Chapter 5

Academy

The first thing to hit me was the heat. It was like walking into a drive room with poor thermal shielding, the place was a good five degrees above station norm, possibly more. There was a strange tang in the air too, like salt. Heat, humidity and salt on the breeze, someone had set the enviro controls very strangely.

I made the mistake of looking up, and the sky opened above me, it stretched in every direction, deep azure blue pocked with stray clouds, stretching off to infinity. It sucked the breath from my lungs, my exhalation lost in endless, open sky, running away from me.

I staggered, fought to breathe in, gasped a lungful of air, tasted the salt on the breeze again. Coughed, chest aching. I pulled my gaze downwards, past some startled looking students, to the ground. Instead of a reassuring metal plate, or a comfortable carpet, the ground was covered in concrete, dusted with a layer of golden sand. It felt strange and other, but at least it was solid. I focussed on it, let my breathing ease. There was nothing wrong with the air. Everybody else seemed fine with it. I just had to breathe, not think about it.

This is ridiculous.

I fought the urge to turn and dash back into the spaceport. In the long run, that wouldn’t help. Centimetre by centimetre, I raised my eye-line, taking in my surroundings more slowly, trying to avoid information overload.

The quad was crowded with students of every species I could name, and a fair few I couldn’t. To a being, everybody else seemed happy to be here. The air rang with shouts of excited greetings, and laughter. About a third of the students wore obvious but strange tech: weapons and scanners and armour. Another selection, maybe one in ten, looked… odd for their species: a human woman emitting a faint purple glow; a Welatak with tufts of fur poking out of the top of her saline suit; a Polifan covered in ruby-red scales, only his wings looked normal.

It was strange, but a strange I could cope with. It’s a big galaxy and I’d seen all sorts of unusual walk through station hatches over the years. This was a greater concentration than I was used to, true, but it was at least normal strangeness.

Steeling myself, I raised my gaze further. Registered the trees dotted around the quad. Palm trees, maybe? Took in the buildings that surrounded us. To the right, a vast dome-like structure of plain concrete, at least seven storeys high at its midpoint. There were no windows I could see, but the doorway was wide and was surrounded by vibrant posters. According to a series of colourful sign posts, to the left, a cluster of accommodation blocks, dozens of them, stretched out of sight. Each was three or four storeys high.

Finally, ahead, the signage proclaimed another group of buildings as the main teaching blocks. At the centre was the building I’d seen in the advert. I remembered it being a soaring white tower block, slightly tapered towards the top, giving it even more height with false perspective. Don’t look up. Windows on every face would make it light and airy inside, no doubt. A sweeping shallow ramp led from the quad up to the tower entry.

The students from the Metropolitan had joined a larger throng gathered at the base of the ramp. I set my shoulders and walked across to join them, concentrating on the scuffing sound my shoes made on the sand as I walked. The sky was there above me, waiting to claim me, but I wouldn’t let it take me. A railing flanked the ramp, and I placed myself beside it and held on. I hadn’t floated off the planet yet, but the gravity felt lighter than 1G standard, and I was taking no risks.

Seventhirtyfour forged through the crowd to join me, two other students followed in his wake. The Brontom beamed at me. “Thought we’d lost you there for a minute. Look who I’ve met! This is Pilvi and this is Dez, they just came in on the Fawcett, from out east. Pilvi scored top three percentile on the science section of the entrance exam, and Dez…”

“Didn’t,” said Dez. She was comically short next to the giant Brontom; I didn’t recognise her species, but she was reptilian, all angles and scales, her tail flicked constantly as she spoke. “I didn’t score well on any of the book stuff, but that’s okay, I’m going to be more of an action superhero, I expect.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said.

Dez looked up and up at Seventhirtyfour. “You’re so lucky. Testing positive for psychic ability! You could have actual superpowers. All I can do is lightly swat things with my tail.”

“Just because you don’t know what kind of hero you will be, doesn’t mean you can’t be one,” said Pilvi. She was human, about my age, blond, with a quick smile. “We’re all here to learn; that’s what counts. They’ll find ways for all of us to be heroes, you’ll see.”

“She’s right Dez,” I chipped in “How does the advert go? ‘Phooey to that!’”

Seventhirtyfour laughed. “That was just like Captain Hawk! Hey, maybe you have super-mimicry.”

Ouch, that was a bit on the nose. Maybe turn that down a bit. “But joking aside Dez,” I repeated her name, committing it to memory. “Don’t tie yourself up into knots about it on day one. Unless that turns out to be your superpower.”

Pilvi nodded. “Quite right,” she said and flashed Dez a smile. “Hi, nice to meet you…?”

“Mirabor Gravane,” I lied. “But call me… Grey?”

“Oh, nice,” said Seventhirtyfour “That’s halfway to a code name already. You could be the Grey Ghost or the Grey Avenger?”

I laughed. “Hard pass on both of those. I’m further behind than Dez. I don’t even have a tail, and the only half-decent score I got in the entry exam was for Maths.”

“Ah, that solves it then,” said Pilvi “Enter: The Grey Accountant!”

Oh well, at least they weren’t talking about my mimicry skills now.

There was a dull roar and a flash of white light from overhead, and like an idiot, I looked up. Reverse vertigo swept over me, my stomach flipped, and I fought to keep my breakfast in. The light source was a man, flying overhead, a trail of white light streamed from his white-blond hair. He flipped, end-over-end, and dropped like a stone, which didn’t do my stomach any good, then decelerated quickly, coming to a stop in a blaze of light a metre above the ground.

“Welcome to the Justice Academy!” he said. The assembled crowd of students whooped with enthusiasm.

“My name is Sunbolt, and I will be one of your instructors during your time here. The few of you with actual superpowers, if you’re good enough, might get to join my Advanced Meta Combat class. The rest of you, I’ll try not to hurt you too much in Professor Red Ninja’s Self Defence class.”

Well, this had taken a turn. The crowd and I weren’t sure how to take that.

“But today, we start with orientation.” Sunbolt pulled a minipad off his belt. “We will divide into your accommodation groups and tour the facilities. Pay attention, listen for your name. First group: Gravane!”

He paused. “This will go faster if you respond. Gravane!”

I raised a hand. “Here.”

Sunbolt stared at me, brow furrowed under his domino mask. Wait… did he know? Did he know what the real Gravane looked like? Was my ruse over already?

Caught between appearing guilty by looking away, and looking guilty by staring at my accuser, I felt my shoulders bob as I shuffled uncomfortably. Being outside had really put me off my game.

The light behind the eye-slits in his mask intensified.

“I’ve got my eye on you, Gravane. Your reactions will need to be quicker if you’re going to survive The Life.” Sunbolt’s hair flashed with light, but he moved on. “4,923,016,734!”

The Brontom raised two hands. “Here! But please, call me Seventhirtyfour.”

I was too relieved to listen to the rest of Sunbolt’s list.

Seventhirtyfour gave me his four-thumbs up. “Awesome, Grey. We’re in the same accommodation block!”

“Fantastic.”

# # #

Our group of twelve followed dutifully along behind a teaching assistant calling himself Kid Jetstream. What followed was a blissfully indoors hour touring the main tower block of the campus, or the Hall of Heroes as Jetstream insisted on calling it. He kept up a flow of overly-hyped patter throughout; for the most part, I tuned it out. I tuned out Seventhirtyfour too, he was off making friends with the rest of our accommodation group, but I had more important things to think about.

You live a life on space stations, you learn the importance of how things fit together. If an air seal breaks, or conduits crash, you need to know how to get out of places quickly, and where it’s safe to go. And if station Security might want to talk to you, it becomes even more important to know every hidey-hole and shortcut. After ten years, there were few people who knew space stations like I do.

My groundside instincts were rusty; non-existent, really. People on the ground had it easy, they thought the default setting of the universe was ‘safe’, just because they didn’t live in a steel box hanging in a vacuum. It made safety features rarer, escape routes more obscure, and finding places to hide required new ways of thinking.

Worse, the Hall of Heroes seemed designed to baffle me. As we left the ground floor (canteens, shops, recreational zones), there was an access panel in the ceiling. I paused, trying to figure out what it was for, and Jetstream spotted me. “Ah, Gravane, you have a good eye. That’s a teaching aid for the Introduction to Building Infiltration class; It’s one of my favourite classes, important to learn how to sneak around if you are in a hostage rescue situation.”

“Great,” I said and crossed it off my list. No point sneaking in a place everyone knows is designed for it.

Jetstream showed us gymnasiums, sports halls and combat simulation zones. The walls were thick, the equipment sturdy, and while much of it was expensive and high quality, it all showed signs of misuse, breakage and repair. I mentally catalogued storage lockers, equipment scaffolds and disused corners.

Classrooms and offices above that. These levels showed more promise. Lots of odd corners and repurposed corridors up there. Several promising places to check out, though how many were teaching aids remained to be seen.

The top few levels were labs. We stopped at the corner stairwell before touring them. “The main labs are in the buildings behind the Hall,” Jetstream said, gesturing out of the window to a group of sturdy-looking buildings some distance away. “The labs up here aren’t used as much as they were in the first few years of the Academy. There were… incidents. It was deemed more sensible and less explosive to give the student labs a little more space. The labs up here, are… safer, but it’s still best to watch your step. Try not to touch anything in here.”

One of our group (Dean, possibly?) was looking out of the windows facing the other way. “Wow, look at the beach! Is that part of the Academy too?”

Jetstream grinned. “It sure is. This whole world is Academy property, and that beach, in particular, has been home to some legendary parties over the years. If any of you have surfing powers, I can tell you the tide here kicks up some great waves.”

Possibly-Dean high-fived one of his buddies; they fell to party planning.

My attention was caught by another building on the lab side, further back even than the student labs, notably separate. A squat, solid building, surrounded by razor wire and the unmistakable shimmer of a force shield. “What’s that place?”

“Tartarus,” rumbled Seventhirtyfour from behind me. “It’s a prison designed to hold supers.”

“I thought that none of the graduates of the Academy ever became super-villains?”

“They don’t,” said Jetstream, his normally sunny tone subdued. “But we don’t graduate everybody. Even this place has bad apples, sometimes.”

A squat blue Zalex, Breetoxa, asked, “How many people there?”

“None, at the moment, thank the stars. It’s not designed to hold prisoners long, we ship them up to Galactic Patrol as soon as we can. We are a school, first and foremost,” said Jetstream. “But we’ve had some… bad people in there, in the past. Arsonists. Imposters. Thugs. We can’t be too careful.”

Jetstream looked at the door to the disused labs. “Do you know what, I think we’ve seen enough up here. Let’s show you to your accommodation block.” His tone brightened. “Race you downstairs!” There was a crackle of lightning, a whoosh of air, and he was already two flights down.

Laughing, the sombre moment broken, the group chased after him. I followed, more slowly, lost in thought.

Imposters?

# # #

A short, disturbing, jog across the quad, and Jetstream showed us to the accommodation block that the twelve of us would share. We had a communal kitchen and lounge on the ground floor, then individual rooms on the floors above. Seventhirtyfour and I were assigned the largest rooms, across the corridor from each other on the top floor.

My room was all but a palace. Bigger than any private berth in any ship or station I’d ever seen, it was packed with comfortable furniture, had its own separate shower room with... yes, actual running hot water. Sonic showers are great and all, but I hadn’t had a real shower in years.

I stripped off in record time and luxuriated in the unmetered, unrationed water. It is a sensation like no other, and if my ruse was discovered right now, it would all be worth it for that one moment of pleasure.

After an extravagant amount of time, I draped a towel over my shoulders and wandered back into the bedroom. There were two suitcases on the bed. Not mine, obviously. They must belong to Gravane, transitioned here from the Metropolitan. Of course, he couldn’t take his luggage off the ship, or he would have tipped his hand, so it had followed me here.

Gravane had told me to maintain the ruse as long as I could, but I wasn’t kidding myself, that had meant while I was still on Meanwhile Station. I’d gone way beyond the plan by this point, and I had no instructions on how to open his luggage. In fact, looking at it, I couldn’t see where the locking mechanism was. I tried just prising it open, to no effect. I ran my fingers all over the case, and eventually, I must have triggered something.

“Password?” asked the case.

I only knew one, but it had worked before. I quoted it again, and the case obliged by popping open. Man, Gravane was lazy about security.

But oh, my stars, the stuff he had in there. I’d known Gravane was money, that was kind of the point, but the array of... stuff... in his case was jaw-dropping. Designer clothes, designer computers, top-spec comm devices, pad and... well... one or two items that looked distinctly like contraband. That was troublesome, but I’d work out what to do with that later. For now, I resisted the urge to put on a fashion show and pulled out the most casual clothes I could find. A pair of artfully distressed jeans, and a plain black t-shirt. The size wasn’t far off, the t-shirt perhaps a little big.

I wasn’t stealing this stuff, technically, just borrowing it, to maintain the illusion.

Somebody knocked at the door, and I jumped. Slammed the cases shut and stuffed them under the bed. I cast a quick glance around the room for incriminating evidence. Like what? I wasn’t sure. Then went to open the door.

Seventhirtyfour loomed outside, filling the doorway. “Come on, Grey, I promised the girls we’d meet them for lunch.”

“Who?”

“Dez and Pilvi. Come on.”

I followed, suddenly feeling very light of heart, even knowing I’d have to cross the quad again. And then the image of Tartarus, squat and brooding, flitted across my mind… and my mood came crashing down again.

# # #

Lunchtime on the first day of term, it turned out, was a popular time to eat in the canteens. The first one we checked was completely packed, the second had a pair of bouncers in powered armour standing by the door. They took one look at the pair of us and waved us on. A glance inside that canteen as we passed showed everyone in there was decked out in visible tech of one sort or another.

Finally, we spotted Dez and Pilvi in the third canteen. Dez waved, pointed at two empty seats they’d saved us. Seventhirtyfour waved back, and we went to join the lunch line.

The diners were a sight to behold. Other than a few Freshers like us, everybody was in costume, and even the costumes which were individually quite stylish contributed to a nightmare of colour-clashes. Blue and green should never be seen. And certainly not alongside magenta, lime, stripes, spots and twinkly special effects.

And the sound was as bad. Even above the general hubbub of conversation, there was a noise of... no, I can’t really liken it to anything. There was a buzzing of electronics, a beeping of monitors, a clicking and ticking of clockwork, a hiss of steam, and that was just from the left side of the room, which seemed to have the concentration of the technical heroes. Over to the right, there were strange other-worldly sounds, of powers I didn’t really understand just idling, while the possessors of those powers ate garlic bread.

Except for one pale guy in an opera cape, who I think was supposed to be a vampire?

We paid for lunch and threaded through the crowd to our seats.

“This place is amazing!” Seventhirtyfour said, raising his voice to carry.

“It certainly is,” I shouted back.

Dez gave me a grimace. “I don’t like it, I have very sensitive ears.”

“I know what you mean. I don’t suppose anyone has any sound-damping powers, do they? We’re all superheroes, right?” I laughed.

The Zalex sitting beside Dez looked up at that, cocked his head to one side, then vanished under the table. Which was odd, I thought.

“How do you like your dorm room?” asked Pilvi.

“Oh, it’s great. I’ve been ship-bound a lot, recently, I’d forgotten how good a proper shower feels. And the view is pretty impressive too. How’s yours?”

“It’s okay. I came from Marwick, an Agri-world, so we have plenty of space and water. The dorm room feels a bit small after what I’m used to, but it’s warm and comfortable, so no complaints really.”

“Can’t believe how busy it is in here,” I shouted.

“It’s great isn’t it?” asked Seventhirtyfour.

“Sure, I guess.”

“Everybody is just excited to be here,” said Pilvi. “Thrown together, meeting new people. Oh! Where are my manners? Grey, Seventhirtyfour, this is Avrim,” she indicated the lanky Polifan that sat beside her, his wings folded in close to his back. “And under the table is… actually, I didn’t catch his name, but he seems nice, probably.”

Dez folded herself over to look under the table. “What is he doing?” she asked.

I held out a hand to Avrim. “Grey,” I said.

“Hi.” He shook, nodding politely.

“What’s with all the factions?” I asked. “I noticed when I came in, all the guys in armour over there, all the glowing ones over there. The ones with wings over that way...”

“Not all of them,” pointed out the Polifan.

“Ah but you’re in the Fresher group,” said Dez.

The Zalex emerged from under the table with an armful of small black boxes. Where had he gotten those? He began to circle our table, placing boxes on the ground about ten centimetres apart. Dez hopped down from her chair and followed him. “What is he doing?” she asked again.

“I’ve read that the Academy encourages people with similar power sets to work together,” said Seventhirtyfour “It helps people new to their abilities learn the ropes, get some mentoring, that sort of thing.”

I frowned. “I guess that makes sense. But don’t you want people with different powers to get used to working together, cover each other’s weaknesses?”

Seventhirtyfour nodded enthusiastically. “I agree. What’s the point of having a team-up if you can both do the same thing?”

“There are classes on team-ups though,” said Pilvi.

“I suppose that’s...” I stopped, realising I was shouting, which I had been doing before, but now it wasn’t necessary. The thunder of the canteen around us had faded to a background whisper. I looked about and spotted the Zalex grinning like a lunatic.

“Sound-damping,” he said, proudly, pointing at one of the boxes.

“Dude! That’s amazing. Thanks. Did you just have those gadgets on you?”

“No, only just thought. You said sound dampen. I thought: boxes.”

“You just made those now?” asked Pilvi.

“Is what I do. ‘Phooey to that’? Superpowers. Gadget, dude.”

“Now ‘Gadget Dude’, that’s a superhero name,” said Seventhirtyfour.

“These little things do that?” said Dez, she lay flat on the floor, tail curled around, studying one of the boxes. She reached towards it.

“No touch,” said Gadget Dude, but it was a little too late.

Dez had poked the box with a claw tip. The box sparked, fizzed, popped, and the sound of the canteen rolled over us again. Gadget Dude looked forlorn.

“Ow,” said Dez. “Sorry.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t worry, I guess we’ll just make do with the noise. But that was genuinely impressive, Gadget Dude.”

The Zalex bowed, clearly pleased with the praise and his new code-name. Together, he and Dez gathered up the boxes again.

# # #

After lunch, we decamped to one of the student bars.

Avrim offered to buy the first round, and I went with him to help carry the drinks. The crowd seemed to part for the Polifan, people stepped out of his way, gave him space. It made getting served quicker, but Avrim had an expression like thunder.

“Can I ask…?” I said.

He growled, but more at the world, than me, I think. “It’s what I was afraid of. Perhaps it was a mistake coming to the Academy after all, but my Aunt Veritas said it would be fine.”

“Your aunt?”

“She’s on the staff here, works as a Counsellor and teaches Ethics classes.”

I picked up our drinks. It turned out eighteen was the legal age for alcohol here, and Gravane was old enough, even if I wasn’t. “The students are avoiding you because your aunt is a teacher here?”

“Not quite. They’re worried I might have the same powers as her.”

We carried the drinks back to our table. “What power does she have that have people so nervous?”

“It’s impossible to lie to her.”

“Ah.” Danger! Danger! I stumbled, managed to not spill the drinks.

“What’s Grey looking so panicked about?” asked Dez.

Avrim set out the drinks in front of Dez, Pilvi and himself. “He thinks I might have the power to compel truth, and he has some deep dark secret.”

“I… that is…” I stumbled.

“Oh, sit down, Grey. I don’t share my aunt’s power and wouldn’t care about your misdemeanours even if I did.”

“Okay.” Dammit, every time I started to relax in this place, I stepped in another puddle of hydraulic fluid, I’d be tripped up and on my back in no time at this rate. And I definitely wanted to avoid Avrim’s aunt.

“I’m a little bit curious, though,” said Pilvi. “What’s your dark secret, Grey?”

“I… don’t have superpowers. I’m just normal.” Change the subject, change the subject, change the subject.

“Don’t get so hung up on superpowers,” said Seventhirtyfour. “Most of the students here don’t have them. Just look at us. I might have latent psychic powers, and Gadget Dude is a natural Builder, the rest of us are normal.”

“Normal means different things for different worlds,” said Pilvi. “I know more about farming than anybody in this room, I bet. On my world, that’s the least interesting thing about me; everybody on Marwick knows farming, it’s what we do. But there are worlds where our agri techniques could revolutionise people’s lives. Stop famines. Save entire civilisations. If the Academy lets me do that... that’s important.”

“It’s not just the big stuff, you know,” added Seventhirtyfour. “My people are known as fighters, soldiers, disposable, faceless. If I can show them that the Brontom can be different, can stand up and be noticed as individuals... that’s why I’m here at the Academy.”

This got a murmur of agreement from the group.

“Of course,” he rumbled as an afterthought, “beating up some supervillains would be cool too.”

Dez joined in. “It’s just like that silly advert says. We’re not here to gain superpowers. We want to find the place in all the galaxy, where what we can do matters. Where if I’m me, and you’re you, and Avrim is a non-truth-enforcing Polifan, just as hard as we can be, we can make a difference. Help people.”

# # #

That evening, I lay on my comfortable bed and stared at the ceiling. I found myself looking again at my reasons for being here. I’d thought I could join in, have a relaxing few days being ridiculous pretending to be a superhero, spend some time with people my own age without the daily pressure to find my next meal. I thought being here would be a fun new game. The costumes, the code names, the ‘Introduction to Grapnel Maintenance’. That was all still extremely silly. But the spirit. The intent. The ambition. Their reasons for being here had nothing to do with being silly.

I wasn’t sure they were doing things the right way, but all of them, even grumpy Avrim, were here because they earnestly wanted to help.

Was I just mocking them by being here, for my reasons? That was an uncomfortable thought.

Another uncomfortable thought: Dez’s comment about being herself as hard as she could be. To be able to be yourself as hard as possible, you had to know who you were, and maybe, my own answer to that question was... complicated.

I was an imposter, bound for Tartarus.

A soft but solid knock on my door. This time Seventhirtyfour managed not to loom, though he still blocked the doorway. He looked if anything, slumped.

“Did I wake you?” he asked, voice low and deep enough to feel in my toes.

“No. Is something wrong?”

“Can I come in and sit with you, just for a bit?”

Something was clearly bothering him. “Sure, come in, what is it?”

He slumped into one of my easy chairs. “You’ll think me silly.”

“Maybe, but I still want to know.”

“I was… look, this is my first night sleeping away from the family barracks. The first time I’ve tried to sleep in a room by myself. I was just…”

“Lonely?”

“Yeah.”

“I get that. The first time I had to sleep away from my family…” I paused. I’d found an airlock, pulled an exo-suit off the wall and used it for bedding. Eight years old. Hungry, cold, alone. The only thing that kept me going that first night, and many nights after, was a hot coal of anger in my chest. Knowing my parents would never miss me. That wasn’t the story to reassure Seventhirtyfour though. “It gets better.”

“Thank you. You’re a good friend, you know.”

I had no answer.

“Registration tomorrow,” he rumbled. “You have your courses all picked out?”

I didn’t even know I had options. “Not yet.”

“Yeah, me neither, they all look so good, you know? I think I’m just going to cram in as many courses as I can the first few days, then drop what’s not working.”

“You can do that?”

“Sure, well, except the mandatories. All the courses this first week are just supposed to be tasters. But if there’s anything in particular you want that’s popular, best to make a point of signing up to that. There’s no guarantee spaces will open up later.”

From the little of Gravane I knew, it seemed unlikely he would have made his course choices himself. I grabbed my (his) pad off the bedside table and logged to his (my) student account. I skimmed his course selections. Yeah, I didn’t think they’d suit Gravane, and they sure as heck didn’t suit me. Jetpack Basics? I don’t think so.

I spent a little time shuffling courses on and off my list. Rescueology was full, sadly. I’d wanted to find out what it was.

I looked up from my pad at a low, loud rumbling. Seventhirtyfour was asleep in my armchair.

# # #

He’d retreated to his own room by the time I woke up in the morning.

Registration day.

It was probably my single biggest hurdle. If they ran biometrics, I was screwed. If they quizzed me about Gravane’s personal life, I was screwed. If they had information on Gravane that I didn’t and referred to that, I was screwed. Honestly, if I wasn’t in Tartarus by lunchtime it would be a miracle.

Could I duck Registration completely? Unlikely, but I might be able to dodge it for a bit. Even doing that would draw attention, though, and that was the last thing I wanted.

I needed to get a look at it, find out what I was up against.

An access panel on the third floor led to a maintenance space that provided a route onto a low roof for the building next to the main gym. I almost turned back at the first spots of rain on the back of my hand, but I noticed an open window across from me. I screwed my eyes shut and ran four paces across the roof to reach the window. I hit the wall, found the window edge with my hands and scrambled through.

Under a roof again, I opened my eyes and let my breathing and heart rate normalise. I was on a window ledge up high near the ceiling, and the view was obscured by an equipment rig. That was easily solved; I threw myself off the ledge, caught the equipment rig one-handed, and pulled myself over and on top of it, working my way along until I got a better view of what was going on below.

I was surprised at how many students there were. I’d expected it would just be our group of Freshers, but there were more of us than I’d realised. There must have been hundreds, maybe a thousand. Three long queues of students trailed through the gymnasium doors, snaked around, leading to three trestle tables where three harassed-looking staff members, two humans and a Polifan, dealt with the students in turn.

The maths was simple, this many students, this few staff, they couldn’t spend more than a minute or two with each, or they’d be here for days. I could get through a minute or two without being discovered, surely? Right? Of a list of bad options, it felt like the best one.

Resolved, I clambered around full circle to look for a way off the rigging. There, in the shadows a few metres away, a dark figure was hunched over on my rigging. His face was covered by a three-quarter mask, all I could see of him were glowing red goggles, and a frown that had been chiselled into place.

We stared at each other for a long, long moment, then he flourished his black cape, and seemed to fade into the darkness among the rafters.

“This place,” I muttered, as I clambered to the edge of the rigging and navigated my way to ground level.

I joined a queue, spent an hour shuffling through the gym as the queue moved onwards. I used the time to access the stellarnet from my wrist pad to revise what I could about Gravane and his family. I doubted it would be enough to make a difference, but I’d be a fool to not at least try.

“Hello?” said a woman’s voice.

I looked up from my wrist pad; I’d reached the front of the queue. A smiling Polifan woman sat behind the trestle table, gestured me to a seat. “Good morning. My name is Veritas. What can I do for you Mr…?”

Veritas? Oh hell.