The Hadley Academy for the Improbably Gifted

by Conor Grennan

  “Maybe a missile system?” Jack asked.

  “What else could it be? It doesn’t matter. It only matters that we get it shut down. I know encryptions, but this one is beyond me.”

  Jack turned to Voss, who was staring at the hologram. Lady emerged from Asha’s pack and buzzed over to him. The little drone hovered right in front of Voss’s face, causing him to snap out of it. He turned around. “What?”

  “Can you do it?” Asha asked him.

  “I’m not a missile-systems expert, Asha.”

  “Voss. It’s a massive power grid that clearly powers something very important that Darius needs shut down. Can you break the encryption or not?”

  Voss opened his mouth to protest. Asha cut him off. “I know you’re afraid to fail, Voss. I’m afraid of that too. But you won’t. So you can’t say no.”

  Voss scratched his head. He gave her a sly half smile. “Fine. You keep your fingernails out of your mouth; I work on it. Deal?”

  Asha pulled her pinky from her mouth and held up both palms. “Happy?”

  Voss took Alexander’s seat at the terminal. “Yeah,” he said without looking up as he tapped on his band to pull up his spin cipher. He held it between the fingers of both hands and studied it a moment.

  They left him spinning the sphere in multiple directions, like someone rapidly solving a Rubik’s Cube. Code streamed across the terminal faster than Jack could follow. Alexander lay on a couch, and a few seconds later he was snoring. Lady, meanwhile, zipped off and came buzzing back shakily gripping a mug of coffee with her six robotic legs. She set the drink down next to Voss.

  “That from you?” he asked Asha, nodding at the coffee.

  “Nope. Lady did that herself. Guess she’s learning your grumpy expressions.”

  Voss grunted and peeked over at the metallic ladybug, which had zipped off and was coming back with creamer. Voss waved her off. “I’m good. I take it black.”

  Lady alighted on Voss’s broad shoulder. He seemed about to rebuke her but instead shrugged and turned back to the hologram.

  A half hour later, Voss leaned back. The spin cipher shone green.

  “Voss, the super hacker!” Freddy said. “Don’t worry, big guy, your nerd secret is safe with me.” Freddy put his feet up on a box of parts and grinned. “It’s cool to be a nerd, you know. All the tech billionaires probably start off as unpopular nerds. It’s not like I knew you when you were hacking into global banking networks.”

  “I can be thankful for that,” Voss muttered. “That you didn’t know me, I mean. I don’t think we’d have been friends.”

  “I would have been friends with you,” Freddy corrected. “You wouldn’t have given me the time of day.”

  Voss looked at him. “You think you know me, Sanchez. You don’t.”

  “So tell me.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “You already shut down the power grid.”

  “I want to see if Alexander got any other instructions on that. He’s still resting; I can take care of anything else.”

  Voss scrolled back to Darius’s last message to Alexander. He swiped at the screen, and the entire message flipped over like a baseball card to reveal a thick block of code. He squinted at it, scrolling through it carefully, then flipped the screen back to the message. “This ain’t from Darius.”

  “Darius. Right there.” Freddy pointed at the signature.

  “I know it says Darius, dummy. I’m saying that the code ain’t from Darius. It’s forged. It came from . . .” He flipped back to the code and peered at it for a long time. Then he sat back, confused. “It came from here,” he said. “Somebody sent this message from right here, inside the Workshop. Right after we got here.”

  “Who sent it?”

  “I don’t know. I only know the location.”

  “Jack disappeared for a while,” Freddy said. “Maybe he did it by accident when he was in the bathroom.”

  Jack gave him a look. “I don’t even know—”

  “I’m joking,” Freddy interrupted.

  At that moment Alexander charged in, holding a tablet and pointing at it. “Did you guys turn off the feed?”

  “Just the visual,” Freddy said. “Audio is still on.”

  “No, it’s gone. What did you do, exactly?”

  “We didn’t do anything. Must have done it by itself.” Voss turned in his chair to face Alexander. “Yo. That message from Darius. It wasn’t from Darius.”

  Alexander was checking the cube’s feed from the CDC operation. It was black. The audio was off.

  “What do you mean, it wasn’t from Darius?” Alexander asked absently.

  “It was somebody making it look like it was from Darius. It was sent from somewhere in the Workshop.”

  Alexander was still staring at the dead feed. “It’s okay; they may be saving power or something.” He checked his band. It was one in the morning. “I should be able to get a satellite over them, so we can pick up sound and visual. It won’t be as good a source, but it’ll work.”

  He eyed Voss. “What were you saying? Somebody mimicked Darius’s message signature?”

  “Is anyone else here?” Claire asked.

  Alexander motioned to the cramped surroundings. “This whole place is three rooms. Nobody is hiding here. And I’m pretty sure the ravens don’t know how to code.”

  “What about outside?” Freddy asked. “If someone sent a message remotely it might appear like it came from in here.”

  “Um, guys,” Asha interrupted, pointing at the screen projected up by the cube. Nothing was there, not even network news stations. All communications had gone dark.

  Then the lights flickered out.

  “This is a lot like what happens when Wyeth darkens somebody,” Claire said, her voice trembling.

  “It’s not Wyeth. Hold on,” Alexander said. After a moment of scuffling and tapping, the lights popped back on. “There. Now let’s see if we can view the engagement.”

  Alexander located the recording and sped through from the beginning. When they finally got to the last several minutes of the feed, Instructor Santori and several operatives were in position outside a large double door.

  Alexander turned up the sound. Everyone jumped up and gathered around the screen.

  Suddenly a bright spark flashed over the screen, accompanied by an explosion. Then tornado-strength wind tossed debris in the air and ripped the building partly off its foundations, twisting it like a rag. The doors melted away. The operatives charged in.

  Then there was a full minute of shouting, but no shots. Then nothing.

  Now Santori was on his monitor, his voice thick with static that drowned out most of the words.

  “. . . No sign . . . Rogue Team isn’t . . .” Santori spun to face his team. “Trap!” he shouted, still breaking up. “. . . drawn us out . . . Hadley . . . Rogue.” The feed cut off.

  “It sounds like the Bulgarian and Rogue Team aren’t there,” Asha said, staring at the screen.

  “And Instructor Santori thinks the Bulgarian lured the operatives away from Hadley,” Claire said.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling.” Freddy rubbed his forehead. Something caught his attention in the other room. “What’s with your birds, Alexander?”

  The ravens were hopping around the mantel. Then with a loud cawing, they dropped down into the hearth of the fireplace, and one after another, flew up the chimney, their complaining echoing up and out of the Workshop.

  Asha looked at Alexander. “What was that all about?”

  An explosion sent Thirteen careening against the back wall. The door to the Workshop was torn off by a monster made of stone and rock. It let out a deafening roar. The Bulgarian had come for them.

  “Run!” Alexander screamed.

  Team Thirteen was out of the Workshop, scattering, running. Jack sprinted next to Claire. Behind him the Workshop exploded into kindling as the Bulgarian’s monster shredded it to pieces with a series of grunts and moans.

  Jack
and Claire raced into the dark woods. They scrambled over a rock formation and lay flat on their stomachs, faces in the dirt. They tried to catch their breath while they listened. There was no sign of the rest of the team or Alexander. No sign if they had made it out.

  Then they heard it. Two sets of footsteps. One man. One monster.

  Claire’s face was close to his. “We’re about to find out how long the Long Woods really is,” she whispered. “Keep breathing, okay, Jack?”

  He nodded. “Keep breathing, Claire.”

  They ran.

  There seemed to be no end to the Long Woods.

  They sprinted at first, desperate to get away. Then Claire came alongside him and gave him a look he had come to know so well. It meant a change in pace. Just as they had always done, she slowed her breathing and he matched her, breath for breath. They took turns leading, finding the route, saving the person behind from the mental energy of picking out the safest footing.

  At some point, Jack glanced at his band. They had run for almost an hour.

  Then Jack saw it: the wall, green-gray and streaked with black, one single piece of rock rising up two hundred feet. Claire came to a stop, bent over, hands on her knees.

  “It’s the southern wall,” she panted.

  Jack felt fear setting in. In the dense woods, it had not occurred to him there would be a dead end.

  Claire looked back. “We’re gonna have to try to break back through, toward the main grounds.”

  “We’d never get past him,” Jack said. “We can climb it. Anything this tall has to be wide at the top. We’ll lie flat up there. The Bulgarian will think we’re still in the woods.”

  “He’ll see us climbing.”

  “It’s dark. And he won’t be looking up.”

  Claire stared back at the woods. They were facing two terrible options, and she knew it. “Okay, go.”

  The forest grew right against the wall, providing cover. The wall was pockmarked with narrow but manageable handholds, allowing them to climb quickly. They made it halfway up before they were exposed.

  Below, they heard the Bulgarian’s monster bullying its way through the forest. Jack’s heart thumped louder as he focused on making it to the top, on getting off the face of the wall.

  The monster had stopped. It was rustling around, searching the undergrowth. Jack hoped it wouldn’t look up.

  Claire reached the rim of the wall first and pulled herself up. Far below, Jack heard a scraping noise. He glanced down, and his stomach dropped. The Bulgarian had spotted them. He was scaling the wall.

  Next to him, the rock monster’s hands morphed into dozens of tiny stone-shard fingers, and the beast began to climb. But then it slipped and crashed to the ground, unable to pull itself up the narrow holds. The monster bellowed in frustration.

  Jack scrambled to the top of the wall. It was impossibly narrow for such an enormous wall—maybe eighteen inches wide. “You think you can keep your balance up here, Jack?”

  The wall stretched for miles ahead and behind, a stone balance beam in the sky that could take them back to the central grounds. A rock broke loose from the wall below and tumbled past the Bulgarian who was still climbing. “Go!” Jack answered.

  Claire and Jack ran down the wall, focusing on picking their steps. Jack tried not to think about the breeze against his face, realizing that a strong gust of wind could push them off. And he tried to ignore the fact that over the other side of the wall, several dozen man-eating dragons lurked.

  Jack glanced over the trees. The stars filled the sky, ending in a sharp line at the horizon—the Atlantic Ocean. Jack had almost forgotten it existed.

  Something crashed against the wall just below them and the structure shook. Claire yelped, but somehow, they kept their balance and continued running. Just behind them on the ground, the Bulgarian’s monster wrenched an immense boulder from the earth and readied to try again.

  Jack heard a low whistle and ducked, squeezing his eyes closed. The boulder pulverized the top of the wall, inches in front of them, and suddenly, his feet felt only air beneath them. Jack gripped frantically at rubble and dust. They tumbled—not toward the Bulgarian but over the other side of the wall.

  CHAPTER 26

  HUNTED

  The trees grew high against the wall on the other side. Jack and Claire tumbled into them, jerking and twisting as their weight snapped through the branches and vines. Jack hit the ground hard enough to feel the vibration in his bones.

  Jack’s right shoulder burned. He got to his feet and steadied himself next to a tree. Then he did something Voss had taught him that he had hoped he would never have to do: he gritted his teeth and slammed against the tree, popping his shoulder back into place. For a long time, Jack squeezed his eyes shut against the pain, trying not to scream.

  The air here was thick, like a cold, wet blanket. The forest floor was wild with thorn bushes and tangled with vines. A heavy rain started to fall.

  He could hear Claire breathing rapidly, but he couldn’t see her through the gloom and rain. Jack found her holding her ankle. “You okay?”

  She used a tree to push herself up, then fell to the ground again. Jack squatted beside her under the tree, trying to escape the rain. “Is it broken?”

  “I think it’s just a sprain.” She pointed at Jack’s wrist. “You’re holding your wrist.”

  She was right. He touched his left wrist and pain shot through his arm. He grimaced.

  “Broken,” she said. “Which won’t make climbing back over easy. And I can’t use my spade on whatever mineral this rock is. It doesn’t conduct electricity.”

  “We can’t go back up anyway. The Bulgarian will be waiting for us,” Jack said. “But he’ll think we died from the fall. Or that we were killed by the dragons.”

  “He’ll be right.”

  “The main gate is our only way back in, on the far side of the wall, right?” Jack asked, his voice dropping to a whisper. “If we had a boat we could get to the mainland, and maybe locate a portal.”

  “I didn’t bring a boat, Jack.”

  “No . . . me neither.”

  “How far do you think the main gate is?” Claire asked.

  Jack looked down the wall. “Maybe ten miles?”

  “President of the Cartography Club, right?” she said. “Okay. We’ll need to stay close to the wall and stay invisible for ten miles.” Claire pulled herself up, holding onto one of the lower branches of the tree. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “Put your arm around me,” Jack said.

  “I don’t need your help.”

  “I’m not asking you to hold hands,” Jack said. “Hold on to my uniform.”

  She smiled grimly and leaned on him. Her wet brown hair fell on his shoulder. Jack took her weight and wrapped his good arm around her waist. “This okay?”

  “Yeah, thanks. Just make sure—”

  “Shhh!” They crouched.

  Claire stared at Jack, eyes wide. Dragon? She mouthed.

  Jack nodded and gulped. He motioned to the west, along the wall.

  Jack focused every ounce of attention through the rain and tried not to breathe. He could see them just through the grove of trees: three large reptiles, larger than the rhinos at the Bronx Zoo. Their tails dragged the ground behind them like whips, their jaws gaped like a crocodile’s.

  Jack and Claire remained deathly still, not breathing, rain dripping down their faces.

  The trees exploded as the three dragons crashed through the forest. Jack lifted Claire over his good shoulder, fireman style. He slipped for a moment in the mud, then hurtled away from the predators.

  Tree trunks snapped behind them like rifle shots. Branches tore at his face, arms, and legs. He barely felt them. A split-second image of one of the dragons behind them had locked in his mind: a mass of muscle with fire-engine-red scales.

  Jack hurdled over a fallen tree. But he didn’t clear it. His uniform caught, and they went down. Jack gripped Claire and braced for a fal
l. He tried to turn his body before he hit the slippery ground, so he could at least get one good kick at a dragon before it tore into him. Maybe he could give Claire a chance to run.

  But he didn’t hit the ground, or not flat ground anyway. They tumbled down a slope, through the underbrush as if the world itself had tilted. Gaining speed, they plowed through brambles and vines, bouncing off thick trunks and sliding off mossy, wet rocks.

  Jack’s face plunged underwater, a shock of cold. For a moment he thought he was in the sea. But it was only a creek, swollen to the size of a river from the heavy rain. The rocks brought a painful end to their tumbling. Jack’s head pounded.

  He was about to pick up Claire and run again when he saw something across the black water: the mouth of a cave in a tall rock wall. Jack helped Claire into and across the cold water, fighting to keep their balance in the current. He reached up to grab the lip of the cave mouth, then pulled himself and Claire up.

  Jack’s cheek rested on hard, cool dirt in the dark. Claire was nearby, her labored breathing echoing in the silence. Outside, rushing water filled the space with white noise.

  Slowly, carefully, Jack sat up and pulled his flashlight out of the pack of his torn uniform. He switched on the narrow beam and scanned the cave behind them. His head came about two feet from the roof of the cave. It was deeper than he first thought, maybe sixty feet from the mouth of the cave to a sharp curve. Along the cave wall, as it narrowed, lay what looked like long branches of bleached driftwood. Jack kicked at it. Bones from a large animal, deer or moose.

  Claire had followed him to the back of the cave, where they were out of view of the mouth. She tapped her flashlight, making it light without using the battery. Then she stood it up to create a dim glow reflecting off the ceiling. A narrow chimney let in a fresh breeze, though no light. Jack guessed it was near morning now.

  Claire gingerly probed her ankle and lower leg with her fingers. “I think we’re stuck here for a while.”