Empowered Academy 1985

by Dawn Jansen

  “How are we going to get her out of here then?” I said.

  “I can do it,” Edgar said. “My power has evolved too, like Ramsey’s, I can feel it.”

  Edgar walked over to the door and, without the slightest hesitation, glided through it as normal. This time, however, holding Vera’s hand, he guided her through the door as well. I watched in amazement as she passed through the door just as he had, as though the door itself was just a flimsy hologram.

  “Holy shit,” I breathed, even though I was the only one left in the cell now.

  It seemed that bringing our relationship to the next level had enhanced all of our powers, and I wondered how mine had been affected as well before I passed through the door as well, joining Edgar and Vera on the other side.

  As soon as we were out in the main room again, I heard Ramsey shouting from above.

  “Up here!”

  We looked up and Ramsey was now on the catwalk above us. He was leaning over the railing, waving.

  “There’s an elevator up here! Come on!” he said.

  ━━━━━ ▣ ━━━━━

  “Where the hell does this go?” I asked once we were all in the old, rusty elevator.

  Ramsey and Edgar shrugged.

  We were at B14, which was the lowest basement level. Ramsey mashed on the “G” button, which was the highest floor available, and the elevator started ascending with a jerk.

  We all took a moment to catch our breaths. I noticed then that despite having our powers back, Edgar didn’t hide his scars anymore. He was wearing them with pride now, and I couldn’t help but smile at this.

  “What?” Edgar asked, having noticed the way I was looking at him.

  “Your scars,” I said. “You’re not covering them up anymore.”

  Edgar smiled back. “I guess I realized they’re not something to be ashamed of. They are a part of me... A part of what makes me who I am.”

  “That’s badass,” Ramsey said in this sort of boneheaded way that reminded me of how he used to talk with Chad. This made me snicker to myself.

  Vera was looking a little better than she was before. She was no longer trembling, but she was still holding on to Edgar for support—perhaps both physical and emotional support.

  “Don’t you think this is a little fishy?” Edgar suddenly asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know they didn’t expect us to ever be able to break out of that cell, but this is all going pretty smoothly regardless. A little too smoothly,” Edgar said.

  “Maybe it’s just our good luck,” I said. “Don’t jinx it.”

  I tried to play it off like it was no big deal, but I had actually been thinking the same thing. Either we had gotten extremely lucky, or the Academy knew exactly what we were doing and we were walking right into their trap.

  ━━━━━ ▣ ━━━━━

  At the ground floor, the elevator emptied out into some old, forgotten corner of the Academy where piles of dusty boxes and equipment were stored. I had long since lost track of time, but the weak, reddish-purple sunlight slanting in through a tiny window in this space told me it was dusk, which meant I’d been in that cell for nearly the entire day. The exit out of this room was locked, but that meant nothing to us with Edgar’s new supercharged power; he guided Vera out through the wall while I took Ramsey’s hand and followed suit.

  After quickly phasing through two or three more walls, we were out by the mansion’s northwestern exterior wall, where we hid in some nearby shrubs while we figured out what to do next. It felt good to finally be out and breathing the fresh, sea-blown air. The entrance to the forest that surrounded the mansion was not far away—all we had to do was pass through it and we’d be out to freedom.

  I was grateful for the setting darkness, as it cloaked our movements once we finally decided to move across the yard an hour later. I found myself becoming more and more hopeful as we crept hurriedly through the woods. The closer we came to the outer perimeter of the Academy grounds, the more I believed we were actually going to make it.

  After about five minutes of passing through the forest, however, all my hope evaporated when I suddenly saw four sets of glowing red eyes waiting for us in the darkness ahead.

  Chapter 24

  Emily

  The sinister eyes belonged not to any people, but to four robots standing directly in our path. These robots, however, looked nothing like the test robots I had dealt with many times before during simulations. They were physically more imposing in every way possible—taller, broader, with a sleeker, more sophisticated design—looking less like C-3PO and more like a T-1000 from Terminator. They had thin, skeletal-looking heads that sat atop a strong torso. In the center of their chest were folded metal plates, and I guessed that was where their main power source lay. Their legs were long and thin and seemed capable of advanced, omnidirectional maneuverability.

  About ten feet behind them was the one responsible for all of this, the Architect, standing in her characteristic trench coat, her electric pink hair pulled back in a bun. I had met her several times before during my bi-weekly evaluations at the Academy and during those meetings I always looked up to her. She was a strong, independent woman, the dean of the Empowered Academy, and one day I wanted to be as capable as her. Now, however, that illusion was shattered, and I saw her for what she really was: my enemy.

  “You didn’t think it would be that easy getting away, did you, children?” the Architect said in a haughty tone.

  “I’m so glad you saved us the trouble of having to find you,” I said, balling my hands up into fists. “I’m gonna enjoy punching your lights out, you sadistic bitch.”

  “I should be the one thanking you, Ms. Stride,” the Architect chuckled. “I’ve been looking for a good way to test my new robots’ abilities, and this will do perfectly.”

  “Yeah, we know all about your bogus robots, and we’re not scared,” said Edgar.

  The Architect laughed. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that. They’re each equipped with a disempowerment field twice as powerful as the one in the Epsilon holding cells. I am very curious to see how you fare against them.”

  That was worrying. I looked at Edgar and Ramsey. They looked concerned but ready for anything. I knew I could count on them. I looked to Vera as well, but she was still too spaced out to be of any real use. That meant it would be us three versus the Architect and her four robots.

  “I should warn you, I’ve programmed them to capture you, but they will use lethal force if they need to,” the Architect added.

  After the Architect finished speaking, the red glimmer of the robots’ eyes grew more intense, as though they were being activated, and the plates on their chest unfolded, revealing a glowing core that radiated out dull, orange light. The darkness that enveloped the forest was only a disadvantage to us, as I was sure that the robots were equipped with night vision, but at least we could follow their glowing eyes and cores. They abruptly jumped into action, and I was immediately surprised by how swift they were. They split off in different directions, moving soundlessly through the dense forest with supernatural speed.

  It was hard to see exactly where they were moving because of the darkness, but one of them was headed straight toward me while the others divided themselves between Ramsey and Edgar. I was amazed that they realized Vera was no threat to them, as this required a level of decision-making that the Architect’s old robots were not capable of.

  I was planning to load up an ultra-dense punch on the robot charging toward me, but to my dismay, the disempowerment field radiating out from the robot’s glowing, orange core was too much. The closer it came to me, the weaker and weaker I felt.

  We just overcame one disempowerment field. Why can’t I resist this one?

  But it was too late—the robot pressed in on me, swatting away my feeble defenses as he brought me to the ground hard. I realized then that its disempowerment field was so intense because it was exposed. That component inside i
ts chests was the source of its disempowerment field, and unlike the disempowering device or the cells in Epsilon, it was exerting itself directly at me, with nothing regulating it or reducing its charge.

  The robot’s cold metal claws clamped around my wrists, pinning me to the damp forest ground, leaves crunching and twigs snapping as he pressed me mercilessly down. I screamed, trying to summon all of my strength. I was able to move my arms a few inches, but it wasn’t enough to free myself from the robot’s eagle-like grasp. Its demonic red eyes peered into me with lifeless fervor, and up close now I saw how closely its head resembled a skull.

  “Threat neutralized,” the robot stated in an emotionless, digitized voice.

  Helplessly, I looked to my right, where Edgar and Ramsey were fighting off three of the robots. They were faring better than me, but they were slowly losing their advantage as the robots’ overwhelming disempowerment fields wore them down more and more with each passing second. Vera was to my left, just out of arm’s reach.

  “Vera...” I said through clenched teeth, still struggling against the robot pinning me down. “Help!”

  It was no use though. Vera had once again entered one of her catatonic states. She was just crouching there, staring off into the darkness.

  I begged Vera to snap out of it, but nothing I said got through to her, and as the sounds of Edgar and Ramsey being pummeled by the robots nearby became louder, I knew there was only one thing I could do: I had to absorb Vera’s power.

  Digging deep, I focused all of my strength on extending my arm toward Vera. It was slow fighting against the robot's unwavering strength, but eventually I managed to stretch my arm out all the way. The only problem was that it was still not enough—Vera was about two inches away still.

  “Dammit, Vera, come closer!” I cried.

  Vera made no reply. She was still trapped in her mind, being tortured by what phantoms of her own making I dared not guess.

  I grimaced as my power continued to wane. The robot on top of me kept its chest component exposed so it could continue raining harsh disempowerment rays directly down on me. I felt Ramsey’s power vanishing, Edgar’s power being whittled away, and then... what was that? Deep in my core somewhere, in the furthest recesses of where I stored the powers I absorbed, I felt somebody else’s power there: Hugo’s.

  It made no sense. It had been over a month since I absorbed his power. It should have long since disappeared, but it was still there. It was weak—nearly imperceptible—but it had never left me. Hugo had been with me this whole time.

  I knew what I had to do. I reached my hand out toward Vera as far as I could, once again stopping short by two inches, but then I tried channeling Hugo’s power into my fingertips. I was sweating profusely, grunting and straining, giving this one last-ditch effort everything I had, and then, miraculously, I felt my fingers stretching. I almost thought I was just imagining it at first, but then they stretched even more and I knew it was working. Little by little, my two forefingers extended out beyond their normal length and touched Vera’s bare foot.

  As soon as we made contact, Vera’s incredible power flooded into me. I could tell right away that Hugo was right; Vera really was the strongest empowered in the world, or at least she had by far the strongest power I’d ever absorbed. It was utterly overwhelming. Whereas normally my power would locate and then coax out somebody’s power when I touched them, with Vera it wasn’t like that at all. There was an ocean of power within her, and when we established the link between us, it felt like somebody had loosed the floodgates and her power came surging into me. It was too much for me, and I pulled my hand away almost as soon as we had touched, fearing that I’d be irrevocably damaged if we maintained contact for too long.

  The robot jerked my hand back away from Vera, but it was already too late. Vera’s power had found my core, and there was no disempowerment field on earth that could even hope of limiting this immense power. Not knowing if I’d get stuck in a parallel universe or lose my mind like Vera, I closed my eyes and entered the fourth dimension.

  Chapter 25

  Emily

  I think I knew why Vera had gone crazy.

  As I plunged into the fourth dimension, the whole world fell apart, revealing its constituent parts. Everything took on the appearance of an exploded-view diagram. When I looked at the robot’s head, it was no longer above me. It wasn’t even below me or to any direction I could rationally perceive, either, but as I moved through this bizarre new dimension, the multiple facets of the robot’s head changed. Sometimes I could see the interior circuitry and screws that made up its skull; other times I could see it from behind and from above at the same time. It was disorientating and dizzying, inducing a sense of vertigo in me almost instantly.

  The robot was moving around in a confused state, and I wondered where I even was in relation to it spatially. I had not gotten far enough in physics class to even attempt to understand what the hell I was seeing, but I reached out—my arm fracturing and traveling through impossible directions in space—and started rearranging the bits and pieces inside the robot’s head, moving a computer chip here and displacing a screw there until eventually the robot malfunctioned and fell down in a heap.

  Edgar and Ramsey had been about twenty feet away from me before, but I reached them now in only a single step. The three robots they were fighting had pinned them to the ground, just like the other robot had done to me. I had to be careful not to look too long at Edgar or Ramsey because they appeared impossibly distorted. Their position and angle in space changed each time I moved, making it so that sometimes I could even see their bones, organs, and blood vessels, as though their bodies had dispersed into an infinity of layers.

  Working with greater speed, I dealt with these three robots the same way I had handled the one that attacked me—by casually reaching in and picking apart their insides, dismantling them from within. They seemed unable to even detect my presence, and they quickly collapsed to the ground harmlessly.

  I couldn’t spend any more time inside the fourth dimension, though. Not only was it incredibly exhausting, but nothing made sense either, and I feared that one wrong step could cause irreparable damage to me or one of my men. So I closed my eyes and deactivated the dimensional shift, hoping Vera’s insane power would obey my command.

  When I opened my eyes again, the world was normal again. Everything was compact, solid, and strictly three-dimensional, and when Ramsey and Edgar came running toward me, I couldn’t see their guts or spines like before.

  I raised my arms to hug them and was surprised by how weak I was. Using Vera’s astounding power had taken so much out of me that I could barely lift my arms. Luckily, Edgar and Ramsey caught me as I fell forward.

  “Careful,” Ramsey said, lowering me down to a sitting position on the soft forest floor next to a downed robot that looked like it had been dissected.

  “I don’t know if I can help you guys... against the Architect,” I said woozily.

  “The Architect... Hey, where the hell did she go?” Ramsey said, standing up and looking around the dark forest.

  “She must have jetted while we were fighting,” Edgar said. “Are you okay to stand, Emily? We better get out of here too while we still can.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “We should get to Old Field as soon as we can. Hugo and the others are waiting...”

  Ramsey bent down to help Vera up off her feet, and then the four of us carried on through the forest, leaving the four busted up robots scattered across the ground. We trudged through the woods for a few more minutes, constantly looking over our shoulder for pursuing guards, before we came upon a cliff overlooking the Atlantic. Here the bright moon hung low in the sky, the powerful waves of the ocean reflecting its selenian glow as they crashed incessantly upon the beach below us. We had escaped Epsilon, escaped the Academy, escaped all the lies and betrayal that festered there. I breathed in the fresh, sea-brine air and looked westward down the beach, knowing that somewhere in that direct
ion, Hugo was waiting for us.

  Chapter 26

  Emily

  Three months later

  The sun was shining brilliantly over Dolores Park that day as Ramsey, Edgar and I were settling down for our first picnic in San Francisco.

  We had burritos, iced tea, pizza, and sushi, a delectable hodgepodge that I could have made short work of on my own, but it tasted even better with Ramsey and Edgar by my side.

  There were several benefits to living in San Francisco. Aside from the bitchin’ food, there was also the fact that the three of us didn’t have to hide our love in public, because nobody in the city batted an eye at a romantic trio like us. Aside from that, there were no winters like there were in Maine or New York, and even though we were busy helping at the Mission, I even found time to learn how to surf.

  We called ourselves the Mission because our base of operations was on Mission Street, but also because it represented what we wanted to do: take down the Empowered Bureau, put the Architect behind bars, and raise public awareness about the existence of empowered people.

  “You think any of these people might be empowered?” Ramsey asked after taking an epic bite of his burrito.

  “Considering we’re not the only trio or even quartet that’s dating here, I think there might be some,” Edgar replied with a laugh. He still wore his burn scars proudly even after all this time, and I still thought he looked damn good with them.

  “I’m glad Hugo wanted us to lay low for these first few months out here,” I said. “I dunno if you guys knew, but I started at the Academy basically right after I finished high school, so I never really had free time like this to just hang out. Still though, it would be even better if Lizzy was here too...”

  Edgar squeezed my hand and gave me a reassuring smile. “We’ll get her out of there, Em. Her, Wesley, Baxter, Mace... All the good ones will surely join us once they figure out what we’re doing here, all the changes taking place.”