Gifted (Chapters 8-9)

Chapter 8: Doorways

The fight was over almost before it had begun. Security men and myself were on the scene in under four minutes, and they cleaned things up quickly. I was almost disappointed that the kids hadn't managed to come up with anything more sophisticated. Almost.

I was grateful that nobody had appeared to think of using sorcery, even before we turned up, and it was probably thanks to this that no one was seriously hurt. Having ascertained this, I promptly gave each of them forty-eight hours punishment cell, with the exception of Jonathan and Max, who hadn't been involved in the major fight, and of Claire, who hadn't been anywhere near the place.

You should probably know that what I call “punishment cell” isn't as bad as it sounds. In theory the concept is based on prisons, but in actuality the version we used was significantly watered down so as not to affect the poor kiddies badly. It was essentially just solitary confinement, which one admittedly wouldn't find in a normal school. So, no problem there.

I was relieved, as well, that my earlier hunch that Adam had figured out the rules had turned out to be mistaken, but those were pretty much the only things I had to be happy about. I was moving fast into unfamiliar territory, and the only map I had was the memoirs of two dead teenagers.

For one thing, what was Adam's motive in the whole story? I had no doubt that he had arranged the entire thing, but I also had no idea why, and this worried me. A lot. The boy was hard enough to handle when I could prepare defences.

For another, how the hell had he managed to drag Max through five hundred yards of campus street without security noticing? In theory, he might have been able to pull off something like that with Illusion, but I was sure none of the students knew how to use that yet. Certain. Absolutely positive.

Damn.

Best to assume the worst. Someone – probably Jonathan, but possibly Adam or even someone else entirely – had discovered the wonderful world of Illusion. Would that fool a video camera? I wasn't sure, but that at least I could find out.

Ten minutes after I had the thought, I walked into my office, shut the door behind me, and heard it seal itself with a pneumatic hiss. I walked over to my desk, opened my laptop, navigated patiently through the various security arrangements, and opened a file entitled Journal.

The memoirs had been left in the order they had been written, with no more arrangement than whatever happened to have been on the writer’s mind at the time. The writers had meant to organise them into a proper document, but after Kraken the surviving one of the two hadn’t been able to bring himself – or perhaps, I supposed, herself – to open it, and soon afterwards it had been too late.

I would wonder, later, how much of that story was absolutely true.

Nevertheless, the journal was digitised and highly detailed, so it wasn’t too hard to track down the information I needed. A search for paragraphs containing the words “Illusion” and “camera” quickly gave me what I was looking for.

We found it interesting to note that images produced by Illusion are visible even through closed eyes, or in dark rooms. A series of experiments, finding that the images have no mirror image and cannot be captured on camera, have led us to the conclusion that these images definitely do not function based on light, but rather on some other agent, as yet unknown; intuitively, one would guess that it is related to the agents which mediate the first two Powers, although this remains pure conjecture for the meanwhile. Experiments with lab rats…

Not Illusion, then. On the one hand, I was relieved that I no longer had any evidence that the kids had independently learned the Third Power; on the other hand, I now returned to the troublesome question of how they had managed to fool my cameras. The last thing I needed just then was a security breach.

On the subject of which…

I closed the file and brought up the surveillance system, flipping carefully through the images to make sure that all my students were in their correct locations. Of course, an affirmative wouldn’t tell me much if they had figured out how to fool the CCTV, but it was all I had for the meanwhile. And even if Adam or Jonathan – my most likely culprits – had worked out a method, it was far from certain that they had let on to anyone else. Certainly not to Richard and his lot.

I checked on the dormitories first. Claire was still up, doing homework like a good girl. Max was apparently sleeping, completely hidden under his covers; he’d had a busy day. Jonathan was lying on his bed with his eyes shut, but I doubted he was actually asleep. I wasn’t worried; there were three rooms on campus that were completely sealed from the Sight, and my office was one of them. Room 001 and the security centre were the others, and if Jonathan wanted to spy on his classmates in prison, he could be my guest.

I’ll admit that I was being callous, but privacy just wasn’t a realistic priority by that point. We had put cameras in their bedrooms, for crying out loud.

I brought up the images from the punishment cells. Adam was sitting cross-legged, leaning against a wall – the cells contained a blanket but no furniture – possibly asleep but more likely to be out scouting. Richard was lying stretched out on the floor, either asleep or pretending to be, and I didn’t think he was that crafty. Michael had managed to tear a corner off his blanket and was apparently trying to rip it into progressively smaller pieces. Most of the rest of the children were engaged in various time-killing activities; Opal in particular was sitting cross-legged, her back to the wall, literally twiddling her thumbs.

I made a mental note to keep a closer watch on her. Her file told me that she was subdued, sometimes violent, not too bright – all of which fit well with her behaviour while she had been in class; but those qualities had become far more pronounced in the weeks since the beginning of term. It was a perfectly normal reaction to a completely new and somewhat hostile environment, but it wouldn't do for her to fall behind the rest of the class too much. The Powers that Be had a lot riding on this program.

And with that thought, I looked over at the feed from the next camera, and my eyes fell on Peace, who was kneeling on the floor, his hands clasped in the small of his back, his face turned upwards. His eyes were open but unfocused, and his lips were moving.

It took me several seconds to realise that he was praying.

Religion, like cigarettes and alcohol, was one of a small group of indulgences which the Government was simply incapable of banning outright no matter how much it frowned. The overwhelming majority of the country saw it as a primitive holdover from medieval times, and a warning as to how wilfully stupid people could be. It was a sentiment I agreed with, but nevertheless I appreciated that it could sometimes be nice to be able to ignore one's responsibilities, either by drugging one's brain into submission or by duping it into world-view in which nothing was one's own fault. No degree of intelligence or information is useful if they aren't used properly.

I cut myself off with that thought, swore, and pulled up the feed from Max's room again. I looked carefully at the footage, then magnified it. The covers on the bed outlined a shape, but they weren't moving at all. Did I really almost fall for that trick?

No matter how good the network, the operator still sometimes misinterprets things. Hence, religion; hence, Messenger.

After double-checking the rest of the students to make sure no-one else was pulling the same trick, I sent an alert over to the security team. If they didn't have him in ten minutes, then the kids had definitely figured out a way to circumvent the CCTV, in which case I was in a great deal of trouble. Of the Governmental kind, which I understood was a lot like normal trouble, only worse.

So, back to square one: the kidnapping of Max, that afternoon. For lack of any better leads, I decided to rewatch the footage—or lack thereof—on the off-chance that the children had been caught out of the corner of one of the screens and been missed. It was unlikely, because the people watching those cameras were professionals who knew their job backwards, but there was always a possibility.

As it turned out, the entire thing had been caught clearly on camera, and my team of highly trained professionals had somehow missed it. I was not pleased. After they had—thankfully—tracked down Max and dragged him back to bed, I told them this, at length. They protested that nothing had shown up at the time, possibly owing to an equipment malfunction.

We had no standing technical team on campus, because of the havoc the student body would probably have wreaked upon them if we did, so I made arrangements for someone to come in from civilization in the morning to look at our CCTV network. Not that I expected them to find anything; any one of our students clever enough to do something like that—Adam being the major candidate—would have had the sense to put everything back together when they were done. I was, as usual, grasping at straws. It was an unpleasant situation to be in, and it seemed to be coming upon me more and more frequently.

If our conditioning was paying off, however—that same conditioning which had caused me so much trouble in trying to instil discipline—then the culprit would not have used a technological hack if the same thing could be achieved with one of the Powers. But Illusion couldn't affect cameras...

But of course, Illusion hadn't affected the cameras. The entire thing had been recorded. If they had affected anything, it would have been the monitors. No, not the monitors, I realised, casting my mind back to Max's trick with the bedclothes. It makes no difference what image is shown. All that matters is how the person watching it perceives that image.

When I realised what they must have done, I left my office and walked to the security control room. There, I stopped, without going in, and regarded the door. It was stainless steel, four inches thick; the moment anyone developed the capability to break through that, access to security cameras would be the least of our worries. No keyhole, obviously; like room #001 and my own office, it was opened by magnetic cardkey and a twelve-digit code. Unlike the door to room #001, however, which slid directly into the clay through which it had been dug, this was sealed pneumatically to its doorframe.

I shone my phone over the pneumatic sealing, very slowly. After I had traced it all the way around and found nothing, I started over again, sure that I would eventually find what I was looking for. On my third circuit, I did.

Someone had concentrated enough force in one place to punch through the seal. A roughly circular shape, perhaps four millimetres in diameter, it had easily escaped notice. And of course, once that was achieved, it would not be hard for someone competent enough—probably Jonathan—to use the Sight, send his presence in, and maintain a disguising Illusion over whatever screens were showing their activities. It was quite brilliant, actually.

I went back to my office and arranged for the technical team that was coming in the morning to replace the pneumatics, in the control room and in my own office, with something more sturdy. It would cost, I was told. No problem. My budget was not my most pressing issue.

I wished it were.

Chapter 9: Peace's War

A few days after they were released from the cells, Peace went to look at the locked door. Again.

He still didn't know why he did it; he was certain he wasn't going to find anything. But, for some reason, the thing still provoked a strange kind of fascination. It was enough to drive a person mad, or, perhaps, a sign that something else already had.

Not that he was the only one, he considered as walked down the stairs. He was sure he had seen Max come down here, more than once. Adam, too, he was fairly certain, and even Richard a couple of times. Although, nowhe came to think of it, the fact that everyone was going insane didn't really make him feel any better.

Yet he was still standing in front of the door. He bent forward to look at it. No keyhole, no handle, no hinges. Because, obviously, it made perfect sense to expect them to be there now, even though they hadn't been there the last time he came down. Or the time before that, or the time before that, or...

Brilliant. Who do you turn to for help when even your own mind is being sarcastic?

Oh, of course. He leaned forward again. 'Spirit of this Place, I ask for strength,' he recited in Het. 'Spirit of this Time, I ask for wisdom. Spirit of—'

Someone kicked the back of his shins. He fell forward, smashed his knees into the metal of the door, and fell backwards on his rump. He looked upwards to see Mike Shears peering down at him, a sarcastically concerned expression on his upside-down face.

'Heya, Peace. Didn't see you there.'

Since he obviously wanted Peace to ask him what he meant, he did so, hoping to get through the encounter with minimal pain. He smiled weakly. 'How so? I was standing right in front of you...'

'Well,' said Mike, gesturing widely at the whitewashed walls, 'you were so well-camouflaged!'

Of course. Peace, being very slightly paler-skinned than the average Government citizen, would obviously be completely invisible against a pure white background. Which, come to think of it, he hadn't been in front of, since from Mike Shear's point of view he would have been standing in front of the door, which was unpainted steel.

But Mike was not looking for a clever remark; he was looking for laughter. Peace, happy to oblige the boy so long as it kept him talking, laughed.

Shears chuckled along at his own joke. 'Y'know, Snowman, it strikes me that we haven't really had time to catch up since we arrived here.'

Not sure what he was aiming for, Peace opted to remain silent, but tried for an expression of rapt interest in the other's words.

'See,' he continued, 'it seems to me that we've sort of fallen out of contact since we moved schools. Which is a shame, because as I recall, we used to have a very close relationship.'

He stopped and looked at Peace, clearly expecting him to input something at this point. Peace took the opportunity to sit up and turn around so that he had his back to the door, and then hazarded: 'Yeah, those were the days, huh?' Which was admittedly not going to win any prizes for originality.

Mike, who in Peace's opinion wouldn't have known originality if it hit him on the head, appeared to be content with this. 'Exactly, man. Exactly. So, I was thinking, for old times' sake...' He kicked Peace in the chin.

It wasn't a very powerful kick, and Peace had taken some in his lifetime, but it was enough to snap his head back, and the door behind him was solid steel. He slumped forward again and raised his hand to the back of his skull cautiously, breathing slowly and deeply, keeping the pain at bay. To show weakness at this point would not be a good career move.

Mike Shears, however, had had a decade or so of practice, and knew pain when he saw it. 'What's up with you, Peace? Used to take a lot more than that without missing a beat. Maybe you're just out of practice.' He slapped him, backhand, across the face.

Peace remained very still. Breathe in, breathe out, repeat until dead.

'Oh, come on. You can do better than that.' Another slap. 'C'mon!'

At this point Peace looked up and nailed him in the eye with the Force. Mike staggered backwards, his hand flying to cover his left eye. He caught himself just before he tripped over the base of the staircase, and laughed out loud. 'Yeah, man! That's what I'm talking about! Knew you still had it!'

It would be better, thought Peace, if he had a really evil laugh, something for the webcasts. This was just a teenager, pumped up on adrenaline, enjoying himself. It made the entire experience seem very surreal.

He stood up carefully; his head was still agony, although he couldn't feel any blood. 'There's more where that came from. Go away, Shears.'

'What, now? But it's just getting good!'

'Yes. Now.'

'Umm... no,' said Mike Shears conversationally, and then, not bothering with the Powers, leapt across the metre or so that separated them and hit Peace in the chest, elbow-on. He went down again, managing to jerk his head forward at the last instant to avoid cracking it open against the door.

Mike laughed again and made a partially successful attempt to pry Peace's head up in order to correct this. It would have been fully successful, were it not for the fact that when he had gotten it halfway up, Peace hit him with the Force again, in his other eye, his nose, and his breastbone, in rapid succession.

Shears sat down hard, breathing heavily. Both of his eyes were bloodshot and he had a bruise spreading across the center of his face, but he was grinning pleasantly. 'Y'know, Peace, Adam has this thing about not using sorcery in fights unless the other guy does first. Three times, to be exact.'

'What, so now you listen to Adam? You scared of him?' asked Peace. Keep him talking; the kid's too stupid to talk and fight at the same time. He wasn't sure, if Mike were to employ sorcery, who would win, but the bastard seemed pretty sure of himself and he didn't fancy his chances. Plus, if Peace did gain the upper hand, then Shears would just shift back to using his fists and pummel him.

'Any sane human is scared of Adam, Bleach. He's got more brains than everyone else on campus put together. Plus, he's got Jonathan.'

This, Peace was forced to concede, was a very good point, but at this point his object was to keep the conversation going until he could make a break for it. 'So what, one tough guy and now you're his dog?'

'Sure,' said Mike, standing up. 'Why the hell not? Dogs get to kill rats.'

'The rats in this metaphor being who?' stalled Peace. He knew the answer, of course, but he needed the extra second to gather his strength.

'You,' said Shears, and struck out with the Force. Peace, however, had already sprung straight forward, and had enough momentum that the blow, though painful, managed to stall him but not knock him back. He feinted wildly to the left—Mike's—and dodged around his right side. Reaching the base of the stairs in one step, he took them two at a time.

He was six stairs up when something hit him in the small of his back hard enough to make him stumble, not a good idea when running up a flight of stairs. He fell forward and managed to catch himself, scraping a good deal of skin off his palms. He lay on the staircase gasping for a second.

One second was all it took before something hit him in the kidney, then the neck, then the side of his knee. He rolled over, curling up into a foetal position as blows rained from the air around him. They continued until Peace was certain his ribs would crack, and then stopped.

Mike Shears, standing on the stair next to him, leaned down, grabbed his hair, and dragged him upright. He considered Peace for a moment, laughed like someone who has just gotten the joke, and then kneed him in the groin and kicked him down the stairs. He descended after Peace and looked down at him for several seconds.

Apparently coming to some complicated conclusion, he kicked him in the ribs one last time, and then Peace felt Force grab him by the jaw and slam his head back into the door, for the third time in as many minutes. When he opened his eyes again, Shears was gone.

***

Tap, tap. A knocking on the edges of the dream. Tap, tap.

Serenity mumbled and rolled over.

TAP. TAP.

She woke up, going from sleep to homicidal rage in three seconds, grabbed the object nearest to hand and threw it in the general direction of the noise. The pillow bounced harmlessly off the window.

TAP. TAP.

A book was banging itself, repeatedly, against the outside of the glass. Bemused, she unlocked the window and stuck her head out. The book fell out of sight, and Serenity, following its path earthwards, saw Max catch it neatly. He smiled up at her, waved, and made an exaggerated come-hither gesture with both arms.

'Max? What the—'

He pressed his forefinger to his lips frantically, and beckoned again.

Serenity hesitated for a moment—an uncommon occurrence—and jumped through the window. She was only on the first floor up, and she'd had to take more serious falls in her lifetime. One of them had been off a bridge into traffic. That had been fun.

She landed well, bending her knees to soak up the impact, and then turned to Max and asked: 'What is it?'

'Richard needs us in the game room. Now.'

'What?' asked Serenity furiously. 'Why can't he come call me himself?'

'Well, one, because he knows that if he were to try knocking on your window in the middle of the night, you'd kick his arse.'

'Damn right,' said Serenity, pleased that he had gotten the correct impression.

'Two, because I'm the one who knows how to properly evade the cameras. Tutor Steel's mercy is not going to last forever.'

'Richard's scared of Steel? The man's a complete wuss!'

'Maybe, but he's a Government-employed wuss. The same Government that employs the large number of men with tasers currently staying on campus.'

'Meh,' said Serenity, encompassing in a single syllable the attitude most teenagers spend their entire adolescence trying to convey.

'Would that I could share your apathy, my lady. I happen to like my skeleton.'

Serenity shrugged. 'You get used to it. Is there a three?'

'Excuse me?'

'A third reason, you bonehead.'

'Oh, yeah. And three, because he has to stay and guard Peace in case someone tries to kill him. Again.'

'Wait, what?'

'Come on, and I'll show you.'

Serenity had to admit that Max did know how to avoid the surveillance equipment. They crawled around the building to the window of the game room—which was constructed below ground with windows high up to allow in sunlight—and waited while Max watched the CCTV cameras carefully.

'Those things do a regular sweep of the area,' he explained in a whisper. 'The bodies don't move, but if you were to look closely, you'd see the lens moving back and forth to cover as wide an arc as possible. When I say so, go through the window as fast as possible. It's been unbolted already. I'll be along shortly with Andrew.'

Max closed his eyes and breathed deeply for four extremely tense seconds. Serenity realised he was using the Sight.

'Go!'

She crawled on her stomach to the window, pushed it open, and wriggled through. Someone—presumably Richard—had dragged a futon under the window, so the fall was an easy one.

'Hi,' he said shortly. 'Now get off the mat so I can kill whoever comes in after you.'

She rolled sideways and stood up. There were a few computer terminals along the walls, a couple of old-fashioned arcade machines, a television screen, and a lot of beanbags and futons scattered all over the place. Serenity noticed that Richard had levered a pinball machine onto its front end, so that if he pushed it forward it would fall on the mat she had just vacated. And, more importantly, whoever was on it.

'So who exactly do you think that would be?' asked Serenity. 'And why?'

'Not sure. Possibly Mike Shears. Almost certainly one of Adam's lot.'

'And why?' she repeated carefully.

'Because Shears tried to kill Peace.'

In the corner, one of the beanbags moved, and Peace sat up, with apparent difficulty. He had a number of bruises on his face, and he was even paler than usual.

'No, he didn't,' he said softly. 'He doesn't work like that.'

'You've known him for three months, Peace,' said Richard. 'And every student in this school is, in some way, crazy. It's the major entry criterion.'

'And here I thought it was just being able to move things with your mind,' said Serenity.

'It's part of the package, I think,' said Peace. 'The two are linked.'

'What about Claire, then?' asked Serenity. 'She's sane. And so are you.'

'Whenever somebody says that about me, I mention that time I burned down a shrine because the cleric said I was too old for sweets. I was twelve.'

Sweet, thought Serenity.

'As for Claire...' he continued. 'I don't know. There's something there, I'm sure of it, and no doubt the Tutor knows what it is, but I don't.'

'Well, she can't handle the sorcery either,' volunteered Richard. 'So maybe she's just here by mistake? Their tests can't be totally accurate.'

'Yes, they can,' said Peace. 'Lifescript doesn't lie.'

'Lifescript?' asked Serenity.

'Sorry. DNA. I move back to thinking in Het when I'm under pressure. Or when I've just had the everloving beaten out of me.'

'I thought that language was illegal,' said Richard.

'It is,' said Peace. 'They knew they couldn't get rid of the religion, but they tried to do away with the language. Morons. Anyway, the other thing is that I've known Michael Shears for a lot longer than three months. We were in primary school together.'

'Well, that explains it,' said Richard. 'I take it there's some backstory to this?'

'You wouldn't believe,' said Peace.

Try me, thought Serenity.

'—but the important thing is that this probably would have happened anyway. What you have to understand about Mike is that he's... oh, I don't know. Mezotu.'

'Excuse me?' asked Richard.

'Some words are hard to translate. Government Native just doesn't have the same power. Put it this way, then. You know how, in the webcasts, there's some knife-fight or whatever, and then one guy drags the other guy up against the wall and puts a blade to his kidney and says, “just give me a reason”?'

'Somebody once actually said that to me,' remarked Serenity idly. 'Guy tried to mug me. Kicked him in the balls, put a finger in each eye, and hung on to his windpipe until he fell over.'

'Sorry,' she added as the other two turned to look at her. 'Go on.'

'Uh... right. Anyway, the thing is, Shears would never say that, because he doesn't need a reason. He just thinks it's funny. Adam's smarter than he is, Opal's bigger, Jonathan's stronger, but out of all of them, you should be scared most of him. Because he's just sadistic. Evil. Yeah, that's the word. Mike Shears is evil.'

There was a moment of silence, and then Andrew came through the window. Twenty seconds later, Max followed.

'What'd we miss?' he asked.

'Well,' said Richard carefully. 'The most important thing is that Peace prompted me to come up with a plan.'

'He did?' asked Serenity.

'I did?' asked Peace.

'Yes. Yes, he did. Specifically, the plan consists of throwing chivalry out the window, cornering Mike Shears and beating the hell out of him until we are quite sure he has become a reformed character. Any questions?'

'Foremost,' said Max, 'Are you actually sure that will work?'

'I am,' said Andrew quietly.

Serenity, not wanting to miss her cue, added: 'Also, we have to be the first ones through that door.'

'Why?' asked Richard.

'Because Adam would clearly prefer we weren't.'

'Fair point. Peace?'

'Hey, you just agreed to take on Mike Shears for me. I'm in.'

'Max?'

'Well, seeing as I've completely failed to break out of here since the start of the school year, breaking in to somewhere looks like it could offer some excellent opportunities for lateral thinking development.'

'I'm sorry, was that a yes?'

'Uh... yes. Sure thing.'

'Good. Andrew?'

'With you.'

'Well then, the race is on.'

Yes, appeared written across the wall. It is.

'What the hell was that?' asked Serenity.

***

'Excellent,' said Adam when Jonathan recounted the essence of the conversation to him on the way to breakfast. 'Really excellent.'

True ?

'Oh, yeah.'

When no more information was forthcoming, he asked, Next ?

'Play this according to the rules. Black doesn't move twice in a row.'

Jonathan had never liked chess. Then ? He asked impatiently.

'Then, if they take the bait, we'll have the opportunity to test a couple of theories I've got about this school...'