WAKE UP!” SOMEONE SHOUTED, AND Fort bolted up.
Jia stared down at him in horror from the entrance to the Viewing Room, and the night before came crashing back in on him.
“I fell asleep?” Fort said, his eyes widening. “Rachel, you let me fall asleep?”
“Shh, five more minutes,” Rachel said from the other side of the room, her eyes still closed.
“What time is it?” Fort asked, panic flooding his fevered body. “Did I miss the test? Am I too late?”
“I’m here to get the book,” Jia told him. “But what did you do? Do you know what would have happened if Dr. Ambrose had come down here instead of sending me? Or if Colonel Charles had come for the Destruction book?”
“This is terrible,” Fort said, jumping up. “I can’t believe I did this!”
Jia stared at him for a moment, then sighed. “It’s fine, I won’t tell on you or anything. I mean, you’re already probably in trouble for not returning to the dorm last night. Just hurry, because—”
“No, I mean I can’t believe I fell asleep!” he shouted at her. “I needed to master the second two spells, and I . . . I don’t even remember if I did!” He paused, staring at her, then leaned in close. “But I do remember that you lied to me, Jia. You did know Sierra. Why wouldn’t you tell me?”
Jia flinched. “I don’t know what you think you know—”
“I saw it, in her memory!” Fort shouted. “I don’t think I know anything, I watched it happen!”
“You don’t know what you saw,” she said softly. “Now I have to go.”
“Why did you lie to me?” Fort said as she pushed past him to grab the Healing book. “What did I ever do to you?”
Jia stopped in place, then turned to stare at him. “Maybe it’s not all about you, Forsythe.” With that, she walked past him, only to pause at the door. “If I were you, I’d get to class immediately. Dr. Ambrose will be there any minute.”
Fort watched her go, not sure how he’d suddenly lost the high ground in that argument. Jia had been the one to lie to him. How had she gotten to leave indignantly?
Sighing, he turned back around and noticed the Destruction student still lazing on the bench. “Don’t you have to get up too, Rachel?”
She yawned, then slowly sat up, cracking her neck. “I guess I’ve done my job here, protecting the school by watching you carefully.”
“Really? That’s what you call sleeping the entire time?”
“You’re just cranky ’cause you were up all night,” she told him, stretching. “Don’t take it out on me. Wow, these benches are not comfortable, huh?”
“How’d it go?” said a voice from the door, and Fort looked up to find Cyrus standing there, holding a new uniform for Fort.
“How did it go?” Fort shouted. “I fell asleep! I don’t even know if I mastered the spells. If only you’d seen this coming, I might have found a way to set an alarm or something. . . .”
Cyrus slowly turned red. “Um, honestly? I sort of did see it, back when I went through all the different ways of getting us here last night.”
“I didn’t want to tell you,” Cyrus continued as Fort changed his burned shirt. “But if you’d tried to get back to the dorm last night, you were going to get caught. Sleeping here was basically the only future where you made it to your test on time.”
“What use is being on time if I slept through all my studying?”
“Think positively!” Cyrus said, pushing him toward the door. “Maybe your unconscious picked up something by osmosis!”
Fort growled in frustration but hurried after Jia.
“The least you could do is wait for me, after I helped you study all night!” Rachel shouted from behind him. “And don’t forget our deal!”
The soldiers behind the glass walls all gave Fort a confused look as he and Cyrus passed by, jogging for the elevators, probably wondering if they’d seen him enter earlier or not, but that was the least of Fort’s concerns now. Chances were that he was about to fail out of the school. And that couldn’t happen.
Cyrus left Fort at the elevator, giving him a thumbs-up as the doors closed. Thankfully, there weren’t any other students in the elevator with him, so Fort collapsed against the wall, trying to calm down. The last thing he needed to do was panic; it wouldn’t exactly help anything.
Even if panicking felt really, really tempting.
Bursting into the Boneyard, Fort found Jia placing the Healing book on the podium at the front of the room as other students began filing in. Today the steel tables were all bare, except for the one that still had sheets on it from where Fort had been healed.
The sight of the sheets reminded him of something, and he quickly slipped Dr. Ambrose’s badge back onto the table she’d left it on the night before, hoping no one saw him. He thought he escaped notice, only to turn and find Jia glaring at him, definitely having caught him in the act. He shrugged, not willing to get lectured by her on anything, and she just shook her head.
“So I did leave it here,” Dr. Ambrose said from behind Fort, grabbing for her badge. “How did I not see it last night?” She gave Fort a suspicious look, then moved up to the front of the classroom.
“Dr. Ambrose?” Mason said, quickly walking up to her from his table as the other students arrived. “I’m having a weird problem. For some reason, I can’t cast Heal Minor Wounds. I mastered it months ago, but I tried to use it on a blister this morning and couldn’t think of the words.”
“Oh, Mason,” Dr. Ambrose said. “Maybe another round of Destruction training will jog your memory.” She surveyed the room as Mason gasped, then dejectedly walked back to his table. “Everyone here? I got a report of someone missing from a class earlier.” Again, she gave Fort a long look.
Fort just gave her a nervous smile, which she rolled her eyes at.
“Fine, then,” Dr. Ambrose continued. “Class, we have a special treat today. Forsythe, get up here.”
Fort stood up and slowly moved to the front of the room as the other students all watched him intently. He couldn’t tell if they were on his side or hoping he’d leave, especially given how many had laughed at him in the boys’ dorm two nights ago. The girls didn’t look much friendlier either, though that could have been confusion over what was happening.
“Forsythe will be taking a quick test,” Dr. Ambrose said, taking three bandage pads out of her pocket and placing them in Fort’s hands. “It’s really quite simple. You’ll cast each of the first three Healing spells once, then a second time, at which point you’ll infuse these bandages with your magic. If you can’t create three separate bandages, then out you go.” She nodded at the door, then lowered her voice so only Fort could hear. “At which point everyone here will be much safer.”
For the first time, it dawned on Fort that there were no school administrators or military officers around this time. “Is it just us?” he whispered to Dr. Ambrose. “Dr. Opps and Colonel Charles aren’t coming?”
“No, they and the other administrators are watching on the security cams,” she whispered back, giving him a look. “For some reason, none of them wanted to be in the same room with you. Any idea why?”
Fort swallowed hard. “Can’t think of a reason.”
She narrowed her eyes but nodded. Louder, she asked, “Are you ready?”
“I am,” Fort said, hoping he was telling the truth. At least there’d be fewer people around to watch him fail, if nothing else.
“The process of creating a bandage isn’t difficult,” Dr. Ambrose told him. “Begin your spell like you intend to heal someone, but instead of releasing the energy altogether, just let it flow slowly into the bandage, like it’s a sponge for your magic. Don’t let go of the spell until the bandage is full, though, or the magic won’t stick, and you’ll fail the test.”
Fort swallowed hard. That actually did sound pretty difficult, at least without knowing exactly what he was doing. “How did you learn how to do this, if you can’t use magic?” he whispered.
“We had the students experiment early on,” Dr. Ambrose said. “Stop stalling. You have one minute to cast Heal Minor Wounds, then create a bandage.”
Fort closed his eyes, trying not to let the panic derail him before he even started. He pulled his sewing needle out of his pocket and pricked his finger, then quickly healed it, showing it off to Dr. Ambrose.
“Right, right,” she told him, waving for him to continue.
He nodded, feeling nervous even though he knew he’d mastered this spell at least. He grasped the bandage in his hand (“It’s not a stress ball, don’t crush it,” Dr. Ambrose told him), and slowly repeated the spell words.
He felt the familiar cold energy in his hand, but as Dr. Ambrose had advised him, he didn’t release it, and instead just let it seep into the bandage as slowly as he could. The bandage began to glow with a dull blue light, surprising Fort to the point that he almost released the magic by accident. He quickly concentrated on reining it in, though, and the glow faded slightly at first, then brightened even more as the rest of the magic filled the bandage. Finally, the last of the magical energy left his hand, and the bandage lit the room in an eerie light before fading away completely, leaving the bandage looking ordinary once more.
“Hey, you really did master a spell!” Dr. Ambrose said, looking surprised. “That’s one more than I would have thought you could. But the odds get pretty long from here. Next one, please. Cause Disease, if you don’t mind.”
Fort slowly raised a trembling hand and took another bandage from her. Here it was, the real test. Had he mastered the spell last night, or just passed out from lack of sleep? Would he be going home to a life of never knowing what he’d left behind at the Oppenheimer School, from answers about his father to the power to destroy the creatures that might have killed him?
Please, he thought. Please. I have to know the spell.
And then he tried to cast Cause Disease.
But there were no words to use. The spell wasn’t there.
Not only hadn’t he mastered the spell, but he must have forgotten to read the spell words again so couldn’t even cast it once.