by K A Riley
It’s the middle of the night by the time we get back to the Academy. Which is fine with me. If everyone were awake, we’d be mobbed by our fellow students the second we walked into the main hallway.
And I’m in no mood for being interrogated by a bunch of chabbies about our adventures down in the desert. I don’t want to talk about Sara. And I definitely don’t want to have to explain to anyone else about Mattea.
Kress and the rest of her Conspiracy head to their offices, leaving me and my Asylum to make the trek up to the fifth-floor Dorms.
The halls are dark and quiet, and our dirt-crusted boots make muted, echoing thumps on the glossy floors and all the way up the stairs.
We all need sleep and a sonic shower, but no one seems to have the energy to do anything but slump into the armchairs and one of the deep orange couches in the Lounge.
The Lounge has pinball, pool, ping-pong, and a host of interactive VR-sims we could plug into if we wanted. Right now, though, even the thought of play seems far too much like work.
So we sit and try to decompress as we let ourselves collapse into bone-weary slumps.
Before sending us on our way, Kress said there’d be a memorial service tomorrow for Mattea.
It’s a strange feeling, losing someone so close to me. We were classmates and friends, two things I spent most of my life without. I didn’t expect to miss her this much. After all the thousands of deaths I’ve seen, I figured I’d be colder to this one. But it hurts in a way I didn’t expect.
And now I’m thinking maybe this pain is a good sign. If a single death matters this much to me, then maybe the lives of millions will start mattering even more, and I won’t see them as a statistic, and then I won’t feel so numb to it all.
The world outside the Academy has been a place of violence and terror for a long time. Thanks to Kress and her Conspiracy, things started getting better. Thanks to the Devoteds’ lust for control over the country and Epic’s lust for control over us, things are about to get worse.
After close to half an hour of sitting in muted, mental and physical burnout, Ignacio slaps his hands to his knees and groans himself to his feet. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I need a shower and some sleep.”
Libra yawns and says she agrees.
We start to head to the door leading from the Lounge to our Dorm, but Matholook heads in the opposite direction toward the main door leading to the hall.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I call after him.
“Upstairs,” he says. “To bed.”
“You don’t have to sleep up in East Tower anymore, Dummy.”
“I don’t?”
I take him by the hand and lead him toward our Dorm. “You’re one of us now.”
“An Emergent?”
“No,” I laugh. “Not that. But the Academy is more than just an Emergent bootcamp. And it’s more than just a school. It’s also an orphanage. A place to go for kids who have no place else to go.” I swallow hard before I say what I say next. “And I don’t think you can go back to the Devoted any time soon.”
“Or ever.”
“So it’s settled: You’ll stay with us.”
“And you’re sure it’ll be okay with Kress and all your teachers?”
“If they thought you were a threat…well, let’s just say you and I would be having a much different conversation right now.” I give him a cheeky smile. “It’d be me talking to your severed head.”
His hands cupped around his throat, Matholook pretend-gulps. “I’ll be sure to stay on their good side.” He takes my hand in his and turns back into the Lounge. “And yours.”
Together, we walk into our Dorm where Ignacio is already stripping down and leaving a trail of sweaty, blood-stained clothes in his wake as he heads, buck-naked and unashamed, toward the shower room.
Shaking his head and clucking his tongue, Matholook serves up a low chuckle. “That is one confident guy.”
“There are ways to be confident without being a sodding, self-absorbed wanker. Maybe someday, you’ll show him how.”
We share an airy laugh as Libra and Arlo follow Ignacio into the showers, leaving me and Matholook sitting alone and side by side on my bed.
“I guess you can take your pick,” I say, pointing to the two empty beds where Mattea and Sara once slept. “I know it’s probably kind of creepy for you—”
Matholook puts up his hand and wags his finger. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“You don’t have to believe in something to be respectful of it,” I remind him. “Or scared to death of it.”
46
Mattea
In the morning, we shower and dress like we always do.
We’re polished up and in clean clothes for the first time in what feels like years. We’ve survived a lot, and we’re safe in the Academy.
And yet, as my Asylum and I walk single-file downstairs from the Dorms to the Lecture Hall, there’s not a smile, a joke, or a happy thought among us.
The halls, stairwells, and landings on the way are somehow colder and more hollow than they’ve ever been before.
As Head of School and with Granden standing sentinel-like behind her on the stage, Wisp beckons us through the double doors and into the bowl-shaped auditorium with a brisk wave of her hand.
The rest of the Academy—more than thirty other students and our teachers—are already inside with each of the school’s Cohorts sitting in their color-coded groups.
The entire student body is here: The Battery of Quails. The Committee of Vultures. The Descent of Woodpeckers. The Exaltation of Larks.
In keeping with the tradition started by Kress and her Conspiracy, the Academy’s Cohorts—my Asylum of Loons, included—are all named after birds.
And yet, weighed down by grief, not one person in this room is anywhere close to flying.
As we go to take our seats, Libra nudges me and tilts her head toward the four new students—all of them looking lost and shellshocked—sitting together off to the side. “That must be Apex,” she whispers, aiming a low finger at the dark-haired boy with the sharp cheekbones and the wide-open, glossy eyes. “The one Kress calls, ‘Database.’”
“Don’t stare,” I whisper back. “I’m sure we’ll have plenty of chance to get to know the new kids after this.”
Sliding into our own row, we take our seats.
In front of us, Wisp stands statue-still on the low stage, her head down, her hands now clasped loosely in front of her. Never one for long speeches, her remarks are curt and clipped.
“This room has often functioned as a place for us to start our day. Today, it’s a place of sorrow, regret, and reflection. It’s a safe space for us to remember that we are students, teachers, friends, warriors, and—in the sorrow we share today and in the happiness we hope to find again someday—family.”
Lifting her head, Wisp slips a lock of her short brown hair behind her ear and asks Rain to come up to the stage as she and Granden walk down the three steps to take their seats in the front row with our other teachers.
With nudges from Kress and Brohn, Rain pushes herself to her feet and walks up to the center of the stage. Standing behind the podium, she looks even smaller than usual as she coughs lightly into her fist and beings to speak.
“As Mattea’s mentor, I had the honor of working closely with her during these past months as Wisp and your other teachers continued to evolve the Academy and its mission. As most of you know, Mattea had a gift for languages. Due to her brain’s hypervariable prefrontal and temporal cortices, radically developed parietal lobes, a marked increase in hippocampal volume, and acute neuroplasticity coupled with a self-correcting motor cortex…” She pauses, closes her eyes, and curls her fingers around the edges of the podium. “Ugh,” she chokes through a tight smile. “That sounds so terribly technical, doesn’t it?”
Next to me, Matholook takes my hand in his as a chortle of choked-back laughter ripples through the audience of teachers and students.
Processor. At the dreaded word, we all clam up.
Libra, Arlo, and Ignacio—along with pretty much every other student in this auditorium—spent years in a Processor. And the four new students are only a few days removed from their own captivity.
Clearing her throat, Rain soldiers on. “Mattea lived most of her life as a captive in a Processor in Valencia, Spain.” Rain glances down at my Asylum, her dark eyes skimming over Libra, Ignacio, and Arlo. “Along with three of our other fine students in the Asylum cohort. The En-Gene-eers wanted to see what made her brain work the way it did. In the end, her ability as an Emergent was the least important thing about her. And that’s something those scientists never figured out. That’s because they were asking the wrong questions, pursuing all the wrong goals. In their quest to use her to replicate their techno-genetic formula for creating and recruiting evolutionarily advanced soldiers, they failed to see what made her a truly powerful Emergent: her humanity. Smart. Kind. Empathetic. Loyal. Honest. Hard-working. Mattea didn’t need a war to prove her strength. And she didn’t need powers to be super.”
Rain clears her throat again. Her fingers wring against the edges of the podium a few times. Her eyes—glassy and red-rimmed—raise up to the ceiling before dropping back down to land on all of us. “We played chess sometimes for fun before or after our apprenticeship sessions. But it was Mattea’s idea to incorporate our games into her individualized Emergent mentoring lessons. She said chess was really just another language. She said it had its own cadence, grammar, vocabulary, and its own diction and syntax. Honestly, I never saw the game that way. But she did. A lot of you know she and I played from time to time.”
There are nods and knowing looks all around. I think everyone in here—students and faculty alike—has participated in at least one of Rain’s famous, week-long Chess and War strategy seminars that supplement our primary classes.
“What you may not know…”
Rain trails off, and I look up from my lap where Matholook and I have our fingers intertwined.
“What you may not know,” Rain pauses again to work through a snuffling laugh-cry. “What I’m sure you don’t know, is that she beat me.”
A gasp of disbelief cascades through the Lecture Hall.
Rain’s Emergent ability gives her acute senses of strategy, logistics, and predictive insight. It’s helped her to navigate through some rough spots during her Conspiracy’s adventures. It also makes her totally, one-hundred-percent unbeatable as a chess player.
No one beats her. Ever.
“And the reason you didn’t know,” Rain chokes through a full-on surge of tears, “is that she refused to tell anyone, and she made me promise to do the same. Mattea…our student, our sister, our dear friend…she didn’t want to make herself look too good, and…and…and she didn’t want to make her stupid teacher look too bad.”
Even when I’m not connected with Haida through my telempathic bond, my vision is especially keen. When we’re connected, even a little, it ramps up to several times the vision of even the most eagle-eyed Typic. When we’re fully connected—when everything between us is clicking just right—I take on a superhuman level of sight, with a spectrum of colors, magnetic waves, heat patterns, and air densities available to me.
Right now, Haida’s in my head, and she’s crying with me.
I can barely see the stage.
47
The End
“Saving the world isn’t one big job, Branwynne. It’s a lot of little ones. Brohn and I are heading out tonight to complete one of the smaller assignments.”
That’s the first thing Kress tells me when I step into her office.
“You’re not the only one who has homework,” she adds with a glinty-eyed smile.
It’s been over a month since Mattea’s memorial service, and I still can’t totally scrub the scent of my own failure out of my mind or off my body. Matholook has been a source of great comfort, and we spend most of my non-class time together, either in the Lounge or else up on the roof with Render, Haida Gwaii, whichever of their five-bird brood is still hanging around at the time, and, of course, Jeff the vulture, who I think the other birds have adopted into their conspiracy as an extra-large, lumbering honorary raven.
Matholook still isn’t allowed to attend classes, but I think Wisp and the other teachers might be softening on that stance.
(I’m sure it’s helped that I’ve been nagging them pretty much every day about it.)
With some of my focus returning to my training and the rest dedicated to Matholook, I haven’t had a chance to get myself in enough trouble to warrant a summons from Kress.
Now, here I am. In her office. Again.
I’m barefoot, groggy, and still rubbing sleep from my eyes, and she’s talking about saving the world. After all I’ve been through, accomplished, lost, and survived, only Kress can make me feel like the laziest underachieving git in a git-filled world.
The rest of my Asylum is still asleep upstairs, and I’m barely conscious, myself.
It was Haida Gwaii’s voice in my head that roused me awake a few minutes ago in the middle of the night.
For a second, I thought the voice was a dream. Then, I thought (and eagerly hoped) maybe it was Matholook kneeling next to my bed, whispering me awake. That would make sense. After all, it was him I was dreaming about. But he was still asleep in the bed next to mine, one of his lean, muscular legs bent at the knee and protruding from under his silver blanket.
After confirming the voice didn’t come from him, I thought maybe it was just my mind playing tricks on me.
And then I remembered what Kress once told me about how the lines between reality, imagination, fantasy, dreams, and delusions aren’t nearly as etched in stone as we’ve been led to believe.
I blinked hard against the pull of sleep, and the voice rang out inside my head with the crystal clarity of an air-raid siren:
~ Kress needs you.
She’s tough, I moaned back at the white raven’s pleading, edgy wakeup call. I don’t think she needs me at all.
~ I don’t mean she needs your help. She needs you in her office. Now.
You know, sometimes I wish you were a normal raven. You make a terrible alarm clock.
~ I’m just the messenger. Should I tell her you’re not coming?
Only if you want her to charge up here and kill me in my own bed.
~ We’re connected. You’re no good to me dead.
Where are you, anyway?
~ In Kress’s office. I’m saying goodbye to Render.
At that, I shoved off the last remnants of sleep and sat bolt-upright in bed.
Goodbye? What do you mean? Is he going somewhere? Are you?
~ Kress will explain.
And with that, Haida—her tempered, motherly voice fading into shallow ripples—severed our connection, leaving me to swing my bare feet down to the cold floor, throw my red leather jacket on over my Academy-issued sleepwear, and jog downstairs to Kress’s office. I was sure the jackhammer of my heart in my chest was loud enough to wake the school, but I told myself to calm down and stay light on my feet. I managed to make it from the fifth floor Dorms down to her office on the second floor without running into anyone or dropping dead from a heart attack.
Now that I’m sitting here, bleary-eyed, curious, confused, and slightly terrified, Kress won’t tell me where she’s going, only that she and Brohn need to stop a disaster before it starts.
“And I’m not sure when we’ll be back,” she adds.
On the window ledge behind her, Haida Gwaii and Render are sitting side by side. Their hackles encircle their necks like spiky shawls, and the feathers on their heads look more like slicked back fur in the light beaming all over the office from an array of holo-projections. Looking like two fidgety chess pieces, the black raven and the white raven take turns looking from me to Kres
s and then out the window into the darkness, clearly amused by their own reflections in the foggy, frosted glass. They ruffle their feathers a little, flex their talons, and tap their heads and necks together in a gentle display of affection.
“We solved one problem,” Kress reminds me as I squirm in the mag-chair across the desk from her.
The room’s paneled walls of synth steel and glass reflect the dark hues of the rough red oak ceiling beams and the floor’s overlapping planks of polished white ash. In front of one of the walls, a seven-foot-high holo-projection of the country Kress calls “The Divided States of America” hovers and glints in the air. The map is divided into three vertical sections: a thin white strip on one side and a thin blue strip on the other with a vastly larger red chunk sandwiched in between. I recognize the topography in part of the red middle section as the desert plains where the Unsettled surrendered to the Devoted, Kress saved us from Epic, and we lost Mattea forever.
All around the larger map, smaller holo-projections populated with numbers, graphs, shifting charts, and the rotating profiles of a bunch of people I don’t recognize glow on hovering rectangular panels of light.
Thanks mostly to Wisp and Kella (and with some more recent help from Libra), the tech in the Academy has gone from Stone Age to state-of-the-art. As nice as that is, it still makes me worry. The Wealthies got to where they are by isolating themselves, hoarding guns, and keeping all the best tech for themselves. Except for the guns, which we have but hardly in any kind of numbers, it’s sort of what we’re doing, too.
So what’s to stop us from turning into them?
The answer, of course, is literally sitting in her office chair right in front of me.
Flicking, flashing, and scrolling in a state of constant, shuffling motion, the colorful schematics distract me for a few seconds before Kress snaps me back to attention.
