by Leito, Chad
“I think that’s enough,” Robert King said, and he cut off the tape.
Volkner’s face had gone even paler than usual.
“Tell me, Volkner, was the Multiplier who bit this Brumi girl from the Hive? Are there Multipliers on the premises that do not work for the Academy?”
Volkner did not respond, and he pursed his lips.
“I know that you don’t want to talk now, but you will. Maybe after a few more weeks in the box, you won’t lie to your God any longer.” He pressed the intercom button and asked the guard to come in and retrieve the prisoner.
Volkner kicked and screamed and begged and cried. Two Academy graduates came in and injected yet another syringe into Volkner—this one knocked him completely unconscious. They unstrapped him from the chair and drug him outside.
Asa was breathing hard as he rested upon the beam, staring down through the water at Robert King’s office. As the two guards secured Volkner’s near-naked body, there was a loud, monotone sound, and Robert King looked from where he sat out at his enormous aquarium.
The hair on the back of Asa’s neck stood up, and he was frozen with fear. Robert King was looking up at the surface, where Asa and Jen had been spying on him.
Directly following the tone, the ocean creatures began to swim to the surface. An orca swam directly below Asa, and he could have reached out and touched its black, wet fin. Sharks circled, along with dolphins, turtles, and all types of fish. The tone seemed to have signaled them to come to the top.
Asa could feel his heartbeat in his neck. What is going on?
Then, the same tone sounded again, and thousands of metal hatches opened up from the ceiling. Thousands of camels, giraffes, goats, and cows were dropped into the water, where they made enormous splashes. A camel was dropped four feet from Asa. It splashed into the water, and its head emerged wet and shrieking moments later. It had time to doggy-paddle three paces before a shark bit heavily into the animal’s abdomen, ripping out a string of intestines.
That tone meant that it’s feeding time for the animals, Asa realized.
The water beneath them grew blood red, and even more animals continued to fall.
With the water obscured, Asa and Jen began the long journey back to the outside world.
As they quietly made their way over the beams and through the various tunnels, Asa thought of the possibility that there was an underground facility somewhere that housed a quarter-million Multipliers. Is that possible? Asa was under the impression that all the Multipliers were confined to the Academy.
He decided that he would again try to contact Conway. Conway didn’t want to give Asa information, but now that he had it, maybe he would be willing to piece it together for him. And, if not, maybe Mama would help him.
14
First Winggame Match: Sharks Versus Armadillos
After warming up, the Sharks sat in one of the generic underground locker rooms that teams were permitted to occupy prior to their games. It was a cold, damp, stone room that was currently dripping water from the ceiling. There was a drain in the floor through which the water could exit. The chairs and tables were made of undecorated metal that smelled of rust. The locker rooms were unlike the vast, decorative, expensive rooms that the were normal in the Academy.
In the front of the room, Bruce Thurman, one of the fourth semester students on the Sharks, was addressing his teammates. Bruce Thurman was ugly. He was stout, and abnormally large features characterized his face. His lips, his nose, and his ears all were chronically puffy and swollen; they looked as though they had just suffered multiple wasp stings.
By watching interactions during practice and meetings, Asa had come to the conclusion that Bruce Thurman was attracted to his team captain, Roxanne Hurst. Obviously, with Roxanne dating a Multiplier, Bruce recognized that he could be killed for ever making a formal statement or gesture that revealed his attraction to Roxanne. Still, the subtle signs were there. Bruce seemed to be excessively encouraging and supporting of his captain whenever she had an idea. When Roxanne told a joke, Bruce would laugh at a degree that was not proportional to the humor of the jest. Asa thought that when Bruce and Roxanne spoke, Bruce would drift too close to Roxanne’s face, and would make too much eye contact for the interaction to be viewed as normal.
Asa looked at Roxanne, his team captain. She sat in one of the cold, metal chairs, breathing out fog and listening intently to Bruce’s words. Asa was thankful to see that her face was clear of bruises or cuts, indicating that her boyfriend hadn’t beat her in some time.
Roxanne, Asa suspected, did not mind Bruce’s attraction to her. She never shied away from him, and seemed honestly flattered when he complimented her. But, again, their relationship could not go beyond platonic: If Travis found out, he might kill both of them.
Bruce had been Roxanne’s first pick in this semester’s draft. While it was common for captains to make draft choices based on students’ physical abilities, Roxanne had picked Bruce because of his knowledge of the game. He wasn’t bad at Winggame—he was a Goo Shooter, which meant that he had used his points to purchase a gun that shot out electric goo during a Winggame match. When hit with one of these electric goo bullets, a player was temporarily paralyzed and would fall to the water below. This made goo shooters extremely valuable. But, Bruce Thurman wasn’t the best Winggame athlete, and at the time he was chosen, there were many superior players still to be drafted.
Where he thrived was in coaching. He loved Winggame, and spent most of his free time coming up with strategies. Last semester, he had been on the Dragons with Benny Hughs as they won the championship. Many argued that Bruce’s strategic coaching had been a more important factor in the Dragons winning last semester’s championship than Benny’s incredible on-the-field performance.
Bruce Thurman was rare in that he already had earned all 1,000 points needed to graduate, even before the Winggame season started. He had been lucky enough to be on a championship team as a Fishie, and then he had also won the championship last semester.
Stan Nuby resented Bruce for this fact. Stan was like many fourth semester students in that this Winggame season would have a big impact in whether or not he died at the end of the semester. In order for Stan to graduate, the Sharks could only lose two regular season games, and had to also win the championship. The odds were stacked against him.
Bruce addressed his team: “Going into the first game, we never know what a team is going to do, especially with this new deal where the Plaid is raised 100 yards above the water. We’ve practiced a lot of different plays, but I think that we should go with 95. And here is the reason: When the Armadillos were warming up, they only practiced defensive maneuvers. Every one of them. I think that they are going to sit back and wait for us.”
Stan snorted rudely.
Bruce ignored him, picked up chalk, and began drawing formations on the board. They had practiced 95 hundreds of times. Bruce, understanding that in stressful times people sometimes forget things, wanted to outline the play for them once more.
As he went through the play on the board, Asa listened to the crowd outside. There was a match going on over the water, and as soon as it was over, the Sharks would get a call over the intercom and take the field.
Asa’s heart was thumping. The crowd outside roared, stomped their feet, clapped their hands, oohed and ahhed, and whistled. He was nervous for two reasons. The first was that Winggame always made him nervous. It was an intense and violent game, and each match was observed by hundreds of people. He didn’t want to mess up. The second reason he was nervous stemmed from a conversation that he had had with Jen last night, after they left Robert King’s office. He had never told her about the contract that made him a wanted man among the Multipliers, about the true reasons why people in the Academy thought that he was a murderer, or about his father. He confided these things to her that night, as they sat alone in Asa’s dwelling. He hadn’t intended to tell Jen these things, but she had heard so much during the meeting
between Robert King and Volkner that he did not see the point in trying to hide the rest.
They talked about Brumi being bitten by a Multiplier and what that might mean. They were both extremely frightened by what Volkner had said regarding the Hive. Jen made a connection that Asa would have missed.
“If the Hive is real, let’s say, and there actually are hundreds of thousands of Multipliers out there, waiting to attack the Academy, wouldn’t it make sense to schedule the attack on the first game of the Winggame season? Everyone will be so tired and preoccupied. Most of the Academy students and graduates will all be in the bleachers above the Moat. If I were them, I’d strike at that point.”
Asa didn’t know how he felt about this proposition. The Multipliers that had been killing Davids in the woods didn’t seem to be part of a large, organized gang of Multipliers. They had been dirty, and had spoken in language full of grammatical errors.
When he voiced this concern to Jen, she said: “Do you have a better idea of who those Multipliers are, then?”
Asa didn’t, and as they neared closer to game time, Jen’s idea was making it hard for him to concentrate on what Bruce was saying.
An abrupt horn sounded from outside, signaling the end of the current Winggame match. Asa had been deep in thought about what a Multiplier raid on the Academy might be like, imagining dripping black jaws tearing into students’ faces, and when the tone hit him he jumped in his seat. Jen gave him a look that was half quizzical and half sympathetic.
“Armadillos and Sharks: You are summoned to the start-platforms. Failure to present there will lead to disqualification. I repeat, Armadillos and Sharks…” came the announcer’s voice from above.
“It’s time,” Bruce said. “Good luck, everyone.” He rested his Goo Gun over his shoulder and led the team out of the locker room, up the stairs, and into the open air.
There were other guns that could be bought and used inside of the game. Last semester, Asa had bought one that shot out three ordinary balls with ropes connecting them. This had cost only ten points. In practice, however, he had found that this weapon was more cumbersome than it was useful. He decided to leave it behind for this game.
A steady snow was floating towards the earth, blanketing the slanting roofs of the Town and the Plaid that was suspended one hundred yards above the Moat.
Stan walked in front of Asa; the light sprinkling of snow was barely visible in his light blond hair. He addressed Janice, another Shark Goo Shooter: “If it were me in charge, this team’ld be running 93, not 95.”
Janice nodded her head at Stan and twirled her limp hair with her index finger. Like Stan, she also had grown up in the country, and Asa suspected that she valued his cowboy persona. Stan was aggressive, patriarchal, and cruel. Janice’s horse-like face lit up when Stan made one of his suggestions to kill Asa, saying that the team would be safer without him. Janice was attracted to Stan’s no-nonsense, black-and-white view of the world. She also shied away when some of the more science-savvy people on the team, like Boom Boom, used technical language. Janice wasn’t science-savvy, and instead of seeing other people’s knowledge as an opportunity to learn, she saw it as a potential for embarrassment. It was a weak trait to have, one that leads to the stunting of intellectual growth, and it also made Janice value Stan more. Stan’s language-abilities were among the most limited in the whole Academy. This made Janice feel safe.
Her eyes admired Stan as they walked.
The crowd that was gathered atop the levitating bleachers that flanked the Winggame court was unbelievable. Hundreds of people sat bundled up in blankets and fur coats over the steaming Moat, waiting for the next Winggame match to begin. This was typical for the first match of the season, as it was the first time that spectators could get any knowledge on other Winggame teams that they would be facing.
As the Sharks made their way onto the Starting Platform, which was a small, square metal deck that would be lifted high above the water to the starting spot, Asa looked over the Armadillos. Their uniforms were a sandy brown color, with the face of an armadillo stitched into the chests. They had three Goo Shooters, one more than the Sharks had. If these players weren’t taken out of the game quickly, the Sharks would have a problem.
As Asa strapped himself into his seat on the Starting Platform, his fears of a Multiplier attack loosened their grip upon him; he couldn’t possibly be scared and concentrate on the game simultaneously. Despite the cold, the people in the bleachers were cheering at a deafening volume as the previous game’s highlights were played on the enormous television screens held high above everything. Asa could feel his heart jabbing at his sternum.
Asa didn’t recognize a single person on the Armadillos, but they all recognized him. The opposite team stared shamelessly at the Sharks, but spent most of their time looking at Asa—the most notorious and infamous student in the entire Academy.
Bruce had recognized this bias that the other teams would have for Asa, and decided to try and use it for the Sharks’ benefit. In the play 95, for example, Asa, Roxanne, and Mike Plode (Boom Boom) were instructed to guard the Shark’s home goals. Asa Palmer was not one of the team’s strongest members, or one of the best flyers, but Bruce reasoned that with all the taboo surrounding him, it might deter people from attempting to fly past him into one of the five goal posts.
Asa hoped that this would work. If the opponents were either able to take Asa out of the game by putting him in the water, or get past him, there was very little hope of the Sharks winning. Play 95 was highly offense-intensive. Three of the twenty players (the Sharks had more than twenty players on their team, but you could only use twenty in a game—it was a rule) would stay back to guard the five goals, the two Goo Shooters (Bruce and Janice) would try to take over the floating Plaid, and the fifteen remaining Sharks would attack the opposite goals, trying to score.
Maybe, Asa thought, if the Armadillo defenders are quickly overcome, they won’t get a chance to attack our goal.
Bruce had run the statistics, and claimed that offensive-reliant teams historically performed better in Winggame. This was partially due to the fact that the matches did not have a play-clock. A match used to consist of a best two-out-of-three game contest, in which the first team to have five players to fly through the opponent’s goals won a game. Or, if all the players are taken out of bounds by hitting the water, and your team has more points than the other, you won.
Just as the Plaid had been raised this semester, there was another change to how Winggame was conducted this season. Now, instead of having a match consist of a best two-out-of-three game contest, there was only one game played per match. A single game was now a match. This simplified the rules. The fist team to score five points won.
“So,” Bruce had explained, “There is an advantage to getting on the attack early. A lot of times teams sit back, and never get a chance to play offense. If you have over half your team flying towards the goals right when the game starts, you’ll get your shot at offense in every contest you play. And with this new rule, there will be no chance to make adjustments after the first game, because there will only be one game. If we can surprise them, I think that we’ll have a good chance of winning.”
Another rule was that after you flew through one of the doorjamb-like goals on the opponents’ side, you were eligible to then fly through more, or fly to the other end of the court and play defense.
“It’s not like you can’t play offense and then defense.” Asa had heard Bruce say this phrase dozens of times. Asa always thought that while Bruce’s statement was true, flying to the opponents goals, and then back to your home goal was impractical.
After the entire team was strapped in, the Starting Platform took off with a lurch and Asa’s stomach dropped as he rose rapidly above the water. He held on tightly to his seat’s armrests. The Starting Platform stopped when the students were eye-level with the Plaid, floating magnetically above the water.
The crowd was now stomping its feet in a slow,
steady rhythm, like an army on a death march. The sound made a low, deep hum as the suspended metal bleachers vibrated with the pounding.
The wind howled and the snow was falling sidewise. Asa’s hands were numb as he undid his safety belt and stood up.
On the other side of the water, the Armadillos began to chant, “What do we want? DEATH! What do we want? DEATH! DEATH, DEATH, DEATH!”
The crowd loved it and some even began to chime in.
“You’re going to do great,” Asa said to Jen.
She actually looked nervous for once. She tried to hide it, and to make a joke out of it, saying confidently, “I know.”
“Game one of the Armadillos, Sharks match will commence in ten, nine, eight…” the announcer’s voice said through the speakers
Asa happened to glance over to the base of Fishie Mountain and see that smoke was billowing out of Conway’s chimney. He scanned the bleachers, and his mentor was nowhere in sight. Of course he hadn’t come.
“One. GO!”
The screaming of the crowd reached a crescendo. Seventeen players leapt off the Sharks’ platform, and expanded their wings out beside them. Fifteen of those players zoomed low over the water, while Bruce and Janice made a straight line for the Plaid. Gaining hold of the elevated platform would allow them a great vantage point from which to shoot down Armadillos. Asa, Roxanne, and Boom Boom all stayed atop the Starting Platform, waiting until the Armadillos made it closer to the goal. Their plan was that they would then swoop down, using the altitude to gain speed, and try to collide with players, sending them into the water.
The Armadillos also sent their Goo Shooters directly for the Plaid at the beginning of the match. But, just as Bruce had anticipated, they were playing a mostly defensive game. All seventeen other eligible players remained on the Starting Platform across the water, waiting for the chance to swoop down and take out the Sharks.
