The Games Heroes Play (15 page)

It was both a comfort and a struggle to see Michael always there beside him.  Michael was a great friend, and Jay was happy to have such a friend that he could rely on.  It was difficult at times though, because Jay
could not
help but feel like he
did not
deserve
Michael to be there for him like this.  Jay had spent much of the semester off with his teammates practicing, and even the time he spent with Michael was spent in thought over the games, and over what he would need to do to get ready for them.  Jay thought about making it a condition that Michael be invited onto the same team as Jay the next year as well.  He wondered how much of that he could get away with, or even if Michael would accept an invitation under those conditions.  Michael was certainly one of the top Prometheus in their year, and he would not be terrible in the games, but Jay knew Michael well enough to know he would want to earn a spot on a team.

WITH HIS FRIENDS
helping him along, Jay passed the last of his tests one week before the end of the break.  Shortly thereafter, Brain came in to congratulate him
and to say goodbye.

“I’m shipping out Decathlon
,”
Brain told him, with a
smile of contented excitement.

“Do you know where you ar
e being stationed?”  Jay asked.

“I won’t know exactly where until the plane lands, but they said I’ll be in charge of a small group.  They also said that small group could become a larger group s
oon enough if I prove capable.”

Jay was happy to hear that things were working out for Brain, but he was sad to see him go.  Brain felt like an older brother to Jay, despite their only getting to know each other well the past few weeks.  “You’ll prove capable
,”
Jay said with confidence.  “Maybe in a few years I’ll have the privilege of be
ing part of that larger group.”

“
Haha
,
or maybe leading a large group of your own nearby.”
 

“Either way,
be
careful out there.”  With a final goodbye, Brain turned a
nd left.

JAY WAS FINALLY
able to start walking around with the help of crutches a few days before the new semester came.  It was a strange feeling to have the energy to run without the range of leg motion necessary, but Jay knew he was healing quicker now, and before long he
would be running around just like before.  He wished he could at least have begun lifting, but the nurse warned that he could only lift with his right arm, and this would not only aggravate his pelvis, but leave his muscles uneven.  Instead Jay left those two abilities alone for the time being, and went back to the reason he first came to the
school, to learn to read minds.

Jay and Michael spent the next few days reviewing the different techniques Jay had learned from Brain.  He tried to teach Michael to blanket read, but this proved to be too difficult a thing to teach.  For one thing Michael did not yet have enough control over his ability to get multiple pictures to show up clearly enough to be seen, and for another thing Jay could not figure out how to teach Michael to make the pictures come,
as they came naturally for Jay.

Jay did manage to help Michael find ways of focusing the images however.  One technique that worked wonders was with the help of
Zahrah
.  She began getting together with them during these practices, and most of the time she would run laps while they sat nearby to practice their reading.  It was Michael who came up with a trick to help him see how to mind read as Jay did.  Since Jay could mind read really well without knowing how he was actually doing it,
Zahrah
would think of different things, and Jay would read her mind.  Michael in turn would read Jay’s mind.  This allowed Michael to not only
see
the images from
Zahrah
, but also to see how Jay’s mind went about processing the images and moving them about.  It was using this technique that helped Michael the most, and as Michael discovered things about how Jay’s mind was working, he would tell Ja
y about it too.

“It’s amazing,” Jay responded when this first began, “it’s like there are two minds working inside my head.  There’s the one I know about, and the one t
hat is working all on its own.”

They were doing just this when they first started seeing groups of new students coming thr
ough the school on their tours.

“It’s strange, I don’t feel like we should be second years just yet
,”
Michael responded, as they watched
one of the tour groups walk by.

“I know what you mean, this time last year I was still uncertain whether I’d be com
ing at all
,”
Zahrah
reflected.

“That’s
right,
I’d forgotten that I’m the only one of us that was actually here for the first day.  Now that I think about it, I guess I hold seniority over the both of you, don’t I?”  Mic
hael teased.

“Come on, let’s go get something to eat, there are way too many people walking about for us to concentrate now
,”
Jay suggested.  The three of them grabbed their things and began walki
ng off towards the dining hall.

On their way, Jay began seeing images in his head that he hadn’t seen in a long time.  He saw his parents, and his house back home. 
Strange
, Jay thought,
what’s bringing that to my mind?
  They got to the dining hall,
but one of the tour groups was
standing in the entrance, and they were unable to get in.  As they waited, Jay heard a voice
that stopped him in his tracks.

“Crutches?
  This doesn’t fit at all.  I thought I heard you had become an all-powerful hero, who could leap tal
l buildings in a single bound?”

Jay knew the voice, but he
could not
believe his ears.  He turned around slowly, and was amazed to find he had heard correctly.  There stood Donny, with a big grin spread wide across his face, and his own tour guide standing by his side.