had sharp, protruding elbows. A week of practice had taught him the peculiar strike-and-drag motion that turned a close elbow into a cutting tool. Alex learned how to shift seamlessly from the jab to the elbow, so that he could switch from one to the other in the same motion when his opponent came forward.
He had started using the elbow strike in the circle two days ago, and he’d turned Steve’s face into a bloody mess. Steve tried to bull through the jab and get inside his guard. Alex’s third short elbow had opened a big cut above Steve’s right eye, blinding him and allowing Alex to batter him mercilessly from his blind side until Mitsuru called a stop. Clearly, the big asshole wasn’t as stupid as he looked, because today he was more careful about stepping inside or shooting for a takedown.
“What is this, modern dance? I’m falling asleep over here. If this was a real fight, you’d both be dead by now.”
Alex ignored the criticism and stuck to the plan. Steve came forward cautiously, and he ate a quick right jab that caught him on the cheek, while his own wild punches fell short. Alex stepped back outside his range and resumed circling, throwing jabs whenever Steve was close enough. He wasn’t trying to wear Steve down. He was aiming to hurt him, but for the plan to work, he needed to goad him into going for a double-leg takedown, a scoop- and-tackle maneuver that was the favored method of putting an opponent on the ground in freestyle wrestling, where Steve had an extensive background. Frustration was evident on Steve’s face, and his increasingly rushed and wild movements. Everyone gets tired of being punched, after all.
More patient footwork, pumping his jab into Steve’s swollen face. It cost him a stomped foot and a bloodied nose from a punch that barely grazed him, but Alex finally saw what he had been waiting for.
He’d seen it the first time a week earlier when Michael had convinced Alex to start utilizing the jab that he had previously regarded as ineffective. Most of the time, it was still tempting to swing for the fences, particularly when Steve (and Miss Aoki had a sadistic tendency to pick out Steve to be his ‘partner’ for these exercises) was the person at the other end of his fist. Alex walked him all over the place that day, backing away and wheeling and counterpunching, no real plan, just hoping to tire him out. It worked for a while, and then the big goon got inside, dropped Alex with a body shot, grabbed him in a full nelson, and drove him into the ground. However, before that happened, Alex saw something that he knew was interesting, even if he didn’t know exactly what to do with it; namely, he saw Steve misstep.
When he was very tired, Steve would step over his own foot, particularly if Alex moved to the left. So Alex consulted Michael again, and then spent days practicing the plan they came up with. For a week, he absorbed terrible beatings, trying to figure out what it would take to tire Steve in the first place. When he brushed his teeth at night, he visualized himself doing it; before he fell asleep, he imagined how it would go. There was a certain dreamlike quality when he finally saw it happen in front of him.
His heart leapt into his throat and he had to stop himself from jumping forward in frenzy. Instead, he followed Michael’s plan. Alex remained patient. He took stepped to his left, then he coiled his legs beneath him and waited to pounce, knowing that if Steve didn’t misstep, that wouldn’t be able to do much to defend himself.
But Steve got lazy.
He stepped across his own foot, the tip of one trainer scraping the laces of the other. Alex launched himself at Steve, leading a wide, looping punch that started too far back for Michael to approve and ended with a satisfying smack below Steve’s ear, right above the base of his jaw. Steve grunted and fell to one knee, the first time he had ever even been dizzied by one of Alex’s punches. Alex was sure he had broken his own hand, the way it immediately started throbbing, but that didn’t matter now. He kept coming forward.
Alex drove his right knee into the side of Steve’s head as hard as he could manage. Steve went limp and fell sideways, his eyes weirdly defocused. Alex felt a brief moment of triumph before he collapsed in a heap himself, uncertain whether to clutch his bruised knee or his broken hand.
“Reset.”
Steve shook his head, spat, and then stood up, stumbling his way out of the circle, a yellowish-purple bruise already forming on the side of his head. He wobbled his way to bathroom, and everyone politely ignored the sound of his retching. Gustav watched from his corner looking amused, that is, if his eyes were actually open. Alex was still writhing on the ground, his arm held close to his stomach and his body curled around it. Mitsuru watched from where she sat, Japanese-style, without comment. Anastasia sighed from the doorway, and then shook her head.
“It’s his arm again,” Anastasia said reluctantly. “Do you want me to have him taken to the infirmary?”
“Alex needs to learn to ask for help. Alex needs to learn that there are consequences for his actions. These are all important lessons that he is being taught by this experience.”
“I see,” Anastasia said quietly.
Anastasia sat down quietly next to Mitsuru Aoki, and they remained there, side by side, watching the boy thrash and moan, while the rest of the class filtered out quietly, and Renton waited patiently in the corner. After what seemed like a very long time, Alex struggled up into a sitting position.
“Is the implication that if I ask, then somebody will help me?” Alex asked through painfully gritted teeth.
“Yes,” Mitsuru Aoki said, nodding.
“Then please help me,” Alex said, not caring how it sounded now. “I think I messed up my arm again.”
Miss Aoki nodded a second time, and then stood up, brushing away imaginary dust from her loose brown cotton pants.
“Now, you can help him,” Miss Aoki said generously, nodding to Anastasia and heading out the door without looking back. Anastasia waited prudently until Mitsuru was gone and the door had shut solidly behind her.
“She doesn’t have to be so unpleasant. Renton, if you would.”
“Sure, milady.”
Renton walked over and helped Alex gingerly to his feet, lifting him on his left side, opposite his injured arm. The worst of the pain had subsided, but everything from his bruised fist all the way up to his elbow throbbed insistently. It didn’t make sense to him. Every injury Alex had incurred since being injected with nanites had healed, rapidly and completely. However, the wound left by the teeth of the first Weir he had ever encountered had never fully recovered.
“What do you care?” Alex demanded shakily, glaring at Anastasia suspiciously. “Why are you even here? You aren’t in the Program.”
“It’s sad, how modern youth is ungrateful. Don’t you think so, Renton?”
“That it is,” Renton agreed.
“Always assuming the worst of everyone,” Anastasia complained, behind a very slight smile. “On a completely unrelated note, Alex, do you mind if we make a quick stop on the way to the infirmary? There is someone that I would like you to meet.”
“For God’s sake,” Alex moaned. “I think I broke my goddamn arm again or something. Do you have any idea how much pain I am in right now? Do you think I want to go make a social call?”
Anastasia looked at him with disapproval. Even after seeing it several times a week for months, Alex couldn’t adjust to Anastasia in gym clothes. Not that they were any different from what any other girl wore to the gym, but he was used to Anastasia wearing outfits that wouldn’t have been out of place in Victorian-Era England, assuming there was some sort of goth scene back then. Even weirder was the two tight braids that held her hair neatly in place. Normally, Anastasia’s hair was elaborately styled; in fact, Renton had confided that she employed a servant whose sole job was managing her hair. With her curled twin-tails, she looked like a junior-high school student on her way to P.E. class.
“Alex, you big baby. Renton, could you help my sensitive friend?”
“Of course,” Renton said, smiling at Alex. Renton’s smile was as questionable as the person that lived behind it; friendly on the surface, but the longer he stared, the shadier it started to look. “You mind dropping those shields, Alex? If you prefer, I could bust through them, but then we’ll both end up with a headache.”
“What?” Alex demanded, his suspicions renewed. He’d needed Rebecca to build the shields that protected him from telepathic and empathic manipulation for the first several weeks he’d been at the Academy, and he had only lately started to build them himself. He recalled Rebecca warning him never to drop them, even for the most innocent request. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Renton is a telepath, Alex,” Anastasia explained, tapping her foot impatiently. “He can turn the pain off. That won’t fix your arm, but at least it should stop you from whining about it until we can take you to the infirmary.”
