“What kind of classes?”
Alex spoke in monotone, unable to hide his unhappiness at the thought.
Michael laughed.
“I doubt very much that you’ll find it boring, Alex, but I can’t tell you much until we figure out what you can learn, okay? We won’t try and teach you anything that you don’t want to know.”
“I don’t get it.”
Michael seemed terribly amused by Alex’s recalcitrance.
“Don’t worry about it too much. At first, it will be general stuff. We’ll have you do some tests, so we can figure out the proper placement for you. It’ll probably be a bit hard, to start with, but I think you’ll find that it’s not that bad once you get the hang of how it all works.”
“Will everyone know what’s going on but me?”
“No, but you will be at a disadvantage,” Michael said thoughtfully. “No use pretending otherwise. Sometimes the talent runs in families, but mostly it doesn’t. Some of the students here have been raised as part of a cartel, but most of the others, like you, were discovered in the world, as children or early teens. It’s a bit unusual to be starting at your age, but it’s not unheard of. But yes,” Michael added sympathetically, “most of the students will probably have a better idea of what’s going on than you do.”
“You’re going to have to explain it, then,” Alex said firmly. “I’m going to need to know about it all, Michael.”
“I’ll do my best to explain,” he said, as Mrs. Nesbit entered with a quick knock and deposited a stack of folders on a recently cleared patch of desk. “Two coffees, Mrs. Nesbit. How do you take yours, Alex?”
Alexander hesitated for a moment. He’d never cared much for coffee. It made him nervous. But then again, given the circumstances…
“Milk and sugar,” he decided, because it sounded right to him. “Lots, please.”
Mrs. Nesbit nodded and bustled back out to the main room, shutting the door behind her. Michael deposited the new stack of paperwork on one of the already daunting piles and then sat back in his swivel chair, folding his hands behind his head.
“Do you mind if I start with the hard part first, Alex?”
Michael’s smile folded up and disappeared, and his big, brown eyes got sad. Alex braced himself without knowing what was coming, and then managed a nervous nod.
“Okay, then. Nobody ever likes hearing this part, but most of the time, people have a bit more choice in the matter. You got the short end of the stick, son,” Michael said, so sympathetically that Alex couldn’t help but wonder if he was being genuine.
“We had no choice in the matter, you see, because of your injuries,” Michael continued. “You were dead by the time they got you to the infirmary, Alex. Your heart stopped on the elevator ride up. And even if the doctors had gotten it going again, you had spinal trauma and massive blood loss, not to mention clotting and impacted bone in your forearm. You would have died again on the operating table, you have to appreciate that.”
Alex was not entirely convinced that he did, but he let the big man keep talking.
“You were injected with almost two-ounces of water saturated with billions of particles of nanomachinery, Alexander, programmed for replication and recovery protocols,” Michael said, almost casually, as if it were a normal thing, regrettable perhaps, but something to be expected. “Your heart started beating about twenty seconds after the injection, and you started breathing again within a minute.”
Alex looked at his hands, at the blue veins running just underneath the skin, and wondered.
“Are they still inside me?”
The question seemed somehow terribly important, his throat dry and his voice hoarse. He had to fight the urge to scratch at his skin.
“I’m afraid so,” Michael replied, looking sadly at Alexander. “It’s not a reversible procedure, Alex.”
“Why would you do that?” He was almost shouting, halfway out of his chair and onto his feet. “Who told you could do that?”
“Sit down, Alex,” Michael ordered sternly. “I won’t bother to repeat the ‘you were dead already’ part, since we covered that, and move to the other half — we would have done it to you, anyway, regardless of the injuries. We would have asked your permission, but, hey, I was there, watching you bleed out, son. If you’d prefer that I explain myself fully to an unconscious kid, before deciding to try and save his life, well, I’m not sure how realistic your expectations are.”
Alex glared at Michael, hands knotted around the arms of his chair, for a long moment. Then he sat back, sighing.
“What exactly have you done to me?” he asked, resting his head in his hands.
“It’s not as bad as all that, son,” Michael said, his smile back. “They did save you, after all. And those little machines, the nanites, they can do it again, too, if it becomes necessary. You’ll find dying pretty difficult from here on out, my friend.”
Something in Michael’s tone resonated with Alex.
“Do you have them too?” he asked, almost pleaded. “Are there machines inside you?”
“Sure I do,” Michael said, reassuringly. “And so do all the students here, and the entire faculty. For people like us, it’s an absolute necessity.”
“Why?”
“You’ve got power inside you, Alex, like everyone else at the Academy, to one extent or another. We don’t know why, but you were born that way. But power isn’t everything…”
Alex shook his head, bewildered.
“Look at it like this,” Michael said, leaning forward in his chair excitedly, “electricity, it isn’t much good, all by itself, right?”
“Huh?”
“You don’t just build a power plant and then sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor, right? Electricity alone won’t do it. You need light bulbs, right?”
“Light bulbs?”
His response was nothing more than a weak echo.
“Power isn’t everything, Alex, I already told you. Application, that’s what we’re talking about now, son. Energy alone is meaningless, unless you can make it work for you, and you need tools for that. Something inside you provides the power, sure, but those nanomachines, they’re the tools. With them, you can apply energy, and do work.”
Alex raised his head from his hands to stare at Michael incredulously. Neither of them responded to the quick knock and rapid entry and exit of Mrs. Nesbit, and neither reached for the steaming coffee mugs she left behind.
“So, what can I do?” Alex asked dubiously. “I have powers, now, because of these machines inside me, right? Can I fly or something?”
Michael laughed and picked up his coffee.
“That’s good, Alex. I’m glad you asked about flying.”
“I can?”
Alex almost jumped out of his seat, gaping and incredulous.
“No, I’m afraid not,” Michael said, chuckling to himself, “but it’s good that you asked. Normal people ask about flying. Perverts ask if they can turn invisible.”
Alex almost choked on his first sip of too-sweet coffee.
“I’m just playing with you son, trying to lighten the mood,” Michael said, with an amiable grin. “Yes, you’ll be able to do some things, now, but we won’t know what till we do some tests. It’ll take some time. And a lot of it, like I mentioned earlier, will be up to you.”
“I get a choice?”
Alex set his mug down on the edge of the desk, hoping he had sipped enough to be considered polite. Apparently, being injected with some sort of mysterious nanomachinery had not changed his opinion of coffee for the better.
“To some extent,” Michael affirmed, “you do. What you are capable of, well, that’s predetermined, but what you do with it — that’s going to be a bit of a compromise. Some of it will be about what you want. Some of it will be about what we need from you.”
“Oh?”
Alex didn’t bother to hide the suspicion from his voice. Normally, he would have been more diplomatic, but this whole situation had shaken his reserve.
“Don’t make it sound so sinister,” Michael protested. “We are like any other organization, son. We’ve got operational needs, and we need the right personnel to fill them.”