The Posterchildren: Origins Read online

  “Are you ready?” Mongoose asked the Alphas. They both nodded, staring at each other instead of glancing over at the instructor. Try as she might, Zip just couldn’t understand what it was that made boys turn everything into a challenge to their toughness. She wasn’t sure if it was a boy thing or an Alpha thing, since most of the Alphas that she knew were male. A great question for the universe, that one.

  “Alrighty. We’ll be using standard rock-paper-scissors rules - rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, paper beats rock. You’ll announce your choice simultaneously, on my mark. Three...two...one...go!”

  Everything around Zip went syrupy and slow and bright. When she really concentrated on something, her brain locked on with the ferocity of a bulldog’s bite. She saw every second stretch, spooling out. She had the time to see everything in perfect clarity: the sunlight caught in the peach fuzz on Clay’s cheek, the veins under Henri’s skimmed-milk skin, the bluish halo that natural light brought out in Mal’s hair, and the lazy ricochets of the pea rattling in the whistle that Mongoose was still blowing.

  She saw Clay start to flatten his hand out, his fingers stiff. His lips puckered, shaping around the p in paper. She knew what he was about to say, even though most of the word was still bunched up in his mouth, half-delivered. She waited until he’d mouthed along through the syllables, waited until the p was paper, waited even though waiting made her short of breath and dizzy, waited until he’d committed—

  “Scissors!” Zip hollered, darting forward.

  The instructor’s whistle shrilled, making her skid to a stop. Mal visibly winced, baring his teeth.

  “Underwood and Chance! Disqualified!”

  “Disqualified?” She shot a baffled look to Mal, searching for an explanation. “Disqualified?”

  “I am the Alpha,” he ground out between his teeth. “I was supposed to make the call. Not you.”

  The rules were different now. She was a Beta, which meant that she wasn’t the one in charge anymore. She was half of a duo. The half of the whole that dragged along like a limb all chewed up with gangrene, apparently.

  She should have known that it’d be different, but she’d let impatience get the best of her. She’d zipped in and fouled things up again.

  Oh, no. Not again.

  “I was just trying to— I was— I could see what they were going to choose before they finished throwing— ” Zip was so flustered, she could barely get her mouth to cooperate with the words she wanted to get out. “S-s-so-I-was-just-tr-trying-to— ”

  “Why can’t you just take two seconds to think?”

  Her legs felt like limp buttered noodles, her steps wobbly as she made her way to the bleachers. There was laughter, but she tried not to hear it; she was the butt of the joke again, the only one not laughing.

  Zip rapidly drummed her fingers on her kneecaps. She wanted to run. She wanted to run so bad, but she couldn’t. No matter how fast or how far she went, she’d have to come back eventually. She’d done twenty-eight laps in her head in the time it took Mal to huff a single sigh.

  “Two seconds is a really long time for someone like me,” she protested weakly.

  “Then you had better learn to exercise some restraint,” Mal said, glaring at a fixed spot in front of him. “Or the next three years are going to be very long for the both of us.”

  Zip didn’t doubt that. Since they had been disqualified in the first round, they had to sit on the uncomfortable bleachers at the sidelines until the end of the scrimmage. There were forty-five minutes left in the period. Forty-five minutes stuck next to Mal Underwood felt like a small eternity. He wouldn’t look at her, but she could feel how mad he was.

  And that was worse. Way worse.

  °

  There was no set rule on how many classes the third block duos had to take together. There were only a handful of classes that were absolutely required. The Academy recognized that every poster was unique, so it worked out better for everyone involved if they let them take the kinds of classes that were relevant to them. It wouldn’t make much sense to force a duo to take a class on breathing underwater if only one of them had gills, after all.

  Ernest enjoyed Combat and A&K, and June would probably have invented a lingering disease to take her out of class if the two subjects hadn’t been among the ten categories they were graded on. She liked PR, law, psychology and acting. Ernest had picked out his classes with June in mind. For his weakest subjects, his choices had been guided by what June was least likely to sign up for.

  Ernest was as bad in his weak subjects as he was good at his strong ones, and acting was his worst subject. Even if he got perfect scores in just about everything else, Ernest would never get a fifty like Mal had - not when acting was still on the roster. It was a crummy weakness to have, too.

  The way his father explained it, life as a public hero was roughly sixty percent acting. Postheroes were like any other hero in the public eye. People expected certain things out of their police officers and officials, their firemen and EMS workers. They were just another kind of public defender, so they were supposed to present themselves in a certain light. That meant being brave when you were afraid, levelheaded when you wanted to be angry, and calm when you felt out of control. A hero was a beacon in the most hopeless of situations.

  That wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy at all. If life were fair, Ernest would have picked up the craft by osmosis. The Commander was known for his way with words, and his dad had been his sole caretaker since day one. He’d been his primary inspiration, his first audience. He should have absorbed that talent, or maybe just been born with it, inherited along with his dad’s blue eyes. But public speaking didn’t work that way, unfortunately.

  So Ernest made sure that he and June took different acting classes. He hadn’t checked the rosters against anyone else he knew, and in retrospect, he desperately wished that he’d double-checked. As usual, Maks Petrov sat in one of the back rows of the auditorium, waving at him enthusiastically. One of the few open seats left in the room was next to him. Since they’d made eye contact and he knew that he knew that he was there, Maks might get offended if he chose to sit elsewhere. He didn’t want him to feel like he was purposefully ignoring him.

  Ernest slid in next to him, wedging himself in as comfortably as possible. The acting classes were held in the theater, so the seats were standard-sized. His father liked to call those seats ‘one size sits most’— usually with a self-deprecating chuckle, because he wasn’t among the most. More than once, he’d had to help pull his dad out of a too-snug chair after an assembly. He was his father’s son, so Ernest was beginning to outgrow normal seating.

  Even with his long legs folded up so that his knees were basically digging into his kidneys, he still took up a seat and a half. The girl to his left gave him a withering look. He tried to fold up further to give her more room, but he’d already scrunched himself as small as possible. Getting growth spurts months ahead of any of his peers had left Ernest very aware of how much space he took up. It felt like he was either looming or invading no matter what he did or how he positioned himself.

  “Psst. Champ,” Maks whispered behind his hand. He leaned over, though it wasn’t necessary. Ernest was taking up what felt like half of his seat, too. It was only uncomfortable when he breathed in. “Thanks for the cold water tip the other day. Worked like a charm.”

  “Glad I could help,” he whispered back. “And it’s Ernest, okay?

  “Uh-huh. Okay,” Maks said, firing off another one of his dazzling grins. Ernest was starting to think that it was his default expression. Maks was a sparkly kind of person, for lack of a better word.

  “Welcome, my darlings!” Madame Ghostlight sang as she emerged from behind the curtain, fluttering her hands. “Welcome, welcome. It’s so good to see all of you! There’s some new faces with us today, too. How marvelous.”

  Some of the instructors— like Mr. Carter, the history teacher— preferred to be addressed by their real names. Other
teachers liked the students to use their monikers. Even though she’d long since retired from both active duty and the stage, Mamie Lamarr asked that her students use her old moniker, Madame Ghostlight. Ernest had taken classes with her in his previous blocks, but he still hadn’t decided why it was that Madame Lamarr liked it when they called her Ghostlight. She dressed for the part of an ancient spirit of the theater, her hair and skin chalky white under her shimmery layers of scarves and shawls. Her flowing long skirt made her look like she was floating across the empty stage.

  Madame Ghostlight was an odd duck. She was practically an unknown name to the public, and she didn’t show up in any of their history books, but his dad said that she’d had a long and distinguished career. As a first block student, Ernest had been convinced that she haunted the theater, and that was why she insisted on the use of her moniker. There were days he still believed that old rumor, at least partially.

  “Let us immerse ourselves, shall we?” Ghostlight said with a bell-like peal of laughter. “Now, who is familiar with the art of mind control? Or possession, as they call it in certain circles— inaccurately, I assure you!”

  Maks’ hand shot up. He narrowly missed bruising his knuckles on the underside of Ernest’s chin.

  “One of my aunties is a purple-band Beta,” Maks answered, dropping his hand after she gave him the nod to go ahead. “She can only do it to animals, though.”

  “Oh, how delightful! And what a unique application.”

  “It made her a great tamer, that’s for sure.”

  “An animal tamer?” Madame Ghostlight held up her rhinestone-crusted reading glasses and consulting her clipboard. “Remind me of your name, darling.”

  “Maksim Petrov. Sideshow, if that’s better. I’m new.”

  “Maksim, my dove, when you spread your wings once more and leave our fine institution, you will be transformed. I will address you with your given name, though I hope you will learn to love the name you have given yourself.” She gestured up toward the stage, her shawls and sleeves flapping as eagerly as the metaphorical wings she’d been going on about.

  “Now, come up here and stand with me. I’d like to have your help with a demonstration, if you’d be so kind.”

  Wriggling out past Ernest, Maks loped up next to the instructor. He jumped up on stage gracefully, from what almost looked like a dead stop. He was very light on his feet. Madame Ghostlight shook his hands warmly in greeting, as though she were some starlet accepting a fancy award.

  “At the start of every year, I get the same question two or three times. Instead of being frustrated with it, I’ve come to embrace this question and use it as a teaching tool. The question itself is a simple one: why must I take acting? And why indeed? Why must you give yourself to the art?”

  Oh, and here came the deluge. Ghostlight’s classes had the reputation of being the easiest acting classes offered. It wasn’t that the material was any easier, but that Madame Ghostlight rarely quit talking for long enough to get any teaching done. If you were any good at acting at all, signing up for her classes meant learning how to sleep with your eyes open. For Ernest, it meant the least amount of stress— and the fewest amount of people paying attention— when he had to stand in front and talk. He wasn’t like Mal and Rosario. They took acting classes that dealt with espionage— lying under pressure, social manipulation, techniques to trick interrogators. He wasn’t going to be that kind of hero, he told himself. Ernest didn’t mind listening to Madame Ghostlight go on and on about her craft and her art and her muse and the fuzzy details of her distinguished career. Really, he didn’t.

  “In previous blocks, acting has been treated as an, ahem.” Ghostlight’s cheekbones flushed bright red. “Extracurricular activity, almost. We have learned how to memorize soliloquies and give them, have dabbled in improvisatory acting, and have put on small— though impressive!— stage productions of familiar works.” She exhaled, the hectic color leaving her cheeks. Then she smiled, gesturing at the class with a shimmering sweep of her hand. “But now, my little creators, now we will get into the meat of the craft. Today, I would like to introduce you to the concept of the light touch. Generally, the touch that your target doesn’t feel is many times more effective than a strike which shatters bone.”

  That was an interesting thing to say, Ernest thought. He didn’t quite see what she was getting at, though. In his experience, bone-shattering punches were more effective than hits that the target didn’t feel at all— unless, of course, bone-shattering wasn’t what you were aiming to do. It was a confusing thing to say.

  “Maksim, I would like to temporarily put you under my control. I promise that no harm will befall you, and that this will only help your new classmates get to know you better. Would you allow me to do that?”

  “Sure!”

  Maks was brave. Braver than Ernest would have been in his shoes. Maybe just braver than him in general.

  “Close your eyes,” Ghostlight instructed, resting two fingertips on the tip of Maks’ nose. He obediently squeezed his eyes shut. “Very good. I want you to take a deep breath and relax, exhaling slowly. Do that for me three times. After you have taken three breaths and have exhaled three times, you will surrender control to me. I will take good care of you. While I am in control, you will go somewhere warm.”

  She gave him a moment to settle. He rolled on the balls of his feet, eyes still closed.

  “Where have you gone, Maksim?”

  “Florida.” Maks sounded relaxed, almost sleepy.

  “Is that where you’re from, dearheart?

  He nodded sloppily, his chin bumping off his chest.

  “I’m from everywhere. But mostly Florida.”

  “Tell me about your aunt,” Madame Ghostlight said, lowering her voice a velvety half-octave. There was something in her tone, a vibrating note just beyond what Ernest could hear. “Tell me about the animal tamer.”

  “Her name is Ariella Katz and she’s my mom’s sister. My mom’s name is Gerda Katz, but she changed her name to Yuri Petrov when she married my dad, Mikhail,” Maks said, babbling like he was trying to get as many words out of his mouth as quickly as he possibly could. “Mom was pregnant with me when they got hitched, so they knew they’d want to have a family act sooner or later. Yuri looked better on posters than Gerda. Part of it, part of the gimmick, was that we’re Russian, so she had to sound Russian, too. Even though she was Swedish.”

  “A family act, you said?”

  “We’re performers. Kozlov’s Candy Apple Circus. My great-great grandparents on my dad’s side came here from Russia. That wasn’t a good place to be a posthuman back then, but things were especially rough for posters over there. On my mom’s side, my Great-Grandma Katz joined the circus during the Depression. She’d worked the Katz family farm in Kansas, but it all dried up. Grandma stayed with the troupe, so my mom was born with them,” Maks said, continuing to regurgitate a steady stream of personal factoids. “Same as me. So I’ve got it on both sides.”

  “I see,” she hummed, taking a step back. “And what do you do in the circus? Show me.”

  “Stuff like this,” Maks said, smoothly bending over backwards and standing on his hands. He rolled onto his stomach, bending his legs back so they touched the top of his head. It was like he didn’t have bones.

  “Aaaand this. And once in a while,” Maks pushed himself up, doing a backflip. The flip itself was impressive, but it wasn’t anywhere near as impressive as the motes of blue light sizzling in the air around him. They followed his movements in electric arcs. He landed lightly on the back of one of the empty chairs in the first row, his toes curled over the top of the seat. “Stuff like that.”

  “Oh my!” Ghostlight said, clapping. “Very impressive, Maksim! How does your power work?”

  “Part of it’s just that I’m bendy,” he said, walking along the seats. His eyes were still closed. Ernest had heard about sleepwalking, but this took the cake. “But the fireworks are courtesy of my enhanced bioelectricalm
agnetism. Y’know there’s like, electricity in living bodies? I can suck that stuff up. I generate a ton of it myself, too.”

  “Thank you, Maksim. You’ve been very helpful. Come back up here next to me— I’m going to let you go now.” He hopped back up, standing downstage. “On the count of three, come back to us. Three...two...one...”

  Madame Ghostlight brought her hands together once, sharply. Maks jerked like someone had dropped an ice cube down the back of his shorts, gasping. He blinked at them, obviously disoriented. Without any warning, he burst into tears. It was the kind of crying that a person did when they were overwhelmed. It was the kind of crying that happened when crying was the only response they could manage.

  Ghostlight descended on him, stroking his hair and patting his cheeks, but Maks disentangled himself, pawing at his red-rimmed eyes and laughing. He had to catch his breath.

  “I’m sorry! I’m fine.” Maks laid a hand over his chest. “Cross my heart and hope to fly. That was just, um. That was a trip!”

  “My dear lamb, you had me worried. Do you remember what you said?”

  “A little? It was like someone else was saying it down the hall or something. I could sort of hear it, but I was back home, so...”

  Madame Ghostlight gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

  “And that, my dears, is the power of the light touch. Ordinarily, mind control is an invasive and unpleasant affair. The usual methods are nothing short of rapacious, which I find— ” She shuddered, head to toe. “Repulsive. In my experience, so much can be gained through a light touch. I received more information than I asked for, and I got it in a way that was kind to my target. You may sit, Maksim. Thank you again.”

  Maks squirmed back into the row, still wiping at his eyes. Ernest fished around in his bag for a clean handkerchief to offer him, but Maks beat him to it. He blew his nose into a hankie with a deafening honk.