LAHQ Academy

Alex did sleep eventually, and enough that they overslept. Neither of them had thought to set an alarm, so they woke up to loud knocking. Alex was bolt upright in a second while Quaid groaned, “What?”

Casey suddenly was standing in their room where there had been nothing before. Alex didn’t think he’d ever get used to something like that.

“Come on,” she urged. “We’re gonna be late for class.”

They both noticed the time together. Alex didn’t really have a concept of when the Academy’s day started, so he didn’t really care, but Quaid was swearing and scrambling to get dressed. If Alex missed class, he wasn’t going to lose sleep, so he got up but didn’t rush, throwing on his jeans and being grateful there was no one there to talk him into hideous slacks. Reeve. The Story from last night filtered back in, but before he had a moment to process that, he was ushered out the door.

“Did we miss breakfast?” he asked instead, mindful of his belly.

Casey’s eyes flashed. “No, trust me, you do not want breakfast before InfoWE.”

Quaid moaned miserably. Alex scrunched up his face at her obvious tone. “Info we?”

“No, it’s an acronym. It stands for Information Withholding and Extraction.”

He nodded automatically. No wonder he hadn’t been able to make out those words on the schedule. Then the meaning trickled in. “Wait, what?” He looked to Quaid.

They looked flattened. “Yeah, it’s torture class.”

Torture class? Alex slowed down, but Casey took his arm to hurry him along.

“It’s not really,” she jumped in.

“Casey,” Quaid deadpanned. “In what way is it not torture class?”

She puffed up her chest to respond, then shut her mouth instead. After a moment of silence she continued as if she’d answered his question and was moving on. “Anyway it’s important. To protect all knacked people, Sol has to be kept a secret, so we have to learn how to not talk under duress.”

“And get other people to talk?” Quaid muttered.

Alex was staring them both down hard. “You’ve done this?” he asked Quaid.

He nodded, looking ill. “My foster team does it monthly. Yours doesn’t?”

“Fuck no!” If any of them had tried to torture him as a lesson or some shit, he’d have hitchhiked out of there faster than they could say “waterboarding.”

“The getting-people-to-talk is more for people who end up in Saturn,” she explained on the elevator, as though it made it better, “but still. It’s important to have all the skills we could possibly need if we’re going to work in the field.”

“You’re actually not joking. Holy shit.” Alex began to prepare a lecture in his mind to give Reeve for not fucking warning him about torture class.

She led them out of the elevator and down a hall he didn’t recognize. It wasn’t full of students, like the classroom hallways he’d been in. It was all only intensifying his feeling of dread.

Casey went on with something that bordered on glee. “Today we’re learning more about stress positions, which are really cool because the position does all the work for you. And it’s something you can prepare for! I’ve been practicing one of them every night before I go to sleep, to see how long I can hold it.”

“What?” Quaid and Alex both said at once.

“Yeah, I was able to do ten minutes last night. Tonight, I’ll probably be a little wiped, so I won’t worry about beating my record.”

Alex considered doing a U-turn. “You went back to your room after lights out and put yourself into a torture stress position?”

“It’s a great way to get tired if you're not sleepy! Not that I need help falling asleep.”

“You’re out of your frizzy little dome,” Quaid told her.

She shrugged as if all of this were logical. “I want to build up my tolerance so I can stick it to all the Saturn kids who think they’re tougher than Neptune. No one is better than Neptune.”

“You want to beat Anise at a Saturn skill is what you mean.”

“Maybe,” she admitted. “ Here,” she pointed to a restroom. “Use the bathroom and then go through those doors.” She gestured at a set of doors with a small “InfoWE” label to the left of it. “Meet you in there!”

She teleported away, leaving Quaid and Alex alone.

“Honestly,” Alex asked, “what are my odds if I make a run for it?”

“Zero.”

They used the bathroom and reluctantly came back out into the hallway. Alex did not want to go through those doors for a lot of reasons, mainly because being tortured did not seem like a reasonable teacher-led experience, but also because he was a fucking psychometrist. He did not want to sit in that room, but he was running out of hallway between himself and it. He was starting the process of trying to quiet his knack as much as he had the skill to when the doors opened and the bright blue vice principal walked out.

He gave something of a smile seeing them. “Alex, can I see you for a minute?”

Alex gave Quaid a look that said he wasn’t sure if this was better or worse than where they were headed. “Sure.”

Quaid smiled awkwardly and went into the classroom as the vice principal motioned for Alex to walk with him back into the elevator.

“No torture class for me? Dang.” Alex couldn’t help himself. “I was really looking forward to that one, too.”

His silver-blue eyebrows lifted. “I don’t think you’re quite ready for InfoWE, no. Your foster team filed for a temporary exception from this course for your home-schooling, citing that you’ve lived through enough as it is, so we hadn’t fully decided whether or not we wanted you to attend this class.”

More stuff he had no idea was happening. Alex was glad to hear they’d looked a thing that said, “torture your foster,” and went as far to tell their bosses where to stick it, but he felt strangely ashamed at the same time. Did they think he couldn’t handle it?

The elevator let them back off on the main Terre level and they crossed the hall into the front office. Alex’s defenses were on alert as they passed the reception desk. He wondered if he was about to get detention or something. As punishments go, it had always seemed like it’d be a breeze to Alex. Then again, if they have InfoWE, maybe their punishments didn’t align with normal schools, either.

They passed a small conference room with large glass windows. A platter of breakfast pastries sat in the center of it. His stomach grumbled. Fuck it. He was already in trouble, right?

“Hey, can I grab one of those?” he asked, causing the vice principal, whatever his name was, to stop. He turned, looking to where Alex was pointing. “I was told not to eat breakfast before class, I’m assuming because all the torture will make you puke.”

“Sure,” he nodded. That surprised him, but he went in and grabbed a raspberry danish before he could change his mind.

Pastry in hand, Alex followed him into his office. The nameplate on the outside said Logan del Sol. Logan, that was it. The office was fairly big, with huge, long bookcases packed to the brim with books of all sizes. There was a calendar on the wall with pictures of dogs in costumes, and knick-knacks scattered on shelves and on his desk, ranging from cartoon action figures, to a stress ball shaped like an alien, to a kitschy ceramic pug. Alex wondered if they were more for students or if Logan just had some weird-ass taste in decor.

“Have a seat.” Logan’s voice wasn’t harsh, so Alex tried to believe he wasn’t about to get chewed out.

Alex sat.

“So I wanted to talk to you about your assessment results.”

His stomach fluttered. “I wanted to talk to you about having a torture class and students who think that’s a normal thing,” he deflected and punctuated it with a big bite of danish.

He expected Logan to lash out defensively, but instead, he asked,“What do you want to say?”

Alex froze, mouth full. “Uh, it’s fucked up?” What else needed to be said?

Logan nodded. “InfoWE is probably our most extreme class, yes. I’m not comfortable with it and I don't think anyone fully is. Unfortunately, that’s the point. If those students were never going to encounter a situation where they might need those skills, the class wouldn’t exist. But many of the students in that class will grow up to put their lives on the line for the rest of us, who can’t be in the field, and they may end up in situations there is no way to prepare for except with a class like InfoWE. So we teach whatever might save their lives.”

Alex sat in silence for a while, his danish forgotten. He hadn’t expected to be actually talked to like an adult. “You grow people in a lab and then send them to go get killed? All these students expect to grow up and have jobs where they might kill people and they’re fine with it. What the fuck type of system is that?”

“We’re not like normal people and that means we don’t get to do the same things as normal people. Some of us more than others. As an organization, we are defensive. What we do we do to avert mass genocide. Humans kill people every day because they use a different name to worship the same god. Can you imagine what they would do to people like us? Keeping this secret doesn’t come without a price.”

There was a lump somewhere between Alex’s belly and his chest. “It’s still fucked up.”

His eyes softened. “If that’s the term you want to use, then yes, it is fucked up.” Logan picked up the file on his desk and tapped it to settle the pages. “Let’s take a look at your evaluations. First off, this one.”

He slid Alex’s pop quiz across the desk to him. He’d nearly forgotten about it. Alex looked over all the different ways he’d written “fuck” as an answer and the not particularly creative drawings. He did like the way he’d turned Italy on the map into a big lace-up stripper heel. The longer he looked at it, the more his indignation at having to take the test rose back up.

“What about it? You gave a written test to someone who just started learning to read. Did you expect me to do anything other than fail? This shit is on you.” He dropped the paper down on the desk. “So you can do whatever you do to kids who can't cut it, ‘cause I was never going to do anything but fail here.”

Logan picked up the quiz again and held Alex’s eyes. The bright orange and pink coloring against his otherwise blue skin was enough to make him a little more intimidating than his tone of voice warranted.

“Assessments aren’t a pass or fail exam. We just wanted to see where you’re at. If you’d left it blank and taken a nap on your desk, that would have been understandable and still given us an idea of what you’re comfortable doing. You clearly know a few choice words, so you’ve proven you have what it takes to learn others. No one is judging you. If anyone in this room has failed, it’s us, Sol, for not protecting you in the first place.”

Alex rubbed the sweaty palm of his free hand on his jeans and didn’t say anything.

Logan moved onto another sheet of paper. “So, your reading and core GED studies are behind; we expected that, so that’s fine. You’re exceeding expectations in non-knacked combat and firearms. Pluto says you’re reporting that your knack isn’t unmanageable most of the time. And you have a strong value set and sense of justice, which is an asset we can’t teach.”

Alex reared his head back. “Where the hell did you get that from?”

“One of our teachers, Hill Campbell, made a note in your file about it.” He closed the file and checked his watch. “Overall, things are looking good. If you’re happy with your foster team, I think they're doing a fine job.”

“Yeah.” He felt like he’d said it a little too fast. “I don’t want to be moved.”

Logan smiled. “That’s good then. Let’s get you home and we’ll see you in six months.”

---

Reeve sat, bouncing his foot nervously, at a table in the Atrium facing the elevators while he waited for Alex to come out. He’d been paged a little early because they’d decided to skip Alex’s InfoWE portion, and Reeve was doubly relieved—that Alex didn’t have to go through that particular gauntlet just yet and that he would have to spend fewer hours twiddling his thumbs in his quarters. Being here had been a lot more triggering than he had anticipated and he couldn’t wait to be back on the road.

The elevator doors opened again, making Reeve look up as he had been each time for the past hour, but this time Alex was there, along with Terre’s Second. Reeve blew out a long breath and stood, straightening his tie, as if looking official could make him feel official. He hoped he could pull off a repeat performance of the day before, when he played off speaking to the LAHQ Academy vice principal as an agent with foster responsibilities and not a student anymore. Pretending that it felt real and natural. It didn't. He’d done the math (he’d had plenty of time in his temporary quarters) and only twenty months earlier, Reeve had been taking his last assessment.

Alex was, no surprise, in his casual clothes, but he had a shaken up look that worried him. There was no normal smile in greeting.

“He’s all set for now,” Logan said, extending an open hand to Reeve and he shook it. “Thanks for being flexible with your schedule.”

“Of course.”

“You’re all doing well. Once the full report is written up, we’ll send you a copy, but we’re happy with where he’s at.”

"That's great," Reeve said, trying to find a tone that sounded personable but authoritative. All he wanted to do was slump over in relief as the anxious tension in his stomach began to unknot.

Logan smiled warmly at Alex. “And it was good to meet you.” He shook Alex’s hand, and Reeve was relieved he didn’t make any smart remarks over it. “Drive safe!”

“Thanks.” Reeve blanked on anything else. Logan left them, heading back to the elevators.

Alex looked uneasy.

Reeve frowned at him. “You want to get something to eat or do you want to get out of here?”

“I want to get out of here.”

Reeve nodded. “Me too.”

They headed for the Venus building. Something was wrong with Alex and he could pick that out, even with the weight of hundreds of minds creating overwhelming pressure in Reeve's throat. He coughed lightly. It was an instinctive response that accomplished nothing. Reeve often envied telepaths with more pleasant synesthesia languages.

Reeve's mind pushed through the crowd and soaked in the buzzing around Alex's head without touching his thoughts in a way he could feel. Alex was a jumble of emotions. Upset, scared, inadequate, righteous. Alex’s psychometry was bearable at the moment, even in a place like this, and Reeve felt a surprising amount of pride at that.

Outside the building, Reeve felt like he could breathe again. He told himself it would get easier being in there over time. It wasn't until they'd put their bags in the trunk and got into the car that Reeve could get a really good read on Alex. Ah. He had worried as much.

"What the fuck was all that?" Alex demanded.

“Which part?” Reeve started the car to avoid having to look at him, but when Alex didn’t answer, he looked over anyway. His lips were tense and he seemed to be having more trouble holding his eyes. He was nervous. Reeve sighed, keeping his composure. “Can I have my button back please?”

It had been a mistake. He knew he shouldn’t have given it to him. He should have known that Alex would take the damn thing out of the little cover he’d made it. It was a moment of weakness and he’d caved, seeing how scared Alex was feeling at the prospect of being in that huge building alone with people who could demonstrate all the ways in which he was behind. Alex had been trying to hide it, but also allowed this tiny crack in his armor to ask Reeve for some comfort. A small thing he could provide. Trusting Reeve with the piece of him that admitted he wasn't fearless. Still, Reeve should have held his ground.

Alex went into his pocket and held it up, wrapped in the green bill. “No. What the fuck happened to you while you were here?" Alex was losing patience.

He wondered, but he didn't dare sift through his head to see exactly what Alex had found. Reeve was too raw from staying in that building again and simply didn't have it in him to watch whatever Alex had seen.

Breathing that recirculated air again and the subtle scent of the default soap Uranus provided in all housing had gotten to him. He’d forced himself to shower with it anyway, but now it was on his skin and it was affecting his hold on his temper.

“Alex.” He said it louder than he normally would have, and in a harsher tone than he ever used with people.

Alex didn’t flinch, but Reeve could feel a distancing and a tension like he’d had when Reeve first drove him home.

A part of Reeve considered just telling him—the bits from the past. Having it out there. It was ostensibly nothing to be ashamed of and yet the shame was there, like a twisting red fist in his chest that muddled his memories and woke him at night.

How could Alex trust him to be a teacher when his own teacher had been erased? There was always the option to have the conversation and see how it goes, but Alex was a psychometrist. Even if Reeve pulled a conversation from his mind, Alex could always find and Read it again.

And there were parts that Sol didn't even know. Memories he'd held back during Reintegration, in the way he'd been taught (a thing he shouldn’t have been taught) and Alex couldn't have any of that in his head. Safest to stop it before it started.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice back under control. Reeve took the memory back. It was recent, so it was simple to isolate the Story and blank it out before Alex could even process that he’d used his telepathy. He filled it in with boring memories of Reading the button sitting in his dresser. Alex wouldn’t remember any of the other memories he’d Read from the button, or the conversation about it.

Alex blinked at him, a little dazed, and the guilt hit him like a wall but he pushed all that down. Alex handed Reeve the folded up dollar. He could feel the button inside of it and, without looking at it, Reeve shifted to put it into his front pocket.

He backed out of the parking spot and started driving. “Thank you for letting me back out first. Now what did you want to yell at me about?” It was always best to try to pick up as close to the far edge as possible. It helped to pull the seams shut.

Alex huffed, annoyed with himself for losing his train of thought for a moment. “You could have fucking warned me about InfoWE! What the fuck do they do to you in that class?”

Reeve bit his lips. “I didn’t see it on your schedule until after you’d left. I thought we’d put that on hold.”

“Yeah,” Alex railed on. “Thanks for not torturing me. Thanks for not tripping on that low bar. Seriously, do you even get how fucked up teaching teenagers to torture is? And how stupid?”

“You may have noticed that students in the Academy are a little different. Exhibit A.” Reeve gestured to himself with one hand. “You can give a roomful of Academy kids guns and trust that no one is going to mess around. InfoWE is just a class we all have to get through. The teachers know who’s going to need it someday and who won’t. They go easy on the ones who won’t.”

Alex sat back in his seat, mouth open. “I can’t believe that of the three of you, it’s actually Gareth who’s the sane one. And he’d probably ace torture class too.”

“Don’t say that around him.” Reeve drove through the first exit security gate. “So was there anything you didn’t hate?”

Alex pouted. “I liked the part where I left those dumb slacks in a locker room.”

Reeve smiled. They were in Reeve’s bag in the trunk, having been returned to him, but he’d surprise him with that later. “You can really milk a gag, huh?”

“Oh, your dorky clothes have a lot of joke mileage left.” There was almost a smile.

Reeve could feel Alex’s mind coming back down to his baseline buzz. “Anything else?”

“Some of the kids were pretty cool, even though they’re mostly pampered and clueless.” Alex flashed Reeve a meaningful look. Reeve pretended not to notice. “Do I really have to do that every six months?"

"Yeah. Eventually, they might scale back to once a year. They said you're doing good. I'm proud of you."

Alex scowled at him and rolled his eyes. "They're gonna send you a report?"

"Yeah, so we'll know what areas to focus on."

Alex nodded. "Then you should probably know I drew a bunch of dicks and fuck-words on a quiz and then tried to escape the building."

The casual tone of Alex's voice did not match how high Reeve's eyebrows had just risen.

Reeve let out a long sigh. He gave him a look to express his own personal suffering.

"Sure. I'm guessing that will make it into the report, yeah."

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---

Beatty, NV.

“Do I have to do this every single time?” Alex whined loudly, to be heard through their earplugs.

Reeve meticulously checked that both the chamber of the handgun and the two magazines were empty before handing them over to Alex. “Yes.”

He took them, giving Reeve a glare. With a sigh and without breaking eye contact, he stuck one of the empty magazines in his belt, directly beside the pistol they’d gifted him for his sixteenth birthday a few months back.

Turning to face a vacant stretch of desert, he inserted one empty magazine into the gun he’d been handed and pulled back the slide. Feeling Reeve’s too-serious scrutiny like a weight, Alex raised the gun and dry fired, squeezing the trigger for nine rapid clicks. Without taking his eyes from the horizon, Alex ejected the magazine with his right hand and reloaded with the other. Eight more clicks, then he ejected the second magazine, catching it in his left hand without looking. He glanced over his shoulder and cocked an eyebrow at Reeve.

“Yup, one more time.”

He went through the exercise again, this time without complaining. Once he had completed the second round, he turned back to Reeve and offered him the pistol, letting the gun dangle from his index finger by the trigger guard. “Satisfied?”

“Yeah.” Reeve took the gun and immediately pushed the grip back into Alex’s palm. The intensity of the look made Alex pause. “But even though it’s a practice gun, you know you should be handling every firearm with more respect than that.”

Alex wished Reeve would blink and he just barely resisted making some wild, joking motion with the gun. “Hannah says the firing pin is so shot to shit that it couldn’t fire if I wanted it to.”

“That might be true, but unlike Hannah, apparently, I’m not interested in getting my foot shot off. And anyway, the point isn’t about this gun specifically. It’s a habit you’ll need to get into.”

Biting his cheek to stop a retort, Alex shifted his hold and made a proper hand-off of the practically toy gun.

“Cool, so can I use the big-boy gun now?”

Reeve stuck the old gun into his waistband at his back and nodded at the box of rounds he’d brought with them. “Go ahead.”

Alex pulled his pistol, making sure to keep it pointed at the dirt in front of his feet. The last thing he needed was back-to-back lectures on the same thing. He blew some hair out of his face as he went about loading up the magazine. It was hot. Hotter than it had been in Reno, and he was glad for the shade of the tarp canopy they had out here after the long walk from the house. The desert was also quieter than Reno had ever been, with a History full of silent sunrises and sunsets, dotted with darting lizards and long-legged tarantulas.

“I’ve been kicking ass with Hannah,” he said while he worked. “I really don’t think I need extra lessons.”

“Growing up, I had firearm training three times a week starting from when I was eight-years-old. This isn’t extra; it’s catch-up for coming in late.”

“And who’s fault is it that I’m late?” he muttered under his breath. It amused him to mutter shit like that, because it’s not like Reeve couldn't use his telepathy to know exactly what he had said, but it also made it so Reeve basically had to admit that that’s what he’d done if he wanted to respond to his sass at all. He didn’t. This time.

When he was done, Alex tucked his hair behind his ears and faced the target stand they had set up. He looked at Reeve for approval.

“Three shots.”

Alex flipped off the safety, aimed, and squeezed off three evenly spaced rounds, all landing within the center two rings.

“See?” Alex said, lifting his chin.

Reeve crossed his arms in front of his chest and nodded. “Three more, rapid fire.”

Alex chewed the inside of his lip and faced the target again. Gritting his teeth and steeling the muscles in his arms, he took three quick shots. He squinted at the target and Reeve waved him to follow him out into the sun to inspect it.

His grouping was all off. One was close to dead center, another high and to the left, and the third hadn’t hit the target at all. Alex felt his ears get hot in a way that had nothing to do with the desert heat. He watched as Reeve inspected the target, studying the tension around his eyes and how his eyelashes looked red-gold in the sun. He braced for another lecture.

“We can fix that,” Reeve said mildly, unbuttoning the cuffs of his sleeves and rolling them up to his elbows.

His tone got Alex’s blood pumping. He wanted to say ‘Oh, so I’m broken now?’ but settled on, “Careful, you’re gonna make your weird tan lines even worse.”

“Go ahead and reload,” he replied.

He did. Reeve watched him as he refilled the clip. “You’re rushing your recovery from the recoil.”

Alex looked up, his lip curled on one side. “No, I’m not.” At least he didn’t think he was.

“Do you feel like you could be more accurate if you went slower?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Then you’re rushing your recovery. Accuracy first, speed later.”

“Okay, but you distinctly said ‘rapid fire.’”

“Alex, shut the hell up.”

He sullenly finished reloading.

“Take your stance,” Reeve said.

With his brow lowered, determined, Alex got back out in front of the target and straightened up, setting his left leg forward.

“Not so far,” Reeve said, pointing to his leg. Alex shuffled it back and managed to do so without rolling his eyes. Stepping closer and using his hands, Reeve adjusted the angle of Alex’s hips. “Like that.”

It sparked an unexpected warmth at the base of Alex’s spine. Reeve stood back. “Does that feel better?” He felt slightly off balance, but the twist had straightened out his right shoulder, aligning it with his arm.

Alex nodded.

“Good, memorize it. Is the safety on?”

Alex licked his lips, forcing his tongue to become unstuck. “Yup,” he answered as he put the safety on.

“Now,” he said, not commenting on the timing, “tight grip, strong arms.” He jostled Alex’s hands causing Alex to sway.

Reeve clicked through his teeth. “Your torso’s too tight. Relax everything except for your arms and your hands.”

Relax? Alex was having a hard time relaxing anything. “Yeah ‘cause shooting equals relaxing.” He swallowed and closed his eyes, willing his body to loosen up.

“Good,” Reeve said. He gave his hands another shake and Alex moved with it, keeping his balance without wavering. “See?”

“Does that happen a lot out in the field?” he asked sarcastically.

Reeve moved around behind Alex, continuing to ignore his bullshit, and put his arms, tanned and freckled, on either side of Alex’s, his hands on his elbows. The Story was beginning to pull at him but he pushed it aside. “Take one shot.”

Alex flipped off the safety and took two slow breaths as he aimed. He squeezed the trigger and did his best to absorb the kickback but bumped into Reeve anyway.

Reeve’s voice was close to his ear. “Now, before you take another shot, what are you looking at?”

“Uh, the target?”

“Forget the target.”

“Are you high?”

He felt Reeve take one of his don’t-yell breaths before continuing. “You’ve already aimed for the first shot and your accuracy is frankly amazing. So if you’ve compensated correctly, the only thing you need to do to hit your target the second time is to wait until your sights are lined up again.”

“Cool, I’ll just be sure to ask real nice for all my targets to stay completely still while I’m shooting.” The warmth in his belly at the praise helped a little with how hopeless all that sounded, but not a ton.

“One thing at a time.” Reeve shifted down to his eyeline, blowing Alex’s hair out of his face. He slid his hands down to cover Alex’s fingers. It gave Alex goosebumps despite the heat. “Three more shots when I say so. Get ready to really shove into the recoil. I want you to count ‘one one thousand’ between rounds and focus on your front sight. That should give you enough time to level out your sights, but not enough to re-aim.”

“No problem.” He wasn’t sure if it sounded cocky or sarcastic, but he was fine with either.

“Go ahead.”

Alex took the shots. Reeve assisted the first correction with firm pressure, guiding his arms back to center, and then left the other two for Alex to do alone. When it was done, Alex had no idea if he’d hit the target at all and was a little dizzy, as though he’d forgotten to breathe. He heard Reeve say something, but it was muffled. He realized too late it was because the Story had him. Alex was falling.

Reeve is young. Twelve, thirteen? He’s read memories from when Reeve was tiny before, but not many, so it’s hard for Alex to guess. He’s much shorter than Alex, and his face is soft and speckled orange with freckles. He’s wearing a plain t-shirt with an open blue-plaid button down shirt over it and acid-wash jeans that are so light in color that it’s hard to believe anyone would ever wear them. He is walking down a long, dim hallway, and Alex is just behind him, matching his pace. The overhead lights are off, and the only light is coming from small emergency lights near the ceiling every ten feet or so. It’s an eerie sight, the hallway flanked by a seemingly endless march of doors, wide and empty except for Reeve. Alex knows it’s the Academy.

He watches Reeve stop at the only doorway that has a warm glow of light escaping from the crack by the floor. There is a narrow window, half covered in taped up paper calendars with scheduling slots filled in with names in all different handwriting and pen colors. A plaque reads “Adam del Sol.”

Reeve opens the door without knocking and Alex peers inside. The office is small and a little cramped. A chunky metal desk with green and grey panels, two empty plastic chairs situated in front of it, and one larger chair behind, take up most of the room. The rest of the space is filled with filing cabinets, all labeled with different grade levels from year six to twelve. The desk itself is tidy, with neat piles of paperwork and an old, blocky desktop computer. The only thing out of place is a half empty bottle of red wine on the desk and dark red rings scattered around, staining the desk surface.

The man behind the desk glances up from grading a worksheet. Alex follows as Reeve walks in, and motions for him to wait a second. He has a glass of wine in one hand and is tall with broad shoulders and short, sandy hair, just long enough to be swept back.

While Reeve waits, standing behind the plastic chairs, Alex feels into the room the way Reeve has taught him, to know more than he can see and hear. Reeve has tried to explain it as a matter of peeling back layers of color, but he feels it more like stepping through a wall of water. He knows this is Reeve’s mentor, Adam, who is also a telepath. But a much more powerful one. Which doesn’t make sense to Alex, because he knows now that telepaths and people with mental knacks like his don’t tend to drink. He also knows from standing this close to Reeve that Reeve isn’t supposed to be out of his dorm room. It brings a prick of sweat to Alex’s neck because there are a hundred ways this situation could play out badly, but Reeve isn’t afraid. Adam hurting him in any way is the last worry on Reeve’s mind.

He felt a hand shake his shoulder and Reeve’s far off voice repeated his name. “Are you with me?”

He is, but not in the desert.

Adam puts his pen down and gives Reeve a one-sided grin.

“Did anyone see you coming here?” Adam asks, setting the stack of papers aside.

“No,” Reeve says solemnly.

Adam looks pleased. “Tell me,” he says simply.

Reeve lifts his chin, his face serious. “I am loyal to Sol.”

Adam nods for him to continue, in a gesture that reminds Alex of Reeve telling him to go ahead and do his shooting exercises.

Reeve takes a breath. “I am loyal to Sol. It is my home and my family, but Sol cannot be trusted blindly.” Reeve’s tone is half earnest and half impatient rote boredom. Alex feels his heart begin to pound. “Sol can and will be protected, but only from within, and by acts of nonviolent disobedience for a greater good.”

“Who must Sol be protected from?” Adam asks, after taking a sip of wine.

“Itself.”

A cold fear creeps outward from Alex’s stomach.

He watches Reeve glance behind him. “Are Misha and Darwin coming tonight?”

“No.”

Reeve is asking, “Where are we going?” when Alex feels a sweeping vertigo lurch through him, as telepathy floods in and blacks out the Story.

Alex blinked into the sun, squinting. Reeve’s face came into focus in front of him, a hand resting on each of his shoulders. He felt unmoored.

Reeve’s eyebrows were pulled together. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Alex shook his head, trying to shrug off the tendrils of Story. “Sorry.”

Reeve chafed his shoulders and stood upright. “Reading?” His mouth was pulled thin.

“Yeah, sorry,” he repeated.

“It’s okay.” Reeve’s voice was suddenly soft and calming. Alex could feel the gentle press of his mind, and there was a moment where Alex felt like he was hovering, paused in time, as he adjusted to the feeling. The silent pause stretched for a few seconds, but Alex sometimes lost track of time when he was transitioning out of Reading, so he didn’t give it much thought. Reeve looked like he was about to hug him or something. Instead, he asked, “Anything good?”

Alex felt the fear in his gut fight with the calm he felt at Reeve’s voice. His brow furrowed and his voice was quiet. “I’m not sure. I’m sorry, I think it was something about when you were a kid—I didn’t mean to pry. For some reason, it’s foggy now, though.”

Reeve rubbed his thumb in small circles on Alex’s shoulder, which was distracting and raised some heat in Alex’s cheeks. “It’s okay,” Reeve said, and Alex felt the anchor of his mind again, calm and reassuring. “How about now?” he asked.

Alex grinned. “Oh yeah! It was you and Gareth losing your absolute shit while failing miserably to assemble the new grill last month.” Alex had been there in real life too, but it was always amusing to hear that much concentrated swearing.

Reeve frowned, shoulders dropping. “Great.” He only sounded about half as annoyed as Alex would have expected. With a small shudder, he felt Reeve remove himself from his mind. Alex was determined to get enough control over his knack that Reeve wouldn’t have to do that anymore.

Reeve cleared his throat, pulled Alex’s gun out of his waistband, and offered it back to him. “Alright. Ready to keep going?”

Alex looked down at his empty hands. Reeve must have taken it from him when he zonked out. “Yeah,” he answered, stretching his neck. “I can do it.”

---

Beatty, NV.

Reeve didn’t like being away from the house overnight, but sometimes it was unavoidable, depending on what needed doing. He pulled his car into the garage and took half a minute to collect himself before going inside.

As soon as he opened the door, he was assaulted by a harsh chemical odor. It wasn’t something he’d ever smelled before, and the combination of that and the empty, clean kitchen got his pulse going. It was too warm inside– the windows had been opened up, he guessed to air the place out.

“Guys?” he called but got no answer. The other car wasn’t out front, but when he let his awareness stretch out he could sense Hannah and Alex downstairs.

He headed to his room to change and the smell only got stronger. Sniffing around, he could tell it was coming from the bathroom. For how clean the kitchen looked, the bathroom had taken the brunt of something. In the corner were a couple of shirts and towels covered in deep red stains. Their bath mat also had a couple of lighter colored splatters, and their shower curtain was hopelessly red and pink at the bottom, fading to speckles and drips as you moved upwards. The tub and walls themselves had a tinge to them. He couldn’t have imagined what the fuck they’d done, but he assumed they’d mixed some ill-advised combinations of cleaners to try to fix it and that had caused the toxic smell that was burning his nostrils.

Reeve, mindful of Alex’s knack, changed clothes and then headed downstairs to find out what the fuck they’d gotten themselves into while he was gone.

The odor eased up as he headed downstairs, but wasn’t absent. The sounds of Hannah and Alex playing whatever video game they were obsessed with at the moment was relaxing at least. Whatever had happened, it hadn’t injured them too badly.

“Hey,” he called as he rounded her doorway, “what the fuck did you do to our bathroom?”

As soon as he looked into the room, he no longer needed an answer. Hannah was sitting on the floor, naked as always, and beside her was Alex with a huge grin and his long, dark hair turned fire engine red.

Reeve clicked his teeth shut. He’d been trying to get Alex to agree to a slightly more conservative haircut for his next eval at LAHQA, but after losing that fight, it appeared Alex was going all out.

“What do you think?” Hannah asked, looking pleased.

“You did this?”

“Took a couple rounds of bleach, but yeah.”

“So that’s what’s burning my nose hairs off.”

“Do you like it?” Alex asked with a toothy smile. Behind it, Reeve could feel his unease and a kind of hope.

“It looks good,” Reeve admitted. It did. The shiny candy apple red matched his attitude and personality.

“Yeah?” he pressed, preening. Reeve could see it was already giving him a boost of confidence that his scarring would have normally diminished.

“Yeah.” He smiled back, despite himself. “It looks good on you.”

“So, I take it by the fact that it’s morning, that things are still going well with you and Jenn?” Hannah asked with a suggestive tone that Reeve didn’t find cute.

“Oh, shut up,” Reeve glared. He hadn’t seen Jenn in months, but it was an easy fiction to keep up as long as he kept an eye on Alex’s psychometry. “Can I talk to you for a second, Hannah?”

She pointed at the television. “We’re doing a thing.” She huffed when he didn’t respond and followed him out of the room, telling Alex, “Right back, don’t fuck with my stuff.”

“Uh-huh.”

Once upstairs in the kitchen she asked, “What the hell is wrong? I’ll bleach the tub. I’m good at bleaching, it turns out.”

“I’m gone for one day and shit goes full punk.”

She gave him a look. “You think red hair is ‘full punk’? Seriously? He was saying he wished he could have cool, funky-colored hair, so I said fuck it, let’s do it.”

“Hannah.”

“I know you’re worried about what the Corp thinks, but his next eval isn’t for another six months and you know once he graduates, they’re not going to let him look how he wants. With his knack and combat scores, there’s no way he’s not getting stuck in uptight Neptune, so let him have fun while he can.”

Reeve nodded.

“That’s not what’s bothering you.”

Reeve grit his teeth. “He cares way too much about what I think about the look.”

“Yeah well, he thought you’d freak out.”

“No, I mean he wants me to think he looks good. Like really good. And you mentioning Jenn really pissed him off.”

Hannah shrugged. “He’s got a crush. He’s sixteen. How did you not notice this?”

“I do actually try to give you all as much privacy as possible.”

“Didn’t you ever get a crush on a teacher?”

He didn’t enjoy thinking back to his days in Academy, but he absolutely couldn’t imagine having anything other than a strict mentor-student relationship with them. “No.”

“God, why am I not surprised. But your teachers were probably more like fifteen, twenty years older than you, instead of only four, so,” she shrugged.

“This isn’t good.”

“It’s normal,” she argued, then continued with her teasing smile. “He’s got bad taste, but it’s normal.”

“What do I do?” Keeping tabs on Alex’s mind had just become that much more treacherous.

“Nothing. He’ll grow out of it, or in two years he’ll graduate, and I don’t even want to think about that. He wants to stay with us.”

“I know.”

“He can’t, right?” she asked, hopeful that there’d be some way. He couldn’t say he didn’t feel the same way. Alex felt at home with them, as though he filled this gap that made them all function better as a family. He didn’t like thinking about him leaving.

“Like you said, there’s no way he’s not ending up in Neptune.”

Her face turned glum. “Yeah.”

Reeve ran his hand down his face. “Just. Just don’t take any fun trips to the tattoo parlor.”

“Aye, aye, captain boring.”

***