The Academy: Book 2 (55 page)

He used the notches along the barrel to aim at the target. He took a few seconds to aim, held his breath, and then squeezed the trigger.

There was a loud CRACK and then the metal spear flew forward. Asa expected to see the projectile strike an invisible barrier and fall to the floor, but instead, it slammed into the target with splintering force.

“Wow,” someone said from the bleachers, but everyone else remained quiet. Asa realized that in that moment, he had done something that made him even more exotic to everyone else than before. He turned to see Stridor smirking in the front row, eyes on Asa.

“Good job, boy!” McCoy said. He was absolutely beaming and his blond curly hair bounced as he came over to give Asa a half hug. “You see,” he said, turning to the rest of the student body, “Palmer realized that the clock hands above were associated with the invisible force field that stops the spear from hitting the target. Seriously, well done! The rest of you are dismissed! This will be the last Flying Class that we’ll have. Palmer, come with me, you’ve got to pick out your mutation.”

The students climbed down the stone stairs for the last time, and Asa followed McCoy through a back door into a small clinic. As he walked, he thought about Teddy, and how he had been right. This proved, along with Teddy’s advice that Asa should change echolocation tones while flying, that the thousands of math problems on the walls of the secret compartment hadn’t just been the writings of a mad man—the math actually had predictive power.

Asa felt cold as he remembered the long analysis Teddy made of Edmund’s Palmer riddle.

What does Teddy know?

25

The Multiplier
Hunter

             
Hours later, Asa was scared of going into his dwelling alone. This would be the second time he entered since learning that a Multiplier had been waiting for him a few nights ago when Teddy was bitten. For some reason, after Winggame practice, he hadn’t thought about it. Now, the thought consumed him. He imagined what it would be like, discovering a lurking Multiplier waiting for him just beyond the threshold of his dwelling.

             
As he walked up the mountainside, bits of clear sleet crunched underneath his feet and he kept his wings outstretched for balance. The moon was waning, but still mostly full, and doused the mountains in a hushed blue light, making the shadowed forests and jungles surrounding the summits look even darker than usual by contrast.

             
He had told himself that he was going to visit Teddy tonight, but now found that he was simply too tired. Bruce had Instant Messaged the Sharks on their armbands, telling them that they were to meet just after five o’clock at The Lab; Asa hadn’t planned on the meeting, and now didn’t want to go see Teddy.

The Lab was a nickname for the dilapidated building that Asa and Charlotte had retreated into last semester when Septa the mountain lion had been chasing them. Situated in front of Fishie Mountain, The Lab was a two story concrete building
that had trees growing into the its shattered windows. The place smelled like a hospital and the checkered-tile floor was riddled with smashed syringes, vials, and torn books. The walls were lined with thick metal cages, all of which hung open.

             
Last semester, Asa didn’t have the slightest idea what this place was for. Now, he had guesses, but no way to confirm his theories. One thought was that The Lab had once been a place used by his father to experiment on mutated animals. He wondered if Davids were created in this very area. An additional, darker possibility was that The Lab was used to do genetic experiments on humans. This idea made Asa feel uncomfortable, but he tried to give all ideas due consideration, disturbing or not. Asa realized that it was unlikely that his father only made Multipliers.
Surely there must have been failed experiments with humans.
An image of a hunched, one-eyed, boil-ridden woman trying to yank her cage open and screaming indiscernible curses came to Asa’s mind.

             
No matter what it used to be used for, the Lab was now a great place to house meetings. There were weird classrooms that had desks and chairs that were bolted to the floor. Manacles were welded to the armrests and the legs of the chairs, used in the past to hold some kind of students as prisoners, while someone wrote on the chalkboard in the front of the room.

             
A month ago, the Sharks had begun meeting in The Lab. They chose a classroom, cleaned it of dried blood and strewn glass, and then kept the door locked while they were gone so that the mutated lemurs would stop sneaking inside from the arctic jungle after the Sharks left each night. The lemurs had a habit of stealing chalk, defecating on the desks, and drawing explicit images on the blackboard.

             
The lemurs hadn’t yet found a way to unlock the door, and so the classroom remained clean. It served a great function. The Sharks could go there any night they chose, sit down at the desks, and Bruce would lecture them on different strategies while writing on the blackboard.

             
Tonight’s lesson was complicated and ran late. Bruce wanted to make sure that each student knew absolutely everything they could about the opponent before their next game.

             
Exhausted, Asa continued to walk up the slick mountainside.

             
A cry of agony broke through the air, and it sounded to Asa like a monkey being slaughtered out in the forest. He thought of the dead Davids hanging by ropes and the Multiplier camp he had come upon earlier in the semester. He thought of Joney, Edna, and Michael. They had all been filthy, and seemed uneducated.

             
Then there was the Multiplier that Adam Trotter had told them about in the Tropics before being struck down by lightening. Supposedly, this Multiplier was suave, sophisticated, and well spoken.

             
Asa didn’t know how to compensate these two different accounts, but he was scared. His nerves felt like they had electricity running through them as he reached the frosty threshold to his dwelling. He took a deep breath, looking at the natural circles of dark and light on the wooden door, wondering what could be waiting for him on the other side.

             
It’s locked. Don’t be crazy. No one could get in here.

             
But then how did the Multiplier get in to attack Teddy? Did it swim up the underwater stream that you exited through the other night?

             
He clenched his fists before thinking
DON’T BE INSANE! No one is in there. It’s perfectly safe.

             
He reached his hands up to turn the padlock and froze. The four digit code was “3491,” and always,
absolutely always,
he locked it by simply turning the last dial to “5” so that it said, “3495.”

             
His hands were trembling as he held the cold metal in his fingers and looked at the numbers.

             
“2864.”

             
Someone had turned the lock.

             
Was it Derden and Tyler, continuing their investigation? Or am I walking into a trap?

             
Asa stepped back and tugged at his hair. In the distance, steam was rising off the Moat like poltergeists marching into the dark jungles. A crow was perched upon the mountainside with him, staring with black beady eyes.

             
Asa could have gone back to Conway’s home, if he needed to. But the truth of the matter was that he didn’t want to seem weak in front of Conway.
He already doesn’t trust me with information. I don’t want to come knocking at his door in the middle of the night, telling him that I’m scared of the dark.

             
There were also his teammates along the Mountainside. If he went and knocked on Viola’s door, she’d let him in.

             
But it’s probably nothing,
he said.
It’s probably just raccoons trying to get inside.
He undid the lock as quickly as he could, without thinking about it. It was like diving headfirst into cold water.

             
With the lock off, he pushed the door just wide enough so that he could slide inside, and then shut it again. He locked the door back again with his numb fingers. Once the lock was in place, he let his hands fall to his sides and a terror washed over him. It was as dark as if someone had come up behind him and thrown a sack over his head.

             
I can hear something breathing in here. Something is breathing along side me.

             
Asa held his own breath, but could hear nothing.
Everything is absolutely fine. It’s okay. I’m okay. Everything is okay.

             
He reached for matches on one of his wooden tables that flanked the door, and felt nothing but the cotton tablecloth. Horror clawed at his throat.
Hadn’t I left some matches there?
His hand spidered over the edges, searching for the large box that the Academy had supplied him, and finally found it. His fingers were shaking as he opened the box and took out a wooden match.

             
With his trembling hands, it took him a long time to light the candle on the doorway table. He watched the flames paint the rock orange. He still wasn’t able to make himself turn around and look into the rest of the dwelling.

             
“This is silly,” he whispered to himself, but his voice was unsteady. “Nothing to be afraid…”

             
There was a soft crack in the dwelling. It sounded to Asa like cartilage popping in a stiff ankle.

             
“Don’t scream,” said a female voice.

             
Asa turned and thrust the candle into the room, revealing a person standing there. She appeared to be in her early twenties. Asa had never seen her before. She wore brown hiking boots, cargo pants that were tightly belted over her small waist, a form-fitting green tank top, a light khaki backpack with a reusable water bottle in the pouch, and black climbing gloves. Rock climbing clips and nails hung from thick ropes off her waist like jewelry.

             
Asa stammered and backed up so that he was flat against the wall.

             
He looked over her smooth skin and the soft curves of her body. She didn’t have a single blemish. Her shoulder muscles displayed her strength, as did her tight abdomen and her muscular thighs.  Asa thought that she was too beautiful to be human. But then she smiled and he began to suck in air, preparing to scream.

             
Her gums were as black.

             
She was pressed against him fast, pushing slim but strong fingers against his mouth so that he couldn’t yell. His eyes moved back and forth, and his chest was rising and falling violently.

             
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said. “I knew your father.”

             
She stepped back and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

             
“Did you bite my friend Teddy?”

             
“I’ve never bitten any human,” she said. “It’s not what my kind do.”

             
Asa scoffed angrily. “Multipliers bite people all the time! Six Academy students have been bitten this semester!”