“Is that it?” Emily asked him, her eyes wet and trembling, the tissue clutched in her hands.
“Is what it?”
“Her chest!” Emily howled miserably, again burying her head in his shirt, this time using the other shoulder. “Is that it? Is that why he’s so obsessed with her?”
Vivik figured out what they were talking about, and then blushed furiously. He was somewhat glad that Emily was too busy sobbing to notice.
“Ah. Well, we don’t really talk about that sort of thing,” Vivik lied. “But I don’t think it’s that. Anyway,” he said, hesitating when she looked over suddenly, “Eerie’s not really that… big.”
“Then, what is wrong with me?” Emily demanded, looking up at him with bloodshot eyes and a runny nose. He handed her another tissue automatically, and wished that he could change his shirt. “Why is he being so weird?”
Vivik weighed his options. He had a strict policy of noninvolvement in cartel affairs, one that had kept him moderately safe until now. Nevertheless, Emily was a friend; moreover, Emily was the girl that he often found himself thinking of right before he fell asleep. He liked Emily, he really did, and he had since the first time they had talked. Vivik wanted her to get what she wanted, and for her to be happy, but he wasn’t sure he wanted that badly enough to help her into Alex’s arms. Besides, Vivik told himself, it wasn’t as if Alex was hurting for attention, feeling increasingly comfortable with the idea. Alex seemed to view Emily as a more of a burden than anything else, much of the time.
“I’m just his friend. We don’t talk about girls much,” Vivik continued on, a little stunned that lying had suddenly become so easy. “And I honestly don’t know what’s up with him and Eerie. Ever since Alex started the Program, he is barely ever around, and when he is, he spends most of his time sleeping. He doesn’t eat with her, and he doesn’t sit next to her in class. Why are you so worried?”
Emily sniffled and looked miserable; curling her bare, tanned legs beneath her, stretched across the top of Vivik’s neatly made bed.
“They know, Vivik,” she said, crumpling the tissue in her hand. “The Hegemony. Chandi Tuesday showed up today and threatened me. They want results, and they know all about Alex and Eerie. Vivik,” she said intensely, seizing his hand in her own, “they are going to kick me out of the Academy. My father will marry me off to some old man, and that will be that.”
Vivik opened his mouth to protest, and then thought better of it. Emily was right, of course, and that was part of it. The other part was that he did not want her to let go of his hand. The way he saw it, it wasn’t even a betrayal of Alex — after all, he had been frank with Vivik many times as to his uncertainty when it came to Emily. Surely, he was not doing anything wrong by spending time with the girl he liked, regardless of her intentions. Was it even possible, he wondered, for Emily’s obsessive quest for Alex to lead her in his direction?
You never know, Vivik thought, until you try, reaching as subtly as possible for the box of tissues.
3
Alex was in the circle, and not at all happy to be there.
No one seemed inclined to ask his opinion on the subject, however, and Mitsuru Aoki’s crimson eyes were latched on to him, so he tried to keep his head clear, his breathing slow, and his hands up. As Steve was right-handed, and favored a lunging uppercut or a right cross, Alex always moved to his left, exactly as Michael had taught him. It was impossible for him to tell how long they had been fighting; time had a way of stretching out in the circle. It didn’t matter, anyway — no one left until Miss Aoki was satisfied.
It was funny without being funny, the way a crudely painted red circle on the floor of an empty room could become his least favorite place to be.
For the most part, though, Alex liked what he was seeing now, through hands wrapped in blood-smeared tape to protect his knuckles. Steve was bigger and stronger, and they were about the same height, but Alex’s arms were a few inches longer, and he had learned to use that to keep Steve at bay, working his jab from just outside Steve’s range, peppering him in the face with fast shots and then stepping back. The jabs weren’t particularly damaging individually, but their cumulative effect was displayed on Steve’s face, from his swollen, bleeding nose to the mouse rising underneath his left eye. Moreover, Steve’s bulk was starting to work against him, stealing oxygen from his blood faster than it could be replaced. He was sweating like a fountain and sucking wind, his face red from exertion.
“You can’t win on points, Alex,” Miss Aoki chided, from where she sat at the periphery of the circle, Margot off to one side looking bored, Renton on the other with a smug expression. “You actually have to hurt him.”
He didn’t rise to the bait, and he didn’t let her distract him from what he was doing. Contrary to popular belief, Alex had a plan.
Actually, it wasn’t really his plan, because Michael had helped him formulate it. After two weeks of getting beat by Steve, over and over, being taken down and battered until Miss Aoki decided he’d had enough, Alex was frustrated enough to ask for help. After all, telepathic simulation or no, it still hurt. Michael’s competitive spirit fired up, and as a result, he had spent the next week drilling him exclusively on the techniques that he was using right now.
His jab wasn’t enough, not by itself, more so when Steve was still energetic. Steve could simply walk right on through it, eating a couple of shots before he got close enough to do damage, but nothing that would actually stop him. However, Michael had pointed out something else that Alex had going for him besides long arms; namely, he had sharp, protruding elbows. A week of practice had taught him the peculiar strike-and-drag motion that turned a close elbow into a cutting tool. Alex learned how to shift seamlessly from the jab to the elbow, so that he could switch from one to the other in the same motion when his opponent came forward.
He had started using the elbow strike in the circle two days ago, and he’d turned Steve’s face into a bloody mess. Steve tried to bull through the jab and get inside his guard. Alex’s third short elbow had opened a big cut above Steve’s right eye, blinding him and allowing Alex to batter him mercilessly from his blind side until Mitsuru called a stop. Clearly, the big asshole wasn’t as stupid as he looked, because today he was more careful about stepping inside or shooting for a takedown.
“What is this, modern dance? I’m falling asleep over here. If this was a real fight, you’d both be dead by now.”
Alex ignored the criticism and stuck to the plan. Steve came forward cautiously, and he ate a quick right jab that caught him on the cheek, while his own wild punches fell short. Alex stepped back outside his range and resumed circling, throwing jabs whenever Steve was close enough. He wasn’t trying to wear Steve down. He was aiming to hurt him, but for the plan to work, he needed to goad him into going for a double-leg takedown, a scoop-and-tackle maneuver that was the favored method of putting an opponent on the ground in freestyle wrestling, where Steve had an extensive background. Frustration was evident on Steve’s face, and his increasingly rushed and wild movements. Everyone gets tired of being punched, after all.
More patient footwork, pumping his jab into Steve’s swollen face. It cost him a stomped foot and a bloodied nose from a punch that barely grazed him, but Alex finally saw what he had been waiting for.
He’d seen it the first time a week earlier when Michael had convinced Alex to start utilizing the jab that he had previously regarded as ineffective. Most of the time, it was still tempting to swing for the fences, particularly when Steve (and Miss Aoki had a sadistic tendency to pick out Steve to be his ‘partner’ for these exercises) was the person at the other end of his fist. Alex walked him all over the place that day, backing away and wheeling and counterpunching, no real plan, just hoping to tire him out. It worked for a while, and then the big goon got inside, dropped Alex with a body shot, grabbed him in a full nelson, and drove him into the ground. However, before that happened, Alex saw something that he knew was interesting, even if h
e didn’t know exactly what to do with it; namely, he saw Steve misstep.
When he was very tired, Steve would step over his own foot, particularly if Alex moved to the left. So Alex consulted Michael again, and then spent days practicing the plan they came up with. For a week, he absorbed terrible beatings, trying to figure out what it would take to tire Steve in the first place. When he brushed his teeth at night, he visualized himself doing it; before he fell asleep, he imagined how it would go. There was a certain dreamlike quality when he finally saw it happen in front of him.
His heart leapt into his throat and he had to stop himself from jumping forward in frenzy. Instead, he followed Michael’s plan. Alex remained patient. He took stepped to his left, then he coiled his legs beneath him and waited to pounce, knowing that if Steve didn’t misstep, that wouldn’t be able to do much to defend himself.
But Steve got lazy.
He stepped across his own foot, the tip of one trainer scraping the laces of the other. Alex launched himself at Steve, leading a wide, looping punch that started too far back for Michael to approve and ended with a satisfying smack below Steve’s ear, right above the base of his jaw. Steve grunted and fell to one knee, the first time he had ever even been dizzied by one of Alex’s punches. Alex was sure he had broken his own hand, the way it immediately started throbbing, but that didn’t matter now. He kept coming forward.
Alex drove his right knee into the side of Steve’s head as hard as he could manage. Steve went limp and fell sideways, his eyes weirdly defocused. Alex felt a brief moment of triumph before he collapsed in a heap himself, uncertain whether to clutch his bruised knee or his broken hand.
“Reset.”
Steve shook his head, spat, and then stood up, stumbling his way out of the circle, a yellowish-purple bruise already forming on the side of his head. He wobbled his way to bathroom, and everyone politely ignored the sound of his retching. Gustav watched from his corner looking amused, that is, if his eyes were actually open. Alex was still writhing on the ground, his arm held close to his stomach and his body curled around it. Mitsuru watched from where she sat, Japanese-style, without comment. Anastasia sighed from the doorway, and then shook her head.
“It’s his arm again,” Anastasia said reluctantly. “Do you want me to have him taken to the infirmary?”
“Alex needs to learn to ask for help. Alex needs to learn that there are consequences for his actions. These are all important lessons that he is being taught by this experience.”
“I see,” Anastasia said quietly.
Anastasia sat down quietly next to Mitsuru Aoki, and they remained there, side by side, watching the boy thrash and moan, while the rest of the class filtered out quietly, and Renton waited patiently in the corner. After what seemed like a very long time, Alex struggled up into a sitting position.
“Is the implication that if I ask, then somebody will help me?” Alex asked through painfully gritted teeth.
“Yes,” Mitsuru Aoki said, nodding.
“Then please help me,” Alex said, not caring how it sounded now. “I think I messed up my arm again.”
Miss Aoki nodded a second time, and then stood up, brushing away imaginary dust from her loose brown cotton pants.
“Now, you can help him,” Miss Aoki said generously, nodding to Anastasia and heading out the door without looking back. Anastasia waited prudently until Mitsuru was gone and the door had shut solidly behind her.
“She doesn’t have to be so unpleasant. Renton, if you would.”
“Sure, milady.”
Renton walked over and helped Alex gingerly to his feet, lifting him on his left side, opposite his injured arm. The worst of the pain had subsided, but everything from his bruised fist all the way up to his elbow throbbed insistently. It didn’t make sense to him. Every injury Alex had incurred since being injected with nanites had healed, rapidly and completely. However, the wound left by the teeth of the first Weir he had ever encountered had never fully recovered.
“What do you care?” Alex demanded shakily, glaring at Anastasia suspiciously. “Why are you even here? You aren’t in the Program.”
“It’s sad, how modern youth is ungrateful. Don’t you think so, Renton?”
“That it is,” Renton agreed.
“Always assuming the worst of everyone,” Anastasia complained, behind a very slight smile. “On a completely unrelated note, Alex, do you mind if we make a quick stop on the way to the infirmary? There is someone that I would like you to meet.”
“For God’s sake,” Alex moaned. “I think I broke my goddamn arm again or something. Do you have any idea how much pain I am in right now? Do you think I want to go make a social call?”
Anastasia looked at him with disapproval. Even after seeing it several times a week for months, Alex couldn’t adjust to Anastasia in gym clothes. Not that they were any different from what any other girl wore to the gym, but he was used to Anastasia wearing outfits that wouldn’t have been out of place in Victorian-Era England, assuming there was some sort of goth scene back then. Even weirder was the two tight braids that held her hair neatly in place. Normally, Anastasia’s hair was elaborately styled; in fact, Renton had confided that she employed a servant whose sole job was managing her hair. With her curled twin-tails, she looked like a junior-high school student on her way to P.E. class.
“Alex, you big baby. Renton, could you help my sensitive friend?”
“Of course,” Renton said, smiling at Alex. Renton’s smile was as questionable as the person that lived behind it; friendly on the surface, but the longer he stared, the shadier it started to look. “You mind dropping those shields, Alex? If you prefer, I could bust through them, but then we’ll both end up with a headache.”
“What?” Alex demanded, his suspicions renewed. He’d needed Rebecca to build the shields that protected him from telepathic and empathic manipulation for the first several weeks he’d been at the Academy, and he had only lately started to build them himself. He recalled Rebecca warning him never to drop them, even for the most innocent request. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Renton is a telepath, Alex,” Anastasia explained, tapping her foot impatiently. “He can turn the pain off. That won’t fix your arm, but at least it should stop you from whining about it until we can take you to the infirmary.”
“Oh, come on…”
“Alex,” Anastasia said firmly. “Work with me on this. I have helped you before. Have I ever lied to you? Threatened you? Have I done anything at all to harm you?”
“Actually, I find everything you say to be vaguely threatening,” Alex admitted warily.
“I’m the only person in Central who is honest with you,” Anastasia said, without a trace of humor. “Are you certain that you wish to alienate me?”
“With friends like these…” Alex muttered, and then he finally gave in, his shoulders slumping. He felt a strange sense of decompression as the shields dissipated, as if he had been keeping his head wedged between invisible blocks of Styrofoam, only becoming aware of it now as they fell away, leaving him feeling sort of naked and vulnerable. “Alright, let’s get this over with.”
Renton tapped one finger against Alex’s forehead. Alex knew, thanks to Rebecca’s tutoring, that most telepaths and empaths needed physical contact to work, but it still creeped him out to let Renton touch him. He couldn’t complain about the results, though, as the pain in his arm throbbed once more, weakly, and then disappeared so abruptly that he had to touch his damaged forearm to reassure himself that it was still there.
“Wow,” Alex said quietly and unintentionally.
“Right?” Renton smirked, picking up Alex’s gym bag along with his own.
“Come along, boys,” Anastasia said, heading for the door. “Let’s take a little walk.”
“This whole house is yours?”
“Yes. In a sense. This house is set aside by the Academy for the current scion of the Black Sun, and at the moment, that happens to be me,” Anastasia
said modestly, leading him through the dark wood and antique furniture that lined the entry way to the home, back into the office where she conducted the majority of her business. The desk she sat down behind was impressive, carved from a heavy, stained wood and ornately detailed, but all it really did, in Alex’s opinion, was make Anastasia look tiny and ridiculous behind it. He almost tripped over a Weir lying on the floor, before he heard it growling menacingly at him and stopped just short.
“Ah!” Alex yelped involuntarily, jumping back. “What the hell?”
Anastasia gave him a surprised look that he suspected was manufactured, and then a small, apologetic smile.
“Oh, that is Donner. Don’t worry, he won’t bite.”
“That’s not particularly comforting,” Alex said, staring at Donner suspiciously. “Is that a Weir, or a normal wolf?”
“Donner is a Weir, but the collar prevents him from changing.” Alex leaned as close as he was comfortable with, and saw that Donner wore a heavy collar that appeared to be made of a tarnished silver metal. The Weir gave him another warning growl, then stalked away to curl up around Anastasia’s feet, behind the desk. Anastasia nodded to Renton, who moved a chair in front of the desk, and gestured for Alex to take a seat. “Blitzen should be nearby. And, no, before you ask, I did not name them. You can thank my little sisters for that.”
“Okay, whatever,” Alex said, sitting down, clutching his damaged arm protectively, though it didn’t hurt at all. “What’s so important that it couldn’t wait until after I got patched up?”
“You must realize, Alex, that I have a great many responsibilities,” Anastasia said broadly, with barely disguised glee. “With so many things for me to worry over, your safety and security can no longer be among those concerns, I’m afraid.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“Don’t be obnoxious,” Anastasia scolded. “You have no idea the lengths I have gone to, in order to keep you safe. In any case, I am handing over the responsibility to someone else. As you know, I found myself one bodyguard short of the quota required for me by cartel bylaw.”
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