They went straight back to the classroom.
Kelly did not sit at the front desk. She stood in front of the whiteboard with her arms folded and waited until Alex and Jerry had taken their seats. Then she looked at them, one at a time, and did not soften her face.
"Before we begin, a reality check," she said. "You have thirty days. In thirty days you will be fitted for a suit, and the suit will decide whether you live or die. It does not care that you are sorry. It does not care about your past. It only cares about a number."
Nobody said anything.
"Most of you will not reach C rank. I do not say that to scare you. I say it because it is true. The Foundation knows it, the doctors know it, and I know it." She let her eyes rest on Alex. "The people who came before you were regular recruits, and half of them washed out. You are convicts. You have a month. The math is not kind."
’She’s not exactly encouraging,’ Alex thought. He felt something hot start to rise in his chest, and before he could stop it he was speaking.
"Don’t belittle us."
Kelly’s eyebrow lifted slightly.
"We know the odds. We heard the doctor. We know what’s on the line better than you do." His voice was steady but low, and it had an edge to it. "Standing there and telling us we’re going to fail isn’t teaching. It’s just looking down on us."
For a second the room was quiet. Jerry had gone very still in his chair.
Then Kelly nodded, slowly.
"Yeah. You’re right. I shouldn’t." She tilted her head. "You’re clearly capable of so much. I mean, taking a life? That takes a certain kind of ability."
The words landed like a slap.
Alex opened his mouth, and nothing came out. The heat in his chest went cold all at once, and he sat back in his chair.
’She’s right,’ he thought. ’It doesn’t matter what I know or don’t know. To her I’m what the file says I am.’
He let out a breath and looked at the desk. The anger drained out of him slowly, leaving something heavier in its place.
"Ok," he said quietly. "Point taken."
Kelly held his eyes for another moment. Then she gave a short nod and unfolded her arms.
’She doesn’t sugarcoat,’ Alex thought. ’She says what needs to be said. It’s not nice, but at least I know where I stand.’
His mind drifted, as it had done many times since waking up in this body.
Kelly walked to her desk and pulled two textbooks from the bottom drawer. They were thick, with dull gray covers and a small Foundation crest on the front. She set one on Alex’s desk and one on Jerry’s.
"Two different books," she said. "Read through yours. When you finish, swap with each other. The material overlaps but each covers something the other doesn’t. You need both."
Alex looked at the cover. Beast Classification and Threat Response, Volume One. It had to be at least three hundred pages.
He groaned.
"Something wrong?" Kelly asked.
"I don’t really read." He flipped the book open and let the pages fall. Dense text, tiny diagrams, headings and subheadings. "Anything that isn’t a novel, anyway."
"That’s unfortunate."
"Yeah."
Jerry had already opened his own book and was running a finger down the first page. He looked almost relieved to be doing something with his hands.
"This is fine," he said quietly. "I like reading."
’Of course you do,’ Alex thought.
Kelly dropped into the chair behind her desk, pulled a book of her own from her bag, and opened it.
That was it. She started reading.
Alex waited for a moment, and when nothing else happened, he frowned.
’Is that it?’
He had expected more. A lecture, a drill, someone standing at the whiteboard drawing diagrams and firing questions. Some kind of interaction. Instead it was three people in a room with books, and the only sound was the turning of pages.
"Is this all we’re doing?" he asked.
"Nine to four," Kelly said without looking up. "Every day. That’s the schedule. The first week is reading. After that we might add drills."
"Nine to four? In here?"
"In here."
Alex opened his mouth to complain, and then closed it again.
’Nine to four. That’s seven hours. A whole day, just the three of us.’ He looked at the ceiling. ’That’s a lot of time.’
And he needed it. He knew that, even if he did not like it. He had a month to go from nothing to something, and no shortcut waiting for him. If reading was what it took, then reading was what he would do.
It was not Kelly’s fault. That was the part that took a moment to settle. He was on death row. He was the one wearing the collar. She was a student who had been handed a job, and she owed him nothing. Why would she care whether he lived or died?
’She wouldn’t. Why should she?’
He turned back to the book and started to read.
The first page was fine. The second was harder. By the fourth he was reading the same paragraph for the third time and still could not say what it had told him. The words slid off his eyes. Terms he did not know, classifications with strange names, tables of numbers that made no sense even with the pages before them.
"Ahhhh." He scratched his head hard enough to mess up his hair. "How do you even read this shit?"
Kelly did not look up. Jerry did not either.
Alex glared at the page. He tried again, started at the top, and pushed through another paragraph. It was no better. He looked over at Jerry.
Jerry had turned a page. Then another. Then a third.
"Wait," Alex said. "How are you that far already?"
"Hm?"
"You’ve read like ten pages."
"Twelve," Jerry said, without looking up.
"Twelve." Alex stared at him. "Yours must have more pictures. That’s why you’re so far ahead. Hand it over."
Jerry blinked and held up his book. Alex leaned across the gap and looked at the open page. Dense text, a couple of small diagrams, a table. It was exactly the same as his own.
"Oh," Alex said.
"Yeah."
"So it’s just you."
Jerry shrugged, a little embarrassed. "I don’t know. I just read it."
"That’s it? That’s the trick?"
"You just read it," Jerry said. "Keep going. You’ll get into the groove eventually. It gets easier."
Alex did not like that answer. It was not an answer at all. It was just permission to keep doing the thing that was already not working. But he turned back to the page anyway and pushed on.
Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. He read a paragraph, lost track of it, and went back. He read another and lost the thread halfway through. He turned a page and realized he had not absorbed any of the last one.
’This is going nowhere.’
He checked the page number. He had covered barely six pages in half an hour. Jerry was on twenty.
’At this rate I won’t finish the first Chapter, let alone the book. And the book is supposed to keep me alive.’
He rubbed his eyes. His head had begun to ache. He glanced at Kelly, who sat behind her desk with her own book open, entirely absorbed.
’Should I ask her?’
The idea did not sit well. He had already snapped at her once, and she had put him in his place. Asking for help would feel like admitting something. But the alternative was another hour of staring at the same page, and he had no hours to waste.
He cleared his throat.
"Kelly."
"Yes."
She said it before he had finished the word. Her head came up almost at once, and her book closed with a soft snap. She was looking straight at him, and there was something in her face he had not seen before. It was almost eager, as though she had been waiting for him to ask, as though she had been itching to say something and had been holding it back until he gave her a reason.
Alex blinked. "I was going to ask..."
"I know what you were going to ask," Kelly said. She stood, walked around her desk, and stopped beside his chair. She wasn’t looking at the book anymore, she looked at him.
"Think about what’s at stake here," she said. "Don’t read, you die."