Super Powereds: Year 1 (7 page)

* * *

Mr. Transport and Mr. Numbers sat at the dining table in their new apartment. It was a spacious two-bedroom that existed behind the door in the kitchen. They would, of course, be sharing the cooking area with the children, but since the kids had meal plans and little practical experience in taking care of themselves, neither Mr. Transport nor Mr. Numbers anticipated battling with them for space on the stove.

They had also been provided with their own mini-fridge, which Mr. Numbers took as a negative sign indicating some higher up was aware of Mr. Transport’s penchant for beer and liquor. Still, the fridge was there, so Mr. Transport had put his beer and a bottle of gin in it as they unpacked. Now the two sat, still clad in their suits, going over their assignment folders one last time before the mandatory destruction of them.

“Do you think it went well?” Mr. Transport asked from his seat.

“Exceedingly,” Mr. Numbers said. “We made them perceive us in the way they were supposed to. The only exception, of course, is the telepath.”

“She shouldn’t pose a problem for us, though,” Mr. Transport said. “Remember your training. Telepaths can only read what is going through your mind at that moment. Just be careful and remember to control your thoughts around her.”

“I’m aware of the necessary techniques,” Mr. Numbers said with a slight edge to his voice. “I’m just not certain it holds true with that one. There’s something about her, something different. I worry she might be able to go deeper than most telepaths.”

“I’m sure the doctors or nurses would have made note of it in the file. Besides, why would a telepath who has spent her life without control of her ability be more adept with it than those who have honed it through a lifetime of practice?” Mr. Transport asked.

Mr. Numbers let out a small sigh. “I suppose you’re right. Still, we’ll have to stay on our toes around her. Heaven knows we have secrets we can’t afford to let some eighteen-year-old girl in on.”

“I thought she was seventeen,” said Mr. Transport.

“She was when we met her, but she had her birthday while she was undergoing treatment,” said Mr. Numbers.

“Oh. I do hope they did some sort of celebration for her,” said Mr. Transport.

“It is to my understanding that there was cake,” assured Mr. Numbers.

“Very good then,” said Mr. Transport. “Well, I’m ready when you are.”

“Let’s get the lighter and the bucket,” said Mr. Numbers.

* * *

Alice tossed and turned sleeplessly in her bed. A telepath! What had her father been thinking, allowing a telepath to be her dorm mate? He knew how much she valued her privacy. At least, she had thought he knew. What was she going to do? That Mary girl could be listening to her at that very moment. She would never know a moment’s peace; never know a good sleep again.

Alice had always been excellent at reading others, a skill she had first learned from watching her Daddy interact with other people. Now she was stuck with a dorm mate who had been living in the damn forest for the last few years and who was a mind reader to boot. All of Mary’s social habits had been scrubbed clean by the wilderness and the solitude, so Alice had no idea what was going on in her head. On top of that, Mary could see Alice’s thoughts plain as day.

Never had the tables been turned on Alice like this, never had she felt so exposed, so vulnerable. Her only consolation was that the others would be simple to deal with. Hershel was a big, insecure geek, Nick was a tongue-wagging idiot, and Vince was uncomfortable with his own uniqueness. They had all shown weaknesses to capitalize on for her own gain, so she was comfortable with them. As for the agents, Alice barely spared a thought for them. They worked for Daddy, because whether they knew it or not, everyone worked for Daddy in some way. She would be polite, and if they crossed her, she would handle them.

No, there was no problem with anyone else. Alice flipped over in her bed for the thousandth time, trying to figure out how to handle Mary.

* * *

Hershel was also thinking about Mary, though he and Alice had very different problems with the girl.

“She was so pretty,” Hershel said to no one. He used to have friends, back before Roy had begun popping up more frequently, and had even managed to hang on to some personal connections through his LARP group. Those were gone now, back in Chicago, while he lay in bed alone. He desperately wished he still had them so he could tell them about his day, about how he had gotten Roy under control, and about the beautiful girl with the amber-colored eyes he had met on his first day at college.

Hershel could do none of those, though, so instead he was talking to an empty room. He wished he could have talked to her after the meeting was over, but she went back to the girls’ side almost as soon as the two administrators were gone. Did she know he was going to talk to her and that’s why she ran? A wave of insecurity washed over Hershel, one that he was more than accustomed to. Hershel was pudgy, shy, and unremarkable. He had spent his whole life feeling those waves of insecurity crash against him. The only times they weren’t there was when he was dressed up in costume pretending to be someone else. Then he was brave, strong, and confident. Then he was someone worth being.

Hershel felt something stir in his mind. He realized he had been calling out to Roy without noticing. That seemed to happen at his lowest points, when he wanted to be anyone else in the world besides Hershel Daniels. If not for the treatment, Roy would probably have appeared already. Fortunately, that was no longer the case. Hershel could call to him all night, but until he used the trigger that had been created, Roy would stay nothing more than a tickle in the back of his head.

Still, it was hard enough to get to sleep alone. Hershel didn’t want to try and pass out with both of them stirring, so he decided to think of something besides Mary and how insecure she made him feel.

“She really is so pretty,” Hershel said once more. He rolled over and tried to visualize anything besides Mary’s amber eyes.

* * *

In her own room, Mary blushed.

“Yes, I think he’s very sweet, No,” she said to her bear. “I just think he needs a little more time to acclimate to college on his own. This is a big new environment, and if I were to be with him, I’d become nothing more than a security blanket.”

The bear stared back at her from his resting place on the bed.

“Okay, you got me. I also want to see what his other side is like,” Mary admitted. “Besides, there are much more interesting thoughts going on right now, don’t you agree?”

No said nothing.

“So many people thinking of little old me,” said Mary. “I feel like this is going to be a very interesting year.”

No still said nothing.

“Oh, you rascal,” Mary laughed. “Maybe after a few weeks. Right now we need to get to bed. It’s going to be very loud tomorrow unless we’re rested and in control.”

Mary scooped up No and got under the covers with him. Like turning off a light switch, Mary banished away the voices from her head. Just like that it was as though she were back in the forest, communing with the quiet. The ability to have silence on demand, that was something she would never grow tired of.

* * *

Vince was asleep. Unlike the others, he hadn’t had any large revelations about his roommates or sudden fears about the day to grapple with. Vince had merely come in, undressed, and gotten into bed.

Of course, before he slept, Vince had tenderly removed a gold pocket watch from his backpack and gently wound it as he did every night. He then checked the time and made sure the watch was running right then set it down in a place of honor on his bedside table.

Then he had gotten into bed himself, pausing on his direct flight toward the land of slumber only long enough to run a finger along the watch and softly whisper, “Goodnight, Father.”

After that, he was gone into a dream that seemed to feature fire more heavily than the ones he had regularly.

10.

“Welcome, freshmen!” The speaker was a tall man with glasses, black hair, and a charcoal-colored suit. He cut an impressive figure even from behind his podium, looking around the room emanating confidence and ease, as though he had made this speech dozens of times before. Which, coincidentally, he had.

“It is my pleasure as Dean of the Hero Certification Program to be the first to congratulate you on making the cut and being enrolled in our very elite little academy,” the dean continued. “My full name is Blaine Geffries, however, I want you all to just call me Dean Blaine. It is my hope that each and every one of you grow stronger in the years ahead, and that the best of you graduate from here with full certifications and go on to become acclaimed Heroes. I want to watch all of you find the lessons you need to succeed!”

“Of course he does,” Nick muttered to Vince quietly from his seat in the middle of the auditorium. “The more prestige a Hero has, the better it looks on the school that trained them.”

“I didn’t think the five universities that ran this program were in competition,” Vince said curiously.

“Where there is money, there is competition, and these bad boys are government-funded,” Nick replied.

“Now, I know all of you are a little nervous,” Dean Blaine said in an understanding voice. “After all, most of you are from schools, if not towns, where you were the only Super present. Having peers around you who can understand and relate to what you’re going through is a new experience, and I’m here to tell you that it will be a wonderful one. You’re going to have friendships, support, and respect all built on the mutual understanding that only fellow Supers can share.”

“Is being a Super hard?” Vince whispered to Nick. “I knew a few of them, and by comparison to... everyone else, it seemed like they had it pretty easy.” Vince chastised himself internally. He had just referenced himself as something other than a Super, a taboo Mr. Transport had advised them against committing before he brought them down that morning. It wasn’t just that the program that had created them was classified, which it was, the problem was that if the other students knew what Vince and his group had once been Powereds they were almost sure to face harassment and discrimination. Of course, in a school where there were telepaths, any secret was inevitably going to come out. The goal was merely to avoid that day for as long as possible.

“It isn’t really hard, per se,” Nick responded, breezing over Vince’s near screw-up. “It’s just different. I know you were on your own most of the time, but for those of us around people it was an odd experience, always knowing you were the one who was different.” Nick was careful to try and cover for Vince, not out of friendship but out of necessity. Nick wanted every advantage he could get his hands on, and being targeted as a freak among freaks would rob him of too many opportunities for him to permit it.

“You’re going to need that support network, too,” Dean Blaine continued. “As all of you should know, becoming a Hero is a grueling task. You’ll be taking combat classes, training your tactical skills, learning to think around corners, and - possibly most importantly of all - you’ll be learning about the ethics behind having and using abilities. And, of course, you’ll be doing all of that while maintaining your secret identity up top.”

The sound of groans permeated the audience, which was about fifty people strong. Dean Blaine only gave this talk to freshmen, and despite what many conspiracy theorists believed, the portion of the population that were Supers was still remarkably small. Of course, the percentage jumped considerably if one were to include Powereds as well, but no one did.

“Now, now, none of that,” said Dean Blaine without breaking his smile. “I know many of you have lived out in the open about your abilities for years, but this is how we do things at Lander. Learning to protect a secret identity helps you hone a lot of the skills a Hero will need. Ingenuity, thinking on your feet, and planning are all major elements of keeping your secret safe. Those of you who fail at keeping your secret... well, let’s just say that fail was the operative word there.”

There was no laughter at Dean Blaine’s joke, not that he had expected any. That was a joke just for him.

“Of course, there are always extenuating circumstances, but let’s just say you should do your best to keep the fact that you’re a Super close to the vest. If you need to show off, work out, or just get the powers pumping, then you are always welcome down here, where you can be the Super we all know you are,” Dean Blaine reassured them.

“Lovely,” Alice said to no one in particular. She had opted to sit alone near the top of the tiered auditorium. She loved that sort of spot because it allowed her a vantage point above all the others, observing and noting their behavior. She had also chosen it because Mary, and for some reason Hershel, had both sat near the bottom. Alice was not about to give that girl any more time staring into her mind than she had to.

“With that settled, let’s go over today’s activities, shall we?” Dean Blaine asked rhetorically. “Since above ground classes don’t start until tomorrow, we’ll be using today to do our combat ranking. For those of you who don’t know, we do rankings among the classes at the beginning of this and end of every other year. This is so we can get a sense of where you’re starting from based on the previous test, and how much you’ve grown by the end. We won’t just be taking into account who wins each fight; we’ll be looking at how they use their abilities, bodies, and brains to make the most of every situation. Today’s will be a single elimination tournament, so the more you win, the more you fight, the better a chance you have to showcase what you can do.”

Vince felt his heart sink. All he had for energy was the half a book of matches he had absorbed yesterday while showing off for Nick. Unless he fought someone with electrical or fire abilities, he was going to be working at a big disadvantage. It was really his own fault; Mr. Numbers had warned them there would be combat. He’d even had a passing thought of trying to find a place to absorb energy, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. There was still a nagging voice in the back of his brain telling him that he would lose control and drain the whole school. Or town. Or state.