COLONEL CHARLES LED FORT TO the door as the Chads all clapped ironically. Jia and Rachel both looked worried, while Cyrus gave him a pitying look, which was never a good sign from someone who could see the future.
Once they stepped outside the cafeteria, Fort assumed the colonel would stop and share whatever was happening, but the man kept moving, walking just ahead of Fort in silence, back to the dormitory. When they reached it, he waved Fort inside. “Grab everything you’ve got here, please.”
Fort didn’t move. “Are you… expelling me?” If it was happening, then Fort would have to do… something. He wasn’t sure what, but there was no way he could leave now, not when he was so close. If he got sent home, he’d be giving up his chance to rescue his father forever.
“Expelling? Of course not,” Colonel Charles said, and Fort let out a huge sigh of relief. “But you’ll be moving out of the dormitory here. So do as I say, please.”
That didn’t make any sense, but Fort went to gather his things, which didn’t amount to much. He’d packed a bag when he’d left his aunt’s apartment almost a month ago now, but the bag had never reached the school, so all he really had were his uniforms and boots. That, and the last thing his father had given him, a brochure of the Gettysburg Address translated into multiple languages. Fortunately, he kept the brochure with him in his pocket at all times anyway.
The only other things that were sort of his were some old mystery novels he and Cyrus had found lying around in unused rooms here at the new school. He took one he hadn’t finished and left the rest for Cyrus. For some reason, Cyrus loved the books, probably because he refused to use his magic to see how they ended.
With Fort’s hands full of clothes and boots, Colonel Charles turned and walked back out of the dormitory without another word. Fort took a long look at his home of the past two weeks, beginning to worry again. Where was he going? And why was he being separated from his best friend?
“Don’t make me wait on you, Fitzgerald,” Colonel Charles said from outside the door, and Fort hurried to catch up.
The colonel led them through the ugly green halls, down corridors Fort had never been in, which just made him more lost than ever. Thick green pipes ran along the top of each wall, with black wires snaking in and out of them. Here and there, a construction worker adjusted wiring inside the walls, bright blue sparks flying.
“This bunker was built for Congress, in the event of a catastrophe,” Colonel Charles said, walking Fort past one of the workers. “That was back in the late nineteen-fifties, if you couldn’t tell by the decor.”
“What are they doing?” Fort asked as someone pushed a cart with two huge metal barrels down the hall past them.
“Renovations,” Colonel Charles said. “All of the electronics in here were out of date, and we needed communications to the outside world that wouldn’t go out the first time a Destruction student learned how to cast an electromagnetic pulse.” He snorted, and Fort figured that was supposed to be a joke.
Somehow, he couldn’t make himself laugh. “So the school isn’t ready? I thought classes were going to start tomorrow.”
“Oh, it’s ready enough,” Colonel Charles said as they passed a horribly carpeted room that looked like it had enough desks and chairs to fit almost five hundred people, all facing a raised podium in front. Maybe that was where Congress would have met? “This was our backup school from the beginning. But ever since the attack, and thanks to your discovery about Healing magic hurting the Old One, we decided to increase attendance. And that required upgrading more of the facility than we’d originally planned on.”
They passed by another large room, this one with glass walls so Fort could see soldiers inside sitting at computers that at least looked more modern than the rest of the place. He also noticed several televisions around the ceiling of the room, televisions that showed—
Fort’s breath caught in his throat, throwing him into a coughing fit as he struggled to believe what he’d just seen.
Colonel Charles paused and followed Fort’s gaze to where the television showed pictures of Damian, the boy who’d been taken over by the Old One, and Sierra, the girl who’d linked to Fort’s mind accidentally during the attack that had taken his father.
And the text above each picture labeled them as terrorists.
“We’re saying they’re part of the Gathering Storm,” Colonel Charles said, turning back to Fort now. “It’s a bit easier to say that than reveal that the girl wiped our memories and escaped after waking up from a coma and destroying the first Oppenheimer School. And we do want people afraid of them, so the public will be on the lookout. It makes sense all around.”
Fort stared at the screens for a moment, then realized what he’d heard. “Wiped our… memories?” he asked.
Colonel Charles stared at him for a moment, then pulled out a small tablet. “That brings us to the first thing I needed to speak to you about.” He typed something on the screen that Fort couldn’t see. “Did you know we had cameras up all over the base, back at the old school?”
“Sure,” Fort said, not liking where this was going.
“Now, during the attack, most of them were destroyed,” the colonel said, then paused his typing and gave Fort a long look. “Most, but not all.”
A deep chill went sailing down Fort’s spine. When Sierra and Damian had left, Sierra had wiped herself out of Colonel Charles’s memory entirely, so that he wouldn’t hunt them down while she and Damian tried to find the other books of magic. Clearly something had changed, since Colonel Charles knew exactly who she was now. Sierra had left Dr. Opps with his memory of everything, so maybe the doctor had betrayed them, or—
Colonel Charles turned the tablet around, and Fort’s eyes widened as he saw himself on the screen, waving his arms around while talking to Damian and Sierra. The three of them looked like they were arguing for a moment, then Damian and Sierra passed Fort and ran offscreen. There was no sound, but from Fort’s perspective, what had happened was pretty obvious.
His mouth suddenly as dry as a desert, Fort blinked, not sure what he could possibly say here. There he was on camera, letting two wanted magicians go free. At the time, he’d wanted Damian to stay, to get judged for what he’d done—even if Damian had been possessed by the Old One when he’d done it—but Sierra had convinced Fort that she and Damian would never be treated fairly.
And now Colonel Charles had Fort on video letting them walk. “Uh…,” he said, trying to decide if he should run, and if the colonel could catch him if he did.
But then Colonel Charles put his hand on his shoulder, and it was too late. “So first of all, I just want to tell you,” the colonel said, “that I’m proud of you.”
That was it, he was getting kicked out, and… wait, what?
“You’re… proud of me?” Fort said, his voice breaking.
“From what I see here, you tried to stop them,” Colonel Charles said. He squeezed Fort’s shoulder, then removed his hand, and Fort almost collapsed, not able to believe his luck. “Considering you had no magic at that point, and both of them could control your mind, that speaks highly of your bravery.”
“It… does?” Fort said, still struggling to catch up.
“Not many would have done it,” the colonel continued. “In fact, it looks like you’re the only one who tried. Probably because they’d already paralyzed the others, so they must have assumed you were no threat. Still, I want you to know that I saw what you did, even if like the rest of us, you got your mind wiped so don’t remember doing it. I saw it, and I admire that you tried.”
“I… I don’t remember it, no,” Fort said, just happy that he wasn’t about to be thrown in jail or something.
“And don’t you worry,” Colonel Charles continued. “We’ve got agents in the field tracking Sierra and Damian down as we speak. Each agent is fully protected against mind magic, so it shouldn’t be long before we have them back in custody.”
“Oh, that’s… that’s great,” Fort said. “Where, um, are they looking?”
“Oh, here and there,” the colonel said. “And don’t worry about not remembering, either: One of these two wiped my mind completely of both of them. I had to be caught up to date by my staff, once we determined Sierra and Damian had gone missing during the attack. Do you know how embarrassing that is?”
Fort just shook his head silently, not trusting himself to say anything.
The colonel gave him a sympathetic look, then his eyebrows furrowed. “By the way, Forsythe, I’m told that you were once… connected to Sierra, from when she used her mind magic on you, back at the National Mall. I’m even told you could see her memories while she was in a coma. You don’t still feel any sort of connection to her now, do you?”
Fort looked Colonel Charles right in the eye, knowing there was only one right answer to this question. “No, I don’t. Whatever that was, it’s completely gone now.”
The colonel nodded. “As I suspected. It must have been something unconscious while she was in the coma. Now follow me, I’ll take you to your new room.” And with that, he set off down the hall.
Next to Fort, a brown-haired girl wearing a black leather jacket and ripped pants appeared in the hallway, glowing yellow. “Completely gone?” Sierra said, raising an eyebrow at Fort.
“Maybe not, like, a hundred percent,” Fort said, and grinned at her.