Vivik wasn’t the kind of person to have many bad days. Nevertheless, today had been exceptionally good, even by his sunny standards.
At breakfast, for example, the cafeteria had French toast, which normally only happened on Tuesdays. He had two pieces himself, and then he finished one from Emily’s plate when she could not. Vivik loved French toast; plus, well, breakfast with Emily, right?
Even if Alex was there.
It wasn't as if he disliked Alex — actually, he considered him something of a friend. He was weirdly appealing, in a sleepy, distracted way. He had bouts of depression and bad moods, and he was particularly clueless about what not to say aloud, but Alex’s tendency to instantly, loudly despair in the face of adversity was actually somewhat endearing.
Then, of course, there was the whole thing with Emily. The situation wasn't strictly Alex's fault, but it remained a point of subtle contention between them.
Vivik had chemistry in the early afternoon, but the lecture was based on work with acids and bases that he had already done, so he was able to devote the two hours to his private scheme, all the while diligently taking notes on automatic pilot, in case. He spent an hour in the library, running down references for his pet project, and then returned to the cafeteria for lunch, where he settled for pasta and salad with Renton, who was, as always, funny in a mean way.
Vivik had enough time left to go back to the dorms and take a nap before calculus, which was exactly what he did. He couldn’t always sleep during the day, but this afternoon he got a solid forty-five minutes and went to class feeling energized and cheerful. The lecture was new to him, and he liked the teacher, Mr. Chan, a squat Taiwanese patriot with a heavy accent who often interrupted his class to denounce the mainland, so the time flew by. After class, he stayed late with his study group, going over equations and cracking jokes about comic books and Star Wars and Internet parody videos related to comic books and Star Wars. He left the classroom around six, satisfied that he had made it through an entire day, the third in a row, in fact, without anyone asking him about his sullen new friend. He practically skipped all the way to the dorm, dropped off his books, washed his face and rewrapped his hair, and changed out of his uniform and into jeans and a polo shirt. Vivik whistled tunelessly to himself as he walked to the cafeteria, hoping for spinach ravioli.
Instead, three lurkers waylaid him the moment he stepped out into the quad.
They smiled as they called him over, and they were friendly enough for Hegemony kids, but he already knew what they wanted before they had a chance to ask. It was a minute or two before they politely worked their way around to the question, breaking the longest streak he had run since winter break, and souring his day.
Of course, they wanted to know about Alex.
Renton was out-of-breath, but he tried to deliver his news anyway. Svetlana flitted annoyingly around him; patting him on the back, cooing, looking concerned, and generally making a spectacle of herself. Anastasia waved her away tersely, and then waited for Renton to stop wheezing long enough to explain what had him so excited. She popped up out of her chair when she heard his news, and even with heels and her hair up, she barely made it to Renton’s chest. When she started pacing, the black Weir in the heavy silver collar that had been dozing beneath her chair whined, sat up, and then followed her at a discreet distance.
“When did they get back? How did I not know about this?”
“They were just hanging around the quad, talking to Vivik,” Renton said, still a bit red in the face. “I don’t know when they got back, or how the precognitives could have missed it. I came here as soon as I saw them.”
Anastasia huffed, and then turned on her heel, pacing away from him, lost in thought.
“All three of them, back at the Academy,” she mused, clearly talking to herself. “I suppose the Hegemony has finally lost faith in Emily, and now they’re bringing in the big guns. Grigori, Chandi, and Hope.”
“Chandi wasn’t with them,” Renton said, shaking his head. “It was Hope and Grigori, and some other guy I didn’t recognize.”
“She is at the Academy somewhere,” Anastasia said, pausing to glance at a mirror on the wall and make minor adjustments to her intricately styled hair. “Chandi is the only Hegemony precognitive powerful enough to block our own pool this way. She wouldn't delegate a situation like this to an underlying. She will handle this affair personally. The only question, then, is where she will start — Alex or Emily?”
“Well, they were asking Vivik questions…”
“Grigori or Hope will talk to Alex, then. That means Chandi is looking for Emily right now.”
Renton nodded, his face returning to its normal, ruddy color. His brown hair was hopelessly in disarray and swept up in a cowlick; Anastasia clucked her disapproval, sat him down in a chair in front of her, and then produced a comb from her tiny antique purse and ran it roughly through his unruly locks. Renton winced when she pulled at the tangles, but he did not look particularly unhappy at the attention.
“Has Emily said anything to you yet?”
“Since she asked about the cost? No, I believe that she is still torn. But, if they are here to light a fire underneath her, then I think that will change.”
“What if Chandi and Hope decide to replace Emily?” Renton asked, gritting his teeth while she tugged on a particularly stubborn knot.
“That would be a waste of the time and energy they have invested. Chandi will not give up on Emily immediately. First, she will give her an ultimatum, and then observe the results. I’m certain that the Hegemony has other options in reserve, in case Emily’s best effort does not succeed, but Chandi stands to lose nothing by offering her a final opportunity.”
Anastasia straightened his head so that she could examine it in the mirror, then she expertly parted his hair down the middle, in a perfectly straight line. After a brief inspection, she smiled in satisfaction and released him. Renton stood up, looking at himself at the mirror and patting his neatly combed hair fretfully.
“Okay. What do you want to do, Ana?”
Renton watched her reflection in the mirror as she wandered back to her desk with Blitzen, the black Weir, firmly in tow, the embroidered hem of her dress trailing along the tasseled edges of the carpet. Anastasia picked up one of the Swiss fountain pens that her father had bought her, and toyed idly with it, spinning it between her small fingers. She was wearing a simple, sheer black dress; it was Renton’s favorite, and not only because Anastasia never wore it outside of the small home the Academy had provided for her.
“I still have time,” Anastasia decided, setting the pen carefully back down in its matching gold-plated stand. “I will wait for Emily to come to me. Chandi will meet with her, and make all sorts of dramatic threats. Emily will be forced to compromise her virtue, or deal with me.”
“Emily won’t put out,” Renton said, adjusting the knot in his tie and wishing he could rearrange his hair, but not wanting to upset Anastasia. “She’s a prude.”
“Is that so?” Anastasia glanced over at him with laughter in her eyes. “You say that because she refused you?”
Renton blushed and turned his attention back to his reflection, too flustered to formulate a response.
“You may be correct,” Anastasia added thoughtfully. “I think she would prefer to get in bed with the Black Sun than with a boy who cannot decide if he likes her. This leaves only one concern outstanding — Alexander Warner.”
Anastasia reached out to pet the Weir that was practically sitting on her feet, begging for attention, while she considered.
“Grigori,” she concluded, nodding to herself. “Chandi will use Grigori. Renton, find out where Alex is now. If I know that boy, he is bound to upset Grigori sooner rather than later. Let’s arrange for sooner, shall we? Oh, and call Katya, would you? It is time to put her to work as well. It’s time for Alex to learn something useful.”
“If you say so, though I still think using Katya is a bad idea. She’s unpredictable at best. However, that’s your call. So, you and I are going to hang back and watch things develop?”
“No, silly boy,” Anastasia scolded, sitting back down behind her desk, which always made her look younger than she actually was. “We do what we do best. We make friends.”
The girl on the other side of the table from Emily was built like a bird, with sharp features and wrist bones like sticks on her neatly folded arms. Her skin was an even, lustrous brown, her hair cut short and fashionable, almost boyish, and she had small, round spectacles that hung precariously from her nose. Chandi Tuesday was often mistaken, Emily knew, for an Indian, but she was in fact from Abu Dhabi.
“Emily Muir,” she said in a clipped British accent, with a smile that seemed as perfunctory as a fold at the end of a toilet paper roll in a gas station bathroom. “ So good of you to come.”
Emily was too flustered to do anything but nod, smile, and take the proffered chair. Chandi kept her waiting while she made a show of reviewing the files in front of her. Emily knew that she must have read them already — in fact, Chandi Tuesday had such a reputation for exhaustive preparation that she would not have been surprised if the girl already knew them by heart.
Emily tried looking for her halo, and saw nothing, as she had expected. Chandi Tuesday was an F-Class Operator, and rumors hinted at the potential for M-Class in her future. Emily didn’t need to peak at the contents of the reports on the desk to know what they contained.
“I have reviewed your reports in regards to Alexander Warner,” Chandi said, still looking down at the papers in front of her. “And I have a few questions I’d like to ask you. That is,” she asked, glancing up briefly, “if you aren’t too busy?”
“No, not at all,” Emily said dishonestly, running one hand through her still damp hair. She had been showering when the summons had arrived, and she hadn’t taken the time to dry off before running over here. She would regret it later, of course. Her hair, if not dried properly, became insufferably poufy. “What would you like to know, Miss Tuesday?”
“The two of you seem to spend considerable time together,” Chandi said, running one finger along a line of text. “But, it is not entirely clear to me whether or not the two of you have developed a romantic relationship. Tell me, what progress have you made?”
“Well,” Emily said, fluttering her hands in front of her, “as you said, we spend a lot of time together…”
“Then you aren’t dating Alexander Warner?”
Emily hesitated for a moment, and then shook her head reluctantly.
“Not exactly. But we have been seeing a lot of each other! I have been tutoring him for homeroom, and we eat breakfast and dinner together almost every day. We’ve been on dates, and I’ve had him over to my house.”
Chandi Tuesday raised one pencil-thin eyebrow, so that it peaked out from behind her ridiculously mousey glasses.
“Then your relationship is a physical one, yes?”
“Not yet,” Emily admitted, biting her lip. “It’s not exactly easy. Alex is very shy, and he’s never had a girlfriend before, so he isn’t exactly sure what to do, and…”
Chandi raised up a hand to interrupt her.
“You are telling me that it is difficult to convince this boy to sleep with you?”
“Y-yes,” Emily said, her cheeks burning. “I know how ridiculous that sounds, but it’s true. I have been trying.”
“Really?” Chandi said, looking skeptical. “I don’t mean to argue, but it seems a bit odd that a girl of your charms would have so many difficulties with such an average boy. In my experience, most girls have to try fairly hard to avoid male attention.”
Emily stared at the ground in front of her, blushing and feeling ugly, useless, and very, very angry with the condescending, sanctimonious girl in front of her. She wondered bitterly if Chandi’s marching orders had ever included having sex with someone she had only just met.
“As much as I hate to suggest such a thing,” Chandi said, not sounding as if she hated it very much. “Perhaps it is simply an issue of personal attraction? Is it possible that you are simply not Alexander Warner’s type?”
Emily blushed ever more furiously, and wished desperately for a hole she could crawl in, a meteor to strike the building, a fire to break out — anything to get her away from the office and this horrible conversation. She could see her chances of staying at the Academy dwindling in front of her while they talked, and her mind scrambled desperately for defenses, excuses, rationales that would keep her here.
“I am certain that he does,” Emily insisted, feeling ashamed. “But things with Alex are complicated.”
“Be that as it may,” Chandi said, frowning. “We are here to deal with complicated situations, yes? Now, could you tell me who this ‘Eerie’ person is, and why her last name doesn’t appear in any of my files?”
Emily’s heart had already sunk, but at the mention of that girl’s name, her heart seemed to fall right through the floorboards, and she was not sure where it stopped. Emily wondered who had ratted her out, and if there was any way at all for her to stay at the Academy, after this. The thought of returning to her home a failure was poisonous, but once the idea entered her mind, it spread like wildfire, sapping her of her poise and confidence.
“Eerie is a changeling. I don’t know if she even has a last name,” Emily said, more bitterly than she intended. “She is our classmate, and also friends with Alex.”
“I see,” Chandi noted primly. “Then, perhaps the changeling is the ‘complication’ in the situation? Warner appears to spend a fair amount of time with her, not to mention that strange business in San Francisco.”
Emily fought the urge to hang her head, blinked back the stinging tears from her eyes. She was not, she decided, giving Tuesday the satisfaction of breaking down. If she were going to cry, it would not be here.
“Eerie is interested in Alex, I suppose. She’s certainly managed to get my way several times. However, she’s a Changeling — she is not, well… sane or normal. She’s not even human! I can’t imagine that Alex would fall for her.”
“She is your rival for Alexander Warner’s attentions, then?”
“You don’t understand, Miss Tuesday…”
Again, Chandi interrupted her with that annoyingly confident and solicitous smile.
“Let me tell you what I do understand, Miss Muir, and you can correct me when I am mistaken.”
She flipped quickly through the pages in front of her, settling her finger on a specific line, but Emily did not believe for a minute that she had actually had to look it up. The files were a prop, nothing more. After all, Chandi Tuesday was a precognitive.
Emily didn’t know much about how precognition worked on a practical level. Like everyone else at the Academy, she had studied probability grids and matrices in homeroom, and she understood the basic theory. As Vivik had explained patiently to her one cram session, precognition wasn’t so different from empathy, in that every precognitive had a different way to perceiving possible futures. Some precognitives experienced visions like ancient Catholic saints, often in the throes of epileptic seizures. Others had prophetic dreams, and woke screaming and crying over potential tragedies, still years away and uncertain. Perhaps the most coveted were precognitives who used a codified system of visualization techniques, perceiving potential futures as a tangle of threads, a pattern of multicolored lights, or even as wholly fictional roadmaps. With one important consistency — precognitives did not actually see the future, but rather various possible futures.
The main thing Emily had taken from Vivik’s lecture was the knowledge that precognitives couldn’t interact with the world around them in a normal way, tormented by the burden of their abilities. They were bad with people, the inverse of an empath. Vivik claimed that an abnormal percentage of them were subject to autism and schizophrenia. Certainly, it was rare for one to attend the Academy; assuming the rumors about Anastasia Martynova’s protocol were wrong, then Chandi Tuesday was among the few in the student body. The rest, according to the stories she had heard, were kept in isolation, hidden away in old family manors and behavioral institutions, working in seclusion or in ‘pools’ with other precognitives. For all her arrogance, all her self-assurance, Emily was starting to see that Chandi was no exception, that she also didn’t ‘get’ people.
“What I understand,” Chandi continued haughtily, “is that your relationship with Alexander Warner is nothing more than a friendship. I believe that you overstated your progress in the reports you submitted to the Hegemony, in order to secure your position here at the Academy. Furthermore, it appears that you failed to report the advances of this,” Chandi paused distastefully, “Eerie, or her success relative to your own. It seems entirely possible to me that your misrepresentation has allowed this changeling an opportunity to get close to Warner, when another Hegemony operative might have had more success, had you been forthright enough to inform leadership and step aside. Now, Miss Muir — where am I wrong?”
Chandi Tuesday was so smug and self-satisfied that she did not even notice the change in Emily’s demeanor when she spoke.
“Well, Chandi,” Emily said, putting emphasis on her first name, “do you mind if I ask you a question?”
“I suppose,” Chandi allowed, peering at Emily suspiciously through her comical glasses.
“Thanks,” Emily said cheerfully, as if they were friends having a chat. “Tell me, have you ever had a boyfriend?”
“What?” Chandi said, gasping audibly.
Emily felt a cruel satisfaction. Whatever precognitive abilities Chandi possessed, they clearly had not helped her anticipate the conversation going in this direction. Her confidence grew commensurately; after all, if Emily had blindsided Chandi once, then she could do it again.
“No offense,” Emily continued casually, twirling a lock of her hair in one hand, “but I’m guessing you’ve never been with a guy, right?”
Chandi’s hand froze halfway on its way to cover her gaping mouth. Emily scored another point for herself on her mental chalkboard. She had figured that any girl raised in Abu Dhabi would have to be a prude, even if she didn’t wear a headscarf.
“Well, Chandi, I have,” Emily continued cheerfully. “And believe me, I know when a guy is interested. And Alex is definitely interested. But with that boy, things are never simple.”
Tuesday’s composure was slipping. If Emily needed any more proof than the way her face had gone pale, she could now make out the faintest indications of a halo over her head, thin and transparent, too faint to read, but unmistakably visible. Emily said a brief mental apology to Alex for the confidence that she was about to break, promising herself that she would make it up to him, and then plunged on ahead.
“Alex has a history, Chandi, and it’s a bad one. Something happened with his family before he came here, and he took the blame. Now he has trouble trusting anyone, much less an empath that he knows has a stake in recruiting him. Despite all that, I have gotten through to him. We had breakfast together this morning, for God’s sake. He is starting to trust me. I know that he likes me. But this isn’t going to happen according to a timetable.”
Chandi cleared her throat, looking uncertainly from one side to the other, as if she was seeking support from invisible companions.
“That all may be as you say, but your instructions were not to make friends with Alexander Warner…”
“Alex,” Emily said firmly. “He likes to be called Alex. Moreover, my instructions were to build a relationship with him, to make him trust me, to make him fall in love with me, if it all possible. And that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
Chandi appeared to be restoring her composure, little by little, her eyes seeking the reassurance of the files in front of her automatically.
“But if this Eerie person has managed to spend the night with him…”
“Nothing happened,” Emily said, shaking her head.
“How do you know?”
“Check the files, Anastasia Martynova was in that room with them,” Emily said, taking a deep breath before saying the thing she knew she would hate herself for later. “Besides, Alex is a virgin.”
Chandi’s eyebrow started its creep upward again, and Emily could not help herself.
“And you know how difficult that makes these things,” she added sweetly.
Chandi blushed, and then turned her attention back to the files, transparently playing for time while she reviewed records. Emily shifted in her seat while she waited for a response, wishing she could leave, not daring to. She managed to keep her feelings of guilt at bay for now. It wasn’t as if she had a choice. Revealing Alex’s secrets was the only way she could see to stay at the Academy.
“I see,” Chandi said, finally looking up from the files in front of her. “At the very least, you have succeeded in becoming his confidant.”
“Yes. At least.”
“Which leads me to believe that your chances might be better than I had originally suspected,” Chandi said grudgingly. “I will be generous. You have until the start of summer session.”
“What?” Emily asked, shocked. “You’ve got to be kidding. That’s not even two months.”
“That’s right,” Chandi confirmed, clearly enjoying paying Emily back for her earlier brashness. “The Hegemony cannot wait any longer. In the meantime, we will put contingency plans in place, in the event that you should fail.”
“You’re already bringing in replacements?” Emily protested. “You’re not giving me a chance…”
“On the contrary,” Chandi said, closing the file in front of her emphatically. “I’m giving you more of a chance than I am inclined to. Whatever you are planning, I suggest you do it soon.”
Vivik had a number of fantasies, extremely private ones, which involved Emily being in his room. Moreover, this was the most intimate contact he had ever had with her, and they were very much alone. And sitting together on his bed, no less.
If he felt a little bitter that she was crying, quite literally into his shoulder, then he also felt that he merited some forgiveness. Vivik patted Emily’s back clumsily, overwhelmed with the normal male confusion and dismay in the face of a woman’s tears, unable to put the fact that he could feel her bra strap underneath her sweater when he touched her back completely out of his mind. It was hard not to feel conflicted when Emily was sitting on his bed, pressing her face against his chest, while sobbing over his friend, classmate and neighbor.
“There, there…” Vivik said lamely, casting about for something comforting to offer her. “Can I get you a tissue or something?”
He regretted the statement as soon as he finished making it, but it Emily carried on crying as if he hadn’t said anything at all, which might have actually been for the best. He let her continue for a few more minutes before he tried again.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Vivik asked hesitantly, not at all sure that he wanted her to.
Emily said something unintelligible, her voice muffled and her face still pressed against his damp shirt.
“What?”
Emily sat up, rubbing her eyes and then wordlessly accepting the tissue that Vivik offered her, discreetly wiping her eyes and sniffling. Vivik made a conscious effort not to look at the wet patch on his shirt that stuck uncomfortably to his skin.
“Is that it?” Emily asked him, her eyes wet and trembling, the tissue clutched in her hands.
“Is what it?”
“Her chest!” Emily howled miserably, again burying her head in his shirt, this time using the other shoulder. “Is that it? Is that why he’s so obsessed with her?”
Vivik figured out what they were talking about, and then blushed furiously. He was somewhat glad that Emily was too busy sobbing to notice.
“Ah. Well, we don’t really talk about that sort of thing,” Vivik lied. “But I don’t think it’s that. Anyway,” he said, hesitating when she looked over suddenly, “Eerie’s not really that… big.”
“Then, what is wrong with me?” Emily demanded, looking up at him with bloodshot eyes and a runny nose. He handed her another tissue automatically, and wished that he could change his shirt. “Why is he being so weird?”
Vivik weighed his options. He had a strict policy of noninvolvement in cartel affairs, one that had kept him moderately safe until now. Nevertheless, Emily was a friend; moreover, Emily was the girl that he often found himself thinking of right before he fell asleep. He liked Emily, he really did, and he had since the first time they had talked. Vivik wanted her to get what she wanted, and for her to be happy, but he wasn’t sure he wanted that badly enough to help her into Alex’s arms. Besides, Vivik told himself, it wasn’t as if Alex was hurting for attention, feeling increasingly comfortable with the idea. Alex seemed to view Emily as a more of a burden than anything else, much of the time.
“I’m just his friend. We don’t talk about girls much,” Vivik continued on, a little stunned that lying had suddenly become so easy. “And I honestly don’t know what’s up with him and Eerie. Ever since Alex started the Program, he is barely ever around, and when he is, he spends most of his time sleeping. He doesn’t eat with her, and he doesn’t sit next to her in class. Why are you so worried?”
Emily sniffled and looked miserable; curling her bare, tanned legs beneath her, stretched across the top of Vivik’s neatly made bed.
“They know, Vivik,” she said, crumpling the tissue in her hand. “The Hegemony. Chandi Tuesday showed up today and threatened me. They want results, and they know all about Alex and Eerie. Vivik,” she said intensely, seizing his hand in her own, “they are going to kick me out of the Academy. My father will marry me off to some old man, and that will be that.”
Vivik opened his mouth to protest, and then thought better of it. Emily was right, of course, and that was part of it. The other part was that he did not want her to let go of his hand. The way he saw it, it wasn’t even a betrayal of Alex — after all, he had been frank with Vivik many times as to his uncertainty when it came to Emily. Surely, he was not doing anything wrong by spending time with the girl he liked, regardless of her intentions. Was it even possible, he wondered, for Emily’s obsessive quest for Alex to lead her in his direction?
You never know, Vivik thought, until you try, reaching as subtly as possible for the box of tissues.