“Rebecca? Is something wrong? Are you alright?”
Rebecca nodded shortly, her face flushed and red, her brow wet with sweat.
“Yeah, I’m okay, but touching this kid, you understand,” she said, breathing heavily. “It’s incandescent, the effect he has. This is a tremendous power. We’re going to need to be very careful about who he comes in contact with, here at the Academy. I can barely manage it.”
Gaul and Michael both shifted in their seats and leaned forward, while Alistair rolled his eyes.
“What’s his story? What makes Alexander tick?”
“Guilt.” Rebecca’s reply was prompt, definite. “Barely contained anger. A tremendous sense of unfairness, resentment of the most general kind. Tremendous guilt.”
“Did he actually kill his family?”
“She’s an empath, Michael,” Alistair said scornfully. “All she knows is how he feels about it. You want to find out something about that kid, ask me.”
Gaul pushed his glasses back up on his brow, glancing over at Alistair disapprovingly.
“That’s enough, Alistair,” Gaul said mildly.
Alistair gave Gaul a challenging glare, but settled back in his chair.
“Did he kill them?”
Michael continued his questions with an almost placid patience.
“Hard to say,” Rebecca admitted, biting her lower lip. “He certainly thinks so, but I can’t find any specific memory of it. Maybe Alistair’s right. Maybe you need a better telepath.”
“Personally, I’m not so much concerned as to what he did or didn’t do,” Gaul said mildly, “but rather how he feels about it now. How likely it is that we are going to have a reoccurrence of that sort of behavior?”
“Well, he only had one family, right?”
“This is weird, guys. I think I’m going to need Alistair’s help after all,” Rebecca said, her brow furrowed with concern. “Because unless I’m reading this wrong, this kid has been tampered with. Extensively.”
Alistair stopped pouting and gave Gaul an inquiring look, getting a small nod in response. Alistair closed his eyes, his hands hanging loosely between his legs, as his entire body went slack. There was a long silence, while Michael and Gaul looked from Rebecca to Alistair and then back.
“She’s right,” Alistair affirmed muddily, his face creased with effort. “This kid’s been manipulated. Tampering doesn’t even begin to describe the extent of it. Every prominent memory has been altered — maybe even manufactured. The manipulation is so widespread, I don’t even know how to make a determination between what’s genuine and what’s been messed with.”
Alistair shook his head and opened his eyes. Gaul looked worried, but Michael had a look of grim satisfaction on his face.
“I thought so,” he said softly, nodding, his dreadlocks shaking with the movement, “From the first time I talked to him, I suspected as much. How could someone have such minimal feeling about such a traumatic event?”
“There is guilt, pathos, rage, all of what you’d expect,” Rebecca allowed, “but not with the depth of feeling that I’d have anticipated. Nor do I see any kind of introspection — he doesn’t return to these memories, not even in dreams. And they are so hazy…”
“They must’ve been damaged by the manipulation,” Alistair agreed, holding one hand to his forehead and wincing. “They are too faded for a kid his age. You’d think these memories were fifty years old. His head is a terrible mess — I already have a headache.”
Gaul leaned forward in his chair to peer at Alex. He appeared to be asleep, his face calm and composed, his brown hair smoothed back from his forehead where Rebecca rested her hand. He didn’t appear to be dangerous, or damaged, but Gaul had worked with children long enough to know that you couldn’t tell the dangerous ones by looking at them.
“Gaul,” Alistair said, his eyes still hidden by his hand, “that night Mitsuru found him — it wasn’t only the circumstances that were manipulated. This kid himself, he was part of the set up, too.”
Gaul nodded, looking at Alex a bit sadly as he did so.
“There is no doubt of it. Whatever trap has been laid for us, and whoever was responsible for it, Alex Warner is a part of that trap.” Gaul shook his head. “This makes his presence in the Academy all the more problematic.”
“He isn’t a kid,” Alistair said gloomily, “he’s a bomb.”
“No,” Michael said quietly, “he’s a child and a bomb.”
“Um, hello? I’m getting a bit tired, here. Do you want me to activate this kid, or what?”
Gaul considered for a moment, ignoring Michael and Alistair’s stares.
“We’ve come this far,” he said, his bloodshot eyes glinting red under the lights, his smile sad and reluctant. “Let’s find out what has been left to us. Even if young Alex is as you say, well, it isn’t only about where the bomb is. It’s about when it goes off, and who’s standing next to it.”
He shrugged dismissively, the ghost of a smile playing about his thin lips.
“Do it, Rebecca. Activate him.”
Alex woke up slowly, his awareness returning to him piece by piece, a little like waking up after a night of serious drinking, but without as much immediate pain. First, he felt the soft cotton sheets bunched in his hands, and realized he was in a bed. And not his own, unless someone had replaced his institutional bedding with high-thread count sheets and added a bunch of unnecessary pillows. It was warm, he realized, but not uncomfortable. He was lying on his back, his head propped up and his arms folded neatly over his stomach. Then he became aware of smells: some kind of incense, his own sweat, and then a hint of the soft, unmistakable scent of a girl’s hair coming from the pillow beneath his head.
So, he was in a girl’s bed. Alex thought briefly about opening his eyes, but he felt too tired to manage it. It seemed pleasant, anyway, lying there, in the softness and the cozy warmth of the bed, only languidly aware of his aching body. He felt strangely calm, almost blissful, immobile and safe.
Perhaps he fell back asleep then. He couldn’t be certain whether the sound of a lighter and then a protracted coughing fit merely jarred him from his reverie, or whether it actually woke him up again. The effect was the same, regardless — Alex was jolted from his placid contemplation into awareness of his situation, his body’s litany of aches and pains, and his presence in the strange bed. A strange
The room was dim, as the shades had been drawn across the room’s single window, and only a sliver of the late afternoon sun made its way across the giant four-post bed that occupied much of the room’s available space. A pair of old-looking bureaus made of dark wood and a dresser topped with a muted television displaying commercials rounded out the furnishings. On the other side of the bed, wrapped in a red Anaheim Angels-branded blanket, Rebecca hacked and coughed sheepishly, red-faced, motioning for Alex to look away.
“Are you smoking pot?” Alex asked skeptically, sitting up against the headboard and attempting to extract his lower body from the tangle of sheets and blankets he was wrapped in. He seemed to have picked up a headache to accompany his body’s various pains at some point. “You are a seriously terrible role model.”
“Give me a break,” Rebecca croaked. “I have a headache. Anyway, it’s your fault.”
“What? How is that possibly my fault?”
Rebecca shrugged and reached over to the sideboard, retrieving a heavy blown-glass pipe and a cheap plastic lighter.
“Never mind. Do you smoke this stuff?”
Alex shook his head.
“Fine,” Rebecca said, putting the lighter to the bowl and taking a long hit. She held her breath for a moment, and then exhaled a stream of dense, skunky smoke at the ceiling. “Be a drag. Whatever.”
“Why do I feel so,” Alex paused, searching for words, “um, bad?”
“That’s your fault, too,” Rebecca said, making a face at Alex. “You started freaking out, when we activated you. First, Michael tried to hold you down, and when that didn’t work, I had to bliss you out.”
“Yeah. So, uh, bliss?”
“State of semi-conscious ecstasy. Nicest way I know to put somebody down. I’m an empath, remember,” Rebecca said, rolling her eyes. “You sure you don’t want any of this?”
