The Hadley Academy for the Improbably Gifted

by Conor Grennan

  “It wasn’t our decision,” Jack told her, the panic rising in him. “We went to see Instructor Rufus about how to speed up the process of breaking through. Next thing we knew he had sent the challenge.”

  “Oh my, child, why did you go see him? Alistair Rufus is senile! He probably doesn’t remember he even did this.”

  Voss gritted his teeth. “Let’s just get this over with.” He peered into the dark tunnel. “When do they arrive?”

  “They’re already here, son. You’ll see a light at the end of this tunnel when it’s time to meet them in the Pit,” she said, grabbing his uniform to pull him back. “But first—the rules of engagement. When you walk in there, the stone door seals behind you. That’s the signal to begin. Remember that you do not have to fight them. You just have to survive. Death matches are two minutes exactly. Believe me, that’s more than enough time for them to kill you all.”

  “So we can just run?” Freddy asked hopefully.

  “Of course you can run. But the Pit has thirty-foot walls and is only slightly larger than a basketball court. So there’s nowhere to go.” She turned to see the first rays of sun coming over the trees and turned back to them quickly. “If you remember nothing else, remember this.” Team Thirteen leaned toward her. “You must try to get killed close to the access point. It’s at the far side of the Pit. I have already summoned more medics. We will be waiting there. The moment the two minutes is up, the door will slide open, and we will revive you as quickly as we can. And protect your chest and head at all cost. It will be much harder to revive you if essential organs are destroyed.”

  A light appeared at the far end of the tunnel. The door had slid open.

  “It’s time.” Dr. Horn sounded mournful. “Remember, get to the far side of the Pit, and stay alive as long as you can.”

  The Pit felt like pure claustrophobia.

  They stood with their backs to the open door, at the short side of the rounded rectangle. Across the Pit were four operatives in black. Jack immediately recognized Zhang: short, spiked neon-blue hair. Her uniform bore a blue rectangle with the infinity sign. He also recognized the saucer-eyed French woman with oversized round glasses and cropped brown hair. That was Operative Chandle. The other two operatives had been in the portal courtyard the morning he had tumbled into Hadley, but he hadn’t gotten a look at them. Their expressions were blank, as calm as if they were waiting for an elevator.

  “What’s the plan here?” Jack asked the others.

  “Survive for two minutes,” Voss said, his voice dull.

  “Getting to the other side is going to be difficult,” Freddy whispered. “We’ll have to go through them.”

  “Can’t help that now,” Asha said. “Voss is right. We survive—that’s it. Don’t pull your blades; we have no chance of engaging them in combat. Keep your hands free. But don’t make it easy for them either. When that door closes behind us, scatter.”

  There was a creaking noise behind them. They turned around to see the stone door slowly sliding shut. It sealed with an echo of stone hitting stone. Jack’s heart pounded. He turned back to face the operatives.

  There were only three of them.

  “Look out!” Asha shouted. An operative with an orange patch on his chest was sprinting almost faster than Jack could see, running on the side of the wall itself. By the time Jack’s eye caught up to him, the operative was already on the wall behind him, his rune blade drawn with an orange blaze erupting from the tip. Jack felt a searing pain in the back of his ankle. He howled and dropped to his knees. Freddy fell next to him.

  Asha and Voss rolled away from the wall and into the middle of the Pit. Asha drew her blade despite her own advice.

  Voss charged at Operative Chandle, who was walking calmly toward him. She flicked her wrist, and what looked like a clicker appeared in her hand. She squeezed it. A deafening pulse echoed off the walls, knocking Jack back against the wall behind him. Voss hit the wall a split second later, but he pulled himself up again, shaking his head.

  He sprinted toward Chandle, noticeably weaker this time. Asha’s head had slammed against the wall from the force of the pulse, which had somehow left the operatives unaffected. She forced herself up too.

  Jack watched Zhang walk out to meet Voss. Voss drew his blade. With seemingly no effort, Zhang deployed her rune blade and disarmed him instantly. Then she slashed Voss across the arm, scorching his uniform with a blue blaze. She kicked him square in the chest, sending him tumbling back again. Zhang turned in time to meet Asha, who had picked up her blade.

  Zhang flicked Asha’s blade out of her hand with a swift movement. All at once, the cold steel of Zhang’s blade was against Asha’s throat.

  “No!” Voss screamed, struggling to his feet.

  Zhang looked at all of them, almost amused. She turned to the last operative still against the far wall, a small Expathic.

  “Flood,” she called back to him. “Drown them.”

  Zhang sprinted to the side wall and leapt, where she was caught by the Kinetic and pulled up. Operative Chandle climbed up the opposite wall.

  Jack glanced back toward the operative on the far wall. But he saw only the wall of water coming at him. The tidal wave engulfed him, and water filled his lungs.

  Then everything went dark.

  Jack opened his eyes. He was lying on a firm mattress covered with a kind of leather material that molded to his body. He realized he was nestled in the bottom half of a clamshell-style bed that resembled a tanning bed. He was comfortably warm.

  He sat up. Voss sat in a chair across from him, a silver thermal blanket over his shoulders. “You’re up,” he said. “Your buddy’s just waking up too.”

  Jack looked to his left. Freddy was sitting up and blinking. He, too, examined the clamshell bed he found himself in. “Where are we?”

  “Hypothermia beds. In the clinic,” Voss explained.

  “Dr. Horn brought us back to life,” Freddy said dumbly.

  Voss shook his head. “She didn’t have to. We never died.”

  Dr. Horn came in. “Welcome back, boys. How are you feeling? Warming up at last, I hope?”

  Jack felt down to his ankle. Nothing. Not even a scar. “You fixed . . .” He stopped and whipped his gaze around. “Where’s Asha?”

  “She’s speaking with Superior Blue in the other room. I’ll go on and fetch them.”

  “Is she okay?” Freddy called after her.

  “You don’t remember, do you?” Voss answered.

  Jack and Freddy just stared back. Voss leaned forward. “You and Freddy went down at the start, with your tendons slashed. Asha and I dodged that operative, but the Systemic developed some kind of localized pulse that practically paralyzed us. We managed to get up, but we had no chance against Zhang,” Voss said. “That’s when the flood hit.”

  “That’s the last thing I remember,” Freddy said. “The water hitting me, knocking my head against the back wall. I couldn’t swim against the wave, and I knew I was going to drown. Then I must have passed out.”

  “I was fighting to get to the surface,” Voss said. “But that pulse made it almost impossible to move. Then I saw Asha.” Voss shook his head at the recollection. “She was on the ground on one knee—completely dry. It was like she was in a tiny invisible room that the water couldn’t get to.”

  Jack was confused. “How?”

  Voss almost smiled. “Ice. She must have instinctively frozen the water around her, all in that split second it took the flood to rush over us. A perfect cube, underwater. She looked stunned. That’s when she saw me,” Voss said. “She put her hand to the ice wall and it became a wedge, like a plow. The ice wall pushed the water out of the way until it got to me. Somehow, I tumbled into the air lock she had made. I was covered in a sheet of ice, freezing but alive.”

  “She did the same for you both.” Voss nodded at Freddy and Jack. “It must have taken her less than a minute. Then she pressed the water out of your lungs with CPR.” He shrugged. “When
the water receded, Dr. Horn came running in. She had to smash through the ice to get us out.” He checked his band. “That was about an hour ago.”

  Asha and Superior Blue walked in.

  “Hey!” Freddy leapt up from the bed and took her by her shoulders. “You’re a rock star. You saved our lives!”

  “Seriously, Asha—holy cow,” Jack said. “Voss just told us. Are you okay?”

  She nodded. “I’m as surprised as you are. But yeah, I’m fine, Dr. Horn fixed me up.”

  “She’s better than fine,” Superior Blue interjected, beaming. “She broke through! She’s an improbable. They said it was impossible.” He turned to Jack and Freddy. “I’m sorry. I should have stopped you. If I had known you were going to talk to Rufus . . . The man is not in his right mind. What happened was unacceptable.”

  “It worked,” Freddy said, full of relief and joy. “That’s all that matters.”

  “It worked for Ice,” Voss corrected.

  Superior Blue shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Don’t you see? This will get you into the Dome tonight. There is only one essential component of breaking through—you believe it.” He motioned to Asha excitedly. “Nobody has ever gone from dormant to fully weaponized spade in an instant. Asha’s breakthrough can only be because the Grays have chosen you. And it’s only day two. The Great Prophecy is being fulfilled!”

  There was an awkward pause.

  “That’s the thing, sir,” Voss said slowly. “All I know is that everyone, except you, believes the Bulgarian killed Wyeth. I don’t see any evidence that this prophecy is real or that the four of us have been chosen by monks. You’re saying all we need to do is believe, but I can’t believe something that has no evidence.”

  Superior Blue nodded thoughtfully. “You’re right, Torque. I’ve been naive thinking you could just accept all this.” He clapped his hands together. “Dr. Horn,” he called into the other room, “I’m checking your patients out.” He turned back to them. “Get up, Thirteen. We’re going on a field trip.”

  The sign hanging askew on the door identified the cottage: The Workshop. What type of workshop, Jack couldn’t imagine. It looked like some rustic abode you might find in Town & Country magazine, a simple dwelling in the woods where some famous author spent a bitter winter writing the great American novel. They had reached the cottage down winding paths no wider than deer trails. Superior Blue rapped on the door.

  From inside came a yelp of surprise and a clatter of metal. Then the door swung open. Standing there, seeming bewildered, was Alexander. Maggie bounded in past him, and a half dozen ravens ricocheted around the room before flying out and into the sky with Maggie leaping joyfully after them.

  “Superior Blue!” Alexander said, eyebrows raised. He glanced at Team Thirteen behind him. “Is anything wrong?”

  “Not at all, Edison,” Superior Blue said. “I was hoping you could help me with a little show-and-tell for our new recruits.”

  Alexander rubbed his forearms. He was a few inches shorter than Jack and so skinny it was a wonder he didn’t sway when he stood upright. He cocked his head but stepped aside for everyone to enter. “Of course. However I can help.”

  A pair of ravens that had withstood the canine invasion perched behind Alexander, peering up at the visitors. They cawed loudly before hopping and flapping out of the way.

  The inside of the Workshop resembled what Jack imagined the International Space Station might look like if it were inhabited by a disorganized auto mechanic. In the main room a large glass table dominated the center of the space like a formal dining room table would. The glass top was actually a screen, and it displayed an image of a full-sized copper door.

  Asha immediately went to check out the odd objects stacked on the shelves on the wall next to the fireplace. A small silver tripod with a mounted laser scope began crawling away from her when she reached for it, scurrying up the wall like a spider. She snatched it.

  “Hey! Don’t touch anything, please!” Alexander said, peering over Superior Blue’s shoulder.

  Asha already had a pin-sized screwdriver in her hand. She also pulled from her pack a pair of glasses that Jack realized, when she looked up at them with gigantic eyeballs, was a portable microscope. “One of the gimbals is misaligned,” she called back. “It’s going to throw the laser off. I can hear you from in here.”

  “I built that myself.”

  “You built it wrong, then.” Asha didn’t look up. “But it does have an awesome intel chip. If I find another one around here, can I borrow it?”

  “Let her take it, Edison,” Superior Blue said. “She’s a Systemic minor. You must have noticed that she’s a natural engineer. She’ll find something interesting to do with it.”

  Asha frowned. “I’m not a Systemic minor. I just like to tinker with things.”

  “You’re correcting the work of Hadley’s tech,” Superior Blue informed her. “Trust me. You’re a Systemic minor.” Blue turned back to the image on the table. “That’s the Corpus Christi door that you reprogrammed, Alexander?”

  “Yes, sir.” Alexander snatched a tissue from a nearby box and blew his nose before he rubbed it vigorously. “That was the model I built off of. I just took out the portal chip and installed a new simulation dome program. See?”

  Alexander swiped at the screen and the door image turned ninety degrees. Where a dead bolt would be in a normal door, there was a narrow slot for a large chip.

  “Excellent work there, Edison,” Blue said. “Now. I need your assistance to log in to the shadow map. I’d like to give Team Thirteen a little demonstration. Just to catch them up, you understand.”

  Alexander hesitated. “You want me to hack into the Bunker, sir?”

  “It’s not hacking if I’m giving you permission. I just don’t want to waste valuable time marching Team Thirteen all the way to the Bunker, getting clearance from Director Darius, et cetera, et cetera.”

  “You are authorizing this yourself,” Alexander confirmed. “As the Superior.”

  “Absolutely. And no need to bother Director Darius with this.”

  “No, of course not,” Alexander agreed. He took a small breath and turned back to the glass table. He swiped over it, and the door flew offscreen. Then Alexander tapped his band, and a hologram hovered above his wrist. The sphere-shaped object was covered in symbols.

  Voss leaned in for a better look. “What is that thing?”

  “It’s a different interface I came up with. I use it to hack into . . . to access certain systems.” Alexander took the spherical hologram in his hands and began spinning it into different combinations, the way you might spin the sides of a Rubik’s Cube. “I call it a spin cipher. It’s easier and quicker to manipulate than working through endless stacks of code. This way allows me to create hundreds of combinations simultaneously. And it’s portable and it interfaces with anything. It’s actually kind of fun to just mess with. Here, I’ll send it to you.”

  Alexander flicked the hologram and it scattered into four separate spheres, each landing above the band of a member of Team Thirteen.

  “Check it out.” Freddy started spinning his cipher, reorganizing the pattern of symbols on the sphere. “I’m hacking the mainframe. Hack, hack. Hackity-hack-hack.”

  “That’s not what hacking sounds like, dude,” Voss interrupted.

  “Oh, so you’re the big hacking expert now?”

  Alexander continued trying combinations of symbols. After a couple minutes, a virtual map filled the screen.

  “You got into that really fast,” Asha pointed out. She placed the tripod on the wall next to her, and it scurried back to its place. “Also, I found an intel chip like the one in that little spider tripod thing. I’m borrowing it.”

  Alexander started to protest again, but Superior Blue cut him off. “I’m guessing this was not Edison’s first time logging in to the Bunker,” Superior Blue said. Alexander turned red.

  Blue called up a floating holographic keyboard and opened a dia
logue window on the screen. “I’ll use the training demonstration program. No need to further breach security by giving you a real-time look.”

  “Further breach security?” Alexander asked.

  The satellite view zoomed in on a crowd in a generic public park. Just behind the crowd, a purple flare hovered, the same size and shape as the humans. Blue pointed. “When a reaper chooses its target, something changes in its chemical makeup. The map is able to detect that change. That’s the purple flare you see.”

  “And the reapers just hunt random people?” Asha asked.

  “Random? Quite the opposite. Target selection is highly sophisticated,” Blue said. “The Shadow’s single-minded goal is to be the most powerful force in the world. That requires stripping people of the power to control their lives. In order to do that, however, the Shadow has to first break down human civilization as we know it. So what keeps our civilization from descending into darkness?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s simple: civilians themselves! More specifically, the remarkable individuals who keep our society standing and intact. At Hadley we call these individuals roots. Roots come from many different walks of life, but they all have two core characteristics.”

  Blue held up a finger. “First, they put others before themselves. This is not simply a moral decision. It is one that creates a culture and protects a society that benefits all, including the poor, the sick, and those who have suffered discrimination.”

  Another finger went up. “Second, roots are gifted speakers, leaders, writers, or activists—or all four—from across the political and socioeconomic spectrum. Roots do not simply believe in the principle of putting others first and strengthening society. They act on these beliefs. They use their power of influence. These individuals are the foundation of any civilization, and every civilization has them.”

  Superior Blue pointed at the shadow map. “Reapers hunt these individuals and attempt to kill them. This is how the Shadow seeks to destroy our civilization.”