Zachary Rawlins - The Academy

“Personally, I’m not so much concerned as to what he did or didn’t do,” Gaul said mildly, “but rather how he feels about it now. How likely it is that we are going to have a reoccurrence of that sort of behavior?”

“Well, he only had one family, right?”

“This is weird, guys. I think I’m going to need Alistair’s help after all,” Rebecca said, her brow furrowed with concern. “Because unless I’m reading this wrong, this kid has been tampered with. Extensively.”

Alistair stopped pouting and gave Gaul an inquiring look, getting a small nod in response. Alistair closed his eyes, his hands hanging loosely between his legs, as his entire body went slack. There was a long silence, while Michael and Gaul looked from Rebecca to Alistair and then back.

“She’s right,” Alistair affirmed muddily, his face creased with effort. “This kid’s been manipulated. Tampering doesn’t even begin to describe the extent of it. Every prominent memory has been altered — maybe even manufactured. The manipulation is so widespread, I don’t even know how to make a determination between what’s genuine and what’s been messed with.”

Alistair shook his head and opened his eyes. Gaul looked worried, but Michael had a look of grim satisfaction on his face.

“I thought so,” he said softly, nodding, his dreadlocks shaking with the movement, “From the first time I talked to him, I suspected as much. How could someone have such minimal feeling about such a traumatic event?”

“There is guilt, pathos, rage, all of what you’d expect,” Rebecca allowed, “but not with the depth of feeling that I’d have anticipated. Nor do I see any kind of introspection — he doesn’t return to these memories, not even in dreams. And they are so hazy…”

“They must’ve been damaged by the manipulation,” Alistair agreed, holding one hand to his forehead and wincing. “They are too faded for a kid his age. You’d think these memories were fifty years old. His head is a terrible mess — I already have a headache.”

Gaul leaned forward in his chair to peer at Alex. He appeared to be asleep, his face calm and composed, his brown hair smoothed back from his forehead where Rebecca rested her hand. He didn’t appear to be dangerous, or damaged, but Gaul had worked with children long enough to know that you couldn’t tell the dangerous ones by looking at them.

“Gaul,” Alistair said, his eyes still hidden by his hand, “that night Mitsuru found him — it wasn’t only the circumstances that were manipulated. This kid himself, he was part of the set up, too.”

Gaul nodded, looking at Alex a bit sadly as he did so.

“There is no doubt of it. Whatever trap has been laid for us, and whoever was responsible for it, Alex Warner is a part of that trap.” Gaul shook his head. “This makes his presence in the Academy all the more problematic.”

“He isn’t a kid,” Alistair said gloomily, “he’s a bomb.”

“No,” Michael said quietly, “he’s a child and a bomb.”

“Um, hello? I’m getting a bit tired, here. Do you want me to activate this kid, or what?”

Gaul considered for a moment, ignoring Michael and Alistair’s stares.

“We’ve come this far,” he said, his bloodshot eyes glinting red under the lights, his smile sad and reluctant. “Let’s find out what has been left to us. Even if young Alex is as you say, well, it isn’t only about where the bomb is. It’s about when it goes off, and who’s standing next to it.”

He shrugged dismissively, the ghost of a smile playing about his thin lips.

“Do it, Rebecca. Activate him.”

Alex woke up slowly, his awareness returning to him piece by piece, a little like waking up after a night of serious drinking, but without as much immediate pain. First, he felt the soft cotton sheets bunched in his hands, and realized he was in a bed. And not his own, unless someone had replaced his institutional bedding with high-thread count sheets and added a bunch of unnecessary pillows. It was warm, he realized, but not uncomfortable. He was lying on his back, his head propped up and his arms folded neatly over his stomach. Then he became aware of smells: some kind of incense, his own sweat, and then a hint of the soft, unmistakable scent of a girl’s hair coming from the pillow beneath his head.

So, he was in a girl’s bed. Alex thought briefly about opening his eyes, but he felt too tired to manage it. It seemed pleasant, anyway, lying there, in the softness and the cozy warmth of the bed, only languidly aware of his aching body. He felt strangely calm, almost blissful, immobile and safe.

Perhaps he fell back asleep then. He couldn’t be certain whether the sound of a lighter and then a protracted coughing fit merely jarred him from his reverie, or whether it actually woke him up again. The effect was the same, regardless — Alex was jolted from his placid contemplation into awareness of his situation, his body’s litany of aches and pains, and his presence in the strange bed. A strange girl’s bed. With a certain amount of trepidation, Alex opened his eyes.

The room was dim, as the shades had been drawn across the room’s single window, and only a sliver of the late afternoon sun made its way across the giant four-post bed that occupied much of the room’s available space. A pair of old-looking bureaus made of dark wood and a dresser topped with a muted television displaying commercials rounded out the furnishings. On the other side of the bed, wrapped in a red Anaheim Angels-branded blanket, Rebecca hacked and coughed sheepishly, red-faced, motioning for Alex to look away.

“Are you smoking pot?” Alex asked skeptically, sitting up against the headboard and attempting to extract his lower body from the tangle of sheets and blankets he was wrapped in. He seemed to have picked up a headache to accompany his body’s various pains at some point. “You are a seriously terrible role model.”

“Give me a break,” Rebecca croaked. “I have a headache. Anyway, it’s your fault.”

“What? How is that possibly my fault?”

Rebecca shrugged and reached over to the sideboard, retrieving a heavy blown-glass pipe and a cheap plastic lighter.

“Never mind. Do you smoke this stuff?”

Alex shook his head.

“Fine,” Rebecca said, putting the lighter to the bowl and taking a long hit. She held her breath for a moment, and then exhaled a stream of dense, skunky smoke at the ceiling. “Be a drag. Whatever.”

“Why do I feel so,” Alex paused, searching for words, “um, bad?”

“That’s your fault, too,” Rebecca said, making a face at Alex. “You started freaking out, when we activated you. First, Michael tried to hold you down, and when that didn’t work, I had to bliss you out.”

“Yeah. So, uh, bliss?”

“State of semi-conscious ecstasy. Nicest way I know to put somebody down. I’m an empath, remember,” Rebecca said, rolling her eyes. “You sure you don’t want any of this?”

Alex looked warily at the bubbled blue glass pipe. He started to refuse again, and then it occurred to him that the random drug tests he’d been subjected to for so many years that they had become routine were unlikely to ever happen again. The Academy probably didn’t have any such policy, he figured, if Rebecca, who he thought was some kind of school councilor, was trying to get him stoned. And his head really was starting to hurt.

“Fuck it. Sure. Why not?”

Rebecca chuckled and handed him the pipe and lighter.

“Famous last words, right?”

Alex barely managed to get the bowl lit before he started coughing, his throat raw and his mouth filled with spit. Rebecca prized the pipe from his limp hands while he coughed, then grinned and pounded him on the back approvingly.