The Academy by Zachary Rawlins Page B

Who in the hell was this Alistair guy anyway? And why did he look so disappointed in him? He hadn’t even had the chance to do anything yet!
    “We should start soon,” Gaul said. “I don’t want this to become public knowledge, and the longer all of us spend in the same room, the greater the likelihood that someone will notice.”
    “Alex, stick with us for a minute longer,” Michael said, nodding at him. “Gaul, you know that these things can’t be rushed.”
    “It’s cool,” Rebecca said, kicking her sandals off. “I’m ready anyway. Alex, I bet you don’t mind if we skip the introductions, right? We already know each other.”
    “Yeah, but, why is that? Why do I feel like I know you?”
    “Empathy, Alex,” Rebecca said, walking across the office to sit down next to him on the couch. “I’m an empath. My name is Rebecca.”
    Alex flinched and shifted away from her a bit. The crushed leather cushions seemed equally uncomfortable no matter what part of the couch he sat on.
    “Are you making me trust you right now, or something?”
    Rebecca chuckled good-naturedly.
    “I don’t think you would have flinched away from me if I was making you trust me, Alex,” she said, amused. “It’s actually the other way around. As an empath, I inadvertently make my own emotional state public knowledge. So you feel like you know me,” she said, shrugging, “because on an unconscious level, you already do. Your reptile brain already knows everything it needs to know about me. You trust me because I am trustworthy, Alex. You like me because I am extremely likable.”
    Alistair snorted.
    “Keep ignoring him,” Rebecca told Alex, patting him on the knee. “I’ve already told you what you need to know about me, Alex, down where it matters. You know that, right?”
    Alex nodded slowly.
    “I do, actually,” he said, with a touch of uncertainty.
    Rebecca smiled at him approvingly, pulling her hair back into a quick ponytail and wrapping it in a rubber band. Alex couldn’t quite figure her out – her accent was definitely Southern Californian, and she looked a bit Latino, but there was something about the way she spoke, something a bit exotic about her appearance that he couldn’t place. She was right, though – he found her immediately likable, and utterly without guile in her frankness. Also, she was pretty, but she didn’t make him nervous at all, even when she sat close to him on the couch, like she was right now, even in front of the strangely intense audience that sat directly across the room, staring at them as if they expected to be entertained.
    Actually, Alex thought, that part might be the whole empath thing.
    “Okay, that’s good. I’m sure you have a whole bunch of questions, and I promise I’ll do my best to answer them later. But, if you are okay with it, I’d like to move on to our main business.” Rebecca folded her legs underneath her, Indian-style, so that she faced him on the couch, her bare toes pressing against the leg of his jeans. “Michael has told you that you are special, right?”
    Alistair made another coughing, choking noise, but neither Alex nor Rebecca acknowledged it.
    “I guess so,” Alex said reluctantly. “I’ve got some kind of power, right?”
    “More like potential, right now,” Rebecca said, nodding. “And today, I’d like to activate those abilities, Alex. I’d like to wake up that power of yours, and find out what you can do. And I’d like to help make it possible for you to use it. What do you think about that?”
    Gaul glanced irritably at his watch, but didn’t dare interrupt. To the best of his knowledge, Rebecca had never lost her temper with anyone at the Academy. But that didn’t keep Gaul, along with the rest of the campus, from treading very lightly when it came to potentially upsetting Rebecca. That was probably a side effect of her empathic abilities, he thought, and not something to actually be worried about. But he didn’t plan to find out