The Academy

by Zachary Rawlins

  From where he crouched, behind a chunk of discarded concrete from some ancient foundation, Alex could see Renton and Edward, further out towards the edge of the clearing, exchanging fire with targets that remain stubbornly invisible to Alex. Not for the first time, he wondered how many bullets he had, and how many he had fired already, and exactly what he was supposed to do when they were all gone. Run and hide, probably.

  Alex already heartily wished that he had done just that. Eerie was crouched somewhere behind the remains of the concrete structure, with Anastasia keeping an eye on her. Mitsuru and Margot had disappeared as soon as the shooting started, and he hadn’t seen either since then, though during the occasional breaks in the gunfire, he could sometimes hear distant screams and howls. He was suspicious that Mitsuru or the vampire-girl might have something to do with that. Not for the first time, Alex wondered how long the fight had been going, and how long it would continue.

  It never occurred to him that he could be killed here, not in a real sense, until a group of Weir came pouring out of the tree cover like a feral tide, all teeth and claws and knotted muscle under matted fur, with a sound that was something between a scream and a howl. Alex didn’t even bother to aim, he just pointed the gun in the direction of the Weir and held down the trigger until it bucked in his hand.

  Alex noticed an odd thing, then, his mind operating with a strange clarity despite the sheer horror of his surroundings. As the mass of Weir advanced, moving as far as the withering fire from Renton and Edward would allow, they streamed past Renton’s position as if he wasn’t there.

  Alex watched as Renton calmly lifted the rifle to his shoulder, and then fired a quick burst, three rounds hitting one of the Weir in the chest, the hollow point shells mushrooming when they impacted the skin, creating great bleeding craters. The remaining Weir turned and spun in place, trying to locate the sound, to pinpoint their attacker’s position, apparently oblivious to the fact that he stood among them. After a few moments of half-hearted searching, the Weir seemed to forget and lose interest, returning to their forward push, only to have another of their number picked off by Renton.

  And so it went for what seemed to Alex to be a very long time – the Weir pushed forward into the clearing, where they were exposed to fire from all angles, and were eventually driven back. Meanwhile, Renton continued to quietly pick off the beasts, secure in what Alex could only assume was some kind of telepathic protocol. Occasionally, Alex manage to get a few clean shots off, and he thought that one or two might actually have hit, which somehow made him sick and proud at the same time.

  Then, without warning, the Weir pressed forward, and this time, the fire against them wavered. Edward was the closest, and therefore the first to go under. He kept firing even as the Weir pounced on him, with no perceptible effect. He tossed aside the assault rifle at the last moment, and Alex clearly felt the Etheric ripple that meant he had attempted to activate some sort of protocol, but whatever he had attempted, it was too late. Edward’s screaming was mercifully brief, his mauled body dragged back to disappear in brush and darkness.

  Alex watching in numb horror, as a surging wave of beasts crossed the empty ground between them, his empty submachine gun hanging useless from one hand, paralyzed by a feeling that had not quite had time to coalesce into fear. The part of his mind that was still capable of thinking was consumed with the hope that he would not wet himself before he was devoured. For some reason, this seemed very important.

  He assumed that he was dead when Renton grabbed him, pulling him forcibly back toward the ruined building by the collar of his shirt. It took a little while before his brain processed what he was seeing, before he stopped struggling against Renton and started running himself, away from the howling, away from the teeth and hot breath he imagined was on his heels.

  Alex was thrown to the ground by the force of an explosion, and then there was a lost interval, dead time.

  He opened his eyes, when he remembered how to do that, and his vision slowly returned to him, in the form of crudely defined silhouettes, then a semblance of the world he remembered before the concussive wave. If there were multiple explosions, as he had been led to believe there would be, then Alex could not tell – there was simply a terrific force that knocked him and everything around him to the ground, the trees nearby bending and cracking, and one huge noise, a sound for which he could find no comparison. It must have echoed, in the valley between those hills, but Alex couldn’t hear anything at that point. When he recovered enough to find his way to his feet, he did so, wondering if the nanites inside him would be able to repair his hearing, or whether he would stay deaf forever. The silent, smoky world that confronted him was so different from what he remembered that he was tempted to dismiss it as some sort of violently surreal dream. Then he saw Mitsuru.

  Though he would have been too embarrassed to admit it, Alex had in fact had a few dreams about Mitsuru. But, they had never involved her bleeding so much, or fighting a great silver wolf-monster.

  Something in Alex’s brain tripped, and finally started working again, and the scene came into focus. Mitsuru moved oddly, jumping out of the way as the Weir charged, firing the pistol she held at its back as it passed, and Alex wondered about the extent of her injuries. The Weir spun to face her again, apparently unhurt, while Mitsuru regarded it calmly, and bled. Alex felt his feet start moving before his brain became aware of the plan, which was probably for the best – had he been thinking clearly, he probably never would have done what needed to be done.

  She had not dodged the Weir’s strike, Alex realized, not wholly, and the resulting wound on her chest was deep and ugly. He wondered how long she had been fighting the thing, and if it was going as badly as it looked. He could see other, more minor wounds on her left arm and the back of her head, and he realized that her left leg was stiff and the foot was dragging on the ground. She looked as collected as ever, her blazing red eyes fixed on the monster, a 9mm in one hand, a long knife in the other, but Alex saw something he didn’t like in her stance, and ran even harder toward them, tossing aside the useless submachine gun as he did so.

  Anastasia’s arm smacked into his chest, bringing him to a stumbling halt ten meters away from Mitsuru and the Weir. She was covered in a layer of fine dust, and her dress was in shreds, but she looked otherwise unhurt. She looked over at Alex, and he was surprised to see pity in the look. She put one hand to the side of his head, and when she pulled it back, it was bloody. Alex reached up himself, and realized that he was bleeding from both ears.

  Anastasia tried to say something to him, but all Alex could hear was a painfully insistent ringing sound. She looked frustrated, and then tried yelling, with no more effect. Alex shrugged helplessly, distracted by the blood leaking from the side of his head. Anastasia stomped her foot, then grabbed Alex by the back of his head, and yelled directly in his ear. Alex couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard the phrase ‘Black Protocol’. For a moment, this made no sense to him, then he looked over at the fight, and realized what Anastasia had in mind.

  Mitsuru was slowing down, there was no doubt about it now. The Weir leapt at her, crossing the distance between them in an instant, arms spread wide, savage talons stained red. Mitsuru rolled clumsily to the side, barely avoiding being torn to pieces by the monster’s claws. She didn’t even bother to try and counterattack this time, either because she lacked the energy or the opportunity, Alex couldn’t tell. He was already busy, tearing frantically at the Black Door in the recesses of his mind.

  For a panicked moment, he scrabbled against the dark, frosty wood of the door helplessly, the surface cold and unyielding. Then he remembered the protocol, and the instructions Rebecca had left for invoking it. Alex exhaled, not even aware that he had dropped to his knees, or that Anastasia was crouched beside him, holding him up. With a tremendous effort, Alex activated the Absolute Protocol.

  At first there were no obvious changes. Then Alex went stiff, his limbs and back rigid, his eyes rolled ba
ck in his head, and his body temperature began to drop dramatically. As Anastasia watched, his lips and eyelids started to turn blue, and she had to hold a hand up to confirm that he was still breathing. Then she felt the Ether seethe and roil, and she knew that a Black Protocol had been activated.

  The Weir didn’t appear any the worse for wear, not at first, but when he charged Mitsuru again, he was not nearly as fast, and even in her debilitated state, she managed to dodge the attack by dropping beneath it, almost crumpling. The Weir landed in a heap, striking the ground with surprising force and then whining. Mitsuru wobbled her way back to her feet, and looked at the huddled Weir curiously.

  “You…”

  The Weir snarled through a jumbled mass of teeth and tongue, holding its frost covered paws out accusatorially.

  “What is this? What is it that you’ve done?”

  Mitsuru said nothing, standing on the balls of her feet, waiting and ready.

  The Weir lumbered forward, moving much slower than it had earlier. As it moved, the sheen of frost that extended across the majority of its arms and torso cracked and bits of ice fell to the ground around it. One paw clutched at its chest while it attempted a sort of shambling run in Mitsuru’s direction, howling in outrage and pain.

  Mitsuru stepped to the side almost casually, her wounded leg dragging behind her. She tucked and rolled, then came up firing, emptying her pistol into the side of the Weir as it passed. In some places, the bullets impacted normally, but in other places, the flesh seemed to shatter on impact, leaving behind great cavities that sparkled with pinkish-red ice crystals.

  The Weir dropped to its knees, clutching at its wounded side and moaning, its other arm still clutching at its chest.

  “Trickery,” it hissed at the advancing Mitsuru, even the slobber at the edges of its jowls frozen and sparkling, “this fight was mine, whore.”

  “Was,” Mitsuru said lightly, limping toward the Weir, “maybe. Sure isn’t now.”

  The Weir fell forward, catching itself with one paw, and coughing slushy, partially frozen blood onto the ground in front of it. It blinked and tried to look up at Mitsuru as she stood over it, its eyes blinded by a rime of frost that stretched across the tissue, one of the eyelids sticking to the surface of the retina. It hissed something, perhaps it tried to speak, but all it managed to do was expel more of the thick reddish slush from inside its mouth. Mitsuru stood above the Weir, its silver pelt now thoroughly covered with a thick coating of frost.

  Anastasia watched as Mitsuru brought down the knife, Alex already fast asleep on the lap of her ruined dress.

  Twenty Nine

  Alex woke with a start, not sure where he was, not sure how long he’d been asleep, but seized with a formless anxiety, a sense that he’d missed something important. He reached to wipe the sleep from his eyes, and heard the rattle of the IV stand and felt the tug of the tape and tubes that were strapped to his arm.

  Even in the dim confines of what he now recognized as a hospital room, Alex could barely keep his eyes open, the light spilling underneath the door seemed impossibly bright. Alex tried to sit up, and managed it after a certain amount of coaxing and waiting out his cramped muscles. His back was impossibly stiff and sore and his whole body ached, and he was alarmingly thinner than he remembered being.

  How long had it been, then?

  His hand brushed against his face in the darkness, and he was surprised to find that he had the better part of a beard. For a moment, Alex panicked completely, not sure what was happening, not sure whether he was awake or not. He leaned forward in the bed, and the movement inadvertently tore the tape stretched across his forearm, ripping the hair from his arm and bringing tears to his eyes. He winced and rubbed it, now thoroughly convinced that he was, in fact, awake.

  And as his eyes adjusted, he realized he was not alone. He could hear gentle, rhythmic breathing from somewhere near the bed, from a jumble of shapes and objects it took him a few minutes to identify.

  Eerie had pushed two chairs together next to his bed and was sleeping there, her legs curled in a ball in her heavy black tights, her sneakers tucked neatly underneath the chair, next to a basket that contained her knitting supplies. She’d looked as if she’d been there for a while.

  Alex tried to speak, and managed only a croak, his throat cracked and terribly painful. He looked around him for one of those call buttons he’d seen on TV shows, but he couldn’t find anything of the kind. He’d half-resolved himself to try standing up and make his way out to the hallway, maybe finding a nurse or something, when there was a soft knock on the door.

  “Alex?” He heard Rebecca’s voice from the other side of the door. “Close your eyes, okay? I’m going to come in…”

  Alex obediently screwed his eyes shut. The room lit up, and it was brilliant even behind his eyelids. It took some time before he managed to open first one eye and then the other, Rebecca standing over the bed and beaming down at him, surrounded by blazing white light like the portrait of a saint, looking a bit teary eyed.

  “Oh, you stupid fucking idiot,” she said sweetly, putting one hand on his forehead, “I knew you’d wake up, hon. I knew you would.”

  Alex attempted to smile back at her, tried to form words. She put a finger to his lips.

  “Don’t try and talk yet,” she said, heading toward the sink, “I’ll get you some water. I’m reading your thoughts, so don’t worry about trying to talk to me, just think clearly and slowly.”

  She brought Alex back a glass of water, which he managed to take from her with a certain amount of difficulty, holding the plastic cup in both hands. He raised it clumsily to his lips, and managed a single noisy sip, and then spent the better part of a minute coughing it back up while Rebecca patted him on the back. After that, he managed a bit more of the water, keeping it down this time.

  He tried to compose his thoughts, looking at Eerie significantly.

  “Oh dear,” Rebecca laughed, “generally, you don’t have to use your eyebrows so much to communicate telepathically.”

  She sat down on the chair next to the sleeping girl, running her hand through her faded blue hair, and smiling at her with an almost maternal affection.

  “She’s been here almost every night, Alex. Emily has been here a lot too, but mostly during the evenings and mornings.” Rebecca patted Eerie on the head affectionately. “I think they have some kind of system worked out so they are never here at the same time, which is funny, because they aren’t speaking to each other, last I heard. Emily is going to be pretty upset when she finds out that you woke up when she wasn’t around.”

  Alex finished the water, and then looked pleadingly at Rebecca and shook the empty cup in her direction.

  “You really suck at telepathy, you know that, right?”

  Rebecca took the cup patiently, then smacked him on the forehead, before she went to go refill it.

  “Good thing you’re better at surviving, huh?”

  Alex drank most of the water in the cup, and then set it down on the table beside the bed. He was already starting to feel better, and had to suppress his urge to start removing the IV gear from his arms.

  “What…” Alex croaked, and then stopped and cleared his throat, before trying again. “What day is it?”

  Rebecca suddenly looked worried, and sat back down next to Eerie, who continued to sleep, totally unaffected.

  “Uh, well, Wednesday.” Rebecca said, looking at the floor.

  “Oh,” Alex said, puzzled, trying to remember what day it had been when they fought with the Weir.

  “The Wednesday before Christmas, that is.”

  Alex glared at Rebecca, but when she met his stare, she seemed sad. It was very clear that she was not joking with him, and Alex found it very difficult to breathe, all of a sudden. It had to be a joke, didn’t it? But then again, if it wasn’t, if Rebecca was serious, then…

  Then he had been asleep for weeks. More than a month.

  Alex lurched forward in the bed, tearing the
tape from one arm, the IV tube stretching and pulling against his skin. His eyes were bloodshot and wide with panic, his skin flushed and covered in cold sweat.

  “No way,” he said, gritting his teeth, forcing himself up with his arms, “No, this can’t…”

  Rebecca sighed softly, and then patted him gently on his knee. Alex’s expression froze, for a moment, in a rectus of fear and mania, and then he quietly folded back into the pillows behind him, his face gone placid and serene, his eyes wet but unworried. He felt a tremendous sense of calm, of assurance, like being wrapped in blankets on a cold day, like a memory he didn’t have of his mother’s hand resting on his forehead when he was very young.

  “Sorry about that,” Rebecca apologized, “but if you freak out right now, you’re going to do yourself some harm. Plus, you’re going to bring down the whole of Central on our heads, and you definitely don’t want that.”

  Alex put his head in his hands, feeling oddly empty, drained of the panic that he could only vaguely remember.

  “Oh shit,” he said, his voice strained. “Edward. What happened to…?”

  Rebecca shook her head slowly.

  “He didn’t make it. The rest of them are fine, more or less. Mitsuru stayed down the hall for a week or so.”

  “How could this happen?” He mumbled, from behind his hands.

  Rebecca shook her head, and then reached reflexively for her cigarettes. She had the pack halfway out of her pocket before she remembered where she was, looked around her sadly, and then slid the pack back into her jeans with a sigh.

  “You used a Black Protocol, Alex. You helped Mitsuru to kill that Weir, from what I hear, you basically froze the bastard somehow. I already told you this, but any time you use a Black Protocol, there is a price to pay. I hope that it seems worth it.”

  Alex looked up at her sad expression incredulously.