Morning came, and Alex woke on the lower bunk with a dull ache in his shoulder and no memory of getting there.
He lay still for a moment. Then the night came back in pieces, and he shut his eyes and let it pass. Above him, Jerry was already awake, sitting on the edge of the top bunk with a book in his lap. He glanced down once and looked away. Neither of them said anything about it.
They got ready in silence and walked to class.
Kelly was at her desk when they arrived. She looked up as they came in and her eyes rested on Alex for a second longer than usual. He did not meet them. He took his seat and set the silver book on the desk.
"Kelly."
"Yes."
"I’d like you to get me all your textbooks." He said it carefully. "Or maybe I can go over to your place and look through them. I have a theory about the books."
He braced himself. He half expected her to lash out. She might call him perverted, or laugh at him, or tell him there was no way a convict was setting foot in her room. He had already prepared an answer.
Instead she asked a question.
"What happened to you yesterday?"
Alex froze.
She did not say more. She only waited, her hands folded on the desk.
He knew what she meant. It was the collar. It was the sound in the dark, the wall, the flash of white, and whatever the building’s sensors had recorded when the shock went off. He did not know how much she knew. He did not want to find out.
He gave no answer.
The silence went on. Then Kelly stood, came around her desk, and stopped in front of him. She lifted her hand toward his face.
Alex jerked back sharply, and his chair scraped.
Her hand stopped in the air. For a moment her eyes widened. She had not meant it as anything. Slowly she moved it lower and touched two fingers to the collar at his throat. The green light blinked once against her skin.
"Fine," she said quietly. "You can come check out the books."
She took her hand back and returned to her seat as if nothing had happened.
"Thank you," Alex said.
He opened the book and started reading. His pulse was still fast. After a while it settled, and the words steadied him. Now and then he stole a glance across the room. She was reading again, calm as ever, but once, when he looked up, her eyes were already on him. She looked away at once. He did the same.
The day ran down. When the bell rang, Jerry gathered his things.
"You coming?" he asked.
"In a bit. Go ahead."
Jerry nodded and left for the dorm. Alex waited until the sound of his footsteps faded, then stood and went out into the corridor. He walked to the stairs and up to the third floor, and stopped at a door at the far end of the hall that he had never seen open. She had given him directions.
He did not knock. He stood outside and waited.
Kelly came up a few minutes later with her bag on her shoulder. She stopped when she saw him standing there with his hands at his sides.
"You didn’t go in."
"You weren’t here."
She looked at him for a moment. Then she unlocked the door and pushed it open.
"Come in."
The room was much like his own, though larger, with a single bed, a desk piled with notes, and a shelf that ran the length of the wall. Every inch of the shelf was full of books.
Kelly dropped her bag on the bed and crossed to the shelf. She pulled out books one by one and stacked them on the desk, and she did not stop until the pile was as high as her forearm.
"Here," she said. "These are the books I think I’ll have you read."
It was a large stack. Alex stepped forward and picked up the first one.
He turned it over, read the title, flipped through a few pages, and set it on the left side of the desk. He picked up the second and did the same, but this one went to the right. Then the third. The fourth. He worked quickly, hardly pausing to think.
Kelly watched with her arms crossed. She did not understand at first. Books went left. Books went right. It looked random. But after a few minutes she began to see the pattern, and her eyebrows drew together.
The left pile held thick, dry texts. Tables and definitions, procedures and diagrams. Facts and nothing else. The right pile held books about awakened pilots, talents, Maximizers, Beasts, purity and Beast taming , the kind that read like stories.
He was sorting them by interest.
"Don’t tell me you’re going to..."
"Yeah." He set the last book on the right. "I’ll just read these and leave those ones."
Kelly sighed. It was a long, tired sound.
"That’s a lazy move," she said. "You could regret it."
"I won’t."
"You don’t know that."
"I know it’s what I can do." He met her eyes. "If I try to force the boring ones, I’ll get nothing from them. If I read the ones I can actually absorb, I’ll get something. That’s the theory."
She held his gaze. Then she uncrossed her arms and turned away.
"Fine. Take them. It’s your neck."
Alex almost smiled at that. He gathered the right hand stack into his arms.
"By the way, could I get a gym permit from you?"
Kelly paused with her hand on the shelf.
"A permit."
"They wouldn’t let me in yesterday. Something about supervisors."
She dug through her desk drawer and came out with a small card. She scribbled a signature on it and held it out.
"Tomorrow after class," she said. "I’ll take you. The first day, at least."
"Thank you."
She waved him out.
The next day went the way the days had been going. Alex read. Jerry read. At noon, when Kelly stood and asked if they wanted to eat, Alex closed his book and followed them to the cafeteria. He sat at the end of a long table with a tray of rice and beans and ate in silence.
Other inmates filled the hall. Sixty six, minus whoever had fallen out. They sat in small groups, some talking low, some staring at their plates. Alex found himself watching them. He noticed a man with a shaved head and a scar along his jaw, and looked away. He noticed the woman who had slammed the door in his face. She sat alone, chewing stubbornly, her eyes on the wall.
’They’re all in the same boat,’ he thought. ’Every one of them wants what I want.’
He wondered how many would still be there in three weeks.
The day after, he slept through the bell.
He had been up all night. The books from Kelly’s shelf were good, better than good, and he had not been able to stop. He had read until the window turned gray. By the time he lay down, the sun was already up.
A jolt woke him.
It was a sharp, hot sting at the base of his skull, not enough to hurt badly, but enough to jerk him upright with a gasp. He clapped a hand to the collar. Its light blinked amber.
"Morning," Jerry said from the desk. He was fully dressed. "They send that if you miss the bell. It’s a small one. Just a reminder."
"That’s..." Alex rubbed his neck. "That’s horrible."
"Yeah."
He got up and dressed in a rush. By the time he reached class, he was ten minutes late, and Kelly said nothing. She only looked at the clock.
The days blurred after that. Reading in the morning. Reading in the afternoon. The gym after class, where Kelly stood by the door with her arms folded and watched him lift and run. Dinner, then a few pages before bed.
By the end of the week, he had begun to notice something in his body.
He was waking earlier. His muscles felt tighter. It started slow, but it was real. So on the seventh morning, before the bell, he slid off the bunk and did as many push ups as he could. Then sit ups. Then squats.
He wanted to know what he could do. Not what the book said. What he could actually do.
So he slipped out of the dorm before dawn, laced his shoes, and stepped out into the cold blue air. The compound stretched around him, a big open field ringed by a chain link fence. He set his eyes on the far side.
Then he started to run.