The Freshman (Kingmakers)

by Sophie Lark

  “Welcome, Freshmen. Welcome, Seniors,” Professor Howell says pleasantly. “What a perfect day for the final challenge.”

  He’s right—the sky is clear and cloudless, the sun brilliant, and only the faintest hint of a breeze stirring the grass around our feet.

  “For this final challenge, you won’t need your entire team. Instead, you’ll be selecting six Freshmen and six Seniors to perform the final task.”

  “Six including ourselves?” Pippa clarifies.

  “Six in addition to yourselves,” Professor Howell says, smiling so that his pointed incisors show.

  “Will you be telling us what the task is first?” I ask. The parameters of the challenge would, of course, influence who I’d want to select.

  “No,” Professor Howell says, smiling even wider. “You’ll have to pick first.”

  Pippa and I both turn toward our respective teams, our eyes sweeping the eager and nervous faces before us.

  I’m torn, because my natural inclination is to pick the fastest, strongest, and most physically-gifted individuals. But what if the challenge is to build a pipe bomb or decode an encryption? Then I’d want someone like with more technical skills.

  “Make your selections,” Professor Howell prompts us.

  “Liam, Sam, Johnny, Sven, Mikhail, and Marcelline,” Pippa rattles off without hesitation.

  “Excellent. And you, Leo?” Professor Howell says.

  “Ares, Hedeon, and Anna . . .” I say. Those three are easy. But for the other three . . . without knowing the challenge, I think I should pick one student from each specialty: an Enforcer, a Spy, and an Accountant. “Silas. Isabel. And I guess . . . Matteo.”

  Matteo looks shocked at being chosen, and not particularly happy about it. I hope I’m not making a huge mistake.

  By contrast, Dean’s face instantly darkens when he sees that he’s been snubbed. He’s right to be pissed, in the sense that his practical and academic performance certainly warrants inclusion. But if he thinks I’m going to trust him to carry us to victory in the final challenge, he’s out of his fucking mind. The fact that he won’t be part of this at all is the best news I’ve heard so far.

  I’m only moderately confident in my last three choices. I picked Silas because if there’s a challenge that requires pure, raw strength, I don’t think anyone can beat him. On the other hand, he’s vicious and not particularly strategic. Picking him could easily blow up in my face.

  Isabel Dixon has some of the highest marks out of all the Spies, and I know she’s good with her hands, too, particularly in assembling bombs, guns, and machinery.

  Matteo is brilliant with numbers, codes, and research. But he’s clumsy and physically weak. If he ends up in some sort of combat challenge, we’re fucked.

  “The rest of you can return to the castle,” Professor Howell says, dismissing the students who weren’t selected. They head off, some clearly irritated at not being chosen, and others laughing and talking excitedly now that they’re free to simply enjoy the outcome without any pressure of performing.

  Only once we’re alone—the seven Freshmen, seven Seniors, and Professor Howell himself—does he rub his hands together in anticipation and say, “Excellent. Now, this is what we’ll be doing: this challenge is split into seven parts. Each teammate will have one task to complete. At the end of the task, you’ll receive a puzzle piece. Assemble all your pieces, solve the puzzle, and you’ll know where to find the final prize.”

  “So it’s a scavenger hunt,” Pippa says.

  “Essentially,” Professor Howell says, smiling in a way that makes me think it won’t be quite that simple.

  He kneels down to unlatch the wooden box, taking out a stack of hand-drawn and hand-letter maps. He hands seven to Pippa, and seven to me.

  “These are the maps noting the location of the challenges. Give one to each of your teammates, and then we will begin the race. You have five minutes to divide your maps.”

  He starts his stopwatch, and my team gathers around me to examine the maps.

  “That’s the library,” Matteo says, pointing to the first map.

  “Yes, obviously,” Hedeon says, rolling his eyes.

  “That’s the shooting range, so that will probably a marksmanship challenge . . .” I say, looking at the second map.

  “This one’s in the Armory. Bet it’s combat,” Isabel says.

  “This one here looks like the river bottom,” I say. “What kind of challenge could that be?”

  Ares shrugs, mystified.

  “And that one’s down in the village . . .” Hedeon says, frowning.

  It’s hard to know how to divide the maps without actually knowing what the corresponding challenges will be. I can hear the seconds ticking away on Professor Howell’s stopwatch.

  “Matteo, you can have the library,” I say, thrusting the map into his hand. I hope there’s not some kind of trick involved, like the library challenge is actually a feat of strength. “Hedeon, you take the shooting range, Isabel, go to the river bottom, and Silas, you take the Armory.”

  Silas grunts, his face as stony and expressionless as ever.

  “Ares, you go down to the village,” I say, thinking that it might possibly be something to do with sailing. Ares is the only one I know for sure can pilot a boat.

  “What are these last two?” Isabel asks.

  “That’s the sea caves,” Anna says, pointing.

  “How do you know that?” I ask her.

  She flushes. “I’ve been there.”

  “Do you want to take that challenge, then?”

  She hesitates. “No,” she says. “I’ll take this one . . . on the cliffs.”

  “I’ll do the caves, then,” I say.

  I mostly chose them because the caves are right next to the cliffs, and I’d rather stick close to Anna if I can. Just in case she needs my help.

  “Time,” Professor Howell says, clicking his stopwatch.

  I was so engrossed in dividing the maps that I didn’t pay any attention to what Pippa was doing. Maybe that was a mistake—maybe I should have tried to match up my players with hers. It won’t be good if Matteo has to face off against Liam, or Silas against Pippa.

  I grit my teeth, thinking that most of Pippa’s team looks older, wiser, and more prepared than mine. It doesn’t matter who I pair up—we’re already at a disadvantage.

  I shake my head hard to clear it. That’s not the way to think. We can do this, or we can’t—and we’ll find out soon enough.

  “Never mind about them,” I say to my team. “We’re not competing against them. We’re competing against ourselves. Don’t hesitate, don’t second-guess yourself, and whatever else you do, don’t you fucking quit.”

  “We won’t,” Ares says firmly.

  Professor Howell raises his starter pistol to the sky.

  “Ready . . .” he says. “GO!”

  I don’t even hear the pistol shot because I’m already off and running with Anna at my side. We’re sprinting east to the spot marked on the map—the place where she’ll have to ascend the steep limestone cliffs, and I’ll have to go the other way, down into the underground sea caves.

  Anna looks fresh and eager, running across the field as swift as a deer. Her hair streams behind her, golden in the sunshine, and I feel like it’s she and I in a race against each other.

  Off to our right, I see Johnny Hale and Mikhail Agapov jogging in a parallel direction, apparently having received the same maps as Anna and me.

  “Which challenge do you think Pippa chose?” I pant.

  “Who knows!” Anna pants. “How is she so terrifying when she’s so tiny?”

  “Are you scared of her, too?” I laugh. “I thought you’d get used to her living in the same dorm.”

  “Fuck no!” Anna cries. “It just gets worse. The other day she said Angelique’s perfume reeked, and she threw the bottle out the window.”

  “Did it reek?” I laugh, pressing my hand against the stitch in my side.


  “Well, yeah,” Anna admits. “Guess she did us all a favor. But she didn’t have to make her cry.”

  Anna and I have reached the point where we have to scrabble down a steep path to the beach below. I hold out my hand to help her and Anna ignores it, laughing and sliding down on her heels faster than I can follow.

  “Come on, slowpoke!” she shouts.

  I skid down after her, not caring if the loose gravel tears the shit out of my gym shorts, because after all, I’ll only be using them a couple more days.

  When we reach the beach, Anna and I have to part ways—her to scale the steep cliffs, and me to enter the caves.

  I look up at the cliffs, which seem impossibly steep and sheer.

  “I don’t see any ropes . . .” I say.

  “I don’t need any,” Anna replies, tossing her hair back over her shoulder.

  “Anna—”

  “I’ve got this, Leo!” she says, shaking her head at me. “Just go!”

  “Alright,” I say.

  I feel a strange hesitation to leave her, but I know Anna won’t tolerate me babying her just because we’re dating now. Besides, Johnny and Mikhail are right behind us. I really do need to hurry.

  “See you soon,” I say.

  With that, I run into the limestone caves, my sneakers splashing in the shallow pools of seawater that quickly deepen the further in I go.

  The map gave no indication of what I’d find in here. Even in the middle of the day, the sunlight fades within twenty yards of the entrance. I have to feel my way along, until I notice that the faint light up ahead isn’t sunshine at all, but rather the glow of a lamp.

  I follow that light, hearing the pants and splashes of Mikhail right behind me.

  We reach the lamp almost at the same time.

  There, at the edge of a deep, dark pool, sits two sets of scuba diving equipment.

  “Oh, shit,” Mikhail says.

  Without answering him, I sit down and start to pull on the fins, weight belt, and tank.

  Mikhail looks distinctly nervous, but he follows suit.

  “You think we have to go in there?” he says.

  “Must be,” I agree.

  “Just . . . don’t get grabby,” he says.

  “Professor Howell didn’t say anything about fighting for puzzle pieces. You stay out of my way and I’ll stay out of yours,” I tell him.

  “No problem,” Mikhail agrees with relief.

  I hope this puzzle piece isn’t as tiny as a standard jigsaw. Otherwise I don’t know how in the fuck I’ll ever find it down in a pitch-black sea cave, even with a headlamp on.

  Pulling my mask down over my face, I drop down into the water.

  It’s cold, especially with no wetsuit. My headlamp illuminates only a tiny column of space ahead of me.

  The limestone walls of the cave look pale and ghostly, like they’re carved from bone.

  I can only guess which direction I’m supposed to go. As I swim along, carefully kicking my fins, I realize this is not a single cave. Instead, I see openings branching off on all sides. It’s a honeycomb of passages and caverns, all interconnected, and all horribly alike. Some of the passageways are narrow. I have to squeeze through, fighting the awful sense of claustrophobia, and the knowledge of what will happen to me if I get wedged in a space I can’t escape. I only have one tank of air.

  I swim and I search, trying to hold onto of my sense of direction. This is a labyrinth. If I’m not careful, I’ll search the same caverns over and over, passing right by the place where the puzzle piece is hidden.

  I have to assume that it’s not tiny, that it’s something a person could reasonably find with only an hour’s worth of air.

  As I kick through one particularly large cavern, I see Mikhail swimming in the opposite direction. He checks my hands to see if I’ve found anything, and I shake my head. He makes an irritated gesture, like he’s already tired of looking, and we pass each other by.

  Twice I’m scanning for the puzzle piece and I accidentally hit my head on limestone. The second time I pop up in surprise and my head breaks the surface of the water, though I’m still deep down underground. I realize that some of the caverns have air at the top—just a couple of inches between water and stone. I scan that area too, in case that’s where my prize is hidden, but I suspect it will be deeper down.

  The swimming helps to keep my muscles warm. Still, as the minutes pass I’m getting slower and stiffer. I’m a long way from the entrance now. I hope I find the puzzle piece soon, or it’s going to be difficult to swim back.

  The caverns are all beginning to blur together. I have to trust the imperfect map in my head that I haven’t seen this one before.

  Right as I’m turning, a glint of gold catches my eye.

  There . . . there at the bottom, where I suspected it would be . . .

  I dive down to the sandy cavern floor, closing my hand around a hunk of metal the size of my fist. It’s smooth on one curved side, uneven on the others. It looks like it might be a sphere when it’s all put together.

  I tuck the piece in my pocket, then turn around to swim out of the caverns again.

  I’m running low on air now, but I probably have ten or twenty minutes left, depending how hard I’m kicking. Plenty of time to get out of here.

  I only saw one puzzle piece, which means that either Mikhail already found his, or the two pieces were hidden in separate caverns.

  Pondering on this, I accidentally take a wrong turn at a branch point and run into a dead end.

  “Fuck,” I mutter into my regulator. I can’t make mistakes like that. Every second counts.

  As I’m about to turn around, something seizes me from behind. My regulator is wrenched out of my mouth, blinding me with a spray of silvery bubbles.

  I whip around, thinking that Mikhail has run into me, or for some inexplicable reason has decided to attack me. Deep down in my brain the less rational part of me is conjuring up images of sea monsters.

  Instead I see something much worse: a boy in a wetsuit and goggles, with a shock of white-blond hair floating above him like pale seaweed, and a knife clutched in his hand.

  Dean Yenin.

  I expect him to attack me. To stab me with the knife.

  Instead he slashes my air hose with his knife. He slices off the regulator in one swift cut, then kicks hard with his fins, swimming away.

  I chase after him, knowing that he’s holding the one and only thing that can keep me alive: his air tank.

  He’s swimming with all his might, trying to get away from me, and I’m doing the same, stroking with my arms and kicking hard with my fins even though my lungs are already burning.

  I seize him by the leg. He kicks me in the face, his heel connecting with my nose. Doggedly, I grab hold of him again. We’re tussling, fighting, the twin circles of light from our headlamps sweeping wildly around.

  Our underwater punches are dull and dreamlike, and Dean’s violet-colored eyes are crazed behind the glass lenses of his scuba mask. His bared teeth grip the mouthpiece of his regulator.

  I expect him to try to stab me with the knife, but strangely he shoves it in his belt instead, so he can pummel and throttle me with both hands. I realize with a sick and chilling certainty that it’s because he doesn’t want any stab wounds on my body. He wants this to look like an accident when they find me drowned.

  My lungs are screaming, convulsing as they try to force me to draw a breath that will only flood them with seawater.

  I manage to rip Dean’s regulator out of his mouth, but before I can take a breath he hits me again, breaking free from my grip and swimming away with the only working air tank.

  I could try to grab him one last time, but I know I only have a few seconds left. So instead I turn and swim as fast and hard as I can for the one thing that might save me.

  No time for wrong turns now. Black spots are already flashing in front of my eyes, and the insistent gulps of my lungs won’t be denied much longer.

  I�
�ve got five seconds at most.

  Four . . .

  Three . . .

  My head shoots up, hitting the top of the cavern. I press my face against the stone, gasping for air.

  I’ve found the two inches of space at the top of the cavern. I can breathe, but only by staying right here with my face tilted up into the tiny bit of space between the limestone and the water.

  I’m trapped.

  I could try to take a deep breath and hold it while I swim to the next cave, but I already know it’s too far. I can’t go forward or back.

  I have no idea how long this air will last. There’s only a couple of inches—how much oxygen does a person need every minute, every hour? I haven’t saved myself, I’ve only delayed the inevitable. This air will run out and I’ll suffocate just as surely as I would underwater.

  The salty seawater laps my face, colder than ever. I have to lift my chin higher to keep it out of the water.

  Another cold burst hits my legs and I tilt my chin higher still.

  The space is shrinking.

  The tide is coming in.

  32

  Dean

  I swim out of the caverns as fast as I can, looking carefully around to be sure that Mikhail Agapov is nowhere nearby.

  No one can see me.

  I wore gloves. I dropped Leo’s regulator in the passageway. It will look like it tore off while he was swimming through, and he panicked and drowned.

  As I climb back out of the water, I see only the lantern standing next to the pool. No discarded tank or flippers—Mikhail isn’t out yet.

  I hesitate, wondering if there’s any possibility of him finding Leo down there. No . . . Leo was almost out of air already. He must have drowned within minutes. Whether Mikhail finds him or not, he’s already dead.

  I carry my own wetsuit, flippers, and tank out with me. I’ve got to smuggle them back up to the school, into the storage room next to the underground pool.

  It’s essential to hide all the evidence. There can’t be any missing equipment, any hint that what happened to Leo wasn’t an accident.

  I had Bram and Valon staked out at the shooting range and the river bottom. Those were our only chances to attack Leo in secret. If he’d gone to the Armory or the library or even the village there’d be too many witnesses around.