Tangeni stood at the edge of the training yard with his back against the chain-link fence, watching the other students throw lightning and crystal spikes at each other while the instructors shouted corrections from the sidelines, and he knew without anyone telling him that his name would be called soon because it always was.
Seventeen years old, senior year at Omafo Hunter Academy, and he still couldn't make so much as a spark no matter how hard he tried or how many meditation exercises the instructors made him do.
Three other powerless kids stood near him in their usual spot by the fence, Fillipus picking at a scab on his elbow while Ndapewa stared at the ground and Tomas kept his eyes closed like he was trying to pretend he was somewhere else entirely. Tangeni understood that impulse because he'd spent years doing the same thing before he learned it didn't help.
The four of them were the academy's failures, the kids who should have awakened by now but hadn't, the ones everyone else treated like furniture that could walk and talk and occasionally be useful for practice.
"Tangeni," Instructor Nghipandulwa called out without even looking in his direction, "get over here, Nakale needs accuracy practice."
The other students stopped their exercises to watch because nobody wanted to miss this. Tangeni pushed off the fence and walked to the center of the yard because he knew this drill by heart, they all did, every powerless kid at the academy knew exactly what "accuracy practice" meant and how it was going to go.
Nakale Shikongo stood twenty meters away with jagged crystal shards already forming between his fingers and that grin on his face that showed all his teeth, the one he always wore right before he got to hurt someone without consequences, the one that made Tangeni want to run even though he knew running would only make things worse.
Someone had painted three rings on the ground around where Tangeni was supposed to stand, red and yellow and green spreading outward in a pattern that was supposed to teach control and precision through repetition, and the official explanation was that hitting close but not too close built skill and discipline in young ability users.
That was the version they put in the training manuals anyway, the one they told parents and inspectors and anyone else who might ask why students were being used as human targets.
The unofficial version was simpler: some people had power and some people didn't, and the ones who didn't existed to help the ones who did get better at using it.
Nakale's first shard hit the green ring two meters out with a sound like glass breaking against concrete, his second hit yellow at one meter and kicked up dust that got in Tangeni's eyes and made them water, and his third grazed the red ring so close that Tangeni felt the wind of it passing his ankle before he heard the whistle.
"Good," Nghipandulwa noted on his clipboard without looking up, "again."
The fourth shard went wide and hit the fence behind Tangeni with enough force to punch through the chain-link, and Nakale laughed and said it slipped, and the instructor just told him to focus and try again without any concern for what might have happened if Tangeni had been standing a foot to the left.
Tangeni stood very still and thought about absolutely nothing because thinking made you flinch and flinching made them aim closer, and he'd learned a long time ago that the trick was to go somewhere else in your head, to let your body become just a thing that stood in a field while other people threw rocks at it.
The session lasted forty-five minutes with Nakale throwing shard after shard and the other students watching and occasionally cheering when one came particularly close, and Tangeni just stood there and took it because that was his job, that was all he was good for.
By the end his legs were shaking and there was a cut on his cheek from a shard that had come closer than the red ring, and Nghipandulwa just noted on his clipboard that Nakale's accuracy had improved by twelve percent and dismissed everyone to lunch like nothing unusual had happened.
Tangeni walked to the cafeteria alone because the other powerless kids had learned not to cluster together since it made them easier targets, and he got his tray of food and found a corner table and ate without tasting anything because that was just how lunch worked at Omafo.
The food was adequate in the way that institutional food is always adequate, enough calories to keep you alive but nothing that would ever make you look forward to a meal, and Tangeni ate mechanically while trying not to think about the eight hundred and forty-seven days he'd spent in this place.
A shadow fell across his tray and he looked up to see Nakale standing there with two of his friends, the crystal manipulator still riding the high from accuracy practice with that grin still plastered across his face, and Tangeni knew what was coming next because it always came next.
"Hey target," Nakale said, and his friends laughed like that was the funniest thing anyone had ever said, "you moved during that last set, I saw you flinch."
"I didn't move."
"Are you calling me a liar?"
Tangeni looked at Nakale's face and saw that it didn't matter what he said because the outcome was already decided, so he just went back to eating his food and waited for whatever was going to happen to happen because there was no point in fighting it.
Nakale knocked the tray off the table and grabbed Tangeni by the collar and pulled him up, and Tangeni let it happen because fighting back made things worse and he'd learned that lesson enough times that it was basically instinct now, and Nakale slammed him against the wall hard enough to rattle his teeth.
"You made me look bad in front of Nghipandulwa," Nakale said, which was insane because Tangeni hadn't done anything except stand still and not die, "you kept moving and it threw off my aim."
"Just let it go," one of Nakale's friends said, sounding almost bored like they'd done this a hundred times before, which they had, "he's not worth the trouble."
Nakale held him against the wall for another few seconds, making sure Tangeni understood who was in control, and then he dropped him and walked away with his friends like nothing had happened.
Tangeni slid down to the floor and stayed there until they were gone, and then he picked up his scattered food and threw it in the trash because he wasn't hungry anymore and there was no point in eating something that had been on the floor.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of classes he couldn't focus on and training exercises he couldn't participate in, and when the final bell rang he walked back to the dorms and lay down on his mattress and stared at the ceiling and counted the tally marks he'd scratched into the wall next to his bed.
One mark for every day he'd survived at Omafo.
Eight hundred and forty-seven marks, stretching back to the day his parents had dropped him off and driven away without looking back, and tomorrow he'd add another one if nothing went wrong.
His roommate came in around nine, a fire manipulator named Petrus who wasn't cruel but also wasn't friendly, and they exchanged the usual nods and went to bed without talking because that was just how it worked.
Tangeni lay in the dark and listened to Petrus breathing and thought about the cut on his cheek and the bruises on his back and the eight hundred and forty-seven days he'd spent in this place learning nothing except how to stand still while people tried to hurt him.
Three more months until graduation, and then he could leave, and then maybe things would be different.
He fell asleep holding onto that thought like it was the only thing keeping him from drowning.