Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,48
at the dance—?”
Loch mussed his hair uneasily. “Different weapon, similar goal. Maybe.”
“You think that would be all they want?” she asked.
All he could do was shrug. “If I were thinking all conspiracy theory, I’d think that the power gained from the fear was going to go toward taking us out.”
Burke shot him a glance. “You are a big help.”
“Forget that,” Addie said steadily. “The point is that Spirit is right about one thing; there is something out there that ran an attack on us. We need to figure out who on the inside here is helping them. Once we know that, maybe we can figure out what the next move is going to be. Then we can take what we know to Doctor Ambrosius. After what we did against the Wild Hunt, he’ll listen and take us seriously. Now let’s see if we can figure out a place to start.”
The others nodded, and Spirit would have been perfectly happy if it hadn’t been for the part about taking what they knew to Doctor Ambrosius.
Because she wasn’t at all sure that was a good idea.
* * *
They hadn’t dared stay out too long—not only because they might be missed from their rooms, but because tomorrow it was back to classes as normal. Or rather, back to all new classes; this was the start of the second term of the year, an “Oakhurst year,” which had three terms of four months each.
Spirit woke up with a sense of dread, and elected to go for a protein shake for breakfast, figuring if she needed to, she could get some yogurt or something to tide her over until lunch. She didn’t think that a full stomach for her first class was going to be a very good idea.
She hurried over to the gym—to the weight room this time, the first time she had ever been in it—to join the half-dozen other students there once she had changed into the clean gym clothes in her locker. At least they were just sweatpants, a tank and sports bra, and a hoodie in Oakhurst brown … nothing nearly as ugly and embarrassing as the gym uniforms she’d seen pictures of.
“All right, ladies,” said Mr. Wallis, prowling up and down in the front of the room like a caged panther. “This is one class where there are very clear rules. You will use the equipment I put you on, at the settings I put it on, and you will accomplish the goal I have set for you. And tomorrow, we’ll do it again. There won’t be any hiding behind a lucky move, and no excuses. Are we clear?”
“Yes sir,” they all murmured. Although some of the more competitive types made use of this room, Spirit never had, and neither had any of the others in this class. What was more, according to the others, this was a brand-new sort of class—a conditioning class—and it was nothing that had ever been taught here at Oakhurst before. If you could call this “teaching.”
Mr. Wallis picked out Spirit and Elizabeth, and put them on the two treadmills in the room. The other four he put on the fancy weight-simulation machines, contraptions that looked like a tornado had run through an archery store leaving these things in its wake. Mr. Wallis programmed in an ambitious workout for Spirit and Elizabeth, and with a sadistic grin, punched the start buttons. The belts hummed to life, and Spirit and Elizabeth had no choice but to start running.
Spirit soon found to her dismay that these were no ordinary treadmills. Oh no. These were state-of-the-art machines that could raise and lower their beds, and in the next five minutes she found herself struggling up a “hill” that never ended.
Then the thing went flat again, but her ordeal wasn’t over. It suddenly sped up, and she was forced into a sprint for thirty seconds. Then it slowed down. Then it sped up. A few more repetitions of that, and it turned into a hill again.
Finally, the treadmill slowed from a sprint to a jog, then a jog to a walk, and then stopped. Spirit bent over, sweating and panting. When she caught her breath and looked up again, she saw everyone else had finished their workouts, too.
“Treadmills!” Mr. Wallis barked. “You’re on machines one and two. One and two, move to three and four. Three and four, move to the treadmills. Move it, ladies!”
With a deep sense of apprehension, Spirit took over one of the two designated