads, he said. Ditching herself and their relationship to become Rhoads’s magical bazooka.

  There was some truth in what he said, of course, but she couldn’t let Dan down, couldn’t let his murder go unavenged.

  No way.

  The bell rang, and it was over.

  “Time!” Lopez bellowed.

  Scarlett spit out her mouthpiece, scowled at Seamus, and released a bolt of lightning that leaped from her with a blinding flash and a deafening crack. Across the gym, a heavy bag vaporized in an explosion of light and heat and crackling electricity. The lights dimmed, went out, and recovered. Behind where the bag had hung, the cinder blocks were scorched and steaming. Cadets staggered, wide-eyed, rubbing their ears and sniffing ozone and casting wary glances at Scarlett. The hair on her arms stood at attention.

  She went to the ropes. Lucy climbed onto the ring apron. Her eyes filled her spectacles. Scarlett pushed her gloves through the ropes. “Get these off of me, Lucy.”

  “You all right, sis?” Lucy said.

  “I don’t know,” Scarlett said. “I just don’t know anymore.”

  Seamus was behind her then, tugging at her arm, apologizing, his voice thick with emotion. “I’m so sorry, Scarlett,” he said. “I’m trying to save you.”

  She refused to turn toward him. Lucy unlaced her gloves and yanked them free. Scarlett unbuckled her headgear and peeled it away. Sweat poured from the chin guard. She chucked the padded helmet out of the ring, and it bounced away across the mat.

  Seamus squeezed her arm. “If you go down that path, there’s no turning back. I don’t want you to suffer like I’ve suffered.”

  Lucy held the ropes, and Scarlett slipped from the ring.

  “Winter’s out,” Lopez called. “Who’s next?”

  “I am.” The strange voice, calm and quiet, cut through the commotion.

  Scarlett turned.

  Dalia entered the ring.

  Lopez hesitated for a second and glanced out the main door, perhaps hoping Rhoads would appear. “Well…”

  “I’m next,” Dalia said.

  “Knock it off, Dalia,” Scarlett said.

  Dalia didn’t seem to hear or see her. She stared sleepily at Seamus.

  “Fifteen seconds,” Lopez said.

  “No,” Scarlett said, grabbing the top rope. “I’ll go back in.”

  Lopez gave his animal snort. “You had your chance.”

  She jumped down from the ring apron and grabbed Lopez’s shoulder. It was like gripping a granite wall. “Sergeant Lopez, I—”

  “Lock it up, Winter,” Lopez said, “and take your hand off me unless you want to lose your spot on the team.”

  Scarlett let her hand fall away.

  Dalia leaned over the ropes and called to her. The dark circles beneath Dalia’s eyes made her look like she’d already gone ten rounds. “Seamus is making you weak,” Dalia told her. “He’s trying to ruin everything—but I will save you.”

  “Dalia, don’t.”

  The bell rang.

  “Back off, Amer,” Seamus said. “Rhoads isn’t here to protect you now.” And then he was talking over herself, a disembodied version of Seamus’s voice calling, “Mom? Dad? Sorry I’m late, but—”

  Screaming filled the air.

  Both Seamuses were screaming…

  One Seamus, made of flesh and blood, screamed in the ring, backpedaling in horror.

  The other Seamus screamed within the dream, which Scarlett and the other cadets watched in a paralysis of terror.

  Scarlett saw Seamus’s home from his point of view, staring through his eyes as he entered the living room—such an inaptly named space in this nightmare moment, filled as it was with so many dead. Seamus’s mother and twin brothers sat on the couch together, each of their heads a red mess, the work of the pistol sitting atop the fluffy corpse of a cocker spaniel in his father’s lap. The gun rose now, pointing at Seamus and, through his perspective, at Scarlett and everyone else. His father said, “I’m sorry, son, but it’s better this way. I didn’t want to do this. I love Mom and your brothers so much, but…” His mouth continued to move, but a string of beeps blocked out his words, as if a TV crew in some parallel universe was editing the dream stream. Even with the beeping, Scarlett could make out one word: Rhoads.

  “Dad, no,” Seamus yelled again in unison, both in the dream and living it again here in public. “Dad, you didn’t. Not Mom and—”

  “I’m so sorry, son,” his dad said, and you could see that he meant it, crazy as that was, could see the tears and the trembling in his hand as he raised the revolver, aiming it at Seamus. “It’s my fault that you’re the way you are. I can’t let them have you. I can’t let BEEP turn you into his attack dog. That’s all we are to him…weapons.”

  “Dad, no!”

  The pistol fired. The gunshot echoed through the gymnasium. Cadets shrieked.

  But the pistol had jerked at the last second. Inches from Seamus’s head, a family photo shattered, showering glass.

  “You killed them, Dad,” Seamus’s voice in the dream said. “I won’t let you kill me. You have to pay for what you did.” In the ring, he simply wept, shaking his head from side to side.

  Seamus’s father grunted with confusion. His left hand flew to his right wrist, struggling in vain as the pistol executed a choppy arc, coming around to point at his face. He shouted at Seamus, but the muzzle jammed into his mouth, muffling the words.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” dream Seamus said, and his father’s garbled roar ended in the sharp crack of the pistol. His head jerked, spraying red, and his body spilled limply from the chair.

  Then the dream was over.

  Scarlett’s breath shuddered free as she regained full awareness. All around her, strike force members mumbled and cursed. They’d all suffered through the dream.

  At the center of the ring, Seamus sobbed. Terrible, tormented, pitiful, alone…

  “Oh, Seamus,” Scarlett muttered, and stepped toward him.

  Dalia
hunched in a corner, arms spread wide, fingers curled like talons. She panted with intensity, a terrible grin triumphant beneath her dark, glittering eyes.

  “Seamus,” Scarlett called, “are you—”

  “Bitch!” Seamus screamed, and then Dalia flew across the ring as if she’d been struck by a car. She hit the ropes hard enough to stretch them outward, then bounced forward like a professional wrestler, where she smashed into a slashing blow of invisible force. Scarlett heard a terrible whip snap and a crunch. Dalia’s head jerked, her face from hairline to chin split open in a line of bright red blood, and her body flopped to the canvas without so much as a twitch.

  AFTER CLAYTON LEFT, SCARLETT SAT beside Dalia’s bed in the infirmary. Dalia had no other visitors, though the small room was still cramped with nurses coming and going, a physician who kept popping in and out, and Cramer, who leaned over Dalia, mending her with energy manipulation.

  Dalia remained unconscious. She drew long, snorting breaths spaced too far apart, like the snoring of someone with late-stage sleep apnea. One side of her face had ballooned, closing that eye; the other eye stared blankly, the black hole of its pupil dilated to eclipse the iris. Worst of all, however, was the cut that ran between the eyes, dividing her face in halves from top to bottom. Seamus’s final attack had split her forehead to the bone, broken and flayed her nose, shattered her front teeth, and sliced through her lips and chin.

  Miraculously, Cramer already had closed those wounds and was attending, Scarlett believed, to internal damage. Cramer moved her hands slowly back and forth, a few inches above Dalia’s right temple, in the manner of a fortune-teller consulting a crystal ball. Wavering green and purple light shifted in the space between her palms and Dalia’s skull, reminding Scarlett of the night so long ago when she’d sat in the backseat of Cramer’s car and watched the healer mend Seamus’s lacerated eyebrow. The memory didn’t seem real. Had things ever actually been that good, that simple, that sweet?

  “She’ll live,” Cramer said, “but she’s going to have a horrible scar, and her head’s going to hurt like somebody packed it with broken glass.”

  Scarlett exhaled heavily and patted Dalia’s hand. There had been a terrifying moment in the ring, as the guards dragged Seamus away, when Dalia’s survival hadn’t been certain.

  Seamus hadn’t resisted the guards. He’d sobbed, apologizing not to Dalia but to Scarlett, who could only stare in wordless terror as the men in camouflage dragged him away.

  But Dalia would live. Thank God, she would live.

  What she had done, torturing Seamus with that nightmarish memory, had been unbelievably cruel, but Seamus’s response had been nothing short of monstrous.

  Yet now she understood why Seamus hated Rhoads so much. Rhoads had exposed his father to the chemical that had caused him to kill Seamus’s mother and brothers—and had triggered telekinetic power in Seamus. As his father had turned the gun on Seamus, he’d apologized, explaining that he’d done everything to save him from Rhoads. Whether that was true didn’t matter. Scarlett could understand to some small degree the guilt that Seamus felt at his powers causing the death of loved ones. Ultimately, Rhoads had both empowered and forced Seamus to turn the gun on his father, who hadn’t committed suicide at all. Sure, he’d jammed the gun into his own mouth, and technically, his finger had pulled the trigger, but Scarlett remembered all too vividly how the man had fought the turning of the pistol.

  She felt horrible for Seamus, but what he had done to Dalia…

  Nothing was simple anymore. Nothing was clear.

  Well, almost nothing.

  She knew one thing to be true.

  She would avenge her brother.

  Lopez appeared in the doorway. “Come with me, Winter.”

  She gave Dalia’s hand a squeeze, thanked Cramer, and followed the massive sergeant. What did he want this time? He couldn’t kick her off the strike force. Now that she’d broken through, Rhoads would do anything to keep her on the team.

  Lopez didn’t pause to talk. He swaggered down the hallway and disappeared around the corner. Scarlett followed. He made another turn and stopped halfway down that hall, where he unlocked the armory door and beckoned her inside.

  She followed warily, remembering the blowtorch.

  The room smelled of gun oil. Racks of M14s lined the back wall. Other racks held nightsticks and body armor. Rows of helmets stared like ranked soldiers.

  “Close the door,” Lopez said.

  She closed it.

  Lopez put a boot onto one of the wooden benches, rested a forearm across a meaty thigh, and regarded Scarlett with his skull face. Lopez just stared for several seconds, a cigar stub gripped in his teeth. His eyes shone brightly against the dark mask of crosshatched scars. “All right, Winter,” he finally said, “I’m gonna level with you, but this is off the record, you read me?”

  “Lima Charlie, Sergeant.”

  Lopez gave a sharp snort. “Your boyfriend is in deep trouble.”

  “I noticed, Sergeant.”

  “Lock it up, Winter. We have to make this fast. This is life or death.”

  Scarlett blinked. Life or death?

  “Kyeong’s been on thin ice since coming here. This time, attacking Amer, he screwed the pooch. And not just any pooch. Rhoads’s prize poodle.”

  “But Sergeant,” Scarlett said, “the dream…you saw what Dalia did.”

  Lopez grunted. “Which is why you’re here. Amer pushed Kyeong too far. Rhoads won’t hear it, but she did. I heard Kyeong talking to you in the ring, and we both saw what happened to his father.” He frowned. “That poor kid’s been through so much.”

  For half a second, Scarlett waited for the other shoe to drop—some sarcastic joke about Seamus—but nothing came. Lopez was actually expressing sympathy. “Is he in the Chamber, Sergeant?”

  Lopez shook his head. “It’s too late for the Chamber. Rhoads doesn’t understand Kyeong like we do. He only sees the most powerful TK to ever attend The Point refusing to join his strike force.” He shook his head again, harder, like a prizefighter trying to clear blood from his eyes. “Even when Rhoads delivered the ultimatum—join the strike force or ship out—Kyeong refused to join.”

  “Seamus has no place to go. His family is dead.”

  “The Farm,” Lopez said, and his haunted eyes stared into hers. “Rhoads made him choose between the strike force and The Farm, and Kyeong chose The Farm.”

  “But that’s—”

  Lopez grabbed her arm. His eyes burned with something approaching desperation. “Transport will be here soon. I’m buying you five minutes with him. Talk him into joining the team.”

  “I’ll try,” Scarlett said.

  Lopez squeezed her arm. “If you care even a little bit about that boy, you’d better do more than try.” The emotion in Lopez’s voice told Scarlett that no matter what the sergeant said, he cared about more than just filling the team roster. “The Farm is hell, pure and simple. He’d be better off dead.”

  TWO MPS, ONE MALE AND one female, stood outside the holding cell. Seeing their black uniforms and silo patches, Scarlett understood. Transport already had arrived. They were going to take Seamus to The Farm unless she could persuade him to join the strike force.

  Lopez spoke to the MPs, who grudgingly agreed to give Scarlett five minutes. They opened the door and let her inside, then closed the door behind her.

  Seamus sat on his cot. He looked up, offered a weak smile, and said, “Part of me wanted to say good-bye. Part of me hoped I’d never see you again.”

  She crossed the room and crouched in front of him.

  He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  After what he’d done to Dalia, she’d been shocked and angry. Now, seeing him broken, her heart ached. Her feelings were confused, but she still cared for him. Deeply.

  “Hey,” she said, and lifted his chin
. “We only have five minutes. MPs are here to take you to The Farm.”

  Seamus nodded, utterly defeated. His mouth wriggled, and tears filled his puffy eyes. “I’m sorry, Scarlett. I’m sorry for everything.”

  She slid her hands over his jaw and used her thumbs to wipe away his tears. “Just tell Rhoads what he wants to hear and we can talk later.”

  His head moved back and forth in her hands, and his eyes stared into hers, unflinching. “I won’t join. I can’t. I’m through with Rhoads. I won’t be his weapon.”

  “You won’t fight the people who killed my brother?”

  “You saw what I did,” he said.

  “It was self-defense. Your father killed your family. He was going to kill you.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” he said. “You saw what I did to Dalia.”

  “But she—”

  “Stop,” he said, his voice suddenly strong again. “I’m beyond help. What I did to Dalia? That’s not me, not the real me. I was nice. But then…what happened, what I did…Killing changes you, Scarlett. You can’t go back.”

  “But you could—”

  “You don’t understand,” he said, “and I hope you never do. The person I was before I killed my father, he never would have hurt Dalia like I did. Didn’t you ever wonder why Hopkins hates me so much? My first semester here, one of his buddies, Harrison, messed with me. I fought back—and nearly killed him. He’ll live, but he’ll never be right again. Healers can’t fix brain damage.”

  “That’s horrible, but—”

  “I’m just a weapon now. That’s what Rhoads and my father and this place and the things I’ve done have turned me into.”

  “Seamus, listen to me.” She had to make him understand. Time was running out.

  “I told Rhoads that I wanted chemical stasis.”

  Scarlett’s heart flip-flopped. “Death?”

  “Rhoads refused, the coward.” He shrugged. “So it’s The Farm. Let them strap me down and pump me full of drugs. Just forget everything, and hopefully someday the world will forget that I even existed.”