The Academy: Book 2

by Leito, Chad

  “Long story short, I learned the things I needed to learn. And when you’re fourteen, people aren’t very scared of you. I was amazed that they let me move so freely. I just walked into the parking garage below the building, like I belonged there, and worked on setting up the explosives for six hours. Six hours, and no one asked me a thing!

  “I lived a mile away from the bank. I climbed into my tree house at home, and watched from the tippy top. I felt the heat, baby! A mile away, and when I pressed the button on my cell phone, I felt the heat!” Boom Boom shuddered again.

  The story sickened Asa, especially the part about the dog. Why would you do that to an innocent animal? Asa never asked how many people died in the bank explosion. He didn’t want to know.

  Boom Boom was a trusted, well-respected student in the Academy. Asa didn’t get it. Maybe it’s because he’s so smart. Professor Stern, who taught Science Class, talked highly of Mike Plode. Asa could understand how a criminal organization like the Academy could use such a skilled arsonist, but didn’t know how you could trust someone like that.

  He had heard that Boom Boom was mutated so that he could make a spider web. Asa had never seen him do it, but it was said that Boom Boom’s webs could stop a charging bull.

  Despite being sickened by Boom Boom’s previous murders, Asa couldn’t help but think that he could be very powerful force in this semester’s Task. He just hoped that he could get Boom Boom and the other members of his team to trust him enough, so that he wouldn’t be left to fight and die alone.

  12

  Sneaking into Robert King’s Office

  February the seventh was a day that Asa would remember.

  The visibility was low. A thick fog had fallen over the mountains of the Academy, and Asa was wondering if it would persist until the next day, when the Sharks were scheduled to have their first Winggame match.

  A few days later, Asa reasoned that the weather had subconsciously helped Jen to convince him to sneak with her into one of the most guarded places in the Academy on February the seventh. He thought that if the day had been clear and blue, he would have been too scared that someone would see them sneaking into that place on the mountainside.

  Asa was tired. He had just finished a Science Class exam and was looking forward to a weekend in which his studies did not consume him. He had stayed up two nights in a row to study, but felt confident that he had done well.

  As he flew towards his dwelling in the side of Mount Two, he had to change course twice after veering off in the wrong direction in the fog. His head was pounding from the mental rigor of the final, which took him two and a half hours to complete. Each question had a component of complicated mathematics, and contained six or seven terms that Asa had not known at the beginning of the class. In his tired state, he reflected on how nervous he had been when Professor Stern handed out the exam. Now, he felt a great sense of accomplishment at achieving something that he previously thought was impossible.

  Teddy had finished the exam long before anyone, and Asa suspected that he got every answer right. Though the students were warned that not keeping your eyes on your own exam could get you killed, Asa couldn’t help but peak up when Teddy stood up fifteen minutes after beginning. Teddy looked at Asa, winked at him with one of his pupil-filled eyes, and turned in his exam. Stridor turned his test in second fastest, and that was an hour later.

  Asa landed on his dwelling’s doorstep, retracted his wings, and looked out at the white mass of clouds that blanketed the Academy. The fog was so thick that he couldn’t even see Fishie Mountain, which was just a short flight away.

  As he entered his dwelling, he was so thankful for the warmth and the promise of rest that he didn’t notice the human-shaped shadow that flanked the stone wall, projected by candlelight.

  “Hello,” Jen said.

  Asa shut the door behind him.

  Though they had been spending a great deal of time together, she had never been inside his dwelling. They always had taken walks around Town, or spent time in the many paths that sprawled out from Fishie Mountain. Asa was nervous about Jen being inside his dwelling. He didn’t want her to hear Teddy working above them. She was so incredibly bold and confident that he feared she would suggest that they swim through the water-tunnel and see what he was working on up there.

  “How did you know this was where I live?” Asa asked.

  “I have my ways,” Jen replied. “Who is Volkner?”

  Without any concrete reason, Asa felt fear. He hadn’t seen Volkner, the Multiplier who had been the most aggressive about killing both Asa and Charlotte, since last semester. It had struck him as odd, but he had welcomed the absence, and hadn’t questioned it much. “Volkner?”

  “Yeah,” Jen said. She crossed her legs on the bearskin couch and said, “Am I saying it right? Volkner? That’s what I thought he said. Is that someone you’ve heard of?”

  “I’ve heard of him.”

  “Robert King wants to meet with him, and I want you to come with me.” She batted her eyelashes comically. “Pretty please?”

  Robert King is dead, Asa thought. He moved across the room and sat in the armchair across from her. “Why are you here?” he said.

  Jen sighed. “Asa, we’ve already been over this. Do I need to start over?” She spoke in a high pitch, as though her voice was being mechanically sped up: “Hello. Who is Volkner? Robert King wants to meet with him, and I want you to come with me.” She batted her eyelashes in the same, sarcastic manner, except faster this time. “Pretty please?”

  “Robert King wants to have a meeting with Volkner?” Asa repeated. “How do you know this?”

  She looked at the watch on her armband. “I’d love to fill you in, Palmer, but we’ve only got an hour to get there, and it’s a long way away. So, how about I just say that I have my ways? Now, give me the cliffnotes on this Volkner guy, and let’s hit the road.”

  Asa hadn’t yet told Jen about how the Multipliers were trying to kill him and Charlotte, and he didn’t feel like doing it now. “He’s a Multiplier,” Asa said. “He seems to have a lot of power here…or at least he did last year. I haven’t seen him this whole semester.”

  “And he scares you; I can tell by the look on your face.”

  Asa didn’t respond.

  “Well, like I said, we’d better get going.” She stood up. “I’d rather you come, so that you can maybe understand if they get to talking about last semester stuff that I don’t get. But, you don’t have to go. I’m not your mom, Palmer.”

  Asa stood to. “You haven’t even said where we’re going yet, if I decide to come.”

  She smiled. “Oh, you’ll come. You seem to want to get a scoop of gossip about this Volkner guy; I can see it in those eyes of yours. The meeting is going to be in Robert King’s office.”

  “ROBERT KING’S OFFICE?” Asa bellowed.

  “Calm down, Palmer. I know a back way to get in, we’ll be fine, and the old man won’t know we’re there.” She walked towards the door, and then turned back to him. “You coming?”

  Asa cursed, Jen smiled, and they walked out together.

  Once outside, Jen explained that she had planned on them walking through the woods to Finish Line Mountain, where this supposed meeting between Volkner (who has been absent from the Academy for over a month, Asa thought) and Robert King (who is dead) was to be held. But, with the thick fog, she thought it would be acceptable to fly.

  They set off into the fog after looking around to make sure that no one had seen them exit Asa’s dwelling together. Jen kept her wings tucked into her back, and Asa flew, holding on to Jen by her wrists as they went. Though Jen was able to somewhat fly, she sometimes was thrown off course by strong gust of winds. And, in the fog, if they had flown separately it would have been easy for them to lose each other.

  Asa hoped that Jen wouldn’t be able to feel the fast pulse in his hands as he held her over the fog-obscured earth and Moat. He thought about how the first time that he had met Jen; she w
as traipsing through the forest behind Mount Two. And then, a short while later, she had tried a shortcut during a team run through the lethal span of arctic jungle at the bottom of Fishie Mountain. Those things had been ill advised. But sneaking into Robert King’s office is insane. Asa thought the punishment for trespassing upon the owner of Alfatrex’s personal office would be torture and then death.

  But, careless as Jen had been, Asa was glad that she had given him this opportunity. He recalled the video that he and Teddy had watched in the safe room, which had depicted Robert King’s death. He had cried and screamed, and asserted that he was not the true Robert King.

  But if that wasn’t Robert King, who died in that internet video?

  Asa was also curious as to why Volkner hadn’t been at the Academy. He had been such a presence last semester. Why had he now disappeared? Was this connected, somehow, to the Multipliers that Asa had seen in the woods—the dirty, crude group of people who had been killing Davids? And was it also connected with Brumi being bitten by a Multiplier that she had described as “dirty?” Had Volkner gone out on some quest, outside of the Academy, that had to do with these things?

  Asa was flying straight towards the center of Finish Line Mountain, where Roxanne had shown him the door to Robert King’s office, when Jen said, “We’ll need to drop some more. We’re going to the base of the mountain. Veer to the right some, too.”

  After some more navigational corrections, Jen and Asa landed on a discreet, rocky portion of the mountain, far away from where Roxanne had told him that the entrance to The Boss’s office was. A white lizard was sun bathing on a frost-covered boulder. Asa would have never seen the four-foot tall metal door in the mountainside if Jen hadn’t pointed it out. Its location was thoroughly obscured by trees.

  “Have you been here before? How did you find this?” Asa asked, wondering how she had seen the door.

  “Yeah, I’ve been here loads of times. If you look enough places, you’re bound to find some useful things,” Jen replied. “Once we get in there, we’re going to have to be quiet. We’ve got a long way to travel before we get to Robert King’s office, but still, if someone hears human voices down there, they might investigate.”

  “Human voices?” Asa asked, but Jen didn’t answer. She had already opened the small door and crawled inside. Asa watched her feet disappear into the dark opening. He stood out in the fog a moment longer, wishing that Jen had given him more information on this place. I don’t even know what I’m crawling into. Not wanting to be left behind, Asa went in after her.

  He shut the door behind him and examined the room. It was wide, spacious, but with ceilings that were barely taller than the four-foot tall doorjamb. They were in a parking garage, but one that was not made for human cars. Parked in the spaces, which were outlined in white paint, were hundreds of tiny cars, similar to the ones that Asa had seen the raccoons driving. Each of these cars was red, with shiny, miniature, black rubber wheels, and a single headlight that was centered on the front bumper. A bucket was attached to the back of each vehicle, and most of these buckets were filled with cleaning supplies such as mops, bottles of Windex, and brooms.

  The Academy raccoons had an innate urge to clean, and this was evident in their garage. Each windshield shined, and every tire was utterly void of dirt. The concrete floor appeared to be mopped regularly, and was as clean as though it had been poured earlier in the day.

  This is why she said that human voices would raise alarm here; we are within an area that only raccoons are expected to go. Asa felt his eyebrows come together as he looked around the expansive room and felt the cold concrete beneath his palms. He had never imagined where the raccoons stayed before—it had simply never occurred to him.

  As Asa was examining the garage, Jen had gotten ahead of him. She was entering one of the many unmarked tunnels along the far wall. Asa hurried to catch up with her.

  The tunnel was as spotless as the garage had been, and it was dimly lit by single-bulb-lights that were screwed into a ceiling socket every fifty yards or so. The tunnel was big enough for one of the raccoon’s cars to be driven up it at a time. As they went, Asa began to get sweaty. Crawling upwards for minutes at a time had him winded. Jen crawled fast, as though she didn’t want to saunter in this tunnel, as though there was some danger in staying here too long. Seeing Jen’s speed made Asa less concerned with fatigue.

  After fifteen minutes of crawling up the spiraling incline, they began to come to places where dozens of hallways came off of the main one. Jesus! Asa thought upon seeing these. Has Jen explored every tunnel in here? How does she know where to go? And how many raccoons live in this place?

  Not long after they passed the first couple of adjacent tunnels, Jen’s sweat began trickling from her nose onto the concrete, and Asa followed the line of drippings as they continued to ascend.

  Finally, they came to an adjacent hallway that was different from the rest. Instead of drab, gray concrete, this one had red, patterned wallpapers, bright green carpet, decorative miniature chandeliers that hung from the ceiling, and gold flanked mirrors and pictures of raccoons along the walls. Since this hallway was for raccoons to walk through, and not for driving, the walls were closer together, and the ceiling was even lower than before. This enclosed space brought on a slight fear in Asa that he would be suffocated in the narrow tunnels.

  Or, maybe worse, Asa feared that they wouldn’t have enough room to turn around if something came after them. Jen didn’t show this fear at all. As she continued on, Asa thought about how she had learned to live on the streets of the post Wolf Flu world alone after her parents passed. It had made her tough, and had brought on a strong confidence in her.

  Jen turned her head and whispered to Asa: “Don’t touch a thing! The raccoons are very particular about their possessions.”

  Jen’s point about the raccoons being particular about their belongings was proven in the next area they entered, which was a spotlessly clean commons room where the raccoons could congregate. The low ceilinged, sprawling room was filled with couches, chairs, and ottomans, all of which were upholstered in a uniform royal purple. Shiny, golden lamps were organized around the room, and black, intricately carved tables stood in front of some of the couches. The room was organized geometrically, and after a moment of examination, Asa realized that the left side of the room was perfectly symmetrical with the right side of the room.

  Asa and Jen crawled over the white, thickly threaded carpet and were careful not to bump into anything. There were many doors leading off from the commons room. Through one, Asa saw a room full of purple bunk beds, each of which was methodically made and without wrinkles. Through another door, Asa saw a tiny, polished miniature bathroom. Near the back of the room, they crawled passed a windowed wall that looked in upon a salon. Inside, some raccoons were on all four paws, while other raccoons ran wooden brushes through their thick coats, spilling excess fur onto the floor that was quickly swept up by a busy, custodial raccoon. As Jen and Asa passed by the window, each of the raccoons stopped what they were doing to glare at the intruders, suspicious that they might mess up their perfect living room.

  As Asa gazed into the eyes of a raccoon who was glaring at him, he felt his breath catch in his throat. There was something odd about the way the raccoon was looking at him. The abnormality had something to do with the too-tall skull, the pink ears that were not customary for the average raccoon, and the way the animal’s lips were pink instead of black. They call them raccoons, Asa thought, but that’s not exactly what they are. They are a different animal. We haven’t given them a new name, but these are not raccoons. The most shocking thing was the animal’s eyes—Asa couldn’t put his finger on what it was about the way that they moved, but something about them made it seem like Asa was looking at a human that was trapped in a raccoon’s body.

  Jen led Asa through a couple of scaled-down swinging doors into a silvery, shining, eatery. Many long, white-tiled walls partitioned this room into sections. Along
each wall, were dozens of metal food bowls filled with what looked and smelled like dry dog food, next to bowls of clean, clear water. A few raccoons were leaned over the bowls of food, crunching on an early dinner. They stopped eating when Jen and Asa passed by, and one of them displayed a set of sharp, tiny teeth as though to say, ‘this is my food, get your own bowl!’

  But even in the arcane act of guarding food, there is something about their eyes that is very unlike any animal that I have ever seen in the wild.

  After this room, they crawled up a raccoon sized, flight of stairs, and then moved down a dark, cold, rock corridor. Coming up on their left were a series of circular windows that projected white light onto the opposite wall of the hallway. “Pass the windows quickly,” whispered Jen, as she continued to move forward.

  Asa’s palms were becoming raw, and his knees hurt as he crawled. He obeyed Jen in passing the windows quickly, but gazed out as he did so.

  The small windows looked out onto an office area far below. Thousands of humans were arranged into straight lines of desks where they were either writing with a pen, talking on a telephone, or clicking computer keys while staring at flat-screen monitors. They were all wearing normal office attire; suits and ties, tucked in shirts, and leather shoes. Asa was flabbergasted. He had never known that so many humans worked within the mountains of the Academy. But, it made sense. There was a lot of work to be done.

  For instance, someone had to find the fifteen year olds who would be kidnapped as Fishies. There must be employees who monitored all sorts of news outlets to see if anyone had become suspicious of the Academy existing. There must be all kinds of scientists who worked on developing new Academy drugs, as well as Alfatrex drugs. There must be bankers, investors, and many more employees to run the Academy. And then, there must be managers, and supervisors, and people who are supposed to hire all these people. And where do they live? They must have lodgings somewhere within the mountains. There must be someone to coordinate these lodgings, and decide who lives where.