by Leito, Chad
“There is a long list of things that have led us to this point.” The dying man looked down at his notes before going on. “First, the citizens of this country and others began to be afflicted by the Wolf Flu, one of the greatest tragedies to afflict human kind. Secondly, one month ago, news stations across the globe were all sent a letter, from an unknown source. Each of the letters were written in the same, scratchy handwriting, and they all accused Robert King and Alfatrex of the Wolf Flu epidemic, pointing to the M1CR mutated agents that have been found in the water. Thirdly, after efforts from the Ivy League, and a series of Federal investigations, a large amount of evidence suggested that the anonymous letters were true.”
The man brought out a napkin from his pocket, and had a horrible coughing fit. He crouched over the podium for a moment, wiped his mouth, and continued on, his voice a bit more hoarse than before. “These things lead us to what happened last night, in which an off duty police officer, Los Angeles’s Troy Webber, broke into Robert King’s home and killed him.” He took a small sip of water. “There are a lot of unknowns regarding the incident last night, but there are some things that we can be sure of.
“Number one: The government did not, in any way or fashion, sanction the murder of Robert King. Number two: Troy Webber has admitted to the murder, both on a live internet broadcast last night, and by signing a form admitting guilt this morning, in the presence and under the guidance of his team of lawyers. Number three: The government has no current intentions of giving any unlawful, favoring treatment to Mr. Webber, despite whatever his intentions for the murder may have been. Thank you.”
He turned briskly and began to walk off stage as he was pelted by an uproar of unanswered questions from the crowd of reporters. The video still had half a minute left to play, but Teddy shut it off.
“Robert King is dead?” Asa asked.
“Yeah,” said Teddy. “But you’ve got to watch this next one now.” He typed an address into the URL box that Asa had never heard of before, and then punched in a long series of seemingly nonsense numbers and letters. The webpage loaded, and a second video was displayed on the screen. Teddy hit play.
An image of a sweaty man came on the screen. His face was lit with orange lamplight and he was crying.
“Hello, hello. One, two, one, two. This is Troy Webber, L.A.P.D. streaming to you live.”
From the background came the muffled, gagged screams of a man that was not in the frame.
“I just want to tell my daughter that Daddy loves you… And…” He gasped for air, let out a succession of crying groans into his hands, and then regained himself. “I didn’t want to be the one who had to do this, but… there was no choice.
“My wife, my beautiful wife”—then his face turned into a grotesque snarl with his lips pulled back from his teeth and his nose folding up toward his brow—“was TAKEN by this DISEASE!”
There was a sharp scream, and Troy Webber pulled Robert King into the frame by his white hair. The Boss’s eyes were open as wide as they would go, and his mouth was stuffed with a pair of socks, held in with a belt. His nose was dripping blood onto the socks in his mouth and the silky pajama shirt he had on his torso.
He was just about to go to sleep, when this man broke in.
Like his captor, Robert King was crying. The Boss was shaking his head back and forth frantically, trying to say something, but the gag made his words unintelligible.
“As I’ve said,” the police officer growled, “this is a live broadcast, so there isn’t much time before I kill this murderer, but I want to hear him beg.” Troy pulled the bloody gag out of Robert King’s mouth. As the Boss started coughing, Troy pulled him closer by his hair and whispered—“Squeal for me, piggy. Let me hear you beg, Robby!”
King withdrew from the police officer’s breath, and looked at the camera; “I’m not Robert King,” he said.
Troy pulled the man close again and with tears still streaming down his cheeks screamed: “BEG FOR ME! BEG LIKE MY WIFE BEGGED THE DOCTORS!” Caught in the moment, Troy pulled the restrained man’s face closer and sunk his teeth into cheek; he bit hard, pulling and tugging at the grotesquely elastic skin.
Blood ran down King’s face and his screaming reached a new level of panic. “I’M NOT ROBERT KING!”
“OWN UP TO IT,” Troy yelled with bloody teeth.
“I DIDN’T KILL YOUR WIFE!”
Troy was done talking. The rage in his face was beyond reason at this point. He lunged at Robert King, tackling him out of the frame. There was more yelling, and the sound of a struggle. Then “Please, please.”
A series of seven gunshots followed. After the first three there was screaming, and the last four were followed by only Troy crying.
When the police officer reemerged into the screen, he was covered in an obscene amount of blood. He slicked his red, sticky hair back with one hand, and got out his cell phone with the other. He dialed and let it play on speaker.
“911, what is your emergency?”
“My name is Troy Webber, and I have just killed Robert King, CEO of Alfatrex at 6390 Roaming Seas. I’ll be in the dining room, unarmed, when the authorities enter. My hands will be up. I’ll come peacefully.”
He clicked off the phone, and looked down at the body for a moment. His tears were mixing with the blood, and the animalistic aggression had again been replaced with sadness. He looked into the camera and said: “I’m so sorry, baby,” presumably to his daughter, then the video went dark.
In the cave, the candles were still flickering, and Asa’s hair was beginning to dry. Teddy turned to him and said, “What did you think of that?”
Asa didn’t know where to begin. Is it over? Is the Academy going to cease to exist now? Are people going to come and save us from this place? And what does this mean for the Multipliers?
“What’s going to happen to us?” Asa asked.
“I think we’re going to get out of here, Asa. Now that the secret is out, there’s no reason for us to be here. The Academy is kept alive by Robert King’s desire to train students to kill people on the verge of discovering that Alfatrex is putting out the Wolf Flu. But now that everyone knows, I don’t see the point of us staying. Who’s going to keep us here?”
Asa didn’t know what he could say. Teddy went on with: “This means that you’re not a wanted man anymore. The Multipliers were helping the Academy because the Academy was lowering the human population with the Wolf Flu, which would lead to the global governments having a smaller chance of stopping them from Multiplying at will. So, they had to adhere to the contract that your dad made, which said that they couldn’t Multiply as long as you or Charlotte were here. Now, that won’t be an issue. You’re just like the rest of us.”
“But what about the Multipliers? What’s going to happen to them?”
“I think they’ll leave.”
Asa considered what he had learned. If Teddy doesn’t think I’m a target for the Multipliers, then he has no reason to kill me. Asa chastised himself for misinterpreting his friend’s actions as threatening.
“Of course,” Teddy went on, his eyes locking on Asa’s. “I could be wrong. There are four other owners of Alfatrex, besides Robert King. Maybe they’ll use this place to protect themselves. Or maybe they’ll start a new business.”
It was quiet for a moment. Asa felt his armband vibrate and looked down to see a message appear in the fabric:
All students are required to report to the Town Center immediately for an assembly.
Yours truly,
Robert King
4
Reporting for Robert King’s Request
“Yours truly, Robert King?” asked Asa, looking at the armband where he had just received the message.
Teddy stood up and unplugged the television from his armband. Without the glow from the screen, the safe room was dim, lit only with two small-flamed candles. Water dripped from the faucet on the far wall.
“Why is it signed Robert King?” Asa asked.
>
Teddy looked incredibly tired. “Either the news is lying to us, or the Academy is. No matter the case, we need to go.” Before beginning this new semester, the students had been warned that a ‘strict punishment’ would be issued to any students who didn’t react promptly to messages on their armbands. Now that they were no longer living in the dormitory, they would be responsible for getting themselves where they needed to go on time.
“Maybe they’re afraid to tell us he’s dead,” Asa suggested.
“Maybe. Do you think it’s a trap?” Teddy asked. “What if now that Robert King is dead, the Multipliers want to kill you and Charlotte, and take over the Academy. Maybe they’ll want to move it—to hell with what the crows might reveal.”
Asa followed Teddy over to the tunnel. “You don’t think that’s going to happen, do you?”
Teddy picked up the two flickering candles, one in each hand. “No. I don’t think so.” He blew a puff of air and they were in complete darkness. Asa could feel Teddy walk by him, and then heard soft waves as his friend entered the cold water passage.
Asa crawled slowly on his belly, hands out in front of him until his fingertips brushed the water surface. He took a deep breath and then lowered himself until he was completely submerged. He pulled his body forward along the thin passage until he came to the place where the tunnel made a fork and split off into two directions.
Asa stayed where he was for a moment, once more contemplating what Teddy could possibly have put at the end of the passage. Asa reached his hand as far down the extra tunnel as he could, feeling nothing as it went forward.
And do I ask Teddy about this extension he’s built? Sure I do. There’s no reason not to. It probably doesn’t actually go anywhere: what would be down the tunnel? Another room? For what? Is Teddy kidnapping Fishies and keeping them chained up in a hidden passage above my dwelling?
Asa actually smiled at his own thoughts. It seemed ludicrous.
Am I being paranoid? This was a question that had been bothering Asa a lot lately. He feared that perhaps the traumatic things that he had gone through and witnessed in the past five months were having an ill effect on him. He could remember watching a documentary when he lived in his home (That feels like ages ago) about the effects that years at war had on the brains of Vietnam soldiers. Being in a war zone for an extended period of time made it so that your brain was constantly soaked in cortisol and adrenaline. Asa couldn’t remember the exact physiology of what happened to these soldiers, but he knew that they started acting odd: they got jumpy. A lot of the veterans spent the rest of their lives sleeping with a gun under their pillow, and hitting the floor every time the neighbor’s car backfired.
Get a grip, he thought to himself. There’s probably some architectural reason for this extra tunnel that I don’t understand. It’s probably nothing. And Teddy will think I’m paranoid if I ask him about it.
Not wanting to take too long, Asa continued on the normal path and emerged over the bathtub.
It was much warmer in the normal dwelling than it had been in the secret compartment, especially near the tunnel’s opening, over the fire. Asa came out, landing with wet feet on the bathtub’s lid.
“Here,” Teddy said, and threw him a towel.
The towel hurtled through the air at a surprising speed, and Asa caught it with one hand, remembering how Edna had caught that knife speeding at her in the woods. He thought of how mangy she was and wondered at the reason for her unkemptness.
“You know what this is?” Teddy asked.
Asa gave his hair a few quick scrubs with the towel before stepping off the lid and into the living room. Teddy was holding a clean white envelope with the single word “Asa” written on it in blue ink. Asa had seen the handwriting before; it had to be Charlotte’s.
“No,” Asa said. “I wasn’t expecting anything from her.”
Teddy held it out to Asa. “Do you want to read it?”
Asa took it and set it back down on the coffee table. “Not right now.”
Asa and Teddy disagreed with the way that Asa was treating Charlotte. For one fantastic week after the last end of semester ceremony, Asa and Charlotte had been a couple. They had done everything together. After some bad dreams, Asa wrote Charlotte and told her that they couldn’t be together anymore. It wasn’t worth it to him; he cared too much about her to spend much more time with her and risk Multipliers coming after them.
After Asa told Teddy that he had broken up with her, his friend had guessed exactly what had happened. He looked at Asa with his yellowing eyeballs and said: “You got scared? How could you do that! You told her you were over that fear thing.” They had been in the rec room at that time, and Teddy shoved the ping-pong paddle he was holding into the container before walking away and muttering something with the word “coward” included in it.
A fire exploded in Asa’s mind. You dirty bigot: you cried all last year. Where do you get the idea to call me scared!? But Asa said: “You’re wrong.”
“Oh, I’m wrong?” Teddy’s chest bowed out and he got uncomfortably closed to Asa, so that their noses were almost touching.
“Yeah. You’re wrong. I don’t like her. It’s just not a good idea. I’m,” pause, “not,” pause, “scared.”
Teddy smiled. “Okay, boss.”
In retrospect, Asa didn’t know why he had lied to Teddy; he had broken up with Charlotte because he had been scared. But why lie? Asa thought about it and remembered that he hadn’t yet healed completely from the diffuse bruises and abrasions he had obtained in the caves, nor had he yet caught up on sleep. Maybe I was just grumpy that day. But who does he think he is, calling me scared?
Asa remembered that scene in the rec room, and was surprised to recollect that he had been so forceful with Teddy. Now, as he watched his friend towel off his dead-looking pale-yellow face, Asa wondered if he would still feel comfortable telling Teddy that he was wrong.
I’m being paranoid again, he thought.
The two of them discarded their towels between the bathtub and fire, so that they would dry, and were about to leave Asa’s dwelling when Teddy used his body to make a physical barrier between Asa and the door.
“You’re lying to me, Asa.” He sneered down at Asa, the pupils in the center of his yellow-green eyes looked too big.
“Huh?” Asa’s heart was racing again.
“You act like you don’t love her, but I can tell you do.”
“Get off it,” Asa said, and shoved Teddy out of the way. To his relief, Teddy took a few steps away from the door (he didn’t have to, he’s much too strong for me to move him like that). Asa opened the door and stepped out. Teddy quickly followed.
The air was filled with the sounds of hundreds of great wings flapping in the air. All around the mountainside, second semester students were opening up their wings and taking off into the air.
Asa took a quick look back at the forest he had been in earlier that day. The tall timbers swayed with the wind, and somewhere in the distance the Multipliers were camping. He wondered what Joney and Michael and Edna were doing. And then he remembered something…
He and Jen were high up in the trees, while Joney tried to carefully read the lettering on the goggles. “Jul Conway.” And then Edna had begun to walk around, jittery and fearful.
“Oh my! Joney! If this trapped up Jul Conway, I think that we are in very, very big trouble!” She began to pace, the goggles still in her hands. “Do you think it was him? What do we do?”
This memory didn’t make sense to Asa with Robert King’s death. Teddy had suggested that the video would help him make sense of what happened, but it only seemed to muddy the issue.
Why are they afraid of Conway? How does this fit in with the rest of it?
But now wasn’t the time to talk about it. Teddy had already expanded his wings out beside him and was running down the mountainside to gain momentum when Asa snapped out of his daydream.
Moments later, Asa was in the air, flapping his bat-l
ike wings and gaining altitude. The air was crisp and clear, with blue skies directly overhead. The wind pulled Asa towards Town, and the shadow beneath him slipped off the mountain and began to zoom over the canopy of the Arctic jungle.
When he was high over the water, he looked over and saw the Winggame courts bobbing in the gentle chop. He started his descent at this point, thinking, if it weren’t for the violence, I would really like it here. This place is beautiful. Flying is wonderful, and if the Multipliers didn’t tamper with my team, I would actually like Winggame. Asa exhaled, and was surprised at how much he desired to play the game fairly.
Asa glided down in between buildings and landed with a run on the cobblestone path. The road glistened with a thin layer of water, and radiated warmth up to Asa. As he had learned last semester, the streets were heated so that snow wouldn’t cake up and make walking difficult.
A line of Fishies was walking down the cobblestone, looking around, seeming to be trying to take everything in. All across the road, upper classmen were landing from the sky, sprinting faster upon impact than any natural human possibly could. On the steps leading up to a tall, stone, London-style clock tower stood a troop of raccoons, all of which had half-sized brooms in their hands as they swept the thin layer of snow away. Then there were the Multipliers, which could be identified by their black gums and the fact that they didn’t wear the utility suits that the graduates and students wore; Asa counted six in the vicinity, four of which he had never seen before. Is that normal? His eyes darted around quickly. Are there more than usual? Or is it possible that I just have never noticed them before?
The Fishies were mesmerized, their faces wide-eyed, and Asa was struck by a sense that he had become desensitized to all the wonders of the Academy. He watched the way these normal humans walked, and noticed that compared to the mutated beings around them their strides looked labored. On some of them, their suits clung unflatteringly to rolls of fat and unhealthy bony hip protrusions.