The Academy: Making of a Ruler (The Eagle King's Academy Book 1)

by C. C. Monö

  Axel took a deep breath and opened his eyes. Izabella was standing next to him, her head held high.

  “No, sir.”

  “How you think followers would react if they saw this? What would homosexuals say?”

  Izabella hesitated.

  “They’d be upset.”

  “Hai. And angry. So did you think safety when going to Mr Hallman?”

  “No, sir.”

  Mr Nakata turned to Axel.

  “You homosexual?”

  Axel frowned.

  “No.”

  “You think it is bad?”

  “To be gay? Of course not!”

  “Then why so upset with Ms Martins?”

  In the light from the projector, Axel caught a glimpse of the students’ unreadable faces. What were they thinking? Did they believe he was lying?

  “I wasn’t upset. I just told her I’m not gay!”

  Mr Nakata was quiet for a moment. Then he clasped his hands behind his back and approached Axel with slow, determined steps.

  “If you not gay, why you not sleep with her?” he asked. “You have no girlfriend, no?”

  Axel looked down at the annoying little man, feeling his anger grow.

  “No, I don’t have a girlfriend, and I don’t see why I have to justify my decision to you.”

  “Oh, why justify?” There was a disturbing twinkle in Mr Nakata’s eyes. “Because you want people to follow, Mr Hallman. This is strange behaviour. You, a young man, saying no to beautiful woman like Ms Martins.”

  “Yeah,” Izabella hissed. “It makes no sense, whatsoever.”

  “Hey, I like Izabella, but as a friend. I don’t love her.”

  “Why did you not tell her this?”

  “I did! I told her I didn’t know her well enough. I said…”

  Mr Nakata looked at the screen behind him.

  “This is very strange, Mr Hallman. I see no evidence here. Did you?” he asked his class. They all shook their heads. “See? No one saw you say this. Why do you not tell the truth, Mr Hallman?”

  Axel snorted, pushing down his anger.

  “You know I’m not lying. If you just keep playing that clip, you’ll see that I’m right. But you’re not going to do that, are you?”

  Mr Nakata crossed his arms over his chest.

  “But there is no more clip.”

  “This is ridiculous. You’re wasting our time, sir. I’m not going to get angry.”

  “So you admit. You are gay?”

  Axel cleared his throat and gave the teacher a wide, strained smile.

  “No, I’m not gay. Of course, I can’t prove it since you’re the only one with the video, but I can tell you this; if I had been gay, I wouldn’t be ashamed of it. I might even have asked you out on a date.” This brought a few giggles from the others. “Now can we please stop this nonsense?”

  Mr Nakata stood motionless for a moment, his eyes on Axel. Then he bowed his head a little and backed away.

  “Good, Mr Hallman,” he said, turning to the class. “What is right and what is wrong makes no difference. What matters is your reaction. Enemy can use anything against you. Even truth. Never forget that.” He nodded to Aseem. “Mr Kamala! Your turn.”

  An hour later, the last student rushed back to his seat, blushing with embarrassment. Axel felt relieved that it was all over. Next to him, Thabo sulked after having relived a conversation with his mother, the only person in the world who still had the power to make him feel childlike and frail. It had been a harmless video, but it bothered Thabo nonetheless.

  “You are all angry and sad,” Mr Nakata declared. “That is good. Will make you think next time. It is time you behave as rulers.” He began to stroll down between the desks. “Wherever you go, you might be watched. Whatever you say, someone might listen. Enemies do not care about truth. They care about winning. You have to be strong, powerful, and clever. If not, you’ll fail.”

  Julie raised her hand.

  “Will you remove the cameras in our apartments, sir?”

  Mr Nakata shook his head.

  “That is wrong question, Ms Baston. You must ask; can you live with people spying on you? No place is safe. You can trust no one. Even your closest friend can become your enemy.”

  Axel glanced at the others. A few months ago, he would have found Mr Nakata’s comment absurd. Now he wasn’t so certain.

  CHAPTER 71

  The young man and his father got off at Amersham underground station, the end of the Metropolitan line. The British winter offered nothing but a cold drizzle on this grey afternoon, and the two men hurried across the platform towards the exit.

  “Do you think we lost them?” the young man asked with a nervous tingle in his gut.

  His father made a quick scan of the platform. There were no more than a handful of other travellers, all of them preoccupied with other things. He seemed to relax.

  “I do, but let’s not take any chances. Come on.”

  They picked up their speed, hurrying towards the exit. Watchers were cunning and effective soldiers. They were fiercely loyal to the Academy and kept a keen eye on anyone or anything they considered to be a high risk. Vanishing from their radar had not been an easy task.

  Thor was waiting for them as agreed, and he greeted them as old friends.

  “The others are already waiting for you.”

  “And Cat?” the young man asked.

  “She’s there,” Thor said with a mischievous grin. “Don’t worry, lover boy.”

  The young man ignored the teasing and slipped into the back of the car with his bag.

  Thor took them on a twenty-minute drive to their hideout cottage in Lee Commons, a small and charming village, about an hour’s drive outside London. As Thor had promised, the others were already there; Smooth, his daughter Cat, and Falcon. The owners of the house and tenders of this safe haven, a lovely elderly couple named Edward and Tilly Porter, were also there but withdrew once they’d greeted their guests.

  The red-bricked cottage, with its low ceilings, narrow corridors, and small windows, had a pocket-sized but cosy feel to it. The smallness, however, was an illusion. There were two floors with more rooms than would be expected.

  “I took a room upstairs,” Cat whispered as they hugged. “The one at the end of the corridor.”

  She gave him a light kiss on the cheek, filling the young man with such lustful warmth it sent a shiver of excitement through his body. She squeezed his hand and then went to greet his father.

  The young man grabbed his bag and took the cramped stairs to the second floor. He chose a room a few doors down from Cat, overlooking the great garden. He couldn’t wait until their late-night rendezvous, but first there were serious matters to discuss.

  He took a shower, changed, and headed down. Following the smell of pizza and wine, he found the others in the intimate dining room. They were waiting for him around a long table, lit up by numerous candles. In the warm light, they all joked, laughed and chatted while soft music played in the background.

  The young man smiled. It felt good to see them all gathered like this. He took a seat next to Cat and squeezed her hand under the table.

  After dinner, the six individuals took their drinks to the tranquil living room. They lit a fire and, gradually, the room fell silent. Smooth picked up his glass and examined the dark colour of his scotch.

  “Let us begin,” he said. “As you know, Mr Hallman has been contacted. He appeared confused, but, as far as we know, he’s kept the experience to himself. Nevertheless, there are a few things we need to discuss. We all know our success depends on Mr Hallman’s balancing skills.” The young man nodded along with the others. Their entire plan depended on Axel’s ability to impress his teachers while maintaining a natural scepticism towards the E.K.A. “We’ve received some worrying news, however. Mr Hallman’s scepticism, or rather his questions, are beginning to annoy the professors.”

  “Not unlike what happened to Ms Wangai,” Falcon observed. He was si
tting in an armchair, one hand resting in the palm of the other. “Am I right?”

  “I believe you are.” Smooth raised his glass to his lips and took a deep swig. He looked out at the others with his dark, intelligent eyes. “I’ve been told a few of the teachers have even contacted Professor Jackson to discuss relevant measures. They’re beginning to consider Mr Hallman a trouble maker.”

  “In other words, exactly like Ms Wangai,” the old man said while scratching his beard.

  “So what do we do?” Cat asked.

  “He needs to understand the danger he’s in,” the young man said.

  The room fell silent, except for the crackling fire. Everyone was contemplating the precarious situation, attacking the problem from various angles.

  “What if we give him another gentle push,” Falcon suggested at last. “Perhaps we can encourage his scepticism while at the same time hint at the situation he’s in?”

  Smooth was pleased.

  “Any ideas?

  CHAPTER 72

  In the background, fateful music played. The man stared at his screens. This was crazy. They were pushing their luck. Only a few weeks had passed since their last operation, and rumours had it that Professor Jackson had been entering the Eagle Eye on more than one occasion. Of course, that could be a coincidence, but if Mr Nakata and Professor Jackson suspected a breech, then completing the next assignment would be treacherous.

  Rubbing his exhausted eyes, he wondered what he’d gotten himself into. Beside him lay the gold-plated communication device with the commands. For security reasons, Thor had kept the bigger plan a secret, but the instructions themselves were clear. The relevant text files had been sent. Now they were waiting for him to do his part.

  They had no idea what they were asking. Programming the Speechomat wasn’t a problem. The difficulty was accessing it. To manipulate the software, he had to hack into Mr Hallman’s personal database protected by the ESAFE system. Getting past ESAFE was just as difficult as getting into EKCOM, which meant it was doable, but not easy. The risks were high, mainly because any changes made to the Speechomat software were traceable. There was no way around it. One could hide who made the changes, but never the fact that changes had occurred.

  The man drew a deep breath, shook his hands in an attempt to release a little tension, and then he attacked the ESAFE.

  CHAPTER 73

  During the first couple of weeks, following Mr Nakata’s dreadful class, Izabella avoided Axel. She seemed angry with him, which was absurd since she’d come on to him, and not the other way around. Paul, on the other hand, kept his distance from both Izabella and Axel. If it was because he was embarrassed or angry, Axel didn’t know. Nor did he care much. It wasn’t his fault that Paul had made a fool of himself.

  By the third week, things started to improve. It began with Izabella who, lo and behold, apologised to Axel for her behaviour. It was by no means a heartfelt apology but, coming from her, it was impressive nonetheless.

  “She must like you a great deal,” Thabo later observed when Axel told him what’d happened. “I never thought Izabella would apologise to anyone.”

  Realising he was right, Axel swallowed his pride and made an effort to patch things up with her. It wasn’t very hard. A few clever compliments and their relationship began to warm. Soon after that, Paul and Izabella buried the hatchet, and, even if things would never be what they had been, at least the three friends could move on.

  But just as life within the Academy seemed to be heading back to normal, or as normal as one could expect it to be within the E.K.A., something happened, something that catapulted Axel into a new state of fear and confusion.

  A week after his apology to Izabella, he decided to do a little communication training in the Speechomat before going to bed. He turned on the machine and put on his 3D glasses. As he shut the door, the screen lit up and in the distance came the eagle. By now Axel was so used to the whole procedure he didn’t even flinch when the bird flew right over his head. He waited for it to make its circle, but, as soon as it landed, Axel knew there was something different about this start-up.

  The eagle still looked the same, but it had landed just a little bit more to the right than usual. Axel waited for the bow but instead the eagle gave off a terrifying screech, fluttered its wings, and glanced over its shoulder.

  In the distance, threatening clouds began to form. The eagle turned towards the approaching storm. The temperature dropped, lightning struck, and the walls shook with the roaring thunder.

  Axel grabbed the podium. What the hell…? Strong winds ripped through the Speechomat, so fierce they brought tears to his eyes. The floor started to vibrate.

  The eagle screeched again and out of the nearing cloud came a tiny bird with an incredible speed. It flew right past Axel’s head, followed by a powerful gust of wind. Then came another bird, and another. Soon a whole army of birds appeared. They whizzed past his head, and then, as abruptly as they had appeared, the birds vanished.

  A moment of peace left the eagle shuddering under the darkening sky. Axel held his breath, waiting as he sensed there was more to come. And come, it did. In a sudden explosion, the army of birds returned. They came over his head and from the sides. The Speechomat became a confusion of wind, sound and blurring colours. Axel was standing in chaos of war, watching the small birds unleash their fury on the eagle. It lasted for no more than a few seconds, and then, when the small birds took off, the eagle was gone. Remaining was the eagle’s golden crown in a puddle of blood.

  Shocked, Axel stared at the macabre sight. Slowly he released his grip off the sides of the podium. The light in the Speechomat died and for a moment, Axel was standing in complete darkness. Then a few golden words appeared in front of him.

  “The E.K.A. is selling a lie.” Axel read the words as confusion, anger, and fear filled him. Another sentence appeared. “Who do you think is paying for it?”

  Then followed a newspaper clipping; a short article that Axel read with rising curiosity.

  CHAPTER 74

  “What class do we have after lunch?” Aseem asked, before shoving a large piece of sushi into his mouth with his chopsticks.

  They were sitting in a secluded area of the restaurant, enjoying a delicious Asian buffet while classical music played in the background.

  “That’s odd,” Axel said, studying his schedule. “I have something called IDT: Psychology.” IDT, or “Individual Training”, was a training method, aimed to give the students a personalized lesson with one of their teachers. Mr Bell was a frequent user of IDT when working with the student’s etiquette skills. “Why am I meeting a psychologist?”

  “I guess it’s your first ‘emotional assessment’,” Dalilah said, picking through her salad.

  Like Paul, Madame Garon had put Dalilah on a strict diet, which meant no unhealthy food and limited access to alcohol. “The rest of us are having Quality Assurance with Professor Jackson.”

  There were a few moans around the table.

  “Emotional assessment?” Paul asked, glancing at Aseem’s plate with obvious envy. “Is that what Professor Jackson talked about a few weeks ago?”

  “Yeah,” Dalilah replied, pushing an olive aside. “But why we need to see a psychologist every semester, I don’t know. It’s stupid, if you ask me.”

  “I guess I’ll know more when I meet the shrink,” Axel said and turned his attention to his plate. He tucked some noodles and a tender, juicy piece of chicken into his mouth. While chewing, he considered the restaurant with its extravagant design and lavish furniture. He saw Cordelia and Julia loading their plates with food at the buffet, and behind them, a waitress walked by with a coffee pot made of gold.

  The E.K.A. is selling a lie. Who do you think is paying for it?

  “How can the school afford all of this?” Axel pondered aloud.

  “What, the food?” Aseem asked, while, with a distracted expression on his face, he tried to grab a pea with his chopsticks.

  “N
o, you moron. I mean everything; this building, the gold, the cars, the pool, not to mention all the staff members. Who’s paying for all of it?”

  Thabo shrugged.

  “The Academy has sponsors and partners.”

  “Well, I understand if companies want us to walk around in their clothes or use their gadgets. That’s just marketing, but what about all the other things? Take the gold eagle in the foyer, or the pool, for example; they must have cost a fortune to build. Why would anyone want to sponsor that? We’re the only ones who see it.”

  The others exchanged a fleeting look and Izabella sat back, dabbing her lips with the silk napkin.

  “Don’t you get it? They’re trying to impress us, Axel. We’ll be very powerful one day.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. We don’t even know who the sponsors are.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they’ll let us know the day they’ll need a favour,” Izabella snorted.

  Aseem set his chopsticks aside and shook his head.

  “Is there a purpose to these questions or are you just curious?”

  Axel cursed himself for having brought up the subject. Professor Evans had warned him; don’t ask too many questions.

  “Never mind,” he said. “I guess it’s no big deal. It was just a thought.”

  CHAPTER 75

  As the golden wings opened on the eleventh floor, a mild whiff of cinnamon buns and apples found its way to Axel’s nose. He stepped out of the elevator and into the comfy waiting room. Nicole was sitting behind her desk, beautiful as always. She lit up when she saw him.

  “Hello, Mr Hallman,” she said with her captivating voice. “Here again, are we?”

  Axel puffed up his chest and strolled over.

  “Yeah. I’m meeting a…eh…psychologist at one.”

  “And you’re looking forward to it, I see.”

  “That obvious, huh?”

  Nicole folded her arms on the edge of her desk and leaned forward, pushing up her breasts beneath the blue blouse. Axel struggled not to stare.