Still better than Bakersfield though.
As we drove west, pedestrians scrambling to get the hell out of Her Majesty’s way, the urban sprawl started to fall away. Barred shop windows and curb-side parking gave way to franchise chains and outdoor malls and then finally to walled estates and the sort of lawns nobody managed without a Druid or a Weather Witch on staff. Even so, I remained unimpressed with the City of Angels. Right until we hit the top of the last hill, and the ocean spread out before us like a white-capped reminder of the planet’s potential.
I’d seen the ocean in vids, of course. Even a painting once, though that had been of a stormy night, with the water black and hungry enough to swallow anyone who dared approach it. But nothing had prepared me for the real thing: deep blue waters, waves crashing toward shore, and just fucking open space and possibility, stretching as far as the eye could see.
Later, I would learn about the very many ways the Pacific could kill you, not even counting the Powers who called it home, and I would learn why the Free States had never been able to re-establish contact with places like Japan or Australia. I’d learn a lot of things, and the world being what it was, too damn few of them would be good, but for that moment, seen through almost-eighteen-year-old eyes… the ocean was the most beautiful thing I’d seen in years.
To be fair, Smiley’s ass was a close second.
•—•—•
Another thing the vids had gotten wrong was the Academy itself. I recognized a handful of landmarks, the field where the Graduation Games took place among them, but there was so much more that the vids never showed; dozens of enormous buildings on multiple acres of green, the whole campus surrounded by an enormous wall.
Either there were a lot more Capes than I’d realized, or more than just Powers went to class here. Or every student got their own building.
We descended a steep hill toward the Academy grounds, but a block or two before we reached the gate, Smiley took a sharp right into a cross-street and brought our car to a shuddering stop.
“This is as far as I go, Bakersfield. Hop on out.”
“Afraid to be seen with the man who moons the university?” I joked. If I put particular emphasis on the word man… well, I was only a day or so away from that being legally true, after all.
“Not interested in being seen at all,” she corrected. “Capes tend to have a black and white view of the world. Don’t take kindly to those of us who see it otherwise.”
“Are you saying you’re a bad, bad woman, Your Majesty?”
That smiley-face turned to regard me, the silence so profound that even I could hear my joke crash and burn. “I’m a professional. I take the jobs that pay. Some are good, some are bad. As for what that makes me?” She shrugged slim shoulders. “I’d say practical.”
I met her shrug with one of my own. “Well, you saved my life. Maybe I’m just already going crazy, but that makes you good in my book. So thank you.” I glanced in the direction of the Academy. “And nobody’s going to hear about you from me.”
When she said nothing in reply, I pulled my bag out of the back, and hopped down off of the car. “See you around, Your Majesty.”
“Hold up a moment.” Just like that, Smiley was standing between me and the Academy. “I don’t know what sort of game you’ve gotten caught up in,” she continued, her voice lacking its usual metallic snarl, “but odds are, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. And if it does…” She offered me a small card.
It was as black and glossy as the glove that held it, blank except for a series of seventeen digits in silver.
“Is this your… number?” Just like pre-Break, communication was done via land lines, and telephone numbers had only six digits—seven including the city code—but I couldn’t figure out what else it would be. Coordinates, maybe?
“It’s a one-time net address for a drop box location I check daily. When you’re in the shit, you might just need a bad, bad woman to bail that sweet little ass out.” The humor re-entered her voice, and for a moment, the smile across her visor seemed sadistic. “Fair warning: if you use it for a booty call, I’ll take your cock away with me as a souvenir afterward.”
With statements like that, my dick was in real danger of becoming an innie rather than an outie, but the rest of me was oddly touched. I was about to enroll at the most secure institution in the country, and I couldn’t see why I’d ever need protection, but the fact that she had offered…
Her Majesty was totally into me.
CHAPTER 12
Turns out that showing up to the Academy in blood-soaked clothes with no escort, school identification, or any sort of acceptance letter sets off a few alarm bells. Not just figurative ones either; before I could trot out my whole stranger danger speech, I’d been whisked off to some small, underground room to be run through half a dozen scanners under the watchful eyes of three guards and a fully automated turret. I was a breath away from having someone shove their gauntleted hand up my ass when word came down that the school dean wanted to see me.
Apparently, he and I had different definitions of wanting to see someone though. I spent thirty minutes sitting on my almost-violated ass outside the guy’s office, under the watchful eye of a steel-haired matriarch who was both the dean’s assistant and way scarier than any of the guards had been. My one attempt to enter the dean’s office had been swiftly derailed by little more than a grim, bespectacled glare and a meaningful shake of her head.
It was like Mama Rawlins had a secret, long-lost, and
