ONE HUNDRED SIX: Ledger

106

 

At North of North that morning, Alden had a plyometrics session with Bobby and the guy who’d been analyzing how his movement trait stressed his body.

They’d roped off a section of the building’s marble-floored foyer just for him because they wanted to watch him on different types of “ground,” and they hadn’t tried marble yet. He was doing his best not to feel self-conscious while he jumped up and down on progressively higher boxes.

Regular jumping. Magic jumping. Higher, Alden. Faster, Alden. Ignore all the superheroes getting their smoothies, Alden.

There’s an actual hyperbole watching me hop around. That’s not strange at all.

She was a spunky-looking girl with teal hair.

Well, not a girl, he corrected himself. Isn’t she like forty?

She was a U-type, and in English, her name was Plopstar. Alden had always found that concerning.

Laying waste to acreage with falling magic sparkles? Awesome.

But calling yourself Plopstar while you did it? Could she really be trusted to aim her magic sparkles at the right spots?

“Let’s get some more height on the next one,” said Bobby, moving a mat out of the way. She’d brought it to toss in front of him in case he overshot a box on a high jump. “Tell me if anything starts to hurt.”

While Alden was checking to make sure the enamel rabbit pin he was using as his preserved object was still tucked deeply in the pocket of his shorts, a text message from Lute popped up. He’d just woken up, and he was booking the privacy booth for them to have their wordchain tutoring session.

[Do you want a creepy one, a snobby one, or an underwater one?]

Why are those the only three options? Why are those options at all?

When he’d heard the phrase “privacy booth” he’d assumed it would be similar to an office cubicle or a restaurant booth. Lute seemed like someone whose idea of creepy might be really creepy.

[Isn’t there a normal variety?]

[What about one in the back of a Wright shop? They’ll check our molars for explosives and teach us a secret knock.]

[Snobby sounds good,] Alden said immediately.

If molar checking happened at these places, he wanted the least creepy molar check available.

“Throw your hips into it!” a voice shouted across the foyer. “You can go higher, kid!”

[Plopstar is yelling at me,] Alden told Lute.

He tried to ignore her. Then he realized that ignoring was probably not the way to go with one of the most powerful people in the world. So he smiled and waved instead.

[R.I.P.] said Lute. [It was nice knowing you. When she glitters you to ash, can I have your room?]

******

Alden survived his gym session with only a little more input from a Rank 1 than he would’ve liked, and afterward, he set off on a rental bike for a skatepark where Lute was hanging out with Haoyu.

It was a gorgeous day for Anesidora—blue sky, sunshine, breezy. People were walking around in flip-flops and tank tops and pretending it was actually warm instead of just warm enough.

Lexi thinks the rest of the planet isn’t for us, and it never will be, Alden thought as he pedaled.

He felt so unsettled by the sentiment, and he couldn’t understand why he did. He was perfectly aware of what Anesidora was. He’d had multiple conversations with people about it. A lengthy government letter was still in his inbox, announcing the official date his U.S. citizenship had expired.

Maybe it was the way Lexi had delivered the opinion. Like it wasn’t really up for debate…just a simple truth.

“Hey, System,” he said, as he wove around a stroller that had been parked in the bike lane outside a clothing store. “Pull up my exit letter. The one that de-citizens me. Text to audio.”

He didn’t know exactly what he was trying to figure out as he listened to the message read itself. He wanted to judge the tone, maybe, and that wasn’t the easiest thing to do. The letter sounded like it had been crafted by a roomful of writers who’d been threatened with execution if there was a single negative connotation toward any party.

There was no line in there that explicitly said, “Fuck off, Alden Thorn. The country just works better for the rest of us without you in it.”

It was, of course, professional and full of language that implied he was a good person and should be proud of himself. They were confident he would use his “extraordinary gifts in protection of and service to our United Nations of Earth and all other known peoples throughout the universe.”

Yeah, it’s pretty final.

He was surprised they’d thrown the other species into the mix, though. It felt like an unusual show of solidarity with the other resource worlds in the first place, and in the second, this was a letter about how Alden had to live on Anesidora now.

Stay there. That’s the spot where we put the people with the extraordinary gifts. Good boy.

It really didn’t have anything to do with the “other known peoples throughout the universe” at all.

…so that’s it. They couldn’t manage to make living on an isolated island sound like my noble duty, so they talk about how I’m protecting and serving as an Avowed instead and hope I won’t notice the two are entirely separate things.

Not surprising. Nothing new.

It just sounded different a few hours after he’d heard Lexi describe Anesidora as “the place that actually wants us.”

He looked around him. A girl in a university t-shirt was in the lane ahead, using Shaping gestures to power her bicycle instead of the pedals. On the street, people were making full use of their running licenses, whipping around cars and motorcycles. And he’d spotted Bedlam Beldam on his way to the gym, soaring around above the drone traffic layer on her broomglider.

He’d taken a quick video for Boe.

It was all so Anesidoran. So Apex.

A couple of minutes later, he reached a small skatepark. He racked the bike and took in the scenery. It had sounded like his roommates were just going to hang out together, and Haoyu was going to teach Lute how to use a board. But their plans must have changed.

He saw Haoyu, but there was also a large and peculiar assortment of their classmates present. Kon was there, so it was probably his doing. Lexi’s brother went through the day picking up people like they were Easter Eggs.

Maricel, Vandy, Tuyet, and Everly were all playing around with a single skateboard. It was obvious they’d never used one before. Heloísa was doing conspicuous kickflips in Mehdi’s line of sight, and he was pretending not to see her while he went up and down a ramp.

Haoyu was on a board at the edge of the park, animatedly explaining something to a watching Kon and Jeffy.

The girls were closest, so Alden headed over to them.

“If I ice the top of it and use my skill to stick myself to it do you think that will make me better or worse?” Everly asked Tuyet and Vandy. She had her arms crossed over her chest and she was watching Maricel skate away from them across a flat section of concrete.

“You might damage Haoyu’s board.” Vandy’s hands were making a pressing motion down by her sides.

Alden looked around for whatever patch of air she was working on. Vandy was almost always doing something with her magic. It took him a while to spot it today. Her shoulder-length hair didn’t seem to be moving in the breeze like everyone else’s.

“Hi, Vandy! Are you shaping the air around your face?”

Blue-gray eyes fixed on him.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m practicing stilling rather than moving today. Maricel is practicing soil compression with the dirt in her pockets. Everly is thinking about freezing skateboards. And Tuyet…is taking a day off. For rest.”

Everly shook her head.

Oof, thought Alden. The judgment in her tone.

“I can’t throw darts around out here in public!” Tuyet protested. “It’ll scare people. They’re weapons, and they’re little. It’s hard for anyone to know if I’ve got safety blunting on them or not.”

Vandy was the kind of person who asked you with utter seriousness how you were going to overcome your Rabbit disadvantages so that she could make plans for shoring up your weaknesses if you happened to be in battle together fifteen years from now. It had to be tough to be her friend sometimes.

“Not everyone wants to practice every minute of every day,” Everly told her. “Weekends are healthy. Alden’s not practicing right now.”

“Yes, he is,” said Vandy.

Alden looked at her in surprise.

“He’s almost always practicing,” Vandy informed the other two. “It’s just that his skill is subtle, and you can only tell he’s using it if you’re watching him walk across ground element surfaces. Or examining his pockets.”

Maricel was skating back toward them. Her pixie cut had gotten a dye job. She had a few small pink streaks at the back of her neck.

She smiled as she joined them.

“Are you really time-stopping something right now?” Tuyet asked Alden.

A few people almost always referred to Alden’s power with temporal language rather than using the words he himself usually did when he was talking about it—preservation, freezing, shielding…

They all pretty much knew what the skill did by now. He thought the vocabulary difference had to do with whether he had tried to explain it to them himself or if Konstantin had gotten to them first. The Adjuster liked talking about time magic for obvious reasons.

I’m just glad Maricel is a nice person who doesn’t tell people about the pickles misunderstanding.

Pickle Man would be a difficult image to escape from.

“What are we talking about?” Maricel asked brightly.

“Vandy says she can tell when Alden’s practicing his skill,” said Tuyet.

Everly was staring at Alden’s butt.

“Not my back pockets,” he clarified. “I almost never have an item there.”

Because his skill wouldn’t work if he accidentally sat on his object instead of letting it sit on him.

“No,” said Vandy. “He keeps objects in his front pockets if he doesn’t have them in his hand or his bag. Usually his hoodie. I always check to see if he’s practicing in Intro to Other Worlds.”

So I’m going to have to make sure I don’t stick anything too weird in the pockets from now on.

“You could just ask me…”

“It’s good to examine other Avowed and determine when their powers are in use,” Vandy explained. “You’re one of the best people in our class to practice observation on.”

Now they were all staring at him.

“He doesn’t have a hoodie on today,” said Everly.

“The front pockets look normal,” said Maricel, examining his jeans.

“Maybe it’s one of his shoelaces?” Tuyet bent over to poke at Alden’s feet. “He could do it to keep a shoe from coming untied.”

I hadn’t thought of that one yet.

“I know he has something,” said Vandy. “He has a trait. It’s tied to the skill’s use like a lot of Rabbit traits. It makes him walk differently on ground when he’s protecting something.”

“She’s right,” Alden admitted, digging his hand into his front pocket and producing the enamel pin. “I can cut the trait off, but I usually don’t bother. I carry this sometimes when I just want to practice and I don’t have anything I really need to preserve. Or I pin it to my shirt. It’s small, so it doesn’t get in the way.”

“Aww, it’s a bunny!” said Everly.

“They gave them to all the Rabbits in intake.”

Maricel looked at him for permission, then reached out with a finger to poke the pin on his palm. “I really can’t touch it. It looks like I’m touching it. I’m touching something. But it’s not the pin.”

“You’re touching a layer of protective magic.”

Vandy looked very satisfied.

“All right,” Tuyet said with a sigh. “I’ll practice later. Not here where I might accidentally poke out somebody’s eye.”

Right. “Have you guys seen Lute Velra? I’m supposed to be meeting him here, but…”

He trailed off as a distinctly uncomfortable shift occurred. Vandy stiffened up like a board. Tuyet’s lips pursed. Everly wrinkled her nose.

Maricel hadn’t noticed. She was still rubbing the preserved pin curiously with her finger.

“Why are you hanging out with him?” Everly asked.

“He’s my roommate.”

“Yeah. I know. Haoyu’s living with him, too.”

“He was here when we got here,” Tuyet said slowly. “And then he left.”

Alden frowned at them. “He’s tutoring me.

Everly scrunched her nose again. “Are you learning music?”

“Wordchains,” said Alden.

“I need to try that!” said Maricel, looking up. “I’ve never done one.”

“Let us teach you,” Vandy said immediately.

“I know two different ones,” said Tuyet.

Maricel suddenly caught the vibe. She looked between Alden and her roommates. “Um…”

“I don’t mind teaching you, too” Vandy said to Alden. “It’s good you want to learn some. Supplemental magics will be particularly important for you.”

Holy shit, they must hate Lute.

They hadn’t said anything terrible, but Alden hadn’t even realized Tuyet had a critical bone in her body. She got nervous if people argued during breaks in gym. And he rather liked Everly. She was super tough and hard-working. And Vandy had just offered to tutor him…instead of saying, “Will the expert tutor me, too?” Which would have been more in line with what he thought of her character.

If they were known dicks, like Winston or Mehdi, he’d probably have said something cutting…but they weren’t. And Maricel was here. And these were the people she was trying to make friends with.

Evacuate, he decided.

“Thanks, but I’m grateful Lute’s teaching me. He’s been taking time out of his schedule to tutor me all week, and he’s amazing at it. I’ll track him down.”

[Lute, where are you?] he texted quickly.

[Skatepark still.]

[I’m here. I don’t see you.]

[Already? Meet me on the side farthest from the street. By the trees.]

“Found him,” said Alden, even though he hadn’t yet. “Bye, guys.”

He spun and headed away from the street, walking along the edge of the park to steer clear of the skateboarders. A second later, he saw Lute drop out of a tree and take a seat on a metal railing that marked the boundary between the park and a walking trail.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

When Alden joined him, Lute said, “We’ve got half an hour until our car comes.”

“Car?”

“We’re going in style because we can…and because my boss is paying for it.” He nodded toward the park. “You want to go hang out with Haoyu and your hero program friends while we wait?”

The girls Alden had just left behind had their heads together. He wondered if Maricel was getting some kind of Lute-related gossip right now.

“Are you going to hang out with them?” Alden asked.

Lute pulled his knees up so that he was sitting on the railing like a gargoyle. He was wearing his safety pin pants and a t-shirt with a Jolly Roger flag on it. It wasn’t the first time Alden had seen him boldly go for pirate themed clothing with the eyepatch.

“Not my thing,” he said after a moment.

“Well I’m tired from jumping on boxes, so I’m good over here, too.”

Lute smiled. “Tell me about meeting Plopstar then.”

“She cheered me on while I exercised. Or maybe it was heckling. One or the other. Normally, Bobby would’ve asked her to stop. The gym has a ‘no bothering’ policy.”

“Don’t tell me you expected your personal trainer to yell at a hyperbole for you.”

“Of course not. I was just noting the difference.”

“A kooky hyperbole, no less.”

A thought suddenly occurred to Alden. “Do you think you’ll be one someday?”

“Huh?”