by K A Riley
Wisp and Granden took turns slamming their fists down on the table in Wisp’s office and storming around the room, promising that if we ever pulled a stunt like that again, they’d feed us to the Unsettled, themselves.
I tried to remind them that we rescued Haida, got great intel about Epic, discovered and brought back a dozen new students, and that Cohort B took care of the Academy and saved Wisp’s and Granden’s lives while we were gone.
But, thankfully, the words lodged in my throat.
(Who knows what Wisp would have done to me if I’d have been that brassy?)
A few days after that—and about two seconds after Wisp and Granden filled her in on everything that had happened in their absence—Kress pulled me aside and gave me a private, one-on-one afternoon of more yelling.
After that, it was back to school for a whirlwind of classes, training, private instruction, and more classes.
Plunged back into the routine of the Academy, the days and weeks flew by.
Things didn’t always go smoothly—a few days ago, I failed Terk and the Auditor’s Digital Tech seminar, and now I have to retake it with one of the younger Cohorts.
I passed Mayla’s Communications Skills class…barely. I aced Part Two of Kress and Brohn’s Unarmed Combat class, and only broke my arm twice.
With so much activity and so many kids darting from class to class, scarfing down quick meals in the cafeteria, crashing in the Dorms, or getting patched up in the Infirmary, the Academy feels closer to what I imagine school must have felt like before the end of the world.
The Academy also seems a little smaller now.
The enormous complex I first walked into more than five years ago is still enormous. But it’s also filling up with life and chatter.
The empty echoes have been replaced by bootsteps on the stairs, the shuffling of bodies, buzzing conversations in the Tavern, bouncy play-fighting in the Dorms and in the Lounge, and a litany of complaints about who’s got the hardest schedule, the toughest teachers, or the most injuries.
With five Cohorts on the go, it’s been a tempest of energy and activity around here.
Libra knew the name of every new kid after about two days.
I still don’t know most of their names, and I’m not eager to learn.
Besides, I don’t need to know their names to know how annoying they are.
(If one more of those slobbery plonkers asks me about what it’s like to fight the Unsettled, escape from the Civillains, or talk to a raven, I’m going to make a dog’s breakfast of their perky little faces.)
Classes are still painful sometimes, but they’re manageable. We’re learning a lot, but, as Mattea points out, “We’re still a long way away from saving the world.”
It’s a mission Wisp and the other teachers make sure stays front and center in our minds. Practically every day, we’re reminded that we’re not an army.
“Not in the traditional sense,” Wisp tells all thirty of us for the hundredth time from the stage at Morning Address. “You’re being trained to use your abilities to help others to victory, not to gain victory for yourselves.”
And then, as she does every day, she sends us off to class where we’ll continue to learn how to survive in the world we’ve been assigned to save.
At least my Asylum and I are getting along okay. I’m less annoyed these days by Libra’s prattling. Sara hasn’t been throwing me quite as many dirty looks. Mattea and Arlo have been keeping each other company and staying out of my way. Ignacio still has moments of profound wankerdom, but he’s also been making visible efforts to rein them in.
He even bawled out a few of the new recruits from the Committee of Vultures for leaving one of the communal bathrooms in a shambles. Since then, it’s been spotless.
So…partial credit there.
My favorite days are when I have my personalized Emergent training sessions with Kress.
I thought telling her about Micah would’ve knocked her for a loop, but she took it in stride. I don’t know if that’s because she didn’t believe her brother was really alive, that he’d be working with someone like Epic, or if she was just too tough to show that she cared one way or the other.
During one of our private sessions, though, she did step out into the hallway to talk with Brohn and Terk.
Patched into Haida, my hearing was acute enough to make out parts of their conversation. They were worried, and they were planning something…something big. I crossed my fingers and hoped they’d let me be part of it—whatever it was.
That was a couple of weeks ago, but so far, nothing’s come of it, and Kress hasn’t said a word to me or asked another question about Micah.
Today, Kress is teaching me how to connect more deeply with Haida Gwaii—on an emotional as opposed to a physical level—and how to merge our abilities in times of extreme stress or fear.
I know Kress gets impatient with me sometimes. I try to stay focused. I really do. But there’s so much going on in the Academy, twice as much going on in the world, and about a thousand times more going on in my head.
I feel like I’m a racecar with a high-octane engine under the hood, but no one will let me get the bloody thing out of first gear. Honestly, I felt at my best when I was fighting the Unsettled or running from Epic’s Sentinels.
Libra says I have a death wish. But I think it’s the opposite. Since I was a little girl in the Tower of London, I’ve felt driven to live.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s the increased number of students or maybe it’s just my imagination, but sometimes it feels like the walls of the Academy are closing in on me.
After six hours of Puzzles, Codes, and Game Theory—where I got yelled at by Rain and failed every challenge—I’m on my way to the Tavern when Libra tugs me aside.
“What’s with you?” she asks.
“What are you on about?”
“You were a million miles away back there.”
“I guess I’m a titch distracted,” I admit.
“Did you get answers to any of the number sequence riddles?”
I shake my head.
“Are you still thinking about Epic?” I shake my head again, and we step aside to let three of the younger kids from the Descent of Woodpeckers scuttle past. “What then?”
When I don’t answer, she asks, “Matholook?”
When I don’t answer again, Libra says, “Thought so. And you want to go find him, don’t you?”
“He’s still down there at the bottom of the mountain,” I explain.
“And you’re up here. Maybe it’s best to leave it that way.”
“We’re up here partly because we don’t know who we are. With Matholook…”
“You felt like you did.”
“Yeah,” I confess. “I can’t explain it. It’s like we’re…like we’ve always been…connected.”
I feel like a barmy, brain-addled tosser saying that out loud. I’m half-expecting Libra to laugh or brush it off as some stupid, teenage girl infatuation.
She doesn’t go quite that far, but she does sound a little annoyed with me. Or else scared for me. “Listen, Branwynne, just because your names come from the same story doesn’t mean you’re on the same page. His people are the Devoted. If they can’t use you--”
Frustrated, I lean back hard against the wall, my arms crossed tight in front of me with one of our hardcover Game Theory textbooks pressed to my chest. “I know. I know. I just feel like…”
“Like what?”
“Like he’s one of the keys to me.”
Libra’s eyes go sad, and she offers up a slow, quiet sigh but doesn’t say anything.
“He knows a war is coming,” I remind her. “He knows what Epic is planning, and he knows more kids like us are out there, just waiting to get scooped up and forced to fight for one side or another. He still wants to help. Even more than he already has. I know he does.”
“Help who? Epic? The Devoted?”
“I think he wants to help us. But not just us. I
think he wants to help us help the world.”
“Helping like he did is going to get him killed. If not by his own people, then by the Unsettled or by Epic’s Sentinels. Or Roguers or Plaguers or any number of desperate gangs out there willing to slaughter whoever crosses their path. And you being anywhere near him…well, you’d just be putting yourself in the same sights he’s already in.”
“I know that, too.”
“Then why risk so much?”
“It’s not that much,” I laugh. “Just my life.”
Libra clamps her hands onto my shoulders and locks her eyes onto mine. I almost don’t recognize her: Her hair, her skin, her eyes…they’re all still painfully pretty and perfect. But she’s not grinning, bouncy, or perky. “It’s not just your life, Branwynne. It’s all of us. It’s everyone in the Academy.”
Nodding, I tell her she’s right.
“Come on,” she beams. “Let’s get something to eat before we pass out. We have Intelligence Ops with Kella first thing in the morning. We need to be in top form!”
I let her drag me along to the Tavern where we grab a quick bite and socialize a little with the other Cohorts before heading upstairs to the Dorms to decompress and get a few hours of long overdue and very well-deserved sleep.
And for the first time, I’ll be doing it among friends.
Epilogue
That night, I spend at least three hours staring at the ceiling.
I know Libra’s right about us getting some rest and about the need for us to stay focused on our training, now more than ever. And I know she’s just looking out for me.
But with the rest of my Asylum purring in the depths of some very deep sleep, I slip out of the Dormitory. I make my way all the way down to the Sub-Basement and along the labyrinth of secret access tunnels leading away from the Academy.
Once I’m through the first set of doors, it’s a long walk down some very steep, very creepy mine shafts with curved walls of rock, wooden struts, and steel support beams looming over me from every side. Beams of rectangular wooden railroad ties are hammered into the path with iron spikes, but they’re not exactly steps, and they don’t make the steep descent that much easier.
I know the first part of this path from the last time I left the Academy with my Cohort on a mission to rescue Haida Gwaii.
At least this time, the holo guide-lights planted into the tunnel walls are functioning. And at least this time, I’m alone.
But this time, unlike before, at the third split, I go right instead of left.
At the end of the first branch of the middle mining tunnel, I tap in the code on the input panel and press my thumb to the fingerprint I.D. scanner. The round metal door glides open, and I step outside.
Behind me, the door slides closed, and the Veiled Refractor activates to make the surface of the door blend seamlessly into the surrounding rock face.
I trudge down a long, winding footpath, through a dense and seemingly endless section of dead and fallen trees. I cling to branches and protruding rocks for balance as I continue to scurry and lope my way downhill.
Where the land flattens out, I slog across a series of deep fields of mud and slushy, melting snow.
The air and the earth are somehow warm and cold at the same time. I’ll never get used to how odd the weather is outside of the climate-controlled Academy. It’s like I can walk from arctic to desert and back again in the space of half an hour.
A flurry of movement overhead startles me. From out of the murky gloom, Haida Gwaii swoops down and lands with a light bounce on a low branch of a scraggly, ash and frost-covered tree. Her blue eyes sparkle, and she ruffles her slick white feathers, reflecting the hazy glow of the moon-lit night.
“What are you doing flying around out here in the dark?” I ask her.
I still can’t always pick up complete language from her. But I do get a flood of her emotions:
~ Concern. Anger. Fear.
“I’ll be back,” I promise her out loud. “I just have to go see a…friend.”
~ Why?
To connect.
Flipping up the collar of my red leather jacket against the biting wind, I clomp the rest of the way down the crags and valleys carved into the steep mountain toward New Haleck and the Cult of the Devoted, determined to find the missing part of me and to reunite myself with the other half of my myth.
* * *
End of The Emergents Academy – Book 1 of The Academy of the Apocalypse series
Next in Series
Coming Soon!
* * *
The next book in the series…
* * *
The Academy of the Apocalypse:
Cult of the Devoted
Feeling an overpowering pull she can’t explain or control, Branwynne slips out of the Emergents Academy in search of Matholook, the mysterious and charming seventeen-year-old member of the Cult of the Devoted she first met five years ago.
Heading right into the enemy camp may not seem like the most sensible thing to do, but Branwynne has never been one to blindly follow the rules—or to shy away from danger. Especially when her instincts are screaming at her that Matholook may have answers to questions she’s been searching for all her life.
Thrust into the middle of a bloody, three-way war for power in a bleak and ravaged land, Branwynne has her loyalties tested as she closes in on the mystery of who and what she really is.
What she finds may not change her life or her mind.
But it could just change her heart.
Cult of the Devoted is coming in March 2021.
Also by K. A. Riley
Academy of the Apocalypse Series
* * *
Emergents Academy
Cult of the Devoted
Army of the Unsettled (Coming in March 2021)
* * *
Resistance Trilogy
Recruitment
Render
Rebellion
* * *
Emergents Trilogy
Survival
Sacrifice
Synthesis
* * *
Transcendent Trilogy
Travelers
Transfigured
Terminus
* * *
Seeker’s World Series
Seeker’s World
Seeker’s Quest
Seeker’s Fate
Seeker’s Promise
* * *
Athena’s Law Series
Book One: Rise of the Inciters
Book Two: Into an Unholy Land
Book Three: No Man’s Land
