“I’m just his friend. We don’t talk about girls much,” Vivik continued on, a little stunned that lying had suddenly become so easy. “And I honestly don’t know what’s up with him and Eerie. Ever since Alex started the Program, he is barely ever around, and when he is, he spends most of his time sleeping. He doesn’t eat with her, and he doesn’t sit next to her in class. Why are you so worried?”
Emily sniffled and looked miserable; curling her bare, tanned legs beneath her, stretched across the top of Vivik’s neatly made bed.
“They know, Vivik,” she said, crumpling the tissue in her hand. “The Hegemony. Chandi Tuesday showed up today and threatened me. They want results, and they know all about Alex and Eerie. Vivik,” she said intensely, seizing his hand in her own, “they are going to kick me out of the Academy. My father will marry me off to some old man, and that will be that.”
Vivik opened his mouth to protest, and then thought better of it. Emily was right, of course, and that was part of it. The other part was that he did not want her to let go of his hand. The way he saw it, it wasn’t even a betrayal of Alex — after all, he had been frank with Vivik many times as to his uncertainty when it came to Emily. Surely, he was not doing anything wrong by spending time with the girl he liked, regardless of her intentions. Was it even possible, he wondered, for Emily’s obsessive quest for Alex to lead her in his direction?
You never know, Vivik thought, until you try, reaching as subtly as possible for the box of tissues.
3
Alex was in the circle, and not at all happy to be there.
No one seemed inclined to ask his opinion on the subject, however, and Mitsuru Aoki’s crimson eyes were latched on to him, so he tried to keep his head clear, his breathing slow, and his hands up. As Steve was right-handed, and favored a lunging uppercut or a right cross, Alex always moved to his left, exactly as Michael had taught him. It was impossible for him to tell how long they had been fighting; time had a way of stretching out in the circle. It didn’t matter, anyway — no one left until Miss Aoki was satisfied.
It was funny without being funny, the way a crudely painted red circle on the floor of an empty room could become his least favorite place to be.
For the most part, though, Alex liked what he was seeing now, through hands wrapped in blood-smeared tape to protect his knuckles. Steve was bigger and stronger, and they were about the same height, but Alex’s arms were a few inches longer, and he had learned to use that to keep Steve at bay, working his jab from just outside Steve’s range, peppering him in the face with fast shots and then stepping back. The jabs weren’t particularly damaging individually, but their cumulative effect was displayed on Steve’s face, from his swollen, bleeding nose to the mouse rising underneath his left eye. Moreover, Steve’s bulk was starting to work against him, stealing oxygen from his blood faster than it could be replaced. He was sweating like a fountain and sucking wind, his face red from exertion.
“You can’t win on points, Alex,” Miss Aoki chided, from where she sat at the periphery of the circle, Margot off to one side looking bored, Renton on the other with a smug expression. “You actually have to hurt him.”
He didn’t rise to the bait, and he didn’t let her distract him from what he was doing. Contrary to popular belief, Alex had a plan.
Actually, it wasn’t really his plan, because Michael had helped him formulate it. After two weeks of getting beat by Steve, over and over, being taken down and battered until Miss Aoki decided he’d had enough, Alex was frustrated enough to ask for help. After all, telepathic simulation or no, it still hurt. Michael’s competitive spirit fired up, and as a result, he had spent the next week drilling him exclusively on the techniques that he was using right now.
His jab wasn’t enough, not by itself, more so when Steve was still energetic. Steve could simply walk right on through it, eating a couple of shots before he got close enough to do damage, but nothing that would actually stop him. However, Michael had pointed out something else that Alex had going for him besides long arms; namely, he had sharp, protruding elbows. A week of practice had taught him the peculiar strike-and-drag motion that turned a close elbow into a cutting tool. Alex learned how to shift seamlessly from the jab to the elbow, so that he could switch from one to the other in the same motion when his opponent came forward.
He had started using the elbow strike in the circle two days ago, and he’d turned Steve’s face into a bloody mess. Steve tried to bull through the jab and get inside his guard. Alex’s third short elbow had opened a big cut above Steve’s right eye, blinding him and allowing Alex to batter him mercilessly from his blind side until Mitsuru called a stop. Clearly, the big asshole wasn’t as stupid as he looked, because today he was more careful about stepping inside or shooting for a takedown.
“What is this, modern dance? I’m falling asleep over here. If this was a real fight, you’d both be dead by now.”
Alex ignored the criticism and stuck to the plan. Steve came forward cautiously, and he ate a quick right jab that caught him on the cheek, while his own wild punches fell short. Alex stepped back outside his range and resumed circling, throwing jabs whenever Steve was close enough. He wasn’t trying to wear Steve down. He was aiming to hurt him, but for the plan to work, he needed to goad him into going for a double-leg takedown, a scoop-and-tackle maneuver that was the favored method of putting an opponent on the ground in freestyle wrestling, where Steve had an extensive background. Frustration was evident on Steve’s face, and his increasingly rushed and wild movements. Everyone gets tired of being punched, after all.
More patient footwork, pumping his jab into Steve’s swollen face. It cost him a stomped foot and a bloodied nose from a punch that barely grazed him, but Alex finally saw what he had been waiting for.
He’d seen it the first time a week earlier when Michael had convinced Alex to start utilizing the jab that he had previously regarded as ineffective. Most of the time, it was still tempting to swing for the fences, particularly when Steve (and Miss Aoki had a sadistic tendency to pick out Steve to be his ‘partner’ for these exercises) was the person at the other end of his fist. Alex walked him all over the place that day, backing away and wheeling and counterpunching, no real plan, just hoping to tire him out. It worked for a while, and then the big goon got inside, dropped Alex with a body shot, grabbed him in a full nelson, and drove him into the ground. However, before that happened, Alex saw something that he knew was interesting, even if he didn’t know exactly what to do with it; namely, he saw Steve misstep.
When he was very tired, Steve would step over his own foot, particularly if Alex moved to the left. So Alex consulted Michael again, and then spent days practicing the plan they came up with. For a week, he absorbed terrible beatings, trying to figure out what it would take to tire Steve in the first place. When he brushed his teeth at night, he visualized himself doing it; before he fell asleep, he imagined how it would go. There was a certain dreamlike quality when he finally saw it happen in front of him.
His heart leapt into his throat and he had to stop himself from jumping forward in frenzy. Instead, he followed Michael’s plan. Alex remained patient. He took stepped to his left, then he coiled his legs beneath him and waited to pounce, knowing that if Steve didn’t misstep, that wouldn’t be able to do much to defend himself.