Zero Sight (34 page)

Rei cocked her head.

“
No nurse’s outfit? Rei, I mean come on, give a guy a break.”

“
I’d be delighted, Dieter,” she said with a broad smile. “How many breaks would you like?”

I shivered. Her fangs still made me freak.

“
What time is it?”

“
3AM. You have been unconscious and vulnerable for the past twelve hours.”

“
Okay,” I said rising. “Enough lying about then.”

Rei leaned forward and pushed me back into bed. “Hold still, my most fragile ex-package. We can’t have you dying of internal bleeding…people would talk.”

“
Internal bleeding?”

“
Indeed,” she said, gesturing to bag of light red fluid. “You pee blood as we speak.”

I felt down to my nether regions and blushed. There was a tube in my wee-wee. Rei smiled gleefully.

“
You know, Rei…”

“
Yes, Dieter?"

“
Well I’m like totally cool if, you know, if you wanna take a swig. I mean, no judgment.”

Rei’s smile cooled. “They say you are bruised all over, but with the vigor of your tongue, I have trouble believing that.” Rei looked at me mischievously, and with a flash, slapped me on the chest. The pain from my many bruises soared to a new level.

“
Ooouuch!” I whined.

Rei giggled to herself. “Oh shoot. The medics
were
telling the truth.” She shook her head sadly. “To think of all that clotted blood—such a waste.”

Rubbing my chest, I looked over at the nightstand.

“
What are you reading anyway?”

“
A monthly called
M. A. D. Magazine
.” I raised an eyebrow. She had pronounced each letter of MAD independently. This girl needed a cable TV subscription, ASAP. “During our last fencing practice, Sheila informed me that my humor was a bit…stale. I am endeavoring to update my jargon with this journal on modern humor.”

“
They still publish that thing?” I asked. “You should read
The Onion
instead.”

Rei scrunched her nose in disgust. “I am allergic to onions and uninterested in their affairs. I will stick with this
M. A. D. Magazine
.” Pouncing on her pronunciation was oh-so-tempting, but I decided to let it go.

“
To each her own, I guess. Hey, I didn’t know you fenced.”

“
Dean Albright insists that I attend club activities. I would have preferred to join the kick-boxing club, but my tryout did not go as planned.”

I cringed at the thought.

“
But I have no worries. Fencing is most amusing. I learned sabre techniques as a child, but Sheila convinced me to attempt épée this season. I never imagined I would so enjoy poking things.”

“
Yea. Imagine that. Still, it’s good to hear that you managed to carve yourself a niche.”

Rei stifled a giggle and shrugged. “It is not
that
enjoyable. Most of the opponents are slow and stupid, and dueling Sheila is most…annoying. I participate because Dean Albright insists.” Rei glanced at the clock. “We have talked for too long. The nurse already thinks I will be harmful to your health, and you must rest and recover if you are to not flunk out of this institution.

“
Fine,” I grumbled.

“
Dieter, I do have one last question before I release you to your slumber.”

I yawned.

“
Sure, Rei. Shoot.”

“
Well, I am most curious about your choice of transmutation…”

“
What about it?”

“
Why did you choose the juice of grapes?”

Oh, for the love of…

“
Well, somebody already did water to wine,” I said burying my head under my pillow.

“
Indeed,” Rei said with a frown.

A breeze greeted me when I woke the next day. The sun was trickling in, and I could make out the room better now. It was a step above the hospital in Vegas. Two nice leather seats for visitors. A plasma TV hanging from the ceiling. Even a fan. And it looked like I was still on campus. A large ‘E’ was carved onto the door to my room. Eikhorn had said that Susan Collins was in the school’s infirmary…I was probably in the same place.

How many serious injuries did they have to deal with around here?

I tried to lift myself up on the pillow, but moving around still hurt quite a bit. My body felt like it had rolled off the side of a mountain, and my skin was mottled with bruises. An IV of clear fluid dripped into my arm, and that ‘other’ tube was still reaching into my bladder. Fumbling around, I found the patient call button and pressed it. A few moments later, a nurse came in and asked how I was doing. She even offered to take my lunch order.

My gut felt broken, so I declined, but I did ask her how Sadie Thompson was doing. She said Sadie was doing all right but was bruised up like me. Hearing that, some of the tension left my body. I couldn’t bear the thought of another death on my hands. Sadie would probably never want to talk to me again, but at least she was okay. The nurse told me I would have to stay for another day. They wanted to make sure the bleeding had stopped before releasing me. I thanked her and spent the next few hours fading in and out of sleep. A knock on the door roused me later that afternoon.

“
Come in,” I said wearily.

I heard the latch turn, followed by a big thump, and then the door was knocked wide open. I lifted myself up. It was Sadie. She was sitting in a wheelchair. Her face was a mixture of blacks and blues—but she was smiling.

“
Holiest of shits, Dieter,” she exclaimed, “that was freakin’ awesome!”

She spun her wheelchair in a circle.

I looked at her uncertainly. “Um…thanks?”

“
I thought you were just a newb! What systemic did you use for that transmutation? How did you manage to conduit that much mana without erasing your modulation matrix? And most importanté, why grape juice?”

Not the response I’d expected. It looked like Rei had been pulling my leg…stupid vampire.

“
I’m really glad you’re okay,” I said.

Sadie waved her hand about as though she was dismissing a fly. “That’s why we wear robes. Now come on, tell me!”

“
Sorry, Sadie,” I said with a shrug. “I don’t know any of the words you’re using, and I really didn’t plan the whole thing out like that. I just did what you said and visualized the manaflow. At first I imagined a little trickle, but that didn’t feel right when I tried it. I realized the leyline was way bigger, like a river or something.”

Sadie nodded eagerly. “Yea, that’s because the leyline here is epic. You can feel it can’t you? The campus is built right on top of the largest manaflow on the entire East Coast. It’s called The Great Eastern Flow.”

“
The Great Eastern Flow? Huh. Well, anyway, I just visualized mana coming up into my hand. I guess I should have picked a single strand. I didn’t know that so much of it was going to, um, respond. Is that the correct word?”

“
It’s a pretty good way of putting it. What you did was construct an extraction field. Life is like a natural magnet for mana, but the strength of that attraction is usually really weak. One thing that makes a mage a mage is our ability to direct our own internal supply of mana around our core. An energized core attracts nearby mana by resonating with it. When you resonate, we call it ‘forming an extraction field.’ You can focus the field on a single strand mana or scoop a bunch of strands at once.”

“
So it’s like electrifying a magnet with current?” I asked. Electrifying a magnet makes it many times stronger. All you have to do is wrap it in copper wire and hook the wire up to a battery. You can even attenuate the magnet’s strength by modifying the flow of the current you pass through it.

“
Rights. It’s just like electrifying a magnet with current. The same basic principles apply, but the equation is different. So what did you do next? Explain what you were thinking.”

“
Well, I was focused on attracting the mana stream, and—”

The door banged open again. The whole gang stormed in to the sound of sticky shoes. Monique stood huffing and puffing at the fore. Angry eyes danced between Sadie and I. Sadie started to wheel away towards the window. A tangle of tubes and wires, I had no such recourse. I pulled up my covers instead.

Monique raised a finger into the air. “A swimming pool worth of grape juice?” she asked rhetorically.

Dante was hiding just outside the door. He was stifling a laugh.

The bastard.

“
We just spent our morning mopping up a swimming pool worth of grape juice.”

Fukimura sloshed over to the sink, removed his shoes and socks, and started rinsing them out.

“
Well,” Sadie offered, “at least it wasn’t as stinky as the paella.”

Maria glared at her. “Oh, sure. Fine. You always bring that up. ‘At least I’m not as bad as Maria.’”

“
That’s not what I—”

“
Bitch! I hate you,” Maria screamed as she stormed out of the door.

Roster shrugged. “That paella was some stank-ass shit.”

Sheila joined Fukimura at the sink. She dumped a pint of my juice product out of her left boot. “I hate the start of the year,” she grumbled.

I looked around guiltily. “Sorry guys. My bad,” I said.

“
It wasn’t
bad
, Dieter!” Sadie said from her new secure position behind my bed. “It was a success! A triumph! And on your first try too. It’s a testament to my totally rockin’ talent as a teacher,” she said, beaming.

“
No,” Monique said, “it means that instead of pillow time, the entire squad got to spend the morning mopping up the basement. And…and…why the hell are you both in the hospital? I mean, my God, look at you two, you’re like two little smurfs.”

“
Yea, well you see, the circle was filling with juice, and we were drowning, and I had to get to the threshold, so I set off a
minor
explosion and—”

“
A minor
explosion
,” Monique sputtered in horror.

“
Nice,” Roster said. He gave me a thumbs up.

“
Dieter, you should be careful employing explosives underwater,” Sheila added. “If you refer to the
Navy Diving
—”

“
Enough!” Monique shouted. “Sadie, you’re fired. No more training Dieter.”

“
But he’s my star pupil!” she moaned.

“
If I leave you two alone, you’re probably gonna unleash the Marshmallow Man on downtown New Haven. No way. No how. Dieter, you’re with Jules from now on. Her parents run an elementary school in Ireland. You two are a perfect fit. And no more casting. We take you through the basics first, bookwork and observation only. You got that, Jules?”

Jules frowned. “You want
me
ta teach the nutto? Monique, I was gonna TA this year.”

Monique glared at her.

Jules pushed the drooping pair of golden-brown spectacles back onto her nose and sighed.

“
Got it,” she muttered. Her hair was even frizzier than yesterday.

Monique turned to me.

“
Yes, ma’am,” I replied quickly. “No more casting till you say so.” I thought being a mage was supposed to be fun.

Sadie and I got out of the hospital two days later. Classes had already started, so I was already way behind. Life got real simple. Every morning I was up at eleven and out the door after a quick breakfast. Three hours of Standards started at noon. I picked
English Composition
,
20th Century American History
, and
Introduction to Molecular and Cell Biology
because I knew I could ace them. The Standards were great. They gave me plenty of time to catch up on my sleep.

After Standards, I got an hour off for what everyone lovingly called linner. Each afternoon you could count on hearing Sadie and the rest of the Linnerets (some sort of school tradition—don’t ask) singing, “It’s not quite lunch / it’s not quite dinner / you won’t get thinner—but there’s fruit punch!”

Personally, I believed afternoons were best-spent unconscious on a hammock, but the good stuff followed linner, so I would pound down a liter of coffee to stave off the impending food coma and rush off to an hour of
Magic Theory I
with Dr. Greenberg. Magic Theory was a kind of catch-all of the science behind conduits, circles, frames, leylines, and alchemy. Most of the students thought the topics were beneath them, but I sat at the front of the class burning through the notebooks.
Basic Defensive Magic
was next. It was equal parts
the Art of War
and spellcasting. I was struck by how many inventive ways the Conscious had developed to pierce, slash, burn, freeze or otherwise transmute their foes. It made me want to go out and buy some pepper spray.