If there was one thing life had repeatedly taught Alex, it was the value of avoiding unnecessary confrontation. He didn’t like uniforms. But he started putting it on, anyway, because he didn’t see any other good options.
There were certain things in life that were going to happen — institutional life had taught him that. You would, for example, wear your uniform as directed. You would be in your cell by six. Lights would go out at nine. You would be up, dressed and bed made by eight the next morning. All of these things were going to happen, whether you felt like doing them or not. The only option that Alex had been offered was whether or not he would prefer to have his teeth kicked down his throat in the process.
And you’d have to be stupid to make a choice like that. They said this was a school, and that was fine. But, in Alex’s experience, school wasn’t so different from any other institution — with uniforms, rules, privileges, dormitories and grounds; there would be principals imparted and edges smoothed out. He’d been the target of such manufacture before, and he knew that he’d gain nothing by getting caught up in the gears.
Add to that, Alex thought, pulling on the button-up shirt awkwardly over the sheath of plastic that wrapped his injured forearm, the fact that Michael was one scary dude, smile or no. Alex didn’t really know that many black guys personally, but he didn’t think that made much of a difference, in this case. He’d never met anyone who looked like him, with the tattoos and the dreadlocks and then the suit, but apparently he worked as some kind of teacher.
Alex fumbled the top button on his collar into place, and then wondered if it was actually supposed to be that tight. Maybe guys usually left the top one undone? He couldn’t remember.
Michael seemed pretty friendly, and that was interesting on its own. Alex hadn’t met many people who didn’t despise him, and he wasn’t overly eager to make him angry. If he was going to be a part of this school, or whatever it was, then Michael seemed to be in a position to make it all go easier for Alex. No, he thought, wincing as he pulled on the tight slacks. There was no point in arguing with Michael. Alex was sure that he would lose, and he didn’t pick fights that he knew he would lose.
He would practice patience, he thought, tucking his shirt into his pants with his off-hand. He’d treat it the same way he’d handled guards, administrators, psychologists, teachers, all that noise — he’d smile when they expected smiles and he’d stay quiet when he could. Whenever possible, he would tell the truth, because lies were more complicated — telling lies meant being meticulous, consistent, remembering who’d been told what. It was a burden, at best; at worst, it could ruin whatever opportunities he might have here. That said, when he chose to speak, he’d try and make as sure as possible it was what they wanted to hear.
And the whole time, he’d be watching. Keeping careful track of everything they said and did. Observation was important. And he knew already that they’d misjudged him, and he’d helped it along a bit. He almost laughed then, as he tucked his feet into the leather shoes, because it was so clear that they didn’t get it — he didn’t lack social skills, not because he came from a town that openly despised him.
Not when it took extraordinary skills just to make it through the day. But, in a lot of ways, it might be better if they thought of him as a bit lost, a bit naive. It would make them more likely to help him, and Alex wanted their help, he wanted it very badly indeed.
Alex didn’t trust Michael, but he liked him, at least a little bit. Alex didn’t want to go to school, but the way he figured it, they’d make him go either way, at least for a few more years. And it couldn’t possibly be any worse than repeating his junior year.
Alex looked himself over in the mirror grimly. He looked battered, skinny, and the blazer and slacks felt unfamiliar and tight. It wasn’t, he thought, the presentation he’d like to make for his big introduction. He’d have to do his best, then, to avoid making those kinds of impressions.
Alex shrugged and walked out the door and into the hallway. He was so absorbed in trying to find his way to the downstairs lobby that he didn’t even notice when Michael started walking next to him, wearing that smile that Alex liked but didn’t trust one bit.
“You look uncomfortable, kid,” Michael said cheerfully. “Nervous about this whole thing?”
“Well, yeah,” Alex admitted, “who wouldn’t be? But I didn’t think that the school would have uniforms,” Alex said, gesturing at the blue blazer and slacks, “it seems kind of, I don’t know, weird. Like some prep school thing.”
Michael laughed and clapped Alex on the back.
“Don’t worry about it too much — you only have to wear it for lectures. The rest of the time, you can dress however you want.”
Michael led him to a bank of elevators, and then pressed the down button. There was almost no wait, and the door chime when the elevator opened filled Alex with a strange, comforting familiarity. Elevators, at least, he understood.
Well, okay. He didn’t understand them at all. But they were a recognizable part of his world.
“What happened to my clothes, anyway?”
The elevator started its descent with an unholy squealing of metal on metal, and worn gears grinding, that caused Alex to flinch, but Michael didn’t even seem to notice.
“Sorry, but they were pretty much bloody rags by the time you got here — and anyway, I think the doctors cut them off you in order to operate,” Michael said apologetically. “We got someone to go around to your place, though, and collect your things. I’ve had them dropped off in your new room.”
Alex nodded a bit skeptically. He wasn’t entirely sure what his ‘things’ could have possibly constituted — he’d lived in his grandmother’s tiny trailer, and most of the things in it had been hers. Only some clothes, his MP3 player, and maybe some movies could be considered his, so he was curious what was waiting for him. He had a vision of his grandmother’s absurdly large Christmas gnome cookie-jar sitting on a desk in a dorm room, and had to choke back a giggle.
The elevator opened on to a lobby that looked to Alex’s eyes to be identical to the lobby of every hospital he’d ever been to. Only Michael, towering over the bustling crowd of nurses and patients, dreadlocks hanging down to his shoulders, looked out of place. He strode across the lobby briskly, and Alex found himself struggling to keep pace with the big man’s stride.
The grounds outside the hospital did look to Alex like a university — concrete paths winding through grassy areas, a number of angular buildings made out of a strange, dull stone, set back discretely from each other, surrounded by old oak and birch trees. The weather was warm fall weather not unlike California — and not for the first time, Alex wondered where they were, exactly. Somewhere that the weather was pretty similar to home, anyway, if that meant anything.
They followed a winding path through the grounds, Alex trailing a few feet behind Michael, who made no attempt to converse. Occasionally, they were passed by other students, or at least other people in uniforms similar to his own. Alex didn’t seem to attract much more than passing glances, though everyone acknowledged Michael with at least a nod, and received a cheerful greeting in return. Alex was not particularly surprised to discover that Michael appeared to know the first name of everyone that they came across.
The building Michael led them to, a few minutes’ walk from the hospital, reminded Alex of a church, or one of the older government buildings in D.C. — made from the same grey stone he’d seen earlier, with ornate columns and a weird round overhang out in front. The windows on either side of the giant wooden door were stained glass, done in an abstract and colorful style. It was imposing, even in the mild afternoon sunlight, dark wood with dull metal inlays, formal and a bit grotesque.
Alex wondered how they were going to enter the building, given that the door appeared to be twelve feet tall and cut from a single piece of wood, but as they got closer, he realized that the door had a secondary, standard-size entry set in it, so close to flush that it was invisible from a distance. Michael held it open, gesturing for Alex to enter.
It was cold inside the building, and Alex shivered as he walked inside the enormous central chamber, a long expense of alternating black and white marble tile with curled stairways at intervals along the hall, climbing up to the ornate girding of the second floor. The hallway went far enough along in a straight line that Alex could not see the end of it. The building appeared sparsely populated, as he saw only a handful of people moving purposefully from office to office, dressed in typical business attire rather than the school uniform.
“Welcome to the Administration building, Alex. We’ve got a few things to take care of here, regarding your enrollment, then we’ll see about giving you a look around the campus, and get you set up in the dorms. Right through here…”
Michael led him down the hall, then up the third staircase on the right, through a heavy walnut door, and into an airy office with an excessive number of potted plants. There was a heavy-set woman in a purple dress there, working behind a white-painted desk, who smiled cheerfully when they walked in. Michael greeted her with a wave.
“Mrs. Nesbit, my secretary extraordinaire. Alexander Warner, a new student. Could you prepare the paperwork?”
She nodded and began tapping away at her keyboard, while Michael led Alex through another door to a smaller back office. He sat down behind a desk littered with books, piles of paper, and an aged desktop computer, nodding wearily toward a comfortable-looking chair in the corner of the room. Alex sat down gratefully, his back sore and his forearm aching, even after his stay in the hospital.
“You’ve got good timing, Alex. We are between sessions right now,” Michael said, clearing an area in front of him by moving what appeared to be a partially disassembled firearm, piece by piece, into a desk drawer. “Most of the students are back at home. We’ll be able to get you installed at the dorms and enrolled in class right from the first day.”
“What kind of classes?”
Alex spoke in monotone, unable to hide his unhappiness at the thought.
Michael laughed.
“I doubt very much that you’ll find it boring, Alex, but I can’t tell you much until we figure out what you can learn, okay? We won’t try and teach you anything that you don’t want to know.”
“I don’t get it.”
Michael seemed terribly amused by Alex’s recalcitrance.
“Don’t worry about it too much. At first, it will be general stuff. We’ll have you do some tests, so we can figure out the proper placement for you. It’ll probably be a bit hard, to start with, but I think you’ll find that it’s not that bad once you get the hang of how it all works.”
“Will everyone know what’s going on but me?”
“No, but you will be at a disadvantage,” Michael said thoughtfully. “No use pretending otherwise. Sometimes the talent runs in families, but mostly it doesn’t. Some of the students here have been raised as part of a cartel, but most of the others, like you, were discovered in the world, as children or early teens. It’s a bit unusual to be starting at your age, but it’s not unheard of. But yes,” Michael added sympathetically, “most of the students will probably have a better idea of what’s going on than you do.”
“You’re going to have to explain it, then,” Alex said firmly. “I’m going to need to know about it all, Michael.”
“I’ll do my best to explain,” he said, as Mrs. Nesbit entered with a quick knock and deposited a stack of folders on a recently cleared patch of desk. “Two coffees, Mrs. Nesbit. How do you take yours, Alex?”
Alexander hesitated for a moment. He’d never cared much for coffee. It made him nervous. But then again, given the circumstances…
“Milk and sugar,” he decided, because it sounded right to him. “Lots, please.”
Mrs. Nesbit nodded and bustled back out to the main room, shutting the door behind her. Michael deposited the new stack of paperwork on one of the already daunting piles and then sat back in his swivel chair, folding his hands behind his head.
“Do you mind if I start with the hard part first, Alex?”
Michael’s smile folded up and disappeared, and his big, brown eyes got sad. Alex braced himself without knowing what was coming, and then managed a nervous nod.
“Okay, then. Nobody ever likes hearing this part, but most of the time, people have a bit more choice in the matter. You got the short end of the stick, son,” Michael said, so sympathetically that Alex couldn’t help but wonder if he was being genuine.
“We had no choice in the matter, you see, because of your injuries,” Michael continued. “You were dead by the time they got you to the infirmary, Alex. Your heart stopped on the elevator ride up. And even if the doctors had gotten it going again, you had spinal trauma and massive blood loss, not to mention clotting and impacted bone in your forearm. You would have died again on the operating table, you have to appreciate that.”
Alex was not entirely convinced that he did, but he let the big man keep talking.
“You were injected with almost two-ounces of water saturated with billions of particles of nanomachinery, Alexander, programmed for replication and recovery protocols,” Michael said, almost casually, as if it were a normal thing, regrettable perhaps, but something to be expected. “Your heart started beating about twenty seconds after the injection, and you started breathing again within a minute.”
Alex looked at his hands, at the blue veins running just underneath the skin, and wondered.
“Are they still inside me?”
The question seemed somehow terribly important, his throat dry and his voice hoarse. He had to fight the urge to scratch at his skin.
“I’m afraid so,” Michael replied, looking sadly at Alexander. “It’s not a reversible procedure, Alex.”
“Why would you do that?” He was almost shouting, halfway out of his chair and onto his feet. “Who told you could do that?”
“Sit down, Alex,” Michael ordered sternly. “I won’t bother to repeat the ‘you were dead already’ part, since we covered that, and move to the other half — we would have done it to you, anyway, regardless of the injuries. We would have asked your permission, but, hey, I was there, watching you bleed out, son. If you’d prefer that I explain myself fully to an unconscious kid, before deciding to try and save his life, well, I’m not sure how realistic your expectations are.”
Alex glared at Michael, hands knotted around the arms of his chair, for a long moment. Then he sat back, sighing.
“What exactly have you done to me?” he asked, resting his head in his hands.
“It’s not as bad as all that, son,” Michael said, his smile back. “They did save you, after all. And those little machines, the nanites, they can do it again, too, if it becomes necessary. You’ll find dying pretty difficult from here on out, my friend.”
Something in Michael’s tone resonated with Alex.
“Do you have them too?” he asked, almost pleaded. “Are there machines inside you?”
“Sure I do,” Michael said, reassuringly. “And so do all the students here, and the entire faculty. For people like us, it’s an absolute necessity.”
“Why?”
“You’ve got power inside you, Alex, like everyone else at the Academy, to one extent or another. We don’t know why, but you were born that way. But power isn’t everything…”
Alex shook his head, bewildered.
“Look at it like this,” Michael said, leaning forward in his chair excitedly, “electricity, it isn’t much good, all by itself, right?”
“Huh?”
“You don’t just build a power plant and then sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor, right? Electricity alone won’t do it. You need light bulbs, right?”
“Light bulbs?”
His response was nothing more than a weak echo.
“Power isn’t everything, Alex, I already told you. Application, that’s what we’re talking about now, son. Energy alone is meaningless, unless you can make it work for you, and you need tools for that. Something inside you provides the power, sure, but those nanomachines, they’re the tools. With them, you can apply energy, and do work.”
Alex raised his head from his hands to stare at Michael incredulously. Neither of them responded to the quick knock and rapid entry and exit of Mrs. Nesbit, and neither reached for the steaming coffee mugs she left behind.
“So, what can I do?” Alex asked dubiously. “I have powers, now, because of these machines inside me, right? Can I fly or something?”
Michael laughed and picked up his coffee.
“That’s good, Alex. I’m glad you asked about flying.”
“I can?”
Alex almost jumped out of his seat, gaping and incredulous.
“No, I’m afraid not,” Michael said, chuckling to himself, “but it’s good that you asked. Normal people ask about flying. Perverts ask if they can turn invisible.”
Alex almost choked on his first sip of too-sweet coffee.
“I’m just playing with you son, trying to lighten the mood,” Michael said, with an amiable grin. “Yes, you’ll be able to do some things, now, but we won’t know what till we do some tests. It’ll take some time. And a lot of it, like I mentioned earlier, will be up to you.”
“I get a choice?”
Alex set his mug down on the edge of the desk, hoping he had sipped enough to be considered polite. Apparently, being injected with some sort of mysterious nanomachinery had not changed his opinion of coffee for the better.
“To some extent,” Michael affirmed, “you do. What you are capable of, well, that’s predetermined, but what you do with it — that’s going to be a bit of a compromise. Some of it will be about what you want. Some of it will be about what we need from you.”
“Oh?”
Alex didn’t bother to hide the suspicion from his voice. Normally, he would have been more diplomatic, but this whole situation had shaken his reserve.
“Don’t make it sound so sinister,” Michael protested. “We are like any other organization, son. We’ve got operational needs, and we need the right personnel to fill them.”
“What kind of needs?”
Michael stood up and looked out the window at the trees, the top of the clock tower visible above the maples, the green slowly eroding from the leaves.
“Well, this place is a lot of things, Alex. Like any school, we need teachers. Our hospital needs doctors, just like any other. Our laboratories need scientists and engineers. Our network needs programmers. But I can already tell that stuff isn’t for you, son…”
The ‘son’ was starting to irk him a little, but he suppressed it. Alex didn’t plan on embarrassing himself any more today, not if he could help it.
“Yes?”
“Yes,” Michael turned away from the window to look at him benignly. “I’ve been doing this a long time, Alex, a lot longer than you probably think. And I can tell an Operator when I see one.”
“What’s an Operator?”
“Mitsuru is an Operator,” Michael said by way of an explanation, “And, a long time ago, I was too. An Operator is a field agent, Alex.”
“A soldier?”
“No, not just a soldier. Soldiers fight wars. Operators do work, war or no.”
Michael frowned and looked back out the window for a moment.
“The world functions within set parameters, you know that right? Physics, that’s basically a set of rules that we think everything follows. Operators can, to some extent, modify those parameters. In particular, Operators are trained to affect parameters relating to combat and intelligence work.”
“You mean they fight those werewolf things?”
Alex tried to push the conversation in a more prosaic direction. He wasn’t sure at all what Michael was talking about.
“Weir, Alex. They are called Weir. And not just them — Operators fight the Witches, the Outer Dark, and the things that came before man, the named and the nameless. All the enemies of Central, the enemies of mankind.”
“I have no idea what you just said. You want me to fight monsters?”
Alex could barely keep from laughing aloud. He’d already met werewolves, so it wasn’t that he didn’t believe Michael, not exactly. The whole thing sounded absurd, even in the face of recent experience.
“I think that you want to, son. I can see it in your eyes already. But Operators don’t spend all their time fighting monsters. They spend a great deal of it fighting each other, or worrying about having to.”
Alex eyes widened.
“Why?”
“We’re no better than they are,” Michael said ruefully. “Normal people, I mean. Humanity. We create families, allegiances, cartels — and then we scheme, Alex, we plot out agendas and attempt to advance them, or try to stop others from doing the very same thing. Just like in the real world, eh?”
“That’s pretty depressing,” Alex observed. “All this power you keep talking about, and the best thing you can think of to do with it is fighting each other? Couldn’t we use it to help people instead?”
“Seemed like Mitsuru helped you a lot the other night, you know,” Michael said dryly.
Alex shook his head.
“That’s not what I mean. Fighting monsters, that’s one thing, whatever they are. But why fight each other?”
“It’s complicated, on one level. On another, it’s the same old stupid story — we aren’t enlightened, Alex. We disagree, fall in love, and hate each other, the whole spectrum of human experience. We have differences of opinion, and sometimes, we can’t resolve those differences peacefully.” Michael started to sound a lot like a teacher to Alex, in a very mundane way. “If a disagreement goes for long enough, and is important enough, people start to take sides. Once people start taking sides, conflict is inevitable. No different here than anywhere else.”
“So what is the disagreement about?”
“How best to protect people,” Michael sighed. “How best to apply the power we have. Like I told you earlier, it’s not a good-guy bad-guy thing — we all agree that we have a responsibility to protect humanity. We just have differing opinions on the most effective way to do that.”
“Different enough that you’re willing to kill another?”
“Sure,” Michael said, shrugging. “Don’t tell me you can’t think of anything worth killing over.”
Alex wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he kept his mouth shut instead, and reached for the vile, cooling coffee.