Remy showed him the image again. “Well, you’re lucky you chose such a quiet corner or you wouldn’t have made it this far.”
“I was so frightened,” he told him. “At first, I couldn’t believe it. How could I not be human? My parents were.”
“Typical teenager.” The AI snorted. “It had to be about you.”
“That about sums it up.” He blushed. “I was a nervous wreck for weeks, worrying about what would happen if I suddenly zapped something or started to glow. I willed my body to be normal and to not show any sign of magic and, for the most part, it obeyed.”
“For the most part?”
“There were a couple of times when I had to dash to the boys’ bathroom, but I found I could keep the lightning in my hands and if I let it play there for a while, I could get it back under control and out of sight again.”
“But it was hard,” Remy concluded, “and it got harder.”
John nodded. “It did. I found out that if I practiced with it at night, it wouldn’t suddenly appear during the day when I was at school, but it wasn’t easy. I could feel it growing stronger every day.”
“Show me how you practiced.” The boy complied. “Now, show me what else you know.”
“Sure,” he said and wished he’d brought a towel. Sweat beaded on his brow and he was breathing heavily.
“It’s not much. Ivy introduced me to a healer—”
“So you can heal?” the AI asked and he nodded. “I can.”
A pistol appeared in Remy’s hand and he’d aimed and fired it into the young Talent’s leg before he understood what he intended to do.
“Show me,” his companion instructed.
“Show you?” John yelped and shock passed over his skin in a cold wave. “You shot me!”
“This is true.” The AI raised the pistol again. “Do you need me to shoot you again?”
“What? Again? No!” He flung an arm up but not to defend himself. As soon as he’d raised it, he flared his fingers and launched three balls of electricity in Remy’s direction.
To his surprise, they crashed harmlessly against an invisible wall between them.
“What the—”
“You need to show me how you can heal, John.” The tone was implacable and his companion’s voice held a hard edge. He raised the pistol again.
“No. I can do it. See?”
He lowered his hand, settled both his palms over the wound, and tried to remember what Dani had taught him. It was hard with the pain radiating through his leg and into his body and even more so with a gun aimed at him.
Still shocked, he decided he would never look at the AI in the same way again.
With another breath, he forced himself to be calm.
What had Dani said? He had to draw on the power and focus on sending it into himself but direct it. For proper healing, he needed to tell it to fix what was broken and to make everything the way it should be.
The pain decreased and the cold and nausea subsided. Warmth spread into the injury and seeped down his leg and up into his torso.
“That was impressive,” Remy told him when he had finished.
Distracted by his voice, John looked up and was relieved to see the pistol was no longer in his hand. “You didn’t have to shoot me.”
“How else could I see how well you could manage the task?”
He stared at him, mouth agape. “But…you shot me!”
“It’s all part of the training,” the AI replied calmly.
“What kind of training regime involves shooting the participants?”
Remy shrugged. “It’s the Virt World. It’s not like you’re hurt in the real.”
“Truly?”
The young man nodded. “Of course. Your trainers were not stupid.”
“Next, you’ll be telling me the Witch orders this kind of training all the time.”
His companion looked shocked. “Of course not,” he said, but before John could breathe a sigh of relief, he continued. “Her training often involves the participants dying.”
Now, he was horrified. “You are kidding me.”
“No, but that is not for you,” Remy reassured him and immediately destroyed any sense of confidence he’d instilled by adding, “Not today. You’re not ready.”
John snorted. “So you’ll only kill me when I’m ready for it?”
“Of course, John. It would not be good training practice if I were to do otherwise.”
“Good…training practice,” he stated and his face paled.
“Don’t worry. You will survive the experience,” the AI reassured him. “It is only training, after all.”
“Okay. Well, I guess that makes it all right then,” he snapped, but his companion completely missed the sarcasm.
“Of course it does. Now, do you know any other forms of magic?”
The question surprised him so he took a deep breath and tried to shake the sense of unreality that seemed to engulf him as he focused his mind on his memories.
“There was a Talent out in the swamps,” he replied. “She said she’d been at Stephanie’s university and her parents had tried to turn her over to the Regime.”
Remy’s face went blank for a moment before he returned with a name. “Kristin Lamont. The university records show she had a talent for both mental magic as well as lightning, healing, and fire. They were helping her to diversify her talents.”
John nodded. “She taught me how to control my Talent, how to use the lightning to attack more than one target, and how to shield.”
“To shield?” The AI sounded intrigued. “That is not listed as one of her skills.”
“There was another girl there…Hollie. She was my age, I think, and was too young to have gone to the school, but she taught most of the classes for shielding. I think she could also make herself move like shadow but we didn’t get to that point.”
“You only have to be able to imagine it to have the magic to do it,” his companion murmured.
“Exactly!” John exclaimed. “That’s what Kristin said.”
Remy smiled. “It’s what Stephanie said too.”
“And did she ever blend with shadows or use shields?” he asked.
“I don’t know about shadows, but she certainly knew how to shield—and how to tear entire starships apart.”
He gaped at him. “Do you… Do you think there’s a class in here that will show me how to do that?”
The AI chuckled. “You have to learn to walk before you can run, John.”
He looked expectantly at him. “So, when do we start?”
“Now,” Remy told him and unleashed a hailstorm of lightning in his direction.
Caught off-guard, he swept his hand toward it and willed a shield into being, although he wasn’t sure if it would be enough. The air before him flared a brilliant blue when the lightning struck, and the attack dissipated.
“Very good, John,” the AI said from beside him.
The courtyard warped and melted and a dojo formed around them.
John shook his head. “I’ll never get used to that,” he muttered.
“You will,” the construct assured him. “Now, it’s time to see what you know about combat.”