The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

that the Pulse was Fahima’s fault. Fahima came home that day to find her drunk and sobbing.

“Why didn’t I change?” Alyssa asked her. “Why didn’t you change me?”

“It’s not who you are,” Fahima said, half sad and half relieved. It was a good question, though, and one Fahima would want an answer to. Why some and not others? And could she make it happen for the others, too? Could Fahima change everyone? As she patted Alyssa’s shoulder, performing the mechanics of comfort, her mind wandered into permutations of machines, drug treatments, and Emmeline Hirsch.

In addition to trying to keep new Resonants from blowing their fool selves up, Patrick meets individually with students whose abilities have “offensive potential.” Sarah is unhappy about it. Some of the teachers have lodged protests, saying it’s counter to academy philosophy, whatever that means, and that it reeks of paramilitary training. Sarah’s had no time to deal with it. They all have more than they can handle. The point being, no one has stopped him.

The gym doors open, and Viola, Emmeline’s roommate, emerges, flushed, hair dry and frizzed. Patches of sweat bloom at her armpits and sternum. She rubs the butt of her hand against her temple.

Fahima waves, but the girl walks by her, vacant stare directed down the empty hallway.

“Viola looks broken,” Fahima says. Patrick’s white dress shirt is singed at the shoulder and along his right side. The latter burn is smoking.

“I’m trying to prepare them,” he says. “They’re soft. They’re too kind to do anyone any damage.”

“You can’t think of them like that,” Fahima says. “They’re kids.”

“You sound like Sarah,” Patrick says.

“Funny you mention our headmistress,” says Fahima. She picks up a medicine ball that’s half scorched, leaving a crescent moon leaking metal pellets onto the gym floor. “We’ve been called upstairs.”

“I don’t have time,” Patrick says. He sounds petulant. “I have an hour per student, and even that’s more time than I can spare. A hundred students on my list and I’ve barely met with a third of them.”

Fahima is impressed that he’s had time even for that. “You want to get a fresh shirt? You look like shit.” It’s not the shirt that’s the problem. Patrick’s eyes are sunken, and his skin looks jaundiced, its usual lily white a thin layer of paint over something sick. She suspects he isn’t sleeping. But then, neither is she. The few hours she spends in bed, Fahima lays awake next to Alyssa and sinks into the Hive, admiring her handiwork.

“Headaches,” he says, tapping his temple. He pokes at the scorched cloth on his shoulder, and it flakes into ash. “My sister will have to tolerate me looking like shit.”

—

When Fahima and Patrick arrive, Sarah is sitting at Bishop’s antique oak desk with Cortex asleep at her feet. She’s trying to look as much like the headmaster of the Bishop Academy as she can. Patrick and Fahima have been in this room enough times that the desk will always be Bishop’s, waiting for him to come back and take it. The once and future headmaster. Sarah looks like a little kid behind daddy’s desk.

“We need to give ourselves up,” Sarah says.

“What the fuck?” Fahima says. She’s been expecting this for a few days, but it hurts to hear that Sarah’s ready to capitulate.

“I’ve been in touch with Louis Hoffman at Homeland.” Sarah once confessed to Fahima that she found Louis Hoffman attractive in a way. She said there was a sad sense of duty in him, creating one of those moments when Fahima felt she would never understand straight people. “He says the facilities in the Northeast are the best. Yuppie summer camps, like the ones we went to as kids. They’re actually using Half Moon in Great Barrington. Do you remember that summer?” Cortex stirs, and Sarah rests her bare foot on his back, rocking gently. “We canoed. You capsized us in Lake Buel.”

“It’s not sleepaway camp, Sarah,” says Patrick.

“He says they’re pouring money in to get them ready for colder weather,” Sarah says. “Insulation, new heating systems. It’ll be better than here. I haven’t had a hot shower all week.”

“Gilded cage is still a cage,” Fahima says.

“What are we in now?” Sarah asks. “We’re at triple capacity. I can barely staff the cafeteria, much less the classrooms. Today we can go outside. Who knows about tomorrow? If we don’t go, they’re going to keep us holed up in here, and the academy is not equipped—”

“We need to fight this,” Patrick says. “We hide the students who are too young or whose abilities aren’t useful, put them somewhere safe, and the rest of us line up and fight.”

“We’d be wiped out,” Fahima says. “We’re not ready.”

“We have our abilities, and we have the numbers.”

“We have kids,” says Sarah.

“I’d rather die here than in my old bunk at fucking Camp Half Moon,” Patrick says.

“It’d be temporary,” says Sarah. “The ACLU has filed a dozen suits.”

“They filed suits in Revere,” Fahima says.

“And people died because they didn’t wait for the results,” says Sarah. “How is this different?”

“This is our home,” Fahima says. Sarah’s shoulders slump. Cortex lets out an exasperated huff. Technically this is her decision to make, but she won’t override them. Bishop would have. He would have listened to their opinions calmly and done whatever the fuck he wanted. But Sarah isn’t Bishop. “We use our time to get ready,” Fahima says.

“How long would that take?”

“If I had another week,” Patrick says, “I’d have enough—” He stops as his phone buzzes in his pocket.

“Patrick, leave that,” says Sarah.

Patrick looks at the screen. “It’s Mom.”

“Why is she calling you?” Sarah asks. She stands up, leaning toward the phone as if she might hear.

“Calm down, I can’t understand you,” says Patrick. He puts his hand over the phone. “Sarah, turn on the news.”

CNN runs a split screen. On the left, Senator James Lowery leaves his office in handcuffs. His shoulders hunch when they duck him into the back of a white van. On the right