The Academy: Book 2

by Leito, Chad

  “Like I said, this Task is similar to a gladiator style fight-to-the-death. But, it is also a lot like a murderous version of capture-the-flag. The rules are as such: If you are able to get another team’s KEE into your red sphere, you will instantly be removed safely from the Task, and your whole team will be allowed to continue on with their education in the Academy. As a prize for placing one of these Killing Electronic Emitters in your red sphere, you will be given 100 points that you can spend in the Shop in Town. And, at the same time that you place your opponents KEE, your own KEE will disintegrate, and no one will be allowed to place your KEE in their red sphere. You’ll see why this is important.

  “If another team puts your KEE in their red sphere, you will be shocked to death, wherever you are. It won’t matter if you’re in your Home Base, or marching beneath the jungle, you’ll fall to the ground and seize until you’re dead and then keep seizing until you’re charred. It will not be an easy death.

  “So, the question that every team will be sitting in their Home Bases and thinking right now is ‘how do I survive?’

  “Some might come to the conclusion that it will be best to stay and defend their own base. Others might decide that they want to take their destiny into their own hands, and march out into the jungle towards another base, trying to steal an opponent’s KEE. More likely, most teams will divide up into a few groups that will head out in different directions, trying to get other KEEs, while some stay and guard the fortress. Before you decide, take a few more things into account.”

  Robert King’s hologram cleared its throat noisily. The vibrations this made on his vocal cords came out in the tones of a Southern accent. Robert King was, Asa knew, from Texas. And he had grown up in the Texas of fifty years ago, when the accents were much more pronounced. Asa reflected that The Boss spoke with a Texas drawl just seven months ago. Why now, when his pupils were dilated just as Teddy’s was, was his drawl going away? His posture had changed too; he held his back much straighter than he used to.

  Robert King’s hologram went on. “The first thing you must know is that this Task will last no longer than seventy-two hours. At the end of the seventy-two hours, each student will be removed from the Tropics. Secondly—I think that this will have a large impact on a lot of teams’ decisions—there is no food here in your Home Base. There is water, but no food.

  “This is very significant. This means that you must go hunting if you want to eat. Now, you might think to yourself, ‘but humans can survive seventy-two hours without food. Can’t we just camp here?’ You can try, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

  “Remember, you’re not normal humans. Most of you have been mutated so that you’re stronger than usual, and every one of you has grown wings. These mutations are not outside the bounds of nature, and so they must come at a cost. This cost is increased caloric needs.”

  Asa recalled his first encounter with this ‘increased caloric needs.’ He had been in the Alfatrex train station with McCoy, Conway, and Charlotte. He remembered watching McCoy and Conway eat an unbelievable amount of food. They had each eaten enough food for fifteen heavy-eating individuals. Though Asa’s appetite wasn’t this extreme yet, he had noticed a significant change. He had to eat three or four times as much as he had before being mutated. He did not know whether or not he would live through three days without food. He would definitely lose a large amount of weight, most of which would be muscle; a loss in a large amount of muscle would make him much more vulnerable to attacks.

  “You may have noticed this in your own diet,” Robert King’s hologram went on, walking around pointlessly throughout the room. “Listen carefully, I’m only going to say this once: Most things in the Tropics are poisonous to consume. The birds, most of the mammals that you will find, the large lizards, the fish, and the vegetation are poisonous. There are things that are not poisonous, and that are rather good to eat. I won’t tell you what they are, but you will know when you find them. Written in large letters upon these things will be the words ‘Not Poisonous.’ If you don’t keep this in mind, you will surely die.

  “Now, as far as the water goes, none of the water in the Tropics is poisonous in any way. There are no unnatural chemicals in any of the water, and there are not harmful bacteria or parasites dwelling in any of the ponds, lakes, or rivers. However, some of the water is rich in salt. This is the only thing that you must keep in mind when looking to drink water.”

  For a time, the hologram of Robert King stood directly in front of Asa, not saying anything. The projection of the man was so seamless that Asa would not have believed it was a hologram if he hadn’t seen the figure walk through solid objects. Asa could see short white hairs curling at the man’s knuckles; the gold buttons on The Boss’s suit jacket were inscribed in cursive with a brand name; the man’s dilated pupils were actually throbbing, trying to pulse out wider and wider.

  “Ah, yes, I promised I’d tell you of the pterosaurs,” he said suddenly. “Pterosaurs, as you may know, were giant birds that became extinct in the Cretaceous period. Much larger than any bird, their wings spanned between sixteen and thirty-six feet. In adulthood, some of them were the size of an airplane.

  “These animals are often referred to as ‘pterodactyls’ in popular culture. This is not the correct word for the large, bird-like fossils that have been found. In fact, pterodactyls weren’t birds at all, but a type of flying reptile. Pterodactyls’ wingspans did not grow past four feet. The pterosaurs were much larger.

  “I’m not saying that there aren’t pterodactyls here, don’t get confused: I’m just saying that there are more dangerous aerials than pterodactyls.

  “We have used the Academy’s DNA technology to revive pterosaurs and pterodactyls from their death to live again, as Jesus did to Lazarus.” Robert King tried to remain serious looking, but couldn’t help smiling at the comparison between himself and Jesus. Shuddering, Asa remembered how The Boss had hinted that he might have some supernatural calling in his meeting with Volkner.

  “Not only have we resurrected these animals, but we have trained them. They are very smart; their brains are roughly the size of a human brain. There are two things that should be noted about their training. The first is this: Each of these pterosaurs has nests at the top of the various Home Bases that are dispersed throughout the Tropics. They wear shock collars, and are trained not to fly below fifteen feet. If they do, they will be given a nasty shock. Only occasionally do they choose to attack a creature below the shock-line and intentionally take the punishment.

  “Something that we have learned by spending time with these animals is that they have a liking for human flesh. They are equipped with barbed teeth: Once they latch on, they won’t let go. In our trials, we have seen that these creatures often bite down on their human prey only twice before swallowing them into their acid-laden digestive tract. Their eyesight is remarkable, they can see in great detail for a two-mile span. While gliding, these animals can reach speeds of over one hundred miles per hour: Their weight carries them well against wind resistance. Even the fastest Academy students cannot outrun a pterosaur.

  “Keep these things in mind. It is perfectly within the bounds of the rules to fly, but once you decide to do so, you are at risk of being picked off by one of our aerial predators.”

  Asa wondered if there was a pterosaur on the roof of his home base where he sat.

  “One final thing before I let you go on your way: In the center of this room, you should be able to see a circular set of stairs. This will lead you far below to the ground floor. On the ground floor, you will find that there are no walls, just intermittent pillars that support the Home Bases. Also on this first floor, you will see many ropes hanging from the ceiling. If you or one of your opponents pulls on these ropes it will do two things. Simultaneously, the glass in the room you now sit will break, and a tone will play loudly throughout the air. This is the same tone that we have been playing for the pterosaurs for the last few months before their feedings.


  “As you could have guessed, anyone in the top floor when one of these ropes is pulled will be in great danger.” Robert King paused, and rocked back and forth, contemplating. Abruptly, he said, “That is all. May the best survive,” and disappeared. Asa recalled how Teddy had suddenly ended their conversation while walking through Town Hall.

  Asa looked at his armband. He saw that instead of a normal clock, there was just a timer counting down from seventy-two hours. The seconds ticked by and with each second the white fabric automatically repositioned itself into the appropriate shape. The Sharks looked around the room at each other. The Task had begun.

  16

  The Resurrected Pterosaurs and Pterodactyls

  With the hologram gone, the sounds from outside seemed to grow louder. The chirrup of crickets, a chorus of birds, the chanting of new world monkeys. It was as though the Tropics were knocking on the glass windows of the enclosure, beckoning the students to come out and see what surprises the unnatural landscape contained.

  The Sharks unbuckled the restraints from their flying chairs. They never shared eye contact between one another, but instead stole furtive glances at their fellow teammates. Who’s going to speak first and break this silence? Asa’s heart was racing and he could sense that everyone else was nervous too. To speak about the improbable three day stay in the Tropics ahead seemed like a blasphemous thing. It was as if they believed that if they were quiet enough, the evil of the Task to come wouldn’t find them here; that, if they didn’t talk about the blood ahead, it wouldn’t exist.

  In Asa’s mind, he saw it as fitting when the sixteen year old who had killed his dog with fireworks committed the irreverent act. “I think that we should get moving,” Boom Boom said. His skin was so pale, and green veins made a prominent Y on the side of his forehead. His fiery red hair stood upon his head like flames.

  No one answered Mike Plode’s words for a moment. The Sharks were scared, and there was a tension about the room as taut as a piano string.

  Asa was looking at Viola Burns, a fellow second semester, and saw that she actually flinched when Bruce Thurman spoke in his low, rumbling voice: “What are you thinking, Mike?”

  Mike Plode was the calmest of all the students. (except, Asa thought, maybe Lilly Bloodroot is calmer. It’s hard to tell though, with those purple eyes. She sometimes stares off into space like she doesn’t know what’s going on, or like she can see things that others can’t). Boom Boom began, “It sounds like we can’t stay here, guarding this place. The Boss’s point about our need to go out and find food is convincing: many of us, especially the most mutated of us, will starve if we camp out here. So, we’ll need to go out and find food. Or,” he said, getting up and going towards the window. He looked out onto the horizon. There was a thin strip of metal that ran vertically up the window, and the shadow of it split his face in half. “We can simply attack. Right now. How far away do you think that base out there is? Five miles? Ten miles? Fifteen at the most, I’d say. Either way, we could make the distance in less than three hours at a jog, even the slowest among us. When we all get to the nearest base, we could fight with those inside, and hopefully steal their KEE. Then, we could give it to the fastest among us and have them sprint it to our Home Base, and be out of this Task in a matter of hours, not days.”

  “Won’t that leave our base empty, though, Mike?” Bruce asked.

  “Yes and no,” Boom Boom replied. “Our base will technically be empty for a time, but if we go fast enough, no one will have a chance to take our KEE back to their own base. I guarantee you that all of the other teams will sit around, talking strategy for an hour before they get moving. Even if a team comes and grabs our KEE while we’re gone, we will have returned with another team’s KEE by then, making ours disappear, and taking us out of the game.”

  “Can’t we just stay here?” Alice, a Fishie, asked. Everyone looked at her. Her voice was shaky; she appeared to be in an emotional state between great sorrow and intense terror. “I mean, we could go out and hunt, but do we want to try to steal another team’s KEE? This Task is only very dangerous if everyone decides to try and eliminate each other. If every team just stays around their bases and doesn’t attack anyone else, we’d be relatively safe.”

  “That won’t happen, though,” Viola Burns spoke up. For the first time, Asa noticed that she had greenish-purple metallic fingernail polish on. It glimmered in the light. “I know that there are some students, in my semester at least, that will not want to sit around and wait to be attacked.”

  She’s thinking about Stridor, Asa thought. He remembered how aggressive he was on the back of King Mountain last year, of how Stridor had taken charge. When the undead stormed the lodge the Fishies were staying in and opened fire, Stridor had covered himself with blood so that they thought he was a corpse. Then, he attacked, stealing a weapon and opening fire himself. Stridor was a leader. Asa suspected that Stridor would be on the offensive soon, whether he had a team behind him or not. He was the kind of person that made things happened. Sitting there, thinking of Stridor’s height, his musculature and his discolored wine-stained skin made Asa afraid of running into him while in the jungle. The thought of Stridor was almost as concerning as those giant, bloody carcasses on the grass far below them.

  What could kill such a thing?

  “I agree with Viola. And, if we start off quickly enough, that would give us the element of surprise,” Bruce said. “And, we could even leave eight people here to guard the place, just as a presence. We could split up.”

  “True,” Roxanne agreed.

  “OH MY GOD, will you two shut the hell up? Are you kidding with me? Really? Thinkin’ that I’m gonna listen to you two when Bruce’s plan ran our Winggame team into the ground just ‘bout an hour ago? And then there was Roxy, right beside him, just noddin’ her head. ‘Ayuh, ninety-five sounds like a good play to run, Bruce, ayuh.’ Makes me sick. Here’s a new rule for the team: Roxanne and Bruce don’t talk. How ‘bout that one?” Stan’s face was red, and his little hands were clenched into fists below his muscular forearms. Janice was by his side, beaming at him.

  “Really mature, Stan. Seriously, your anger and cursing is helpful,” Bruce said with a harsh sarcastic tone.

  “Maybe you don’t care about what happened in the Winggame match, but I do! I can only lose two games, damn it!” Stan appeared to be in a frenzy. He looked on the verge of tears and on the verge of killing someone all at the same time. “They’re gonna kill me, don’t you get it!? Don’t you care?”

  “I do care! I care about this team and I want them to win. I don’t like the way it feels to lose, so don’t tell me…”

  “CALM DOWN!” Roxanne hollered.

  “Does being a loser feel worser than knowing the girl you love is dating a Multiplier? Does losin’ feel worser than that?” Stan asked.

  Bruce stammered, not knowing how to respond. His face flushed scarlet.

  “It’s ‘worse,’ not ‘worser,’ you idiot!” Asa didn’t know why he said it, the words slipped out. He was so scared, and this emotion spilled into anger at Stan for taking such a cheap shot at Bruce’s attraction to Roxanne. Stan’s eyes found Asa, crazy and deeply green. “AND YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT, SO SHUT UP!”

  It happened so fast and so slow at the same time. Stan picked up his chair from behind him in a blurring speed, and hurled it directly at Asa. It tumbled end over end through the air in a straight line. Asa fell to the floor, like a baseball player in the batter’s box dodging a stray pitch. It was only when he was on the ground, watching the chair soar over him, that he saw the danger in what was happening. Behind Asa, there was a clear shot towards a nearby window and the chair was moving very fast.

  Pterosaurs.

  Asa reached out his hands to try to stop the chair, but it was too late. It continued on, and shattered through the thin glass as though there wasn’t a barrier at all. The glass crumpled, and the chair fell to the ground far below.

  eeeaaaAAAH
HHHH, eeeaaaAAAHHHHH, eeeaaaAAAHHHHH

  The siren began to blare, and Asa realized that the tone that called the pterosaurs was actually caused by the glass breaking, not by pulling the ropes downstairs. Those ropes broke the glass, which then caused the tone.

  The sound was incredibly loud. Just yards away from him in the high ceilinged roomed, he could see by the intensity with which Roxanne’s mouth was moving that she was screaming something, but he couldn’t hear what it was.

  eeeaaaAAAHHHHH, eeeaaaAAAHHHHH, eeeaaaAAAHHHHH

  Asa was sure that the sound could be heard for miles around. It was hurting his ears. On the other side of the room, Stan was making a run for the staircase.

  eeeaaaAAAHHHHH, eeeaaaAAAHHHHH, eeeaaaAAAHHHHH

  Stan had taken three steps when the siren stopped and the room was so quiet that all Asa could hear was a ringing sound in his ears. For some unexplainable reason, the Sharks did not move for a moment, but remained as still as possible. The opening where the window had been broken blew hot, humid air into the room.

  Then, there came a much worse noise than a siren from above them: The clacking of talons on hard metal as something above them moved.

  Clack clack. Clack clack clack.

  It was a heavy noise that sent vibrations through the tile that Asa lay upon.

  There’s something on the roof. Something very big.

  The nervousness in the room peaked, and Asa felt a drop of sweat run to the tip of his nose. He was breathing shallowly, trying to be as still and silent as possible. His heart was fluttering like a hummingbird trapped in a shoebox.

  A nonsensical chain of thought came into his mind as his ears strained to hear the pterosaur on the roof take off and swoop down into the room: What would it be like to be eaten alive by such an animal? Chewed twice and then swallowed. Would the jaws kill me, or would I slide down the hot, mucus-covered stinking throat of the great bird, with merely a broken hip? Would I make a splash as I fell into the stomach acid? Would the acid eat away at me quickly enough to end my life, or would I suffocate to death? While I was in there, acid eating my flesh off, would I feel the weight of a fellow teammate fall on top of me, still twitching but dead? Would I feel the stomach muscles contract around me, pulling me further down the gastrointestinal tract?