The Academy: Book 1

by Leito, Chad

  The incident happened so fast that afterwards, Asa debated with himself as to whether or not it had actually happened. Everyone else in line was in front of Asa, so he had no one to confirm or deny what Asa thought that he saw. The man in the white suit looked at Asa, his skin almost as pale as the surrounding snow. For one tenth of a second, or perhaps less, the man with black gums lifted his upper lip and brought the inside parts of his eyebrows together in a snarl that made Asa’s heart skip a beat. It was an evil, menacing look. He showed almost his entire top layer of gums, and the sharp, menacing teeth that hid between his lips.

  As quick as it had started, it was over and the man’s face returned to normal except for the small hint of a smirk on his lips as he looked over Asa’s face. Asa wondered what kind of frightened expression he had made in the midst of the horror.

  “…four, and tell Ken’s secretary that I cannot…”

  The voice trailed away behind Asa. Asa looked around, and wasn’t sure that anyone else noticed what had just occurred.

  McCoy looked back at Asa and gave him a stare that Asa couldn’t read. He thought it said, be careful.

  Asa was in a semi trance as he made his way over the dock, trying to stay as close to McCoy as possible. His heart felt like a hummingbird in his chest, and the adrenaline and cortisol, stress hormones, that shot through his body made him forget about the cold. He felt as though he had just ran sprints for the last hour. He was sweating.

  Ken Pudman. He said Ken Pudman. Asa ran through the name in his head. Ken Pudman had been the president of the United States last term.

  What did it all mean?

  He had no answers. He did not know. Every step into this new world, from Officer Harold Kensing, to the people with black gums that he had warned Asa about, only brought more questions, and no answers.

  He was excited for the assembly that would be coming tonight. McCoy had said that he would be given information. Asa trusted McCoy.

  Asa and Charlotte were the last to step aboard the ship, and so they were not able to select their seats. There were four spots still open, and none of them were beside each other.

  Without saying a word, they parted and made their way to opposite ends of the ship. Asa held onto the railing as he walked to prevent himself from falling. As he was walking, a chaperone untied the boat from the dock and they began to drift.

  7

  Fishie Mountain

  The wooden vessel began to creak as Asa sat down on one of the benches. He leaned up against the backrest and ran his hands along the smooth wood. There was a faint wind blowing around him, and most of the other Fishies were shivering, holding their parkas tight against their bodies. Asa sat up tall, and didn’t notice the cold. He stretched up his neck and looked back at the town the boat was drifting away from. Far down one of the cobble stone paths, Asa could see the man in the white suit—his pale baldhead was exposed to the elements, and he was moving with the fluidity of a cat. His assistant was scurrying behind, trying to keep up with the bald man’s strides.

  He’s not a human, Asa thought. He lowered into his seat some more and watched the giant masts above move to the correct position, seemingly on their own. Wind filled the sails and pushed them forward. Human’s can’t move like that. Human’s don’t have black gums. Human’s don’t torture cops so that they kill fourteen-year-old kids.

  Charlotte sat six rows in front of Asa, and she was talking to someone with a baldhead. Asa leaned forward and gripped the wooden seat between his legs. The person turned, and Asa could tell that it was a male. He was wearing a Fishie parka. He smiled and Asa saw that his gums were pink, normal. His head, however, was not. The person was tall, and so even though Asa sat far back from him, his head was in clear view.

  The back of his scalp was covered in blotches of dark red skin atop his Caucasian head. The blotches of discoloration were arranged in a seemingly random way, as though someone had thrown a cup of maroon dye at him. The top half of his left ear was gone, and the skin stopped in a calcified, plastic-like twist of wine colored scar tissue.

  But still, he was handsome.

  Inner qualities, a confident and quiet soul, helped to overcome these deformities. He looked down at Charlotte as she spoke; her head came up to his shoulder. The bald person’s face seemed to feign interest while she was talking. His eyes flashed around the vessel, and then back to Charlotte. He gave the impression that he knew everything at once.

  Charlotte’s eyes glowed at him. Asa was jealous.

  She’s probably like that with everyone.

  The bald man’s eyes shot over at Asa, registered that he was staring, and then went back to Charlotte.

  Asa looked out over the water. I don’t care, really I don’t. He was gripping the bench even harder now.

  The water had a low chop, and was the deep blue that gave the impression of immense depth. The Moat, as they had called it, spanned about three quarters of a mile, and they were a quarter of the way across. The wooden vessel was taking all of the Fishies North, in the direct opposite direction of the biggest mountain that loomed in the South.

  In the exact spot in the water that Asa was staring, bubbles began to rise to the surface, and then a shadow. Asa leaned forward, trying to get a better view, trying to make sure that his eyes weren’t fooling him. They weren’t. A moment later, a ten-foot thick cylindrical body emerged from the water. The scales made horizontal white and black stripes along the body, like on a zebra. The body rolled, and then it was gone. Waves dopplered out from the spot where the thing had been, and rocked up against the boat.

  Asa looked around the vessel with his mouth open in awe to see if anyone else had seen what he had. No one seemed to notice. None of the people had stirred.

  It was then that Asa noticed the crying boy sitting beside him. Silent tears were streaming down his face and his lip quivered as he looked forward. The boy was plump and blonde. His cheeks were chubby and red beneath the hood of his parka.

  “What’s wrong?” Asa asked the boy, keeping his voice low so that others didn’t hear them?

  “Huh?” the boy looked up at Asa and the tears continued to fall, but his bottom lip stopped quivering. He was trying to hide his tears.

  “You’re crying,” Asa whispered with concern.

  “No I’m not,” said the boy, but tears continued to fall onto his cheeks.

  Asa nodded, and then looked straight ahead at the mountain that they were headed for. He heard the boy beside him sob once more. “My name is Asa,” Asa said, and put out his hand. “Asa Palmer.”

  “I’m Theodore June. Call me Teddy.”

  They shook hands.

  “June?” Asa repeated. “I’ve never heard that before.

  Teddy nodded. “I’ve never heard of it before outside of my family either. So…” Teddy paused, and looked at his hands. He had a moment where he looked like he was about to burst out crying, and then he regained his composure. “Did they take you from your family too? How did you get here?”

  For Teddy’s sake, Asa pretended to not notice the tears; crying was understandable at this point; they had been kidnapped; it was nothing to be ashamed of. But if Teddy was ashamed of his tears, Asa wasn’t going to make an ordeal out of them. “I was running in the woods behind my house and a chaperone came and snatched me up. He took me to a boat, they drove me out to the center of a lake, tied me to iron weights, and had me sink to the bottom.”

  Teddy looked up, confused. “Had you sink to the bottom?”

  “Yeah. I thought that I was going to die. There was a train station at the bottom of the lake. I sunk through the bottom and landed in this room where the floor is made out of trampoline. From there, we had lunch, and then we got on the train.”

  “Oh, well that’s not what happened to me. I work at a school and…”

  “What kind of school?” Asa interrupted. “Elementary, high school?”

  “It’s a college,” said Teddy.

  “What college?”

&nb
sp; “Duke.”

  “Duke?” Asa blurted. “Like the university.”

  Teddy was bashful. He didn’t make eye contact. “Yeah. I work in the Math building, and I was leaving at three in the morning. I got in the elevator, pressed the F button, and the thing just continued to go down. The elevator fell for hours. I was banging on the door and pressing the emergency button, but it didn’t do anything.”

  “Wow. What do you do at Duke?”

  “Uhhh…” He twisted his hands together. “I lecture.” The next words came out fast, as though he were apologizing—“I’m a TE, which is, like, this thing that’s even lower than just a lecturer. It’s not a big deal. I don’t get to publish or anything.”

  “How old are you? How did you get that job? What do you teach?”

  “I’m fifteen. Today is my birthday, actually. I teach discrete math, which is basically mathematics where the answers are limited to a certain range of real numbers. I like it; it’s very applicable. Stuff like—‘if Johnny has 38 dollars, a coupon for %50 off his first three purchases, and he wants to buy as many 8 dollar toys as possible, how many can he get? Six toys with two dollars left over. So it’s not as though I’m teaching calculus or anything like that.”

  “How did you get the job?” Asa looked over Teddy. Teddy looked much younger than fifteen. He wondered what kind of respect he received from the students. The boy fidgeted a lot.

  “I’ve always been good at math. I wrote this formula for predicting atmospheric changes. Most meteorologists’ computers have my formula in them now. There was a story about me on CNN. Duke thought it was impressive, and offered me a job.”

  “That’s incredible! You teach at Duke, and you’re fifteen.”

  Teddy cracked a smile for the first time. “I’m proud it.”

  “You should be. I bet you’re the smartest person here.”

  Teddy raised his eyebrows, still smiling, and shook his head. He had stopped crying. “No. Not even close. Have you talked to some of these kids? Some of the other ‘Fishies’?”

  “No. What?”

  “They’re all geniuses. At my train station, one of the chaperones was asking everyone about their accomplishments. Do you see that girl, right next to the railing? She’s looking out onto the water. Blonde hair. She’s worth millions. She invents kitchen gadgets—knifes, things that chop your vegetables. She even invented a machine that will clean your fish for you, season them, fry them, and then cleanly dispose of the waste. Isn’t that remarkable? And the boy with the long blonde hair, sitting in the front. I don’t know if you can see him right now, but anyways, he won the high school national debate championship as a freshman in high school. Can you believe that? President Ken Pudman hired him to play George Decker in mock debates, to get the president ready for the real thing. He could have asked anyone, and he hired a kid. The president thought that a kid was his best practice in a mock debate! And do you see that bald one up there? Real tall, he has scars on the back of his head. He’s missing half his ear.”

  Teddy was talking about the man sitting beside Charlotte.

  “That’s Stridor Akardiavna. He’s a genius. Off the charts. Seriously, off the charts. There’s a youtube video of him when he’s seven. It’s ten minutes long and he’s scribbling on a chalkboard, and talking to the camera. In the video, Stridor presents a new way of thinking about the Theory of Relativity. I don’t really understand all of what he says, but experts say that he’s right. As a seven year old kid, he proved that Einstein’s grand accomplishment, the thing that was used to create the atom bomb and one of the biggest leaps that science had ever made, needed some tinkering. Stridor proved that Einstein didn’t ‘get’ something! Unbelievable. So what about you? Everyone has his or her grand accomplishments here. I think that they’re rounding up some kind of elite group. Why did they pick you?”

  Asa felt his heart rate rise and was afraid he was blushing. He had no idea that he was among such a company. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice low. “I haven’t done anything like that. I’m not a genius. I’m normal.”

  “Huh,” Teddy said. He relaxed back in his chair, pondering. “Are you athletic?”

  “I run cross country. I’m pretty good; not close to the best in the nation or anything.”

  Teddy looked at him; “And you’re sure you haven’t invented some space ship, or written a literary masterpiece, or beaten a Grand Chess Master?”

  Asa thought about it. He was enjoying talking to Teddy; he liked him. But this conversation made him nervous. He couldn’t think of anything that was special about him.

  His stomach dropped and he thought of the crows

  He considered for a moment. The crows do make me unique. It’s something that I have that no one else does.

  Asa considered McCoy’s warning and then answered Teddy—“No. Nothing.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. Asa looked around at all the people beneath their fluffy parkas.

  Genius.

  The word played in his mind. These kids were all so much smarter than he was. They must think so differently. They must be so different. Asa wondered if they were processing information in a completely different way from himself. He wondered if Stridor, the bald one beside Charlotte, thought in math equations instead of images and words. He wondered what the blond girl who made kitchen gadgets thought of the mechanics involved in this wooden ship. He wondered if Teddy noticed some logical flaw that he had made. Asa spent the most time wondering what Charlotte’s talent was, though.

  The boat cast long Northern shadows as they coasted into the dock. Four people in white suits tied the boat to the dock and let down the bridge so that the Fishies could walk across. Asa watched them. They looked much younger than McCoy or Conway; they appeared to be Asa’s age, at least in the faces. Their musculoskeletal systems, on the other hand, were much more developed than any fifteen year olds; muscles shot out from their body in every direction, divided by deep crevices in between.

  As all the Fishies and chaperones were lining up and filing out of the boat, Asa noticed that Teddy didn’t look sad anymore. He had a slight smile on his face and the tears were gone.

  The group made its way out onto the wooden dock. The dock, like everything else in this strange place, was gluttonously adorned with expensive details. The wood was thick, and a deep red, with a shiny sealant running along the entire length. Golden torches were placed on either side of the massive expanse of wood, and were erected the entire length of the dock, illuminating the Fishies with flickering orange light.

  The only sounds were feet on the thick wood and the soft kisses of the water against the dock. The moon was out, even though the sun had not completely set and was still wavering on the horizon in between two great mountains. The moon was a glowing yellow crescent above the mountain that they were walking towards.

  No one talked. They were consumed with the sight.

  The mountain in front of them, although not the biggest among the Five, was even more of a spectacle from up close. Asa looked up and saw that it rose high above what he thought was physically possible, and then more, seemingly straight up. This close to the structure, Asa couldn’t understand how it didn’t topple over; it seemed to run completely vertical after it hit the clouds—stretching up at the end as though to make itself look taller. It was a natural phenomenon; it was a reminder to Asa of the unbridled powers that man did not control.

  Lower down in the rock, covering such a small portion of the mountain that it could be easily looked over, was the area that humans had changed. Buildings with glass windows overlooking The Moat were sculpted out of the mountain itself; these were the same color and consistency of the rock in the mountains. They were made to be seamless—it was impossible to point to the exact location where nature ended and the buildings began. Asa saw that there were two great towers coming from the rock. He followed them to the bottom and saw that as his eyes went lower he saw that they gradually became rockier, and more sporadic until he was
just looking at untouched mountain again. It was as though these structures were natural growths that sprouted from the rock on their own.

  The dock reached 100 yards from the land out into the water. As the group moved over the dock and walked closer to the mountain, Asa noticed a pebbled road that ran in between white leafed pines, up several flights of marble stairs, and up to a great door at the bottom of the mountain. The road was surrounded with statues of naked men and women, knights in full uniform, and giant, painted flowers. There were benches along the half-mile stretch of road where a person could sit and rest during their walk from the Moat to the mountain.

  Asa’s breath fogged in front of him as he stepped off of the dock and onto the pebbled path. As he looked around, he noticed that the trees didn’t look like they belonged in Tundra—many of them had thick green leaves and frost-covered fruits hanging from them. To the left and right of the road were thick woods. Asa looked into them and saw the plush stacks of foliage on the ground, the vines growing up the trees, and the icicles hanging from the thick branches of the canopy.

  As Asa walked, he thought that the atmosphere was entirely too loud. The air was saturated with noises. He could hear the buzz of insects, the calls of tropical birds, and a constant hiss that came from deep within the maze of trees. Teddy walked beside Asa, and had taken the same interest in the surrounding forest.

  There was a rustling up above, and as Asa looked, a line of monkeys jumped from the canopy on the right side of the road, to the canopy on the left side of the road. Then they were gone, and Asa and Teddy were left staring at the gently swaying branches where they had been.

  “Those monkeys were white,” Teddy said.

  “And their fur was thicker than any I’d ever seen,” Asa added. “I’ve never seen such a thick track of woods before.”

  “That’s because these aren’t woods,” Teddy said. “It is jungle.”