bodies and cleaned up the broken glass hours ago. When Katya had walked with him back home from Eerie’s, there was still blood on the concrete and frightened students crying, though that also seemed to have died down as the night descended.
“I can’t believe they got Rebecca,” Alex said, taking a sip of his beer and making a face at the bitterness. Renton liked IPAs, and since he was the only one who seemed to be able to get beer, Alex had to drink them, but he hadn’t learned to enjoy it. “How could that even happen? Margot said she’s an Auditor, right?”
“Yeah,” Renton said grimly, from where he slumped next to an HVAC unit, in one of the old classroom chairs they had dragged up here. He had bandages all the way down one arm, an ankle wrap, and a crutch that he seemed to barely use. “She is. One of the best. Alistair said they rigged the assassins with some sort of psychic trap, a parasitic protocol that disguised itself as a memory and then attacked her mind from inside, once it was past her defenses. I still have trouble believing it myself.”
“Will she… be okay?”
“Of course,” Vivik said immediately. Renton just shrugged, while Li looked away.
“Who were they after, do you think?”
Alex only felt okay asking the question because, for once, it didn’t seem to be him. One group had attacked Anastasia’s home, while a second had gone for one of the Administration buildings, meeting Alice Gallow and Rebecca Levy by chance. It hadn’t taken long to deal with either attack, but a third undetected group had made it as far as the dormitories in the meantime. A few kids he didn’t know were killed in the attack, and a couple more were in the hospital, including Li’s friend and Alex’s occasional training partner, Cy So. He wouldn’t have admitted it, but he felt a profound relief, not being responsible for this. After all, they hadn’t even attacked his dorm.
“Hard to say,” Renton said thoughtfully. “Maybe it was Rebecca from the start. Who knows? They sure couldn’t have taken away anyone we need more right now. Half the primary school kids saw that happen. They’re probably all traumatized.”
“It’s worse than that, and you know it. Rebecca’s a lot more important than you are giving her credit for,” Vivik said moodily. The boy had been drinking more than the other three over the past hour, to no visible effect, but causing some worry on Alex’s part. He understood, of course. Alistair had to intervene personally in order to prevent Alex from visiting Rebecca’s bedside a few hours before, dragging him down the hall while quietly explaining the need for her to recuperate in peace. “The Committee, the cartels, the Academy, it all holds together because Rebecca can always rally support, or smooth things over. Without her, Gaul might be brilliant, but I don’t think he can do much to keep control.”
“How do you know all this stuff?” Li asked. “I’ve been here three years longer than you and I don’t know any of this…”
For some reason, Vivik looked embarrassed to Alex, but maybe it only seemed that way. Maybe he was just drunk.
“I’ve been studying political theory and history lately,” Vivik said dreamily. “I’ve been having these ideas…”
“What I want to know,” Li cut-in, turning to Renton with a smirk, “is what you were doing over here, old man. Why weren’t you right by Anastasia’s side?”
“I was watching out for Alex…” Renton began uncomfortably.
“Bullshit! We all know where Alex was,” he said, turning and giving Alex a big grin that made him supremely uncomfortable, “so Anastasia knew, too, right? So what’s up with that?”
Renton finished his beer before he said anything.
“I think that maybe I got ditched. She’s been tight with Timor ever since they were both kids. I think she wanted to hang out with him without me around. It’s not a big deal.”
“Look out, Renton,” Li said, cackling. “A rival appears!”
“He’s gay,” Renton said flatly, giving Li an evil look.
“Or you wish he was.”
“He is, jackass,” Renton snapped. “I am a damn telepath, remember.”
“Huh,” Li said, briefly stopped in his tracks. It didn’t last. “Well, whatever. I still say you are jealous. He goes to class with her everyday and all, while you are stuck with me and Mr. Kohl…”
“He is her cousin,” Renton said, almost shouted. “And he is gay, you fucking idiot! Why would I be jealous?”
“I don’t know, but you’re the one yelling, dude,” Li said, smiling affably.
Renton’s shoulders slumped.
“How is Margot?” Alex interrupted, hoping to avoid a fight. “You were with her, weren’t you, Renton? You fought with those guys who attacked the Academy, right?”
Renton looked pained.
“It wasn’t much of a fight. They were much more experienced than we were. One on one, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but there were five of them. One of them manipulated light, I think, because that bitch set my whole arm on fire, swear to God, and I couldn’t see a thing the entire time. While they had me distracted, their telepath got all up in my head, locked me up in a replay of some fucking childhood trauma on endless loop. It took me hours to get it to stop. Margot said they ported her about forty feet up and dropped her on concrete, then one of them shot her in the chest with an assault rifle for good measure. She didn’t even have to go to the hospital. By the time the cavalry showed up, she said she was already walking around.”
Li whistled appreciatively.
“That girl is a force of nature,” he said approvingly. “But you shouldn’t feel bad. Even the Auditors would have had trouble with odds like that.”
Renton shook his head.
“No, you don’t get it,” Renton said quietly, but the kind of quiet that made Alex think that he might actually be really angry. “Timor killed two of them. So did Katya.”
“So? They got the jump on them. And you got jumped,” Li said encouragingly. “It’s not the same thing.”
Renton stood up abruptly, knocking his chair aside with an angry gesture. His crutch clattered to the ground beside it, forgotten.
“I’m supposed to be the one protecting her, Li,” Renton said, the full force of his anger turning his voice into a snarl and contorting his face. “Do you think she takes mitigating factors into account when she’s evaluating the success of her bodyguards? No, you idiot, she doesn’t. That fucking piece of shit Timor is after my job.”
“I don’t know,” Vivik said uncertainly. “Who besides you would want it?”
“Maybe some other pedophile?”
Renton gave Li the finger and stomped off, slamming the door behind him as he left the roof.
“That was pretty messed up, Li,” Vivik said, mildly rebuking him. “You didn’t have to be so hard on him.”
“Well, it is Renton,” Li said cheerfully, unmoved as always. “You don’t know him the way I do. Don’t waste too much time feeling sorry for him, ‘cause he sure wouldn’t do the same for you. Besides, if you think that was fucked up, wait and see what Renton does next. I guarantee it won’t be pretty.”
“I will be the first to admit that this is hardly my strength or area of expertise,” Mr. Windsor said solemnly, sitting on the edge of the table in front of the lecture hall, his normally ubiquitous projector inactive and silent. “Unfortunately, the events of this weekend appear to have deprived us temporarily of the services of the person most qualified to deal with their aftermath. This, I’m afraid, leaves me as the next-best option. Therefore, I wanted to give you all the opportunity to discuss anything that might be on your minds, to ask any questions you might have, which I will answer to the best of my ability. While we were fortunate enough not to lose any members of our class, I’m sure that some of you knew some of those affected by the fighting. Moreover, the sheer violence itself, once so routine in the days of the cartels running rampant, must have come as quite a shock, given the decades of peace we have enjoyed here at the Academy. Now, would anyone like to start?”
The class was silent, which was pretty much what Alex expected. Judging from the patient expression on Mr. Windsor’s face that was probably what he had been expecting, too. Alex glanced over at Vivik to see if he was planning to say anything, and decided that he was not. He had managed to maneuver Vivik between himself and Emily, as a precaution, one Vivik had been had to oblige. She looked hurt as class started, but he ignored it. Better, he thought, to be safe — but he couldn’t be too obvious about it, either. If he went over and sat down by Eerie all of a sudden, he would make her the target of every plot and scheme at the Academy. The silence stretched out
