“A Crow first-year?” Something like surprise leaked across the line. “How are the other families taking the news?”
“I haven’t informed them yet. I wanted to make sure you were okay with the extra burden before I did anything else. I know I am asking a lot.”
“It’s okay, Jonathan. I can handle two patients as easily as one. I’ll see you in a few days.”
And then there was nothing but dial tone. Bard set the receiver back in its cradle and looked back at his notes.
One problem solved. A dozen to go.
CHAPTER 14
The dorm room I’d slept in before my exams turned out to be the room I’d be staying in as a first-year. Either someone had been confident I was going to stick around or it had been the only free space available.
According to the Academy handbook—which I had pulled up on my school-provided Glass and was presently reading, thanks to my newfound commitment to academic excellence—the majority of dorm buildings on campus were designated for the non-powered population, leaving only a handful of buildings for the first-year, second-year, and third-year Cape dorms. The last was frequently empty, as third-years spent a good portion of their school year off-campus, either interning with established teams—for those students who’d managed to win an invitation to do so—or doing mission work in the Badlands with the rest of the unwanted.
Students had begun pouring into campus shortly after my meeting with Bard, but none had made their way to the first-year dorm yet. I took the opportunity to pass out on one of the room’s two beds, where my dreams mostly revolved around my new roommate being blonde, tan, and hugely stacked.
I ended up getting two out of three… just not the two I would have picked.
“How’s it going? Looks like we’ll be rooming together as first-years.” Blonde and tan, sure, but given his gender, it was probably just as well that he wasn’t stacked. He did have a mouthful of perfect teeth though, the sort of physique you saw in hero vids, and a hell of a grip.
“I’m Damian. Nice to meet you.” I told him. At Mama Rawlins’ place, that would have been the ideal time for one of us to sucker punch the other, but Blondie didn’t seem concerned with asserting his dominance, and I didn’t see the wisdom in starting something with a guy who outweighed me by at least thirty pounds of muscle.
“Likewise.” After shaking my hand, he carried two enormous suitcases into the room—the lack of effort telling me he’d either packed feathers or had some sort of augmented strength—and then took a quick look around him. “You know, Dad talked about first-year dorms like they were prison cells, but this isn’t bad at all.”
It sure as hell beat the orphanage. Each dorm room had two full sets of furniture—bed, desk, dresser, bookshelf, and closet—with enough space left over to not make the whole thing feel crowded. No vid screens, but the common room I’d walked through to get here had one that was almost as big as I was, along with couches, chairs, and a ping pong table.
The blonde kid finished unloading his suitcases—which held a shit-ton of clothes, a personal Glass that was two generations newer than what the school provided, and a framed picture of other absurdly attractive people—before sitting lightly on the edge of his bed, and turning back to me with a smile.
“Sorry about that. If I’d waited to put everything away until after we chatted, I'd have spent the whole time worrying my mom was going to bust in here and stare disapprovingly at my suitcases.”
My own mom was standing nearby and didn’t seem to care at all that the only unpacking I’d done was to toss my bloody clothes into a laundry basket, while pulling on the Academy-logoed sweatpants I’d found in my top drawer.
“Anyway,” he continued, still offering that easy smile, “I’m Matthew… Matthew Strich, but I prefer to go by—”
“Hey Paladin!” Another kid—almost as pale as I was, with spiky black hair and bushy eyebrows—stuck his head in our doorway, “They just posted our class roster in the commons. Come check it out!” Just as quickly, he was gone.
Matthew rolled his eyes and grinned. “Can you tell Caleb is part Jitterbug? Come on, roomie, let’s go see who we’ll be spending the next three years training with.”
It was a bit early to be sure, but I was cautiously optimistic that my new roommate wasn’t going to be a complete asshole.
Still would’ve preferred a girl though.
•—•—•
Despite Bard’s joke about a tunnel to the girls’ dorm, the Cape dormitories were co-ed. The girls’ rooms and bathroom were in one wing, while ours were in the other, but at the center of the two wings was the common lounge we all shared.
That room was far from full—I never saw it full during my year there, no matter how many people flooded into it—but there were a handful of teenagers clustered about the two sheets of paper that had been pinned to an old-fashioned cork bulletin board.
Matthew and I joined the crowd, where Caleb was already reading through the class roster.
“Holy shit,” he exclaimed, “We have a High-fucking-Four Pyro! Ish… Ish…”
“Ishmae, although she goes by Phoenix.” The speaker was almost as skinny as I was, her most prominent features being large green eyes and black, curly hair.
“I think I’ve heard of her,” said my own roommate. “Some kind of prodigy, right?”
As a High-Four, she kind of had to be. There were a handful of Cat Five Powers in the entire world, so a High-Four was the next best thing to royalty. It also made my Low-Three seem particularly puny by comparison.
“She must be,” agreed the woman. “She looks like she’s about fifteen.” She sighed. “Out from under the parents’ nose at last, and I get stuck with a child as a roommate. I bet she doesn’t even drink.”
“Don’t
