by Hayes, Drew
“You want to know why I didn’t do to Roy what I did to the super-speeder.”
“I want to understand where your mind is at, Vince.” Dean Blaine tilted his head forward, forsaking the pointless pages. “You’re starting to grapple with serious destructive potential. Between the ability you showed that night and the wreckage you left in your wake today, I would be remiss in my duties as an educator if I didn’t make sure you were on the right path.”
“I guess that’s fair.” Vince tried to put his thoughts together neatly, imagining how he’d concisely explain everything, then quickly gave it up as a lost cause and resigned himself to rambling. “From a practical side, I need to feel the kinetic energy to steal it, like when someone punches me. For stopping a heartbeat, it means skin-to-skin contact. I have to feel the heart, the pulse, the blood pumping through them. Roy wasn’t exactly going to make getting a grip on his neck easy. But… but even if he had, I’m not sure I would have used it. That technique is dangerous. I can’t… I don’t know what the difference between capturing and killing is when I use it. A few seconds too long and I could do something permanent. I’m not… I’ll use it if I have to. When I have to. But not for a trial, and not against someone I’m not prepared to kill.”
Dean Blaine stared at him for a long, silent moment, then reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a form. “I understand, Vince. That skill is one that scares you because it is, at its core, a killing technique. I’m glad it does, too. If you were the kind of man who embraced such options without pause, I shudder to think at what sort of person you’d be after ten years in the field. But, on the other hand, polishing your absorption skills will make you vastly more effective, and in this class, to ignore such potential would be folly. So I’d like to make you an offer: what are your plans for Winter Break?”
“Just going to visit Hershel and Roy’s house, as usual,” Vince replied.
“Would you be open to spending it elsewhere? You see, Vince, you are certainly strong, but you are hardly the first Super to come through this program wielding more power than could be safely contained and properly utilized on a college campus. A long while ago, we created a separate training facility, somewhere far from civilization where those with destructive, dangerous abilities could sharpen their skills without fear. Well, it serves that purpose among others. Anyway, if you’re willing, I’d like you to spend Winter Break there. I think it will give you perspective, as well as the chance to fine-tune your power in a way you might never find here.”
There was barely a pause after Dean Blaine’s offer was fully formed before Vince spat out, “I’ll go.”
Slowly, Dean Blaine slid the form across the desk. Vince noticed that the top portion was already filled out.
“I took the liberty of getting a head start,” Dean Blaine explained. “Something told me you’d be game. Just fill out the rest yourself, and by the day’s end we’ll have a temporary spot lined up for you at Lander’s East Campus.”
142.
As far as college parties went, this one was rather subdued. Part of it was because nearly everyone in attendance was exhausted; even if their bodies had been mended, the injuries had still taken a substantial toll. Not to mention that the trial itself had been emotionally draining as well. Once one added in the efforts to keep their normal class grades high, it was enough to leave anyone lethargic. But, truth be told, those were only smaller pieces of why everyone in Nick’s apartment was a little sluggish that evening, nursing their drinks and making light conversation. The real cause was more deeply rooted: this was their final Winter Break. The real world was looming on the horizon, casting its shadow on even these festive occasions. And the closer its arrival drew, the harder it was to put the inevitable change out of mind.
For her part, Alice wasn’t entirely sure what to do. She knew Mary planned to leave the program, and part of her felt like she should share that fact with the others. Then again, Mary acted as the keeper to all of their secrets and private thoughts, a responsibility she’d never once treated lightly. Was it really so wrong for her to have one secret of her own, even fleetingly? Alice didn’t know; it fell into the gray area she’d become more and more comfortable with as her Subtlety education went on. All she knew for certain was that once a secret was out, it couldn’t be unspoken, so she wanted to be sure of whatever move she made. And with the day they’d had, she definitely wasn’t making that choice tonight.
“—so the theater downtown is doing a Space Puncher marathon, which should be a fun way to kill a day,” Alex said. Although they’d invited several friends to the party, Alex and Camille were the only non-Melbrook residents who’d taken them up on the offer. Even Chad had declined, as he was heading home that evening like so many of the others. It was hard to blame any of them; if Alice had grown up in a loving home, she’d have jumped on the opportunity to visit it as well.
“Anyway, that’s my plan, aside from training. What about you all?” Alex asked. He played a card on the table, something with a monster illustration and numbers in the corner, which elicited a curse from Hershel.
“Damn you, and damn your greens with their damn trample,” Hershel muttered, flicking through his own hand. No one else entirely understood the game they were playing, not that Alex and Hershel hadn’t tried to rope the others in. “Roy and I are going home, as usual. Well, mostly going home. With the way our powers have been… developing, we’re going to take a day out sometime during the month to visit an old family friend. Just to make sure everything is going well.”
With a flourish, Hershel laid down a card with a red border on top of Alex’s weird monster. He looked mighty smug about the move, right up until Alex pulled a blue card from his hand and pushed Hershel’s red card away. Alice didn’t grasp the intricacies of what had just gone down, but from the darkly muttered swears escaping Hershel’s mouth while he took the red card back, it wasn’t hard to figure out things had not gone his way.
“I’ve just got the training,” Vince said. “No idea what it entails, but hopefully it will be productive.”
“You spent your whole summer training, and now you’re giving up winter too? You know, there’s a difference between being dedicated and just hating downtime.” Nick appeared with a pair of drinks, slipping one to Alice as he took a seat next to her. “Some of us are going to spend our time off as the gods intended: drinking champagne by the pool.”
“In December?” Camille asked.
“It’s a desert. But even if we get a cold front, I’ve got options. People come to Vegas all throughout the year. It’s just good business to have a few indoor, heated aquatic lounging options,” Nick explained. “There’s never a bad time to visit Las Vegas.”
Mary made her way in from the kitchen, holding a slice of pizza. They’d attacked dinner hard earlier in the evening and were now picking through the scraps as hunger occasionally reared its head. “Lovely as I’m sure it is, I think I’m more than happy to have a nice winter back in my woods. The peace and quiet will be a welcome change of pace from this town.”
“Aw, you know you’ll miss us,” Nick said. “I give it five days in the woods before you’re calling everyone up, trying to get us to visit.”
Alice didn’t look at Mary during the discourse; she was better trained than that. Any sort of conspiratorial nod or sideways glance was risky, especially around someone as perceptive as Nick. A question appeared on the tail end of those thoughts: what if Nick already knew? Playing it close to the vest was certainly his style, but since there wasn’t a way to ask about it without tipping her own hand, there was no way to be sure. And besides, it didn’t really matter if he knew or not. It wouldn’t change the outcome. Only Mary could do that.
“I’m just going to be home with my family,” Camille said. “We go caroling for Christmas, which is fun, and then my mom makes a big ham for me and all my cousins.”
“Sounds idyllic.” Hershel was half-distracted, rapidly shuffling the cards in his hand, clearly searc
hing for a solution that failed to appear.
“It’s nice enough. I’m the only Super in my family, so things were more awkward when I was a kid. Nowadays it isn’t as bad.” Camille rested her head on Vince’s shoulder, and for a moment Alice felt like she’d stolen Mary’s power. It was too easy to see into that woman’s mind, imagining a Christmas where she got to bring Vince home to meet the family. Maybe she’d even been working up the courage to ask, before Vince had arrived and casually announced he was heading off to some eastern campus for more training. The guy was an open book, a trait that Alice strangely found herself envying from time to time.
“What about you, Alice?” Vince asked. “Are you going home for Christmas?”
It was a fair question, one she’d been asking herself for some time. Knowing what she did about her father, it had been extremely tempting to skip the whole thing—buy herself a ticket to a tropical island and spend the break in luxury. But the more she’d dwelled upon it, the more she’d come to the realization that this wasn’t a burden: it was an opportunity. Alice had information about her father that he wasn’t aware of. If she was smart, if she was careful, and if she was daring, she might just be able to twist that advantage into getting more information out of him. Besides, with all that she’d seen, she needed to talk with him. This might be their last chance to have any sort of honest dialogue, and she owed her father at least that possibility. It was a gamble, through and through; however, this was what she’d been training for. This was the perfect opportunity for someone who wanted to be a Subtlety Hero.
“You know I can’t miss it, even if I wanted to.” Alice put on her best exasperated yet stalwart smile. They needed to think she was stuck going, not that she had anything planned. After all, if they knew, then they might try to talk her out of it, and this was too good of a chance to miss due to anything as paltry as logic or reason. “There’s nothing like an Adair family Christmas.”
143.
Nick sat in the back, eyes out the window as Eliza and Jerome switched off the role of driver in the gas station parking lot. It wasn’t a terribly long trek from Lander to Las Vegas, but neither were especially fond of the task. Curiously, part of Nick actually missed the old days when he’d had to stuff himself into a shitty Bug rather than the spacious backseat of a luxury SUV. There had been something peaceful about it being just him, a ridiculous car, and the open road sprawled out before him. Maybe he liked the idea of all the possibilities that lay on a stretch of highway. Maybe he enjoyed the small section of time where he didn’t have to play any games or wear any faces; he could just be a man on the road. Maybe he was glazing a past experience in nostalgia to avoid dwelling on his current situation.
That last one seemed mostly, albeit not entirely, right.
Technically speaking, he had no idea what was waiting for him in Vegas. Eliza had been tight-lipped aside from her one bit of advice, and there were just too many possibilities to know anything for certain. All Nick was sure of was that it would be troublesome, and that had a fifty-fifty shot of being interesting.
Still, no matter how he tried, Nick couldn’t shake the feeling in his stomach. The sensation was like the inverse of what had been waiting for him when he finally found Abridail’s body. It was dark, unwanted, and heavy. Worse, the closer they got to Vegas, the stronger the feeling grew. Whether it was a new aspect of his ability or simply intuition his conscious mind refused to acknowledge, it was persistent.
Nick kept staring out the window as Jerome threw the car into drive and put them back on the long stretch of highway leading to the bright, twinkling lights of a place Nick had once considered home. Whatever challenge or problem was awaiting him there, Nick would face it head-on. That’s who he was, that’s how he’d been trained to deal with things.
But until they arrived, all he could do was count the road signs going by and think.
* * *
The cold struck him by surprise, although it shouldn’t have. Mr. Transport had insisted Vince don a heavy jacket before they teleported, and now that they were staring out at a snow-swept landscape, Vince understood why. For a moment, his heart leapt into his throat as a memory from freshman year came bursting forth. They wouldn’t dump him at the same mountain, this time alone, would they?
Then Vince noticed the stone building farther up the battered and half-frozen path upon which they’d landed. Looking past it, seeing the peaks of other mountains nearby, he realized that this certainly wasn’t the same place, and even if it had been, at least they weren’t at the bottom. Moving forward, Vince trudged along, Mr. Transport crunching through the snow next to him.
“Dean Blaine is going to join us soon to walk you through everything; he just had a meeting come up at the last minute,” Mr. Transport explained. Originally, the dean of Lander’s HCP was going to accompany them on the journey, but his job came with more than a few unpredictable elements. “Until then, we’re just supposed to get you settled.”
“Where are we?” Vince asked, scanning the white lands around them. “It looks like the mountain training scenes from the old Kung Fu movies Hershel sometimes puts on. Are we in Tibet or something?”
Mr. Transport’s chuckle came out as fog, lingering near his mouth before slowly dissipating. “We’re in Colorado, Vince. This is still Hero-related, so the HCP couldn’t very well set up a training facility in a foreign country.”
“Oh. It’s just… Dean Blaine called it Lander’s East Campus, so I sort of assumed…”
“Lander is in California. Almost everything is east from there,” Mr. Transport pointed out.
Together, the pair made their way up the path, finally arriving at the building’s thick stone door. Despite the rustic appearance, both men noted the security cameras that were watching as they approached. Vince had reached out to try and shove the door open when a heavy thud came from the other side. Slowly, the door opened, revealing a man Vince’s age wearing simple gray gym clothes. For a moment, Vince couldn’t place him. The hair, short and brown, made it tougher, as did the fact that he wasn’t wearing a half-mad expression and cursing Vince for even existing. But after a few seconds, it clicked, and Vince took a step back even as he let out a single word that was part gasp and part accusation.
“Michael?”
* * *
“I’m supposed to be with Vince at this very moment, explaining what the weeks to come will be like,” Dean Blaine said. He wasn’t quite glaring across the table, situated deep in their hidden bunker, but he made no effort to appear anything other than displeased about being called in to a sudden meeting. “The fact that you wanted to talk here is the only reason I granted the request. I’m assuming this is something Globe-related and time sensitive?”
“It is, and it isn’t,” Mary replied. Her eyes darted to the other two people in the room—Mr. Numbers and Professor Stone. The latter gave Mary a gentle smile and a soft nod. It was comforting, but it didn’t make the task before her any less onerous. “This is the meeting I requested at the beginning of the year. Originally, I wanted it to be after Winter Break, and I figured that setting it up for when we returned would be fine. However, the situation has changed since then, and I think it’s important to get this all squared away.”
Dean Blaine tapped his index finger on the desk methodically. “If my original complaint didn’t make it clear, time is a factor here. Let’s skip the preamble and jump right to the heart of the matter. What is it you need from me?”
“Well… I needed to let you know that I don’t intend to graduate from the Hero Certification Program,” Mary told him. His eyebrows rose a few inches, but otherwise he remained unmoved. It made sense; in his time as dean he’d probably seen dozens of students realize that this wasn’t the job for them. Hell, she wasn’t even the first one to tell him that this year.
“I am saddened to hear that, although I’d considered it a possibility,” Dean Blaine said. “You lack the temperament for the job, and since May I’ve seen your taste for battle
diminish significantly. That seemed the likeliest reason for the meeting request; however, I, and no doubt Professor Stone, hoped that with time and training you would change your mind. None of which accounts for why you felt the need to call a sudden meeting in an off-site location. We could have just as easily handled this at Lander.”
Mary swallowed; this was the tough part. She’d have traded nearly anything to read Dean Blaine’s mind, but for once she was flying blind. It gave her a new respect for Alice and Nick, doing stuff like this all the time without the aid of telepathy. “My quitting could have been handled at Lander, yes. But not this next part.”
“Oh?” Dean Blaine asked. “And what is that?”
Now or never, and never wasn’t really an option. “I just assumed discussion of breaking HCP protocol was best handled in private. Because I’m going to keep my memories of Lander, Dean Blaine. All of them.”
144.
“Mary, let me put your mind at ease.” Dean Blaine’s voice was gentler than before. Now that he felt like he understood the situation, he was shifting gears from stern authority figure to reassuring teacher. “What happened to Nick Campbell was the case only for those who are expelled. Students who drop out or fail to advance in the HCP don’t lose everything. They keep their memories of some training, learning, etc. All Professor Stone fogs over are the pertinent details that could be dangerous for a non-Hero to have. Names and faces of fellow students, lift locations, things like that. And you can even retain details about your friends if they’re willing to trust you, a condition of your leaving the program I have no doubt they will insist upon. I understand the fear of losing memories, but for situations like this it really isn’t all that bad.”
