by Lori Bond
That got my attention. I even pulled the blanket off my face. “He said that? Healthy constitutional?” What was this? The eighteenth century?
Percival sniffed. I hadn’t realized he could do that. “Master Will may have called it an early morning run around the outer terrace.”
“Yeah, not happening.” I rolled over and pulled the blanket back over my head. “Tell him to go away.”
Percival must have relayed my message because the banging stopped. I snuggled deeper into my blankets. I enjoyed the peace for about six seconds.
The lights in my room started flashing on and off with the kind of strobe effect that can give people seizures. “Morning, sunshine,” Will’s chipper voice boomed from over the loudspeakers in my room. “Time to get the blood pumping. We’re going for a run around the terrace. No jumping off it though.”
I didn’t appreciate the joke. “You traitor, Percival!” I yelled. “You’re supposed to be on my side letting me sleep.” I tried cramming my pillow over my head, but Will had Percival add klaxon alarms. “You win,” I screamed at them both. I threw my pillow at the door, but my room was so big, it landed in the middle of the floor. “I’m up.”
The lights went back to a normal illumination, and the alarms stopped.
“Can I come in?” Will asked.
I wore a sports bra and leggings. The answer was an emphatic no. “Give me a second,” I said. I pulled on a T-shirt while trying to brush my teeth at the same time. I couldn’t do anything about the pink crease running down the side of my face from having slept at a weird angle on my pillow. At least, I could scrub the line of dried drool off my other cheek. My hair was a loss, so it got thrown in a ponytail while I sprinted back across the room to my door. I threw it open.
Will leaned against the opposite wall. He looked amazing in a close-fitting tank top that showed every defined muscle on his chest. I kind of felt the need to drool again. Instead, part of me was shriveling up and dying from mortification that Will was seeing me all rumpled and half asleep. Had I remembered to check for eye boogers? I reached up and rubbed both my eyes like Arthur did every time he was stressed.
I flushed when I realized Will was checking me out from head to toe. I’d just seen myself in the mirror. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
“You forgot your shoes,” he said. “You don’t want to run four miles barefoot.”
My flush deepened to a throbbing red when I realized he’d only been looking to see if I’d dressed for training.
I turned and headed back to my closet. Will followed me into my room.
“Four miles? This is inhumane,” I muttered.
“It’s time to train. Didn’t you get the new schedule Arthur and Ginny sent an hour ago?”
“Don’t you people sleep?”
Will shrugged. “At the Conservatory, we got up at four. You got to sleep in an extra hour.”
“It’s five in the morning?” Will didn’t see my look of horror since I was rummaging through the boxes of brand-new shoes stocked in my closet, hoping there would be something I could use for running. I pulled out a gorgeous pair of designer heels only to put them away again. Not appropriate training wear.
“I get you for three hours every morning for self-defense.”
Awesome. I would get to look this good for Will every day. “Yay?” I managed.
At last I found a pair of running shoes at the back of my closet. When I first got here and Ginny had asked me what kind of clothes I wanted, it hadn’t even occurred to me I would need stuff like running shoes. I only had the leggings and sports bra because I liked to sleep in them. I said as much to Will.
“You don’t use them for working out?” he asked while I pulled on a pair of socks and the shoes.
“I hate working out. All that sweating. Even dance team is more than I’d do if I didn’t have to have some kind of PE credit.”
“Wow.” Will nodded his head up and down in wonder. He gestured to the door, and I followed him out. “That’s a new level of lazy. You’re gonna looooooove self-defense.”
I slammed the door behind me.
He was right though. I hated self-defense. I hated how I didn’t seem to possess a coordinated bone in my body. The little skill I had when dancing didn’t transfer over into hand to hand combat. I hated that no matter what I did, I ended up flat on my back with Will on top of me—and not in a hot look-deep-in-each-other’s-eyes kind of way. More like a knee-in-my-stomach or an arm-in-my-solar-plexus kind of way.
The worst part though was Will’s distance. Whatever moment we’d shared last night in his room had disappeared. Will was all business. Agent Redding had returned with a vengeance.
I tried everything I could think of to bring the real Will back. I asked him about being in LANCE. I tried talking about the Conservatory he’d attended. I even told him stupid anecdotes from my life from back when superheroes and secret agents were just things you saw in headlines and movies.
In return I got one-word answers and another demonstration on the proper technique to break a choke hold.
The torture finally ended with a curt nod from Will. I dragged my sore body away from the full-floor home gym we’d been using. My first time out of the Keep’s general living quarters, and it was to get my rear-end kicked in a gym. Super awesome.
Breakfast was a new form of torture. Will had been as gentle as possible, but I still had some impressive bruises. Sitting on my chair to shovel cereal in my mouth hurt. Will wasn’t looking at me, so he missed the death glares I kept sending in his direction.
Ginny watched the two of us for a moment. “Training went well, I take it.”
Will made some incoherent murmur, still not looking at me.
“I have sore muscles in places I didn’t know had muscles,” I griped.
Ginny grinned. “I haven’t found you a school I like yet, so this afternoon, you’ll code with me instead of more traditional academic subjects.”
That perked me up. I could do coding sitting down. In a chair. With no one throwing me to the ground.
“Can we start now?” I asked her.
“Not yet, Princess.” Arthur strolled into the room and grabbed an apple off the back wall’s buffet. “You’re mine until lunch.” He flashed me a mischievous grin.
I groaned and dropped my head onto the table. “Why am I sure this will be even worse than training with Will?”
It was, and it wasn’t. Arthur didn’t share Will’s reticence, so he talked non-stop from the moment we left the small breakfast room until the elevator reached the armory. This was another room that took up a whole floor, but instead of workout equipment and mats, robotic knights filled the space.
Like every other floor, the armory was a perfect circle. Niches lined the entire outer wall with robots standing in them like silent sentries. In the center of the room was another circle of niches filled with knights. We walked into the wide hallway formed by the two.
“Meet my Knights of the Round Table or at least my round tower,” Arthur said with a small snort, amused by his joke. “I think you’ve met Gawain and his brothers Agravaine, Gaheris, and Gareth.” He waved at various knights as we passed. They still all looked the same but engraved nameplates mounted above each niche named the knights inside.
At first I had thought every niche was full, but we passed empty ones as we made our way to a door set in the wall of inner niches. When I asked Arthur about it, he pulled up one of his mid-air screens. Even here in the armory the things were ubiquitous. The screen followed Arthur as we kept walking. “Yep,” he said, confirming a thought he’d had. “Most are patrolling around Keep Tower, but a couple are escorting our guests.”
Arthur, though, wouldn’t tell me who the guests were. No amount of pestering would get him to ruin the surprise. By the time we reached the door, he was rubbing at his eyes as if my persistent questions and begging were giving him a migraine, so I stopped. Besides, he’d promised that the guests were on track, and I’d find out soon enough.
I forgot all about mysterious guests when we stepped into the inner room. I had thought the outer armory of knights was impressive, but this room took my breath away. Literally. I realized when I became light-headed that I’d been holding my breath as if the magnificence of the room had made my body forget how to breathe.
This room was a throne room, despite not having chairs. On one wall were six niches, only these were more ornate than the ones in the outer corridor. Those had been impressive feats of technology able to run diagnostics or charge the knights. But, compared to the niches in this room, those had been like the basic charging cable that came with every Keep smart phone.
These niches were works of art. It looked as if a medieval monk had hand illuminated each one. There were hand painted dragons around the niche holding Pendragon. Like outside, this niche had an engraved plate above with Pendragon’s name. This plate though looked as if Arthur had made it out of solid gold.
Three of the niches were empty with no nameplates as if they weren’t in use, but two knights flanked Pendragon. Both were smaller than Pendragon or the knights in the other room, but I was relieved to see that at least they were the same shape as all the other knights. No weird breastplates.
The knight Arthur had shown me the day before sat in a niche marked Morgause. The weird, pointy boobs were gone. Arthur tapped on a screen on the wall of the niche and a complete schematic with readouts appeared.
“Dame Morgause looks in good shape,” he said. “Percival, let’s get Elaine suited up and start her training.”
Both Pendragon and my armor stepped out of their niches. Arthur handed me a headset. It looked like the ones telemarketers wore with a headband holding a single ear bud attached to a small arm with a microphone that sat on my cheek close to my mouth. The thing was form fitting and comfortable, and within seconds, I forgot it was there.
“Ready?” Arthur asked after checking his own headset.
I didn’t answer. Instead, I pointed at the other knight still in its niche. It was golden like Pendragon’s old armor. In fact it kind of looked like the match of the armor he used to wear, complete with a small crown. The plate above the niche said “Leodegrance,” but that didn’t tell me anything. “Whose armor is that?”
Arthur made a grumbling sound through his headset. It wasn’t a sound he meant for me to hear, but the microphones in our headsets were that sensitive. Good to know.
“That is Ginny’s armor,” he said. “Not that I’ve ever gotten her to so much as try it on.” He glared at the armor before turning his back to it in a supreme gesture of disinterest. Even I could take the hint he didn’t want to talk about it.
“Ready?” he asked again.
“I guess.” I sighed. Might as well get this over with.
My armor fell into a jillion pieces before reassembling around me.
“Initializing,” said Percival.
The screens lit up around my head, and I bent and flexed my arms, legs, and finger joints. Percival had taught me the basic voice commands to control a knight yesterday. Arthur now took me through more complicated physical instructions. Sensors throughout the inside of the armor monitored my every muscle. If I wanted to walk, I moved as if I wanted to walk. Percival and the armor did the rest.
However, there were physical commands that controlled less obvious motions. Wiggling my pinky fingers activated the lasers embedded in the armor just above my wrists. Various toe motions controlled flight. Arthur had me practice each movement even though we weren’t flying around the throne room.
Within minutes, I had no trouble running, jumping, or even doing a high-kick in my armor. Remembering the other commands would take time, but Arthur called it “building unnatural reflexes.” Controlling my borrowed knight yesterday hadn’t been burdensome, but armor that fit had many advantages. It didn’t feel like I was wearing the armor, more like I had gained a thicker skin.
When I’d convinced Arthur I could walk across the throne room without tripping or launching myself into flight on accident, he opened the room above us.
A small circular door, wide enough for three knights to fly side by side, opened in the ceiling. I waited but no ladder or staircase appeared.
Arthur ignited the rockets on his back, and he shot through the hole.
“Oh, of course. Flight. Duh.” We’d just been practicing flight controls.
I’d been talking to myself, but Percival answered. “Boosters engaged,” he said. Faster than I would have thought possible I shot straight up through the hole in the ceiling.
I was in a massive training room. Like the armory and the Keeps home gym, it took up the whole floor’s footprint. Unlike those other spaces, it was four stories tall. This was a good thing because all of Arthur’s careful training flew out of my head the same time my boosters engaged. The roof of the building approached faster than I would like. Any minute I would splat flatter than a bug on a windshield, and I didn’t remember how to stop.
“Stop!” I shrieked at Percival and my suit. “Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop!” The words blurred together. Percival must have been able to figure out what I meant because I halted mid-air about six feet from the top of the room. Arthur flew up to where I hovered, staring at the ceiling.
“Not elegant, but effective,” Arthur said. Pendragon’s face didn’t show emotions, but I could tell Arthur was grinning. Even over the comms his suppressed laughter filled his voice. “In a pinch you can always just yell commands at Percival, and he’ll respond. It’s faster though to do things the right way. In a fight you might not have time to think up the words, much less say them. Percival can respond faster if he reads your muscle movements rather than listens for commands. Let’s go through all the flight motions again, shall we?”
The rest of training didn’t go much better. I soon got to where I remembered most of the commands, but then Arthur decided I was ready to start combat training. If I had thought self-defense with Will was hard, doing the same maneuvers mid-air was impossible. I also had to worry about things not just coming at me from the front, back, and sides, but also from above and below. It was enough to make a girl cry. Which I did—although I swore Percival to secrecy. I didn’t need Arthur feeling sorry for me. All of this might be miserable, but it was necessary. I had to learn to defend myself, to keep from being another potential victim again. So even though I cried again from frustration when another knight tossed me into the wall for the eighth time, I kept at it. The next time the Dreki came for me, I would toss them out the door, not hide behind a desk.
By the time we put our armor back in their niches and headed down for lunch, my bruises had bruises. I knew that if I hadn’t been wearing the armor, I’d be suffering from broken bones or worse. It didn’t help that Arthur informed me in a cheerful voice that he’d set all the knights to “crowd-control,” the least lethal setting. He assured me we’d be working at their most lethal by the end of the month.
“I can’t wait to see you dodging bomblets,” he continued as he led me back into the breakfast room where we’d eat lunch. “You’ve got some real grace out there. It must be all that dance you’ve done.”
At no point today had I done anything graceful. I’d spent the entire day being tossed around. I assumed parental love was blinding Arthur to my many, many training failures.
“Our guests have arrived,” Ginny said. She sat at the table, her ever-present notebooks and tablets spread around her plate. Will also sat, shoveling food in his mouth like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. Unlike me, he’d gotten to shower, and he’d changed into one of his LANCE gray suits. I settled in for another uncomfortable meal with Agent Redding.
“Are they coming in for lunch?” asked Arthur. He gave Ginny a kiss on the cheek before dropping into his chair. Arthur couldn’t seem to sit still though. He kept turning to stare at the doorway, wiggling in his seat like a toddler promised ice cream.
I missed Ginny’s answer. I hovered behind my chair, unsure if my aching body could handle sitting d
own. Besides, I was pretty sure I’d guessed who these exciting mystery guests were. There were only two people I wanted to see right now. Considering how excited Arthur was and how pleased Ginny looked, I figured they’d managed to get them for me.
Some device beeped on Arthur’s wrist. “At last,” he said. He got up to welcome his guests. I got ready to throw myself in my parents’ arms.
Our guests entered the room, but instead of running, I froze. It wasn’t them.
My parents hadn’t come.
12
WHERE I DRAW SOME UNWELCOME CONCLUSIONS
I TRIED TO APPEAR PLEASED TO SEE OUR GUESTS, BUT BASED ON THE look Will gave me, I failed. He was the only one looking at me. Arthur and Ginny had both gone to greet the visitors.
“Cassie, Patrick,” Ginny said. “Welcome. We’re so glad you could come.” She kissed both guests on both cheeks.
Cassie smiled and glanced over at me. I tried to smile back. Normally, I would have been beyond excited to have Patrick Jennings in the room. I’d seen every one of his movies and almost every episode of Danger Road. Never mind he was also the Defender and Cassie was a famous clairvoyant I’d met yesterday. I couldn’t gather up the enthusiasm though. As soon as I could leave without being glaringly rude, I fled to my room. I didn’t even bother to eat lunch even though getting pummeled in my armor had worked up an appetite.
Will tried to follow me, but to my relief, Ginny called him back. Patrick and Arthur were deep in some discussion about training exercises. Cassie watched me go, but she said nothing. She continued to eat enchiladas instead.
When I got to my room, I grabbed the prototype phone Arthur had given me yesterday. Other than grabbing it off the breakfast room table after dinner last night, I’d forgotten it. Between my new armor, the vision, and throwing myself off the terrace, a new phone hadn’t been at the front of my mind. But now I stared at the special phone app. I scrolled through my email and texts, but there weren’t any new messages from my folks. They had dropped off the face of the planet.
