That got my attention in a hurry. “Shane? How was any of this his fault?”
“He repeated young Ms. Naser’s mistake. He overestimated his own training and proceeded recklessly. As great as his loss is, we are incredibly lucky that his actions didn’t cause even more widespread tragedy.”
My knuckles were white as I gripped the side of the metal gurney. “So all that crap you were saying about Shane earlier—”
“Was true,” Bard finished, “if incomplete. Shane was a first-year. For all his power, he was still largely untrained. His decision to heal Ishmae rather than wait for assistance cost him his life. Even worse, it cost the world multiple decades of benefit from his gift.”
“He didn’t think she would survive long enough for us to wait for help.”
“I know. I also know that he was in love with her, and there are few things less rational than a teenager in love.” The hard lines of Bard’s face softened. “But High-Four though she is, there is not a Cape in the Free States who would have willingly traded Shane’s life for Ishmae’s. And now, even that trade seems moot.”
“What do you mean?”
He loosened his tie, and sank back into the chair. “Ishmae has chosen to leave the Academy.”
“She what?”
“She just killed an innocent man, Mr. Banach. And not a stranger, but someone who cared for her, and who was himself destined for great things. That is the sort of weight that has broken older and stronger people than Ms. Naser.”
“That’s total bullshit,” I growled. Bad enough that Shane had died because of her… now she was going to quit?!?
“It is also none of your concern,” said Bard. “Particularly when you have problems of your own.”
It was my turn to sigh. “What do you want from me, Bard? I’m doing my best. Hell, I even helped catch those two Shifters.”
“Yes, you did. You’ve shown occasional flashes of potential. At the same time, I’ve received over a dozen complaints about you, the majority of them coming from your fellow first-years.”
“That’s bullshit too,” I decided. “I haven’t done a damn thing to any of them, unless you count bleeding all over Paladin and Orca. And the Viking. And Alan Jackson,” I added after a moment’s thought. Sometimes I thought the central theme of Nikolai’s class was me getting my ass kicked. “Most of them hated me from the moment they found out what I was.”
“True enough.”
“That’s all you have to say? True enough?”
“Hatred is something that every Cape must deal with, believe it or not. Powers are fundamentally different from the rest of us, and humanity has a long history of hating those who are different. Capes are the key to our nation’s survival, but public sentiment is a fickle beast. It’s the reason every Cape team has a public relations office, and it’s the reason we pour funding into Cape vids and merchandising. It’s also one of the core reasons this Academy even exists; to teach you control, so that you can fight without leaving a swath of death and destruction in your wake. It’ll be years before we recover from what happened in Palo Alto last year. Another catastrophe and everything that has been built in this country over the last seven decades could slip away.”
“I get all that. Amos has told us what it was like in the days after the Break.”
“And you were actually awake to hear it?” Bard shook his head in mock astonishment. “Clearly, the rumors of your academic inattention have been exaggerated.”
I rolled my eyes. “I know why normal people might fear or hate those of us with abilities. But the first-years are Powers too. So why do they hate me?”
“Of all people, you must understand why people would fear a Crow.”
“Because we’re insane, murdering assholes…. sure. But you saw what Ishmae did. She could’ve killed thousands of people when Shane woke her up—would have if her fire hadn’t mostly gone vertical—but for some reason I’m the one everyone is terrified of. How does that make any sense? I see ghosts. She incinerates fucking cities!”
“A High-Four is terrifying, Mr. Banach. A Full-Five even more so. But Dominion and Grannypocalypse … in the end, they can only kill you.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“It’s a reality the world has adjusted to, post-Break. Life is precious, but it is also fleeting. There’s a reason the concept of an afterlife holds such sway. Heaven, Valhalla, even the great wheel of karma; each suggests that physical death is not the end, but a gateway to something greater beyond this broken plane of existence.”
“I have no idea where you’re going with this,” I admitted.
“What happened to the souls of those Lord Bone raised? What happens to the spirits that the Crimson Death consumed?”
“I don’t know.”
“Nobody does. That’s the point. As awe-inspiring as other powers might be, they can only destroy the body. A Crow—and only a Crow—can do more.”
“What about the Singer?”
“A Power who can literally sing someone out of existence?” Bard rolled his eyes. “The Voidsinger is a myth, Damian. Crows, on the other hand, are all too real.”
“So the first-years are…what…? Worried that I’m going to snack on their souls like synth-rations? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!”
“Says the eighteen-year-old who threatened to kill someone, raise their corpse as a Walker, and send it home to murder their family.”
I shifted uncomfortably on the gurney. How the hell had he heard about that? “If you know I’m sleeping through Amos’ class, you also know that whole threat was a bluff. I can’t do anything like that.”
“Not yet.”
“Even if I could, I wouldn’t!”
“The two Shifters didn’t know that.”
“No shit! That’s why the bluff worked!”
“And how many of the first-years do you think that same bluff would have worked on?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. A handful, maybe.”
“I think you’d be surprised. We fear the unknown, Damian, and you remain an unknown to most of your classmates.”
“Yeah, well… that’s on them, not me.”
“Is it? If it weren’t for your history project, would you have
