“Their past. You mean their parents, right? Their family, their home.”
“I understand that this is startling to witness. But everything we do here has a careful logic behind it. By renaming them, we emphasize their essential sameness. It’s a way of demonstrating that they have no value until they have finished the academy. At which point they are free to choose their own names, to return to their families if they choose. Though you might be surprised to learn that a large percentage do not.”
“Why?”
“Over their time here, they have built a new identity and prefer it.”
“No,” Cooper said. “Why do this? I thought that the purpose of the academies was to provide specialized training in their gifts. To raise a generation that had mastered its potential.”
The director leaned back in his chair, elbows on the armrests, fingertips touching in front of him. Anyone could read the cold defensiveness, the go-for-the-throat approach of the embattled academic. But Cooper saw more to it. Something in the easy way Norridge maintained eye contact, the steadiness of his speech as he said, “I would have thought that an agent of the Department of Analysis and Response wouldn’t need to be told.”
“This isn’t really my area.”
“Still, surely you could have gotten these answers without a trip—”
“I like to see for myself.”
“Why weren’t you academy trained, Agent Cooper?”
The suddenness of the topic change wasn’t what surprised Cooper—he’d seen it coming in the fold of the man’s lips and the crinkle of his eyes—but the content threw him. I never told him I was gifted, or that I was tier one. He could tell on his own. “I was born in 1981.”
“You were in the first wave?”
“Technically second.”
“So you would have been thirteen the year the first academy opened. Back then we could barely manage fifteen percent of the tier-one population. With the opening of Mumford Academy next year, we expect to be able to train one hundred percent of them. That’s not public knowledge, of course, but imagine it. Every tier one born in America. A shame you were born so early.”
“Not from my perspective.” Cooper smiled and imagined breaking the administrator’s nose.
“Tell me, how did you grow up?”
“Doctor, I asked a question, and I want an answer.”
“I’m giving you one. Indulge me. Please, your childhood.”
Cooper sighed. “My dad was army. My mother died when I was young. We moved around.”
“Did you know a lot of children like you?”
“Military brats?” The old snide side coming out, the part that didn’t handle authority figures well.
But Norridge didn’t bite, just mildly said, “Abnorms.”
“No.”
“Were you close to your father?”
“Yes.”
“Was he a good officer?”
“I never said he was an officer.”
“But he was.”
“Yes. And yes, a good one.”
“Patriotic?”
“Of course.”
“But not a flag worshipper. He cared about the principles, not the symbol.”
“That’s what patriotism means. The others are just fetishists.”
“Did you have a lot of friends?”
“Enough.”
“Did you have a lot of fights?”