The Academy: Book 2

by Leito, Chad

  Minutes later, the circular windows were far behind them, and they were in the pitch dark. Asa followed the noises that Jen made crawling, and used his echolocation every so often to check his surroundings. Finally, Jen stopped, and Asa ran into the back of her.

  “Give me your hand,” she whispered.

  He did so, and she guided it over to a cold, metal rung.

  “This is a ladder. We are very close to Robert King’s office. Don’t say a word. Follow my lead. If something happens, leave me.”

  Without further explanation, Jen began to climb. Asa could hear her hands and feet moving higher and higher up the metal.

  Before he went up, Asa closed his eyes for a moment and placed his forehead against the chilled ladder. This is a good decision. She knows what she’s doing. She’s been here before. And who knows what kinds of things I’ll learn from sitting in on a meeting in Robert King’s office?

  For starters, I need to find out if he’s actually alive, as Jen seems to think that he is. It sounded like she had seen him in his office before. Is that possible? Didn’t I watch him die? Jen has never seen Robert King before in person, though. Maybe she mistook someone else for The Boss. I’ll never know unless I climb this ladder.

  And so, he began to ascend. He felt that the weight of the entire mountain around him was pressurizing the space he occupied, weighing on him. It felt insane to crawl so deep into the mountain to spy upon someone so dangerous as Robert King. And don’t forget, Jen said that Volkner will be in the office, too. Moving up the ladder was like crawling into a wasp’s nest.

  But I have to go. Asa remembered how lost he had felt before he learned why the Multipliers were trying secretly to kill him last semester. He remembered thinking, How am I supposed to defend myself from an attack if I don’t know what’s coming?

  Now, he faced a similar situation. Last month he had happened upon non-Academy Multipliers in the forest behind Mount Two. And now Brumi had been bitten and a Multiplier attack seemed imminent to Asa. On top of this, there were highly intelligent apes, called Davids, being killed in the Academy’s surroundings. The picture of himself that a David had given to Asa in the arctic jungle at the foot of Fishie Mountain was stowed away in the same drawer that Asa kept Charlotte’s letter in. To top these things, Teddy was acting more murderous than ever, and the approaching Task was supposed to be the most lethal one yet.

  The information he learned had the potential to shed light on any or all of these issues.

  Asa let out a small moan and began to climb.

  The best situation, Asa told himself, would have been for me to get my information from Conway. But, he does not trust me enough to tell me the things I need to know. He’s left me no choice. I need to know what’s happening.

  As Asa climbed the ladder, his surroundings began to slowly brighten.

  13

  Volkner, Robert King, and Jamie

  The ladder came to a spot where it ran vertical beside the glass siding of what appeared to be the world’s largest fish tank. Asa couldn’t see the top of it, or through to the other side. It was full of dark blue, clear water. Tiny, moving bubbles suggested currents in the tank. From high up above came the sound of water splashing.

  Asa looked upward, and just as he couldn’t see the top of the tank, he couldn’t see the end of the ladder.

  Jen was slowing down, and he could hear her breathing above him as she continued to move higher on the ladder that never seemed to end. Asa, who had been mutated to be almost three times as strong as a normal human, was fatigued. He couldn’t imagine how hard this climb must be on her, considering what it was doing to him.

  I don’t understand her, Asa thought. She had gone through the raccoons dwelling, past the parking garage, up the spiral incline, through the living room, through the kitchen, through the tunnel that looked out onto the thousands of workers and up this ladder by herself at some point in the past. Why was she so bold? And why, after finding out that this was a back entrance to Robert King’s office, did she want to return? Asa wished that he had had a chance to ask her this earlier, but she had been hurrying him along from the moment that she had greeted Asa in his dwelling. Either she’s stupid and a thrill seeker, or she’s smart, and sees value in sneaking around this place that other people can’t. Maybe she knows something that I don’t.

  It was so hard to guess what Jen was thinking because of her sporadic behavior. She was unpredictable.

  Asa was in awe at the size of the aquarium he faced. Slowly, as they progressed upward, the water turned a lighter shade of blue. The splashing noise grew louder. Asa could now visualize the top of the ladder a couple hundred yards above his head. Still, he couldn’t see all the way through the water to the other side.

  This must be bigger than some lakes, he thought. It smelled like salt, which made Asa wonder if they were housing ocean creatures here. Or mutated ocean creatures. The thought was unnerving. Due to the vastness of the tank, the potential size of the creatures was virtually unlimited. Asa guessed that a blue whale, the largest of the known living creatures, would be comfortable in a tank this size.

  A turtle glided past him, kicking with long, spotted feet. It took note of Asa with its black eyes. Its face was deeply lined and wrinkled, and the green animal appeared to be decades old. Its brow furrowed and it then looked upon Jen, who was a bit higher. The animal swam up to Jen’s height, examined her, and then swam off.

  Does it recognize us? Does this turtle know who we are? Is it going to alert someone to our presence?

  The thought sounded crazy, but in the Academy, it was never safe to assume that you understood the capabilities of an animal.

  As they climbed higher, there were occasional schools of tropical fish; most displayed more than one bright color over their shiny scales. A hammerhead shark slithered through the water, past the school of smaller fish, taking no notice of them as though it wasn’t hungry. In the deep, dark blue distance of the water, Asa thought that he saw an enormous creature stir in the water. The distance and lack of light obscured what the animal looked like, and after a moment of stillness, Asa questioned whether something had truly been there in the first place.

  Minutes later, Jen finally reached the top of that ladder. She was panting, sweat glistened on her blotched face, and she rested her forehead in the crook of her elbow for a moment, trying to catch her breath. Her cheeks were flushed, and this was the first time that Asa thought she looked beautiful.

  They waited there for a moment before moving on. Asa tried not to stare at Jen, so he looked out over the tank. He couldn’t see where they would go to next. They were at the top of a fish tank, but there was no adjacent ladder that they could go over. How does this lead to Robert King’s office?

  It was now clear, though, what the ladder was for. From the top of the ladder a raccoon could reach a thin beam that ran parallel with the topmost edge of the tank. This beam was an eight-inch thick platform that was held five feet above the water by intermittent cables that ran from the ceiling. Running perpendicular to this beam to make T-like formations were dozens of similar beams that stretched far out into the water. If a raccoon were to crawl out far over the water, they could reach small ladders that led upward to a matrix of metal pipes coming from the ceiling. These pipes, which were spread out above the entirety of the aquarium, had spouts that shot water at high speeds directly downward, into the water. There were hundreds of spouts that were simultaneously shooting water into the aquarium. This, Asa reasoned, was what insured that the sharks and deep-sea creatures far below the surface received adequate amounts of oxygen. This artificial oxidizing system did what ocean waves automatically did in the wild.

  While Jen rested, Asa looked in the water some more. Orca whales were shooting wide mists out of their blowholes a quarter mile away. A large white shark was swimming close enough so that Asa could see its teeth, which were crammed in its mouth. Its white, rubbery face was deeply scarred.

  Without saying a word to
Asa, Jen slipped over the side of the aquarium and began to crawl on the thin beam that ran parallel with the glass Asa was looking into. Reluctantly, Asa followed her lead. They moved over the beam for some time, and then they crossed over onto beams that stretched far out over the water. Jen pointed to a beam for Asa to crawl onto, so that they were side by side. Asa had no idea where they were going, but he hoped that they were close.

  The beams swayed back and forth with their weight, and the bolts and cables that attached the platforms to the ceiling groaned with the added pressure. These things are made for 20-pound raccoons, Asa thought. I weight eight times that!

  He knew that if he needed to, he could fly back to the ladder where they had come from. If, however, he slipped or the cable suddenly wouldn’t support his weight anymore, he would land in the water before he had time to react. Once in the water, he didn’t know if he would be able to get out. The beams were five feet above the surface, which was too high to reach, and he would not be able to fly directly out of the water—he wouldn’t be able to gather the momentum. And what’ll happen to me if can’t get out of there?

  The thought made him shudder.

  The bottom of the tank was too far below him to be seen. From his vantage point on top of the water, he could visualize three sharks circling far below.

  Asa and Jen wriggled along the beams for minutes longer, and Jen looked absolutely exhausted. Her hair was damp with sweat, and she was breathing very deeply through her mouth. She kept her mouth wide open, so that her quick inhalations and exhalations wouldn’t be noisy. The pressurized spouts were shooting water into the surface all around them, and Asa was so mesmerized by the whales, sharks and dolphins below him that when he looked up and saw that they were approaching the far end of the tank, he was startled to remember that they had come here to eaves drop upon a meeting that was supposedly between Robert King and Volkner.

  The gently swinging beams that Asa and Jen were crawling upon reached all the way to the other side of the aquarium, and they could have slid to the end, and looked over the edge. Jen, however, stopped fifteen yards before she reached the edge, and looked down. From this point, through the water and the glass, they could see Robert King’s office below them. Hopefully, if we don’t go any closer, he won’t look up through the aquarium and see us.

  Robert King’s office was situated so that when he sat in his desk, the left wall was the aquarium. The aquarium had been placed there so that the richest man in history could work on his computer, listen to the water trickle into the massive tank, and occasionally gaze out at the leviathan-like creatures drifting in the absurd amount of space.

  Asa’s heartbeat quickened. He turned to Jen and they shared a smile. It was incredible to Asa that he was able to look upon one of the most protected areas of the entire Academy, but it also made sense. Robert King hadn’t thought to put up any security measures that prohibited raccoons from getting to his office, and why should he have? They would only come in to clean. And who in their right mind would crawl through the raccoon dormitories and then balance over millions of gallons of mutated-shark infested waters to spy on one of the most dangerous men of all time?

  Asa looked at Jen, who was now focused on the office. Her face was beaded with sweat. She’s crazy, Asa thought.

  Robert King’s office was roughly the size of a tennis court. There was a bluish, soft hue about the place, due to the large amount of water that filtered the entering light. In the middle of the room, raised atop a golden platform, was Robert King’s desk. The man who could afford nearly anything had a rather simple desk; it was wooden, and well shined. In front of this desk were two leather chairs that visitors could sit in. These were not elevated, so that when someone came into Robert King’s office to speak with him, The Boss would be situated above them.

  On the left side of the desk was the aquarium. The right wall was an incredibly large and intricate mural of the Academy’s five mountains, with King Mountain standing the tallest. Also, just higher than Robert King’s desk, there was a picture of Asa on the wall. This image was framed, and much larger than life-size. Asa was confused to see that this image had been photoshopped, just like the polaroid that the female David have given to Asa in the arctic jungle. It was altered so that Asa appeared older than he was, sporting a thick, black beard and wearing a lab coat. In the picture, Asa had his arm around the shoulders of an orangutan, which was wearing a flowery dress and a pearl necklace. They were smiling, posing for the camera.

  The orangutan’s smile was odd, though. Instead of smiling jubilantly in a crazed laugh, as primates are known to do, it seemed to simply be pulling the edges of its mouth back from its teeth, like humans sometimes do when they don’t feel like taking a picture, but are obliged to. The orangutan’s posture was entirely polite, and though the posed smile was artificial, she did not look unhappy.

  Asa had to stop himself from gasping when he saw what was transcribed in big, blocky, golden letters above the image.

  Francine Black and Edmund Palmer

  Asa let the gravity of those words sink in for a moment. He had anticipated the lettering to say, “Asa Palmer,” not his father’s name. He suddenly felt a little cold and stupid, and he realized the polaroid that the ape David in the jungle had handed him was not of himself, but of his father.

  Asa had never seen an image of his father so young before, so he had not recognized him in the image. He studied the face on the wall that he shared with the biological dad that he had never met. Asa considered how the wings that were folded into his back had been thought up by his father, along with the strength boosts, and probably the echolocation ability that Asa had. Edmund Palmer had been brilliant, and had stood up to Robert King and the other owners of Alfatrex when they had wanted to create more Multipliers. This act seemed like such a noble, fearless thing to do.

  So then why did you kill yourself, dad? Asa thought. Why did you leave the world to go on without you? Were you scared? Did some obstacle seem too big for you to overcome? Is that why you gave up and left me and mom to navigate this wolf-flu ridden world by ourselves? Is that why you gave up?

  Asa then realized that his father probably also helped to create the Wolf Flu that had killed his mother.

  Why? Asa thought. Why would someone do such a thing? And why, if the polaroid was of my dad, was the David in the arctic jungle carrying it around?

  Next to the image of Edmund Palmer and the orangutan was a poem. As Asa looked at it, he again had a hard time containing his surprise. It was a riddle. Conway had told him about this in the caves behind King Mountain last semester, and Asa had not thought of it again until this point.

  The memory came back to him now. He recalled that before his father killed himself, he requested that the Academy be moved to the middle of a series of mountains, where it now was. According to Conway, Asa’s father had buried something of importance deep underground in the middle of the mountains, and then dug a moat (which is now The Moat), around it. Whatever it was that Asa’s father buried, he demanded that it be in a guarded place. No one knew what was in the vault. Also, before he died, Edmund sent out this riddle to all Academy members. Just as no one knew what is in the guarded vault, no one knew what the riddle meant. Asa read the words on the wall of Robert King’s office:

  Solutions and weapons that are known

  Can be used, or worse, destroyed

  Best keep them in the void

  There are two spaces that these secrets are maintained

  One is metal, it’s locked away

  The other, though, isn’t so easily disposed

  You can’t see it, it doesn’t say hello

  It doesn’t make a difference

  It’s never seen

  It doesn’t affect any pedigree

  Where two come and give half each

  This is where it will be

  You’ll find that I’ve only stolen from me

  The poem struck Asa as nonsense. But, his father, one of the smarte
st men in history, had written it—so surely it had some meaning, Asa suspected. And why did Robert King put the poem up there on the wall, right next to his desk? Quietly, Asa used a pen function on his armband to transcribe the poem. He didn’t want to forget it.

  Also of note along the right side of the wall was a large cage made entirely of gold. Inside the cage, the floor was carpeted with a red-and-blue-checkered rug. Also inside of this cage, there were building blocks, various picture books, a beach ball, yellow and blue beanbag chairs, a small table with plastic chairs and crayons and a coloring book atop it, a miniature slide, and many stuffed animals.

  A young chimp was sitting at the table and coloring. Asa assumed that this chimp must be a David, one of the primates that were genetically engineered to be smarter than usual. He was wearing jean shorts and had a yellow baseball cap atop his head; his hairy torso was bare, except for a red bandana around his neck. There was also a metal apparatus around his neck, with small, glowing red light in the center of it. He colored with his crayons patiently, not making much noise.

  Robert King was sitting at the desk in the middle of the room, not dead at all. Asa hadn’t seen that face since he had watched the video of Troy Webber, the police officer, killing someone who looked suspiciously like The Boss. The memory was burned into Asa’s brain.

  Troy pulled the man close again and with tears still streaming down his cheeks screamed: “BEG FOR ME! BEG LIKE MY WIFE BEGGED THE DOCTORS!” Caught in the moment, Troy pulled the restrained man’s face closer and sunk his teeth into his cheek; he bit hard, pulling and tugging at the grotesquely elastic skin.

  Blood ran down King’s face and his screaming reached a new level of panic. “I’M NOT ROBERT KING!”

  “OWN UP TO IT,” Troy yelled with bloody teeth.

  “I DIDN’T KILL YOUR WIFE!”