by K A Riley
Oddly, Arlo barely puts up a fight. With his head down and his eyes unfocused under his sweat-soaked hoodie, he throws a couple of weak, telegraphed punches that wouldn’t bruise a butterfly. He reaches for Kress’s wrist, but she slips away while back-kicking Libra halfway across the room at the same time.
Turning, Arlo makes a half-hearted lunge at Brohn. Brohn rewards him for his gentle restraint with a sharp fist to the ribcage and an almost simultaneous elbow strike to the temple. I’m pretty sure Arlo’s unconscious before he hits the floor.
Even Ignacio, who’s nearly as big as Brohn, is embarrassingly out of his league. A fist-swinging flurry in Kress’s direction ends with him flying across the room and sliding to a crashing stop in a helpless tangle of limbs against the wall.
Kress and Brohn are Emergents, like us. Like us, they have certain abilities. Unlike us, they know how to use them.
Of the six of us in this class, I think I’m the only one who’s been in actual, life-or-death combat before.
My real-world experience plus my work with Kress has given me a confidence the others don’t have. That gives me an edge.
Brohn, though, looks determined to dull that edge.
Grinning, I dance around and slip away from his attack before launching one of my own.
Already congratulating myself in my mind, I strike with blazing speed at all his pressure points: throat, bridge of the nose, floating ribs, instep, solar plexus. Hoping to replicate my success against Ignacio, I even take a shot at his groin.
He’s not happy about that, and he lets me know it with a spinning back fist I never saw coming.
You can be big, you can be strong, or you can be fast. It’s not fair that Brohn gets to be all three.
And bulletproof on top of it all, I remind myself. Totally not fair.
For the second time today, I wind up gasping for breath on the floor.
The fact that I’m the last of my six-person Cohort to get pummeled to the ground isn’t much comfort.
“That’ll do for today,” Kress tells us. “You can head to the Infirmary to get fixed up. War and Mayla will meet you there. Then, get yourselves to the Tavern. Cohort B will be there soon, and you can all eat together.” Without waiting for a response, she and Brohn stride out of the room. At the door, Kress turns back to her gasping, bruised, and bloodied students. “Get some rest. You’ve got an hour until your next class.”
She’s not even breathing hard.
Great. It’s the first day, and I get the stuffing beaten out of me. Twice. If this is a sign of what’s to come, I might not just be one of the Academy’s first students. I might also be its first to leave in a body bag instead of in a graduation gown.
4
Infirmary
After the brutal humiliation of Unarmed Combat Class, my Cohort limps downstairs to the Infirmary where War and Mayla are all set up to attend to our assorted wounds and injuries.
The large room and the smaller lab and tech rooms connected to it are bathed in pure white light from banks of holo-panels embedded in the walls. Every surface—from ceiling to floor and from wall to wall—is cold, sterile, and completely uninviting.
With all the flat white light, there aren’t even any shadows.
I think alarms might go off if so much as a speck of dust found its way in here.
In the middle of the room, War and Mayla are dressed in matching powder blue scrubs with clear surgical shields covering their faces and transparent nitrile examination gloves on their hands.
Mayla’s long, dreadlocked hair is threaded through with a colorful array of beads, clips, and ribbons.
War, all four hundred pounds of him, is glistening with a light sheen of sweat and is glittering next to Mayla, his hands on his hips like someone carved him out of a giant block of ice.
Considering his size, I’m wondering how they managed to rustle up a pair of scrubs big enough to fit him.
Maybe they used some of the extra bed sheets?
Our two teachers—and for now, our nurses—look fresh and clean…unlike the bin of bloody clothes, towels, bandages, and gauze sitting over in the corner.
Gruesome and sticky-looking, it’s the only thing out of place in this otherwise completely hygienic room.
Well, the bin and us.
Our clothes are a Rorschach test of rips, sweat, scuff marks, and blood. We look like we’ve been dragged through Hell by our tongues.
“You just missed the other Cohort,” War tells us, flipping the lid closed on the bloody bin and scanning us up and down. “If it makes you feel any better, I think they got it even worse than the six of you.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Mayla laughs. “Terk just ran them through their first class of Demolitions and Explosives in the Weapons Lab. No big deal.”
“Sure,” War chuckles. “Just a few flash burns, jangled nerves, and some temporary hearing loss. And I’m sure Trax’s eyebrows’ll grow back in a few weeks.”
Mayla gives him a playful smack on his bulging inner-tube of an arm. “Don’t scare the kids.”
Grinning, War taps his wrist-mounted holo-scanner to life. He invites us to have a seat on the row of hovering examination tables lined up in the middle of the room under a bank of tendril-like sensors hanging down from the ceiling. “Now…let’s see how the six of you fared. You lived through the first day, so that’s something, eh?”
“Only two broken ribs,” Mayla tells Ignacio as she applies a liquid-blue gel wrap around his midsection.
“It’s two more than I had this morning,” he groans, wincing as he pulls his blood and sweat-soaked tank-top back down.
“You’ve still got twenty-two good ones left,” Mayla grins. “If I were you, I’d start protecting them a little better.”
“It’s just going to get tougher from here, kids,” War warns us. “We didn’t set up the Academy to kill you. Just to give you a sneak peek at what death might look like if you’re not one-hundred percent prepared for it.”
Sara cringes as Mayla circles around behind her, prodding her neck and back, looking for damage.
“Don’t worry,” Mayla tells her, “death is still a long way away. And the good news, while you’re waiting for it, is that you’ve only got one bruise.”
“And the bad news?”
“It covers pretty much your entire back. And your shoulders. And some nice spots here on the backs of your arms.” Sara gives Mayla a dirty look, but Mayla doesn’t seem to notice. Instead, she hands Sara an icepack-vest and pats her knee. “Don’t worry, kid. Black and blue suits you.”
War runs his huge hands over my shoulders and down my arms as Mayla slips over to the table next to mine to treat a gash running the length of Libra’s forearm. She tosses a silver penlight to War and tells him to check my pupils for dilation.
Swinging around in front of me, he shines the penlight into my eyes.
Frowning, he calls over to Mayla. “She doesn’t have any.”
“No dilation?”
“No pupils.”
“Oh, right.”
I can feel the others looking at me. It’s no secret that my eyes are…unusual. It’s not like I can hide that fact.
But I forget sometimes that my eyes don’t look like other people’s.
While Ignacio has his amber golds, Mattea has her murky browns, Arlo has his emerald greens, and Sara has her baby blues, my eyes—even the parts that are supposed to be white—are outer-space black with pinprick specks and atomically thin swirls of silvery light shifting around in tiny, dancing galaxies.
I’m not self-conscious about my eyes. Never have been. After all, I’m the one person in the world who can’t see them. But being reminded that they’re one—or rather two—of a kind isn’t something I’ve learned to take pride in just yet.
“Trust me,” I say, squinting and swatting away War’s brick-sized hand. “I can see just fine.”
“It’s not only about your vision,” he explains. “We need to check for concussions as well.”
“I’m fine,” I assure him, hopping off the table, sliding my hair into a ponytail, and slipping back into my red leather jacket.
I drop my head down so he can’t see me cringe at the bursts of pain running through my body.
Leaning in to scan Arlo, Mayla says, “Hmmm” loud enough for all of us to hear.
“What is it?” Mattea asks, stepping over and hovering above him like a protective mother hen.
“His cuts. His bruises.”
“What about them?”
“They’re already healed,” Mayla says, half to herself. “Kind of.”
“What’s that mean?” Mattea leans in close to see what Mayla is talking about. She says, “Oh” and takes a step back.
That piques my curiosity, and I inch over for a closer look. “What is it?”
With Mattea already stationed by his side, Arlo is sitting quietly hunched over, surrounded now by Libra, Sara, and Ignacio, who have all clambered over to join me in a huddle around his lab table.
Absently fiddling with his hoodie that’s draped over his lap and with his chin tucked into his chest, Arlo doesn’t seem to notice or care that we’re gathered around him, leaning in with wide eyes and inspecting him like he’s a specimen in a zoo.
“Weird,” Sara mutters, and I have to agree.
Thanks to Kress’s training and my growing ability to channel Haida Gwaii’s metabolism, my injuries are already healing. Arlo’s are, too. Only not the same way.
It’s been less than twenty minutes since class let out, but my cuts and bruises are fading. His seem to be growing thicker and more permanent right in front of our eyes.
On anyone else, the long cut on his cheek would normally start healing by itself after a few days. On Arlo, it’s darkening and closing up, rising up into a thick, rubbery ridge.
As we stand there gawking, the bruises on his shoulders and upper arms turn more purple, not less.
Mayla excuses herself and steps over to where War is checking a scrolling holo-display of rising and falling graphs for any major anomalies in our vital signs. Her voice isn’t loud or clear, but I hear it all the same from across the room.
“It’s advancing faster than we thought. We better report this to Wisp and Granden.”
War glances over at Arlo before turning back to Mayla and nodding his agreement. “I think they’re in Wisp’s office upstairs.”
“Okay. We’ll go up. But let’s get these six heroes off to the Tavern first.”
Mayla plops six stacks of clean Academy uniforms on one of the examination tables and tells us we can change in the Infirmary annex rooms before heading down to the Tavern.
The clean, dry clothes feel nice against my skin, although they don’t do much to alleviate the muscle cramps or the aches and pains throbbing through my body.
Back in the Infirmary’s main examination room, War and Mayla take a few final minutes to fuss over us. They advise us about getting enough rest, changing our assorted bandages, using the antibacterial spray they give us, and they request that we try not to get quite so beaten up next time.
“We’ll do better,” I tell them on behalf of my Cohort. “Easy-peasy.”
Once we’re as bandaged up as good as we’re going to get, War and Mayla head upstairs, while my fellow students and I limp our way downstairs to the Tavern.
Mattea makes it a point to walk next to Arlo, her long, thin arms at the ready in case he stumbles or something.
But Arlo doesn’t seem weak or shaky. Maybe just a little sad.
His face is back to being hidden under his gray hood, but every few steps, I catch a glimpse of the furrow of scars and the patchwork of dark bruises lining his face and neck.
He can heal, but his injuries just look worse? What kind of Emergent ability is that? And why do I get the feeling that the damage runs deeper than the surface of his skin?
5
Tavern
Back to bouncy, Libra leads the way into the Tavern, skipping like a little girl into the huge room of low-hanging lights and walls of brightly polished cherry wood.
The rectangular lunch tables are set up in orderly rows with slatted, leather-cushioned cherry wood chairs and matching benches tucked under them.
When we enter the paneled, high-ceilinged room, Roxane is already there with Chace, Trax, Lucid, and Reverie.
Together, they make up Cohort B.
Like us, they’re wearing the Academy uniform, only their compression tops are cobalt blue instead of white.
The two sets of twins and I have been here for five years now, but I barely recognize Lucid and Reverie at the moment. Their normally jet-black hair is crusted and drab. Their usually pale white faces are streaked with ash and singed with patches of angry red flashburns.
The other twins—Chace and Trax—look like they’ve aged ten years since this morning.
War wasn’t kidding about Trax. That boy really did lose his eyebrows.
Demolitions and Explosives class must’ve been a shambolic shite-fest.
And I get to take it next term. Great.
Completely ignoring the sparse meal on the plate in front of her, Chace is hunched over, writing and drawing on the holo-pad projected in the air in front of her. Trax, being deliberately annoying, keeps leaning over her shoulder and asking, “What’s that? What’s that?”
“They’re drawings,” she tells him, shoving him away with one hand while she continues her flurry of creative activity with the other.
We call Chace the Chronicler. She says she’s drawing pictures and keeping detailed notes about what we do. “So there’ll be a historical record for when we save the world,” she constantly reminds us.
Lucid and Reverie are sitting next to each other at the far end of the bench seat, eating in silence. Even after five years, I still don’t know them all that well. I don’t really want to, either. But Kress tells me I have to. “They’ll be the key to helping you reach the next stage in your evolution.”
That’s the problem with evolution: It just keeps going, so you never get a chance to rest or to rejoice at reaching the end.
Sitting on the far end of the table, Roxane is part of the new arrivals, too. She’s pink-skinned and shy, her white hair always hanging down over one part of her face or another. As far as I know she hasn’t said a word since they got here.
For the past few days, she and the other new kids spent most of their time in one of the fourth-floor Med-Labs, being taken care of by Wisp and the others and recovering from whatever they went through to get here.
I haven’t gotten the full story yet.
All I know is that Granden got them here and that he says they’re important to the Academy’s mission.
With the eleven of us from the two Cohorts seated together at a single long table in the middle of the room, we eat in mostly silent exhaustion.
Granden and Kella are sitting across from each other at one of the tall bistro tables on the far side of the room.
They finish eating just as we’re all settling in. Standing up and walking hand in hand, they give us polite nods on their way to the door where they disappear into the corridor.
I’m not surprised that Kress and Brohn didn’t follow us down. They almost always skip meals. Instead, they spend their down time exercising in the gym, doing research in the bio-tech labs on the fourth floor, or battling realistic enemies in one of the high-tech VR-sims.
I don’t know if they’re in competition with us or with each other, but—as they so clearly demonstrated in today’s class—they work, train, and teach like their lives depend on it.
Or, maybe, like our lives depend on it.
Wisp, our school’s dean, spends almost all her time in her office in the Administration Wing. I think she sleeps there.
She’s small, thin-boned, and frail-looking. She’s also as driven and determined as anyone I’ve ever met, and I know from sharing time in battle with her that she’s tougher than she looks.
Our other two teachers,
Rain and Terk, spend most of their time up in the Communications Hub on the top floor of the school.
As a Modified, Terk has an integrated computer system called “The Auditor” fused into his neural network. The three of them—Rain, Terk, and the disembodied voice of the Auditor—handle almost all of the tech issues in the Academy.
With all of our teachers off doing their own thing, that leaves us, the two Cohorts, eating alone in the large cafeteria we call the Tavern.
Other than the occasional grunts and groans, we eat in silence. Except for Libra, that is. Despite a cut lip, a shredded forearm, and a swollen jaw, she manages to waffle on about how great it is to be here and about how excited she is to get to learn so many new things.
I give her a glare that she returns with a smile and a happy, one-armed hug, which I shrug off.
I don’t do touchy-feely.
She’s lucky looks can’t really kill or else she’d be nothing more than a chalk outline on the floor right now.
As a little girl in the Tower of London, I used to fantasize about going to a proper school. Now that I’m in one, it’s not exactly how I imagined. It turns out, being around this many people all day, every day, is harder than I expected and possibly more than I can handle.
On the other hand, take away the classmates and the pain of getting beaten up by our teachers, and I guess it’s not all that bad.
6
Brouhaha
After lunch, we make our way upstairs to the Dormitory.
The fifth floor of the Academy is divided into a dozen separate, round rooms, each with six beds set up in a semi-circle, with an island of six rattan armchairs. two plush loungers, and a glass and chrome coffee table in the middle.
The Dorms take up the entire floor and spoke out around the Lounge and a hub of common bathrooms and shower rooms.