Kelly turned a page in her own book, and the sound was small and dry in the quiet room.
Alex continued with his book which just seemed to immerse him more with each turn of the page.
The book kept going. It described how a pilot who had awakened could use their talent outside the suit, and how the suit sharpened it once worn. It explained how the talent grew stronger as synchronization deepened. It talked about focus, control, and the strain on the body when a talent was pushed past its limit. There were diagrams too, simple line drawings of a figure with lines of energy running through the arms and chest.
Alex read every word.
He did not do it perfectly. Now and then his eyes wandered, and he raised his head to look across the room. He kept stealing glances at Kelly. She sat behind her desk with her book propped in front of her, her eyes fixed on the page. She did not look up once. She did not shift in her seat. She turned pages at a steady pace, calm and unbothered.
’She’s not noticing,’ he thought. ’Good.’
He looked back at his book.
Kelly noticed. Every one of them. She had been aware of each glance since the first, and each time she had kept her eyes on her page, and each time she had felt a small, odd satisfaction at how carefully he tried not to be seen. But Alex did not know that yet, and she was not going to tell him.
He read on. After a while a thought began to gnaw at him.
’Is it strange that this book is talking about all this?’
He flipped back a few pages. The Chapter on Beast behavior had been one thing. The Chapter on containment had been another. But this section was about the post awakened, about talents and suits and the powers that came after synchronization. It was the kind of thing a person did not need to know until they had already survived the first test.
’Why would you put this in a training textbook? Half these people won’t ever awaken.’
And it was not boring. That was the part that stuck with him. Yesterday’s book, the technical one, had nearly put him to sleep on the first page. This one kept him turning pages. He had covered forty of them without noticing.
He glanced sideways at Jerry.
The boy was hunched over Alex’s old textbook with one hand propping up his chin. His eyes were half lidded. As Alex watched, he let out a huge yawn, stretched his jaw, and blinked slowly at the page like he had forgotten what it said.
Alex frowned.
’Wait. He’s yawning?’
He watched a little longer. Jerry read a line, lost his place, backed up, and read it again. His finger came up to trace the words. It was the same thing Alex had done yesterday, the same slow crawl through dense text. Jerry was on page thirty, maybe forty. Nowhere near as far along as he had been with the book yesterday.
’He’s struggling too.’
The realization dropped into his head all at once.
’It wasn’t just me.’
It was not that Alex was stupid, or lazy, or bad at reading. The technical volume was simply dull. It was written in a way that made even a fast reader slow down. Jerry had torn through the second book because it had been easier, and now that he was working through the first, he was hitting the same wall.
’The book kind of sucks,’ Alex thought, almost cheerfully. ’That’s the whole problem. It’s not me.’
He felt something lift off his shoulders that he had not known was sitting there.
Then he stopped and looked at the page in front of him, and a second thought surfaced.
’But why is this one easier?’
He ran his eyes over the paragraphs. Talents that came from the elements. Suits that changed color. Powers that could be used with or without armor. Fire, wind, ice, gravity.
’The post awakened section seems so...’
He searched for the word.
Fantastical. Unreal. It was something out of a story.
That was when it clicked.
’That’s why I can read it. It reads like fiction.’
It was exactly that. He had spent his whole old life reading novels, not textbooks. Stories about people who woke up with powers and swords and glowing panels.
This section was basically the same thing, dressed up in technical language. It had heroes and abilities and rules for using them. His brain had latched onto it the way it latched onto any story.
’It essentially is fiction,’ he thought. ’Just the true kind.’
He almost laughed again, but he caught himself and turned the page.
The next section had a new heading. He read it slowly.
Beast Ravager Weapons: The Maximizer.
Alex leaned forward.
He read in his mind, line by line.
A Maximizer is a Beast Ravager weapon that can be used in both suited up mode and base mode, without the suit. Maximizers are ranked from level one to level ten. Each level reflects a different scale of ability, with higher levels granting greater output and range. A Maximizer comes with only one monster talent.
He stopped.
’Monster talent?’
He read the sentence again.
’What’s that?’
He kept going, looking for an answer. The next paragraph began to explain it. Monster talents, it said, were distinct from the color coded talents of the Ravager suits. Ravager talents numbered twelve, no more and no less. But monster talents had no set count. A Beast could carry any ability, and no two species were alike. Some could spit acid. Some could bend light. Some could regenerate from a single drop of blood. Each one was a talent in its own right, wild and unpredictable.
’So the suits have twelve,’ Alex thought. ’The monsters have as many as they want.’
It felt unfair, and he realized it probably was.
The book went on. Maximizers, it said, were manufactured by Foundation scientists from monster drops. The process was long and difficult. A drop was collected, refined, and worked on until a core ability could be extracted from it. That ability was usually the monster talent, distilled and locked into the weapon.
’So they take a piece of the Beast, pull the power out of it, and turn it into a weapon.’
It was clever, and a little frightening. He thought of the glowing shards behind the glass in the drop site, pulsing softly like heartbeats. Some of those, he understood now, would one day become something a person could hold in their hands.
’That’s what the drop site was for. That’s what Kelly meant when she said they’re the basic resources.’
He kept reading.
The next few paragraphs described how a pilot could equip a Maximizer, how it bonded to them, and the limits of using one unsynchronized. Then the book changed subjects again, and the tone shifted.
The next section was about synchronization.
It opened with a single line, and Alex read it twice.
The significance of the synchronization percentage cannot be overstated. It determines not only a pilot’s rank but the extent to which they can draw on the suit’s power, the strength of their talent, and the weapons they may safely wield.
’This is the important part,’ he thought. His heart was beating a little faster.
He turned the page.
A chart filled the top half. It was plain and clean, printed in black on white, with a column of letters down one side and a column of numbers down the other. He knew it. He had seen it on the screen in the prison room, glowing on Dr Hela’s wall.
But now it was in front of him, in ink, for him to read as many times as he wanted.
He put his finger on the top line and read.
96 to 100% is S rank.
86 to 95% is A rank.
71 to 85% is B rank.
61 to 70% is C rank.
46 to 60% is D rank.
30 to 45% is E rank.
29% and below is F rank.