by Leito, Chad
Roxanne leapt into the air and began to ascend. Shortly afterward, the two of them were flying side by side over the Moat, towards the fourth semester students’ mountain.
The moat reflected the mountain perfectly in the still water. Finish Line Mountain was what some referred to this mountain as, obviously because it represented the last step in a student’s training before she or he could become a graduate.
Multiple clear streams trickled down the gradual slope of Finish Line Mountain, coming from the snowy peak high above. The region on the mountains that was covered in snow had been descending slowly downward in recent months, Asa noticed. Finish Line Mountain was layered with thick pine trees. As Asa and Roxanne flew towards the mountain, he was unable to see the entrance for the fourth semester students’ dwellings.
8
Roxanne’s Apartment
As they flew through the air, high above the steaming Moat, Asa wondered why Roxanne was taking him all the way to her apartment just to reprimand him. If she was going to kick me off, couldn’t she have done it in the jungle? And why is she acting as though the conversation needs to be secret?
Asa could feel the corners of the altered polaroid picture poking his chest. It rested inside his suit, in between the fabric and his skin.
Far below, off to their right, Asa could see Conway’s house. The roof was packed thick with snow, and soft yellow light came through the thin curtains from the main room. Excitement boiled up in Asa’s mind as he wondered what Conway would say if he saw the picture of Asa in a lab coat with glasses. Asa almost couldn’t wait to know if his suspicion that the mutated gorillas around the Academy were trying to help him was correct. If not, then why were the Multipliers trying to kill them? And why was the gorilla that Jen came across carrying a picture of me?
Far below, a team was practicing Winggame in the early daylight. From so high up, the faces below were unrecognizable; the height made them the size of ants. A male voice drifted through the air to Asa, as the captain shouted orders to his teammates.
“I DON’T CARE IF THERE’S SOMEONE RIGHT ABOVE YOU! IF YOU’RE GOING TO HIT THE WATER, PULL UP! IT’LL BE THEIR FAULT WHEN YOU KNOCK THEIR TEETH OUT!”
Again, Asa longed to play a fair season of Winggame. He wanted to actually test himself against the other players; he wanted to show what he could do in a game, and make a new reputation for himself. He wanted to be known as a winner, not a cheater or murderer. And now, in addition to those, I’ll also be known as the first student to be kicked off their own Winggame team.
With all that had already happened since he woke up, Asa was somewhat surprised to see that it was still only 7:55 AM. He already felt tired, and he still had a full day ahead of him. After Asa’s meeting with Roxanne, he would have to hurry back to his home mountain, which was sometimes called Mount Two (because it held second semester students), for “Flying Class” at 9:00 AM. Asa was confused by the title: I already know how to fly, though. Wouldn’t it have been better to offer the class last semester? After this was a “Responding to Medical Emergencies Class,” and then, directly after that was a class that was broadly named “Science Class.” He wouldn’t have a break until the afternoon. And then I’m going straight to Conway’s, he told himself.
Asa followed Roxanne as she began to descend into Finish Line Mountain. Instead of the entrance being in the front, as the entrance was for Fishie Mountain, the student entrance into this mountain was located along the right side, carved into the rock. Asa saw it clearly, even from a distance. Great stone lions flanked the door on either side. The door itself was eighty feet tall, and covered with a glass overhang. The overhang had a minimal amount of snow on it, but a raccoon was busy sweeping it clean, brushing off bits of snow that drifted to the ground.
Asa and Roxanne landed before the enormous door. Asa was winded from the flight, but tried to control his breathing so that he didn’t look weak.
Roxanne began to walk the moment they hit the ground. Her hair was even frizzier than before, due to the flight. Asa followed, moving quickly to keep up. He saw, though, that she wasn’t heading for the door. She was walking towards a forest trail to the left of the giant door.
“Ummm. I thought that we were going to your apartment?” Asa said.
“We are,” Roxanne said. She strode over the earth, into the forest, and Asa followed.
“Isn’t that the door back there?” he asked.
“That’s a door, but it’s not the door. That door goes to Robert King’s office. That’s where he works.”
“But I thought the fourth semester students lived here.”
“It’s a big mountain, Asa. It can have more than one use. Just like your mountain: the researchers do all sorts of chemical testing there, but you also live on the side of it.”
“That’s true,” Asa said, as if he already knew that. His mind went to what Teddy had told him earlier that day, about the authorities not being able to find where Alfatrex kept all the ingredients and recipes they used for making the Wolf Flu. No wonder they can’t find it, he thought. It’s not in the Alfatrex office building; it’s here. He had an uneasy feeling about living on the same mountain that housed the substances that were used to kill his mother and so many other innocent people.
Robert King deserved to die, Asa thought. I wonder if any of the students are suspicious about his absence. “Have you seen The Boss lately?” Asa asked.
“No,” Roxanne said promptly. “Why?”
“No reason,” Asa said. “Just wanted to make sure he was doing okay.”
She turned and looked knowingly at him with her brown eyes. “You don’t think someone shot him, do you?”
Asa’s mouth was dry. “No.” He laughed nervously, wondering if she somehow knew that he had seen the internet video of Robert King’s death. “Why would I think that?”
Roxanne shrugged. “You just asked the question as though you thought someone had shot him. If you keep asking that, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else came to that conclusion also.”
Asa didn’t respond and they walked on along the path. Has someone detected the internet transmissions from my dwelling? Asa had a flash of imagination in which he was being led down to some kind of awful torture chamber. They would shock him, cut off his legs, and demand to know what he had seen, and how he had acquired the video.
They kept walking, and soon they came to a small, discreet, glass door. There was a small metal keypad to the side of it, and Roxanne quickly typed in a passcode. The door opened without a sound and they entered into a long hallway. The floor was carpeted with a rug that was whiter than any he had ever seen. Asa looked down, concerned, as they were tracking in dirt and mud.
“Don’t worry about it,” Roxanne said, noticing his unease. “The raccoons will clean it.”
As they walked down the hallway, motion sensors detected them and lanterns that hung from the ceiling hissed to life and then caught fire. Their feet barely made any noise at all on the thick carpet.
They walked like that for minutes, moving over the carpet as the lanterns above hissed to life. The hall was flanked by hundreds of doors that they passed, as well as adjacent hallways that broke off from the main one; seeing these brought Asa’s mind back to the safe room above his dwelling. He thought of the extra lane that Teddy had carved in the water tunnel.
Again, it’s probably just an architectural thing, Asa told himself. What else could it be? What would Teddy need an extra room for?
Finally, they came to a stop in front of a harsh, metal door with the numbers 2583 sketched into it. There was a strong, reinforced handle with a keypad on it. Roxanne entered the code, opened the door, and they walked in.
The apartment was unlike any room Asa had ever been in. The floor was completely covered in sand. Red and blue leather couches flanked a bamboo coffee table. A huge fish tank sat against the wall, a fluorescent light illuminating the fat catfish beneath it. A fifteen-foot wide photograph of a beach at sunset was mounted on th
e wall. The photograph was somehow illuminating light, and the image was so detailed that Asa could have counted the feathers on a seagull that sat in the sand.
“Have a seat,” Roxanne said.
Asa nodded and walked in. He felt a terrible lump of anxiety in his stomach, and dreaded being kicked off the Winggame team. He sat on the blue couch, which was completely clean despite being surrounded by sand.
Roxanne locked the deadbolt, then picked up a chair and lodged it underneath the doorknob, making the entryway even more secure.
There is a keypad on the outside, Asa thought. Why lock the deadbolt or put the chair in the door. Who is she afraid of?
Roxanne moved across the living room toward the kitchen in the back. It was small, but tastefully decorated with appliances that looked as though they came from a 1950’s diner. The refrigerator was a crisp white, with red plastic outlining it. The floor of the kitchen was checkered black and white tile. A light-up Elvis clock hung on the wall; every time a minute passed, he shook his hips.
“Can I get you something?” She asked, opening up the refrigerator. “Water, beer, lemonade?”
“You have beer?”
“Yeah, the raccoons stock my refrigerator every morning.”
Asa still had a full day of classes ahead of him. “I’ll just have lemonade, thank you. I like your place. Do all fourth semesters have apartments like this one?”
“No, we get to pick how we would like ours to be decorated. I’m glad that you like it.”
Asa heard a noise from behind him and whipped around from where he sat on the couch. A black leopard was pawing out of the back hallway; its fur was matted with sand on its right side. It’s green eyes locked on Asa’s, and it lifted its top lip and began to growl.
“Shut up, Rica,” Roxanne said, and the cat ceased growling, but continued to display it’s sharp teeth.
“Pretty cat,” Asa said.
“Yeah, she’s attractive, but she’s got an attitude. It’s not mine; it’s my boyfriend’s. He thinks I need it for protection,” she said this last word in a singsong, mocking voice.
After seeing Roxanne kick Stan into a nearby tree, Asa wondered who or what she would need protection from. But she does have that black eye, he thought. Maybe there is some legitimacy to the concern.
Roxanne placed two glasses of sweating, iced lemonade on the coffee table. Rica, the panther, was purring beside the fish tank. Roxanne saw the cue, and walked over. She reached her hand in, grasped a catfish, and tossed it to her leopard. What followed was surprisingly violent. The cat pinned the flopping fish to the floor with one of her massive paws, and then bit the head off. While she was crunching the skull, the remainder of the fish squirted blood onto the sand.
The sight made Asa feel nauseous. His heart was thumping in anticipation for the conversation to begin. He wiped his sweaty hands on his suit, and took a sip from his lemonade; it tasted freshly squeezed, but he hardly noticed. His shaking hands made the ice ‘tink’ in the lemonade glass. He sat it back down on the bamboo table, nervous that he might drop it.
Roxanne sat, crossed her legs, and sipped on her own lemonade. She didn’t seem to be in any hurry to start the conversation.
Asa watched Rica devour the entire fish and then begin to lick at the bloody sand. Roxanne’s lemonade glass was half empty and she still hadn’t said anything. Asa felt as though his mind was running too fast for him to properly think, and with the prospect of getting kicked off his Winggame team before him, he was having an awful time. So, he decided to jump into the conversation and get it over with.
“Earlier,” he began. His voice was more even than he had imagined it would be. “When I was in the woods, I wasn’t doing anything…”
She waved a hand at him. “You went after Jen. I know. I was flying over, monitoring the run. What I don’t know is how you could see her from where you were on the track?”
“You know that I was just trying to help?” Asa asked. For some reason he thought it would be better not to tell her about his echolocation yet.
“Yes. And I understand about you not reading the playbook. It was a lot of information. I just want to hold my team to a high standard. And, I needed to make an example of someone. However, I do expect it to be read by tomorrow.”
Asa nodded. He still didn’t feel comfortable. “So the only reason you brought me here was to punish me was because I was talking to Jen?”
Roxanne looked confused. “You’re not in trouble, Asa.”
“So why am I here then?”
The front door’s handle rattled in the doorframe. Roxanne put her lemonade down.
KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!
The door was being hit so hard that it was bulging in its frame.
“ROXIE? YOU IN THERE?”
KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!
“My boyfriend,” she whispered. Her eyes were wide. She looked scared.
KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!
“Roxie, open up!”
She planted her feet, leapt over the coffee table, and ran through the sand towards the door. Rica sat up from where she was sleeping and looked perturbed due to the ruckus.
“COMING!” Roxanne called.
Asa felt frozen as he watched.
She picked up the chair she had lodged under the handle, sat it aside, and unlocked the door. She stood there for a second before opening it, and practiced smiling. She threw open the door.
“Travis!” She squealed, and she threw her arms around him in embrace. She tried to kiss him, but he grabbed her face tightly in one of his hands and held her at arms length.
“What’s going on?” Roxanne’s boyfriend and Asa saw each other. Asa had seen him before. Travis and Asa had met last year when Asa was under the talking ban. Travis had sat at Asa’s table, and when Volkner came by and told Travis Asa’s name, Travis began to drip black saliva from his mouth. He was a Multiplier, and he did not like Asa.
“HUH!?” He squeezed Roxanne’s cheeks and she squealed again; this time the noise wasn’t made due to excitement (or fake excitement).
Travis was furious. His teeth were clenched, and black saliva coated his lips. Still, he was handsome. He stood at six feet four inches tall with short, messy black hair atop his head. He wore a gray turtleneck with a heavy coat over it (the shoulders were sprinkled with snow), and beige slacks. The hand that held Roxanne’s face was enormous.
He took a fast step in, flung the door shut behind him, and threw Roxanne to the ground. Tears had already made it halfway down her cheeks.
Asa looked at the heavy, metal door that was shut and remembered that if someone wanted in, they needed a passcode. If Travis turned on them (which his dripping mouth suggested he was thinking about doing), a scream for help wouldn’t do any good. Even on the off chance someone heard and wanted to try to intercept the angry Multiplier, they wouldn’t be admitted without a code.
“Why was the door locked?” he growled.
“Can we talk about this in the back room, honey? You’re angry!”
Travis wiped the black drippings from his mouth with the back of his hand.
Asa thought: How much older is Travis than Roxanne? Ten years?
“Please. Let’s go sit together. We can talk about this,” Roxanne begged.
Travis rubbed his temples, and without saying a word, he went to the back. Roxanne stood, and wiped a tear from underneath her eye, right beneath the just-healing bruise, and followed him. She didn’t even look at Asa.
The leopard shut her eyes and went back to her nap.
Asa heard a door shut, and all was quiet for a moment. He didn’t know what to do: Leave or stay? He now knew that Roxanne hadn’t brought him here for punishment, but he still didn’t know the purpose of the meeting.
The walls didn’t do much to muffle the sound of Travis’s scream. “WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? DO YOU KNOW WHO HE IS?”
“Yes,” he heard Roxanne say. “Keep your voice down!”
“MY VOICE DOWN?! ASA PALMER, IN YOUR LIVING R
OOM! I WANT HIM OUT!”
Now it was Roxanne’s turn to yell: “THIS IS MY APARTMENT!”
Asa heard him hit her from the living room. A clear smack! broke through the air like the crack of a whip. It sounded as though he backhanded her. Asa tensed up so hard that the glass of lemonade he was holding shattered in his hands. Ice, lemonade and glass rained onto the sand below. Asa’s hands were sticky with lemonade and blood.
He hurried to clean up the mess as Travis’s voice took on a new level of aggression.
“Don’t EVER, EVER talk to me like that!”
She was crying and didn’t respond.
Travis stormed out the bedroom, slamming the door behind him. His shirt was covered with black liquid, and he spat his dark saliva onto the wall where it struck heavily. Asa stood, glass in his hands, and watched the Multiplier walk by. Travis didn’t glance in Asa’s direction. He stormed out the front, slammed the door shut behind him, and then it was quiet again.
Asa continued to clean, not knowing what else to do. He wondered if Roxanne needed help in the back; had he knocked her unconscious?
But going into her bedroom without invitation seemed to Asa like an intrusion on privacy. Leaving also seemed inappropriate because he still didn’t know why she had called him here in the first place. And so, he meandered back and forth from the sand to the trashcan, making sure that he cleaned up every speck of blood and every shard of glass. When that was done, he put Roxanne’s glass in the sink, and even washed a few dishes that were dirty. A dishwasher sat in the lower cabinets, but still, he hand washed what he found.
Asa went back and sat on the couch, contemplating what had just happened. Roxanne is dating a Multiplier. ‘DO YOU KNOW WHO HE IS?’ Travis had yelled. What had he told Roxanne? Surely nothing about the contract, Asa thought. That’s secret information: she’s not supposed to know that. But, the more he thought about it, the more plausible the idea became. She seemed to know that Robert King had been shot, Asa told himself, remembering the odd comments Roxanne had made out in the snow. So maybe he trusts her. Maybe she knows about what went on last semester—about how the Multipliers killed my teammates in an attempt to make me earn fewer points. Maybe she knows that the deaths weren’t my fault, as everyone seems to think that they are.
