by King, Wesley
Clutching a heavy rifle in her hands, Emily started forward. Ahead of her, trees and bushes were scattered in an eclectic pattern, and a brick wall jutted out from the left. A rickety wooden fence stood off in the distance.
Concentrating, she scanned her visor readouts while keeping a close eye on the various obstructions. She took a few more tentative steps forward, and then, as expected, there was a flash of movement from behind one of the trees.
Emily dropped to one knee and hoisted her rifle. Before the unknown assailant had even made it four feet from the trunk, Emily narrowed her sight, pulled the trigger, and sent a stream of pulsating red energy directly toward it. The bolt hit the assailant dead on and exploded, spraying fragments all across the room.
A sudden change in the readout flared across the bottom of her visor, and she realized something else was coming out from behind the brick wall. Not having the time to shift aim, she shouted, “Lock and fire!”
As soon as the words left her mouth, a missile erupted from her shoulder mount and streaked toward the wall. The target had just reached the edge when it was struck by the missile and obliterated.
Emily stood up and continued walking toward the roiling black smoke, ready for another assault. However, after just a few steps, the scenery retracted back into panels along the wall. Soon the massive room was empty again, except for the remains of her “attackers” and the lingering smoke.
“Very good,” Rono commented from where he was standing beside the controls. “They never had a chance.”
Emily lowered her rifle. “Deactivate shoulder mount.” As the missile launcher descended back into its panel, she turned to Rono and grinned. “I love the shoulder mount.”
“I figured you would. The missile launcher seems to be responding quickly enough,” he said, picking up a fragment of the destroyed attackers. “But that’s enough shooting for today. We have important work to do tonight. We need to hack into some very secure parts of the League network. The Baron thinks they are closing in on this mansion, and he wants me to find out just how close they are. He’s already begun preparing the defenses.”
“Have you ever considered making a truce with the League?” Emily asked.
Rono laughed. “They would lock us up on the Perch the second they got a chance, if they didn’t kill us first. There’s too much history now. This battle will only end when one side destroys the other, Emily. The League has made that clear.”
Emily thought about that as they headed out into the hallway. None of it felt particularly right to her, but she was far more sympathetic to Rono than she was to the League, whom she had never met. And thinking of the opportunities and tools he had given her, she felt a certain responsibility to repay her mentor. She knew that she would defend Rono in a fight.
“Then we had better win,” Emily said, and noticed the pleased expression on Rono’s face. He almost looked like a proud father, Emily thought. This was the first time she’d had one of those, and she decided she liked it very much.
Sam shut his eyes, and without thinking, he launched a mental assault back at Sliver, who clearly hadn’t been expecting it. Several walls crumbled in his mentor’s mind before he managed to compose himself and halt Sam’s invasion. They were practicing the second method of telepathic warfare: mental crippling.
Coercion was the more subtle approach, but it was only effective on untrained or unprepared opponents. When facing a worthy adversary, crippling was the only option.
That involved a blunt attack on an adversary’s mind, using one’s thoughts like a battering ram to overwhelm their consciousness. Instead of adding his mental voice to the current of someone else’s train of thought, Sam was supposed to displace it with his own, at which point the enemy would become overwhelmed and faint. And if enough force was used, Sliver continually reminded him, mental crippling could also kill. That was exactly how he’d murdered Mind two years ago. Sam didn’t like this method, but Sliver forced him to train with it anyway.
Sliver began to push back against Sam’s intrusion, and for a moment, neither could penetrate the other’s defenses. It was like a physical pressure on Sam’s head, diluting his thoughts so much that he could barely hear himself think.
Sam tried one last time to smash through Sliver’s defenses, but his mentor had composed himself now, and his barriers were as hard and thick as a granite wall. Sliver turned the attack back onto Sam, and he frowned in concentration, holding his mentor at bay. This continued for several minutes, until finally, Sliver found a hole in Sam’s defenses and broke through, freezing Sam in place with a powerful command.
When Sliver released him, Sam sagged in his chair, sweat beading down his face. But he also saw just the slightest bit of moisture on Sliver’s forehead, and he knew he’d improved today.
“That was better,” Sliver said. “Much better.”
“Thank you,” Sam replied, his voice slightly hoarse.
This had been a pattern for the last two weeks. Sam had been steadily improving, and as a result, Sliver wasn’t berating him as often. Sam could still sense a strong dislike from the man, but it had been tempered somewhat, and at one point during a duel, Sam had even detected a small touch of pride. That was something his family never expressed to him.
In fact, the more time Sam spent here, the more he began to consider his life at home. Besides his mom, no one was even nice to him. Even though he was generous and kind to everyone he met, he was still one of the least popular kids in school. His own father ignored him most of the time, and Sam knew that Hugh could barely stand to have him around. But despite that, he still missed them, especially his mom. Sam didn’t want to leave his new friends, but if they were actually allowed to go home, he didn’t know if he could pass on the chance to see her.
“Tomorrow we’ll be trying something else,” Sliver said, glancing at the door.
The two of them now used Sliver’s living quarters for their training since the control room had a lot of traffic going in and out of the protégés’ common area.
“I’m going to be introducing you to something I created a few years ago: an amplifier for our abilities. I haven’t been able to use it yet; not effectively, anyway. It amplified my mental voice, but it also left me dangerously overextended. It was too risky to continue. But in the last few days, it’s occurred to me that two telepaths might be able to use the amplifier. With it, we should actually be able to combine our voices and strengthen them a hundred times. I’m finishing the adjustments tonight.”
He leaned forward, lowering his voice.
“For now, I want you to keep this between us. Don’t mention the amplifier to the other kids. It’s untested, and I don’t want them to tell the rest of the Vindico until I’m sure it’s going to work. Understand?”
“Sure,” Sam replied. He sensed a strange nervousness in his mentor, but he kept that to himself. Sliver didn’t like it when Sam commented on his emotions.
Sliver leaned back in his chair. “Good. One more thing. You haven’t gotten an announcement yet, as you know. There’s a reason for that. Your announcement was something that took a little time to put together, and it’s also not something you can hear. It’s something you have to see.”
“What is it?” Sam asked apprehensively.
“I had one of Leni’s operatives set up a camera inside your house to see what your family has been doing since your disappearance. To see how sad they really are. Do you want to see the recordings?”
Sam bit his lip. “My mom would be sad,” he murmured.
“Let’s go to the control room,” Sliver said, and started for the door.
James threw the bench-press bar up and let it crash against the restraints. He was dripping with sweat.
He sat up and walked over to the mirror, which he did after almost every exercise. He couldn’t help it: it was like a dream come true. His pale, skinny body had become lined with muscle. His once-shapeless arms now rose and fell with the curve of biceps, and his chest, which use
d to sink inward, was firm and shaped.
“How does it feel?” the Torturer called. He was doing bicep curls across the room, and it looked like he had about six hundred pounds on either end of the bar.
“Incredible,” James replied. “I just benched four hundred and fifty pounds! I couldn’t even lift a hundred a week ago. And I feel hard too, like you said.” He turned and punched the metal wall, forming a dent. “Didn’t even hurt!” he said excitedly, stretching his fingers.
“Good. Within a few weeks, maybe a month, you’ll reach your growth potential. You’ll be unstoppable.”
“What’s growth potential?” James asked.
“We can only push our genomes so far,” he explained. “Eventually, you can’t go any further, or you’ll end up killing yourself. I had to stop taking AP because it was starting to feel like I was gonna burst.”
“How do you know when that’s going to happen?” James asked nervously.
The Torturer picked up the bar again. “Don’t worry, I figured it all out by trial and error. You have a ways to go yet. You’ll be smaller than me, like I said, so you’re in way less danger of going over your growth potential. It’s all under control.”
James wasn’t completely convinced, but there was also no way he was going to stop now. He turned back to his reflection and smiled. For once, he was happy with what he saw.
“I can actually leave?” Lana asked Avaria skeptically as they stood facing each other in the combat room.
Avaria nodded. “If you wish. That was the agreement.”
They had been sparring for twenty minutes, but Lana had hardly broken a sweat. She rarely felt tired anymore, not since Avaria started putting her in the strange chamber. It made her skin crawl uncomfortably under the intense red glow, but every time she stepped out, she felt faster and stronger. Already, she could do one-handed cartwheels and backflips, when she used to struggle to do a somersault without hurting herself.
Their fights were becoming increasingly brutal and fast-paced, but Lana could absorb blows even in the unpadded areas with ease. Her body was changing, and though it scared her sometimes, Lana couldn’t deny that she loved it. She would never be helpless again.
“You would just let me go and not contact me again?”
“We have all decided that it is unfair to keep you here. The decision should be yours.”
Lana softened her fighting stance, her mind racing. Is she telling the truth? Lana wondered. And what if she is? Can I actually just walk away from all this?
“I don’t know what to do,” Lana said honestly, and she saw the slightest flicker of surprise cross Avaria’s face.
“I thought you wanted to leave?”
“I did,” Lana replied. “I do. But I don’t know if I can just go back to high school and be a normal kid. Not after all this.”
Avaria stared at her, as if considering her words. “I tried that once…tried to just be normal, even though I knew there was a chance I could be more. It is not easy.”
Lana studied her mentor. “Would you go back if you could and do it differently?”
“Yes,” she said softly. Then her expression hardened. “But I want to know if you are planning on leaving. I won’t waste any more of my time training you if you’re not going to stay.”
Lana longed to return to her family, but in a way, she didn’t want to face her father yet. She wanted to see her friends at home, but she wondered what Kyle had told everyone about that night. And mostly, she knew she would miss the others here. She was almost certain that none of them would leave. Maybe Sam, but the other three would stay without a doubt. How could she just abandon them?
An hour later, Lana walked back into the common room and found Emily sitting alone by the chessboard. She was staring intently at the intermingled pieces.
“What are you doing?” Lana asked.
“Playing chess,” Emily replied, her eyes on the board.
Lana paused. “By yourself?”
“Of course,” Emily said, glancing back at her. “How do you play?”
Lana just shook her head. “Where’s everybody else?”
Emily moved a black knight forward. “James is still with the Torturer, and Hayden went to console Sam.” She quickly took out the knight with the white queen. “He’s upset about something, but all he told me was that it was something to do with his mom. Hayden got back a few minutes before you and decided to cheer him up. Oh, bad move.” Emily knocked out the white queen, and clapped in triumph. “Checkmate.”
“Hayden is talking to Sam about his mom?” Lana asked skeptically. “That can’t be a good thing.”
Leaving Emily to reorganize the chessboard, Lana hurried to Sam’s room and pressed her ear against the door.
“So wait…these surveillance videos showed her doing normal things?” Lana recognized Hayden’s deeper voice.
“Yeah,” Sam replied. “Just her making breakfast, and going out, and having dinner with my dad and brother. Sliver showed me different days, and she…she didn’t even look sad.”
“It could have been edited together,” Hayden suggested. “You know Sliver would do that kind of thing.”
“I don’t think so.” It sounded like Sam had been crying. “She doesn’t miss me, Hayden. I knew my dad and brother probably wouldn’t even notice I was gone, but my mom, she was supposed to miss me.”
Lana was just about to go inside and interrupt whatever snide comment Hayden was about to make, but he beat her to it.
“You know, I might not be an expert when it comes to moms,” Hayden said slowly. “That said, I do know a thing or two about missing somebody.”
Lana stopped, surprised at the tone of his voice.
“You can do two things when you miss someone,” Hayden continued. “You can cry about it, and lie in bed, and just feel miserable. Sometimes you have to do that, I think. But when it’s bad, when you really, really loved them, all you can do is normal things. You have to, or you just fall apart. So if your mom was doing normal things, I think that means she’s hurting way more than if you’d seen her crying in bed. She misses you, Sam, trust me.”
Lana heard sniffling. “Thanks, Hayden,” Sam said quietly.
“No problem,” Hayden replied. “If you ever want to talk about it, just let me know, all right?”
Lana quickly backed down the hallway.
“Hey,” she whispered when Hayden stepped through the door.
“Hey,” he said, frowning. “What are you doing?”
She reached out and took his hand. “I heard what you said to Sam. That was really sweet.”
For the first time since she’d met him, Hayden’s cheeks flushed. “Well, he’s upset and—”
“You miss your mom, don’t you?” Lana interjected.
He hesitated. “Yeah. I do.”
Lana leaned forward and kissed him. “You’re only kind of a jerk, aren’t you?”
“Three-quarters,” he said.
“It’s a start.” She kissed him again and then stepped back, slightly embarrassed. “Sorry, that was kind of—” She stopped when she saw James walk around the corner. He met her eyes and then turned and hurried off in the other direction.
24
BREAKFAST HAD BEEN DECIDEDLY QUIET THAT MORNING, EMILY noticed, shoveling the last bit of bacon into her mouth. She suspected there were two reasons for that.
The Baron’s voice had come over the speakers right before bed last night to remind them that today was the end of his two-week challenge. A decision was needed from every protégé: stay until their mentors decided they were ready, or leave and be sent home immediately.
If they chose to leave, the Baron warned that they would have no second chance to return. He also added something that he had failed to mention two weeks earlier.
“We have gifted you with these abilities,” he said, “and we have done so without asking anything in return. But if you decide to go home and use these newfound powers, you will attract the attention of the League
of Heroes. If they choose to accept you, which they would do only to use your knowledge to defeat us and then dump you again, you will become our number-one priority. If you attempt to join the League, you will be killed.”
It was not quite what he’d said the first time, but from what Emily gathered, none of the protégés were leaving anyway. Still, she assumed everyone was reflecting on their decisions to stay, and it was contributing to the somewhat dour atmosphere.
The second reason involved only three of the protégés.
Hayden and Lana were sitting directly beside each other, leaving both ends of their couch vacant. Obviously, something had happened last night. Emily wasn’t really surprised, but judging from the angry looks James was shooting at the pair, it seemed not everyone was happy about it.
Hayden put down his plate and stretched. “I can’t deal with these early mornings. I feel like I was asleep for an hour.”
James scowled and took a bite of his toast, leaving the rest of his breakfast untouched on the plate. Emily studied him for a moment and watched as his eyes flicked between Lana and Hayden. He must really like her, Emily thought. Poor James.
“Attention,” the Torturer’s voice cut in. “You have a group session with the Baron today, so be ready in twenty minutes. You will inform him then of your decisions. But first, we have an announcement, this one concerning Emily.”
Emily perked up, glancing at the mirror in surprise. She’d been wondering why she had yet to receive an announcement as it had been almost two-and-a-half weeks since the last one. And if Sam had been given his announcement in private, she was the only one left. Emily had assumed it was either because they couldn’t find anything good enough or because Rono didn’t want to hurt her feelings. The fact that she was getting one now certainly ruled out the latter.
“Emily is an only child,” the Torturer began. “And while her parents have always been civil enough to her, they show her no real affection. They’ve never told her they love her, never even said they’re proud of her. Her grandparents mostly ignore her as well, besides sending a small gift on her birthday, though they have forgotten numerous times in the past. All except her grandfather on her mother’s side. He is the only person who has ever told Emily he loves her. He means the world to her.”