by Dawn Jansen
MacCready can tell I’m getting angry, but it only emboldens him more.
“Don’t get any stupid ideas, one-armed wonder,” he says, standing up to challenge me. “I could’ve taken you before your stupid girlfriend died. Now I could fuck you up with my eyes closed.”
I now realize the whole class is quiet. Everybody’s eyes are glued to us. I know what I would have done before; I would have tackled him through the wall faster than he could even think. But now... Now I feel like he’s right. It hurts to admit it, but I know I don’t have the strength to stand up to him anymore. I feel gutless and called out.
“Boys...” Mr. Heaton says, which by itself is enough to make all the other students get back to work. Even MacCready wouldn’t want to piss off Mr. Heaton.
“You’re lucky, cripple,” MacCready says in a low voice so that only I can hear. “Come on, babe,” he says to Melody, putting his arm around her waist as they move to another table.
Mazzy and I are left alone now. I’m still looking down; I don’t want her to see the glimmer of tears in my eyes.
“He shouldn’t have said that,” Mazzy says to me. I can hear the sincere concern in her voice, but I don’t want her pity. As far as I’m concerned, this is what I deserve, and everything MacCready said wasn’t much different from how I feel about myself anyway.
“Why didn’t you punch him or something?” she asks me. “You said you have super strength...”
I finally look up to meet her eyes, and when I do, I see something in them that surprises me. They’re so clear and penetrating, but more than that there seems to be a real level of empathy in them, and behind that empathy—supporting it—is strength.
For a moment, as I stare transfixed by Mazzy’s gaze, I feel my power stirring within me, awakened by the strength in Mazzy’s eyes. Though it’s only a trace, it reminds me of what I was like before the Test.
“Do I have something on my face?” Mazzy asks quizzically, and only then do I realize I must have been staring at her for too long.
“No,” I say, snapping out of my trance. To my amazement, I find a smile forming unconsciously on my lips again—that’s three times today, and all because of this girl.
“You look cuter when you smile,” Mazzy says, and then she quickly looks down at her textbook, her blond hair falling over one eye.
That gesture reminds me of Starla—she would make a similar expression when she complimented me. This realization causes a pang of regret to rip through my heart, and I am reminded of why I can’t let myself get close to Mazzy. The more time I spend with her, the more I see that she has a bright future ahead of her—she’s clever, brave, and obviously has great power, even if she doesn’t know how to fully tap into it yet—and that’s exactly why I can’t endanger her with my cowardice and self-doubt.
“They’re probably gonna have us do simulations on this stuff next week,” I tell her. “We better take it seriously. Don’t want you freaking out on your first simulation.”
“Right,” she says with a serious look.
I never was the best at this textbook crap—usually I just relied on brute force to punch my way out of any situation—but I am Mazzy’s tutor after all, so I have to give it my best effort. Even if the Academy has ulterior motives forcing the two of us together, I can’t just leave her out to dry. There’s a lot she has to learn, so we dig into the textbook and begin her first lesson on what she can expect during a mission.
Chapter 7
Mazzy
It’s officially been one week since I first got to the Empowered Academy. During these past seven days, I’ve gotten my ass kicked in hand-to-hand sparring, learned how to defend against psychic intrusions (take that, Frankie), and turned my power into something I can now call upon at will.
Now I’m sitting outside the Architect’s office, waiting to be called in for my bi-monthly evaluation.
I’ve heard quite a lot about the Architect from the other students, as she’s basically the one that runs this whole loony bin. Her power is entirely cerebral; it gives her super-enhanced intuition. That might not sound like much, but apparently it’s so extreme that she can basically figure out exactly how something works just by looking at it. She’s the one who engineered all the test chambers, which are more advanced than anything I’ve ever seen before, as well as the freaky robots that get used in the simulations. I guess that’s what happens when you combine a mad scientist with an essentially unlimited budget.
I’ve changed more in this past week than I have all year. The things I see every day at the Academy would have blown my mind before, but now they seem almost commonplace. Even my personality has started to change. I’m beginning to understand just how important my emotions are as a power source. All throughout my life I’ve had to keep my emotions in check so that I could stay levelheaded and survive, but now I’m learning how to let my feelings take over.
The one thing I didn’t realize when I first got here was how basically everyone is hooking up with one another. The Academy officially encourages inter-student relations as a surefire way of activating students’ powers, and as a result everybody is very open about who they sleep with (that explains the lingerie in my dorm, by the way—never thought I’d see a standard issue thong). While a few people are able to maintain monogamous relationships, what most commonly happens because of the disparity between male and female students is that several male students will all be hooking up with the same girl. And no, I haven’t pried deep enough to figure out if they all do it together or take turns, but I’m sure I’ll find out.
Even though this is the status quo, I’ve been very hesitant to get involved with any of the guys I’ve met yet. Once I turned sixteen and started living on my own, I jumped straight into a relationship way too enthusiastically as a way to make up for my fear of being alone. As one might imagine, that didn’t end very well, and led to a series of other failed relationships filled with drama and heartbreak that kind of put me off dating completely. Shortly before I was arrested and taken to the Academy, I actually just started to figure out that what I really need to do is spend more time learning to be okay with myself, and that’s a big part of why I’m so cautious about hooking up with anybody at the Academy.
Tristan is the most persistent of my suitors, and I hate how he can tell how physically attracted I am to him. It’s like he has this sixth sense. But I’ve dated guys like him in the past—more good-looking than they are well-intentioned—and I know they’re nothing but trouble. Besides, I can be a pretty jealous lover, and I don’t know if Tristan has it in him to swear off other women just for me. Still, I’d be lying if I said that part of me didn’t like his stubborn attempts to woo me.
The other guy I spend the most time with is Paul, who I actually have a thing for. As luck would have it, though, Paul doesn’t seem at all interested in me, and I can understand why. He used to be the star of the school, and he and his girlfriend were the perfect match, or so I’ve heard. I doubt somebody with my fucked-up background could compare to her. Still, although Paul can be cold, I do appreciate that he helps tutor me, even if it seems just out of pity sometimes.
Aside from those two, there are a few other guys who’ve made it obvious they’re interested in a “mutual power exchange,” but another one of my lovely personality traits is that I’m extremely picky, and none of those guys tick the right boxes for me. What worries me though is I’m not sure how much longer I can hold out. Being around other EMPs has awakened something in me; I think it’s the power that’s lain dormant inside me for so long, and now that it’s gotten a taste of freedom, it wants more. It wants to unleash its full strength, and it’s calling me to the other students, to connect with them and feed off their power. Some days I wake up with my panties soaked—a result of the wildly sexual dreams I’ve been having lately—and every time Tristan gets too close to me and I feel the warmth radiating from his body, I have to fight back the intense craving to rip off his clothes and mount him. It doesn’t help
that Crash keeps emphasizing to me the incredible amount of power a romantic partnership can generate too.
So while I can’t promise I won’t give in to these temptations eventually and provide what the power inside me craves, I’m at least trying to make sure I don’t get involved with the wrong guy (guys?).
Speaking of my admirers, presently I hear the ornately carved doors to the Architect’s office click open and out walks Rush. He’s a total jock whose density and strength increase as he runs, so I guess you could describe his power as being able to ram into shit really well. He was an all-star running back on his high school football team and got sent to the Academy after being investigated for pulverizing some poor lineman who got in his way on the field.
“I knew you’ve been stalking me,” he says to me with a wink as he closes the door behind him.
“In your dreams,” I say. “How was it in there?”
“You’re in luck, new girl,” Rush says, taking a seat on the bench next to me. “She’s in a good mood today. You’ll be alright.”
Crash and Overcharge told me what the evaluations were like, but I’ve still been pretty nervous.
“We’re fixing to get trashed this weekend,” Rush whispers, leaning closer to me. “Out by the lake. You should come.”
“I thought we weren’t allowed to have alcohol here?”
“That ain’t never stopped us,” he says with a grin. “Ten o’clock on Saturday. Skinny-dipping. Cards. You’ll have a great time.”
He gets up and swaggers toward the exit. Like most of the students here, Rush is certainly good-looking, but he’s totally not my type. He’s handsome and confident, but it’s the kind of confidence that comes from being too thick to read negative social feedback. Still, having a few drinks by the lake sounds like it might be fun. I’ve been pretty stressed out since I got here, so it would be nice to unwind a bit.
Speaking of being stressed out, it’s probably not smart to keep the Architect waiting.
━━━━━ ▣ ━━━━━
When I step into her office, I quickly notice that it’s much different than I’ve been expecting. Everybody describes the Architect as cold, calculating, pragmatic—but her office doesn’t reflect that at all. It’s fairly large for a private office, and she’s taken advantage of the extra space by filling it with paintings, sculptures, taxidermy displays, and plants. As I make my way to her desk, which is placed in front of tall French casement windows where the afternoon light angles in, I stare in awe at the things she has on display. There are some very exotic animal specimens, like a pangolin and an arctic fox, as well as framed butterflies, a terrarium in one corner, and a weird device that looks like an astrolabe. Aside from the spinning art deco fan overhead, the only other sound is that of the Architect scribbling away into a notebook. Her desk is a mess, covered with papers, folders, floppy disks, and an ashtray heaped with short cigarette buds next to her clunky Macintosh computer.
There are two seats in front of her desk for visitors, but I dare not sit down uninvited. As I get closer, I clear my throat to announce myself.
“Sit,” she commands without looking up or slowing down the pace of her writing.
I sit down and, after what seems like a few minutes, she finally finishes what she was writing. I notice she’s still wearing her big sunglasses, only now the angle of the light from behind her lets me see that they’re not normal sunglasses at all; there seems to be some kind of digital display on the lenses that I can just barely make out. They’re unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, and while I can’t make sense of whatever data is scrolling down the side of the lenses, I don’t doubt these glasses are something the Architect herself invented.
“Ms. Martins,” she says, closing her notebook and putting it to the side. Rush was right—this is only my second time meeting her, but she seems to be in a better mood than she was last time. “How are you finding the Academy so far?”
“It’s cool,” I say, not knowing what she expects to hear. Even though the Architect is way weirder than any of the CPS workers I had to deal with all the time growing up, the power dynamic between us puts me right back in that same mindset; the taciturn attitude that helped me survive.
“‘Cool’,” she repeats, lighting a cigarette. The smoke is highlighted by an afternoon sunbeam as it drifts upward. “Your teachers have nothing but positive things to say about you. Ms. Fischer notes...”—the Architect fumbles around on her desk for a piece of paper, which she then reads from—“‘Ms. Martins displays a high level of control for a Class B empowered.’ How about combat training? Our records show you have experience with Taekwondo.”
“Yeah, but I’ve never trained as seriously as we do here. I feel like every muscle in my body is sore.”
“You’ll adapt. The combat training is essential. When you’re out in the field, it can be the thing that allows you to make full use of your power. Speaking of, perhaps you’d like to know what we’ve found out about your powers so far?”
“Yes, of course,” I reply, wondering at the same time just how exactly they’ve been collecting this information. It’s not like they’ve had me do any tests or anything since I got here.
“It’s not psychic, which we thought might have been the case at first. You don’t feel it in your mind, do you? When you use your power?”
“No, I feel it—”
“In your core,” she finishes my sentence for me. “That’s because you’re not moving things with your mind. You’re distorting the gravitational field around objects by manipulating your own relationship to them. There are a few other EMPs whose powers work the same way,” the Architect says, and then opens up another folder on her desk. “As you train, you should be able to manipulate larger objects, but I doubt you’ll ever be able to exert your power on people directly, due to bio-electromagnetic disturbances.”
I don’t fully understand the nuance of what she’s saying, but I think I get the general gist, so I nod, hoping she’s not going to test me on this crap later.
“There is one thing that bothers me, however,” she adds, turning to another page in the folder she just opened. “According to your pineal activity tests, you should have access to much greater stores of power than you’ve displayed so far...”
“I’ve only been here a week though,” I say somewhat meekly.
“It doesn’t matter,” the Architect says bluntly. “Your powers have already activated, which should be enough to let us measure your full energetic potential, but we can’t... Tell me, Ms. Martins, what do you feel when you use your power?”
I’ve been training with my newfound power a lot this past week, so I’m much more familiar with how it feels now. “It’s like there’s a current of energy alive within me, and it’s calling to me, wanting me to use it. When I concentrate, I can reach into that well of energy and—”
“No,” she says, cutting me off. “What do you feel? Emotionally.”
I think for a long while before deciding to tell her the truth. “Fear,” I say.
“Of what?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “It reminds me of before; before I knew what my powers were. They’d only come out when something terrible was happening to me, so maybe it brings me back to those times.”
“But that’s not all, is it? It’s something deeper.”
It’s true, and she knows it is, but I don’t know what to say. There’s something greater; a sense of dread far more primal than what my teenage memories could invoke. Every time I use my powers, I can sense it there lurking beneath the surface, threatening to consume me, and I can tell that’s what is keeping me blocked off from my full power.
“I believe it has to do with your past, before you were eight,” the Architect says. “I want you to meet with Mr. Ward next Monday after class. He’s the strongest psychic we have, and if there’s anything left in your brain from before the amnesia, he’ll be able to dig it out. That should do a lot to help you unleash your full power.
>
“In the meantime,” she continues, putting her cigarette out in the ashtray, “you need to stop avoiding the other students. Are you a lesbian, Ms. Martins?”
That came out of left field. “W—No, I’m straight,” I stammer out, not expecting her to ask so bluntly.
“Then you should have no excuse. Female EMPs are scarce, but there are plenty of males here for you to choose a suitable sexual partner. We can’t force you, but it’s unlikely you’ll be able to pass the Test without the boost in power you will gain from a romantic bond. As I’m sure you’ve heard from the others by now, those who fail the Test have a tendency to get themselves killed while doing so, and that’s how the Test was designed. We can’t send incompetent EMPs out into the field.”
This is definitely the first time I’ve been reprimanded for not banging more guys, so I’m not sure what to say. “I’ll... try my best?”
“Good,” the Architect says, her big leather chair creaking as she leans back into it. “Now, anything else?”
“Is there any way I can get my bike back before the Test?”
The Architect pauses for a brief moment before giving me a curt smile—the first time I’ve seen her change her expression since we met.
“Please close the door on your way out, Ms. Martins.”
Well, it was worth a shot.
Chapter 8
Tristan
After bumping into Mazzy in the hallway, I have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming.
I’ve been hitting on her all week in vain, and now she suddenly asks me to go to the lake with her tonight? All I can say is that persistence pays off.
This past week I’ve pretty much given up any attempts to get with any other girls as thoughts of Mazzy have completely consumed my mind. I’m pretty sure I know what it is; nobody has ever played hard to get with me as much as Mazzy has, and it’s driving me nuts.
