Zachary Rawlins - The Academy

Alex finished the water, and then looked pleadingly at Rebecca and shook the empty cup in her direction.

“You really suck at telepathy, you know that, right?”

Rebecca took the cup patiently, then smacked him on the forehead, before she went to go refill it.

“Good thing you’re better at surviving, huh?”

Alex drank most of the water in the cup, and then set it down on the table beside the bed. He was already starting to feel better, and had to suppress his urge to start removing the IV gear from his arms.

“What…” Alex croaked, and then stopped and cleared his throat, before trying again. “What day is it?”

Rebecca suddenly looked worried, and sat back down next to Eerie, who continued to sleep, totally unaffected.

“Uh, well, Wednesday.” Rebecca said, looking at the floor.

“Oh,” Alex said, puzzled, trying to remember what day it had been when they fought with the Weir.

“The Wednesday before Christmas, that is.”

Alex glared at Rebecca, but when she met his stare, she seemed sad. It was very clear that she was not joking with him, and Alex found it very difficult to breathe, all of a sudden. It had to be a joke, didn’t it? But then again, if it wasn’t, if Rebecca was serious, then…

Then he had been asleep for weeks. More than a month.

Alex lurched forward in the bed, tearing the tape from one arm, the IV tube stretching and pulling against his skin. His eyes were bloodshot and wide with panic, his skin flushed and covered in cold sweat.

“No way,” he said, gritting his teeth, forcing himself up with his arms, “No, this can’t…”

Rebecca sighed softly, and then patted him gently on his knee. Alex’s expression froze, for a moment, in a rectus of fear and mania, and then he quietly folded back into the pillows behind him, his face gone placid and serene, his eyes wet but unworried. He felt a tremendous sense of calm, of assurance, like being wrapped in blankets on a cold day, like a memory he didn’t have of his mother’s hand resting on his forehead when he was very young.

“Sorry about that,” Rebecca apologized, “but if you freak out right now, you’re going to do yourself some harm. Plus, you’re going to bring down the whole of Central on our heads, and you definitely don’t want that.”

Alex put his head in his hands, feeling oddly empty, drained of the panic that he could only vaguely remember.

“Oh shit,” he said, his voice strained. “Edward. What happened to…?”

Rebecca shook her head slowly.

“He didn’t make it. The rest of them are fine, more or less. Mitsuru stayed down the hall for a week or so.”

“How could this happen?” He mumbled, from behind his hands.

Rebecca shook her head, and then reached reflexively for her cigarettes. She had the pack halfway out of her pocket before she remembered where she was, looked around her sadly, and then slid the pack back into her jeans with a sigh.

“You used a Black Protocol, Alex. You helped Mitsuru to kill that Weir, from what I hear, you basically froze the bastard somehow. I already told you this, but any time you use a Black Protocol, there is a price to pay. I hope that it seems worth it.”

Alex looked up at her sad expression incredulously.

“So I slept for a month? That seems…”

Rebecca looked downcast.

“I know,” she agreed, grimly. “That’s why Michael didn’t want you to use this ability at all. The price for a Black Protocol is always greater than what you get from using it, if you ask me. You know you aren’t the only one here in Central who uses them, right?”

“Well, Alice…” Alex said, nodding.

“Right,” Rebecca nodded. “Well, Alice forgets things every time she uses her protocol, Alex. The more she uses it, the more she does with it, the more of her memory is gone forever.” The stare Rebecca fixed him with was hard. “Do you know what she does when she’s not out being an Auditor, Alex?”

Alex shook his head. The calm that Rebecca had flooded him with earlier had started to ebb a bit, and he was having trouble following what she was saying, even with only the edges of the panic he’d felt nudging him.

“She has a room full of diaries, Alex, hundreds of them. And she spends most of her time reading them, or recording the day’s events.” Rebecca smiled unhappily. “So it’s not like she doesn’t know anything about her life, because she’s read about some of it. But she doesn’t remember much of it at all.”

“I don’t get it,” Alex said, closing his eyes and leaning his head back onto the pillow, still slightly damp with his sweat. “Why? Why did this happen?”

“We don’t know,” Rebecca said darkly. “We still don’t have any idea. But every M-class on record has the same problem. Unlimited power, a Black Protocol, and an exorbitant cost for using it.”

“Christ,” Alex said. “Who in the hell makes up all these rules?”

Rebecca smiled and patted him on the leg.

“Alice is an extreme example,” Rebecca said. “Not every M-class has problems on that scale, okay? She insists on using her protocol all the time, maybe more than any other Operator I’ve met, despite the consequences. Other people handle it better.”

Alex thought for a moment.

“Um, so, Mitsuru’s scars, then?”

“You little shit,” Rebecca said approvingly. “How did you figure that out?”

“Well, she cut herself when she saved me, that first night,” he said, smiling. “Before she used the barrier protocol. And then with what you just said… It doesn’t seem like you’d let someone that, uh, unstable work in the field, unless they had some truly exceptional abilities, right?”

“Yeah, more or less,” Rebecca admitted grudgingly, “Mitsuru’s kind of unique, though. A long time ago, there was a plan to help her avoid having to use her Black Protocol. The surgery, right? The implant. The whole idea had, you know,” Rebecca paused and looked briefly angry, “mixed results. It won’t be repeated, that’s for sure.”

“Wait, what?”

“Another time,” Rebecca said, shaking her head. “We don’t have all night, and I came here to talk to you about some important things. I can’t be the only one in Central who knows you woke up, so it will be common knowledge, soon.”

“What’s up with Eerie? Why isn’t she waking up?”

Rebecca smiled and stroked Eerie’s cheek gently with the back of her hand.

“I fixed it so she won’t wake up until we are finished. She’s fast asleep, dreaming about something that makes her happy,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “This is, actually, one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Making Eerie happy is one of the things you wanted to talk about?”

Alex fought off the urge to pinch himself, just to be sure this wasn’t an extremely odd dream.

“Sort of. You see, I’ve known Eerie since she could walk without falling over, and I’ve never seen her latch on to someone the way she has with you. I think this is probably a new experience for her, and I’m not sure what to make of it — she’s not human, after all, not really.” Rebecca frowned, pulling her feet up onto the seat, clutching her knees to her chest. “I don’t know what it means, that Eerie is acting this way. I mean, she’s not totally abnormal, I know she’s gone out with boys before. But she didn’t seem to particularly care about them, one way or the other. You didn’t,” she asked, her voice tolerant and frank, “you know, do anything with her, while you were in San Francisco, did you?”

“N-no,” Alex stammered. “Nothing like that. I’m not even sure that she likes me, you know. She doesn’t always act like it.”

Rebecca nodded sympathetically.