The Academy (61 page)

Mitsuru stepped to the side almost casually, her wounded leg dragging behind her. She tucked and rolled, then came up firing, emptying her pistol into the side of the Weir as it passed. In some places, the bullets impacted normally, but in other places, the flesh seemed to shatter on impact, leaving behind great cavities that sparkled with pinkish-red ice crystals.

The Weir dropped to its knees, clutching at its wounded side and moaning, its other arm still clutching at its chest.

“Trickery,” it hissed at the advancing Mitsuru, even the slobber at the edges of its jowls frozen and sparkling, “this fight was mine, whore.”

“Was,” Mitsuru said lightly, limping toward the Weir, “maybe. Sure isn’t now.”

The Weir fell forward, catching itself with one paw, and coughing slushy, partially frozen blood onto the ground in front of it. It blinked and tried to look up at Mitsuru as she stood over it, its eyes blinded by a rime of frost that stretched across the tissue, one of the eyelids sticking to the surface of the retina. It hissed something, perhaps it tried to speak, but all it managed to do was expel more of the thick reddish slush from inside its mouth. Mitsuru stood above the Weir, its silver pelt now thoroughly covered with a thick coating of frost.

Anastasia watched as Mitsuru brought down the knife, Alex already fast asleep on the lap of her ruined dress.

Alex woke with a start,
not sure where he was, not sure how long he’d been asleep, but seized with a formless anxiety, a sense that he’d missed something important. He reached to wipe the sleep from his eyes, and heard the rattle of the IV stand and felt the tug of the tape and tubes that were strapped to his arm.

Even in the dim confines of what he now recognized as a hospital room, Alex could barely keep his eyes open, the light spilling underneath the door seemed impossibly bright. Alex tried to sit up, and managed it after a certain amount of coaxing and waiting out his cramped muscles. His back was impossibly stiff and sore and his whole body ached, and he was alarmingly thinner than he remembered being.

How long had it been, then?

His hand brushed against his face in the darkness, and he was surprised to find that he had the better part of a beard. For a moment, Alex panicked completely, not sure what was happening, not sure whether he was awake or not. He leaned forward in the bed, and the movement inadvertently tore the tape stretched across his forearm, ripping the hair from his arm and bringing tears to his eyes. He winced and rubbed it, now thoroughly convinced that he was, in fact, awake.

And as his eyes adjusted, he realized he was not alone. He could hear gentle, rhythmic breathing from somewhere near the bed, from a jumble of shapes and objects it took him a few minutes to identify.

Eerie had pushed two chairs together next to his bed and was sleeping there, her legs curled in a ball in her heavy black tights, her sneakers tucked neatly underneath the chair, next to a basket that contained her knitting supplies. She’d looked as if she’d been there for a while.

Alex tried to speak, and managed only a croak, his throat cracked and terribly painful. He looked around him for one of those call buttons he’d seen on TV shows, but he couldn’t find anything of the kind. He’d half-resolved himself to try standing up and make his way out to the hallway, maybe finding a nurse or something, when there was a soft knock on the door.

“Alex?” He heard Rebecca’s voice from the other side of the door. “Close your eyes, okay? I’m going to come in…”

Alex obediently screwed his eyes shut. The room lit up, and it was brilliant even behind his eyelids. It took some time before he managed to open first one eye and then the other, Rebecca standing over the bed and beaming down at him, surrounded by blazing white light like the portrait of a saint, looking a bit teary eyed.

“Oh, you stupid fucking idiot,” she said sweetly, putting one hand on his forehead, “I knew you’d wake up, hon. I knew you would.”

Alex attempted to smile back at her, tried to form words. She put a finger to his lips.

“Don’t try and talk yet,” she said, heading toward the sink, “I’ll get you some water. I’m reading your thoughts, so don’t worry about trying to talk to me, just think clearly and slowly.”

She brought Alex back a glass of water, which he managed to take from her with a certain amount of difficulty, holding the plastic cup in both hands. He raised it clumsily to his lips, and managed a single noisy sip, and then spent the better part of a minute coughing it back up while Rebecca patted him on the back. After that, he managed a bit more of the water, keeping it down this time.

He tried to compose his thoughts, looking at Eerie significantly.

“Oh dear,” Rebecca laughed, “generally, you don’t have to use your eyebrows so much to communicate telepathically.”

She sat down on the chair next to the sleeping girl, running her hand through her faded blue hair, and smiling at her with an almost maternal affection.

“She’s been here almost every night, Alex. Emily has been here a lot too, but mostly during the evenings and mornings.” Rebecca patted Eerie on the head affectionately. “I think they have some kind of system worked out so they are never here at the same time, which is funny, because they aren’t speaking to each other, last I heard. Emily is going to be pretty upset when she finds out that you woke up when she wasn’t around.”

Alex finished the water, and then looked pleadingly at Rebecca and shook the empty cup in her direction.

“You really suck at telepathy, you know that, right?”

Rebecca took the cup patiently, then smacked him on the forehead, before she went to go refill it.

“Good thing you’re better at surviving, huh?”

Alex drank most of the water in the cup, and then set it down on the table beside the bed. He was already starting to feel better, and had to suppress his urge to start removing the IV gear from his arms.

“What…” Alex croaked, and then stopped and cleared his throat, before trying again. “What day is it?”

Rebecca suddenly looked worried, and sat back down next to Eerie, who continued to sleep, totally unaffected.

“Uh, well, Wednesday.” Rebecca said, looking at the floor.

“Oh,” Alex said, puzzled, trying to remember what day it had been when they fought with the Weir.

“The Wednesday before Christmas, that is.”

Alex glared at Rebecca, but when she met his stare, she seemed sad. It was very clear that she was not joking with him, and Alex found it very difficult to breathe, all of a sudden. It had to be a joke, didn’t it? But then again, if it wasn’t, if Rebecca was serious, then…

Then he had been asleep for weeks. More than a month.

Alex lurched forward in the bed, tearing the tape from one arm, the IV tube stretching and pulling against his skin. His eyes were bloodshot and wide with panic, his skin flushed and covered in cold sweat.

“No way,” he said, gritting his teeth, forcing himself up with his arms, “No, this can’t…”

Rebecca sighed softly, and then patted him gently on his knee. Alex’s expression froze, for a moment, in a rectus of fear and mania, and then he quietly folded back into the pillows behind him, his face gone placid and serene, his eyes wet but unworried. He felt a tremendous sense of calm, of assurance, like being wrapped in blankets on a cold day, like a memory he didn’t have of his mother’s hand resting on his forehead when he was very young.

“Sorry about that,” Rebecca apologized, “but if you freak out right now, you’re going to do yourself some harm. Plus, you’re going to bring down the whole of Central on our heads, and you definitely don’t want that.”

Alex put his head in his hands, feeling oddly empty, drained of the panic that he could only vaguely remember.

“Oh shit,” he said, his voice strained. “Edward. What happened to…?”

Rebecca shook her head slowly.

“He didn’t make it. The rest of them are fine, more or less. Mitsuru stayed down the hall for a week or so.”

“How could this happen?” He mumbled, from behind his hands.

Rebecca shook her head, and then reached reflexively for her cigarettes. She had the pack halfway out of her pocket before she remembered where she was, looked around her sadly, and then slid the pack back into her jeans with a sigh.

“You used a Black Protocol, Alex. You helped Mitsuru to kill that Weir, from what I hear, you basically froze the bastard somehow. I already told you this, but any time you use a Black Protocol, there is a price to pay. I hope that it seems worth it.”

Alex looked up at her sad expression incredulously.

“So I slept for a month? That seems…”

Rebecca looked downcast.

“I know,” she agreed, grimly. “That’s why Michael didn’t want you to use this ability at all. The price for a Black Protocol is always greater than what you get from using it, if you ask me. You know you aren’t the only one here in Central who uses them, right?”

“Well, Alice…” Alex said, nodding.

“Right,” Rebecca nodded. “Well, Alice forgets things every time she uses her protocol, Alex. The more she uses it, the more she does with it, the more of her memory is gone forever.” The stare Rebecca fixed him with was hard. “Do you know what she does when she’s not out being an Auditor, Alex?”

Alex shook his head. The calm that Rebecca had flooded him with earlier had started to ebb a bit, and he was having trouble following what she was saying, even with only the edges of the panic he’d felt nudging him.

“She has a room full of diaries, Alex, hundreds of them. And she spends most of her time reading them, or recording the day’s events.” Rebecca smiled unhappily. “So it’s not like she doesn’t know anything about her life, because she’s read about some of it. But she doesn’t remember much of it at all.”

“I don’t get it,” Alex said, closing his eyes and leaning his head back onto the pillow, still slightly damp with his sweat. “Why? Why did this happen?”

“We don’t know,” Rebecca said darkly. “We still don’t have any idea. But every M-class on record has the same problem. Unlimited power, a Black Protocol, and an exorbitant cost for using it.”

“Christ,” Alex said. “Who in the hell makes up all these rules?”

Rebecca smiled and patted him on the leg.

“Alice is an extreme example,” Rebecca said. “Not every M-class has problems on that scale, okay? She insists on using her protocol all the time, maybe more than any other Operator I’ve met, despite the consequences. Other people handle it better.”

Alex thought for a moment.

“Um, so, Mitsuru’s scars, then?”

“You little shit,” Rebecca said approvingly. “How did you figure that out?”

“Well, she cut herself when she saved me, that first night,” he said, smiling. “Before she used the barrier protocol. And then with what you just said… It doesn’t seem like you’d let someone that, uh, unstable work in the field, unless they had some truly exceptional abilities, right?”

“Yeah, more or less,” Rebecca admitted grudgingly, “Mitsuru’s kind of unique, though. A long time ago, there was a plan to help her avoid having to use her Black Protocol. The surgery, right? The implant. The whole idea had, you know,” Rebecca paused and looked briefly angry, “mixed results. It won’t be repeated, that’s for sure.”

“Wait, what?”

“Another time,” Rebecca said, shaking her head. “We don’t have all night, and I came here to talk to you about some important things. I can’t be the only one in Central who knows you woke up, so it will be common knowledge, soon.”