by Leito, Chad
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.
Asa felt sick. If Troy Webber had not killed Robert King in that video, who had he killed? And if he had killed Robert King, who was this, sitting in his office?
Whoever this person was, he looked just like Robert King.
Yeah, but so had that other guy!
The man was reading paper documents by the light of a metallic desktop lamp. He looked tired, older than Asa had remembered.
There was an abrupt, loud buzzing noise, followed by a voice coming out of a speaker: “Boss, we’ve got Volkner outside your door. Do you want us to bring him in?”
“Hold on, I’ll buzz you in after a couple seconds. I appreciate you, David!” Eerily, Robert King’s words sounded cheery, almost jubilant, but his face looked miserable. It was hard to believe that the voice and the facial expression were from the same being.
“Thanks, Boss. I appreciate you.”
Robert King opened up his desk drawer, and took out a blue elastic band, a vile of blood-red liquid, and one of many plastic-wrapped, sterile syringes. He unwrapped the syringe, poked the needle through the porous cap of the vile, and carefully drew out half a syringe.
Asa had never seen any injectable recreational drugs before, such as heroin or ketamine. Is that what I’m seeing? Are those drugs that deep of a red? And if that is a recreational drug, why is The Boss getting high before a meeting? Asa had known people with diabetes before he entered the Academy, and didn’t think that their insulin looked like that.
Robert King removed his right, leather shoe, and the patterned dress sock on his right foot. He tied the blue elastic band tightly over his calf, to temporarily cut off the circulation. He unwrapped an alcohol-disinfecting pad and dabbed it on the area. The green-blue veins on the top of his foot grew, and he flicked them a few times to dilate the vessels even further. Then, he took the syringe, injected the needle into one of his veins, and pressed the plunger down until all the liquid was inside his body.
He’s injecting in his foot instead of his arm so that people don’t notice his track marks? What is he injecting, though? Asa’s mind was going wild with guesses. He wondered if the man he saw wasn’t the real Robert King. Maybe he’s injecting a serum that makes him look like Robert King?
The person that looked like Robert King untied the rubber tourniquet, and withdrew the needle from his body. A thin trickle of blood began to run down his foot, towards his ankle. He reused the open alcohol pad, cleaning the blood, and then he applied a skin-colored band aid. He leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. He remained like that for minutes, not moving. A stingray floated beneath Asa. The David in the metal cage continued to color.
For no perceivable reason, Robert King sat up after a few moments. He opened one of the drawers on the side of his desk, and discarded the dirty syringe, the trash from the band aid, the syringe wrapping, and the alcohol-swab in there. He put the tourniquet and the vile of blood-red liquid back in the top drawer, where it came from.
Asa noticed that he was moving very fast.
Robert King grabbed his patterned dress sock, tugged it on, and then slipped his foot into his shoe. He sat up straight, and shook his face out, as though to shake the tired off.
It was then that Asa noticed the similarities between Robert King, after he injected himself with that red stuff, and how Teddy had been acting recently. Robert King’s pupils were enormous, nearly the size of nickels. He twitched his head quickly to the right, just as Teddy had been doing recently, Robert King looked much less tired than before he injected himself with the drug. He reached down, pressed a button underneath his desk. After an initial buzzing noise, The Boss said, “bring him in.”
There was a series of metallic clicking noises and then the heavy front door opened slightly. Volkner was pushed inside, where he collapsed and rolled onto the floor, and then the door was shut again.
“Nice to see you, Rasmus,” said Robert King, addressing Volkner by his first name and looking him over with his dilated pupils. Robert King’s posture was different than Asa had ever seen it: typically, the man took a relaxed pose, slouching his back a little. A trademark of The Boss was that he talked out of the side of his mouth. All of this was gone. He held an erect, military-style pose, and he talked using his whole mouth. Robert King used to mumble some when he talked, and now he enunciated each word clearly, using his lips and tongue excessively to shape each word. “I can see that Jamie’s hand-me-down shorts are fitting you nicely! Jamie, what do you think?”
Upon the arrival of Volkner inside the room, the David was no longer coloring quietly at his table, but was now hanging halfway up his golden bars by his hands and feet. He pressed a hairy knuckle up to the metal apparatus around his neck, and as he did so the red light turned green. “My pants fit you,” came a male, computer-voice from the monkey’s neck, and then the David screamed out a high-pitched series of laughs. Asa realized that the metal band the monkey wore allowed him to somehow speak in an electronic voice.
“Do you like wearing Jamie’s clothes, Rasmus?”
Volkner did not respond. He was facedown on the marble floor, breathing.
Jamie turned a knob on his voice-producing machine, and when he spoke next, the voice was of a female with a British accent: “Volkner, he’s talking to you.”
Volkner remained face down, and said, “Yes, sir. I am grateful for them, sir.”
“Good,” Robert King said. “Now get up and come over here. Take a seat. We need to chat.”
Volkner stood, slowly, on trembling knees. He looked so much different than he had two months ago, when Asa last saw him.
He was naked except for jean-shorts that didn’t at all fit him: they appeared to have been made for a child, as they were Jamie’s hand-me-downs. They were ripped along the sides and the back, and an extra elastic band had been added to them to hold the torn article of clothing to his body. The only covered a fourth of his thighs.
Jamie jeered at Volkner as he walked past the golden cage. “My jeans! My jeans! HAHAHAHA!” the monkey said, still in its female English accent voice.
Volkner’s left eye was swollen completely shut, and his right eye danced nervously around the room. His pale face and scalp were covered in deep, half-healed gashes and scars. Blond hair so bright it was almost white had grown half an inch out the back and sides of his scalp: Typically, he kept his head shaved, but it appeared as though in the midst of whatever had been happening to him, they hadn’t allowed him a razor to do so.
Asa could see by the positioning of Volkner’s cracked lips that he either no longer had teeth at all, or that he was simply missing the majority of them.
His body was spotted with yellow, purple, and green-brown bruises, the worst of which covered a 6-inch by 2 feet area extending over his left hip.
Volkner was missing two toes on his right foot, and he was dripping blood from somewhere.
The worst part of his appearance was his emaciation. The last time that Asa had seen Volkner, he had been lean, but filled in with muscle. Now, he looked to weigh half of what he used to. On all portions of his body, his joints were wider than the sinewy regions between them. His hips, his knees, his ankles, his shoulders, and his elbows were all twice as wide as the disturbingly thin regions between them. You could count his ribs from twenty feet away: they cast hard shadows on his pale flesh.
He limped across the room and then slouched down in one of the chairs facing The Boss’s desk. All of the confidence that he had had before was gone. He was a broken man.
The water trickling down into the aquarium was the only noise in the room for a few minutes. Robert King stared down at Volkner, not saying a word. Volkner couldn’t
look up at the stare, and was shifting uncomfortably. Suddenly, he broke into sobs, his bony chest hitching with rapid breaths.
Robert King took a seat behind his desk, and pressed a button located on his chair that lowered the platform he was atop until he was eye to eye with Volkner. “We need to talk, big V.”
Volkner nodded, but continued to sob.
“I’m very angry with you,” Robert King said, matter-of-factly.
“I’m very angry at you,” Volkner spat back at him.
Jamie screamed in rage from behind his golden bars and Robert King’s face remained unchanged.
“I was your most faithful,” Volkner said, continuing to sob. “I was loyal to you, Robert!”
The Boss slammed his fist upon the desk and Volkner flinched. “Nonsense! You were my least loyal, continually trying to throw me under the bus! You wanted this organization to crumble so that the Hive would have less opposition.”
“You’re crazy,” Volkner whispered, trembling.
Jamie threw one of his coloring books through the bars, aiming at Volkner, but it clattered harmlessly to the floor before reaching its target.
“That’ll be enough, Jamie,” Robert King said, not taking his eyes off of Volkner.
“Sorry, sir,” Jamie said, utilizing his electronic male voice.
Robert King’s too-dilated eyes were moving quickly over Volkner’s body in a motion that reminded Asa of Teddy’s eyes. He then began to talk very fast, just like Teddy had been doing lately. His voice rose, and his anger waxed and waned as he spoke.
“Let us review an aspect of the contract that Edmund Palmer made regarding the Academy: If Charlotte Stokes or Asa Palmer are unfairly disqualified of killed, the crows will write letters to news-outlets around the world, detailing crimes that we have committed. Now, let us review how you have handled Charlotte Stokes and Asa Palmer’s coming to the Academy. You tried to poison both of them, you sent Professor Kayce’s mountain lion after them, and you gave them each Blood Canaries that were supposed to kill them. Does that sound fair to you? Huh?”
Robert King stood, his face was becoming red and he was now talking even faster. “Because the crows sent out letters to the news outlets, letting them know that I was behind the Wolf Flu! And then, oh, THEN, Troy Webber sneaks on my property, makes a video saying that he’s killing me because of my connection with the Wolf Flu, and shoots the head off of one of my accountants who I had altered to look like me!”
Robert King breathed for a moment, then slammed fists down onto the wood of his desk: “THAT COULD HAVE BEEN ME!”
Volkner was sobbing harder than ever now.
“What were you doing, if you weren’t trying to bring the Academy to the ground! How are we supposed to exist without the funding from the Wolf Flu vaccine?”
Volkner shook his head, still staring at the floor.
“What were you doing if you didn’t want us to be taken down?”
Volkner leapt up and threw his chair against the wall next to the golden cage, where it was smashed to pieces. After crumbling, Asa could see that odd, metal devices had been installed in the now broken chair. Though Volkner was emaciated, he was still incredibly strong—much stronger than a human could ever be. Black purulent saliva was running down his chin and he growled: “I was trying to kill the boy so that you could create more like me! I wanted there to be more Multipliers in your organization so that you would be more protected!”
Robert King took a few steps back from his desk to distance himself from the enraged Multiplier, but he still continued with his verbal attack: “I hear things, Rasmus! I have ways of getting information that you wouldn’t believe! I heard you talking to Professor Kayce about the Hive! I know that it exists!”
“It doesn’t exist!”
“Then why is Professor Kayce dead?”
Asa felt chills go up his spine. He, Teddy and Charlotte had been involved in Professor Kayce’s death last semester.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Volkner asked.
“HE DISAPEARED AFTER I CONFRONTED YOU ABOUT THE HIVE! HE KNEW TOO MUCH! YOU HAD HIM KILLED!”
Volkner threw his hands up in frustration, and walked in a small circle. “What do you think that place is, anyways? The Hive? There’s no such thing!”
“You told Kayce about it,” Robert King said. “Didn’t you? Don’t lie to me.”
“No,” Volkner said.
“Swear to me that you didn’t tell him about it.”
Volkner looked at Robert King for a moment, measuring him. “I swear.”
The Boss stood solemnly and then said. “Let’s sit back down.” They did so, both men still looking angry at the confrontation that had just occurred. Anger seemed to bring Volkner’s confidence back.
“I will admit that some of the choices I made last semester were…ill advised,” said Volkner. “But I promise you, I had no motives of bringing this place down. In trying to kill Palmer, I was only trying to help it.”
Robert King rocked back and forth. Volkner averted his eyes from The Boss’s massive pupils. “Then why, when I put you in charge of getting rid of the boy and Charlotte, did you not do something like we are doing this semester?”
Volkner looked blank. “I don’t know what you’re doing this semester.”
Robert King sat up straighter, excited. “It was mine and Gene’s idea.” He rubbed his large hands together. “Remember, the crows will see any unfairness as a violation of the contract. I think next time, they’ll tell the world’s armies about the location of The Academy. Then we’d be done for sure. They’d nuke us, I think. I don’t think they’d take kindly to us kidnapping teenagers and turning them into super humans—it’d freak people out.
“But, we still want to get rid of Palmer and Charlotte. If we’re able to do so, we can have an army of Multipliers to guard the premises! The advantages to having creatures like you guarding us over ordinary Academy graduates would be enormous. For one, your kind is much stronger. You don’t sleep, you’re much more diligent, too. We need more of you. But in order to do so, Palmer and Charlotte must die. But, it must happen fairly. They must have the same chance of graduating as the rest of the Academy.
“The solution is so simple. We’re making this semester’s task much more lethal than ever before. Increase the number of students that die, and you increase your chances of killing Palmer and Stokes. And, if it doesn’t work, there’s always next semester: We’ll just have to devise a task harder and more lethal then. And, if they survive to their final semester, we might just put all the students in a situation where they’d all die. Why not? It’d be fair, wouldn’t it? All would have an equal chance!”
Volkner considered. Before he could answer, Robert King spoke up.
“Do you believe in God, Rasmus?”
“I…sir…I don’t see the point in the question.”
Robert King tilted his head, and put his fingertips together. “What I’m wondering, more specifically, is if you believe in destiny?”
“I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”
“I want to know if you believe that the future is fixed, pre-ordained. Do you think that God, or something, put me here, in charge of the Academy? Do you think that if he did, he’d be mad if I made it implode? I’ve been thinking about doing away with this place, Volkner. Another question: Do you think that Jesus always knew he was the Son of God, if you believe in Jesus, of course.”
“Sir, I…”
“While, Rasmus, I think that you’re scum, I think that you’re smart scum.” Robert King looked at his watch. “Our meeting is about to come to an end. I don’t think that you’ll like what happens next—our meeting was a test, and you failed. But, being smart scum, I thought that I’d ask you a question first: If I was the true Son of God, how would I know it?”
Volkner looked worried. He smiled nervously, showing three teeth on his bottom black gums and one tooth on the top. These were the only teeth in his mouth.
“Or, how ab
out I frame it this way—I think that I am special, Volkner. I offer intellectual an challenge: Can you prove that I am not special?” Robert King’s head twitched to the right.
“I-I-I,”
“Answer!”
“I think that you are special, sir! You’re the richest person in history! You don’t get that much money by being ordinary.”
“True,” Robert King said. He snorted. “Now, can you think of any reason why I wouldn’t be the Son of God?”
Slow tears trickled down Volkner’s face. “Don’t put me back in the box! Please! I don’t want to go back there!”
“You’re going back there, Rasmus. You failed your test, remember? I’ve said this already. Can you not recall that?”
“What test?” Volkner said.
The Boss laughed. He flipped a switch underneath his desk and shackles came out, locking Volkner to his chair. Volkner writhed and squirmed, and then started to scream.
“Relax, it’s simply an injection in your neck. It won’t kill you. But, you do need something to subdue your strength a bit. It can be frustrating how strong you are sometimes.”
Volkner pulled and tugged on the metal, but it was no use. He was trapped.
“You asked about the test: The test came when I asked you if you had ever told Professor Kayce about the Hive.”
“NEVER!”
Robert King waved a finger in front of Volkner’s face. “You’ve failed again, Rasmus! You are lying to the Son of God. You realize that, don’t you? Let us listen to a clip.”
Speakers popped, and then a voice was played throughout the room. “But what is kept in this Hive?” came a voice that Asa recognized as Professor Kayce’s.
Volkner’s voice responded on the recording, except it was much deeper then than it was now. And the words were clearer, because he had all his teeth at the time the recording was taken: “It’s a place where we do what we’re made to: We Multiply. I can’t tell you where yet, but in time you’ll see. I’ll take you there. There are a quarter-million Multipliers living there, waiting to come out. They have carved tunnels deep underground, with thousands of hallways. We have gatherers that sneak out at night, steal humans, and…”