Jay was not sure what to say to this. He never thought that the source of his abilities could be the people around him, but thinking about when he felt the strongest, the fastest, and read the clearest, it was always when he was around others that could do the same. He looked over at Brain. “Thanks Brain, I guess now that the games are over we can be friends.”
“I guess so,” Brain replied. “Although, you did lie to me.”
Jay was taken aback. “When did I lie to you?” he asked, struggling to think of what he might have said that was incorrect.
Brain smiled at him. “You told me you couldn’t fly.”
Jay smiled at this, glad that he hadn’t really done something to offend Brain. Jay wanted to ask more questions, but he realized that no matter how many questions he asked, there would always be more that he would need answers to, so he let his head drop back onto the pillow in resignation. Without meaning to, he soon fell back asleep.
“I WANT ANSWERS soldiers, and I want them now.”
“He will be alright, sir, he should be up and about in…”
“That’s not what I want answers about. Rumors are all over the school about his being able to fly.”
“He cannot, sir. It was his speed plus the force with which he pushed off that propelled him up that high.”
“So it was just a jump? He jumped up to the ceiling of the arena?”
“Yes sir.”
“And you say he cannot fly? Soldier, if he can really jump that high, and still be moving fast enough to dent the roof, I’d say that’s about as bad as flight.”
“At least he cannot land, sir.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Sir? Only the broken arm came from his hitting the roof. The cracked pelvis and broken leg came from the fall.”
“He fell while nearly unconscious, and he was unprepared for the ceiling. He was also weak from having been separated from Titans for a short time. If he had been at full strength, and been ready for the impact, he might have been able to deflect himself off the ceiling, and achieved a landing when he came back down.”
“Sir, from that height, and at that speed, even the best Titans…”
“He is not the best Titans, soldier, he is an anomaly. He is developing in ways we had previously thought impossible, and so we need to keep our minds open to any physical possibilities.”
“Yes, sir.”
“On the topic of physical impossibilities, how the heck did he survive all that?”
“It appears the sand helped, as it was a softer thing to land on than most. Also, the fact that he was still strong from being near his team, which is predominantly Titans. We suspect that his adrenaline slowed the loss of that power. Lastly, he landed near a fellow student, who bandaged him enough to stop the bleeding and got him help quickly. Any of those events missing and the end may have been different.”
“So you think he got lucky.”
“Yes, sir, the circumstances played favorably for him.”
“So the rumors of his being immortal are false.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You really need to stop considering your speculations as facts. He is still alive, so how do you know for sure of his mortality? Still, I would have to agree. His bones are clearly broken, and he is healing slowly, so that is pretty good evidence that he as a whole can be broken.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any permanent damage?”
“No, sir, he should heal completely.”
“Then we need to be ready for that. I fear that in the long run this might make him even stronger, and as a result, even harder to keep track of. His brother is being picked up now, which should help keep him distracted. We can also use his having multiple abilities to our advantage. He is not the best academically, but having all three abilities means he should be taking all three sets of classes. A harder course load may weigh him down a little more.”
“Or it might help him exceed even faster.”
“This is still our best bet. If he somehow is still able to keep up, and we start to lose control, I have another plan waiting.”
THE BRIGHT SIDE to being bedridden, Jay realized, is that you have all the time you need to get your work done. Jay did not enjoy lying in bed, being unable to get up and move, but there was always a friend or two around to help him with whatever he needed. Brain, who admitted feeling a little responsible for Jay’s injuries, since he had purposefully led Jay away from the other Titans in the hopes of decreasing his strength, came by often to answer any academic questions Jay had about his classes, or to tell him stories of different simulation games he had been in, or other stories from his time at the school. He even explained how he had actually planned on capturing Jay, if Jay hadn’t taken off the way he did.
“The plan was for Zahrah to chase you away from the rest of your team, while we trapped them. Then after they were trapped, we would move them to the outer edges of the arena, and signal to Zahrah that things were in place. She would then chase you into the center of the arena, where we had a trap set. The trap wouldn’t capture you completely, but it would have slowed you down long enough for Zahrah to get away. We would have our Prometheus’s waiting at the trap, and as you lost your speed, and with your strength gone by that point, we should be able to take you easily, no matter how much you could read.”
Jay enjoyed hearing Brain’s strategies, even when they involved ways of stopping Jay himself. Brain was much older than him, and certainly much smarter, but he was a child at heart, and this was his game.
Another of Jay’s frequent visitors was Duke. Without being able to move around, Duke and Jay quickly realized they really did not have many of the same interests, and conversation between them was awkward at first. Before long, however, they made a habit out of sticking to the one thing of which they did share an interest, and that was the simulation games. The games may have been over for that year, but Jay could see that to Duke, the games were never fully over. He would talk about strategies that could be put into place next year, different ways they could have dealt with the different environments, and the stats of the students who would still be around the next year. At first Duke tried to keep his big plans to himself, but Jay agreed that he would not play on a team unless Duke was on it as well, and that was good enough for Duke.
Zahrah was another one who would visit constantly. She had a lot of catching up to do with her classes as well, so she was not able to spend much time talking with him, but she would often bring her work in and sit there with him while she worked. Her teachers had given her an extension on her tests as well; originally her professors had turned down her request for an extension, but with Brain saying that a Hermes by Jay’s bedside would give him strength, she ignored her tests and hardly ever left his side throughout the two weeks he spent unconscious. Brain explained to the teachers that Zahrah had missed her tests in order to save Jay’s life, and they all gave in. Even though they spent little time talking, Jay felt happier when she was around, as if she were an old true friend that he had known his whole life. He allowed himself to treat this as the case, instead of the truth, that she was the Hermes nicknamed Sapphire, who was considered by many to be his enemy and a rival throughout this past season of games. The games were over now, and they could now be friends; Jay was satisfied with that.
There were the random visits from others too; Hammer, Hummer, first year Prometheus’ from his dorm room, team members from the green team, even many of the people from other teams who he had faced, or from his classes. Out of everyone, however, the one who was always there was Michael. The first few nights the nurse sent him away, but Michael waited nearby until he could see the nurse’s dreams, then snuck back in and took a seat by Jay’s bed once more. At first he was reprimanded, then he was talked to, then he was ignored, and after a few days the nurse just stopped telling him to leave during closing time altogether.
Jay tried a few times to tell Michael to go live his own life, or to have some fun, but his answer was alway
s the same. “We’re on break for a few weeks before the new semester, so I don’t have any work to go do, and besides, what could be more fun than this?”
It was both a comfort and a struggle to see Michael always there beside him. Michael was a great friend, and Jay was happy to have such a friend that he could rely on. It was difficult at times though, because Jay could not help but feel like he did not deserve Michael to be there for him like this. Jay had spent much of the semester off with his teammates practicing, and even the time he spent with Michael was spent in thought over the games, and over what he would need to do to get ready for them. Jay thought about making it a condition that Michael be invited onto the same team as Jay the next year as well. He wondered how much of that he could get away with, or even if Michael would accept an invitation under those conditions. Michael was certainly one of the top Prometheus in their year, and he would not be terrible in the games, but Jay knew Michael well enough to know he would want to earn a spot on a team.
WITH HIS FRIENDS helping him along, Jay passed the last of his tests one week before the end of the break. Shortly thereafter, Brain came in to congratulate him and to say goodbye.
“I’m shipping out Decathlon,” Brain told him, with a smile of contented excitement.
“Do you know where you are being stationed?” Jay asked.
“I won’t know exactly where until the plane lands, but they said I’ll be in charge of a small group. They also said that small group could become a larger group soon enough if I prove capable.”
Jay was happy to hear that things were working out for Brain, but he was sad to see him go. Brain felt like an older brother to Jay, despite their only getting to know each other well the past few weeks. “You’ll prove capable,” Jay said with confidence. “Maybe in a few years I’ll have the privilege of being part of that larger group.”
“Haha, or maybe leading a large group of your own nearby.”
“Either way, be careful out there.” With a final goodbye, Brain turned and left.
JAY WAS FINALLY able to start walking around with the help of crutches a few days before the new semester came. It was a strange feeling to have the energy to run without the range of leg motion necessary, but Jay knew he was healing quicker now, and before long he would be running around just like before. He wished he could at least have begun lifting, but the nurse warned that he could only lift with his right arm, and this would not only aggravate his pelvis, but leave his muscles uneven. Instead Jay left those two abilities alone for the time being, and went back to the reason he first came to the school, to learn to read minds.
Jay and Michael spent the next few days reviewing the different techniques Jay had learned from Brain. He tried to teach Michael to blanket read, but this proved to be too difficult a thing to teach. For one thing Michael did not yet have enough control over his ability to get multiple pictures to show up clearly enough to be seen, and for another thing Jay could not figure out how to teach Michael to make the pictures come, as they came naturally for Jay.
Jay did manage to help Michael find ways of focusing the images however. One technique that worked wonders was with the help of Zahrah. She began getting together with them during these practices, and most of the time she would run laps while they sat nearby to practice their reading. It was Michael who came up with a trick to help him see how to mind read as Jay did. Since Jay could mind read really well without knowing how he was actually doing it, Zahrah would think of different things, and Jay would read her mind. Michael in turn would read Jay’s mind. This allowed Michael to not only see the images from Zahrah, but also to see how Jay’s mind went about processing the images and moving them about. It was using this technique that helped Michael the most, and as Michael discovered things about how Jay’s mind was working, he would tell Jay about it too.
“It’s amazing,” Jay responded when this first began, “it’s like there are two minds working inside my head. There’s the one I know about, and the one that is working all on its own.”
They were doing just this when they first started seeing groups of new students coming through the school on their tours.
“It’s strange, I don’t feel like we should be second years just yet,” Michael responded, as they watched one of the tour groups walk by.
“I know what you mean, this time last year I was still uncertain whether I’d be coming at all,” Zahrah reflected.
“That’s right, I’d forgotten that I’m the only one of us that was actually here for the first day. Now that I think about it, I guess I hold seniority over the both of you, don’t I?” Michael teased.
“Come on, let’s go get something to eat, there are way too many people walking about for us to concentrate now,” Jay suggested. The three of them grabbed their things and began walking off towards the dining hall.
On their way, Jay began seeing images in his head that he hadn’t seen in a long time. He saw his parents, and his house back home. Strange, Jay thought, what’s bringing that to my mind? They got to the dining hall, but one of the tour groups was standing in the entrance, and they were unable to get in. As they waited, Jay heard a voice that stopped him in his tracks.
“Crutches? This doesn’t fit at all. I thought I heard you had become an all-powerful hero, who could leap tall buildings in a single bound?”
Jay knew the voice, but he could not believe his ears. He turned around slowly, and was amazed to find he had heard correctly. There stood Donny, with a big grin spread wide across his face, and his own tour guide standing by his side.
The Games Heroes Play (The Academy Trilogy) Page 15
