Persist (Discipline Book 3)

by P. S. Power

  The others were more or less just playing, except for Micha, who had gotten that they were attacking Ben, and simply moved to get in on it. Then forgot the rest of her early lessons rather handily. She should have sought cover, as soon as a fire fight was joined.

  Waving his hand, from well behind the others, Ben caused a wave of snow to build suddenly, and fling itself through that air, leaving a large bare patch on the walkway they were using. The amount was a bit more than he would have thought of using on purpose, but by the time it reached them, traveling over a hundred feet, only about half of it rained down on them. Like an avalanche.

  It took all of them except for Clark off their feet, landing them in the soft white. They were left mainly buried too, though everyone was able to just stand up, after a few seconds.

  “Gah! What the hell was that!” Lenore looked at the mound that had formed around them, which was a bit past three feet higher than the surrounding stuff. The glare off of it left Ben’s eyes hurting a bit, as he walked back over. Slowly, in case they were planning to attack again.

  It wasn’t until he was most of the way there that he realized he wasn’t in his body. He was standing there, off in the distance still. That got fixed, and left him feeling a little shaken. Things had seemed so real, that even with him standing there, off in the distance, not moving, Ben hadn’t realized he wasn’t himself at the moment. Just a projection, or whatever they called it.

  After a few seconds, Ben answered, safe inside his real body again, he hoped.

  “That, is what happens when you start a snow war with someone that has super powers. Unsymmetrical dampness making.” Before he could ask if everyone was all right, words flowed on his screen about it. Micha was shaken, but that was the worst damage. Everyone else was larger than her, and she’d been tossed forward a few feet. Not that she couldn’t handle it.

  It was hard to remember, as she stood there, looking small and cute, her dark skin contrasting with her blonde hair, but she wasn’t exactly a regular person. None of them were, technically. Even Lenore, who was dancing around and pulling at her gray outfit, trying to get the snow off of her, was more than most would have dreamed of.

  There was another attempt to get him, using snow weapons, and he didn’t toss nearly as much at them then, though he was able to use the white from some of the closer rooves, so that it was nearly impossible to flee from. Worse, getting further away from him didn’t help them at all. Clark tried that, only to be driven back with a half dozen very well placed projectiles from Ben. They didn’t all land, since the man was fast, and moving, but five of them did. That took aiming at where Clark was going, even with his attempts to bob and weave added in.

  Out of the null area, Ben could do that.

  It meant that, five minutes later, when they’d all gotten inside, that Ben was damp in a few places, and the others were trying to strip off their outer layers near the front entry, inside the dining room. Half of them found that they had large pockets of snow trapped and had to go outside to dump them. It was hilarious, of course.

  Clark shook his head, and then grinned, as they finally got to walk toward where the food was put out.

  “Fine. If you want to play with the snow, how about you clear all the walkways? The running trail, too? We don’t really have anything in place for that and you did part of it already.”

  Ben looked at his tray, which had a big bowl of oatmeal on it, along with a stack of fried eggs. His stomach ached, wanting to consume it right then, but he got the idea. It wasn’t about punishing him really. There was a bit of that in there, since the others were all cold now, but they had started it, and simply lost.

  The larger man was just the one that was supposed to be in charge of teaching Ben how to use his TK and so far they hadn’t had time to work on that at all. Or, they had, but it wasn’t going to be fun for the others, so it had been being put off. Ben hadn’t touched anyone yet, so was able to get that part. Directly from Clark, who nodded, knowing what he was thinking.

  “After I eat?” He was about to beg, since food was needed at the moment, but he knew that missing a meal wouldn’t really hurt him. Not that he didn’t need the calories now. Really, it probably wasn’t enough food for him, what he had on his tray. His body was burning things hard, at the moment. Mainly to keep himself warm.

  Being a kind and benevolent taskmaster, Clark nodded.

  “Sure, don’t take too long. I want the area between here and the meditation hall cleared before we have to walk over.”

  Inside, the other man didn’t seem to think that Ben could do it. Using his powers constantly would be too hard, and snow, while light and fluffy, weighed more than anyone thought, when you were pushing it around constantly.

  Putting a spoon of oatmeal, plain, into his mouth as he sat, Ben worked out how to do it. That required a map, which formed in his head, and dropping out of the conversation, but he was able to eat at the same time, with a bit of trying. The eggs were slippery, but good, and while he wasn’t exactly focused on what he was putting in his mouth, no one snuck anything onto his plate as a punishment for being too good at impromptu snow fighting.

  The actual work would have to be done in parts, he decided. Using his powers for about ten to fifteen seconds, to push as big of a scallop shaped swath as possible out of the way, alternating sides, so the snow wouldn’t form a giant wall. Each building needed a path to its door too. No one called out for him to start, though he pushed his tray away, indicating that he was about to do something.

  If people spoke, he didn’t hear them, since to his perspective, he was standing out in the snow again, waving his hands, moving large amounts of white in about ten-meter quarter circle shapes. There was no rubbing sounds, but the snow all moved, leaving the ground below bare and nearly dry. After the first one, he took a break, having to wait fifteen seconds to actually recover.

  Pain didn’t really come into play this time, thankfully. He was both far enough away from his body, and taking his time, not trying to power through the whole thing at once. Ben still heard himself breathing hard, in the real world, but it was no worse than he sounded while running.

  Finally, he sat up.

  “Well, I at least imagined that I did something. Should we go and check it out?” It had taken him at least ten minutes, but if he wasn’t just sitting there imagining things, it was a good sized area to clear up. The actual bare ground started about thirty feet away from the dining facility. That put it just at the edge of how close he could move anything of real note. From that point to the meditation center looked good though. There were funny shaped sea shells of snow off to each side, in regular patterns. It looked almost like someone had decorated a cake, and piped in a lot of frosting on the edges.

  Which was pretty, at least to him.

  Clark pounded him on the back, several times.

  “Nice! Now, just do the rest of the place for us, say, before dinner tonight? You have time for that, right?”

  He didn’t think so, but Ben shrugged.

  “I can work on it? I have training today, and who knows what else will come in. I should get a reward for this though. I mean, think of all the cold, wet feet this will save? I should get a medal, or at least an emailed award ribbon.” Not that he had a personal account now. That had been given up when Ben had left home, months before.

  There was no promise of a Ben centric award coming anytime soon. If anything the others seemed less than impressed with the work he’d done. He was patted a bit, but not in support, just to get at the warm and calm peace that being around him could provide. Then they all went to meditation, even Lenore, who seemed to be trying to do her best, even if she didn’t know what to do for half of it.

  It brought back memories for Ben. Not that long before it had been him standing there, trying to make things look right, and not making it, even if he didn’t know exactly why that was. It took training to be able to get some of it, after all. Machines and devices that allowed you to get feedback
that you might otherwise miss. It felt like a long time before, but wasn’t. Months. Not even that many really.

  The event itself was peaceful. Calm and productive for Ben. Unfortunately training with Ali was much harder than it had been, since she’d noticed the problem with the snow as well, which meant that Ben had two hours in which to practice fleeing from flying insects that didn’t care one bit about that kind of thing, while he was in two feet of slippery doom. Needless to say, he was killed, over and over in VR. It was hard enough to pull off that Ali didn’t even scold him for sucking so much, for once.

  “Right. It probably won’t come up, but we need to work out how to do this a bit better. I’ll do that part. What do you have for the rest of the day? Files?”

  There were probably some, but they were the old paper kind, Ben knew. He could see the stack on the little table that he got to use in Kyle’s office. None of them were important really, being at least fifty years old. Mysteries that people were still vaguely interested in, but that was all. Cold cases, that not getting to for a few hours wouldn’t make any difference to.

  “Clark wants me to do some telekinesis work, so I have that. It will probably take a few hours. Path clearing? On the good side it seems to be pretty good exercise. On the bad, I don’t think I’m eating enough for it.” Grinning, he waited for her to tell him that sounded fun, or hard, or even just wave him away, bored with him. Instead the lady rubbed her scar and smiled a little bit.

  “All right. I want to get that on camera. I’ll get Dave to do it. Hold on. You can work from here.” She didn’t run out, but walked quickly enough that it didn’t take hours for the others to be ready. Dave, blue hair shining, waved to the air, and spoke out loud. He was outside, with Ali, waiting for him, it seemed.

  “Um, Ben? Can you hear me? Why don’t we start on that side?” Dave pointed down the main path, his fingers already looking chilly. They needed gloves, but he didn’t know how to find any. In town, most likely.

  A place that hadn’t been gone to on purpose in a while, for him.

  The snow moved, like before, and both Ali and Dave spoke about it, with some alternate paths being suggested, since people used them, daily. Even if they weren’t official walking spaces. Interesting things that mainly went from people’s cabins to where they worked and the dining hall. That took a lot more effort than just doing the main ones, but they were small, so Ben was able to do them quickly enough.

  They lost Ali, who was too cold shortly after they finished the main areas. Dave stuck with it, even though he wasn’t feeling that happy about it all. He was wearing everything he owned, but his hands and face were bare. Which meant that Ben needed to hurry. Still, he didn’t drive himself into pain over it, and took the smallest breaks he could.

  In the end, he finished just before Dave died of hypothermia. At least that was what the man was thinking. He wasn’t that close to going down however, though his hands were pretty chilly and numb. Ben felt that part, as if they were his own. When he finished and found himself in brown seven, standing and staring at the far wall, he was drenched with sweat. Ali was sitting behind her desk, using her computer for something. What it was didn’t make any sense to him at the moment, his brain still working on snow, inside.

  Even though that part was done.

  “All finished? You have just enough time to go and change, maybe shower, before dinner. If you don’t want to just fall down? That looks a bit more intense than you said.”

  It probably was, but Ben just smiled, not able to speak yet, he didn’t think, and walked away. It was still coming right down outside, he noticed. The paths were all white again already. At least the ones he could see. That was annoying. Ben glared up at the sky, for betraying him, which had cold frozen water hitting him there.

  “Fine, be that way.” It was muttered, and no one was standing around outside to see him make a fool of himself, so it was fair game.

  That night he decided to sneak away after dinner, to go and work on the files that had been put out. It was, more or less, his job now. Even if it was a bit useless.

  Like him, in the main. Yes, he managed to do some interesting things from time to time, but that didn’t prevent millions from dying. Ben had no more clue that day about how to stop a massive bomb than he had the one before. Not unless he could work out how to push it back into the world it came from, before it exploded.

  The ground under him was clean, and the snow had been a lot to move, but he hadn’t actually tossed the stuff into a different reality. So far he hadn’t even been able to mentally look into those far off places. There was a wall in the way, preventing that. Otherwise he could just kind of bat the thing back through, if it wasn’t too heavy.

  Ben didn’t know how much he could move, using his mind, really. Hundreds of kilograms, he figured. Maybe a thousand or more. The numbers that came up were in pounds, but showed that the amount he could do at that moment was about one ton, standard. That was a lot more than he could lift by hand, but a large metal and composite bomb might be too much.

  Plus, the part where he couldn’t actually go through to the other side.

  “Not yet. You will though. Think about it Ben. If others are going through, there has to be a hole, doesn’t there?” The voice that came was his own, though it felt older. Like David always had to him. His dead father.

  He didn’t think his lips were moving, but that was the most likely case. The other was that his ultra-vivid imagination was playing tricks on him. Again. There was no orange sphere to the left this time, either, to let him know that it was happening.

  “Um… Hello? Dad?” He waited, but nothing came, as he walked along.

  No one was watching, so that part was good. The last thing he needed was to start talking to himself. Or his dead father. Not that people wouldn’t cut him some slack for that kind of thing, but hearing voices wasn’t a great sign of mental stability.

  Hurrying, he showered, and changed, then walked quickly to where the food was. His favorite spot, at the moment. The tray he loaded probably had about six thousand calories on it, which got noticed when he settled at the regular table. Micha moved in alongside of him, and patted his shoulder, like she always used to do. It wasn’t that she meant to be creepy, but a chill ran up his spine at the contact.

  Then, gently, he pulled away.

  “Sorry, I’m…” The others started tapping him then, like a light source that needed to be activated. It looked cute at least, when Mags did it, using one finger, like she’d read what he was thinking about. That turned into her leaning into him.

  “Hey! I managed to go and get presents for everyone. Well, all of you. I don’t make enough for everyone in the place. I won’t even make you wait twenty days for them. Back in my room?” She looked at Ben, as if he might have seen it, but he’d changed in the bathroom, and no one else had been there at the time. So he had no clue what the presents would be.

  The idea was exciting though.

  “I need to go and do some shopping soon too. Are the roads clear?” It would be a bit of a walk into the nearest town if they weren’t. Fifteen miles of snow was a lot to get past.

  Mags nodded.

  “Plowed and salted. Once you get to the end of the driveway here. That was dicey. The electric van had some trouble with it earlier. It’s been cleared, so that part should work, if the snow ever stops. I heard that it’s another polar vortex? That means we’re going to be in for some cold weather in the coming days.”

  Across the table, there was a snort, which came from Lenore, her long strawberry blonde hair looking darker at the moment. That probably meant it was damp still.

  “Cold in a few days? My nipples are raw already from standing up so often. Getting chillier isn’t a great thing, in my book. I need to get into town and get some cold weather gear before the. We should all do it. There are autos here? I mean, would I be allowed to use one like that, or…”

  Not knowing the answer Ben was a bit surprised when Micha nodded.
>
  “Yeah. They just need to be signed out. There’s a hundred-mile limit, for each trip, but that means we can go to some decent places as far as shopping goes. We could all go, if you want? That isn’t a bad idea, getting warmer clothing. I swear it wasn’t nearly this bad last year. We barely had a dusting of snow at all.”

  There was a lot of agreement on that point. Lissa didn’t really say anything about it, but managed to smile anyway.

  “I love the snow. When, you know, it’s not riding down the back of my shorts. That… Thing you did earlier was…”

  She was looking at Ben, which got Mags to snigger at him.

  “You shoved snow down her pants? That’s… Cold, Ben Epson. Freaking cold!” Also, apparently, funny.

  Lis shook her head slowly then, her face a bit more adult seeming as she locked eyes with Mags.

  “No. He threw a wall of snow at us. I ended up buried in it. Completely covered. We all did.” She shivered, holding her arms. It looked real even, and not like she was acting for them.

  Ben shook his head.

  “Nope. Clark didn’t go down from it. It was only about a ton of the stuff, spread out a bit too.” Leaning into Mags, trying to be friendly, given that they were kind of together now, if not officially, Ben wrinkled his nose.

  “They’d just ambushed me, forgetting about my awesome ice based powers. I bet they don’t forget that part next time. Mwa-ha-ha!” He’d been going for super villain, but it came out more Dracula like. The cartoon that he used to watch as a kid, not the one from the old movies.

  Ben had watched some of them, with his dad, but had always preferred the interactive nature of virts. It wasn’t like playing a game, but you could look around the environments, and get a lot closer to the action than the ancient flat picture things allowed. You were normally locked into being in the same scene as what the others were watching, or what the script needed you to see or hear at the moment, but it was still like being there. Just invisible.