Chapter 13: Nowhere Special

(True-but-unseen account)

If you are searching for a story about a boy who wins a game and gets a parade, close this book now. Dear Reader, Arthur Specter won Stage One and received a question mark, and it was the polite kind, the kind that follows you home.

Hadjer was waiting on the apartment steps when he got back.

She hadn’t gone inside. She sat with her knees pulled up and the red card folded small in her fist, and she watched him climb the stairs with the look of someone reading fine print.

"Sit," she said.

He sat.

"How did you know the man would come at exactly 4:10?"

"Seventeen days of watching him. He was never late."

"How did you know the clocks would fool her?"

"I didn’t. I knew she’d stopped checking anything but her own house."

"Why didn’t you tell me?"

He opened his mouth. He’d had a whole speech ready for that one, and it had gone missing on the walk over.

"Because you can’t hide what you don’t know," he said. "The mark would’ve had nothing to grab. And because I was scared you’d say no."

Hadjer looked at him for a long time.

"That’s the first answer that cost you something," she said.

"Is that good?"

"I don’t know yet." She stood and brushed off her jeans. "Ask me tomorrow. I’m going to keep asking you things, Arthur. Every time. Get used to it."

She walked ahead of him down the stairs. He stayed one step behind, grinning at her back like an idiot.

He was proud of her. It was a strange, warm feeling, like watching a houseplant decide to survive.

The card, though, had his name on it.

MR. SPECTER. Arthur turned it over that night on the ceiling of his bedroom, in the dark, in the smell of clean laundry and his father’s old cologne on the hallway air.

The tracker had been on Hadjer, never on him. Yet somebody had looked up at their window and tapped a wrist, making sure we saw that he used two fingers. Somebody knew a second player had been sitting behind the glass.

He thought of the plumber’s assistant asleep on the laundromat bench, gray vest, wrench on the shoulder. Ten minutes of a stranger’s life, borrowed without asking.

Nobody saw me leave my body.

Nobody could have. A body on a bench looked like a boy taking a nap. Proxy Me had kept it breathing, and that was all anyone could see.

Still.

Ghost Mode was the only card he held that nobody in this world had a name for. He knew that the way he knew his own middle name. And a trump card only works while the other players think you’re holding a two.

Careful, he thought. Use it like a match, not a flashlight.

A secret shown is a secret spent;

the best hand’s the one they never suspect.

The letter came the next morning, and it wasn’t from the Game.

Headmaster’s Office. Immediately. Bring Ms. Lotus.

Voss’s office smelled like cedar and cold tea. The window behind his desk showed a garden that Arthur was fairly certain hadn’t been there yesterday.

Voss did not look up from his papers. "Sit down, Mr. Specter. Both of you."

They sat.

"You sent two sick notes," Voss said, "from two mothers’ accounts, eleven days apart, for two children who were supposedly suffering the same stomach flu."

Arthur said nothing. Beside him, Hadjer went very still. She should listen to Arthur when he said change it a bit so they don’t suspect anything.

"I knew by the second morning." Voss finally set down his pen. "Your mother called the front office, Mr. Specter. She wanted to know why her son was always late. She said your schedule felt suspicious. She was correct, incidentally. It is a rare pleasure to be right about a child."

Arthur’s stomach dropped somewhere near his shoes.

"We covered for you," Voss went on, mildly. "Quests here sometimes take more time than a lesson does. Covering for a cadet who has vanished on one is part of the job. Your mother received a very believable excuse."

"Sir," Arthur said, "how did she call at all? I thought nobody could find the Academy."

"Nobody can." Voss steepled his fingers. "This place is called Nowhere. Any person, from any place, can arrive here if they hold permission. Without it, they simply get lost, and the road forgets them by supper. Your mother could not find this building. She found only a telephone."

He let that settle.

"Next time you attempt a mission, you file a report. No forged notes. Three cadets minimum, and one adult teacher’s approval, signed before you leave. Am I understood?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good." A dry pause. "Now. Introductions."

The door opened, and Carter walked in.

He stopped when he saw Hadjer. He looked at her. Hadjer looked at him. Then, very slowly, the gray-green curl of a wilting leaf drifted off the plant on Voss’s shelf and landed in front of Carter’s shoe.

"Ms. Lotus," Voss said. "Mr. Carter. Your teammate."

Nobody moved.

"Sir," Carter said carefully, "she poisons things that get near her. She’s not fit to work in a team."

"Sir," Hadjer said at exactly the same time, "he’s the monster house boy. He... well... you know..."

Voss nodded gravely, as if this were an excellent point. Then he stood, walked to the window, and became fascinated by the garden.

The silence lasted four seconds. Then both of them turned and grabbed Arthur by the sleeves, one on each side, and hauled him to the far corner of the room.

"We can’t be on the same team," Carter hissed.

"You’re new, so you don’t know. On his last team mission, he abandoned his team and let them die!" Hadjer whispered. "He’s famous in here, in a bad way. You can’t trust a coward!"

"She’s a walking hazard!" Carter said. "We’re better off as a duo."

Arthur looked from one to the other. Two exhausted, panicked faces, both convinced they’d found a fatal flaw in the arrangement. It struck him that this was the funniest thing that had happened to him all month.

He started to laugh. He couldn’t help it.

"You two are hilarious," he said. "Beggars can’t be choosers."

They stared at him.

"You’re both Iron. You both have no team. We need missions, and we need to get stronger than we are, and nobody else is offering." He shrugged. "So deal with it."

"Not to mention, neither of you has even confirmed what you know about the other. Rumors are mostly told about dumb people. Why would I need a bunch of dumb people’s opinions to be mine? I’ll confirm them on my own. Also, Carter, you need to tell your version of this monster house story. And Hadjer will get you a hazard suit. Honestly, I’ve been feeling a bit sick those days."

Carter’s jaw worked. Hadjer glared. Neither of them said no.

Behind the desk, Voss coughed into his fist, and it sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

"One more thing, Mr. Specter."

The other two were already leaving. Voss had returned to his chair, and his voice was quiet.

"You have not yet attended a single class. That ends today." He slid a printed schedule across the desk. "Your Awaken Talent is a tool, and a tool you cannot use is only a weight. Learn it."

"Yes, sir."

"First period. Down the east corridor. Do not be late." The faintest pause. "For once."

Arthur took the paper and walked out.

He read it in the hall. Only one line, printed in plain black ink under a name he didn’t recognize.

PERIOD ONE — COMBAT 101.

Oh, he thought. Oh, no.

The east corridor smelled like chalk dust, sweat, and something iron underneath it, like old blood scrubbed over years.

At the end of it stood a pair of double doors with a small brass plaque:

COMBAT 101 — ALL FIRST-YEARS. NO EXCEPTIONS. NO WEAPONS UNTIL YOU’VE EARNED THE RIGHT TO BE HIT WITH ONE.

Arthur stood in front of the doors for eleven seconds.

He was twelve. His stat block said STR 13, a number that sounded better than it felt. His only combat experience was one lucky punch and one very unlucky fall from a very tall place.

His Talent, Proxy Me, did not swing a sword. His Talent piloted his body while his mind was somewhere else. He couldn’t exactly explain that to a combat teacher.

And Ghost Mode stays in my pocket, he thought. Especially here. Whoever runs the Game of Life obviously is from this place and probably has a bunch of planted spies.

He pushed the doors open.

The room was enormous. Sand floor. Racks of practice weapons along the walls. Twenty cadets scattered across the ring, most of them already in gear, and all of them turned to look at the boy in the doorway with no gear at all.

Then the doors slammed shut behind him.

Somebody, somewhere, turned a heavy key.

When paths go quiet and crowds withdraw,

something watches behind the law.

An instructor stepped out of the shadows at the far end of the ring, and he was smiling.

"Welcome, Mr. Specter," he said. "We’ve been waiting for you."

TO BE CONTINUED...