by Leito, Chad
Asa screamed, spun, and fell. For a moment, both he and the Multiplier were flailing through the air. He saw Teddy’s face change into a bloodthirsty smile, and he reached for Asa. The two of them splashed into the water. The smooth stream was running faster than Asa thought, and within one second he was swept out of the room and was traveling fast down a dark, underwater tunnel. Teddy was no longer in Asa’s arms and was floating separately.
The stream was running downwards, curving left and right and then taking sharp, falling angles that made Asa’s stomach churn. Asa tried to open his eyes and orient himself, but it was impossible. He was slammed against rocky protrusions and turned so often that he didn’t know which way was up or down. Finally, he covered his head with his hands, trying to avoid any trauma to his skull.
One minute went by like that and Asa began to fear that he would drown. If there were a gate, or some kind of blockage in the mountain stream, Asa would surely die; it would be impossible for him to swim against such a fast-moving current.
He was thinking this when he felt Teddy’s cold hands wrap around his throat. Instinctively, he shot his own palms out and caught Teddy’s face in his hands. Teddy’s jaw was trembling in the dark—even in the circumstances, he couldn’t control his will to bite. Asa tried to remain strong and keep Teddy at a distance, but he was closing in. Asa screamed underwater as he felt Teddy’s leg wrap around his torso and his gaping jaws move nearer his neck.
Then, they were out of the water and falling.
Asa was gasping, spinning, and Teddy no longer held him. He was falling beside a waterfall. He saw the mountains and dark sky before splashing into the water.
Whatever they had fallen into was deep. The waterfall above pushed Asa thirty feet underwater, where his back made gentle contact with seaweed before he began to swim to the top. He kept his eyes wide, looking for Teddy’s kicking feet in the water above him.
He emerged, gasping again, and then did a quick circle. Teddy was nowhere to be seen. The waterfall was roaring beside him so loud that he couldn’t hear his own breath. What if Teddy drowned? Maybe the suicide pill weakened him, and then he hit his head before going into the waterfall. Asa moved over to the shore and pulled himself out. He felt stupid for carrying Teddy to the stream. He should have left right after Teddy chewed up that pill. He saw that he was at the river that separated Fishie Mountain from Mount Two, and he faced the Arctic jungle.
It’s so dark. Teddy could be hiding anywhere.
Asa looked around, contemplating. The trees made black, jagged outlines against the purple sky. Stars were out, twinkling overhead.
It is possible that once Teddy had gotten out of the water he ran away. He did say, after all, that he was waiting until the Winggame Match to…
Asa was tackled and the back of his head smacked hard on the gravel shore, making his vision blurry for a moment. Teddy was atop him, crying more Salvaserum and growling terribly.
Asa was able to drive his fist into Teddy’s face, knocking his head backwards. Teddy was disoriented for a moment, and Asa slid out from underneath him. The two friends got to their feet beneath the starlight. The river beside them reflected the moon.
“Teddy, THINK ABOUT WHO YOU ARE! REMEMBER!”
Teddy’s nose was bleeding and he continued to growl—the noise gurgled through the hole in his mouth. He took a step forward, and then tripped and fell. He caught himself on his hands and then stood up again, wobbly.
The suicide pill is affecting his neurological functioning.
Teddy took two more unsure steps forward, his hands outstretched. Asa planted his foot and kicked Teddy in the face with his heel. There was a sick crunch and then Teddy crumpled to the ground where he lay, not moving.
Asa was breathing hard as he looked over his friend. Teddy was completely still and made no more attempts to stand. His nose was bleeding like a faucet. Asa wiped his cheek with the back of his hand and realized that he was still crying.
“I don’t want to touch him,” he groaned. His instincts told him to either run or smash Teddy’s head in with a heavy riverside stone, but he couldn’t bring himself to do either of these things. Trying not to give it much thought, Asa grabbed Teddy by the ankles and began to drag him, first over the stone and then through dark jungle dirt.
A few minutes later, Asa was panting and dropped Teddy’s legs. Teddy was lying in Conway’s garden. Purple and pink lights shone out of Conway’s window and painted the lawn. Asa was sobbing. He wasn’t sure that Teddy was breathing anymore.
“And what the hell is Conway supposed to say?” he groaned to himself.
But since he was already there, he knocked on the door. He was greeted with the familiar growl of Ozzie from inside, and expected to hear Mama’s voice telling the polar bear to “Hush.” Instead it was Conway who did the hushing. A moment later, he had pulled back the curtain on the door and was peaking through the glass on the window at Asa.
His black face was glistening with sweat and the windows were foggy. The curtain closed and then the door opened with a loud creak.
Conway began to speak with his low, rumbling voice. “Asa, what can you be…” He stopped midsentence, looking from Asa’s crying face to Teddy on the ground. “Teddy. Asa!” He couldn’t find the words. He was shirtless, and from his sweaty, lean frame, it was clear that he just been exercising in the basement.
“I need your help,” Asa said.
Conway’s mouth was open. “Has he been bitten?” he whispered.
Asa nodded and watched Conway’s throat contract as he swallowed.
“Is he dead?”
Asa shook his head.
Mama’s slender frame slipped out from behind Conway. She smiled and her eyes rested on Asa as though she could see.
“I need you two to help me. I want to keep Teddy in your jail cell,” Asa said. It sounds crazy hearing it out loud.
“What?” Conway hissed. “You want me to keep a Multiplier in here? Are you crazy?”
“He’s got nowhere else to go. The Academy will kill him if they find…”
“But he’s a Multiplier!” Conway was standing at his full height, looking down at Asa with his brown eyes. The stress he was under could be seen in the lines on his hard jaw. “I’m an Academy graduate—if they catch me housing a Multiplier, they’ll punish me. They might even kill me!”
“He needs your help, though!”
Conway shook his head. “No. Lots of people need my help and I can’t assist them.”
“Well then what do you want to do? Kill him? Call The Boss and tell him what happened? You can’t tell anyone what happened, Conway! Teddy’s been living in an illegal safe room above my dwelling. He’s been hiding out up there. Multipliers came to my dwelling tonight, saying they were running an investigation. Teddy’s been missing all week and they came looking for him. It was Travis and Derden. I showed them my dwelling and told them Teddy wasn’t there. If they find out the truth, I’ll be in enormous trouble.”
Mama watched as Conway thought about this.
“Then we’ll have to kill him,” Conway said as though he were asking what was on television that night. His eyes looked numb, as though he were trying not to think about what he was saying.
“No!”
Conway stepped outside and poked Asa hard in the chest—“And you ask me why I don’t tell you all about your father, Asa? And you wonder why I don’t tell you all the history about the Academy? Look at you—you’re acting on emotion! You love Teddy, but keeping him alive is irrational, and you know it!” His eyes were fiery, angry.
“It’s not irrational. You don’t understand! He knows things, Conway! He, he…”
“HE WHAT?”
“His pupils have been dilated a lot lately!” Asa said.
“So?”
“So? So have Robert Kings, surely you’ve noticed. Teddy probably knows what the Boss has been doing lately. Teddy has this ability. It sounds crazy, but this semester he has been so much smarter than usual�
��I think it has something to do with his dilated pupils. It’s like a super power, though. He’s able to figure things out that he shouldn’t be able to figure out. He told me how to use my tones differently so that I could get the fastest time in Flying Class. He aces all his tests in an eighth of the time it takes everyone else to fill in their answers. And he’s been analyzing my father’s riddle, the one about solutions and secrets. He uses mathematics in ways that I’ve never seen. I think that he knows something valuable.”
Conway stood still, looking at Teddy. “What happened to him?”
“I told you, he got bit by a Multiplier.
“No, after that. Why is he knocked out?”
“He took one of the suicide pills they gave us in the Tropics. It didn’t kill him, though.”
“The pill is made for humans and he is no longer a human. Why did he take the pill?”
“Because he had an urge to attack me, but wanted to stop himself. He took the pill to save me.”
Behind Conway, Mama spoke for the first time: “Let the boy come in, Jul.”
Conway looked angrily back at his mother. “Then what? We keep him for how long?”
“What does it matter, Jul?” Mama asked. “The cell has been used to keep Multipliers, Davids, and graduates in the past—it did it just fine. He’s not a danger, locked up like that. And no one ever comes out here. C’mon, Jul. Help Asa get the boy in here.”
Conway sighed heavily and moved further into the moonlight. He grabbed Teddy’s wrists and Asa took his ankles. “If he gives me any trouble, though, I’ll kill him,” he said as they carried him towards the stairs.
“Deal,” Asa agreed.
Teddy didn’t stir as he was carried down the stairs, over the basement floor and into the jail cell. Asa watched as Conway locked the initial lock, and then clamped all of the dozens of padlocks down around the caged door. He inserted bolts into the proper rings and secured them with more padlocks.
“He’s going to get very strong. I want to warn you again, if he’s any trouble, I’m going to shoot him dead. Do you understand, Asa?”
“Yes.”
Asa sat down on the edge of the bench press, looking at Teddy. In the mirrors that lined the walls, he could see that Conway sat behind both of them on a metal plyometric box.
“And I can’t guarantee that the suicide pill won’t kill him,” Conway said.
“Do you think that he’ll die, though?”
“I have no way of knowing.”
It was quiet for a long time, and Asa watched Teddy’s chest slowly rise and fall beneath his dirty camouflage suit. His friend’s breathing was shallow, and towards midnight, it was barely detectable. Asa wondered if Teddy was dying, but didn’t say anything to Conway. If there was something wrong with Teddy, there was nothing they could do. They couldn’t seek medical help for him, and even if they knew what interventions to administer, it would be dangerous to get in close contact with Teddy again.
Asa was on the edge of his seat, trying to detect any movement of Teddy’s when the Salvaserum-covered lips move and the Multiplier croaked out the name: “Aye-sah.”
Asa was up in a flash, and gripped the bars of the cell, looking down at Teddy. “Are you okay?”
Teddy nodded, then turned over and coughed up saliva that was tinged with Salvaserum.
“Back away a step, Asa,” Conway said; he was also on his feet now.
Asa took a step backwards and watched as Teddy slowly stood up and walked over to the bars. His dilated pupils ran over the different locks and bars, and Asa had a fear that Teddy would be able to find a way out. “Can I have some water?”
Conway went over to the miniature refrigerator in the corner and retrieved a cold water bottle for Teddy. Teddy sipped on it slowly and then said, “Thank you. Where am I?”
Asa began, “You’re at…”
“STOP!” Conway interrupted. “He doesn’t need to know.”
Teddy sipped on his water. “How long are you going to keep me here?” he asked.
“We’re not sure,” Asa said.
Teddy looked down and nodded. “Did I try to attack you, Asa?”
“Yes. But you took a suicide pill to stop yourself. It knocked you out for a time.”
Teddy’s eyes kept moving over each lock. He tilted his head frequently, as if to get a different angle. Then, unexpectedly, he began to weep with big globs of Salvaserum running down his face from his eyes. “I-didn’t-want-to-hurt-anyone!”
Asa regarded him with sympathy, and Conway just crossed his arms.
“Asa, I’m sorry, for whatever I’ve done! When you came into the secret compartment, I became so uncontrollably angry! It was unbelievable, how mad I was at you! I could not have anticipated the urge I felt to kill you, and I feel so guilty for that!”
“Teddy…”
Teddy put up a hand and stopped Asa. “Let me give you something, as a way to say that I am sorry. Would that be okay?”
“What is it?” Conway asked skeptically.
“Just knowledge. I’m going to tell you how to hit the target after Flying Class, okay?”
Asa nodded as he listened as Teddy spoke. What Teddy said was a brilliant idea—Asa had never looked at it that way before.
“…and if that doesn’t work, I’ll try to come up with something better.” Teddy was smiling, as he could see that Asa was eager to try the new tactic.
“Okay,” Conway said. “I think it’s time that we go to bed.”
Teddy reached his arm through the bar as far as it could go. “Can I shake Asa’s hand before he goes to bed? I just want to touch him. Would that be okay?”
“Absolutely not,” Conway said.
Teddy withdrew, looking hurt. “What do you think I’m going to do, try to strangle him?”
“Let’s go, Asa,” Conway said, and the two of them began walking up the stairs. Behind them, Teddy was yelling from his cell.
“Hey! Wait! Wait a second! Asa, don’t go back to your dwelling—the Multiplier that bit me was waiting for you when I came in. Hey! Wait!” Asa and Conway reached the top of the stairs and were about to shut the door when Teddy’s cries changed back into the demonic, low grumbles that Asa had heard back in the secret compartment, “WAIT! COME BACK HERE, DAMNIT!”
Conway shut the door and then rested his back on it. “You can sleep here tonight, Asa. I think that would be a good idea.”
Conway retrieved pillows and blankets that Asa could use on the couch. He was glad to be sleeping at Conway’s—he was safer that way. As he lay down, he could hear the wind howling outside and wondered if the Multiplier that had bitten Teddy was still out there, in the cold.
Asa wondered what it would be like to go through the change. He wondered if it hurt. It probably is emotionally awful, having the urge to kill people. He tried to imagine how conflicted Teddy must feel—he loved Asa and yet he wanted to tear his throat out at the same time.
Asa shuddered. He pulled the blankets up to his chin. From Mama’s bedroom, Asa could hear Ozzie snoring.
He felt electric, excited, but he knew that he must sleep. He had Winggame practice early the next morning. Brushing thoughts of a coming Multiplier attack aside, Asa shut his eyes and let sleep overtake him.
24
Stan’s Apology
The tiny hammer on the golden wind-up alarm clock began to undulate back and forth, striking the small bells on either side of it as the second marker ran past 5:00 AM. Asa’s hand came out from the blankets and stopped the alarm. His eyes opened slowly.
Before he awoke, he had been dreaming of brushing his teeth and discovering that his gums had turned black. Now, blinking in the soft red glow from the fireplace embers, Asa was relieved to have woken up, but found it hard to believe that he had been dreaming.
It had seemed so real.
He stood up and stoked the fire with a heavy black poker, not thinking too much. He softly placed a log among the smoldering ashes and watched as the fire began to spread up the wood.
The flames took hold in one tiny corner, and from there they were able to grow to a consuming fire. Watching the fire reminded Asa of how Salvaserum could do a similar thing; if one molecule gets into your bloodstream, it will grow and reproduce until it has taken over your entire body. Your gums will turn black, and you’ll have an irresistible urge to kill.
The night before, Conway told Asa to help himself to any food he could find for breakfast. That morning he ate a banana and toast with homemade blackberry jam on top. He made a cup of coffee and let the hot steam drift up to his face as he looked out the foggy windows at the dew-covered grass. A black squirrel was using tiny claws to dig around an oak tree in Conway’s lawn, looking for an acorn that was buried before the winter.
Asa rinsed off his mug and plate before putting them in the dishwasher. The house was still quiet, except for Ozzie’s heavy breathing in Mama’s bedroom. Before Asa left, he turned and looked at the picture of his father on the wall—stubble beard, glasses.
He knew that it wasn’t helpful to blame his father when bad things happened, but he couldn’t control the urge. He hoped that Teddy was still okay.
He opened the front door and stepped out into the cold. The moon was dark orange that morning, and surrounded by a sea of cloudless black and a million tiny dots of light that shone down from the universe. Asa’s wings were stiff as he stretched them out from his back. They reached nine feet on either side of him, and when he held them up he could see silhouettes of the surrounding trees through the vein-ridden thin membrane of his wings.
With a powerful stroke, he took off and was in the air. He watched Conway’s cabin shrink in the distance beneath his feet as he rose out over the trees and then over the Moat.
Moments later, he landed softly on the Plaid along side Roxanne, who always looked perky in the mornings. They were alone.
“You look exhausted,” she said, her green-gold eyes beaming at him.
“Good morning to you, too, sunshine.”
