Reading was not any easier.
That was the truth of it, and Alex had accepted it somewhere between the third and fourth page that morning. The words still slid off his eyes. The tables still made him want to scratch his head. Nothing about the book had changed. What had changed was that he finally understood what wanting meant in this place.
It meant nothing.
He could want an easier book. He could want a nap, or a friendlier teacher, or a shortcut. It made no difference. His convenience counted for nothing when his life was the thing on the scale. So he read the way a man walks across a frozen lake, one careful step after another, without stopping to complain about the cold.
They reached the classroom at two minutes past nine.
Kelly was already at her desk with her book open. She did not look up when the door opened. She let them take three full steps into the room before she spoke.
"You’re late."
Alex checked the clock on the wall. 9:02.
"Two minutes," Jerry said quietly.
"Two minutes is two minutes."
’Two whole minutes,’ Alex thought. ’Wow. Somebody call the Foundation.’
He kept the thought to himself and dropped into his chair. Jerry sat beside him and set his textbook on the desk.
Kelly closed her own book and folded her hands.
"Textbooks," she said. "Hand them over."
Alex blinked.
"What?"
"Your textbooks. Both of you. Pass them forward."
"You didn’t tell us we only had a day," Alex said. It came out louder than he meant it to. "Besides, who reads a whole ass textbook in a single day?"
Kelly raised an eyebrow. "I said when you finish, swap. I never said when."
"That’s..."
Jerry had said nothing. He reached into the bag beside him, pulled out the textbook, and held it out to her with both hands. His face looked slightly stunned, as if he could not understand why anyone would be surprised.
"I finished mine," he said.
Alex turned to stare at him.
’What?’
Kelly took the book and flipped through it, scanning a page here and there. She nodded slowly.
’There’s no way,’ Alex thought. ’He finished that overnight? What, he didn’t sleep? He said he could barely sleep, but that’s not the same as reading three hundred or so pages.’
The boy was watching Kelly’s hands with the calm, dazed look of someone who had done exactly as told.
Kelly set Jerry’s book aside and looked at Alex.
"Let me guess. You didn’t finish it."
"I did," Alex said at once.
She waited.
"Almost. I’m almost done. I just need a little more time."
"Yeah, sure."
She held out her hand. Alex hesitated, and then he handed it over. Kelly took his book, glanced at the bookmark he had left in it, and passed it across the desk to Jerry.
"Since you’re almost done," she said, "I’m sure once he’s through with his you can trade later."
Jerry took it and nodded. Then Kelly picked up his finished volume and slid it in front of Alex.
"Read this in the meantime."
Alex looked down at the cover. Beast and Ravagers Volume one.
He was not almost done. He had barely gotten through the third Chapter of the first book. It had been a lie, plain and flat, and both of them knew it. Kelly did not seem to care. She had already turned back to her desk and opened a textbook of her own.
Alex glanced at it. It was thick, easily as heavy as the ones they had been given, with a cracked spine and dozens of colored tabs sticking out from the edge.
’Not exactly a light read for her either,’ he thought.
He opened the Volume.
It felt like time had stopped. The clock on the wall ticked once, then again, and each tick took a year. The book was no more interesting than the first. Page after page of measured text, dry, technical, and long. He read a paragraph on Beast behavior patterns and forgot it. He read one on containment protocols and forgot that too.
’Hold on,’ he told himself. ’Slow down.’
He kept turning pages.
Then he reached a Chapter with a different title.
Talents and Synchronization.
He read the first paragraph, and something in him went still. He read the second and leaned in. By the third he had stopped feeling the weight of his own eyes.
The book explained that a Ravager suit did more than protect its wearer. When a person synchronized with one, it awakened something inside them. It was called a talent, a power tied to an element, and each awakened pilot received one. The suit changed as it did so. Every suit began as a base black, dull and lifeless. Only after awakening did it show its color, and that color was the mark of the talent the pilot had received.
Alex read on, almost without breathing.
Red for the Flame talent. Green for Earth. Blue for Water. Yellow for Thunder.
’Ok. Those are the basics.’
White for Ice. Black for Wind. Orange for Sand. Purple for Darkness.
’Wait, black is a talent? But the suit starts black.’ He read the footnote. The base color was a matte, lifeless shade, and the Wind talent turned it glossy and deep. ’Ok. That’s a difference I can tell apart.’
Gold for Light. Silver for Metal. Brown for Blood.
’Blood.’ He paused on that one. ’That’s a little dark.’
And Pink for Gravity.
He read it once. Then again.
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He could not help it.
’Pink gets gravity? Of all things?’ He shook his head in amazement. ’I can’t believe it. That’s the strongest one on the list, probably. And it’s pink.’
The smile widened.
’I’d love to be a pink ravager, honestly. If it wasn’t for the prejudice.’
The smile turned into a laugh. It came out short and sharp, and it echoed in the quiet room before he could stop it.
Kelly looked up.
"Something funny?"
Alex did not answer. It was not that he meant to be rude. He had only sunk into the book so deeply that her voice barely reached him. He had forgotten where he was. The words on the page had begun to hold his attention in a way nothing else had for days, and he kept reading with his lips slightly parted.
The book went on. The suits, it said, did not lock the talent inside them. A pilot who awakened could still use their talent when they were not suited, in a smaller, weaker form. The suit amplified it, focused it, and made it deadly, but it did not own it. The power belonged to the pilot.
’So it’s not just the suit,’ Alex thought. ’It’s me. If it awakens, it’s mine.’
He turned another page.
He did not hear Kelly return to her book. He did not notice Jerry glance sideways at him, and then quietly look away.
At last he sat back, exhaled, and rubbed his eyes. His head buzzed with names and colors. Flame, Earth, Water, Thunder, Ice, Wind, Sand, Darkness, Light, Metal, Blood, Gravity. Twelve. It was more than he had expected. It was almost overwhelming.
He looked up at the ceiling and grinned.
"You know," he said, "I’m fine with most of them. Maybe besides orange. Sand? Really?" He shrugged. "But honestly, I’ll take even blue or red."
Kelly did not look up from her book.
"Those are the most generic ones," Alex added lightly. "Fire and water. Every hero in every story gets them. Real original, the Foundation. Their talents are..."