THE SOUND OF A TRUMPET jolted Fort straight up in bed, only for the aches and chills to knock him right back down. Right, the flu. Why was someone evil playing music so loudly? He looked around frantically for the source and noticed Cyrus sitting on his already made bed, smiling.
“That’s the reveille,” he said. “Think of it as an alarm. Welcome to your last full day before the test!”
The thought of having so little time left woke Fort up more than the trumpet had. Then the events of yesterday and the feverish dream came flooding back to Fort, and he groaned loudly.
“You don’t seem thrilled,” Cyrus said. “Was it because you didn’t sleep well?”
“Nope. But I think I know who Sierra is now.”
Cyrus closed his eyes for a moment, then popped them back open. “Ah, she’s a Telepathy student? I didn’t know that we had a book of mental magic here.”
Fort just stared at him. “How did . . . did you read my mind?”
“No, I just looked ahead to when you told me about things and saw the conversation happening at breakfast,” Cyrus said. “And now you don’t have to tell me. So efficient!”
This hurt Fort’s brain almost as much as the fever. “But . . . doesn’t that mean you won’t find out, because I won’t tell you at breakfast? And then you won’t see it, so you wouldn’t know now? Aren’t you changing the future?”
“Of course,” Cyrus said with a shrug, standing up as the other boys around him groaned and began to rise as well. “The future’s always changing. That’s one of the tough parts about this magic. But it’s not like I’d forget what I already saw, just because you’re not going to tell me then. You will have told me if I hadn’t seen it, so in one sense, you already did.”
“. . . No,” Fort said. “Just no, to all of that.” He pulled his covers over his head and reveled in the warmth for one last minute.
“Let’s go find Jia before breakfast,” Cyrus said, patting his shoulder through the blankets. “She’ll get you cured. I’ve already seen it.”
With the promise of good health as motivation, Fort quickly got dressed, then followed Cyrus out as the rest of the boys got ready more slowly. Bryce, Chad, and Trey all grinned at the sight of Fort’s miserable, sickly face, and for a moment he considered coughing all over them, but that would take effort, and he barely had the energy to walk.
Outside, there were noticeably more soldiers around, after the events of the night before in the officers’ mess. They all seemed much more on edge than before, and they hadn’t exactly been calm to begin with.
Fortunately, Cyrus turned out to be very handy at finding people, considering he could look into the future and see where they’d be in five minutes. With that knowledge, they timed their arrival at the cafeteria just as Jia showed up. She took one look at Fort’s face and sighed.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said, her hands already glowing blue. She ran them over his head and chest, and the energy passed into his body, immediately curing him of the flu. “Sebastian, I take it?”
“Yeah,” Fort said, sighing in relief, both from the healing and from the fact that she seemed to have forgotten whatever he’d done to annoy her yesterday. Maybe the flu had helped him out after all. “Thank you.”
“I’d stay away from him,” Jia said. “His mother is on the congressional committee that the TDA has to answer to. He’s the only one at this entire school who definitely will never get sent home. But she wouldn’t let him learn Destruction magic, and I doubt he’ll ever get over that, so he’s perpetually annoyed with everyone.”
“How is Dr. Opps’s hand?” he asked her. “I heard Colonel Charles yell for someone to get you to heal him.”
Her eyes widened. “How did you know about that?”
“Let’s get some food, and I’ll explain,” he told her. “I’m starving!”
She raised her eyebrows but went quiet as other students began coming into the mess. After grabbing some scrambled eggs and pancakes, they sat down at a table that Cyrus promised would stay otherwise empty, and Fort filled Jia in on what had happened the night before in the officers’ mess, as well as his dream (which also negated any paradox of Cyrus not officially hearing it too).
Jia didn’t seem to take it as calmly as Cyrus did, though. “They wouldn’t tell me what happened,” she said quietly, looking away. “This is bad. This is so bad.”
“Do you have any idea where this Sierra girl is?” Fort asked her. “She definitely seems like a student here, but I didn’t recognize the room I saw in her memory.”
Jia swallowed hard and wouldn’t look at him. “She’s . . . she’s gone. She’s no longer a student. They sent her home.”
“You know her?” Fort asked. “What about those other two, Michael and Damian?”
Jia seemed to flinch at the names, and she pushed her tray away. “I didn’t know them. I’m not really hungry anymore. Can we stop talking about this?”
Fort gave Cyrus a confused look, and the other boy returned it with a shrug. “This is pretty important, Jia!” Fort said. “If you do know them—”
“None of them are here, okay?” she said, standing up abruptly and grabbing her tray. “Now let this go. You said yourself that thing was looking for Telepathy magic. The last thing we need is for you to lead it back here. You have no idea what you’re messing with, Fort.”
“I don’t, you’re right,” he said, even more confused now. “That’s why I’m trying to find out more—”
“Just let it go, for all of our sakes!” With that, she walked over to the garbage and dumped her uneaten food, and then, with a quick look back at them, left the cafeteria.
“What was that all about?” Fort asked Cyrus. “Did I offend her somehow?”
His friend just stared off into space for a moment. “Seems like she knows more than she’s saying, doesn’t it?” Cyrus said finally. “At times like this, I feel like it’d be kind of useful if I could see the past, too.” He frowned. “I wonder if there are spells for that, later in the Clairvoyance book.”
“Wait,” Fort said, realizing something. “Why don’t you look ahead in my future, and see if we get answers out of Jia?”
Cyrus smiled. “And then we wouldn’t need to even have the conversation. You’re right!” He closed his eyes, so he missed Fort’s wincing at his words. “Hmm,” Cyrus said after a moment, his eyes still closed. “Today is . . . not really going to be your day. Ouch.”
“Great,” Fort said. “What about tomorrow?”
Cyrus furrowed his brow. “Tomorrow . . . looks really fuzzy for some reason.” He opened his eyes back up. “That’s weird. Usually the future’s only fuddled up when the person is near the books of magic. I don’t know if the books cause it, or if the chaos of pure magic messes up my sight somehow, but I’ve never been able to see anything around them, or even closely related to them. The teachers tried having me search the globe for the rest of the books already, and it’s like there’s just a hole in that part of my vision.”
“Perfect, so maybe we never find out what Jia knows,” Fort said, dropping his head into his hands.
“Too bad you can’t use the Telepathy magic yourself,” Cyrus pointed out. “That’d make this a lot easier.”
Fort shook his head violently. “Even if I could, I’d never use it. What if that thing from the officers’ mess heard it and came looking for me again? There’s no way I’d take a chance. You didn’t see it, Cyrus.” Even the thought of it made Fort’s blood go cold.
The other boy gave him a supportive look as Fort turned back to his breakfast, his appetite now gone. First Dr. Opps and Dr. Ambrose, now Jia. Why did everyone at this school have something to hide, a secret to keep? How was Sierra sending him thoughts if she wasn’t even at the school? And why him to begin with?
“So on the bright side,” Cyrus said, having no problem eating his own breakfast, “you will be seeing Jia later today. You won’t get any answers out of her, but at least she’s not still mad.”
“Oh yeah?” Fort said. “Last time she only forgave me because I had the flu. What happens this time, a hospital visit?”
“Whoa!” Cyrus said. “See, now you must be reading my mind, because that’s exactly why!”