The Academy: Book 1

by Leito, Chad

  They want me to stay here.

  The crows overhead grew so thick that Asa had to stop running; it was too dark ahead to dodge the trees. The sky above was so dense with crows that they completely blocked out the moonlight. The boy of fourteen years and eleven months stood there and felt the bark of a tree right in front of him that he couldn’t even see. The cawing grew louder and louder, and the morning grew darker still. Asa felt like he was in some kind of a cage. Everywhere he moved, they pushed him backward by flapping wings. The cawing was so loud that he couldn’t hear himself breathing. He closed his eyes because there was no point in keeping them open. He made a wish for Harold Kensing without much hope.

  The cawing stopped and the light came back.

  Asa looked up. All of the birds were silent. Millions and millions of crows sat throughout the forest; they covered every spot that snow had on the day that he fell from The Tower. Each of their shiny black eyes above their beaks were pointed right at him. He felt that it would be inappropriate to breathe. The branches swayed in the wind, but the birds held their positions. They sat poised upright on moving bark.

  Asa didn’t even hear him coming. Even in the silence, he had not heard it.

  It was like getting hit with a truck.

  The birds and the branches and tree trunks around Asa were moving so fast.

  No, I’m moving.

  Asa was being carried by a man wearing all black. The man was short, and lean, and hard as marble. His arms were as thick as tree trunks. He was covered in head to toe in black, thick fabric that clung tight to his body.

  Asa kicked and jerked and screamed, but it didn’t matter.

  The man bounded over a line of bushes and in one leap while still holding Asa, and continued to sprint in the forest.

  Asa wondered what color the man in black’s tongue was. Surely these are the people that officer Kensing spoke of. Surely these are the ones who will get me at all costs. And I’m going to die before I know what happened last night—before I know about the dog and what they want and why I’m wanted.

  The trees were speeding past Asa at what felt like forty miles per hour. The birds were still, and Asa was amazed at how many there were. Incredibly, he thought that there were more in the trees and the sky and the ground than that day he had been sent home. The man (or thing) that was holding Asa was dodging in and out of the trunks and leaping over brush at a sickening pace. His legs moved in a blur, like a leopard’s. Asa stayed still and stopped fighting; he thought that falling into a tree at that pace could be fatal. Asa looked behind him and saw dirt shooting up behind this man’s impossibly fast moving legs.

  Asa felt sick. He looked ahead of him and saw that the road was just a few hundred yards off. The man in black wasn’t even breathing hard and when they were near the road, he skidded to a stop, kicking up dirt and dead leaves beneath him.

  He sat Asa down and Asa just stood there, stunned.

  “Don’t try to run, or I will catch you,” said the man in black. “Make it easier on both of us and just stay put for a moment.”

  Crows covered every inch of White Bridge for as far as Asa could see in either direction. There was a car sitting idle on the shoulder, and Asa wondered if it was his mother’s Volvo, still abandoned from the night before when Harold Kensing had pulled him over.

  Asa stood still while the man’s head snapped back and forth, as if looking for something in the vegetation. Asa noticed that the man in black had a band covering his forearm. The numbers “5:55” were stitched in the fabric and Asa thought that it was an amazing coincidence that it was just about that time in the morning. “Ah, there it is. C’mon! Follow me!”

  The man sprang across the road and Asa found that his legs carried him over to the strange person. The crows made a path for both of them to cross.

  The crows protected me from Harold Kensing, so what are they doing now? They’re just standing there.

  They stood on White Bridge, opposite Asa’s mom’s Volvo. The man turned to Asa and said through his mask, “A lot of birds out today, huh?”

  Asa’s mouth was dry and he didn’t respond.

  The man pressed on his forearm and was staring into the fabric. “King Lake is this way. We’ve got about a mile left to go.”

  “Where are we going? And who are you?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get there, but we might not make it. Conway said that the boat was leaving at six sharp. We would have left sooner, but the crows were a bit distracting. Up you go.”

  Asa was in the man’s arms, and in a flash they were sprinting through the woods again. The man’s legs moved in a blur, and Asa held on around his neck so that he didn’t fall. Asa knew that there was no use fighting it; if the man could run this fast, he could certainly detain Asa.

  In a couple of minutes, they were out of the woods, and King Lake came into view ahead. The man in black had ran the mile impossibly fast.

  King Lake stretched out of view like an ocean. Robert King (Or as some call him, The Boss), the trillionaire owner of Alfatrex had had the resevior built for his son, Cobb. It was the biggest reservoir in the world, and it stood at the center of Dritt Texas; it was a symbol of who was running the show. Cobb could buy nature; he could control the elements. All of their money practically made them gods to the Wolf Flu ridden, poorer population.

  The man carrying Asa came out of the woods and they began to sprint over the dirt surrounding the lake. Crows were swarming overhead. A long, wooden dock stretched out ahead of them, and a two story fishing boat was setting off out into the water. The motor on the boat was humming in the dawn, and the vessel was ten feet from the end of the dock.

  Asa tightened his grip and the man in black sprinted over the wooden dock. The crows flew out of the way, and some cawed from the land behind them. When they reached the end of the dock, the boat was twenty feet from the dock and still moving. The man carrying Asa planted one last foot on the wood, and leaped out over the water. They flew so high into the air that Asa felt his stomach drop as they began to descend.

  The water rose up to meet them, but they kept on moving forward, propelled by the jump that the man in black had made with his impossibly strong legs. The man landed on the deck, with Asa still in his arms.

  He looked behind him and saw that the boat was floating away from the dock. “That was pretty good, wasn’t it?” the man said through his mask. He had a British accent.

  The floor level deck of the boat was all white, with thin metal rails surrounding the edges, and benches to sit on and fish off the sides. The man in black walked to the door, stepped inside, and he began to descend down a dark, damp staircase with Asa still in his arms. The boat kicked into a next gear, and Asa felt that they were moving over the water much faster now.

  Before they reached the boat’s basement, Asa could hear crying coming from below. “Please, let me go. You don’t have to do this! Please. Please.”

  The man who was carrying Asa stepped off of the last stair and they were standing on the bottom floor of the boat. It smelled like fish, metal, and lake water. There were old coolers around the edges, and a single light bulb twisted in to a socket on the ceiling. Besides that, everything else was mostly either flat metal, or huge, metallic nuts and bolts that were holding two surfaces together. In the middle of the floor there was a closed metal hatch with a wheel above the door. It looked heavy and secure. You could open it and drop things into the lake below.

  There were two other people in the room. The first was the crying person; Asa thought that she was beautiful. She had clear porcelain skin, and thick brown hair that came out of her scalp in thick waves that fell to her shoulders. She was slender, with high, defined cheekbones and ocean green eyes. Asa could see why she was crying immediately; she was tied up. She had thick ropes around her wrists and ankles, with knots that didn’t move no matter how much she writhed and wiggled. A length of chain went from metal cuffs on her wrists, and ran through a series of ten forty-five pound circular wei
ght plates that were stacked up to make a big, four hundred and fifty pound cylinder. The chain wrapped from the bottom of the plates and connected back on the top.

  Asa saw that the girl’s eyes kept on moving from the weight plates to the closed hatch door on the bottom of the boat.

  The other man was wearing the exact same clothing as the man who had carried Asa except that his mask was off. He wore unmarked black shoes on his feet, and his whole person except from his neck and head was covered in tight, fitting fabric. He was taller than the man who had carried Asa, and much leaner. He was a black man, with graying hair. There was a knot of scar tissue beneath his left eye and Asa thought that the man looked oddly familiar.

  “What took you so long, McCoy?” The maskless man asked the man who was carrying Asa.

  “There were more crows than I expected,” said McCoy. He sat Asa down next to the girl.

  Asa tried to stand, and McCoy pushed him down. Asa then hit McCoy in the face, and then Asa’s hands and ankles were in cuffs; just as he had in running, McCoy could latch handcuffs at a remarkable pace. The man’s hand moved impossibly fast, tying long lengths of rope to Asa so that he wouldn’t squirm.

  “Has she been any trouble, Conway?” McCoy asked.

  Asa tried to remember where he had heard that name.

  “I tried to explain to her what was going on,” said Conway, but she didn’t believe me.

  “Let me go! Please, let me out!” said the girl.

  Asa followed the chain attached to his handcuffs and saw that they too were attached to a four hundred fifty pound bulk of lead. He jerked, and tried to twist, but it didn’t work.

  “Who are you?”

  McCoy, the man who had carried Asa through the woods, took off his mask and shook his head. He had short, blond hair, and a much younger, stronger face than Conway. “I wish that I could tell you, but we just don’t have time.” He was looking at his forearm again.

  “Time for what?”

  “Time before I have to drop you two. You two have to be in the water as quickly as possible. We don’t want to miss the next train. We’re almost there. Conway, open up the hatch.”

  Conway twisted the big metal wheel on the hatch in the middle of the floor.

  “WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? YOU’RE INSANE!” Asa was screaming, the words echoing around the small, metal chamber.

  Conway stopped twisting and lifted the heavy door of the hatch. The boat was still moving at a fast pace, and water was gushing into the basement from the opening in the floor.

  McCoy acted as though he didn’t hear Asa. “We’re on a very tight schedule. We’re supposed to check in at 6:10 to Alfatrex Station Number 63, and if I sit here and try to explain everything to you, we’ll be late. I’ll offer you a bit of advice, though—take a deep breath; it’s a long way to the bottom. You’ll have to fall about four or five hundred feet until you hit bottom. If you don’t get a deep breath, you’ll be in trouble.”

  “Please, let us go!” screamed the beautiful girl beside Asa. She looked at Asa for a moment with her piercing green eyes.

  McCoy was staring at his forearm. The boat was slowing. “We’re in the target zone, Conway. Drop them.”

  Conway moved over to the chunk of lead attached to the beautiful girl, lifted it, and sat it down into the water. Asa watched as the girl with the blue eyes slid across the wet floor.

  “Deep breath!” McCoy called out.

  She looked at him like he was crazy, but then took in a lungful before she went down into the water. There was a splash and then she was gone.

  “No! You can’t do this!” Asa screamed.

  The other girl is dead, he thought with horror. The lake is empty, she’ll go right to the bottom.

  “Actually, we can,” said Conway. Asa looked at the man in the eyes and would have sworn that he had seen him somewhere. The man lifted the bulk that was attached to Asa and dropped all four hundred and fifty pounds of it into the water of the biggest reservoir in the world.

  Asa was screaming and crying and he slid across the floor.

  “It’ll be fine!” called McCoy. “Just remember, deep breath.”

  The weight was too much. Asa struggled and tried to stop himself from going into the water by applying traction to the metal with his shoes, but the floor was covered in water and he was slipping. Finally, his body slid to the edge of the hatch, and he looked down into the deep water below. The chain that was attached to him went straight down, and twelve feet below he could see the weight plates pulling him down into the water. Beyond the weight plates, there was a seemingly endless depth of water; Asa could not see the bottom. He sat there in limbo for a second, his back flexed with adrenaline pumped strength, trying to keep him alive.

  “Remember,” McCoy called, “deep breath.”

  Asa took a deep breath and then plunged into the water. He opened his eyes. The lake was clear and he could see for a good distance; a hundred yards below was a sinking shape that Asa thought was the brunette girl.

  I’ll never know. I’ll never know who sent officer Kensing, or who those people are, or who sent that dog to save me. I’ll never know why the crows love me, or why they’re killing me.

  He was certain of these things. He looked up and saw that the boat above was already small. The top of the lake shimmered and sunlight shown through. Asa looked down and saw that he was falling into an abyss. There was nothing but black underneath.

  He jerked at his hands with all the strength that he had, and saw that it was no use. He was tied up so well that he couldn’t use his back to gain leverage, and even if he managed to get the cuffs from either his hands or feet, both were attached to the chain that was dragging him to his death.

  He looked up again and saw that the boat was still traveling. He couldn’t see the hatch anymore, and the object was still shrinking in his vision. His lungs were beginning to hurt. A perch swam a few feet from his head, unaware and unperturbed by they drowning person. They were not crows; the fish didn’t care about him.

  Asa went like that, down and down and down until he was in the darkness of deep depth. After a minute, his lungs were crying out for oxygen, but there was none. He kept on going down. His ears hurt with the pressure and he struggled with the cuffs even though he knew it was useless.

  And he kept on drifting down.

  4

  Alfatrex Station Number 63

  It began as a low hum. As Asa went lower and lower into the vacant waters, away from the surface where all of the boats and engines should be, a mechanical sound grew louder. Asa had been holding his breath for over a minute now, and he wondered if it was all in his head—if this audio hallucination was the first sign that his system were shutting down.

  Asa’s hair floated and waved in the deep water as he continued to descend. His ears hurt with the pressure and his lungs were tight and begging for air. He looked around in the darkness for the beautiful girl who was submerged before him, but couldn’t find her. The handcuffs were digging into his skin, and he jerked and pulled on them. The chains rattled and moved some, but the metal wasn’t coming off. Asa looked above him to the surface of the water. The sunlight was reflected among the small waves and Asa couldn’t see the boat anymore. He thought that even if he was able to get the handcuffs off that he wouldn’t be able to swim to the surface before he drowned. The weights continued to pull him down.

  It hurt. Asa noticed with panic that his vision was tunneling down into a thin beam. His brain was in dire need of oxygen, and his chest was beginning to tighten and plead for air.

  He could see the lakebed below him now, caked down with thousands of pounds of water sitting on top of it. Green and brown weeds reached up towards the far-off surface, waving as if welcoming Asa into their reach. In half a minute, he would be among the thick vines. Even though he was certain he would parish no matter what the circumstances, he had an illogical fear that there was some kind of foreign, scale-covered lake creature that would take bites from his skin
with sharp teeth as he finally came to a rest at the bottom of King Lake.

  He smiled nervously at the thought. What’s it going to do, kill me? Probably no faster than the lack of oxygen surrounding my body.

  Asa’s eyes were wide open, still searching for the beautiful girl among the tangle of deep-water plants. He scanned all around; he had an incredible urge to get just one final look at her.

  Asa cocked his head to the side. He had heard it again, and he was almost positive that it wasn’t a hallucination this time. The whine of an engine came to his ears; the noise was growing louder by the second as he neared the bottom of the reservoir. He noticed that the plants that grew from the floor weren’t just moving with the water currents, but something was making them vibrate from beneath the dirt.

  The metal plates that Asa was chained to slipped below the deep-water vegetation and out of sight. The weight continued to drag Asa lower, and the slimy fingers and tendons of the seaweed wrapped around his arms and legs, then brushed his face and neck. He let out a moan accompanied with a dozen bubbles when an edge of plant brushed his ear and he mistook it for a snake out of the corner of his eyes.

  The plates beneath him struck hard, slime covered dirt, and Asa bobbed up and down for a second, still chained to the weight below. He had an innate instinct to blow out all the air in his lungs and to inhale water—but he suppressed it. He tugged hard at his chains, but they still wouldn’t budge. The whine of a motor was obtrusive at the bottom, and Asa wondered what could be this deep.

  Is it some kind of filtering system?

  His head was throbbing, and just as he gave in and blew out all of the air from his lungs and saw the bubbles disperse around him and race up to the summer air he felt a jerking sensation. He wrapped his hands around the chain that was pulling him down and felt that it was pulsating. He looked down and saw that the weights that he was attached to had sunk down beneath the bottom, and that he was being pulled into the dirt.