“This is plenty,” Captain Ross says, his resonant voice breaking through my worries. “I know you’re all busy people, so let’s get started.”
He strolls over to an object about the size of a refrigerator and yanks off the tarp that covered it. The metal box with a mottled circle on the upper half isn’t any more recognizable now that I can see it. For all I can tell, a flying saucer might have dropped it off.
Ross pitches his voice to carry, although we’ve all fallen silent as we watch him. “To step up your combat and defensive skills under pressure, we’re going to be incorporating military techniques—and the equipment we use to train our lucent recruits in those techniques. It will be intense and sometimes uncomfortable, but I assure you that you’ll come through these sessions with a new confidence in your abilities.”
I guess that’s why the academy brought this guy in. He’s got more fancy equipment than a superhero’s hideout.
He pats the side of the thing that’s definitely not a fridge. “First, I want you to experience the shocker on its own. We use these to rattle lucent aggressors when we haveto go up against a large number of them—and in training to learn how to keep our own ephemera steady. Take a moment now to brace and shield yourselves as well as you know how.”
Trepidation squeezes my gut. It doesn’t sound like this thing deals out actual injuries—but it’s hard to know what might trigger my glim. No one here can shield against that kind of backlash.
Breathing slowly, I center my mind the way I taught myself from my earliest preteen meditations. My stricter regimen of the last three years has prepared me to detach and float all lotus-like above more mundane concerns.
If this will actually be mundane.
I can’t afford to detach completely. With a little remaining focus, I weave a shell of ephemera around me that should deflect an initial blow of magic.
“Here we go!” Captain Ross calls out, and cranks a dial on the machine.
In the first moment, I think nothing’s happening—or I’ve guarded myself so well that I’m immune to it. Then the full impact of the shocker hits me.
A blare of fluctuating ephemera slams into my barrier and smashes straight through. It jangles and jitters, pummeling me with unpredictably shifting currents of energy, so swiftly I can’t adjust to any of them before it changes again.
My nerves squirm as if trying to crawl out of my body. My thoughts scatter like a vampire bursting into dust at stake-point. Pain splinters across my skull and down my spine.
Gritting my teeth, I force another even breath and another. Seek out some small bit of calm inside me amid the storm. Float higher, higher, higher above it, repeating my mantra again and again…
I have all I need. I have all I need. I have allI?—
The blare cuts out. I blink, staring around me at my schoolmates.
Several have clapped their hands over their ears even though the blast wasn’t sound. Others have doubled over, hugging their knees. Every face has paled with blotches of strain.
Byron is still standing straight, but his mouth is as tight and flat a line as I’ve ever seen it. His gaze ticks to one side and then the other.
Did this test scrape against the pre-existing ticks he keeps so carefully hidden? My heart strains to move closer to him.
I instinctively try to catch his eyes, words of solidarity forming on my tongue?—
His dark gaze collides with mine, and I jerk my head away with a sudden spurt of panic.
He doesn’t know I know about that part of him. I’m not supposed to, not here.
Not with this Byron.
I can’t help him. Not any way at all while we’re trying to keep our bond a secret.
If only knowing that would stop it from wrenching at me.
Captain Ross speaks as steadily as before. “Good. Now you know what to expect. Prepare yourselves again.”
Cadance mutters a curse under her breath. I plant my feet against the earth and resume my rhythmic breathing.
How many times is he going to put us through this torture?
Somehow the blaring of disjointed ephemera is both better and worse when you know what to expect. It’s harder to relax into a meditative state when my body knows how awful it’s going to feel. But through three more exposures, I find the techniques that keep me the most stable and disaffected. By the last of those, the pain only gets to the point of prickling before I’ve walled myself away from it.
Ross and Jovak walk between us, offering tips to students here and there in between the blasts. Neither of them speaks to me. I must look like I’ve got a reasonable grip on the situation.
