by K A Riley
We all stare at her and lean in, fully expecting her to elaborate. But she doesn’t. And neither does her creepy twin brother.
Instead, they stand up and walk, hand in hand, over to their Dorm.
Muttering about “getting some straight answers,” Ignacio gets ready to chase after them, but Mattea reaches out to lock her hand on his forearm. “Don’t.”
“But…”
“They know something’s wrong, but they don’t know what. Confronting them isn’t going to make them know any more than they do.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“I can’t speak for anyone else, but I suggest sleep. A good, long night of it, if possible.”
Mattea walks through the Lounge door leading to the showers with Libra, Sara, and Arlo right behind her.
“I guess that’s our cue,” Trax says, pushing himself up and nodding to Chace and Roxane. “Let’s try to get some sleep. Tomorrow’s a new day. With lots of new challenges…and pain.”
Trax and his Cohort disappear through the door leading to their Dorm.
Libra leads Sara, Mattea, and Arlo through the door on the opposite side of the Lounge and into our own wing.
Alone in the Lounge, Ignacio and I watch as the two Cohorts file out.
Standing side by side, I don’t look over at him when I ask, “Are you sure it wasn’t you?”
“Am I sure what wasn’t me?”
“The power flicker.”
“What makes you think I can do something like that? Or that I’d even want to?”
“I heard you can disrupt electrical impulses.” When Ignacio doesn’t answer, I press on. “Is that what you did to me in Unarmed Combat this morning?”
He tilts his head toward me just enough to let me see his scowl in the near-dark. “If I wanted you dead, Branwynne, you’d be dead. And I don’t want you dead. Yet.”
He strides off toward the shower rooms, leaving me alone in the Lounge, my mouth open, my fists clenched for the fight I know will have to happen.
10
Morning Address
I spend most of the night in my bed, restless and fidgety.
I don’t know how the five other members of my Cohort can sleep so soundly.
Unfortunately, they don’t all sleep soundlessly.
Libra giggles in her sleep. Sara grumbles. Ignacio snores.
Mattea and Arlo sleep quietly at least, although Arlo keeps his hoodie on all night. I’m not even sure he takes the thing off to shower.
When I can’t stand lying still any longer, I push my blanket off and slink out of the Dorm.
The dim, nightlights are back on in the hallways.
I make my way down to the fourth floor where I hear voices coming from one of the Bio-Tech Research Labs.
A halo of light from the seam around the door seeps into the corridor.
The voices coming from inside the room are muffled, so I concentrate, trying to connect with Haida to borrow some of her heightened senses. Unfortunately, nothing happens.
It’s a problem I’ve been having forever, and it’s not getting any better. When Haida’s asleep, I have trouble accessing her. It’s tricky when I’m nervous or stressed, too. Kress has been working with me for a long time now, and I’ve made good progress in a lot of areas, but this is one of the things I just can’t get the hang of.
When I hear bootsteps approaching the door from the inside of the room, I backpedal down the hall and toward the stairs, slipping back up to the Dorms and into bed.
The voices, it turns out, belonged to Kress and Brohn. I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but they sounded exactly like War did earlier: afraid.
That thought alone is enough to keep me wide awake for the rest of the night. I lie there, biting my lip and staring at the ceiling until the holo-lights along the top edges of the walls flash gold and white to wake us up.
At least the power’s back on.
Brohn’s voice rumbles out from the narrow speech-amplifiers built into the top of every doorframe in the Dormitory. “Cohort A and B. Please meet in the Assembly Hall for Morning Address.”
Somehow, after all we went through yesterday, Libra manages to sing herself awake, leap up from her bed, and throw herself into her uniform.
She slips into combat pants and a form-fitting white compression top before sliding her hands along her hips.
“You have to admit,” she gushes, “these fit great!”
“It’s an organic, stimuli-response polymer,” I tell her. “They’re designed to adjust to our bodies.”
“Really?”
“There’s a storeroom full of them downstairs.”
Libra toggles her thumb back and forth between the two of us. “You’ve been here the longest. Maybe later you could give some of us a tour?”
“I thought Wisp and Granden already did that.”
“They did. But this place is massive. I want to see the secret places. You know, the nooks, the crannies.”
“That sounds like a great idea. Only…”
“Only, what?”
“I don’t want to.”
Libra throws her arm around me and pulls me close. She whispers, “I think you do” into my ear.
I push her away, but she just laughs and tells the others to get moving and to stop being such lazy bums.
Ignacio groans his disgust at her chipperness and swings his feet to the floor.
Mattea is groggy and grumbling, but she seems to get a burst of competitive energy when she sees Libra already up and ready to go.
Dragging from my lack of sleep, I sling on my red leather jacket. Technically, it’s not part of the official Academy uniform. Neither is Arlo’s shabby hoodie, but Wisp lets us get away with it.
Sara is the last one up. Unlike Mattea, she doesn’t seem to get any sort of energy boost by seeing the rest of us up and about. In fact, she tugs her blanket over her head and curls into a human nautilus shell.
“Come on Sleepy-bones!” Libra beams as she steps over to shake the Sara-shaped lump.
“Go away.”
“Wisp said she’d have Terk break our arms if we showed up late.” Libra’s sprightly smile drops down into a rigid line. “I don’t think she was joking.”
Grumbling and cursing under her breath, Sara rolls out of bed and trundles off to the Shower Room.
A few minutes later, she emerges, dressed and groggy-eyed, but apparently ready for class.
Cohort B is already out in the hall when we step out of our room.
They’re huddled around Trax, who seems to have slipped into the leadership role for their Cohort.
I guess that makes sense. He’s an expert on directions and tracking, so it’s reasonable for him to be in the lead, especially in a group with four other kids looking as lost as they do.
Besides, his sister spends all her time writing and drawing, Roxane is a monosyllabic, brain-muddled nutter, and Lucid and Reverie more or less live in their own world.
That leaves Trax—usually shy and a little fragile-looking—to run the show.
Like the proverb says: In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
With our two Cohorts together and the soreness from yesterday kicking back in, we start down the hallway—all of us looking like a bunch of geriatric tree sloths slogging through a marshy bog.
Although there are several mag-lifts in the Academy, we’re supposed to take the stairs. “To keep you in shape,” Kress told us at Orientation a few days ago.
I know that’s not entirely true, though. For a while now—ever since the new Emergents arrived, actually—the mag-generators have been as glitchy as the lights.
They won’t say it out loud, but I know Wisp and the others are worried about us getting stuck in one of the lifts or stepping into a malfunctioning one and plunging to our deaths.
On the glossy wooden stairs, I can feel a lightning strike of pain shooting through my legs with each step, but I shrug it off and muscle through.
Passing
through the big double doors of the Assembly Hall, the eleven of us clomp down the aisle and take seats scattered throughout the first few rows.
With its comfortable red-cushioned, fold-down seats, the auditorium-sized room is designed to hold almost three hundred people. Plus there’s room for another fifty or so in the balcony.
But, right now, the eleven of us barely outnumber the teachers.
So, like the rest of the Academy, there’s an open, echo-y feeling to the big hall, and I can clearly hear every breath and squeak of the seats as my classmates and I settle in.
On the stage, Kress and her Conspiracy are sitting on mag-chairs in a semi-circle behind the podium where Wisp is standing next to Granden.
Wisp is thin and small. Her baggy combat jacket hangs on her like an oversized pelt. But there’s something about her that makes her a great leader. It’s like she says the right things at the right time, and you just sort of want to do what she tells you.
“And how was everyone’s first day?” she asks us with a pleasant smile.
We answer with a disjointed round of sleepy grumbles.
Except for Libra. She says, “Great!” and I roll my eyes and start a silent count in my head of the number of ways I could kill her right now.
“Well, you survived,” Wisp says. “So that’s a good start.” She pushes up the sleeves of her jacket and brushes back her feathery brown hair.
“I’ve spoken with the two Cohorts separately, but this will be the first time I’ve had a chance to address all eleven of you together. I know we provided schedules for you a few days ago at Orientation, but after consulting a bit, we’ve made some changes to the course list. Your final schedules are now in place. As you know, your classes are arranged into five Disciplines: Weapons and Combat, Survival, Governance, Medical, and Espionage. In the hopes of giving you the best chance to succeed out there in the world, we’ve added a few classes to each Discipline. We’ll go over those in just a minute. Time will be allotted for each of you to have Apprenticeship—that’s your one-on-one private mentoring sessions—with one of your instructors in the use and development of your individual abilities as Emergents. Some of you have already started that training. The rest of you will meet with your mentors and start today. Plus, there will now be some time scheduled in for you to catch up on your books and movies.”
“I love movies,” Libra whispers to me. “Don’t you?”
I shift in my seat to be as far away from her as possible, only that puts me shoulder to shoulder with Ignacio.
Great. I can be annoyed by Miss Blabbermouth on my left or harassed by Mr. Conceited on my right. Am I doomed to be the meat in an imbecile sandwich?
On the stage, Wisp taps the bracelet on her wrist. “Here is the revised list of courses. As I noted, you’ll see some classes we went over at Orientation a few days ago as well as some new ones the Conspiracy thinks are essential to your training.”
As she talks, the names of the classes and of the assigned teachers appear next to her in a floating holo-display:
5 DISCIPLINES
* * *
1. WEAPONS & COMBAT
Unarmed Combat (KRESS, BROHN)
Sniper, Marksmanship (KELLA)
Alternate Weapons Training (BROHN)
Demolitions & Explosives (TERK)
Blacksmithing (TERK)
Strategy &. Tactics (RAIN)
* * *
2. SURVIVAL SKILLS
Hunting & Foraging (WAR)
Topography & Navigation (RAIN)
Outdoor Survival (BROHN)
Communications Skills (MAYLA)
Transportation & Mechanics (WAR)
* * *
3. GOVERNANCE & PHILOSOPHY
Transhumanism (GRANDEN, WISP)
Rhetoric & Propaganda (GRANDEN)
Diplomacy & Negotiation (WISP)
Rights, Duties, & Laws (GRANDEN)
Politics & Power (WISP)
Apocalyptic History (GRANDEN)
End of the World: Fiction & Fact
(GRANDEN, WISP)
* * *
4. MEDICAL
Field First-Aid (WAR and MAYLA)
Surgical Techniques (MAYLA)
Pharmaceuticals & Vaccines (MAYLA)
Exercise & Fitness (WAR)
Coordination & Reflex Skills (KRESS)
Bioethics (TERK / AUDITOR)
* * *
5. ESPIONAGE
Puzzles, Codes, & Game Theory (RAIN)
Surveillance & Reconnaissance (KRESS)
Infiltration (KRESS)
Drone Detection, & Avoidance (WISP)
Intelligence Ops (KELLA)
Counter Terrorism (KELLA)
Digital Tech (RAIN, TERK/AUDITOR)
* * *
EMERGENT APPRENTICESHIP
Specialized Mentoring (VARIOUS)
Wisp taps her bracelet, and the holo-display sizzles away into a fading, pixilated cloud. “If you have questions about any of the changes, please let me or one of the other instructors know. Remember, this is your first time being students, but it’s our first time being teachers. We may be older and have a bit more experience, but we’re all in this together, okay?”
Our two Cohorts nod our understanding as Wisp clears the holo-display.
“Make sure you check the announcement board posted in your Dorm each morning for any changes to the schedule.”
Granden clears his throat, and Wisp gives him a go-ahead nod. “And be sure to consult with your Mentor to set up a schedule that will work for both of you.” He gives a sideways flick of his eyes toward War and Mayla who are sitting behind him with our other teachers. “Some of us are Typics, but we’ll be acting in a Mentoring capacity as well. At least as much as we can,” he chuckles, “until your Emergent abilities exceed our ability to help you. After that, you’ll be assigned to one of your fellow Emergent instructors for advanced training.”
“Contrary to what some of you might think,” Wisp adds, “you’re not just here to learn how to become expert fighters. You will also be taught the arts of survival, diplomacy, medicine, and espionage. And you’ll be taught how to use your abilities as Emergents. As you know, some of these classes will include all of you. Most, however, will be taught to each Cohort separately. You’ll be together for meals and for your downtime in the Dorms and in the Lounge upstairs.”
Holding up his fingers in a “V,” Ignacio leans toward me and whispers, “I can’t believe we have to take two classes every day.”
“Nothing to whinge about,” I whisper back through the corner of my mouth. “It’s less than I thought they’d give us.”
“Branwynne!” Kress snaps from her seat on the stage. “Pay attention!”
I snap back in my seat like I’ve been electrocuted.
Wisp nods her thanks to Kress before turning her attention back to us. “I see from the bumps and bruises that your first class was a roaring success. I’m sure the rest of your time here will be just as productive.”
Taking a half-step to the side, she turns the center of the stage over to Granden.
Square-jawed, clean-shaven, even-tempered, and cold-eyed, he’s a total field general. Like Wisp, he commands respect and attention—almost magically—and gives off a total Pay Attention and Don’t Frack with Me aura.
I don’t know him that well, but the six new arrivals—the ones he took care of for the past five years and escorted across the country—all sit up straight and lean forward as he talks.
“As you know, Wisp is your dean. If your teachers are busy, you should feel free to consult with her if you run into problems. I’ll be around as well. Some of you will see me when you have my class on Post and Transhumanism.” He rubs his hands together with pretend glee. “Not as much fun as getting beaten up in Combat Training, but I’m sure we’ll have some good times tracking the past, pondering the present, and predicting the future of techno-human evolution.”
“For today,” Wisp adds, sliding back to the center of the podium, “r
eview your schedules, set up your mentoring sessions, listen to your teachers, and never forget why we’re all here at the Emergents Academy. Our mission is simple: Save the world.”
11
Time Passes
The next couple of weeks are a blur of classes, exhaustion, and pain.
The routine is essentially the same:
Snap awake at 6 AM to the rapid-fire, wake-up blast of gold and white holo-lights.
Follow the bouncing Libra into the Shower Room.
Fortunately, there’s plenty of space, so we don’t have to fight over toilets or shower stalls, although Ignacio still likes to be a territorial wanker and keeps trying to claim the best sonic shower as his own.
After we’re dressed in our Academy uniforms—complete with Kevlar armor for the full-contact and weapons classes—we stumble down five flights of stairs to the Tavern where we scarf down our breakfast.
It’s bland-looking and thin on flavor, but at least there’s not much of it.
Then, at 6:45 AM, it’s back up two flights of stairs to the Assembly Room where we plunk down in front of Wisp and some or all of our other teachers for Morning Address.
With classes set up in modules of two per day over a period of what we’re told will be about three months, our two Cohorts go our separate ways from 7 AM to 1 PM for Morning Module—the first of the day’s two ridiculously intense classes.
After Morning Module, we get an hour of “down time” from 1 to 2 PM when we can get a snack in the Tavern, grab a catnap upstairs in one of the Academy’s reading nooks or, more likely, spend that time getting patched up by War or Mayla in the Infirmary.
The flash of blue and white lights signals Afternoon Module, which runs from 2 PM to 8 PM.
Then, it’s one more stop at the Infirmary if necessary (and it often is), a quick and unsatisfying dinner, and then back up to the Dorms for a few hours of chit-chat, debriefing, comparing notes, showering up, or playing games in the Lounge—if we’re not too buggered out—before finally drifting off to sleep.