Anastasia looked back at him with cold eyes, taking a bite from her carrot and then chewing it slowly, deliberately, before answering him.
“My lunch did not work out. Neither did my last cook, for that matter. Or, maybe I just like carrots,” she said finally, her expression blank and ominous. “What is it to you, exactly?”
Vivik looked up at the two of them, and smiled tiredly, and then looked back down at his book.
“She’s a vegan, Alex,” Vivik said. “A vegan who is going to have serious trouble on the test this week if she keeps skipping study session to focus on her evil plots and schemes.”
“My plots aren’t evil,” Anastasia corrected, “Mostly. They are mostly not evil plots. And I’ve got that test under control, thank you very much, Vivik. It’s not like you’re working on it either,” she added accusatorially. “That’s Alex’s textbook you’re annotating, right?”
Vivik sighed and put down the highlighter.
“It’s not really the time I’d pick to do this,” Vivik allowed. “But whenever I come by his dorm room he’s asleep, or so he says. He won’t answer his door, anyway.”
“Very suspicious,” Emily said gleefully. “What is that you get up to in the evenings, anyway?”
Alex wasn’t entirely sure how to answer her question. He had been falling asleep early most nights, ever since he’d come to the Academy, often waking in the morning without have changed out of his clothes, without any memory of going to bed in the first place. Alex had always been a light sleeper, and he found this change worrisome, more so since the strange conversation with Eerie that he couldn’t fully remember.
“I wish it was something cool,” Alex said, sitting up reluctantly. “But there’s nothing to it. I keep crashing out early, that’s all. It’s not like a deliberate thing, it just kind of happens.”
Emily look at him pityingly, her golden hair curled into tight, perfect ringlets. She wore a plain grey sweater with a maroon skirt, her legs folded beneath her, effortlessly beautiful. Alex remembered their ‘arrangement’, and then tried to find something else to pay attention to.
“That’s sad, Alex,” Emily teased. “You should find better things to do with your evenings.”
Anastasia’s expression was poisonous.
“I think I’m going to pass on commenting on that,” she said, gathering her books and shoving them into her backpack. “I have class soon, and I have some things I need to take care of before that.”
Renton and Edward began gathering their things, Renton grumbling all the while, Edward silent and efficient. Alex wondered how Edward could look so neat in his uniform after sitting in the grass for an hour, and how it was that the exact same uniform could look so bad on Renton. Vivik sighed and handed Alex the text he’d been highlighting.
“That means I’ve got to get going too,” Vivik said, standing and stretching, “which is too bad. Since I stayed up and studied last night,” and here he shot Alex a significant glance, “I could really use a nap out here in the sun.”
“That’s what you get for being smart,” Alex said sleepily.
Margot stood up with Vivik, startling him with her proximity.
“Actually, I came here to talk with you, Vivik,” she said, collecting her bag. “Do you mind if I walk with you to the Science building?”
Alex gave Vivik a questioning glance, but if Vivik had any idea what was going on, he didn’t show it. He agreed readily enough, but the confusion was obvious enough on his face. Anastasia nodded at Alex, opened her black parasol, and walked purposefully off in the direction of the Science building, flanked by Renton and Edward, Vivik and Margot lagging behind.
“Empath-girl. Make yourself useful. Explain what just happened for me,” Alex commanded, looking at Emily expectantly.
“You are so bossy,” Emily complained, still engrossed in her notes. “Remember, they’re all pretty decent at hiding stuff like that because they’ve already been through the training. You’re getting better at it yourself, by the way.”
“Rebecca’s been teaching me.”
Alex was secretly pleased with the praise. He had been practicing shielding his thoughts and emotions, but so far no one had commented on it, except for Rebecca gently making fun of his efforts, during the lessons.
“Anyway, if you want my guess, I think Vivik has no idea what Margot wants to talk to him about.”
“Okay,” Alex said, drawing his knees to his chest and looking at Emily curiously. “So, what about Margot? What was that all about?”
Emily put her pen down and frowned.
“That was pretty weird, wasn’t it?”
She twisted a lock of hair absently between her fingers, her nails painted mother-of-pearl. Her hair caught the afternoon light, golden and red.
“Margot’s emotions are muted, so I never get much from her. I do know she wanted to talk about you, though.”
Alex started.
“What? Why? I barely even know Margot…”
“I’m not sure why,” Emily said, shrugging. “Common sense, really. Vivik seems to know you best of anyone, so if she had something about you she wanted to know and she didn’t want to ask you directly, then Vivik’s probably the one to ask, right?” Emily returned to her paperwork. “Besides, Vivik’s easy for girls to push around. Even Margot has to have noticed that. And this is creepy, by the way.”
Alex shook his head.
“Wait, what? What’s creepy?”
Emily smiled but didn’t look up.
“Getting me to spy on people like this. It isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I suggested our arrangement.” Emily tapped the eraser on her pencil absently against the textbook while she read. “It’s not like I’m helping you out, or something. It’s more like I’m spying on your friends.”
“I’m not sure that I’d call them my friends,” Alex said crossly. She was probably right, he supposed, but at the same time, he’d felt constantly at a loss since he’d arrived here. Emily had laid it all out very simply, that night in her living room – if he would spend time with her, she would help him out, dealing with people at the Academy. Just hanging around Emily was enough to show her superiors that she was doing her job somewhat successfully, or that’s what she thought. Alex wasn’t sure himself how long the cartel would be content with that, but he acceded to Emily’s request. He couldn’t figure out a way not to.
And, of course, he was hoping for things between them to go further. At least a little further.
At the time, he’d been fairly sure that she was going to ask him to spend the night, but instead she’d taken the bus back to the Academy with him, saying she wasn’t in the mood to be there when Therese came home. There’d been a moment after the ride home, at the Academy gates, before they headed back to their respective dorms, when Alex was certain that he could have kissed her. Should have kissed her. But he’d chickened out, and he’d been feeling dumb since then.
“Does your arm hurt?”
Alex looked up in surprise, shaken from his ruminations by Emily’s voice. The concern in her eyes was obvious.
“Ah, well,” Alex muttered, realizing that he had been cradling his left elbow and jerking his hand away, “it might have gotten tweaked in class yesterday.”
Emily scooted over until she was sitting next to Alex, and then grabbed his elbow and inspected it, causing Alex to yelp and try and pull away.
“It looks a bit swollen,” she said sympathetically. “I thought Michael was your instructor? He did this to you?”
Alex shook his head. He had class with Michael three times a week, not counting the morning workouts. Alex couldn’t imagine him injuring someone. Not accidentally, anyway.
Michael had decades of discipline, training, and combat experience. Beyond that, he was a patient and genuinely gifted teacher. But he had twelve students in his Wednesday afternoon class, and though Alex suspected he got more than his fair share of personal instruction, he still spent half of every Wednesday in the less-capa
ble hands of various student instructors.
He was certain that Margot hadn’t intended to hyperextend his elbow – in fact, he probably should have tapped the moment he felt her lock in an arm bar. But he hadn’t figured on her being so strong, and for a moment, he’d thought he might still be able to tear his arm back out of her grip. That hadn’t happened, and for the first time since he’d met her, Margot had looked pleased, tending delicately to his injured arm, until one of the instructors came over with ice.
“No, it was some student instructor,” Alex said, bending the sore elbow experimentally. “I got it checked out; they said it would get better on its own. It’s never really been totally right, since that thing with the Weir, actually.”
Emily frowned at him, and then poked at his elbow experimentally.
“Have you been icing it?”
“Sure,” Alex lied. “Just last night.”
“Really?” Emily looked at him skeptically. “How long are you going to keep lying to me, Alex? I’m an empath, after all.”
Alex sighed, and Emily smiled good-naturedly.
“You’re no good at keeping secrets,” she observed, continuing to poke at him.
“That makes me pretty unique around here,” Alex said darkly, looking up at the blue sky and the clouds passing overhead, and wishing that any of it made him feel even slightly more at ease.
Twenty One
Alex really tried to stick with homeroom. At first.
It wasn’t so bad, most days, because they spent much of the three-hour class in breakout groups or with student instructors and guest lecturers, which were usually fairly interesting. They passed the time, if nothing else.
A Punjabi researcher from Analytics came and taught the class to read a very simple probability matrix, potential futures radiating out from a baseline of functional certainty, branching and growing more unlikely the further they spread out on the page, implying other dimensions. Alex found himself reminded of a cable show he’d seen on the mandalas that he’d seen saffron-robed monks making with colored sand. He didn’t understand it in the slightest, but he found himself captivated by the evolving beauty of the model.
On a different day, Alex and the rest of the combat-track students were pulled to spend the period on the grass outside, while Rebecca (who had refused to teach if she was forced to remain in the nonsmoking class room) lectured them on the basics of psychic self-defense. That was the idea, according to the syllabus anyway, but what actually happened was Rebecca showed up hung over and grumpy, and talked about the topic at hand for less than half an hour. The rest of the time she spent making them sit in contented silence while she slept on the grass.
One entire morning was devoted to a short Mongolian professor, whose name Alex never did catch, lecturing semi-coherently on relaying coded field information via Internet message boards and social networking sites. Another afternoon consisted of tiny Mr. Huang demonstrating in rapid order how to open a dozen different models of locks with improvised tools, while the class watched in astonishment and envy. An alarming number of people stayed after.
And that was only the practical stuff – unlike, say, the two-hours they spent with a cheery empath named Mrs. Lovett who encouraged them to hurl paint at a roomful of blank canvases, or Mr. Brosnik’s interminable lecture on chess and a Japanese game called Go, or the various other sessions on gardening, ceramics, or the recreation of the American Civil War.
As far as Alex could tell, there was no particular pressure on the students to learn any of things guest lecturers taught, but for anyone who showed interest or aptitude, further instruction was made available. Accordingly, Alex was careful never to show either, particularly for the history teacher who showed up in full Union regalia.
The core course, and Mr. Windsor along with it, was another matter entirely. For one thing, the lectures were frustratingly broad and vague, the kind of topics that Alex associated with the questions that novels sometimes included in the back for book club discussions. Mr. Windsor was always encouraging them to ‘consider’ – to consider, for example, the nature of the Ether itself, or the oddity of Central being located inside of it, or what effects repeated transit through it might have on the human body. Alex played along for a while, until he realized that Windsor didn’t have any real answers – he seemed to think that any sort of discussion was a desirable thing in and of itself. And Alex resented being asked questions that there were no answers for.
Then Anastasia informed him that he didn’t even have to pass the class in order to clear the Academy. Apparently, Mr. Windsor’s role was more advisory than anything, and homeroom designed more as a yardstick to measure the student’s progress and interest level than to teach any one thing. That was still buzzing around in his head when Mr. Windsor asked him to stay late after class one Friday. Alex had an afternoon training session with Michael looming, and precious little time before it began.
“Can I ask what the problem is?” Alex demanded, as soon as the rest of the class had filed out, Emily glancing over her shoulder sympathetically at him before she left.
If Mr. Windsor was surprised by Alex’s tone, he didn’t show it. He simply carried on stowing his laptop away in the brown leather messenger bag he carried with him everywhere, the same defocused smile plastered on his face that seemed to be an almost permanent feature.
“I wanted to discuss your progress and your comfort level with the material, Alex,” Mr. Windsor said reasonably. “Our most recent test was not your finest effort to date, particularly on the subject of classification of protocols. Moreover, your essay on the founding of Central, a topic which you selected, I might add, is now quite overdue. Can I ask why?”
Alex was a bit thrown off by the diplomatic approach, having anticipated a lecture, but he refused to be mollified.
“I guess I have too much other stuff going on that seems more important than this class,” Alex said curtly. “No one is going to shoot me in the head for not knowing how the Black Sun rose to prominence, or when the Agreement was expanded to include vampires, or whatever random topic we’re working on right now.”
Mr. Windsor, against all expectations, laughed and gave Alex a knowing nod.
“It’s true, and I do understand, the Operations track is an intensive and difficult one,” Mr. Windsor said sincerely. “But, it is important for you to understand that you are not attending the Academy solely for the benefit of Central. The Academy exists to help you become a more complete person, Alex, and no amount of physical training or combat experience can create a whole, rational, functional being. Operators are asked to function under tremendous stresses, and some of what we discuss here is designed to give you tools to understand and deal with that stress. The topics of the class may seem haphazard, I admit, but I am trying to provide you with a gloss, an overview of the principals by which the world you live in functions, and the alternatives available to you. The rest of the Academy teaches you to obey and to execute, and they do an admirable job of it. I am allowed a few hours every week to try and teach you to think critically. Do you see why this is so important?”
Alex sighed and shook his head.
“Look, I don’t understand how a car works, or an ATM, okay? But I can use both of them just fine.”
This was actually untrue. Alex had never driven in his life.
“I’m not here to teach you how things work, Alex, I am here to help you understand why they work. Don’t you want to know why things are the way they are?”
Alex had to stop to consider it for a moment.
“I guess,” Alex admitted reluctantly. “It isn’t like you have any real answers, though – no disrespect, Mr. Windsor.”
“Ah, but that’s just it!” Mr. Windsor cried out, as if he were thrilled by Alex’s answer. “Are the only questions you are interested in those that have already been answered?”
Alex snorted and turned to gather his things.
“You’re talking in circles, Mr. Windsor,” he said impati
ently. “Any chance I can go? I might still have time for a shower and a meal before I have to go back to the gym.”
Mr. Windsor looked at him and smiled, the look on his face sad enough that Alex almost relented, until he remembered that this man was trying to teach him.
“What are you interested in, Alex?”
“What?” Alex snapped, exasperated by his persistence.
“It’s a simple question,” Mr. Windsor said expansively. “And any answer at all will do. In thirty years of teaching, I have yet to meet a student who wasn’t interested in something, Mr. Warner.”
Alex thought about it. He thought about it for a while, and then he got a bit worried. Eventually, he was forced to confess.
“I can’t… um. I can’t really think of anything, Mr. Windsor.”
Mr. Windsor shook his head.
“Come now. There must be something… I notice that you wear headphones every day when you come into class. You must like music?”
“I guess,” Alex shrugged. “I mostly like not having to talk, or listen to people, you know?”
“How about games, Alex? What kind of games do you play?”
Again, he had to stop to consider. It didn’t take long, though. There isn’t much to see in a blank sheet of paper.
“What do you mean? Like, video games, or something? Nah. I don’t really play games. I mean, I’ve played cards and stuff, and I could probably remember dominoes or checkers if you gave me a board and a few minutes. But, I can’t say that I’ve ever really been into them much…”
“Alex, I don’t mean to pry, but you’ve been institutionalized, haven’t you?”
Mr. Windsor’s voice was soft and kindly, but to Alex, it sounded treacherous. He couldn’t help but look longing at the exit.
“Now, now, don’t be angry,” Mr. Windsor said soothingly. “I have no idea what happened to you, and I don’t need to know. I’m familiar enough with the signs to recognize them when I see them. You aren’t the first student we’ve had that had a difficult background, you know. But, that is beside the point. You must have had a great deal of time to kill, then, in the institution. What did you do with it, Alex?”
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