Super Powereds: Year 3 (62 page)

                Vince patted him on the shoulder, that damned smile of his never wavering. “Like I said, I know you. I know your intentions say more than your words. Deny it all you want, Nick, but I’m not pretending you aren’t who you are. And I’m definitely not keeping my distance from you any longer, so you better get used to that real quick.”

                The two young men had to step aside briefly as a group of women jostled along the sidewalk, clustered together too tightly to be ignored. When they had passed, Nicholas spoke:

                “The meeting-up thing shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I’m here as a legitimate student, and the minor surveillance concern I was dealing with has been handled.”

                “I never had a doubt,” Vince said. “I have to lay low tonight, though. Tomorrow is a big exam. My 
biggest
 exam, actually. But tomorrow, you’re coming over to hang out in the dorm.”

                “No.” Nicholas firmly shook his head. “Vince, for just so many reasons, no. I cannot go back in there. The security protocols alone are staggering. If you really want to hang out, then you all can come to my apartment. Mary, of course, knows where it is.”

                “Awesome, plan on us showing up around seven, then. Just this once, I bet everyone will let you pick a bad horror movie without complaining.”

                Nicholas knew he could still diffuse this situation, manage to convince Vince that hanging out in such social occasions was dangerous for all in involved. He knew he could do that . . . he just didn’t want to. The idea of spending an evening with everyone, of being around his friends from a former life, it sounded downright 
fun
. He couldn’t have rationally broken down why, but Nicholas had a staggering desire to see them all, as soon and as frequently as possible.

                “I’ll pick something so bad it borders on blasphemy.”

115.

               After two years in the Hero Certification Program, every student who still remained had come up with some manner of pre-exam ritual, a method of preparing, mentally and physically, for the trials that awaited them come sunrise. The evening before the junior class’s semester final saw people preparing in different ways.

                Some went to the gym, doing workouts meant to keep their muscles limber without overtaxing them. They might not have known what they were facing, but soreness wasn’t going to help them with any type of challenge.

                Others took the night off completely. They planned movie marathons, had lavish dinners, or found other methods to get their minds off the next day’s coming challenge. This was their way of both distracting themselves, and having what might be one last hurrah. People usually weren’t cut at this point in the program, but what they’d been learning since Day One in the HCP was that anything was possible.

                Vince was in his room, trying to block out the excitement he felt over seeing his friend and their plans for the following evening. He needed to be calm for this to work. It was a technique he’d only discovered recently, during his daily fights with George in the desert. It had taken him months of practice to learn to use it reliably, and tomorrow might be his first opportunity to use it in battle. The key was to calm himself, to push past the usual fire he felt when engaged in battle. Keeping himself steady and detached would be the hardest part of the exam tomorrow, but he had to do it. He wouldn’t let Nick’s sacrifice be for nothing.

                Roy and Chad were sparring down in the gym. Though it was still difficult for Roy to land blows on Chad, his blond opponent could no longer dominate Roy the way he once had. True, Chad would always be faster and more skilled, but Roy’s own growing strength and coordination made counters more dangerous. Neither considered this a true match, as both were holding back plenty in reserve. One day, they’d have an all-out brawl to determine who was stronger, but not on the night before an exam. Doing well was more important than stroking their ego by proving dominance. That fact alone, more than any other, spoke to the growth Roy had experienced since freshman year.

                Alice and Mary were doing basic exercises to work on their precision. While both might have benefitted more from a bout of actual battle, it was too risky to strain their bodies the night before a match, since neither possessed healing abilities. Instead, they focused on sharpening their skills. That would be what made the difference tomorrow. Physically, each was skilled, but not terribly imposing. They could handle any civilian with relative ease, yet, by Super standards, they were weak and vulnerable. Add in their ability, however, and either young woman was powerful enough to send the smart criminals fleeing for the hills.

                Camille, Thomas, Will, Jill, and Violet all had a simple dinner that night. They set a table, cooked a variety of dishes and toasted to the friend who was no longer with them. If Stella had been around, they would have all been training as well, striving for an extra iota of power to use in the coming trials. But Stella was not there, and as such, they had learned that there were better uses of one’s time than just training. For example: having a night with friends, making memories that would last, even if not for all of them.

                Curiously, it was a Super who was no longer in the HCP that had the strangest night, and following day, of the lot.

*             *             *

                Nicholas was downright impatient when he “woke up” in the dreamscape. He leapt up from the ground, spinning about until he spied Nick, who was standing nearby and looking somewhat confused.

                “Right then, let’s get this over with. I don’t care what the game is; I’m not letting you beat me at this one. Your emotions were already leaking all over the place when dealing with Vince. Any more, and I’ll end up so dim and dull I may as well be a civilian.” Nicholas spat the word “civilian” as though it left a rancid taste across his tongue.

                “Coming out of the gate swinging, I can respect that,” Nick replied. “Unfortunately, you wasted your bluster. I don’t think we’re playing a game tonight.”

                “Why not?”

                “Well, I’m just guessing here, but I’m basing it mainly on the fact that I can’t seem to manipulate our dream-reality anymore.” Nick extended his hand, trying to conjure a table or chairs like the ones he’d called forth previously. Nothing happened; the mist and fog merely swirled about.

                Nicholas did the same, attempting to produce nothing more than a pack of playing cards, items he was so familiar with he may as well have been conjuring his own fingers. As with Nick’s efforts, there was neither a shift in the world, nor cards in his hand.

                “Curious,” Nicholas noted.

                “Fucking annoying,” Nick countered. “I really wanted to beat you again.”

                “No chance. I went to sleep tonight intent on winning.”

                Nick rolled his eyes, a gesture hidden by the sunglasses on his face, and looked around. There was nothing to signify what came next, only an empty, expansive landscape completely covered in swirling white fog. Then, as he swept his gaze around once more, there was suddenly something in front of them. A small female figure that hadn’t been there previously. It took Nick a moment to place her, which was forgivable. He’d never taken Focus, and the woman looked thirty years younger than the professor he’d only seen in passing.

                “Are you ready to begin?” Professor Stone asked.

                “Begin what? What is this? Who are you?” Nicholas looked torn between taking a swing at the small woman and getting down and pleading with her. “Can you finally end all this? Please?”

                “Are you ready to begin?” The words, the tone, the facial expression, all of it was an echo of the first time she spoke. Nick quickly assembled the clues before him.

                “She’s not real. Well, she’s real in that she exists here, but she’s not an actual telepathic projection. Are you, Professor Stone?”

                “Are you ready to begin?”

                “That pretty much answers my question.” Nick turned to Nicholas. “Maybe she’s an implanted memory or something, it doesn’t really matter. She’s clearly the next step in whatever this crazy bullshit is we’re going through.”

                “Vince was the last of them,” Nicholas said slowly. “No more games and memories. This is a new trial.”

                Nick nodded and adjusted his sunglasses out of habit. “Maybe it’s the endgame, maybe it’s not. We do know one thing about it, though.”

                “What’s that?” Nicholas asked.

                Nick flashed him a wild, hungry grin, the sort of expression he would never show outside of a closed Family meeting. “It’s going to be interesting.”

                Nicholas allowed himself a smile of his own. That was true. For all the differences he and Nick had, it was clear they both still shared some personality traits. Most dominant among those was the part of them that had defined so much of their lives and the man they’d grown into: the inability to resist a good challenge.

                The identical yet different young men looked to the small woman, who took the cue.

                “Are you ready to begin?”

                “We are indeed,” Nicholas said.

                “Hell yes we are,” Nick said.

                The landscape around them shifted dramatically. In the blink of an eye, the woman was gone. In her place was a massive stone entrance leading down. The walls of the enclosure were lit, but even straining, neither Nick nor Nicholas could see more than twenty feet down.

                Wordlessly, they both wandered into the cave.

116.

               Dean Blaine always felt a strange glow of pride when he looked at the older students before an exam. Seeing them grow from uncertain or overly prideful freshmen into competent warriors reminded him that, as frustrating as his job could be at times, he was still helping to make a difference. The young men and women gathered before him were no longer undisciplined Supers with a disproportionate sense of their abilities. They were staring at him with eyes that, while nervous, still shone with controlled calm and preparation. These were the eyes of people prepared to walk into battle. These were the eyes of future Heroes.

                “Good morning, everyone.” Dean Blaine’s voice boomed through the gym, falling on the ears of waiting students and eager professors. “As you all know, you are here to take the semester final for your third year in the Hero Certification Program. I want to take this moment to wish each of you the best of luck. Though some will score higher than others, I hope each of you will use your abilities to their fullest potential. That, ultimately, is all anyone can ever ask from you as a Hero.”

                The students nodded their understanding, but made no comment. Tension practically radiated off every one of them. They were ready to hear what they would be facing; all other sentiments were secondary concerns.

                “Now then, let’s get on with what I know you all really care about: the details of your exam.” Behind Dean Blaine, a large white screen lowered from the ceiling. “As you know, the focus of your third year’s training is predominantly on handling multiple opponents on your own. Today’s exam will offer a real life situation to test how well you’ve absorbed that knowledge. You are all Heroes who have gotten a call about a gang of criminal Supers holed up in a building. They are planning to commit acts of serious destruction, and all other Heroes are engaged in other assignments. It is up to you to neutralize these threats. And what exactly are these threats? Let me introduce you to a training tool used by HCP upperclassmen as well as actual Heroes: the Simulated Super Automated Battle Droids, or Sims, for short.”

                On the screen behind Blaine appeared images of several mechanical beings. Some were large, easily eight feet tall and wider than a pair of vending machines, while others were human-sized or smaller. The one trait they all shared was a colored light in the center of their chest.

                “Sims come in a variety of builds, meant to emulate the powers of several basic Super categories. You’ll find that, depending on your particular suite of abilities, some will go down easier than others. Sims are a key part of training, but they do come with a very obvious flaw in that Supers with technical control abilities will find them laughably easy as opponents.”

                Jill kept her face as neutral as she could manage. The sight of robotic opponents had made her want to bust out in a smug grin, but two years of this stuff had taught her that nothing would be that simple.

                “For that reason, during this exam, it will be forbidden to use any abilities on the Sims that do not also work on humans. Case in point: Jill Murray will not be allowed to simply overtake them and power them down; however, she is free to use her ability on anything else in the training field.”

                “Doesn’t this actually make it impossible for some of us though?” Rich Weaver asked. “My power doesn’t work on robots, so I’m basically going in there as a human.”