The Academy tc-1

by Zachary Rawlins

  The knife she clutched was as long as her forearm and broad, with a tapered point and a razor edge. The hasp was wrapped in worn leather, and it fit her hand like it belonged there. She’d been picky, rejecting a number of other knives before settling on this one, the product of a small smithy in rural Arkansas that had produced only a handful of knives before shutting down sometime in the Seventies. It wasn’t much to look at, having lost its sheen decades ago, but the weight and balance were perfect, and Mitsuru had fallen in love with it the first time she’d picked it up.

  Mitsuru dispensed with caution, charging across the crowded street, relying on the concealment protocol to hide her from the target. Analytics guessed that she could close to within three meters before the target became aware of her. They were a little off. At five meters, the man started and turned in her direction, pulling a gun from inside his coat pocket.

  At four meters, Mitsuru took a wrong step, and her ankle turned.

  His pistol was a large, high-caliber chrome plated affair, probably loaded with hollow-point rounds, designed to inflict massive tissue damage. The barrier protocol Gaul had sheathed her in was tough, but it was not up to the task of blocking a bullet that large and fast at such close range. When he spun to face her and pointed it, the barrel of the silver pistol seemed enormous.

  Mitsuru almost tumbled into the gutter in front of him, next to his discarded Thai food. For a moment it seemed certain that she would, the pain in her ankle sharp and dismaying, her balance badly skewed and her leg giving way beneath her. For Mitsuru, time slowed, almost froze, while her Etheric implants worked, querying the network’s servers, then processing the downloaded probability matrix, feeding her numbers, likelihoods, odds. She would be too slow, now, even if she didn’t fall. Her calculations were grim and infallible.

  The gun discharged, and she could see the bloom of hot gases as they escaped the pistol, fire and vapor. The slug seemed huge as it wound its way through the air toward her, and she adjusted her stance slightly, still in midair, to avoid it hitting her in the chest. She couldn’t dodge a bullet, no one that she knew of could, but she could try and control where it hit her.

  The bullet passed cleanly through the bicep of her right arm, a burning line drawn through the muscle. For a brief, brilliant moment, Mitsuru hung in the air, ruined arm trailing behind her, captivated by the twined agony and euphoria that flooded her body. She caught her breath, a rush of pain and pleasure running up her spine, as her arm blossomed into a crimson flower, the shockwave destroying the tissue all around the wound.

  Mitsuru almost laughed then. The fool had saved her by using metal-jacketed rounds. They were perfect for tearing through barrier protocols, but tended to pass right through tissue.

  The blood from Mitsuru’s arm swelled and warped in a mass, but it did not go flying with the chunks of skin and bone — Mitsuru reached for it, leaning against the Black Door in her mind, and with a sound like violin strings snapping, a few more of the luminous threads that bound the blood-soaked wood gave way. The door slid open with a strange, moaning sound, and the trail that it left behind was wet and thick. For a moment, her arm was held in flux, partially disintegrated, caught between inertia and Mitsuru’s will, and then finally bowing to the superior force.

  Moving against prevailing motion, her blood flowed backwards, coating her arm with a slick layer of fluid. It wrapped around her arm like a cocoon, warm and gelatinous; Mitsuru could feel it crawl across her skin, hardening, becoming an exoskeleton. Her body twisted under the pressure of the outside forces, fighting momentum. As she passed by the target in a barely controlled dive, she twisted and lashed out with her knife hand, her damaged arm guided by the stiffened strands of blood like puppet strings. Her heart sang as the blade passed his guard, cutting smoothly through the target’s gun arm, severing it just below the elbow.

  Mitsuru forced more power through her body, then, wincing at pain comingled with a base ecstasy, as she forced herself to land on her feet. Her right shoulder complained for a moment, then gave way to momentum, dislocating at a troubling angle. Her right arm hung useless at her side as she found her balance again. She tumbled into the man, her left arm and her legs wrapping around him, dragging him down to the ground with her, pulling his chin up and away from his throat.

  And then, reflected in the glass of the shop windows, there was the look. The thing she lived for. His eyes went wide for a moment, with shock, when he realized that he had failed to kill Mitsuru, to defend himself. That he would die. That there was nothing he could do, by force or by pleading, to change the outcome. Mitsuru could see it in his eyes — surprise, fear, outrage, and buried somewhere beneath, a profound regret.

  She wondered, in the second before she dragged the knife across his throat, which the regret was for — a lover, a child? It didn’t matter.

  The knife was truly a marvelous blade. His throat offered no resistance, a single thread of blood trailing behind the tip, his jugular exploding in a warm spray, drenching Mitsuru’s face and chest in cloying stickiness.

  She shook the blood from the blade with a flick of her wrist, and then turned to look behind her. The Isolation Protocol was still active. In the last few seconds, she realized belatedly, she had lost her link to Alistair. Worse, she seemed to have company.

  There were at least half a dozen of them, wrapped in concealment protocols so powerful that she had not noticed them until they were within a block of her. They were nothing but grey blurs to her visually, but their Etheric signatures were massive. Her implant crunched numbers, and informed her helpfully that they were very probably hostiles, and that she could do little to defend herself from them.

  Blood was pouring from her arm, mangled at the bicep and separated at the shoulder, hanging useless. She’d had reserves of power, but her Black Protocol had cost her more than she had anticipated.

  Laughing, Mitsuru assumed the most fundamental of the one-handed fighting stances that Michael had taught her, the tip of the knife pointed toward the rapidly advancing figures, her back foot planted sideways, prepared not to give an inch before dying. Her uplink churned out numbers, scenarios, strategies, but she rejected them all.

  There was no way for her to survive. But as she prepared her final protocol, Mitsuru promised herself that they would not, either. After the carnal exultation of the wound and the killing, she felt a strange calm. She reached toward the Black Door in her mind, still warped and complaining from her earlier endeavors. She threw herself at the threads that held the door closed, drawing up power from within, a tidal force, up from her blood, up from inside her. She felt the familiar pinpricks of pain and pleasure as her mind tried to disintegrate under the pressure.

  Abort!

  The command was delivered so powerfully that she could only obey in shock, her vision blurred and her head filled with cotton. For a moment, she thought the world had gone off kilter, the ground beneath her feet collapsing from the force of the broken protocol.

  Then she realized that Alistair had somehow stepped behind her, without her noticing. He swept her up in his arms and ran on. He’d telepathically erased himself from the minds of everyone in the area, doubtless, even her. He held her effortlessly in his arms, his eyes sad and angry and relieved all at the same time as he looked down at her.

  “Mitzi,” he said, breathing hard. “We are out.”

  It was only then that noticed that not all of the blood was hers, and how drained Alistair actually was. She wondered what had happened.

  Alistair dropped to his knees, cradling Mitsuru with one arm, his other hand palm down on the head of the target’s corpse. Then Mitsuru felt the terrible dislocation of an apport, but she had no time to wonder where Alistair found the strength, as they hit the Ether like a wall, and her consciousness disintegrated against it.

  Eleven

  Alex lay on his bed, exhausted, and tried to wrap his mind around the idea — his bed, his room, his school. That wasn’t really sinking in.

  Mi
chael had led him around the campus for hours, but he hadn’t seen anything like the whole campus. He didn’t understand how the Academy could be so big, and yet he’d never heard of it — but then again, why would he? Up until a few days ago, he had only been dimly aware that there was more to the world than rural California.

  He’d seen a handful of students — most were home, Michael had explained, finishing out a break that would end tomorrow. He’d been surprised by the range of ages — apparently the Academy taught everything from kindergarten through college, or some approximation of it. Alex still didn’t have a clear idea what was going on.

  Only part of what he’d seen looked like a school, and that bothered Alex. Parts of it looked more like a boot camp. There was even a firing range in the basement of the science building, which Michael had proudly described as state of the art, as if to reassure him.

  The clothes, too; that had been weird. Michael had taken him by the commissary, and after a few private words with the staff, a flustered young woman had come out to take his measurements. She was both hurried and excessively polite, and that had made Alex tremendously nervous. He’d left the building with a couple new uniforms in his actual size, some workout clothes, and several pairs of fatigues. He was too tired to ask questions by that point, something that Michael must have noticed, as he had led him directly to his dorm.

  It was a mixed dorm, Michael explained, with alternating floors of girls and boys. The building was one of the older ones, and therefore close to the center of campus, which would allow him to get to class more easily, while he was still learning his way around the grounds. Michael had led him to the fourth floor, down a silent, brightly lit hallway, and then to his door.

  Alex was surprised that he had merited a single room — it was small, but he’d lived in smaller spaces. The room was nice enough, and Alex was surprised to find that the wardrobe had already been filled — someone had apparently returned to the trailer, and collected his clothes and few belongings. When he saw his MP3 player sitting on the old writing desk in the corner, he was so overwhelmed he almost cried. Michael showed him where the bathrooms were, gave him the password for the wireless network, handed him a plastic swipe key for the door, and then left, bidding Alex a good night.

  He’d expected to fall asleep immediately, given all that had happened that day, but the moment he lay down he felt restless, unnerved somehow. The dorms were nicer than any he’d ever seen — wood paneled walls, clean beige carpeting, and lots of windows — but it was, in the end, institutional living, and that didn’t have positive associations for Alex.

  He tossed aside the covers of his newly acquired double bed, and walked over to the laptop that had been thoughtfully provided. He wasn’t sure what had happened to his old one, back at the trailer, but he wasn’t actually worried — he hadn’t kept anything important on it, because he didn’t have anything important to keep. Anyway this one was obviously quite a bit better than his ancient machine, a silver Sony with an LED lit keyboard. He plugged in the password Michael had given him, and accessed the Internet.

  For a few minutes he surfed at random, plowing through news and video-sharing sites without paying much attention to their contents. It was comforting in of itself, to be able to connect. It made him feel a bit like he was in the real world. He closed the laptop and reached for his headphones, turning the player on at random. To his surprise, it was still on the same song from the other night, when he’d been attacked. He hit skip, and in the interval of silence, realized that someone was knocking at his door. Pulling out his headphones, he got up and answered it.

  “Um, hello.”

  If he had to guess, Alex would have guessed that the kid standing there was roughly the same age he was. He was a few inches taller than Alex, with dark brown skin and bulky, plastic-framed glasses. He wore some kind of black turban on his head, which made Alex wondered if he was a Muslim, but he decided it would be impolite to ask.

  “You are Alex, right? My name is Vivik,” he said in perfect, American-accented English, offering his hand. “I’m in the next room over. Michael asked me to check in on you.”

  Alex shook his hand and then stepped aside to allow him to enter, doing his best to mask his confusion. Alex sat down on his bed, while Vivik pulled out his desk chair and sat down backwards on it, facing Alex.

  Vivik looked at him knowingly, and then smiled.

  “It’s pretty strange, huh?”

  “Yeah. Yeah it is,” Alex admitted. “Up until a few days ago, I had no idea any of this even existed, hadn’t a clue. And now they tell me that I start class tomorrow.”

  “Same here,” Vivik nodded.

  “Really? You’re new here, too?”

  Vivik waved his hand, obviously embarrassed.

  “Well, actually, this is the beginning of my second session. But, I showed up a week after the first session started, earlier this year, so I was just as clueless as you are. Don’t let it worry you, Alex, most of the people here found themselves in your shoes at one point or another.”

  “I figured that all these people were, you know, raised knowing about this stuff,” he said hesitantly, running a hand through his disheveled hair, and wishing in a vague way that he was not in his pajamas. Not that the t-shirt and sweats he had on were particularly ratty or anything, but still, it was a bit uncomfortable, meeting someone while dressed that way.

  “Nope,” Vivik said, shaking his head. “It’s fairly unusual for a family to pass the affinity down like that. Most of the students here had normal parents, came from normal families, that sort of thing. Up until whatever point they were activated, and then, like you, they ended up here.”

  “Weird.” Alex wasn’t sure what else to say, though he felt a little bit better knowing he wouldn’t be quite as out of place as he’d imagined. After a moment of awkward silence, he asked, “So, were you attacked by monsters, too?”

  Vivik laughed jovially.

  “Thank God, no. Nothing of the kind. They do screenings, apparently, at public schools and institutions, when they do all those hearing and vision tests. They flagged me right at the start of the school year, pulled me aside, and explained it all to me.” Vivik looked around the empty dorm room cheerfully, seemingly nonplussed. “About a week later, I was enrolled here.”

  “So you have a family back at home? Aren’t they worried? About all this?” Alex gestured toward the window and the school outside.

  “Sure, I’ve got a big family,” Vivik said, nodding. “But to them, when I received an offer to attend a prestigious private boarding school, all expenses paid, they were so delighted that I didn’t even have to come up with an explanation. I heard that they have the telepaths smooth things over with some parents, but in my case, it wasn’t even necessary.” Vivik shrugged, and looked a little embarrassed. “My parents are kind of fixated on the whole college thing, you see.”

  Alex looked at Vivik for a moment, and then burst out laughing. Vivik looked at him, a little puzzled, and then joined in.

  “Actually,” he admitted, removing his glasses to wipe his eyes, “my parents probably wouldn’t even care if they knew what this place actually was. I mean, they wouldn’t like the guns and the fighting and all that stuff, but it is a very demanding school.”

  “That’s not good,” Alex said grimly.

  “School isn’t your favorite thing, huh?”

  Alex nodded. He had a long list of things he didn’t care for, and school was on it, but not at the top. It had been his home, at first, and then the Youth Institution, for a while, but lately ‘being eaten by werewolves’ had taken the top spot.

  He wasn’t stupid. He knew he was at a school. Alex had figured that with all the talk about monsters and fighting, that the classes wouldn’t be, well, hard. Not academically, anyway.

  “Who do you have for homeroom?”

  Alex grabbed his schedule from where he had tossed it on the desk, and then unfolded it.

  “Mr. Windsor?” He read aloud unc
ertainly, as if he were afraid to mispronounce the name.

  “Thought so,” said Vivik, nodding. “Me too. Don’t worry, you’ll like him. It’s a pretty nice class, too. Not too many fanatics.”

  “What?”

  Vivik looked embarrassed.

  “Right, I keep forgetting you are so new,” Vivik muttered. “Well, you’ll find out for yourself eventually anyway, so I may as well tell you — do you know anything about the cartels?”

  Alex shook his head, staring at Vivik.

  “They’re the factions, here in Central. And almost everyone at the Academy will, at some point, commit to joining one of them. It’s against the rules to declare for a cartel until you complete your second year, unless you were born into it, but a lot of the students voluntarily associate themselves with one long before that,” Vivik explained, looking uncomfortable. “A lot of what goes on here revolves around the politics between them.”

  “Hmm…” Alex said, mulling it over. “Do you belong to one of them, Vivik?”

  “Me?” Vivik asked, amused. “Not a chance. I’m doing the science track, and I’m going to join the staff here at the Academy as a researcher, after I graduate. I’m not interested in picking sides, or eventually having to fight the people I go to school with. It’s just too petty.”

  Alex nodded.

  “It does seem that way. Is it really such a big deal?”

  “Can I see your schedule?”

  Vivik held out his hand. Alex felt some reluctance, but decided to hand it over anyway. Vivik read it carefully, and looked thoughtful as he folded it and handed it back.

  “I’m afraid it’s going to be a matter of life and death, for you, Alex,” he said sadly.

  “Why?” Alex looked at Vivik suspiciously, wondering if there was some kind of implied threat in his statement.

  “Well, for one thing, the classes that they’ve picked for you — you’re doing basic, Alex. You’re going to be an Operator. The Academy shares most of its research pretty freely, so it’s not a big deal to the cartels when some scientist decides not to join up, and stays on with the faculty here instead. But an Operator? No way they’d let that slide,” Vivik said reluctantly. “And then there’s another thing…”