Emergents Academy: A Dystopian Novel (Academy of the Apocalypse Book 1)

by K A Riley

  Emergents Academy

  Academy of the Apocalypse: Book 1

  K. A. Riley

  Contents

  Note from the Author

  Summary

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  1. First Class

  2. Lesson

  3. Krav Maga

  4. Infirmary

  5. Tavern

  6. Brouhaha

  7. War

  8. Challenge

  9. Flicker

  10. Morning Address

  11. Time Passes

  12. Weapons

  13. Introductions

  14. Selection

  15. Worried

  16. Propaganda

  17. Brainwashing

  18. Recruiting

  19. Leaving

  20. Glitches

  21. Six-Station Race

  22. Station One - Sniper

  23. Station Two - Generator

  24. Station Three - Juggle

  25. Station Four - Scars

  26. Station Five - Riddles

  27. Station Six - Tap Out

  28. Date

  29. Breakfast

  30. VR-sim

  31. Intruder

  32. Tunnel

  33. Brawl

  34. Caught

  35. Galaxy Eyes

  36. Trapped

  37. Stronger

  38. Escape

  39. Run

  40. Savior

  41. Enemies

  42. Church

  43. Gather

  44. Cohorts

  Epilogue

  Next in Series

  Also by K. A. Riley

  COPYRIGHT

  * * *

  © 2021 by K. A. Riley. All rights reserved.

  * * *

  DISCLAIMER

  * * *

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, and events should not be associated with living people or historical events. Any such resemblance is the work of the author and is purely coincidental.

  * * *

  COVER DESIGN

  * * *

  www.thebookbrander.com

  Note from the Author

  The events of the Academy of the Apocalypse series take place immediately following the conclusion of the Conspiracy Chronicles.

  * * *

  Although the Academy of the Apocalypse draws upon characters and references some events in that nine-book series (made up of three interconnected trilogies), this is a stand-alone series and doesn’t require intimate familiarity with what’s come before.

  * * *

  (But it couldn’t hurt, right?)

  * * *

  Either way, enjoy!

  Summary

  It’s been more than five years since Kress and her Conspiracy defeated Krug and his Patriot Army, traveled through Europe and back, completed a cross-country rescue mission, and made it home alive.

  Things were looking up for the future of the nation…until the Cult of the Devoted and the teenagers of the Army of the Unsettled decided to light the fuse for an all-out civil war.

  Now, a special Academy—hidden high in the Rocky Mountains and designed as a school to train young Emergents in the use of their abilities—is being forced into the fight.

  On the brink of a new global apocalypse, the tenacious raven-whisperer Branwynne and the bio-genetically enhanced teenagers of the Emergents Academy find themselves entangled in a three-way battle for power, where survival is doubtful, peace is impossible, and death is inevitable.

  Dedication

  For the teachers.

  Epigraph

  “Teaching would be impossible unless students were sacred.”

  * * *

  — Henry Higgins, Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw

  “You’re off to great places. Today is your first day! Your mountain is waiting, so get on your way!”

  * * *

  — Dr. Seuss, Oh the Places You’ll Go!

  Prologue

  I wasn’t alive when the world ended.

  By the time I was born, the Eastern Order and their drones had already blown up most of London.

  They destroyed lives, monuments, roads, buildings, bridges, and worst of all, hope.

  And they didn’t stop until London—the only home I’d ever known—was a flat, smoldering mess of death.

  Most of the adults got killed or cleared out. The Royal Family legged it up north, and the city was left in the hands of the survivors—mostly kids—who couldn’t or wouldn’t leave.

  Until I was twelve, I lived in the Tower of London with my parents, Llyr and Penarddunne, the resident Ravenmasters.

  Other than the radiation storms and the occasional drone strikes, we got along okay. The Banters and the Royal Fort Knights were too busy fighting with each other to bother us, and the Scroungers were too superstitious or too scared to try to attack the Tower.

  I used to think my parents lived a pointless sort of life, fussing over seven ravens—six jet-black and one ivory-white—while the world and everyone outside the tower gates brawled, suffered and struggled, or else gave up and died.

  My parents used to tell me, “Branwynne, as long as the ravens are safe, the kingdom shall never fall.”

  I’d nod and pretend that was the truth, even though as far as I could tell, our kingdom hadn’t only fallen—it had been gutted, crippled, and dragged through Hell by its nostrils.

  Besides, I knew the whole bit about the ravens was just an old Welsh myth.

  In the story, Brân, the giant king of the Britons, died in a war against the Irish king. He ordered that his own head be cut off and buried under London’s White Hill—the exact spot where the Tower of London is today—as a warning to keep invaders away.

  “‘Brân’ is the Welsh word for raven,” my mother explained to me when I was little. “It’s part of the myth that explains the tradition of keeping at least six ravens in the Tower of London at all times.”

  It’s also the same myth that gave me my name.

  And now, here I am, across an ocean and thousands of miles from home.

  Accompanied by Haida Gwaii, my white raven companion, I’m in school to learn how to stop this new kingdom, the one that used to be called the United States, from being dragged by its nostrils through a Hell of its own.

  Of course, there’s hardly anything “united” about this country anymore. Kress calls it the “Divided States of America” and scoffs about what she insists is “the canyon-sized gap between its ideals and its practices.”

  Today, there are a handful of budding cities on each coast with small, new governments trying hard to put things right for themselves. Washington D.C. is getting back on its feet. And we hear good things are happening in San Francisco. Most of everything else in between is a wasteland of disease, carnage, and cannibalism.

  Instead of a country, now it’s just dozens of warring factions, all fighting and killing each other in the shadow of the skyscraping arcologies the Wealthies are building up in the ruins. Maybe there never was any real unity. Maybe it was just propaganda or a hoax or a marketing trick.

  I didn’t grow up here, so maybe I shouldn’t talk.

  On the other hand, I spent the last five years here, so maybe I should.

  Back in London, when I found out the whole terrorist global threat known as the Eastern Order was made up, I cried. I don’t know why. I’m not the most emotional girl in the world. I think I was upset because of how dumb I felt for falling for the world’s biggest lie.

  The governments, the enemies
, the need for some people to have all the power while everyone else had to suffer and starve…it was all based on one big load of rubbish. A giant myth. Like the weird, made up stories that gave me my name.

  Which I guess makes me a myth inside of a myth.

  It’s crazy how two lies can make each other seem like the truth.

  Since learning the facts about the wacko way the world’s been run, I’ve actually felt more complete. Like I have a purpose. Like I’m more than just a character in an old story.

  When they left London, Kress and her Conspiracy of friends brought me back to Washington, D.C. with them. My parents insisted. They said Kress would “save” me. They said my future was tied to hers and that the fate of a new nation would one day be in my hands.

  Thanks for not putting any pressure on me, Mum and Dad!

  From D.C., I joined Kress and her Conspiracy on a cross-country quest through her shattered country and wound up here, high up in the mountains of Colorado.

  I was twelve years old.

  And now, five years later, I’m one of eleven students in the first class of the brand new Emergents Academy.

  The massive, six-story compound was built in secret right into the top of a mountain in the Colorado Rockies. It’s part school, part bunker, part boot-camp, part monastery, part armory, and part science lab.

  We’re supposed to get instructed in everything from outdoor survival skills and high-risk reconnaissance missions to modern and Medieval weapons training.

  There are even going to be one-on-one lessons where we’ll learn how to use our special abilities as Emergents.

  All so we can one day go back out into the apocalypse and save the world.

  Back in London, Kress and her black raven didn’t save our city. But they did restore our hope.

  Now, my white raven and I are going to school so we can learn how to help what’s left of the world restore theirs.

  1

  First Class

  “Hey, Branwynne! Are you ready for class?”

  Bracing myself in the long hallway against her bonkers bubbliness, I give Libra my best get-away-from-me glare. But she’s not fazed. “Come on!” she urges, tugging me by the arm.

  Her beaming white smile is happy. Her walnut-brown eyes are happy. Her smooth, unblemished mocha skin is happy. Even her bouncy coils of silky, licorice-black hair are happy.

  Ugh.

  It’s like someone melted down puppies, sunshine, birthdays, and babies into a giant vat and poured the whole mess into the mold of a way-too-pretty teenage girl.

  She’s so cheery, it’s all I can do not to punch her in the throat.

  Almost all of us at the Academy have special abilities to one degree or another, although not all of us know our full potential or limitations.

  I know about Lucid and Reverie from the other Cohort. They can combine their abilities to open a portal to another dimension called the Lyfelyte. I’ve seen them do it.

  In my own Cohort, I’ve heard Sara can do something unusual (and possibly dangerous?) with her voice, and Ignacio has some sort of affinity for electricity. I don’t know about Arlo or Mattea yet.

  Libra’s powers seem to include being super annoying, pointlessly cheerful, and totally oblivious to the fact that she’s about to get her face bashed in.

  Of course, if I didn’t want to get my hands dirty, I could always sic Haida Gwaii on her. With one good telempathic request, my sharp-taloned, occasionally over-protective white raven could carve some seriously deep trenches into this giddy kipper’s perfect, perky face.

  But I doubt that would dampen her enthusiasm.

  So I let Libra grab my hand and drag me along down the hall. Not because I’m excited about the first official day of classes at the Emergents Academy. And not because I’m desperate to bond with this chuffed-up, human-shaped chatterbox.

  No. What I’m looking forward to is some serious combat training.

  And not just any combat training.

  Our teachers for First Semester Unarmed Combat are Kress and her boyfriend Brohn.

  They’re the school’s power couple, the ones everyone knows about and wants to be like. Brohn is tall and handsome with insanely watery blue eyes that dare you to look at them and then dare you to even try to look away. He’s got broad shoulders, thick dark hair, just the right amount of stubble on his square jaw, and a rumbling baritone voice that soothes you and snaps you to attention at the same time.

  Oh, and he’s bulletproof.

  And Kress…well, she’s a legend.

  Sometimes known as Kakari Isutse, “the girl who dreams in raven,” she has her own super-powered telempathic bond with Render, her personal raven companion since she was six years old. She’s probably the most powerful Emergent around. She downplays it, though.

  Over the past few days of orientation, I’ve seen her—with Render perched like a glossy-black gargoyle on her shoulder—walking around all casual, chatting with her friends, making last-minute improvements to the Academy, and tinkering with our class schedules like she’s the most normal twenty-three-year-old woman in the world.

  That’s a laugh.

  I’ve seen her kick ass, dodge bullets, and walk through walls.

  (I can walk through walls, too sometimes. She’s just way better at it than me.)

  She’s even been known to fly from time to time. But when I ask her about it, she blushes, calls it “gliding,” and changes the subject.

  I’ve been studying with her for the past five years, mostly learning focus, patience, and how to be an expert Ravenmaster with a deeper mental bond with Render, Haida Gwaii, and their brood of six raven offspring. So far, all I’ve been able to manage from the lessons are vague feelings, blurry images, brain-splitting migraines, and an unfortunate craving for carrion.

  When Granden showed up with the six Emergents we left behind in Washington, D.C., Kress and her team of teachers decided it was time to start having proper classes—with schedules, assignments, lectures, seminars, and even homework.

  So, altogether, there’s Chace and her twin brother Trax, the other set of twins— Lucid and Reverie—the six new arrivals, and me. That makes eleven of us in the first class of the Emergents Academy.

  We’re all in awe of Kress and her Conspiracy. And why wouldn’t we be?

  We’ve heard the stories about how, on the day they turned seventeen, Kress and her friends were recruited away from the Valta—the bombed-out and annihilated town just down the ridge on this very mountain. How they escaped from the Processor where they were being trained as genetically enhanced super soldiers. How they went on the run.

  We know bits and pieces about what happened after that. The work they did to free San Francisco. Their experiences in Chicago where they met War and Mayla, two of our other teachers. Their victory in D.C. when they catapulted that wanker President Krug off a roof. The way they turned themselves into an unstoppable reconnaissance, infiltration, assault, and rescue team.

  And I know first-hand about their experiences after that in London, England because that’s where I first met them, and it’s where I first found out that I’m not the only person in the world who can share minds with a raven.

  After returning to the U.S., we rescued a bunch of Kress’s kidnapped friends from a Midwest Processor, battled our way past the Army of the Unsettled in a Colorado desert, and escaped from the eerily friendly clutches of the Cult of the Devoted.

  All the while, Kress protected me like I’m her baby sister.

  As an only child growing up behind the high stone walls of the Tower of London, I always dreamed of having a big sister, someone to mentor me, train me, and show me the ropes. I dreamed of a special place where I could be taught how to discover, enhance, and control my abilities.

  Now my dream has come true.

  Only it seems to have come with a price: I have to deal with annoying classmates.

  Giggling and yakking away, Libra drags me through the open doorway of CSTR-1—the primary Combat
Skills and Training Room—the largest of the third-floor training rooms where the other four members of our six-person Cohort are already gathered in a nervous huddle.

  The room is clean, well planned-out, and fully stocked. Basically, the opposite of the chaos and violence in the dodgy world outside.

  Anxious to get away from Libra—and afraid that her over-the-top cheeriness might be as contagious as the Cyst Plague—I make a beeline to where Kress and Brohn are standing side by side, waiting to start the class.

  I greet my adoptive big sister, my fellow raven-whisperer, and my dear friend with a smile and a big wave.

  She returns my greeting by leg-sweeping me off my feet and hammering her fist into my sternum on my way down.

  Perfect, I think as I try not to black out. First day of class, and I get body slammed by the teacher.