Rei let his head fall back to the bed with a dull thump, cursing as he did. “Shit…”
Catcher smirked by his side. “Get it now?”
“Yeah… I guess I do… I mean I knew their bitching about me not belonging was old news, but when you put it all together like that…”
“It’s the excuse you’re gonna get until you prove you can beat every one of their asses into the ground, man. It’s the easy excuse to give, instead of admitting that they’re scared. And they are definitely scared, man. If Grant’s gotten around to sending his minions after you, even he has to be beginning to feel the fear.”
Rei managed a chuckle. “He did admit that I was catching up, before training started and—”
“It was Grant?”
The question, asked as keenly as a knife, sliced through their conversation with all the cool precision of cold steel. Catcher whirled, and beyond him Rei saw Viv getting to her feet, obviously having woken just in time to overhear precisely what they both would likely have rather explained more carefully.
As she approached the bed, she spoke again.
“Rei. It was Grant?”
Rei gaped at her, thinking fast, trying to come up with an answer that wouldn’t be adding gasoline to the fire. Catcher’s fury had been intense, a smoldering, burning anger, but it had been controlled, roiling beneath a calm, composed exterior.
In comparison, Viv’s face was an inferno.
Her eyes seemed to blaze as she stared him down, waiting for an answer. Her jaw was clenched, hands in fists by her sides once she came to stand at Catcher’s side, and it was like Rei could feel the heat of her rage emanating in waves, as though Gemela was manifesting its User emotions into true energy.
“He wasn’t there,” Rei finally decided on. “Just some of his tag-alongs and a couple Brawlers from my group.”
“But he was involved? He was the one who told them to do this?”
“Th-they didn’t say,” he answered carefully.
Viv’s lip curled. “Of course he was,” she spat venomously, and her eyes had glazed over, no longer seeing Rei as she worked herself up. “Of course he was. I’m gonna kill him.”
“Viv—” Rei started to try to calm her down, but she cut him off before he could say anything else.
“No. Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare, Rei.” Viv’s glare could have scorched the earth. “It’s one thing to pick fights and badmouth you. You can handle yourself, even when you lose. It’s another to send lackeys to beat you half to death without so much as having the guts to show his own face!”
“Viv. I’m okay.” Rei lifted both arms as best he could, trying to hide the strain this took as he attempted to prove that he was alive and whole. “I’ll be back on my feet before—”
“SHUT UP!”
Viv’s scream was so abrupt, Rei and Catcher both jumped while Aria came to with a start at his legs.
“What? What happened?” she demanded, her head jerked up, red hair falling across her freckled face while she blinked away sleep. Catching sight of Rei—awake and well—she froze, taking him in with wide eyes that glimmered green in the faint light.
Viv, though, didn’t let her get another word in.
“Enough, Rei,” she seethed. “Enough. Even you can only take so much, and you’ll be so surprised to hear it turns out I’m not good at watching any of my friends get turned into the class punching bag. I’ll handle this.”
With that, she whirled on her heel and started for the door.
“Viv, wait!” Rei croaked, reaching after her in vain from the bed.
Fortunately Catcher was largely more able-bodied, in the moment.
“Viv, hold on,” he said, grabbing her by the arm and stopping her short. “What are you going to do?”
“Did I stutter?!” Viv snapped, wrenching herself free of the Saber’s grasp. “No one should be able to get away with this kind of shit!”
“But how?!” Catcher demanded, starting to get equally riled. “What are you planning to do?! Walk up to him and punch him in the face?!”
“And more, if I can manage it!”
“He’s a C-Rank, Viv! You’ll get beat to a pulp!”
“I’m a Duelist! I’ll run circles around his cowardly ass and cut him down—!”
“What in the MIND’s name is going on in here?!”
In a blaze of white the room’s ceiling lights came on, and Rei, Aria, Viv, and Catcher together all winced and squinted under the sudden illumination. In the doorway a tired looking woman in a rumpled doctor’s coat was standing, taking them all in furiously from under her disheveled silver bangs.
“You are disturbing the entire floor!” Lieutenant Major Ameena Ashton snarled, thundering towards Viv and Catcher with a purpose. “And in a room with a sleeping patient, no less! What are you—?!”
She paused, catching sight of Rei sitting up and alert, blinking at him in surprise.
Then she rushed to his side in a flash.
“Ward!” she breathed. “You’re awake! Excellent. How are you feeling? Do you know where you are?”
“I-I’m okay,” he said at once, wincing as the doctor started poking and prodding at his scarred arms. “I’ve been up for a little bit.”
“You have?!” Ashton demanded, and she half-whirled, obviously intending to rip into Viv and Catcher some more.
Both of them, however, were gone.
“Those two!” Ashton growled, snapping around to glare at Aria, who was still sitting—quite plainly at a complete loss for words in the confusion she’d woken up in—by Rei’s other side. “Cadet Laurent! Care to explain why I wasn’t summoned the moment he came to?!”
Aria’s mouth opened and closed, obviously having no answer to give.
“It’s not her fault, ma’am!” Rei interrupted at once. “She was sleeping until just a few seconds ago!”
Ashton continued to frown at Aria for a moment, then grunted to face him again. “I suppose that Arada and Catchwick woke her up as well, did they? The next time I see them…” She trailed off, starting to study Rei’s face. Reaching into the chest pocket of her wrinkled coat, she plucked up what might have been a stylus, except a twitch of her fingers had a small light glowing at its tip. “Eyes forward, Ward,” she ordered, and Rei looked dead-ahead, letting her test his ocular responses with several flicks of the instrument across his pupils. “Hmm… Good. Reactions are fine. That’s good.” Tucking the device away again, she reached for his neck with both hands, feeling along his spine and the sides of his throat. “Any loss of sensation anywhere? Any tingling, or pain down the arms?”
“Too much sensation, and lots of pain, but not what I think you’re looking for, ma’am,” Rei attempted some light humor, trying for a grin. It wasn’t the best he could do, but he was distracted. If Viv had run off to hunt down Logan Grant…
He knew all too well that Catcher didn’t have a prayer of catching her.
“Good,” the doctor said again, releasing his neck. With a flick of her hand and a flash of her NOED a stool Rei hadn’t noticed in the dark zipped across the floor from the far corner of the room. Seating herself upon it as it reached her, Ashton looked to Aria again. “Laurent, I’m going to ask you to step outside. Ward and I need to speak in private.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Aria was on her feet at once, her usual alertness having returned pretty quickly, but Rei stopped her before she took so much as a step towards the door.
“Aria, hold on.” He looked to Ashton. “Ma’am, if you’re planning to ask me what happened, I’m going to tell you straight up that I can’t answer that.”
Ashton’s face darkened. “Can’t, cadet? Or won’t?”
Rei chose not to reply to this. If he could avoid lying, he would. “I won’t insult you by telling you I fell, or something, but I also won’t tell you who did this.”
“And why not?”
“Are there cameras in the lobby Aria found me?”
Ameena’s frown deepened, but she shook her head. “No. Major Barnes has already told me as much. It’s the reason he asked me to ask you to—”
“Then there’s no evidence. Nothing but my word.” Rei shook his head. “I’m sorry, ma’am. They set up their ambush in a place with no eyes. They didn’t call on their CADs, so they can’t be tracked. They hit me hard and fast, and while most everyone was still changing in the locker rooms, so I doubt they even came or went outside of an inconspicuous window other cameras might have picked up. There’s no evidence.”
“You don’t know that unless you tell us what happened, cadet. I’m giving you an order, now. Explain.”
“Then I’ll claim I don’t recall, ma’am.”
“Which will lead to my recording you as having suffered significant head trauma, and ordering you to bedrest until you do remember.” The woman’s face was stony. “Are you willing to sacrifice days of training so close to the Intra-Schools, cadet?”
Rei swallowed at that. He hated this. Hated it. Ameena Ashton had been his case worker since he’d arrived at school. They’d met three times already to review the progression—or regression, rather—of his fibro, and he very much enjoyed having her on his side.
But… If he didn’t do this…
“Yes, ma’am,” he said after a moment.
“Rei!” Aria hissed from his other side. “What are you talking about? If you know what happened, just tell her!”
Rei looked around. Aria’s expression was mournful, like she didn’t like witnessing the exchange before her any more than he liked participating in it.
“I can’t,” Rei said miserably. “Think about it. There’s no evidence. Catcher said I’ve been out for half a day. If there was proof, Major Barnes and Campus Security would have already found it, the students involved would have been rounded up, and you guys would have been updated.”
Aria looked pained. “There has to be something… We can’t just let them get away with this…”
“They won’t,” Rei answered through clenched teeth. “I’ll pay them back, but I’ll do it the right way. On the field. I just need to get stronger. For that though, I need time.”
Aria’s eyes widened at the words, but Rei had turned his attention to Ashton again. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m already at the very bottom of the barrel when it comes to the first years. In more ways than one. If I accuse my classmates without evidence other than my say-so, it will just give the ones who did this more ammunition, not to mention hand plenty of others an ample reason to dislike me. I can’t let myself be slowed down by something like that.”
Ameena scowled. “You should have more faith in your classmates, Ward.”
Rei almost scoffed, but managed to turn it into a cough at the last second. “Ahem… I just got beatdown by a half-dozen members of those very classmates you’re talking about, ma’am. And I can tell you they’re just the bravest of the assholes who would be happy to take a piece out of me.”
Ameena blinked at that, and looked abruptly troubled.
“Ward…” she eventually started again, sounding hesitant. “If things are that bad, that’s all the more reason to tell me what—”
“He’s fine.”
Aria’s statement was sharp and clear, and both Rei and the lieutenant major looked around at her in surprise. Immediately her cheeks flushed, but she held her ground firmly, her gaze clearer now than it had been all night.
“He’s fine,” she repeated. “He just needs time, like he said. He just needs to get stronger. I’ll help him.”
They continued to stare at her, and her words seemed to register as her faced reddened even further.
“I-I mean we’ll help him,” she corrected, voice pitching into a squeak of embarrassment. “Viv. Catcher. Myself. He just needs to get stronger, ma’am.”
Ashton glanced at Rei, giving him a questioning look he thought he could read. Does she know? the doctor was asking him.
He offered only the briefest shake of his head in answer.
Ashton grunted, addressing Aria again. “Intentions being all well and good, cadet, what happens in the meantime? What happens if this group decides to come after him again? I don’t expect even Ward is likely to get strong enough to fight off six first years at once anytime soon.” She gave Rei a poignant glance sidelong, letting him know she had picked up some clues, at least, from their conversation. “Are you intending to shadow him for the next twelve months until he is?”
Rei registered the oddity of the question, only barely noticing Aria stiffening from his left. 12 months until he was? Did that mean Ashton—and probably Willem Mayd, therefore—thought him likely able to take on multiple opponents his age within a year’s time? It was a shocking prospect to consider, and he wondered if the doctor knew she, too, had let slip more than intended.
“If I must,” Aria finally answered evenly. “But I don’t think that will be necessary. Rei only needs to get to the point where he can prove himself on an even playing field with the class. People won’t be so quick to discount him, then.”
“And how do you propose he does that?” Ashton asked, raising an eyebrow.
“The Intra-School SCT.”
Rei didn’t realize he’d been the one to answer until Aria and the lieutenant major both turned to look at him. Ashton frowned, forehead creasing, but Aria beamed like he had read her mind.
Which, given her words had put the pieces together, he basically had.
“The Intra-Schools?” Ashton repeated. “You plan on getting yourself on level ground with your class in a month?”
“Yes ma’am,” Rei answered. “I can do it. I know I can.”
Another half-truth. By the time the second quarter started, most of his classmates would likely be D8 or D9, with not a few among them ranking in the C’s. Already Kastro Vademe, the Lancer from 1-B, had joined Aria and Grant in that prestigious ranking, but in 4 weeks he certainly wasn’t going to be the only one to manage it. Rei would have to climb six—no—eight levels to put himself on similar footing, given his other specs were skewed downward by his S-Ranked Growth. Eight levels in 4 weeks, through the D-Ranks no less, when he’d only managed nine in 6 weeks mostly through the Es. He could do it, he knew.
It would just be a month of hell the likes of which he suspected would push him, mind and body, to his limits.
Ameena Ashton was still watching him, very clearly anything but pleased.
Eventually, however, she only sighed with a shake of her head. “Well, I can’t exactly make you tell me anything, though I suspect Major Barnes will do his best when he arrives to talk to you. Oh, speaking of.” With a blink her NOED blazed, then went out again. “He asked me to let him know when you woke up. As you’ve deduced, he and Campus Security have nothing else to go on but your testimony, which, if you’re not willing to give…” She frowned again.
“I’m sorry…” Rei said again, and he truly felt it.
Ashton contemplated him for a moment, taking him in with something between sadness and resignation.
Then, without warning, she reached up and flicked him in the forehead.
“Owe!” Rei yelped, wincing twice as he instinctively tried to lift a hand to where her finger had struck. “Owe! What was that for?!”
“For making me worry,” Ashton grumbled, but she looked to be smiling a little as she scooted away from his bed. “You’re supposed to be my miracle case, Ward. I can’t well ride your future to fame and glory in the medical field if you get your face kicked in before you even finish your first quarter of school, can I?”
Rei, with nothing to say to this, only mumbled his understanding, and from his left Aria spoke up eagerly.
“Does that mean you won’t keep him on bedrest, ma’am?”
Rei perked up at once to hear the answer.
“So long as he’s brave enough to tell Major Hadish the same thing he just told me, it’s not like I actually could. Hippocratic Oath, a
nd all that.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Pretend you don’t remember, though, and I will see you strapped to this bed myself until your graduation. As a third year. Is that clear, cadet?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rei said quickly.
Glaring at him a moment longer, Ashton finally shook her head and got to her feet. “I need to get a medical drone. We’ll do scans again, and if everything is still clear I’ll discharge you after the major has his go.”
“Discharge?” Aria asked only a second before Rei did, clearly as surprised as him. “In his condition? Is that a good idea?”
The lieutenant major cocked her head at the girl. “Do you have a medical license and board certification of User-specialized care, cadet?”
Aria reddened yet again, averting her gaze to look at the bed as she mumbled her answer. “No, ma’am…”
Ashton, though, only smiled in truth, finally. “Oh don’t pout, I’m only teasing.” She looked to Rei. “Most of your damage is superficial. Severe dermal and muscular contusions. You have some mild bruising of the liver, and likely some strained ligaments in your back and ribs, but your CAD will help deal with all of that fairly fast. The best thing for you to do is help it by getting up and moving when you can, for as long as you can. That being said—” she continued quickly as Rei opened his mouth to voice his excitement at this news “—I am ordering you to sit out of training for the next forty-eight hours. I will pass this on to the chief combat instructor who I assure you cares more about your health than your CAD-Rank.”
An image of Logan Grant being thrown into a wall at a speed that might have been measured in Machs flashed across Rei’s thought, but he decided that wasn’t the best time to be arguing opinions. Instead, he just nodded. “Understood. Thank you, ma’am.”
An unhappy grunt was all Ashton offered him in reply, turning to head for the door. “I’ll be back soon with the medical drone. Laurent, if he tries to do anything stupid—like get out of bed before I scan him—I am ordering you to pin him down by the neck until I get back.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Aria answered with a little too much enthusiasm for Rei’s comfort, even throwing the woman a salute as she left.
Iron Prince: A Progression Sci-Fi Epic (Warformed: Stormweaver Book 1) Page 48
