Arc: Hero-Grade Freshmen

  It is literally impossible to know where anything is in this school. Since I’m not allowed to fly or whatever, it means I’ve got to run around asking people where my first class of university is, and all I get in return is people asking me for selfies, shout-outs, or shrugs as they keep walking. For a school full of superhero-wannabes, there aren’t a lot of people willing to help a girl out. I’m forced to grudgingly call Clare, who picks up almost before I’m done dialing her number, and cheerily tells me to go to the Founders’ Rotunda. Have I ever heard of said building? No. Do I also stop and gape at it the second I finally find it? Yes. First comes the Pantheon Eight, four massive white statues that line the pathway toward the gleaming staircase that leads into the building. Scratch that, this thing is a monument.

  Like almost everything in this university, the Founders’ Rotunda is overwhelmingly huge. Massive white pillars surround it, holding a pointed roof toward the sky like whoever built this thing wanted God to have it. I have to remind myself that I’m ten minutes late just so I can keep moving through the building. But wow. Murals of old superheroes paint the domed ceiling. I pass busts of heroes, past and present, that almost seem to glare at me as I jog past them. The only other person in here is a guy with a sketchbook standing in front of Alexandria’s smaller statue.

  But I’m not going to any of the offices or rooms in this building. Oh, no. According to Clare, my class is in basement level five, which means the elevator I find is totally useless, because it only goes down one more level to an old archive room that stinks of paper and dust. The stairs I find suck even more, and thank God I can see through the dark, because the deeper I go, the more the paint on the walls begins to chip, the mustier it smells, and I have to step over a handful of dead rat skeletons to get to where I need to be. It stops being majestic and begins getting a lot colder, less personal. Steel pipes. Exposed wires. I’ve got to duck over a rusting series of metal rungs that lead to nothing but solid concrete. And, after what feels like an eternity, I reach a corridor, and the only thing I can wonder is why the hell there’s all this concrete and rusting steel underneath the Founders’ Rotunda in the first place, too.

  Right now, it’s better I choose my fledgling university career over my thought-provoking questions.

  I fly down the empty hallway and find a set of double steel doors at the end of it. There are other doors, plenty of others, but they’re all sealed shut with shitty welding or weird plasma that’s hardened over the tiny gaps.

  I’ve got to fight the urge to take a peek through some of the cracks. Weird smells come from past the doors, a little like sewage, a lot like rusting iron. But this entire place is one quietly groaning mass of concrete, anyway, so I’m either hearing whatever my mind is conjuring, or there might actually be things inside of the sealed rooms.

  I guess that’s not my problem right now.

  Before I barrel through the doors, I stop, use my phone’s black screen as a mirror so I can fix my hair, lick my thumb and line my eyebrows, and try to wipe the sweat off my face. There, perfect. I stuff my phone into my back pocket, take a deep breath, and nod to myself. Fashionably late, that’s what I am. Number One’s get to do that.

  I push the cold steel doors open and cringe when they squeal on their rusted hinges. One footstep into the room, and almost every single person turns to look at me. Sweat punches me in the face next, quickly followed by the stink of old rubber mats twisting my gut into a painfully tight knot. Everyone’s sweaty, everyone’s wearing red track pants and Pantheon U sports t-shirts…unlike yours truly, who’s wearing jeans, sneakers, and a baggy t-shirt half tucked into my waistline. Clare chose this outfit, not me. After the hectic morning I had fighting my new furry little roommate, it’s a miracle I didn’t wander over here with bite marks up and down my body. Doesn’t make this any less awkward, I think, dropping my backpack along the old concrete wall that every other bag leans against.

  This place is not a classroom. It’s so far from it I almost think I’m in the wrong place, but nope, there’s Red and Summer, Jason and Jordan, and even Kory and Ana. All sweaty. Some on the floor, held down by other supers. The lights are harsh and large, beating down on shoulders and foreheads. An industrial fan groans in the ceiling, vomiting cold air inches in front of its rusted grate and barely any further. And all I can think is: What the hell?

  Pantheon U, for all its glory, has us beating each other up inside of a concrete block? God, this place looks like a really big prison cell. The concrete is cracking and I’m pretty sure I can smell something dead in the walls.

  “Ahem,” someone says, which is a weird thing to actually say, but sure, whatever. A muscular woman with a shock of white hair slowly strides toward me, her bare feet padding against the floor mats, hands clasped behind her back. She’s in a black vest and black pants, the baggy kind you’d probably sleep in instead of, you know, teach superheroes Applied Combat. She stops in front of me, jaw sharp, the scar crossing her face and stopping just under her circular glasses shining under the fluorescent lights above us. “You’re late. Very late. Why even come here?”

  I scratch the back of my head. “Dunno, because I’d get in trouble for missing classes?”

  “Oh, you sweet summer child,” she says, slowly shaking her head. “This isn’t high school. By all means, turn right around and go have fun. There’s plenty of clubs to join and sports to play, girls and boys to kiss and drugs the faculty pretends you kids don’t get your hands on.” She waves her hand toward the door. “Well? Get moving.”

  I look around. Everyone else is taking the pause to kneel and pant and wipe the sweat off their faces.

  Except Red, who’s smirking at me and mouthing: Loser over and over again.

  And Summer, of course, who’s waving at me with the biggest grin on her face as the guy she’d been sparring dry heaves on the mat beside her. I guess because we’re such a small class, every one of us has to be here.

  I smile uneasily. “I had a really crazy morning, and then I got lost, because this place is uber hard to find.”

  She folds her arms. “Wow. No, you’re right. That’s a great point. This place is so, so hard to find.”

  “Right!” I say. “And the elevator is a bust, so I had to run all the way down here, which is, like, crazy in its own right. I mean, who needs five levels worth of a basement? And under the Rotunda? That’s just nuts, y’know?”

  “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” she says, nodding. “And did you have breakfast before you came down here, too?”

  “I didn’t, actually,” I say. “Only this weird protein bar my…sidekick, I guess, gave me. Tastes terrible.”

  “Wow,” she says, nodding her head even more. Then her smile drops, her face goes blank, and she jerks her thumb at the doors. “Get out of my class. Try again on Wednesday when you’re serious about learning something.”

  I watch her walk past me. Red bites the edge of her lip, trying not to laugh.

  I turn around and say, “But…you just said I can choose where I want to go.”

  She stops and looks over her shoulder. “Right. Anywhere except my class.”

  “You can’t do that,” I say, smiling, trying to keep it on my face, trying to keep cool. That girl with the sparkly costume, inky black hair and unfairly gorgeous face has her phone out, recording this, which means I’ve got to keep my face neutral, shoulders low, and… Ok. It’s fine. Chill out. She can’t literally kick me out. I’m the Sentry.

  “Oh, I can,” she says. “I can also remove your name from the class registry, wanna see me do that, too?”

  A couple of people smile and quietly laugh at that, and if I didn’t have phones secretly trying to record me, I would’ve glared. But I’m better than that, mostly because I’ve been trained to keep a constant smile on my face. It hurts. My cheeks hurt. My jaw hurts from being clenched so hard. I chuckle quietly just to stop it from cramping up.

  “Good one,” I say, then look around. “So who do I get to partner up with? Let’s do this thing.”

  She slowly makes her way toward me again, and this time, her glasses catch the harsh white lights, turning them into reflective saucers hiding her pale green eyes. She stops, tilts her head, and says, “Let me make something clear, and I hope everyone is listening, so that means phones off.” Slowly, each phone lowers. She waits longer. A few more get shut down. Speaking to everyone doesn’t mean she faces them—she’s still staring directly at me, like I’m the one she’s got to hammer this into. “Do you know what happens during your first week of school here?” I open my mouth to speak, then pause, because I realize that: go to class might not cut it for an answer this time.

  A scrawny, pale-skinned guy puts up his hand, lowers it, then wobbly raises it over his head again.

  “Shoot,” she says, not even looking at him.

  His voice is quiet, scratchy, and even with ears like mine it’s hard to hear. “We, um, we get graded.”

  “You get graded,” she says, much louder. “Good try. Wrong answer. What happens is we want to test if you can make it here or not, and then you get graded. I’m not here to kiss your ass, to tell you what everyone else in your life has told you right until now. Not a single one of you would last a split second against a superhero in the year above you. You’re all sloppy, doped up on your own bullshit, thinking that your weak-ass punches would actually do something against supervillains with threat levels higher than a six. News flash, you’ll all be dead. Including you, Sentry.” I clench my jaw, keep smiling. Haha, right. Totally! Lump me in with the rest of these losers for your speech and let’s wrap this up already. She smiles. “You think I’m bullshittin’, don’t you? Think you’re better than all these losers, right?” I freeze. Fuck, a Psychoki— “Not quite,” she says. “I’m a dual threat, two power kind of lady, and let me tell you something, Sentry. Each one of these people in this room? Right now? They want your spot. They want to knock you down a peg or a dozen. And I want that. This school wants that. Superheroes don’t become great through comfort. Pantheon U doesn’t pump out the best and bravest because I let just anyone wander through my doors, half-cocked, not taking me seriously. That’s just not how it works. So, let me ask this question again, and if anyone gets it right, you’ll get extra credit.” Muttering. Mumbling. “What happens next?”

  The girl with silky black hair folds her arms and mutters, “This sucks.”

  “Wrong, but I like that, glitters. I love myself some honesty. Anyone else?”

  Jason says, “Hero GPAs and teams get assigned at the end of the week.” People frown and look at him. He scratches the back of his head, shrugs, and his posture softens ever-so-slighty, just enough that you wouldn’t notice it if you aren’t paying attention, almost like he’s trying to hide. “Or…something. That’s what I read online, I think.”

  “Atta boy,” she says. “Two kinds of GPAs. Hero Grades, and Student Grades. Hero Grades are easy: are you punctual, are you attentive, are you listening, and are you standing out. Do you go above and beyond on your drills. Just how much do you shine? Are you faster, stronger, better than everyone else? That sort of thing. It’ll also include your cape marketing classes, see who hits the most data points. Student Grades are your regular hoops and jumps. Tests. Exams. Attendance, which is mandatory for freshmen. Both of those will combine to result in what kind of team we think you’ll be best suited to be working with, and said team will be the same people you’ll stick with your entire life here in Pantheon U, unless we think something needs to change, of course. This, everyone, is prime time for kids like you. These people might just save your bacon one day, or be the reason you watch the rest of your teammates get massacred.” Suddenly, everyone was a little more stiff. She tilts her head again, still staring right into my eyes. I shift on my feet, pretending to be nervous, but let’s be honest—the only people I need in my life are mom and myself. A team? Ha. Yeah, sure…and she’s in my head, nodding along, listening to all of this, and I should probably stop thinking out loud. She smiles a little more. “You’re learning,” she says quietly. “Good.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “Isn’t that an invasion of privacy, or something?” Ana asks her, wiping sweat off her brow.

  “I ain’t listening to all your thoughts,” she says. “It’s just, for some goddamned reason, Sentry’s head over here is wide open, thoughts just begging me to listen, shouting like all hell!” She turns around. “Now, for the Telepaths amongst you, take that information as you will.” I stop smiling and look around the room, because no, I don’t think that’ll be a very good idea if you don’t want to end up in a wheelchair. “So, who’s gonna give you all a break and take on Sentry? The longer the fight lasts, the more you get to rest, and the more extra credit you get. And just to sweeten this deal, because I’m nice that way, if you can tell me everything wrong in the fight that Sentry does, I’ll let you choose what superhero Grade One fight to watch during our next class. Heck, maybe I’ll even convince one of our Founders to stop by and give you all a rousing speech in doing your best and trusting your teammates and…” She shrugs. “Well, you get the fuckin’ picture. So, volunteers? Who wants that tasty number one rank?” Silence stretches, just like I figured it would. I fold my arms. “Nobody? Nobody wants a perfect H-Grade?” She slowly turns around, then sighs. “Well, that’s disappointing. Here I was thinking this draft class would be—”

  “The higher the H-Grade, the better the team, right?” someone asks. A guy. No, sorry, a Bruiser. Short blonde hair in a buzzcut, hard nose, harder jaw with a piercing in his right ear. He swaggers forward, pushing past several people to size me up. He’s taller than me, but not by enough to spook me. I eat Bruisers for lunch, and this guy barely meets my nutrient slate. “Fuck it, I can take her. Shit, I’ll probably be Number One when we graduate.”

  “Now that’s the spirit,” she says. “And yes. Better the H-Grade, better the caliber of team around you. Teams shift and change a lot. Personalities sometimes don’t mesh. Ideals clash. Shit happens. But if you’re the best, you get to be the leader, and if you get to be the leader, it means you can tell anyone, no matter who, to shut up.”

  He smiles a nasty, white-toothed smile, then slams his fist into his palm. The thudding echo rushes through the room. Great, a tough guy. Bet he was a bully. Look at him, what else could he be? “I don’t hit girls, but I’ll—”

  I wave my hand through the air. “Don’t make this corny. Just promise you won’t file a charge against me.”

  His face almost visibly darkens. “Move,” he snarls to everyone around us.

  “You heard the man,” the woman with white hair says. “Give him working space.”

  So they shift and shuffle and move, some of them grateful to finally sit down, most of them filming this. I can almost hear the livestreams quietly egging this on, because of course they are. There’s no actual cameras in here, none on the ceiling, none on the walls, just the dozens or so being pointed at me from sleek new smartphones.

  I might as well get this over with already.

  I sigh and kick my sneakers off my feet, stretch my arms, and roll my shoulders. This blows, I think, then I look at the woman. She smiles and gives me a small shrug. If this goes wrong, it’s totally on you. Not my fault.

  “Whatever you say. Who knows, maybe this won’t be easy. Alex there is the highest ranked Junior Class Bruiser in the East Coast. Golden Gloves winner. Three times regional champ. Hell, his transcript was so impressive that I was pretty surprised he wasn’t ranked in the top ten. I guess here’s where he changes that, don’t you think?”

  “Yawn,” I mutter, ignoring Summer as she mouths ‘Good luck!’ Then I pause and say, “What do I get?”

  “Nothing,” the woman says. “You’re number one. You’ll get tested. You’ll get fought and picked on and made to live through hell. What you get is proof you deserve to be a leader and in your rank, that’s what you get.”

  Oh, silly me! Here I was thinking everything I’ve already done was proof enough! Fuck all the people I’ve saved, the villains I’ve neutralized and the amount of merch I’ve sold! Gee, golly, I just can’t wait to spend the next four years of my life hitting people who barely deserve to even look at me. Who the hell is Alex? I’ve never even heard of this guy in my entire life! And he can jump around on the balls of his feet all he wants, warming up his shoulders, rolling his neck, aggressively slapping his cheeks until they’re red, but honestly, everyone? I don’t care.

  He’s lucky there’s witnesses, so I’m gonna go easy on him. Probably a punch to the gut, make him vomit and embarrass him a little. Nothing too crazy. If he gets back up, I’ll kick him into the concrete wall, easy peasy.

  “Hey, Angel-Wings,” Alex says, then winks at Jordan, who stiffens. “Pray for her, alright, babe?”

  The woman with white hair says, “I don’t tolerate that kind of talk, Mr. Grace. Zip it and fight.”

  “Asshole,” Jordan mutters.

  Alex blows her a kiss, then his face falls into an ugly grin as he stares at me. “Ladies first.”

  I shrug, then force my eyes to burn and—

  “Nuh-uh,” White-Hair says. “On the feet or on the mat, nothing more.”

  I sigh through my nose and kill the lasers. This really, really sucks.

  “Fine,” I say. Then hit Alex in the stomach.

  It’s like hitting solid concrete. It gives, sure, but not enough. Nowhere near enough.

  He grunts, saliva spills from his clenched teeth, then he grins at me. “My turn.”

  His fist connects with my skull, and before I know it, I’m slumped against the far wall of the room, blood in my mouth, one of my eyes quickly swelling shut. I groan. Try to move. Manage to get onto a knee, weakly gasping for air as agony rushes through my skull. What the hell? I spit blood and half of a chipped canine, and… Blood? My blood? I— But— I wipe my mouth again. More blood. It doesn’t stop, leaking from a loose tooth and the meaty gum surrounding it. I swallow and taste hot liquid iron clawing down my throat. I look up. Alex used me to make a dent in the concrete, one so big it has spider-web cracks crawling toward the ceiling above me. Coils of my hair fall over my face as I stare at Alex from across the room. Everyone is standing, some of them with their hands on their mouths, some of them clapping Alex on the back as he soaks it in, arms spread, grin widening. Blood. My blood. I stand. Sway. Shake my head. Summer is yelling at me, saying I’ve got this. Jordan is silent, so is Jason—watching, both of them, stock still at the back of the class. Ana looks like she wants to run toward me. Red is grinning wide.

  Kory, though, is shaking his head, mouthing: don’t.

  I still take a step forward, hearing the plastic mat under my foot squeal and give.

  I spit blood one more time. It punches through the mat and impales the concrete floor underneath.

  “Woah, look at her!” Alex says mockingly. “Looks like Sentry’s legit. She’s got some grit in her.”

  I roll my shoulder, massage my jaw. My blood. A human made me taste my blood. Ha. Right.

  The air shifts around me.

  And suddenly, a heartbeat later, the woman with white hair is in front of me, a hand on my shoulder and a grin on her face. “Easy,” she whispers. I glare at her. Then she turns around. “Sentry taps out.” I open my mouth to argue, but she loops her arm around my shoulder and says, “Alex gets his extra credit, but Sentry is still numero uno, people. One class, one punch, can’t change that.” She glances at me for a fleeting second, arm keeping me in place as I’m forced to breathe in the stench of my own blood. “That only changes over the course of a semester, but for now, great work, Alex!” Alex pauses, then beams, the smile on his face uneasy as even more people pat his back.

  I shove her off me and take several steps forward, but then I end up kissing an invisible wall so hard I get a headache from my skull smacking into it. I glare at her over my shoulder. She’s got her palm stretched toward me.

  She shrugs and quietly says, “It’s unfair, I know, but I can’t let you go and do what I know you can.”

  “Then why’d you fucking let that happen?” I snarl, then slam my fist against the wall.

  I watch her flinch, almost like she felt that. The air in front of me splinters.

  “Applied Combat, Samantha, is about tempering your emotions, planning your attacks, and knowing when to dive head first into something, or when to calm down and make a rational decision. I’ve read your files, I’ve studied hours and hours of your fights, and you’ve never bled. Not once. I figured he’d give you a shot, maybe a test that’ll make you sweat, just not make you bleed. What I wanted to see, Sam, was the correct judgement. Look at them, and look at yourself—you’re ranked first in the entire country, and you were willing to kill him over this?”

  I clench my jaw, feeling as my tooth slowly gets pulled back into my gums. “So what? Now they’re all—”

  “It’ll rev them up, that’s for sure. But they’re not on your level. You know that. I know that. I want you to learn restraint, and I want them to learn not to be afraid, no matter who they’re up against. It’s just that simple.”

  “No,” I snap. “You don’t get it, do you? Now they’re gonna gossip about some random asshole who beat me up in class, and how I bled, and the next thing I know, my rank is falling because a no-name idiot hurt me.”

  “Superheroes bleed all the time,” she says softly, lowering her hand. “It’s normal.”

  “Ever seen Guardian bleed?”

  “No,” she says with a smile. “But everyone’s got their secrets.” She gets closer and squeezes my shoulder. “I don’t like that you’ve killed people.” I freeze, then narrow my eyes. How many freaking people think I do that? She shakes her head. “PU knows a lot, Sam. We have for a while. All I’m saying is that it happens, we get it. But all I see is a superhero who can be perfect, so damned perfect, and she’s holding herself back. Work with me, and let’s make it happen. I’m not everyone’s favorite, but I don’t have to be, because everyone who graduates my class ends up in the Major Leagues or going Independent and being just as great. I just need you to breathe and learn, OK?”

  I wave my hand at Alex. “Cut the motivational crap. What’s the point in letting him take a cheap shot?”

  “If I let you take a swing at him, are you gonna pull your punch or break his neck?”

  Silence. I glare at her. She shrugs, her face almost saying ‘See?’

  “Whatever,” I mutter, shrugging her off again. “Get me one of these losers I can actually hit.”

  The exact opposite comes barreling through the doors, panting, sweaty, clothes torn up and looking so out of place I almost wonder if a homeless person just exploded onto campus. “I’m sorry!” he gasps, hands on his knees as he breathes hard, brown skin sweaty, hair a mess, not a backpack in sight with both of his shoes missing. He looks up, and we lock eyes, just for a second—a second that feels like an eternity—before he grins, straightens, and says, “I’m Carter. It’s really nice to meet all of you. There was a bunch of traffic on the way here, so I got caught up.”

  “Did you cause the traffic?” Red asks. “You look like Abomination stepped on you.”

  “Or had his way with you,” Inky-Hair mutters. A posse of girls around her quietly laugh.

  White-Hair pats my back and says, “Looks like I’ve got someone to throw at you.”

  “That guy?” I ask her.

  I watch him scratch his head, making shards of broken glass fall free. Maybe the girl with jet-black hair is right, because Abomination would’ve have only stepped on him, but probably did whatever he wanted to the guy.

  “That guy,” she says proudly. “Meet Carter Knoble, the West Coast’s answer to you.”

  He smiles from across the room, and I can almost see a twitch in his eyes as he glares at me.

  “When I win,” I tell her, “Alex doesn’t get extra credit.”

  “If you win, Sam,” she says, “you get the chance to keep wearing your crown.”

  The necklace mom had given sits heavily against my chest, the golden lace digging into my throat.

  “Fine,” I say quietly. “But don’t stop me this time.”

  “Sure,” she says with a shrug. “Just as long as he doesn’t hurt you too badly.”

  Bitch, I think.

  “That’s coming off your S-Grade,” she says, then pats my shoulder. “Good luck. You’re gonna need it.”