Blood in the Water by Tash McAdam

 
     
     
     
     
    “WHAT WE CALL BREACHES
ARE , in reality, tears in the veil between
our dimension and those that surround us. These doors are a
constant threat. Beasts from other worlds seek them, longing to
sneak through and feast on the fat of human complacency. Some want
our flesh, as food or entertainment … some want our minds. There
are even species that feed on our dreams!”
    The professor gesticulates wildly, caught up
in her own grandiosity, her gray hair fluttering as she shouts into
the microphone on the wooden desk. She ignores the squeal of
electronic feedback from the device, though the students sitting
near the speakers flinch and mutter in complaint.
    “You, young and idiotic as you
are, have been awoken as the next generation of protectors. You
have been gifted with special skills and abilities that are never to be taken
lightly or abused. The price you pay for misuse of power is
terrible...”
    The lecture room is stuffy and holds a
mishmash of sprawling teenagers across a wide age range. Some are
actually watching the elderly woman, who is now gesturing at an
unresponsive screen with a smart-board control, not seeming to
realize it’s turned off.
    I am not, however, paying much attention. Lost
in my own thoughts—a situation that’s fairly standard for me—I pick
at the battered corner of my maroon tablet cover, half-slumped over
the desk. Short black hair escapes from behind my ear and flops
into my large brown eyes. Exasperated, I puff it out the way and
scratch my upturned nose, which is peeling from a day-old
sunburn.
    We’ve been taking this stupid class for weeks,
and it’s all very heavy on the doom and gloom, without ever getting
down to the nuts and bolts. I have so many questions, but no one
will let me ask. The guy in charge of us weavers is nice enough,
but he can’t focus on the real world for five minutes. I can
actually see his eyes glaze over when I start talking. Which, in
all fairness, I do a lot of. Still, it’s not getting me any
answers, and that’s … frustrating.
    Suddenly a bird caws loudly
outside the window, making me jump, and I huff. I keep trying to
ask about bird demons. I bet loads of flying demons come through
little breaches that are too high to get to, and just zoom off into
the skies. And what about under water? Seventy percent of the
earth’s surface is water! And it’s deep. How could anyone hope to
find every rip and get there in time to stop anything coming
through, or catch the stuff that does? Are we supposed to scuba
dive? I refuse to believe that no one has come up with a better
system than ‘follow techno-magic to the holes in reality.’
    After all, surely the massive computer
lab—whose primary purpose is to scan for rifts and let us know when
they’re happening—can make mistakes. Miss breaches. Which is
dangerous. Because a lot of those breaches are filled with monsters
that want nothing more than access to the blind-to-magic population
on Earth.
    The professor hits the desk with the flat of
her hand, regaining my attention. “Some of you are now fierce
warriors, given fighting skills beyond your wildest dreams. You are
stronger and faster than you ever believed possible. You are
superheroes. You could be champions at any sport; you could be
famous and rich.
    “But you never will be, so put aside your
childish dreams of glory. Warriors, you have been chosen for your
valorous hearts, and should you abuse the power you’ve been given,
your very bones will blacken and crack inside you. The Warp has
gifted you, but it will punish you horribly if you prove yourselves
unworthy.”
    I wonder what it would have been
like to be woken as a warrior instead of a weaver. I guess I don’t have a ‘valorous heart.’ I heard from Donnie, another weaver, that we’re called for our
‘intuition,’ but I’m not sure whether it’s a general thing, or
something specific—something that allows us to hone a weaver’s
awareness, our foreknowledge of