Michael picked up a pebble and threw it toward the quarry wall, but it came up short, diving down early toward the black water at the bottom of the quarry and colliding with the ice on the surface with a crunching sound.
“I tried to get him to stop there, but he seemed like he was in a trance or something. Next thing I know, the rock where he was staring starts to disappear into the Ether.”
Michael gestured at the frost around him, as if it had just arrived, to his shock.
“I think all the cold is only a side-effect, you know?”
“You mean he was creating a vacuum? You are kidding, right?”
“I think so,” Michael said. “I think all the time, without even realizing it, Alex creates a localized void in our world, and Etheric energy leaks through to fill it. I think that’s where all that catalytic power comes from. When he activated the protocol, he created a much larger void in the Ether, so energy went rushing out of the world to fill it.”
“You could use that, maybe,” Rebecca said slowly, lost in thought. “The cold might be easier to control than an actual energy or mass transfer. Less dangerous for Alex, probably more effective.”
“No,” Michael said, almost sadly, shaking his head.
“Why not?”
“He can’t control the protocol, and he can’t stop it, once it starts.”
Rebecca frowned doubtfully.
“Okay, what then?”
Michael looked moodily at the frost covered hole in the quarry wall and sighed.
“It’s like Mitsuru all over again,” he said, turning to face her, with an expression that was filled with grief and frustration. “We can’t let Alex operate that protocol. He’ll kill everyone around him.”
Alex lay on his back, on top of the comforter, still wearing his shoes and uniform, and wondered why someone enrolled in the combat program had to study any math at all, much less the exact same math that had been kicking his ass back in the real world.
He looked idly over at the stack of books on his desk, the study guides that Vivik and Emily had made for him sitting on top. Vivik’s notes were typed, bullet-pointed, and exhaustive to the point of being incomprehensible. Alex often found the text book’s explanations to be shorter. Emily’s notes were handwritten, concise, and easy to understand — but equally as useless to Alex. They only made him worry about her, and their little ‘arrangement’.
The ceiling proved more interesting that the books. He wasn’t, he realized drowsily, going to be doing any studying tonight. He fished his headphones out of his pocket and hit play on his MP3 player, finding himself mid- song, halfway through a Portishead album.
Alex turned the volume up earlier when he’d gone for a jog on the Academy’s surprisingly modern synthetic- surface track. Alex hadn’t really felt like getting lost going running on the grounds, but he’d wanted the exercise, even if it was an off-day. The music was too loud now, in the quiet of the dorms, but he didn’t bother to reach for the volume, letting the lushness of the sound obliterate his thoughts, his skull reverberating with the slow, looping beats.
He couldn’t have fallen asleep. Not like that. Alex was a light sleeper, a very desirable trait for those who planned on surviving incarceration. He had trouble falling asleep almost every night, and even small noises tended to wake him up. He couldn’t possibly have fallen asleep with his headphones on.
But, Alex could have sworn that for a moment somewhere in the album’s final tracks, his head heavy and swimming with worry, that he felt the warmth of another body besides his own in the tiny dorm bed, a small hand resting on the pillow above his head. The illusion was so complete that he was aware of the smell of her hair, the weight of her head from where it rested on the hollow of his shoulder. He felt a tremendous sense of comfort and gentleness, and he lost himself in it.
He did not wake then. He could not have woken, because he had not slept. He opened his eyes. Nothing had changed. He was alone, and the place beside him on the bed was cold. The MP3 player had moved along to Massive Attack, but he felt too agitated to listen anymore. He pulled the headphones out of his ears as he sat up, puzzled and angry for reasons he couldn’t articulate.
There was no way for him to know how long they had been knocking on the door. He hadn’t slept, he didn’t even feel that sleepy. But, he hadn’t heard them until now.
Alex got up with a sigh and opened the door, expecting Vivik. He liked the Sikh kid quite a bit; actually, he was really good-natured and upbeat. But Vivik liked studying, as in he seemed to do it for fun, and sometimes he wanted to tutor Alex a bit more than Alex wanted to be tutored.
It wasn’t Vivik. It was Renton, and a Chinese kid who Alex recognized from class, but he couldn’t remember the name of.
“Hey, Alex,” Renton asked, smiling mischievously, “why are you still in your uniform?”
Alex looked down at himself, and wondered the same thing. He had he slept, then? Had he dreamed?
“I’m not really sure,” he admitted, rubbing his head. “I guess I was asleep. What time is it, anyway?”
“A bit after eleven. I’m Li,” the Chinese kid said, extending his hand to Alex. He had a firm hand shake and a smile that seemed friendly enough. “We have homeroom together.”
“Right,” Alex said. “You’re a friend of Renton’s?”
“Don’t think badly of me for it, though,” Li said, grinning. “It sort of worked out that way.”
Alex laughed, and then stifled a yawn, wondering how anyone could tolerate Renton on a consistent enough basis to be friends with him. Frankly, he wasn’t totally sure how Anastasia put up with Renton, as an employee or whatever he was.
“Get yourself changed, Alex. Put something warm on,” Renton suggested, leaning against the wall. “We’ll wait out here while you change.”
“Where are we going?”
Alex was wary. He wondered if the Academy had hazing rituals that he was unaware of.
“The roof, Alex. Believe me, you want to come with us to the roof,” Renton said, his voice dripping with sincerity.
“I will not notice,” Rebecca said, up to her chin in rose-scented bathwater.
The room was so thick with steam that she couldn’t see the shower curtain. Pink-tinged bubbles floated across the water’s surface. Her hair was securely wrapped in a red towel, a mask stuffed with lavender pressed across her eyes.
“I will not notice.”
Rebecca thanked whatever God that there might be that the founder of the Academy had been Japanese, and had a fondness for his native country’s baths. She’d made certain that everyone in Central had forgotten the bathhouse except herself and the staff that cleaned it. The wood was carved cedar, darkened with age and moisture, and the bath itself was big enough that she could stretch her legs out. The only sound was the branches scraping across with the outside wall with the wind.
“I’m not going to notice anything. I don’t care what they do. I’m not going to feel any of it.”
The worst was the flirting, the falling in lust or in love. She could feel it from a mile away.
She’d always planned to bring a lover here, Rebecca remembered bitterly. Back when she’d had them. When she found someone special, someone worth rewarding, she intended bring them here. She’d had it all planned out.
How many years ago had that been? Three? Four?
“I will not notice. I will not.”
Rebecca let herself sink down, into the steaming water up to her eyeballs, letting the hot water massage her brain.
It helped a little bit.
There were around thirty people up on the roof. Most of them were strangers to Alex. Since Renton and Li were caught up in conversation as soon as they walked out on to the roof, Alex shyly migrated back to where a cooler sat, perched on top of one of the old chimneys the dotted the roof. A beer, he figured, might help relax him a
