The Dark Academy

by Gerhard Gehrke

  “Did you see that?” Tyler asked. He looped the video a few more times before moving on to a third pass incompletion. Again, the ball appeared to have been struck by the wind before it could make it to the receiver.

  “Zoom out,” Brendan said. He looked at the rest of the visible players, students, and people watching the game. Banners and flags hung limp.

  “You see it?” Tyler asked.

  “Show me the ball again. As close as you can.”

  Tyler filled the screen with a close-up of the ball in flight. The image was pixelated. Brendan got up and looked at the screen. It was only there for a couple of frames, but a tiny insect-sized dot had appeared out of nowhere and attached itself to the ball.

  “What is that? A bug or a drone or just a smudge of dirt?”

  “We don’t know,” Lucille said. “We want you to help us find out.”

  Brendan leaned on the table. None of his drones, even the small agile ones, could easily intercept a ball in flight. This was something Charlotte’s little black ones might be able to do, but they were much bigger and would have been spotted trying a maneuver like what he was seeing. If that was what he was seeing. But the black drones had all been lost.

  “Maybe it really is just a bug,” Brendan said. “Or a tiny bird.” He tried to sound less interested than he was.

  “Smaller than a hummingbird?” Lucille said. “No such thing. And what bug could push a ball in flight off its course?”

  “How much does a football weigh?”

  “One pound, give or take a half ounce,” Tyler said.

  “So who do you think did it? Someone must have made the drone and programmed or piloted it.”

  Tyler shrugged. “One of them.”

  “A Cathedral Valley student,” Lucille said. “Tyler went through footage from previous years and didn’t uncover anything. They just had good players. But then it did happen last year. Whoever did this is likely a sophomore. Which means they’ll be there this year, manipulating the games. We want you to do the same back to them.”

  The thought of a drone that could move that quickly and push so hard filled Brendan’s head with ideas. He had always been focused on lifting power and adding more weapons and functions. It was the same trajectory his dad had been on up until his final public crime. But Myron Reece from Not-Earth had made tiny drones with knockout drugs. Smaller drones. Faster.

  Brendan found himself nodding. “You’ll help me with my dad.”

  “Yes,” Lucille said. “That’s what friends are for.”

  “I’m in.”

  4. Split

  Brendan had an odd guilty feeling roiling in his chest as he sat with Tina, Vlad, and Poser on the couch in the lounge. Some well-photographed supers fights had occurred over the weekend and were now posted online, fully edited with music and commentary.

  A masked man with a glider swooped down from a high-rise. San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid stood behind him as he shot above a gang of bandits in electric body armor. Their sparkling hand weapons were linked to neon-lined metal backpacks. The bandits all fired and missed, their blasts of energy sending streaks of light up into the air. The man with the glider dropped a purple smoke bomb that dispersed the gang.

  “This feels really scripted,” Tina said.

  “I don’t care,” Vlad said. “That was awesome. He must be going at least seventy miles per hour.”

  The glider made a tight turn and came back. A few gang members had taken cover behind vehicles parked to either side of the street. They fired again. The glider was struck, but the man flared the glider’s nose up and bled off speed. He then slipped out of the glider’s harness, dropped to the street, and tumbled forward, only to come up running with a sawed-off shotgun he’d pulled off his back. He fired at a gang member who fell to the sidewalk, clutching his chest.

  “Rubber bullet or sabot round,” Tina said. She got out her tablet and scanned a web page. “Rubber bullets, according to his website.”

  “Well, even if this is scripted, that’s going to leave a mark,” Vlad said.

  “What’s his name again?” Poser asked.

  “Fallen Angel,” Tina said. “But his website says ‘Angle.’”

  Vlad snorted.

  She kept reading. “Huh. Another typo. Dangling participle. More misspellings. Fallen Angle doesn’t need an agent, he needs an editor. Besides, we jumped higher than this guy flies. And punched harder. We took down a warlord and an evil headmaster and an army of invading superpowered biker creeps. This guy just built a rocket pack. We were so much cooler.”

  “You wish you had more upstream food and drinks.” Vlad’s statement wasn’t a question. Tina didn’t reply.

  Brendan hadn’t said a word. He watched the action, but all he could think about was getting to the electronics lab to work on a drone that could intercept a football. Poser snapped his fingers in Brendan’s face.

  “That’s annoying,” Brendan said.

  “That’s why I do it. Is this boring you? We can put on some cartoons or a game show or maybe a singing contest.”

  “This is fine.”

  Poser snatched the remote from Vlad’s hand and turned the TV off. Several other students in the back of the lounge yelled at him to turn it back on, but Poser ignored them.

  “You going to share the nature of the beast that crawled up your butt?”

  Tina and Vlad were staring at him now and waiting.

  “I hate to do this,” Brendan said, “but maybe we all need to go to the electronics lab. I have some things to tell you, and I might need your help.”

  They had the lab to themselves. With only the warm brown lights over the workbenches turned on, the A.V. Club looked like a shadowy gang of conspirators.

  “We’ve been through some stuff,” Brendan said. “My dad’s still out there somewhere, and so is his twin. I know we all tried to do what we could, and I’m grateful to all of you. But I think Agent Walters is holding something back. Lucille has offered to help.”

  Tina snapped her gum.

  “In exchange, I’m helping her and Tyler figure out how Cathedral Valley is cheating at their football games.”

  “What do you know about football?” Tina asked.

  “He showed me footage. Looks like someone is sending in a small drone or something to give the ball enough of a nudge to make a pass go off target.”

  “How could someone do that and not be noticed?”

  “It doesn’t happen a lot, and it’s really small. Three times in the one game they showed me.” He described how the blip or bug intercepted the ball and changed its course.

  “I’d like to see that footage,” Vlad said.

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Tina said. “Why are you even considering this, Brendan? We don’t owe Lucille anything. You were the one who rescued Tyler after Lucille abandoned you guys. And what can she do besides get you in a bunch of trouble with the feds? Let the agent do his job. You have us to help if he comes around again bugging you.”

  “How strong is she now?” Poser asked. “I missed her whole mind-control power spike with the upstream food. That’s all gone now, I presume, so what can she actually do?”

  Brendan was still looking at Tina, surprised at the venom in her voice. They had all tangled with Lucille before, but the bad blood between the two girls hadn’t abated. “I don’t know what she can still do. Maybe nothing. But maybe she can at least find out if the agent is being straight with me when he says he’s trying to find my father. He sounded more interested in things my father might have passed on to me. Something’s weird about the guy.”

  “Lucille is useless,” Tina said. “She’s not going to find out anything we can’t. You don’t have to help her.”

  “Some-body is jea-lous,” Poser sang, conducting with an imaginary baton as the words came out of his mouth.

  Tina pushed him hard enough that he stumbled back into another table. Brendan took Tina’s arm to hold her back, but she pulled away from him. Vlad helped Po
ser back up.

  “What is wrong with you?” Poser asked.

  Tina’s attention was on Brendan. “You can’t sit and watch a single basketball game with me, but you’d go out with Lucille for coffee?”

  Brendan was dumbstruck. He realized enough other students had seen him and Lucille together that word must have gotten back to her. “Tyler was there too,” Brendan said. “We only talked about football.” He knew how lame it sounded even as the words left his mouth.

  Tina stormed out of the lab. Vlad paused long enough to see that Brendan wasn’t moving to follow. “I’ll talk to her,” he said before leaving.

  “Just you and me, brah,” Poser said.

  Brendan plopped down on a stool and let out a long sigh.

  5. Temecula

  On Thursday night Brendan and Poser met with Lucille and Tyler to go to the Cathedral Valley High football game. Their school was playing Chaparral High School in Temecula. A chaperone, a senior from the Dutchman Springs football team named Chuck, joined them. He and Tyler slapped hands, arms, and backs in a quick series of moves Brendan had seen before among the other football players, a clandestine handshake worthy of any secret society of a bygone era.

  The hyperloop station was busy, but the train system delivered more pods to meet the need and soon they were being conveyed at five hundred miles per hour towards Cathedral Valley. Brendan felt a thrill as his pod accelerated and propelled him along, a deep-gut rush that momentarily distracted him.

  Tina wasn’t speaking with him, and she hadn’t replied to the text he’d sent asking her to meet him for breakfast. Vlad had tried to prompt Brendan to drop his business with Lucille, but Brendan told him he wouldn’t. Now Vlad wasn’t speaking with him, either.

  A chill buffeted them as they exited the station. Lucille wrapped her thin sweater around herself and shivered. She leaned on Tyler and they walked towards the school. Other visitors from Cathedral Valley were moving along with them.

  “Whooo, Wildcats!” Poser cheered. People stared at him.

  “Valley Cats,” Brendan said. “Cathedral High Valley Cats.”

  “Yeah, them too. What exactly is a valley cat, anyway?”

  “Probably something that’s extinct,” Lucille said.

  “You’re dark.”

  Brendan watched the other students and adults, trying to get a feel of the Cathedral Valley crowd. Lots of team sweatshirts and neat haircuts. Everyone’s clothing looked new. Affluent, and more diverse than Dutchman Springs, but otherwise not too different. But as it was a private school, he had no idea if this was a true sampling of the town’s population. He tried to guess which of the faces might belong to a fellow inventor or drone pilot capable of affecting the outcome of a football game.

  They lingered near the back of the visitor bleachers, near one of the end zones. About two hundred people were taking their seats and mingling around the Cathedral Valley sidelines.

  “What are we watching for?” Brendan asked.

  “Anyone acting strange,” Tyler said. “Up to something. Paying more than the usual attention to the ball.”

  “You just described us,” Poser said. He made a conspiratorial look around. “And maybe everyone here. Lots of weirdos.”

  “Everyone here is watching the game,” Lucille said. “So how about anyone using a remote, like to pilot one of your drones? Doesn’t that take a tablet?”

  “With some drones, yes,” Brendan said. “Phones work too. But my dad and his double used flat, flexible circuit panels that could be stuck to the skin or on clothes. I’ll scout around once the game starts.”

  Poser clipped a small camera to a pair of protective glasses taken from the lab. “Well, whatever happens, at least now we’ll get a high-definition shot of the ball with image stabilization. Too bad Soren’s not here.”

  Brendan looked at Lucille for some sort of reaction but she gave none. Soren had once hung out with them and had even helped in their fight against the headmaster before temporarily falling under her influence. Now he would have nothing to do with any of them. Lucille’s jaw was trembling from the cold. Tyler took off his school jacket and draped it over her shoulders.

  “Game’s about to start,” a security guard said. “Please find a place to sit in the bleachers.”

  The others went to sit, but Brendan lingered. He saw not everyone was taking a seat. A group of three adults were looking at a tablet screen, the blue light flickering on their faces. Brendan got close and craned his neck. They were tall and he had to shift a few times to be able to see what they were doing. He caught a glimpse of someone in a looped gif waterskiing and crashing into a dock. The adults were laughing. One saw Brendan looking and blocked the view.

  Many other spectators had their devices out. Some were texting and a few were taking videos as the Cathedral Valley team finished their warm-up and took to their benches. The team didn’t have many players, about half what the home team had across the field. Many of the boys looked small and a few were downright scrawny. The largest player in the center stood out.

  “Johnson,” the back of his jersey read. Bull, Cathedral Valley High’s star player.

  The coach was walking the sidelines with his assistant, giving a pep talk. The squad was nodding. Bull had his attention fixed on the coach, stiff as a statue. A referee and two officials took to the field and teams came out for the coin toss. Temecula won the call and chose to receive the kickoff.

  It was hard not to watch Bull as play started. He was several inches taller and wider than the largest player on either his own team or the opposition’s. As a defensive lineman, he knocked down one player after another in pursuit of whoever had the ball. And he was fast once he started running. Only a few of the most agile players could outmaneuver him. Cathedral Valley stopped Temecula’s march up the field and forced them to punt the ball away. Bull stayed on the field as the Cathedral Valley offensive line came and joined him.

  Brendan climbed the bleachers and squeezed in next to Tyler and Poser. “He’s allowed to stay on like that as both offense and defense?”

  “No rule against it,” Tyler said. “We do it. A coach would be crazy to do that on a big team. A player will get exhausted, get injuries, so it’s a risk. With a small team, there’s no choice. But no one is able to do everything.”

  Bull appeared to be proving Tyler wrong. He trounced anyone that got close to their quarterback, and their quarterback used Bull as his shield. He only got harried when fading back too far for a throw. On a fourth down, instead of punting, the ball was handed to Bull. Bull ran forward through three defensive linemen and made their first down.

  “They should do that every time,” Brendan said, unexpectedly caught up in the action. Watching the giant take on what appeared to be most of the opposing team was a thrill. Then a chill came over him. What if Bull was some upstream refugee like Charlotte? What if he had his own source of water and special food supplementing his incredible strength and abilities?

  He leaned around Tyler and nudged Lucille. She seemed to be half paying attention, half freezing to death. “Have you ever considered he’s from upstream?”

  “Bull’s been a big boy all his life,” she said through chattering teeth.

  “Born big, raised big, just got bigger once he starting playing ball,” Tyler said with a begrudging grumble.

  “Anyone check for steroids or cybernetic implants?” Poser asked.

  Cathedral Valley led the game 14–10 by the late second quarter. Then it happened. They were well on their way towards a third touchdown when Bull was tackled by a pair of players and brought down. He didn’t get up. The coach and a medic came running out. After a minute, they got him up and helped him limp off the field.

  Tyler studied every move as if he were preparing for a test. “His ankle.”

  “Twisted it?”

  “Temecula cornerback landed on it. Might have been intentional.”

  “But no whistle or flag. So it was legal.”

  Tyler nodded
. “Happens all the time.”

  It took the refs a few whistle blasts to get the Cathedral Valley team back on the line. Bull was put on the bench and his foot was iced. Play resumed, but Temecula stopped the offensive drive cold and the game paused for halftime. Their chaperone offered to buy hot cocoa for everyone.

  “I’ll go with you,” Brendan said. They went down to a crowded coffee stand set up in the nearby parking lot. He kept an eye on the crowd. Everything appeared so civil. Most of the students had their attention on the field or on one another. When he saw the line would take about ten minutes, he slipped away from the chaperone and walked along the Temecula sidelines.

  Things were jubilant there. Drums and noisemakers accompanied the cheerleaders as they ran through a well-choreographed routine. The Temecula coach was speaking loud enough to be overheard. But when Brendan paused to listen, a couple of Temecula students approached.

  “Wrong side of the field,” one said.

  “But I’m not with them.”

  The Temecula student pointed back the way Brendan had come. Brendan considered sidestepping the boys, but other students were now watching.

  “Go Valley Cats!” Brendan said. He turned and went back to the Cathedral Valley sidelines.

  ***

  The game turned after halftime. Cathedral High’s defense couldn’t keep up and Temecula scored, taking the lead with a long pass landing right in the arms of their receiver. A perfect throw. Brendan watched Bull and the Cathedral Valley fans and saw the usual displays of disappointment. Bull clearly wanted to return to the field but was obedient when the coach pointed him back down. A trainer was rewrapping his ankle.

  Brendan walked the back of the bleachers to the other side. A few students had detached themselves from the game and were talking and vaping. Clouds of silvery air blew from their mouths, scented heavily with vanilla and mint. No adults were visible and no one paid him any mind. In an area around an equipment shed that had no working lights, Brendan saw a student fiddling with something in the shadows. He got closer and saw it wasn’t one student but two, kissing and groping each other. He turned and walked back to the field, embarrassed.