I told you back at the very beginning.
CHAPTER 77
My expulsion hearing was held in a conference room near the Academy’s administrative offices. There were no lawyers or audience members. There wasn’t even a judge to bang his gold-plated gavel, like you see sometimes in old vids. It was just the review board and the defendant aka the accused aka me.
This being the Academy, the review board was mostly Capes. Bard was the lone normal, flanked by Macy Johnson, Isabel Ferra, the adult Paladin, and Dominion himself. I didn’t know how my Ethics professor had made the cut, but I was pretty sure she was the only one of the bunch who actively hated me.
By the fourth hour, I was considerably less confident.
By the second day, I was wondering how I’d survive on the streets when they were done.
It’s kind of funny… I’d spent the whole damn semester worrying about getting kicked out because I was too weak to be a Cape. The battle at the Hole had proved I belonged… yet it was my presence at that battle that might end up getting me expelled.
Shit’s just never easy, is it?
“I think we’ve spent enough time on the specifics,” said Bard, a very long time after I’d come to the same conclusion. “Mr. Banach left campus without permission, breaking one of the stipulations of his continued enrollment, and he did so by convincing his classmate to engage in a potentially dangerous overreach of her abilities. There’s also the question of his woeful academic performance, several reported incidences of physical violence, and a multitude of vehement complaints from at least one of his professors.”
Isabel Ferra didn’t even have the grace to look ashamed about that last bit.
“Do you have any words you’d like to offer in your defense, Damian?” finished Bard.
I frowned. “I had to leave campus if I was going to see my father. Maybe the timing sucked, but that was President Weatherly’s fault, not mine. And if I hadn’t been there—”
“Your actions at the Hole are irrelevant to these proceedings,” snapped Isabel.
“Well, that’s pretty convenient for that one anonymous professor who’s had it in for me from the moment she heard a Crow was coming to school,” I shot back.
“Damian…” warned Bard.
“Sorry.” It’d been almost two weeks since the battle, but I was still sleeping even worse than normal. I pinched the bridge of my nose and tried to muster up a usable defense. “I only asked Wormhole for help because the brawl made me miss my shuttle. She didn’t seem concerned about the distance of the jump.” I paused to hedge that statement just a bit. “Outside of being able to fit into her dress for the dance when all was said and done.”
“As for my grades…” I shrugged. “I was passing most of my classes until it became obvious I wasn’t going to make it to second-year. And I did pass the first semester. Right?”
“Somehow,” muttered Isabel.
I nodded. “Well, there you go. Is there anything I missed?”
“I’m pretty sure there was something about violence,” Macy said helpfully, tossing in a wink and a grin.
That was one accusation I felt no guilt over. “Violence is part of what we do, isn’t it? Half our classes are about training us to fight. I’m not saying I’m a model student,” I admitted, “and maybe I could have handled some things better—like when that dickhead accused me of killing Unicorn—”
“Mr. Banach,” warned Bard.
“Right.” I winced. “Anyway, Capes need people that will run toward the action instead of away from it. If nothing else, I’d say I meet that criteria.”
“Courage is part of what makes a Cape, but self-control is an even greater necessity,” said Dominion, speaking for the first time in hours.
“I’m not the first-year who punched Backstreet in the face—”
Matthew’s father scowled.
“—but yeah, self-control is something I should work on,” I admitted.
“Mr. Banach is not the first student to get in a fight on campus, and he’ll be far from the last,” said Paladin dismissively. “Unlike Isabel, I am interested in his exploits at the Hole.” He leaned forward in his chair, pinning me to mine with a hard-eyed stare. “In particular the fact that he used a piece of Legion tech to kill Firewall.”
I hid another wince. The revelation that they knew about the gun had been an unpleasant surprise. Of the six civilians that Fallout had spared for hostage usage, two others had actually survived… and one had not only witnessed my shooting of Firewall but reported it during his debriefing. The only reason I wasn’t on trial for possessing contraband technology was that the witness only remembered me shooting it. Nobody knew I’d been the one to smuggle it in, which meant I’d been able to keep my plot to kill my dad—and Her Majesty’s involvement in that plot—secret.
“It’s like I told you,” I said, lying through my little Crow teeth, “I saw it on the ground after the initial attack and grabbed it. I knew a gun when I saw one.”
“Care to hazard a guess on where it might have come from?” That was from Dominion, who was a hell of a lot harder to lie to than Paladin.
I shook my head. “All I can think is that one of the other conspirators smuggled it in, like Jaws’ wife did the dampener override. Maybe they dropped it when Red went ballistic?”
“That seems far-fetched,” said Paladin.
“Does it?” Macy shook her head. “The alternative explanation is that some unrelated third party also smuggled in Legion tech. Who? Why? And what are the chances that this individual was, by pure coincidence, in the same group of twenty that was down there when the escape attempt occurred?”
“All good questions,” said Bard, rubbing his eyes tiredly, “and ones which I suspect the Security Council will be grappling with over the next several months. However, as Isabel pointed out, Mr. Banach’s actions at the Hole are not on trial here. Is there anything else you’d like to
