by James Riley
“You won’t be reading their minds, of course,” Dr. Opps said. “As usual, I’ll be thinking of random numbers, and I want you to confirm that you can see them.”
Sierra sighed, hating this lesson. Of all the things she could do with the spell, why did mind reading have to have the most tedious training? Dr. Opps closed his eyes, and she concentrated on him, already feeling bored. There were so many possibilities, and here she was, reading out numbers like a stage magician.
1829228, Dr. Opps thought, holding a finger to his forehead unnecessarily. Sierra threw a glance at Michael, and they both hid their smiles. Damian just rolled his eyes.
“1829228,” she said out loud.
99783112723232.
“997 and a lot more numbers,” Sierra said, feeling even more restless.
“Sierra, please,” Dr. Opps said. “This is important. We have to determine the limits of your Telepathy when you use the magic. Now concentrate, and tell me my full thought this time.”
“Yes, Dr. Opps,” she said, and glanced over his mind again. “3980890182121, and then something about how Michael needs to stop picking his nose, because frankly, it’s disgusting.”
“Hey!” Michael shouted. “I didn’t have my finger anywhere near it!”
“Maybe Dr. Opps is reading the future,” Sierra said. “Like those kids in the UK?”
“That will be quite enough,” Dr. Opps said. “Michael, Damian, you’re both dismissed. Try not to burn anything down, Michael. And, Damian, please keep practicing the spell we talked about.”
“Yes, Dr. Opps,” Michael said, while Damian just nodded and left the room right after Michael.
Dr. Opps sat down on the table a few feet from Sierra in his classic lecturing pose, and she sighed internally. This would go a lot faster if she just read his mind instead of waiting for him to yell at her.
This is important work, and I need you to take it seriously, she saw in his mind. Think of the miracles we could accomplish with the power we’ve found. And maybe just as important is the potential for great evil, and that must be avoided at all costs.
“Sierra, this is important work,” Dr. Opps started, but she held up a hand.
“I know, I’ve heard the entire speech already,” she said, then flashed him an apologetic smile. “I get it, I really do. And I want to get better at it, to learn more powerful spells, if just so I can actually stop Michael from all the nose picking.”
Dr. Opps gently smiled at this. “He really does seem to have a problem.”
“Wait till he sets fire to it,” Sierra said, giving him a terrified look. “But I just don’t get why we have to go over the spells I’ve already mastered again and again. Can’t we try something new? Damian’s, like, ten Telepathy spells ahead of me, and he doesn’t have to practice.”
“Damian’s a special case,” Dr. Opps said. “He’s obviously talented, but his usefulness will be in his flexibility, not in his depth. We need you to be our master of mental magic, Sierra.” He patted her shoulder. “If nothing else, I want to see you control Damian’s mind in your next one-on-one challenge. The boy could stand a little humility, I think.”
She snorted. “Done and done.”
“Good,” Dr. Opps said. “Now, since you asked so nicely, let’s change things up a bit. Why don’t you tell me what the boys are up to, along with our resident Healing queen? Don’t think I didn’t notice she didn’t show up today.”
Sierra winced. “I, um, don’t see her right now.” That wasn’t exactly true, but Sierra had promised to cover for her. “But Michael is setting fire to things in the Destruction training room, and Damian . . .” She paused, then gasped.
“What do you see?” Dr. Opps asked her as he jumped to his feet.
Sierra just looked at him. “There’s something in the room with Damian. Something . . . not human.”
- TWENTY-ONE -
THE SOUND OF A TRUMPET jolted Fort straight up in bed, only for the aches and chills to knock him right back down. Right, the flu. Why was someone evil playing music so loudly? He looked around frantically for the source and noticed Cyrus sitting on his already made bed, smiling.
“That’s the reveille,” he said. “Think of it as an alarm. Welcome to your last full day before the test!”
The thought of having so little time left woke Fort up more than the trumpet had. Then the events of yesterday and the feverish dream came flooding back to Fort, and he groaned loudly.
“You don’t seem thrilled,” Cyrus said. “Was it because you didn’t sleep well?”
“Nope. But I think I know who Sierra is now.”
Cyrus closed his eyes for a moment, then popped them back open. “Ah, she’s a Telepathy student? I didn’t know that we had a book of mental magic here.”
Fort just stared at him. “How did . . . did you read my mind?”
“No, I just looked ahead to when you told me about things and saw the conversation happening at breakfast,” Cyrus said. “And now you don’t have to tell me. So efficient!”
This hurt Fort’s brain almost as much as the fever. “But . . . doesn’t that mean you won’t find out, because I won’t tell you at breakfast? And then you won’t see it, so you wouldn’t know now? Aren’t you changing the future?”
“Of course,” Cyrus said with a shrug, standing up as the other boys around him groaned and began to rise as well. “The future’s always changing. That’s one of the tough parts about this magic. But it’s not like I’d forget what I already saw, just because you’re not going to tell me then. You will have told me if I hadn’t seen it, so in one sense, you already did.”
“. . . No,” Fort said. “Just no, to all of that.” He pulled his covers over his head and reveled in the warmth for one last minute.
“Let’s go find Jia before breakfast,” Cyrus said, patting his shoulder through the blankets. “She’ll get you cured. I’ve already seen it.”
With the promise of good health as motivation, Fort quickly got dressed, then followed Cyrus out as the rest of the boys got ready more slowly. Bryce, Chad, and Trey all grinned at the sight of Fort’s miserable, sickly face, and for a moment he considered coughing all over them, but that would take effort, and he barely had the energy to walk.
Outside, there were noticeably more soldiers around, after the events of the night before in the officers’ mess. They all seemed much more on edge than before, and they hadn’t exactly been calm to begin with.
Fortunately, Cyrus turned out to be very handy at finding people, considering he could look into the future and see where they’d be in five minutes. With that knowledge, they timed their arrival at the cafeteria just as Jia showed up. She took one look at Fort’s face and sighed.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said, her hands already glowing blue. She ran them over his head and chest, and the energy passed into his body, immediately curing him of the flu. “Sebastian, I take it?”
“Yeah,” Fort said, sighing in relief, both from the healing and from the fact that she seemed to have forgotten whatever he’d done to annoy her yesterday. Maybe the flu had helped him out after all. “Thank you.”
“I’d stay away from him,” Jia said. “His mother is on the congressional committee that the TDA has to answer to. He’s the only one at this entire school who definitely will never get sent home. But she wouldn’t let him learn Destruction magic, and I doubt he’ll ever get over that, so he’s perpetually annoyed with everyone.”
“How is Dr. Opps’s hand?” he asked her. “I heard Colonel Charles yell for someone to get you to heal him.”
Her eyes widened. “How did you know about that?”
“Let’s get some food, and I’ll explain,” he told her. “I’m starving!”
She raised her eyebrows but went quiet as other students began coming into the mess. After grabbing some scrambled eggs and pancakes, they sat down at a table that Cyrus promised would stay otherwise empty, and Fort filled Jia in on what had happened the night before in the officers’ mess, as well
as his dream (which also negated any paradox of Cyrus not officially hearing it too).
Jia didn’t seem to take it as calmly as Cyrus did, though. “They wouldn’t tell me what happened,” she said quietly, looking away. “This is bad. This is so bad.”
“Do you have any idea where this Sierra girl is?” Fort asked her. “She definitely seems like a student here, but I didn’t recognize the room I saw in her memory.”
Jia swallowed hard and wouldn’t look at him. “She’s . . . she’s gone. She’s no longer a student. They sent her home.”
“You know her?” Fort asked. “What about those other two, Michael and Damian?”
Jia seemed to flinch at the names, and she pushed her tray away. “I didn’t know them. I’m not really hungry anymore. Can we stop talking about this?”
Fort gave Cyrus a confused look, and the other boy returned it with a shrug. “This is pretty important, Jia!” Fort said. “If you do know them—”
“None of them are here, okay?” she said, standing up abruptly and grabbing her tray. “Now let this go. You said yourself that thing was looking for Telepathy magic. The last thing we need is for you to lead it back here. You have no idea what you’re messing with, Fort.”
“I don’t, you’re right,” he said, even more confused now. “That’s why I’m trying to find out more—”
“Just let it go, for all of our sakes!” With that, she walked over to the garbage and dumped her uneaten food, and then, with a quick look back at them, left the cafeteria.
“What was that all about?” Fort asked Cyrus. “Did I offend her somehow?”
His friend just stared off into space for a moment. “Seems like she knows more than she’s saying, doesn’t it?” Cyrus said finally. “At times like this, I feel like it’d be kind of useful if I could see the past, too.” He frowned. “I wonder if there are spells for that, later in the Clairvoyance book.”
“Wait,” Fort said, realizing something. “Why don’t you look ahead in my future, and see if we get answers out of Jia?”
Cyrus smiled. “And then we wouldn’t need to even have the conversation. You’re right!” He closed his eyes, so he missed Fort’s wincing at his words. “Hmm,” Cyrus said after a moment, his eyes still closed. “Today is . . . not really going to be your day. Ouch.”
“Great,” Fort said. “What about tomorrow?”
Cyrus furrowed his brow. “Tomorrow . . . looks really fuzzy for some reason.” He opened his eyes back up. “That’s weird. Usually the future’s only fuddled up when the person is near the books of magic. I don’t know if the books cause it, or if the chaos of pure magic messes up my sight somehow, but I’ve never been able to see anything around them, or even closely related to them. The teachers tried having me search the globe for the rest of the books already, and it’s like there’s just a hole in that part of my vision.”
“Perfect, so maybe we never find out what Jia knows,” Fort said, dropping his head into his hands.
“Too bad you can’t use the Telepathy magic yourself,” Cyrus pointed out. “That’d make this a lot easier.”
Fort shook his head violently. “Even if I could, I’d never use it. What if that thing from the officers’ mess heard it and came looking for me again? There’s no way I’d take a chance. You didn’t see it, Cyrus.” Even the thought of it made Fort’s blood go cold.
The other boy gave him a supportive look as Fort turned back to his breakfast, his appetite now gone. First Dr. Opps and Dr. Ambrose, now Jia. Why did everyone at this school have something to hide, a secret to keep? How was Sierra sending him thoughts if she wasn’t even at the school? And why him to begin with?
“So on the bright side,” Cyrus said, having no problem eating his own breakfast, “you will be seeing Jia later today. You won’t get any answers out of her, but at least she’s not still mad.”
“Oh yeah?” Fort said. “Last time she only forgave me because I had the flu. What happens this time, a hospital visit?”
“Whoa!” Cyrus said. “See, now you must be reading my mind, because that’s exactly why!”
- TWENTY-TWO -
AFTER BREAKFAST AND CYRUS’S PROPHECY about what was to come later that day (if that was what it really was), Fort found himself in a surprisingly normal situation: math class.
Before he and the rest of the healers went to Dr. Ambrose’s medical training, they had two classes of regular school, taught by a very nervous-looking soldier. That probably shouldn’t have surprised Fort as much as it did; there was no way even a secret government agency would let kids get away with skipping school.
Fort quickly figured out where the class was in their lessons and felt confident he could keep up without worrying too much about it. And that was good, because he found it pretty impossible to pay attention, considering everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, not to mention that his test to remain at the school was tomorrow, and if he failed that, he was getting his memories wiped before being sent home.
The regular school classes were small, and the students from both magic disciplines were mixed in together. Cyrus and Jia weren’t in Fort’s class, nor were Bryce, Trey, or Chad. Sebastian and Rachel were, though neither seemed to be paying much attention to him, which was probably for the best. He didn’t need another case of the flu, or someone protecting him like he was a little kid, either.
Though between the two, at least Rachel didn’t involve aches and chills.
When it came time for Dr. Ambrose’s class, Fort prepared himself to confront Jia, ready to demand answers about Sierra and the other two boys he’d seen in his dream. But when he arrived with the rest of the healers, Jia was nowhere to be found.
Instead, Fort got thrown into what turned out to be the most graphically disgusting lesson he’d ever seen as Dr. Ambrose walked her students through the workings of an arm muscle, showing on a screen exactly how various injuries looked, and how they could be fixed.
“Now this is a torn muscle,” she said, flipping to a new picture of an actual muscle with an actual tear in it, making someone next to Fort dry heave. “See how the muscle strands are all literally ripped? Someone didn’t stretch before working out, am I right? So which spell would you use on this? Mason?”
“Would it be . . . Heal Heavy Wounds?” Mason asked.
Dr. Ambrose sighed. “If you think this is a heavy wound, wait until we get to pictures from the ER. No, Mason. Please try to keep up, as I’m not actually teaching these classes for my benefit.”
Sebastian raised his hand, then started speaking before Dr. Ambrose even called on him. “The spell to use is Restore Body, the same as rebuilding bones,” he said.
“Right, as usual,” Dr. Ambrose said, shaking her head. “How is it that the only one of you who doesn’t need to study to stay in this school actually knows the answers?”
In spite of Dr. Ambrose wanting him to fail out of the school, Fort actually found himself fascinated by the lesson. It did help to know what sort of magic he’d need to use on various injuries, given how little his Heal Minor Wounds spell had worked on his flu symptoms. Besides, who knew what might help him with his first three spells?
The lessons continued, getting more and more disgusting, until even Fort ran out of the room after Dr. Ambrose showed a slide of severed toes, then demanded Mason answer whether that was a major wound. Fort wasn’t the only one to excuse himself either, and there ended up being a line for the restroom.
After the class finished, Dr. Ambrose stopped Fort on the way out. “Only one day after today until your test, Forsythe,” she said as the other kids left, looking various levels of nauseated. “Jia told me you don’t need her help anymore, which I think we both know is a lie. But given that Oppenheimer confirmed to me that she’s off the case, that tells me you did something to annoy her, or him.” She narrowed her eyes. “But while I’m glad to have Jia back, I’d like to know why.”
“Wait, what?” Fort said, his eyes widening. “No, I definitely st
ill need her help. Where is she?”
“What am I, her daily schedule?” Dr. Ambrose said. “Clearly you know less about this than I do, so further conversation won’t help. Not that it ever does. Off you go.”
She shoved him out of the classroom, then slammed the door behind him as he stood in the hallway, shocked.
Jia wouldn’t help him anymore? And somehow she’d gotten Dr. Opps’s permission to stop? What could she know about Sierra that they wouldn’t let Fort find out? This was maddening!
“Argh!” he shouted, and slammed his fist into the door.
“Take your angst somewhere else, please!” Dr. Ambrose shouted from inside the classroom, and Fort blushed, then quickly headed for the elevator.
As he left the Training Hall, he caught sight of Dr. Opps walking toward the officers’ mess, presumably for lunch. Fort sprinted to catch up and stopped the headmaster before he could go in. “Dr. Opps! I need to talk to you.”
The doctor turned and visibly flinched when he saw it was Fort. That was never a good sign. “Forsythe, stop there.”
Fort did, several feet away. “But I have questions—”
“I have too much classified information in my mind for you to get anywhere near me again,” Dr. Opps said, shaking his head. “It’s for your own good. And there’s nothing I can tell you about what happened last night anyway. The TDA is running an investigation, and Colonel Charles isn’t in a sharing mood today.” He seemed annoyed at this, so maybe Fort wasn’t the only one getting left in the dark.
“It’s not about that, though I do have a lot of questions,” Fort said. “Like where is Sierra, and why is she—”
“All you need to know is that she’s no longer a student, and we will find a way to stop her using her power on you,” Dr. Opps said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m rather hungry. I spent all night using one of our mental items to hide the school from that thing, in case you have any more telepathic experiences out of nowhere. It won’t last more than a day or two, but we shouldn’t need it much longer anyway.” He gave Fort a long look.
