“Don’t walk. Run!” the man in the middle hollered at us, and we didn’t hesitate to obey, Bobo keeping pace with us.
When we shored up to stand across from them, the man in the center, who was also the tallest, pursed his lips. “You’re late.”
“We ran into some complications before coming here,” Layla offered, and I was glad that, for once, she stayed her tongue and didn’t tack on, “We were busy watching a new student being tranq’d and electrocuted into submission.”
“Excuses won’t cut it with us. You’ve agreed to be here. You’ve made a commitment, and we expect you to honor it and not waste our time.”
“Um …” Brady said as I shifted uncomfortably on my feet. Already I wanted the three teachers to approve of me, and I didn’t like feeling that way one bit. “To be fair, we didn’t actually agree or commit to anything, not with any real free will anyhow. We’re being coerced into being here by threat of extreme violence, in case you didn’t already realize that.” Brady laid that all out free of his normal sarcasm.
I expected at least one of them to flinch at that reminder, but none did. Either they were remarkably skilled at controlling their reactions, which they likely were, or they just didn’t care enough to endanger whatever incentive Magnum was offering them for being here.
“Free will is relative,” the man said.
Is it really though? Shouldn’t free will be, you know, free to have and wield?I thought it, but didn’t say it out loud.
“The rules are very different once you enter this world.”
“And what world is that, exactly?” Hunt asked.
“The world of physical powers. In the societies most people live in, material wealth, social class, and political standing are often the determining factors of power levels, especially when one takes into account the rampant corruption that infects nearly all modern civilizations across the globe.”
At this, the man to his right nodded with a stout frown, but didn’t otherwise comment.
“But when a person develops their physical prowess so it cannot be ignored, they can overcome the restraints of the limited wealth and social standing they might have been born into. The rules change. And when one also considers powers beyond those commonly found in this world that affect the physical laws here …” He shook his head in what seemed akin to awe. “Then it’s within the realm of possibility to entirely transform the governing rules.”
Griffin crossed his arms and studied our instructors, eventually addressing the man in the middle: “From what we’ve seen so far, we can return from death. That sounds like exactly the kind of power you were just referring to as an advantage. Yet look at us. We’re prisoners here, trapped precisely because of these extraordinary powers.”
The man shared a look with the other two teachers before saying, “We’ll do whatever we can to teach you how to harness and wield every advantage you have.”
“That’s right. We agreed to be here because we want to help you learn everything you can do,” the woman chimed in with a pretty accent that suggested Spanish was her first language. With her lustrous dark hair, round facial structure, dark eyes, brown skin, and small frame, I guessed her ancestral heritage was connected to the indigenous tribes of Central or perhaps South America. But it wasn’t an appropriate time to ask.
Bobo circled my friends to once again sit atop my feet where he could keep an eye on our instructors.
“Dogs aren’t allowed in the training arena,” said the man in the center while studying Bobo. “It will have to wait for you outside.”
“‘It’ is a boy named Bobo,” I said, “and it’s important that he remain with me at all times.” The man started to shake his head, but I persisted, meeting his dark stare and holding. “These four people”—I angled my stare up and down the line of my friends—“and my dog are the only things that really matter to me in the entire world. They’re the only ones I trust, and the only ones I love. My friends and I are supposedly immortal. But Bobo isn’t. I have to keep him in sight at all times so he isn’t used as leverage to get me to fall into line.”
Even though I kept the threat to Bobo vague, it was the first time I’d even admitted it to myself. Once I heard myself say it, I realized how true it was. Bobo was the first one Magnum would threaten to hurt if he wanted me to do something. My sweet boy wouldn’t survive death like we would.
Griffin and Hunt, who stood on either side of me, moved up half a step so that they also flanked Bobo.
Our instructors were still examining Bobo when the man to our left announced, “Bobo can stay.”
The man in the middle frowned at him before sighing and looking at us again. “If he’s to stay, then he must be well behaved.”
“He is. Very well behaved,” I answered immediately.
“You think so, but will he continue to be ‘well behaved’ when you appear to be in grave danger? When your body and life are being threatened? When he sees you lying dead on the mat?”
“Laying it all right out there, aren’t we?” Layla mumbled under her breath. “So much for pretending we’ll actually be safe in our classes.”
The man at the center scoffed. “Your abject lack of safety shouldn’t be news to you. You’re here to be experimented upon, to have the limits of your immortality tested and studied.”
Layla huffed. “Still doesn’t make it any less hard to hear.”
“If you’re looking to be handled with kid gloves, then you’ve come to the wrong people. We’re not here to coddle you. We’re not even here to take it easy on you. We will push you to your limits and beyond. That’s our job.”
Brady bristled. “So you’re just here to try to murder us? Like everyone else?”
