by K A Riley
I have to give him credit. He’s being awfully brave for someone who’s outnumbered six Emergents to one Typic. But he seems sincere.
“They’re really…like us?” I ask.
With a small shrug, he tells us most of them are Emergents. He reaches into the cluster of kids and draws one of them forward with delicate care by her elbow.
With what looks like a pair of needle-nose pliers for hands, a bald scalp like a curved circuit board, and a single camera lens for an eye with the swollen socket of her other eye stitched closed, the small girl is more of a junkyard collection of spare parts than a human being.
“This is Valinda. As you can see, she’s a Modified. She’s one of the ones I need you to save.”
Libra opens and closes her mouth, but since nothing comes out, I ask for her. “Save? Save them from what?”
“From us.” We all stare at him for a second before he explains. “There are plenty in the Devoted who think we should kill these Emergents before they kill us. Look. Epic isn’t the only one who’s afraid of what you represent. Years ago, we all lived in Sanctum down in the valley. The Devoted and the Civillains didn’t exactly see eye to eye.”
“About Emergents?” I ask.
“About anything, really.”
“So you splintered off and came here,” I continue for him. “I know that part of the story.”
“The part you don’t know is this: The Unsettled have gotten involved in Epic’s search for Emergents. Emergents are the new weapons of war. And, believe me, there’s a war coming.”
With my eyes still locked onto the ragtag group of stunned kids, I give him a confrontational shake of my head. “We know that, too, Matholook. The Devoted and the Unsettled are out there right now. You’ve told us as much.”
Matholook shakes his head and gives a casual flick of his hand in the general direction of the big double doors at the front of the church. “Not that war. What they’re doing out there…that’s nothing. That’s just…territorial stuff. Jockeying for position. Revenge killing to trim down the ranks. All so we can get ourselves prepared for what’s to come.”
He ushers the kids closer, and they gather around him, shuffling and clearly too stunned—or too abused—to speak.
“What’s to come?” Arlo asks.
“The real war. Not the war for food, water, space, land, or safety. That war’s over. We lost. We all lost. Two-thirds of the population’s been wiped out with everyone else scared and starving. No. I’m talking about the war over you.”
“Emergents,” I say. “You’re talking about Epic’s war.” It’s not a question.
Matholook gives me a sad half-nod as Ignacio offers up a half-hearted chuckle of his own. “Not bad,” he says, his lower lip pressed forward in a contrived pout. “I never figured we were worth fighting over.”
But his joke falls flat under Matholook’s pleading gaze. He turns back to the quiet, dead-eyed bunch behind him, and, just for a second, he reminds me of Render and Haida Gwaii when they were going through an especially over-protective stint with their brood of six young ravens a few years back.
“They look like kids,” he says. “I know that. But trust me. They’re not.”
“Then what are they?”
Matholook points back into the dark room they just emerged from and then back to the twelve kids. “That room is a weapons depot.”
“And?”
“And…these kids…they’re the weapons.”
I’m torn. I want to grab my Cohort and run. I want to punch Matholook in the face. And I want to help these kids and make Kress proud.
After all, this is exactly what we’ve been training for.
I hate feeling indecisive almost as much as I hate feeling helpless.
“What do you want us to do?” I laugh. “Take them to the Academy with us?”
Matholook doesn’t answer, and I can tell he hasn’t really thought this through.
“First of all,” I explain, “the Academy isn’t a day camp where you just pop in and out. It’s a school. We’re in training to stop people like you.”
When Matholook squints and his cheeks go red, I clarify my point. “Not to stop you, personally. To stop the Devoteds. To stop the Unsettled. And Epic and his Civillains. And every other faction in the Divided States who’d rather see the world end than saved.”
Next to me, Ignacio nods and reminds everyone about how we have a very real, very urgent mission. “We’re going to save the world,” he boasts, his chest puffed out. “Whether the world likes it or not.”
Matholook’s eyes bounce between me, Libra, Sarah, Mattea, Arlo, and Ignacio. “These kids are like you,” he insists, his anxious eyes wide and wet. “Without proper guidance, they’ll turn into people on the wrong side of the apocalypse. They’ll become the very weapons we’re trying to turn them into.”
“And with proper guidance,” I remind him with a sweep of my eyes over the interior of the church, “they’ll turn into people dedicated to bringing down all of this, bringing an end to you.”
“I know.”
“You’re willing to help bring down your own people?”
“My own people shouldn’t have been brought up in the first place. People like us, people with ambition and power and the willingness to use it…we’ve run the world for a long time. I’m tired, Branwynne. I’d like that time to finally be over. If we succeed, if the Devoted—or the Unsettled or Epic or if any of the other rogue factions gets an upper hand—then the whole country’s at war.”
“And if we succeed,” I remind him, “you and I will technically be at war.”
Through a cheeky grin, Matholook says, “I can live with that.”
“No,” I tell him with all the sincerity I can muster. “You can’t. And you won’t.”
“I can get you back up the mountain.”
“The mining tunnels?”
“Well, one of them, anyway.”
“Fine. Where?”
“At the far western edge of the compound, there’s an opening in a steel gate. Three hundred feet past that is a very large, very dead tree leaning against a small hill of red rocks. At the base of the ridge is a small opening. You’ll need to squeeze in. It leads to a buried mining station and three tunnels. From there, you can take the middle tunnel back up the mountain. It ends and then starts up again in places, so you’ll still have to navigate parts of the mountain from the outside. And the mines won’t get you directly to the Valta, but they’ll get you close enough.”
Glancing from the kids to the open doorway, Matholook’s glistening green eyes go twitchy with panic. “But you need to hurry. It’s almost dawn. The Devoted will be here for church in less than an hour. And the rest of our army—the Vindicators—could be back as soon as nightfall. If any of them catches you here…”
“We’ll take the kids,” I announce on behalf of my Cohort. “But you need to know…you’re just giving us the weapons we’re going to use to destroy you.”
“I’m counting on it.”
“I’ll come back,” I tell him. Even as I say the words, I don’t know if it’s a promise, a question, or a threat.
Matholook asks, “Come back? For revenge?”
“No,” I tell him. “I’ll be back for you. After this, you can’t tell me you’ll be safe here. The Devoted—Justin and Treva—they’ll know you let these kids out. They’ll know you’re a traitor. And they’ll kill you for it.”
“Not if they think you overpowered me,” he grins. “What if I’m just an innocent victim of a rogue band of powerful Emergents who nearly killed me before taking off with our own collection of precious, rescued Emergents?”
I know exactly what he’s asking, and I only hesitate for a split second before obliging.
I strike out with a quick jab to one side of his gorgeous face and then a second jab to the other side. Smiling, he tells me I need to do better than that. So I throw one more punch, clipping him on the jaw and follow that hit with a knee strike to his midsecti
on that leaves him doubled over and gasping for air.
He doesn’t so much as raise a hand to defend himself.
Nice job, Branwynne. You just beat up a childhood friend and a possible soulmate.
“Come on,” I say to the group of kids who strain to switch their gaze from Matholook to me. Urged on by Libra, they snap into a hazy-eyed, partial focus and scramble out of the room with Sara, Mattea, Arlo, and Ignacio.
I’m the last one to reach the open doorway. Before I step through, I turn back to Matholook. He’s on his knees, his cheeks red, the corners of his mouth cracked open and dripping blood.
“I’ll be back,” I promise. “For you.”
“That’d be nice,” he grins. “But why?”
“Well…you said it yourself. You and I…we’re…inevitable. And I believe you.”
Wincing and with one hand wrapped around his ribs, he raises his other hand and mouths the word, “Inevitable…”
I dash through the open doorway and sprint to catch up with my Cohort and the liberated kids who are already shuffling their way through the waning darkness toward the edge of the compound.
I keep my eyes forward and focused.
I don’t need to look back to know that someday, I’m going to go back.
44
Cohorts
We started out as a class of eleven.
That was three months ago.
Now, with the kids from New Haleck and the ones rescued by Kress and her Conspiracy, we’re up to thirty.
Because of the way the Emergents of New Haleck were revealed to me, I’m barely surprised when the Terminus doors open in the Sub-Basement hangar, and Kress leads seven kids—none older than about twelve or thirteen—down from the truck.
She and her Cohort beam in triumph. Terk brags about their successful mission, and Rain squeals about how great it is to be home.
As War and Mayla start relaying their supplies out of the massive rig, Brohn strides over to Wisp, who leaps into his arms, hugs him tight, and tells him she and Granden have got a lot to fill him in on.
“So it wasn’t too boring around here while we were gone?” he asks.
I know all eleven of us original students want to burst out laughing. But Wisp and Granden weren’t exactly happy with us about our little excursion outside of the Academy, so we hold our tongues.
“It definitely wasn’t boring,” I mumble at last through a suppressed smile.
“Great,” he grins. “Can’t wait to hear all about it.”
“Well,” Kella drawls, standing protectively behind the seven overwhelmed and stunned-speechless kids, “here’s seven more students to add to our little school.”
“Seven?” Ignacio crows, his raised thumb pointed toward the ceiling, his voice full of the bluster of an over-embellishing fisherman. “We got twelve!”
Kress and Brohn exchange one puzzled look, a second one with their Conspiracy, and then a third with Wisp and Granden, who nod their confirmation.
“They’re upstairs waiting for us in the Infirmary,” Granden tells them.
Clearly still not happy with us, Wisp gives us a withering glare. “Apparently we have some junior recruiters of our own.” When Brohn holds his sister at arm’s length like he’s inspecting her for a concussion or brain damage or something, Wisp slips her arm around his waist. “Don’t worry. We’ll explain everything.”
“Come on,” Granden calls out, his words echoing in metallic waves through the expansive hangar. “Let’s get everyone cleaned up, fed, and rested. I think we all have quite a few stories to tell.”
After Kress’s heroic return and a full week of discussions and debriefing, Wisp and Granden divided the Academy’s thirty students—the original eleven of us plus the twelve we brought back and the seven Kress and her Conspiracy rescued—into five Cohorts with six students in each group.
One of the new students—a pigtailed, thirteen-year-old prankster and practical joker named Prairie—was assigned to be the sixth person in Cohort B, which had been getting by with only five students since the beginning.
Along with our two original Cohorts, each of the three new Cohorts has been named after the term for a group of animals, mostly found in the mountains outside of the Academy. In keeping with traditions started by Kress and her Conspiracy and by Mayla and her family of the Unkindness back in Chicago, each Cohort is assigned the alphabetized group-name for a specific species of bird.
So now we have…
A Committee of Vultures
A Descent of Woodpeckers
An Exaltation of Larks
Cohort B, Prairie included, is now called a “Battery of Quail.”
And my Cohort, Cohort A, has been given a name Wisp was sure we’d object to but which we unanimously cheered for when she assigned it.
Libra, Sara, Mattea, Arlo, Ignacio, and I are now formally known throughout the Academy as the “Asylum of Loons.”
It wasn’t long before we all dropped the bird part of our name for the sake of convenience.
That makes my Cohort known mostly just as “Asylum” and Cohort B mostly referred to as “Battery.”
(Roxane—who still doesn’t say more than a handful of words every few days—apparently thought our Cohort being called “Asylum” was the funniest thing in the world, because she laughed until she cried and then had to run out of the room to pee.)
Thanks to Chace’s designs, each Cohort is going to get its own Academy patch featuring its very own animal representative.
She won’t show them to us yet, but she promises it won’t be long before we can see her pictures and read her stories.
It’s been funny to see how quickly each Cohort has come to rally around its assigned mascot.
“It’s like each individual in the Cohort combines to give them a single personality,” Arlo points out as we’re gathered together in the Lounge, watching the younger kids from Descent and Exaltation hooting and hollering in a rowdy darts tournament on the far side of the crowded, buzzing room.
Arlo’s comment launches us into a whole new conversation about whether or not a group can have a personality in the same way a person does.
Leaning back on the orange couch, Sara claims it’s impossible for a group of people to have a personality. “It’s in the word, itself,” she insists. “Personality means the character of a person. A group can’t have a single personality any more than a bunch of raindrops can be called a puddle. It’s one or the other.”
“I disagree,” I tell her. “I think it’s possible for six people to behave differently as a group than they would as individuals.”
“So what’s our personality, then?” Mattea asks, her hand making a sweeping arc in front of the six of us.
I survey the Asylum and remember all the problems we’ve encountered, the arguments we’ve had, the dire situations we’ve escaped, and the things we’ve achieved over our first months at the Academy. “Well, we’re not exactly the best bunch in the world.”
“Or the nicest,” Ignacio adds with totally inappropriate pride.
Libra snorts through a perpetual smile, which I’m now sure she simply can’t control. “Speak for yourself!”
Mattea rests her chin in her hand like she’s deep in thought. Then she grins and nods, apparently in agreement with herself. “Okay. For this bunch, I’d say an ‘Asylum of Loons’ is about as accurate as it gets.”
“See!” Arlo beams from under his hood. “Together, we’re more than we are.”
With my elbows on my knees and my head down, I tell my Asylum, “Listen. There’s something Epic said to me when I was trapped underground in that bubble-cell of his.”
“What did he say?” Ignacio asks.
“I haven’t even told this part to Kress.”
Feigning anger, Libra stomps her foot. “What is it?”
“He said the natural state of people is to be connected and that basically everything that’s gone wrong with us as human beings is from us resisting that natural state.”
Sara’s ears seem to perk up at this. “So now you’re saying even things that are totally opposite—good and evil, right and wrong, human and animal, Emergent and Typic—are really connected?”
“I’m saying that’s what Epic said. Yes.”
“And you agree with him?”
“I don’t know,” I shrug. “It was a strange thing for him to say. But I know it’s important. I can feel it. Anyway, it just got me thinking.”
“Ugh,” Ignacio grunts with an exaggerated eye-roll. “Thinking. What a waste of time.”
We have a good laugh, and Libra tugs at my sleeve. “Let’s go show those little ankle-biters how to play darts.”
I laugh again, not at Libra’s use of my term for the younger Newbies, but because going over there with her as my partner and taking those little chabbies from the Exaltation of Larks down a peg or two is exactly what I both want and need to do right now.
Technically, this is Sara’s wheelhouse. She’s the darts expert, after all. But she seems content to sit in her armchair and look sour while the rest of us chat, gossip, and have fun.
For the next couple of hours, Libra and I lose ourselves in the thrill of harmless, painless competition.
Naturally, Libra and I destroy the little tossers. We finish the last set with a flurry of spot-on double bullseyes and a couple of high-fives just for good measure.
We’re merciless in battle but gracious in victory, and we offer our younger opponents encouraging, overlapping rounds of “Not bad,” “Good match,” and “Better luck next time.”
Libra takes me by the hand and half-drags me across the Lounge to plop back down with our Asylum for a few more minutes of rest and relaxation before we finally head off to bed.
Tucked in and preparing myself mentally for the new challenges we’ll face tomorrow, I whisper my “Thanks” to Libra for prodding me into the diversion of a good game of darts.
After all, the last few weeks haven’t been all fun and games.
Soon after our return from New Haleck and just a few days before Kress and her Conspiracy returned with their new recruits, my Cohort and I got yelled at for three days straight for leaving the Academy.