Empowered Academy 1985

by Dawn Jansen

  Empowered Academy: 1985

  Book Two in the Empowered Academy Trilogy

  By Dawn Jansen

  Copyright © 2020 by Dawn Jansen

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, email me at: dawnjansenbooks@gmail.com

  Chapter 1

  Emily

  The ground shook as the thick metal walls of the test chamber rose abruptly, trapping the four of us—me, my best friend Lizzy, and our two classmates, Baxter and Carl—in a narrow corridor.

  “Ready, Em?” asked Lizzy, shooting me a mischievous grin that I’d seen many times before.

  Lizzy and I grew up together in Rockland, Maine. We used to hang out every day after school, buying Tiger Beat at the local 7-11 and going fishing down by the pier, but I never would have thought that one day we’d both be enrolled at a school for the empowered on the eastern tip of New York.

  “For sure,” I replied, trying to sound more confident than I was. I wasn’t usually this nervous about running a simulation—after all, we’d been at Empowered Academy for a month now—but the purpose of this simulation was to train stealth, an area I’d never excelled at. What could I say? When there were bad guys that needed a thrashing, I just preferred the bust-down-the-door method.

  “I’m ready to rock!” added Baxter with a suspicious amount of enthusiasm.

  I didn’t know what the hell he was so confident about. Baxter had possibly the lamest power in the whole Academy: the ability to turn into any nearby inanimate object (a “tier three” power, as my dad would say). It looked trippy to the max, but it had very limited applicability, and that was something I could speak with authority on since my power allowed me to absorb anybody else’s and use it as my own.

  “That doesn’t mean you’re going to literally turn into a rock, does it, nerd?”

  That was Carl, who had the power to disrupt electronics and interfere with magnetic fields and whatnot—AKA an actual useful power. Like many students at the Academy, however, having a “tier one” power meant being a “tier one” prick as well, and Carl was no exception to this rule.

  “Hey,” I whispered to Baxter, “don’t let him get to you.”

  I didn’t actually feel bad for him, but the four of us had to cooperate because all empowered thrived on each other’s power. The more in sync we were, the more powerful each of us became, and simulations could be life or death, so we needed all the power we could muster.

  As soon as the ascending walls finally locked into place with a heavy click, the entire test chamber—or rather, the section of the test chamber we’d been partitioned in—went pitch black.

  “Hey, Emily,” came Carl’s sleazy voice through the darkness, “wanna play seven minutes in heaven?”

  “Ew, barf!” I replied. Carl and Lizzy snickered. “Focus on the mission,” I added. “Lizzy and I will get some elevation. You guys find cover.”

  Lizzy’s power let her crawl along walls and ceilings like a gecko, which allowed her (and me, since I had “borrowed” her power before the simulation began) to get into pretty advantageous positions in situations like this.

  Lizzy and I deftly scaled the sheer metal walls, Lizzy taking the wall to the left, while I took the opposite one. Us being BFFs, Lizzy was the first person whose power I had ever absorbed, and thus I felt more comfortable using her power than anybody else’s. I didn’t know the statistics on how common it was for two empowered kids to grow up together, but I was willing to bet Lizzy and I were the only two in the world who joined the Academy together when they turned eighteen.

  Just as my eyes were starting to adjust to the darkness, several spotlights flashed on, illuminating the long hallway in sections. Now I understood what they wanted us to do; we had to sneak and slink through the dark hallway, avoiding the patches of light, and reach the other side without being detected. It looked easy enough, but knowing the Academy, there would be plenty of bogus surprises waiting for us along the way.

  Test robots, for example, were staples of the simulation experience, and I was sure there’d be some waiting for us in the shadows here too. They were these lunky, bipedal machines that could perform basic functions. Given how slow and unsophisticated they were, getting injured by one was a mark of shame for any Academy student, but they still could be a pain in the ass if they caught you off guard.

  It was hard to explain what it felt like using Lizzy’s power. To others, it looked like we stuck to the walls with our hands and feet, but there was nothing sticky about her power at all. It was almost as though there was a primal force, like gravity, that kept us attracted to the wall. After coming to the Academy and finally being able to absorb other people’s powers, I’d learned this was one thing they all had in common—this ineffable quality that seemed linked to some fundamental force of nature.

  “Pst!” Carl hissed from below, getting my attention.

  From my vantage point about thirty feet overhead, I peered down to see Carl and Baxter ducking behind a low metal wall. A spotlight illuminated the area in front of them where there was a single test robot patrolling back and forth. It was so simple, I knew it had to be a trap.

  Carl, however, thought this was a fine time to use his powers, which could be pretty damn conspicuous. Kneeling in the darkness, he began charging up an electromagnetic blast that would fry the test robot’s circuits, but doing this caused quite the commotion and—just as I suspected—two other test robots that had been lying in wait nearby suddenly activated and rushed Carl.

  I was by now fifteen feet above the clusterfuck waiting to erupt below me, and without thinking I leaped from the wall, landing feet-first on one of the robots charging through the darkness at Carl—so much for stealth, I supposed—effectively putting it out of commission. This caused the other robot to stop in its tracks and turn its attention to me. I didn’t know what kind of targeting system their metal brains used, but apparently the dropkick from hell that I’d just given its tinhead buddy made me a greater threat than Carl. Before it had a chance to make a move on me, however, I quickly used Carl’s own power that I’d absorbed earlier to send a jolt of electricity through the metal ground that shocked its way into the robot, scrambling its circuits long enough for Lizzy to drop down on it with a great crash.

  “We’re failing this simulation, aren’t we?” Lizzy said to me hopelessly. I helped her up as chaos continued to erupt around us.

  Carl had finally launched his electromagnetic bomb, but apparently he’d charged it up for way too long, so while it did manage to stun the test robot he’d originally set his sights on, it also lit up the area in front of us brighter than the pyrotechnics at a Kiss concert. My dark brown hair was standing up from all of the ambient static electricity in the air. Once the sparks died down, we were left standing there awkwardly among the twitching bodies of the test robots.

  “Your disguise isn’t fooling anybody,” Carl said indignantly, kicking a metal crate by his feet that I hadn’t even noticed before. Baxter morphed from the crate back into his normal form.

  “That’s your idea of stealth?” Lizzy asked incredulously.

  Baxter shrugged sheepishly in reply, and then suddenly all of the lights flashed back on. We winced, our eyes wholly unaccustomed to the harshness of the intense lights reflected off the gleaming metal walls and floor.

  “Debriefing room, now,” said Mr. Silva over the loudspeaker. The test chamber started reconfiguring itself back into its default form so that we could leave.

  “I think that was Mr. Silva’s ‘you guys blew it’ voice,” said Lizzy with a sigh, idly kicking at one of the malfunctioni
ng robots on the ground.

  I looked at Carl angrily—his impetuousness had started the whole cavalcade of events that blew our stealth. “I thought we agreed to take things slowly,” I said to him. “If this was a real mission, you would’ve got us all killed.”

  Carl rolled his eyes. “Don’t think just cause your dad is head of the Empowered Bureau that you know anything about ‘real missions’,” he said with a snort.

  I had to fight back my urge to punch him right there. I hated it when other students brought up my dad. They all thought he paved my way through the Academy, but they had no idea how hard he actually was on me.

  Luckily, however, my BFF saw that Carl’s remark had gotten to me, and she placed a hand on my shoulder, calming me down.

  “Let’s go, Em,” she said. “I wanna find out if we set a record for quickest team to fail a simulation.”

  ━━━━━ ▣ ━━━━━

  Back in the debriefing room, we were all sitting down at the big conference table when Mr. Silva barged through the door.

  “Up,” he said immediately. “Sitting is for students who can pass simulations. You guys just failed that one, big time. Set a record in fact.”

  “I knew it!” Lizzy whispered to me as we stood up, which earned her a harsh glare from Mr. Silva.

  Mr. Silva was probably the hottest instructor at the Academy—the epitome of tall, dark and handsome—and it only made sense that he was the one to run our stealth simulations since his ability to literally disappear inside shadows made him incredible at espionage.

  “I’ve only ever had to cut a simulation short two times since I started teaching here, and this was one of them,” Mr. Silva said, eyeing each of us in turn. Even though we were all eighteen-year-olds, Mr. Silva’s great stature combined with the shame each of us in some way felt at having bungled the simulation made us look like grade-schoolers getting scolded by their parents.

  “Carl, you have to consider the luminosity of your electric powers,” Mr. Silva continued. “I know you have some tools in your arsenal that would have been more appropriate for the first obstacle. Lizzy, be more decisive. You could have prevented things from getting out of control, but you hesitated. Emily, you have to lead. Your powers give you a complete understanding of what your teammates are capable of. You should be orchestrating everything. And Baxter—a box? Really?”

  My cheeks were flushed with anger. I was trying to lead. It wasn’t my fault Carl was more impatient than a senior on prom night.

  “Not a good look for the last simulation you guys will probably ever run,” Mr. Silva said, which was met by a collective gasp from the four of us.

  “What happened?” I asked. “No more sims?”

  Though our training at the Academy consisted of classes, exercises, and even homework, nothing compared to the benefit you got from having to put everything together during a simulation.

  “First of all,” Mr. Silva began, “Test Chamber Alpha will remain open, so you will still have powers training there. But the Architect needs to use Test Chamber Delta for special testing of her new robot designs, and we don’t know when she’ll be finished with that.”

  Lizzy jabbed me in the ribs. She was a conspiracy nut and had all sorts of theories about what was going on at the Academy, one of them being that the Architect, the dean of the Academy, had been designing robots that could use powers like us. I didn’t buy it—like I didn’t buy most of her crackpot theories—but maybe she was on to something.

  “In the meantime,” Mr. Silva continued, “in lieu of running simulations, we’re going to be taking you out on field missions. You’ll have an instructor with you, but you’ll be out in the real world dealing with life-or-death situations.”

  At that, the hairs on my arm stood up. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Normally, you had to train in dozens of simulations before taking the Test to become a full-time Empowered Military Personnel, and only then would you have the chance to do field missions.

  “Sweet!” I said enthusiastically. Lizzy and the others were just excited as I was. We all looked at each other with big, surprised smiles on our faces.

  “Don’t get ahead of yourselves,” Mr. Silva cut in, flicking his dark hair to one side in a somewhat coquettish way. “Simulations are dangerous, but field missions can be deadly. And since you’ll be leaving the Academy grounds for them, your discretion training will be even more important. Nobody knows about the Academy, much less the existence of EMPs, and things have to stay that way. It also means you may be called upon at any moment for a mission. There’s no way to tell when a situation is going to break out, so you always have to be ready.”

  “I’ve been waiting to go on a mission my whole life,” I said breathlessly, almost to myself. It was true—ever since I found out I had powers and my dad explained the Empowered Academy to me, it had been my dream to make my dad proud and serve my country as an EMP.

  “What kind of missions?” asked Carl. “Bank robberies? Assassinations?”

  “It varies,” Mr. Silva replied. “But the nature of the missions you’ll be assigned to will depend on your powers.”

  “Does that mean I’ll get sent on a mission with you, Mr. Silva?” asked Lizzy, batting her eyelashes at Mr. Silva. She had the hots for Mr. Silva big time and had never really tried to hide it.

  “Perhaps,” Mr. Silva said, doing a good job of pretending not to notice the flirtatious tone in Lizzy’s voice. “But if you all perform the way you did today, your missions will be a disaster. So remember what I told you and focus on your training, because if you screw up during a mission, it could get your whole squad killed.”

  This put a somber tone on the excited mood that had been filling the air before. We all looked downward, thinking about what Mr. Silva just said.

  “Now, some of the other teams are still going through their simulations. Get to the observation room and take some notes. When they’re all finished, you can shower and get out of here.”

  We all grabbed our notebooks and started making our way to the door that led to the observation room, but then Mr. Silva called my name.

  “Emily, I need to talk with you for a minute.”

  I stopped in my tracks. Lizzy looked back at Mr. Silva and me. She almost seemed jealous that I would get to be alone with him, but I was more worried than anything else.

  “Just Emily, Ms. Price,” Mr. Silva added, motioning for Lizzy to get lost.

  Once we were alone in the debriefing room, I felt even more nervous. Because of how strict and demanding my dad was, I always got really self-conscious around male authority figures, especially when I was by myself. I wondered what I had done to be held after debriefing like this.

  Mr. Silva leaned back against the conference table casually, and I couldn’t help but gulp at how sexy he was. With just the two of us in the quiet room, I somehow felt intimately close to him. With one leg crossed over the other, his slacks bunched up around his impressive bulge, making me wonder at what I would see under his clothes.

  I tried biting my inner cheek, something I sometimes tried when I had to force myself to focus, and it worked a bit, bringing my mind back to the matter at hand. Even though I’d been here for a month, I was still sometimes overwhelmed by the insatiable pull I sometimes felt toward other empowered.

  “Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble,” Mr. Silva said, making me wonder how obvious my nervousness was, “but there is something I wanted to talk with you about.”

  He reached back to a pile of papers on the conference table and pulled one out. He looked at it as he spoke. “Baxter, Carl, Randal, David, Trisha... We’ve paired you with lots of students so far, and the only one you seem to connect with—the only one you seem to be able to really work together with—is Lizzy.”

  I didn’t know what to say. It was true, but it wasn’t something anybody had brought up with me before.

  “It’s good you work well with Lizzy,” he continued, “but that won’t cut it on real missions
, which you’ll soon have to go on. You’ll need to cooperate with a whole squad; at least four people.” He put the paper back and then crossed his arms. “How much did your dad tell you about how our powers work?”

  I cringed. There it was again—“your dad.” I was so tired of everybody at the Academy bringing him up around me. Why couldn’t they judge me based on my own performance alone? Why did I always have to be associated with my dad?

  But Mr. Silva had always been nice to me. I couldn’t get mad at him. “The same things we learned in class, really,” I said, clearing my throat. “That our abilities are powered by our emotions, especially with other EMPs...”

  “So have you tried connecting with any other EMPs? I mean, on an emotional level?”

  I thought for a moment. Ever since I got here, I had been dead set on doing my absolute best so I could make my dad proud. I paid complete attention in each class and even did after-hours training in my spare time. But aside from Lizzy, who had been my best friend since we were little, I guess I hadn’t really tried to make friends with anybody else. I told myself it was because I was the hardest-working and most serious student at the Academy, but at the same time I knew it had to at least be in part because of my shyness as well—I’d never even had a boyfriend before.

  Mr. Silva saw the answer to his question in my expression as I searched in vain for a time when I really connected with anybody else at the Academy. He gave me a light smile, which made me relax a little bit.

  “You know, I only graduated and became a teacher about half a year ago, so I know some of the students here can be major a-holes, but you’ve gotta give them a chance. You have to find your tribe.”

  That was a juicy bit of gossip to tell Lizzy. I knew Mr. Silva was young, but I had no idea he’d only just recently graduated. I guessed passing the Test really did make you grow up.

  “You’ll know what I mean once you find the right person,” Mr. Silva added. “I used to think I was pretty powerful, but I had no idea how much I was missing until I met Mazzy. There’s no way we would have passed the Test without the empowerment our squad got from being with each other.”