"Think about what’s at stake here. Don’t read and die."
The words hung in the air.
Alex stared up at her. He had expected a pointer, a tip, maybe even a sigh and a reluctant explanation.
He had not expected that. It was blunt and cold, and it was thrown at him like a rock. She owed him nothing, she didn’t have to sugar coat things.
’Did she just...’
His mouth opened, but nothing came out. Across the room Jerry had stopped turning pages. He was watching them with his head slightly tilted.
Kelly did not wait for Alex to recover.
"What your friend here said is not the best advice," she said. "Just read it and you’ll get into the groove. That works for him. It clearly doesn’t work for you." She glanced at the page Alex had been stuck on. "You have to find what works for you."
"My friend?" Alex said.
He had not meant to say it out loud. It was only the word that had caught on something in his head, and it slipped out.
Kelly’s face did not change, but her thoughts moved behind her eyes.
’Well, I mean, you’re both criminals. What do you want me to say? Your fellow inmate?’
She kept the thought to herself and crossed her arms.
"The best course of action for a dumb dumb like you," she said, "would probably be to evaluate what is at stake and use that as motivation."
"Excuse me?"
"You’ve read survival books, I’m sure. This is the basis of most motivational quotes. Think about what you lose if you fail. Then act like it." She shrugged. "It’s not complicated."
Alex did not like her tone. It was flat, and there was just enough contempt in it to make the words sting. He opened his mouth to say so, and then he stopped.
She was right.
He sat back in the chair and looked at the book. The page was still there, the same dense block of text he had been staring at for half an hour.
’I’ve been thinking like I have a chance. Like I have all the time in the world. But do I?’
Slowly, without meaning to, he raised his hand and touched the collar at his neck. The metal was cool against his fingers. The small green light blinked steadily against his skin.
It was a reminder. It had been a reminder since the yard, and he had let himself forget. Any moment, any mistake, and it could go off. He was a criminal in this world, whatever he had been in the last one did not matter.
The name in the file was his now, along with everything attached to it. No one would help him. No one would look after him.
’This is the only chance I’ve got,’ he thought. ’Ravager life. That’s the road out. There’s nothing else on the map.’
He lowered his hand.
’And I’m sitting here wasting it.’
Something in his chest settled, like a stone dropping to the bottom of a well.
"Ok," he said quietly.
Kelly looked at him for a moment. Then she nodded once, turned, and walked back to her desk.
Alex pulled the book closer and dragged his chair forward. He put both elbows on the desk and started again from the top of the page.
The words did not change. They were still dense and dry. He read the first sentence, then the second, and by the third he realized his eyes were moving but his mind was somewhere else. It felt as if he were reading without comprehension, letting the words wash through without leaving any of it behind.
’No. Stop.’
He backed up and started over.
He read slower this time, one line at a time, and made himself stop at the end of each sentence and ask what it had actually said. It was tedious. It felt like walking through mud. But he began to catch things. A term here, a definition there. The words for classification levels started to attach themselves to actual meanings.
’There’s no rush,’ he told himself. ’Take it slow. If I get the first page right, the second gets easier.’
He turned the page.
Beside him Jerry cleared his throat and put up his hand like a schoolboy.
"Kelly?"
"Yes?"
"Can you point me to the nearest restroom?"
"Down the hall. Second door on the left. There’s a sign."
"Thanks."
Jerry stood, tucked his chair in neatly, and slipped out of the room. The door closed softly behind him.
For a while there was only the sound of pages turning.
Alex read on. He was thinking, though, and he could not stop it. There were questions rattling around in his head that he had not been able to ask, not with Jerry sitting right there. Jerry was a criminal, or at least a convict, and Alex was supposed to be one too. Asking certain things would make him look strange. It would raise the wrong kind of attention.
But Jerry was gone now. Only the two of them were left.
He kept his eyes on the book, and after a moment he spoke without looking up.
"Can I ask you something?"
"You can ask."
"Why did you do this?"
The sound of Kelly’s page turning stopped.
"I mean, you’re one of the top students," Alex said. "You could live as a regular student at the academy. Nobody would make you work with us. So why did you sign up for this program?"
Kelly closed her book.
She did not answer at once. She set it on the desk, laced her fingers together, and looked at him for a while. It was not hostile. It was the look of someone deciding how much to say.
He wasn’t buying the idea that they were forced to do this afterall they were top students.
"It’s not because I love helping people," she said. "That’s for sure."
"I didn’t think so."
"It’s simple." She leaned back in her chair. "The Foundation offered something. Anyone who accepted the assignment to work with you would be taken straight to phase two of the evaluation."
Alex looked up.
"Straight to phase two?"
"Myself and all the others who accepted," Kelly said. "We get to skip the first phase entirely."
He turned that over in his head. So the students in the yard had not been chosen out of kindness or duty. They had been offered a trade. Babysit sixty six convicts for a month, and in return skip a hurdle that everyone else had to clear.
’That makes sense,’ he thought. ’It’s a deal. Everybody wants something.’
It was almost comforting. He understood deals better than he understood duty.
"Interesting," Alex said. He kept his voice casual. "What’s the first phase all about?"
He closed the textbook slowly and kept his hand pressed flat on the cover, one finger wedged between the pages to mark the exact place where he had stopped.
Kelly noted it. The book, the finger, the careful way he had held his place, like a man who fully intended to come back to it.