LATER, AFTER TRAINING WAS OVER and the other students filed out, Dr. Ambrose waved Fort and Jia over to her desk.
“You two can use the book in the Viewing Room until it’s locked down tonight before dinner, Jia,” she said, taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes. “Just make sure he meets Dr. Oppenheimer for dinner in the officers’ mess at 1900 hours. Don’t bother killing yourself trying to help him, though. There’s no way he’s going to master one spell, let alone three.”
Fort swallowed his protest as Jia nodded and picked up the book from the podium, then led Fort out. “See you tomorrow,” Fort told his teacher, since it felt weird to just leave without a good-bye.
“Ugh, that sounds like a threat,” Dr. Ambrose said with a sigh.
Jia brought him to the elevator, where they waited in silence. Finally, the doors opened, and Fort almost leaped inside, anxiously shifting back and forth until the doors closed. Finally they did, and all the questions Fort had been holding in came flooding out like a dam breaking.
“What’s Destruction training? Why is everyone so afraid of it? Do people get hurt? Why would they let that happen? I thought we were too young to actually fight, and that’s why we were making bandages—”
Jia took a step back from his onslaught, holding up her hands. “Whoa. Okay. Wow. Slow down. One at a time.”
The elevator opened again, letting them out on the first floor. Fort kept quiet as they walked through the offices to where he’d first had his testing earlier that morning, conscious of the soldiers’ eyes on him. When they reached the testing room, what Dr. Ambrose had called the Viewing Room, it was empty, meaning Fort could get back to the questions.
“So, Destruction training?”
Jia sighed. She placed the book on the podium next to the Destruction magic book, then sat down in front of both. “We learn to heal by studying anatomy and practicing our spells. Destruction students practice through . . . well, combat. Once you know how to cast a magic missile, there’s not much you need to learn in terms of specialization, like with Healing. So they learn to fight, usually against each other. It’s pretty brutal.”
“They don’t actually attack each other, do they?” Fort asked.
“Well, do you know paintball?”
“Yeah,” Fort said. “That’s where you shoot paint pellets instead of bullets at each other?”
Jia nodded. “Imagine that, but with fireballs, or magic missiles, or lightning. The Destruction students either split into teams, or go every student for themselves, and try to hit each other with their spells. They have protective gear on, but someone’s always getting injured. That’s why Colonel Charles wants us there, for quick healing. Whenever someone gets hit in an unprotected area, a Healing student has to rush in and heal the player up. Only hits on protected areas count in their training, so we have to make sure whoever got hit can still train.”
Fort paused, several thoughts passing through his mind at once. Their training was that dangerous? But of course it would be, if they were using real magic against each other. Rachel had thrown him across the room without even trying, when she thought he was attacking Dr. Opps.
But why would the teachers be forcing the Healing students to do this? Or even allow it in the first place? What happened if a healer got hit while training was happening?
Right. Combat experience. Which made sense, if Colonel Charles was trying to teach his students how to fight for real. And if that was the case, all the more reason Destruction was where Fort needed to be.
“So, I’m guessing it’s okay to hit the healers, too,” he said.
Jia nodded. “The Destruction kids think it’s funny to aim for us. Most of them are jerks, honestly. The teachers don’t stop them either, ’cause they think it’s better training.”
“Maybe they should give us Destruction magic too,” Fort said, his mind racing with possibilities. “That’d make it a bit more even.”
“No one studies two books at once,” Jia told him. “It’d be like learning two foreign languages at the same time. If you mixed up a spell somehow, combined Destruction and Healing . . .” She shuddered.
Just because no one had yet didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. “Sounds like I should get back to mastering these spells, then,” Fort said, and walked over to where Jia was sitting. She didn’t move as he opened the Healing book and took out his sewing needle.
For a few hours, he worked at mastering the Heal Minor Wounds spell in silence while Jia read a medical handbook she’d brought. Every so often he’d think of a new question to ask her, but held back, as he really needed to concentrate on learning the spells.
As for the Destruction training, it did sound intense and pretty dangerous, but if it could prepare him for what he needed to do, then he was happy to participate. Maybe if he volunteered to take another student’s place, Dr. Ambrose would take pity on him and knock the spells he needed to master down to two?
Ha, right, like she’d care about her students at all.
“Why are you here, anyway?” Jia said out of nowhere, startling Fort from his thoughts. “I mean, I get it, the idea of learning magic is amazing. But I know what happened to you in D.C. Everyone here does. I’d think that’d make you want to get as far from this stuff as possible.”
Fort bit his lip, not sure what to say. I want to keep what happened to me from happening to anyone else, especially my aunt. I want justice for my father. And I want to watch that monster suffer. To make it feel like I felt. To make it afraid.
“I don’t really have a choice,” he said finally. “I don’t have much of a home to go back to. Both my parents are . . . gone. And my only family is my aunt, who can’t afford to take care of me at all. I think this is it for me.”
Jia nodded. “I don’t think any of us really had a choice. My dad was from a small village in mainland China, near to where the Healing book was found, actually. He had left to study theoretical physics, and met my mother, who was becoming a chemist. But when the book was discovered, the government brought him in because they could send him to the site without bringing up too many questions with the locals. And then after a few years, we were sent here, with the Healing book, to combine research with the scientists here.”
Wow. She’d left her entire country behind? “How old were you?” Fort asked.
“Only three,” she said. “I hardly remember it anymore. We’ve never been back, because my father refuses to return until he figures out the mystery of the books.” She flashed a small smile. “He doesn’t believe there’s any such thing as magic. He keeps quoting some science fiction writer, saying, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,’ so the books must be some kind of source code to the universe. He had Dr. Opps convinced for a while, but who knows now.”
Fort shrugged. “I must have missed the lesson in school about how making fireballs was just a natural thing to do.”
She raised a hand, and Fort watched as it began to glow with blue light. “All I know is that if this is science, then whoever wrote the books was thousands of years more advanced than we are.”
Fort frowned. “Has Dr. Opps discovered anything about who did write the books?”
Jia shook her head. “Just that the books are only a few thousand years old. That’s younger than the pyramids in Egypt, but no one had seen any historic evidence of them before Discovery Day. Which brings up all kinds of questions, like where did the books go for all that time? Why were they buried? Why did magic disappear at all? Why can’t adults use it, but anyone born after that day can?” She smiled again, staring off into space. “All questions my father couldn’t answer. He and my mother are off at one of the sites now, still digging for answers. Or at least, that’s my guess. Even with their security clearances, all our letters to each other are heavily censored.”
So in the past thirteen years, the government hadn’t managed to find out much more about the books than Dr. Opps had known the day they were found. That was interesting. Was it because people were working in secret, so they couldn’t be too obvious with their research? Or were the answers not to be found through science?
Unfortunately, Fort didn’t know the answers any more than Dr. Opps did. “So how did you end up here?” he asked, changing the subject back to Jia.
“Since we were already here, and I was born on the right day, they pulled me in immediately,” she said. “Helps when both your parents are already working on the project.”
“Right,” Fort said quietly. “Would you go back to China if you could?”
“I’d like to see it,” Jia said. “I probably wouldn’t remember anything, but it’d still be nice to visit. We just never traveled because my parents were so busy with the books. All I’ve known is our place outside D.C., and, well, now the school.”
D.C.? Fort’s whole body seemed to tighten, like a rubber band pulled tightly. “So you were close to the attack?”
Jia looked up in surprise. “I didn’t . . . what?”
“You said you had a place outside D.C. Were you there during the attack?” He leaned forward, not sure why this was so important to him. Maybe it would help in some way if he wasn’t the only one here who’d gone through that.
“No, I . . . I wasn’t on the Mall,” Jia said, shaking her head.
She seemed to be getting more tense with every question. “No. I was . . . I wasn’t around. I don’t really remember, okay?”
This set Fort back. “You don’t remember? How could you not—”
“I know what happened!” she shouted, and her sudden anger made him take a step back. “Why do I have to remember every single detail about my day? Is it so wrong that I’d rather forget, maybe?”
“I’m sorry,” Fort said quietly, not sure what had just happened. “It’s not wrong at all. I would probably forget if I could. I was just curious.”
“I wish we all could forget,” she told him. “I wish this could all just go back to normal, and we’d never heard of magic to begin with.” She stood up and motioned for him to follow. “C’mon. We have to get you to the officers’ mess for dinner. Don’t want to be late.”
Fort watched as she walked out of the room, then checked his watch. Six p.m. If dinner was at 1900 hours, that was military time for seven o’clock. They still had an hour.
I always knew you were great at making friends, his father said in his mind. Winning hearts left and right, that’s my Forsythe!