by Leito, Chad
Taking a deep breath, Asa let his toes hang over the edge. He leaned forward until he was falling headfirst into the maze, feeling the wind rush over his body.
He flew at a breathtaking speed towards the tarp, and as he approached one of the punctured gaps, he retracted his wings, making himself smaller, and shot through. Once on the other side, he immediately shot out dozens of echolocation cries of all different tones—it was a bit like singing, but with fast, terse notes. As the sound waves returned to his mutated ears, his brain was given an image of the different rings and windmill formations that the moving wooden barriers created. Adrenaline pumped through his body and for the time he was in the maze he wasn’t tired at all. He extracted his wings and continued to rush forward.
He twisted, turned, maneuvered his wings, and by the time he came out the end and landed in the water at the finish line, he was panting. The speed at which he had been traveling propelled him forty feet deep in the cold pool of water, and it wasn’t until he came up for air and saw the digital clock say “16:11” that he knew he had finished with the day’s fastest time.
He waded over to the edge and pulled himself out onto the slick stone floor. “Mr. Palmer, fastest time yet again. Good job,” said McCoy.
Stridor watched Asa as he climbed the bleachers and took a spot next to Viola at the top. He was still panting and dripping wet as he sat down.
“Good job,” said Viola, who didn’t look up from the book she was reading on her armband. In the Academy, the students didn’t see an act like this as rude. Studying for hours on end was necessary, and sometimes being nice was an unaffordable privilege.
“Thanks,” Asa said, and let her get back to studying.
He sat quietly and watched as Shashowt came through the finish line at a little over 22 seconds, which was a good showing for him, but did not change the fact that Asa had the fastest time.
After Shashowt pulled himself out of the water, McCoy waved his arm at Asa. “C’mon up,” he said, asking him to approach the spear gun at the end of the room. Only the back end of the gun was in the room with them; the barrel was lodged through the wall, facing a round, stone room with circular target twenty yards away.
As Asa made his way off of the stone bleachers and over the floor beside the pool, his heart was thudding. No one else seemed excited. Some were watching Asa quietly as he approached the spear gun, while others studied on their armbands. They had seen Asa, Stridor, and others shoot at the target over fifty times, and the result was always the same; even if the shot was perfectly aimed, the spear struck an invisible barrier and crumbled before making it to the target.
Asa looked up at the clock positioned directly above the spear gun, which showed that it was 9:45 AM. He rubbed his hands together and tried to concentrate. He knew that he might only get one shot. The night before, Teddy had explained to Asa that it was curious that there was an analog clock situated just above the spear gun; most other clocks in the Academy were digital. Teddy also explained that the invisible barriers that Stridor and Asa often times hit seemed to move. Some days, when they shot the spear gun the spear only went a few feet before crumpling. Other days, it went almost all the way to the target before striking the invisible barrier. It was Teddy’s belief that the hands of the analog clock corresponded with the movement of invisible barriers within the circular room.
Asa sighed, and tried to imagine a clock face drawn onto the circular room. He imagined a giant “6” next to the spear gun, and the far back area being where the “12” would sit. If these things were true, the target was currently sitting behind an invisible barrier that corresponded with the hour hand, and the minute hand. He thought that if he could wait until 10:20 that he would have a fair shot at the target, after the hour and minute hand moved out of the way. He sighed. If Teddy’s ideas were true, Stridor could get the best time the next day, learn from Asa’s tactics today, and hit the target. He would have to shoot perfectly.
He waited, trying to calm his nerves. After ten minutes of doing nothing McCoy came up and put a hand on Asa’s shoulder. “Asa, we haven’t got all day.”
“Let me take my time,” Asa said, and then stared back into the circular room. He didn’t want to reveal his strategy. He wanted to make it look like he was simply thinking, not waiting for invisible barriers to move, so that his strategy wasn’t revealed.
Not saying a word in response, McCoy stepped back on the damp stone and watched Asa.
Ten o’clock came and went without a word spoken in the room. Asa knew that all of the students would be late to their next class, but it didn’t matter. As the minute hand swung around to the “4,” making it 10:20 AM, Asa stepped up to the spear gun. Now, all of the students were staring at him; none were studying.
He used the notches along the barrel to aim at the target. He took a few seconds to aim, held his breath, and then squeezed the trigger.
There was a loud CRACK and then the metal spear flew forward. Asa expected to see the projectile strike an invisible barrier and fall to the floor, but instead, it slammed into the target with splintering force.
“Wow,” someone said from the bleachers, but everyone else remained quiet. Asa realized that in that moment, he had done something that made him even more exotic to everyone else than before. He turned to see Stridor smirking in the front row, eyes on Asa.
“Good job, boy!” McCoy said. He was absolutely beaming and his blond curly hair bounced as he came over to give Asa a half hug. “You see,” he said, turning to the rest of the student body, “Palmer realized that the clock hands above were associated with the invisible force field that stops the spear from hitting the target. Seriously, well done! The rest of you are dismissed! This will be the last Flying Class that we’ll have. Palmer, come with me, you’ve got to pick out your mutation.”
The students climbed down the stone stairs for the last time, and Asa followed McCoy through a back door into a small clinic. As he walked, he thought about Teddy, and how he had been right. This proved, along with Teddy’s advice that Asa should change echolocation tones while flying, that the thousands of math problems on the walls of the secret compartment hadn’t just been the writings of a mad man—the math actually had predictive power.
Asa felt cold as he remembered the long analysis Teddy made of Edmund’s Palmer riddle.
What does Teddy know?
25
The Multiplier Hunter
Hours later, Asa was scared of going into his dwelling alone. This would be the second time he entered since learning that a Multiplier had been waiting for him a few nights ago when Teddy was bitten. For some reason, after Winggame practice, he hadn’t thought about it. Now, the thought consumed him. He imagined what it would be like, discovering a lurking Multiplier waiting for him just beyond the threshold of his dwelling.
As he walked up the mountainside, bits of clear sleet crunched underneath his feet and he kept his wings outstretched for balance. The moon was waning, but still mostly full, and doused the mountains in a hushed blue light, making the shadowed forests and jungles surrounding the summits look even darker than usual by contrast.
He had told himself that he was going to visit Teddy tonight, but now found that he was simply too tired. Bruce had Instant Messaged the Sharks on their armbands, telling them that they were to meet just after five o’clock at The Lab; Asa hadn’t planned on the meeting, and now didn’t want to go see Teddy.
The Lab was a nickname for the dilapidated building that Asa and Charlotte had retreated into last semester when Septa the mountain lion had been chasing them. Situated in front of Fishie Mountain, The Lab was a two story concrete building that had trees growing into the its shattered windows. The place smelled like a hospital and the checkered-tile floor was riddled with smashed syringes, vials, and torn books. The walls were lined with thick metal cages, all of which hung open.
Last semester, Asa didn’t have the slightest idea what this place was for. Now, he had guesses, but no way to confirm h
is theories. One thought was that The Lab had once been a place used by his father to experiment on mutated animals. He wondered if Davids were created in this very area. An additional, darker possibility was that The Lab was used to do genetic experiments on humans. This idea made Asa feel uncomfortable, but he tried to give all ideas due consideration, disturbing or not. Asa realized that it was unlikely that his father only made Multipliers. Surely there must have been failed experiments with humans. An image of a hunched, one-eyed, boil-ridden woman trying to yank her cage open and screaming indiscernible curses came to Asa’s mind.
No matter what it used to be used for, the Lab was now a great place to house meetings. There were weird classrooms that had desks and chairs that were bolted to the floor. Manacles were welded to the armrests and the legs of the chairs, used in the past to hold some kind of students as prisoners, while someone wrote on the chalkboard in the front of the room.
A month ago, the Sharks had begun meeting in The Lab. They chose a classroom, cleaned it of dried blood and strewn glass, and then kept the door locked while they were gone so that the mutated lemurs would stop sneaking inside from the arctic jungle after the Sharks left each night. The lemurs had a habit of stealing chalk, defecating on the desks, and drawing explicit images on the blackboard.
The lemurs hadn’t yet found a way to unlock the door, and so the classroom remained clean. It served a great function. The Sharks could go there any night they chose, sit down at the desks, and Bruce would lecture them on different strategies while writing on the blackboard.
Tonight’s lesson was complicated and ran late. Bruce wanted to make sure that each student knew absolutely everything they could about the opponent before their next game.
Exhausted, Asa continued to walk up the slick mountainside.
A cry of agony broke through the air, and it sounded to Asa like a monkey being slaughtered out in the forest. He thought of the dead Davids hanging by ropes and the Multiplier camp he had come upon earlier in the semester. He thought of Joney, Edna, and Michael. They had all been filthy, and seemed uneducated.
Then there was the Multiplier that Adam Trotter had told them about in the Tropics before being struck down by lightening. Supposedly, this Multiplier was suave, sophisticated, and well spoken.
Asa didn’t know how to compensate these two different accounts, but he was scared. His nerves felt like they had electricity running through them as he reached the frosty threshold to his dwelling. He took a deep breath, looking at the natural circles of dark and light on the wooden door, wondering what could be waiting for him on the other side.
It’s locked. Don’t be crazy. No one could get in here.
But then how did the Multiplier get in to attack Teddy? Did it swim up the underwater stream that you exited through the other night?
He clenched his fists before thinking DON’T BE INSANE! No one is in there. It’s perfectly safe.
He reached his hands up to turn the padlock and froze. The four digit code was “3491,” and always, absolutely always, he locked it by simply turning the last dial to “5” so that it said, “3495.”
His hands were trembling as he held the cold metal in his fingers and looked at the numbers.
“2864.”
Someone had turned the lock.
Was it Derden and Tyler, continuing their investigation? Or am I walking into a trap?
Asa stepped back and tugged at his hair. In the distance, steam was rising off the Moat like poltergeists marching into the dark jungles. A crow was perched upon the mountainside with him, staring with black beady eyes.
Asa could have gone back to Conway’s home, if he needed to. But the truth of the matter was that he didn’t want to seem weak in front of Conway. He already doesn’t trust me with information. I don’t want to come knocking at his door in the middle of the night, telling him that I’m scared of the dark.
There were also his teammates along the Mountainside. If he went and knocked on Viola’s door, she’d let him in.
But it’s probably nothing, he said. It’s probably just raccoons trying to get inside. He undid the lock as quickly as he could, without thinking about it. It was like diving headfirst into cold water.
With the lock off, he pushed the door just wide enough so that he could slide inside, and then shut it again. He locked the door back again with his numb fingers. Once the lock was in place, he let his hands fall to his sides and a terror washed over him. It was as dark as if someone had come up behind him and thrown a sack over his head.
I can hear something breathing in here. Something is breathing along side me.
Asa held his own breath, but could hear nothing. Everything is absolutely fine. It’s okay. I’m okay. Everything is okay.
He reached for matches on one of his wooden tables that flanked the door, and felt nothing but the cotton tablecloth. Horror clawed at his throat. Hadn’t I left some matches there? His hand spidered over the edges, searching for the large box that the Academy had supplied him, and finally found it. His fingers were shaking as he opened the box and took out a wooden match.
With his trembling hands, it took him a long time to light the candle on the doorway table. He watched the flames paint the rock orange. He still wasn’t able to make himself turn around and look into the rest of the dwelling.
“This is silly,” he whispered to himself, but his voice was unsteady. “Nothing to be afraid…”
There was a soft crack in the dwelling. It sounded to Asa like cartilage popping in a stiff ankle.
“Don’t scream,” said a female voice.
Asa turned and thrust the candle into the room, revealing a person standing there. She appeared to be in her early twenties. Asa had never seen her before. She wore brown hiking boots, cargo pants that were tightly belted over her small waist, a form-fitting green tank top, a light khaki backpack with a reusable water bottle in the pouch, and black climbing gloves. Rock climbing clips and nails hung from thick ropes off her waist like jewelry.
Asa stammered and backed up so that he was flat against the wall.
He looked over her smooth skin and the soft curves of her body. She didn’t have a single blemish. Her shoulder muscles displayed her strength, as did her tight abdomen and her muscular thighs. Asa thought that she was too beautiful to be human. But then she smiled and he began to suck in air, preparing to scream.
Her gums were as black.
She was pressed against him fast, pushing slim but strong fingers against his mouth so that he couldn’t yell. His eyes moved back and forth, and his chest was rising and falling violently.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said. “I knew your father.”
She stepped back and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Did you bite my friend Teddy?”
“I’ve never bitten any human,” she said. “It’s not what my kind do.”
Asa scoffed angrily. “Multipliers bite people all the time! Six Academy students have been bitten this semester!”
She put her fingers on his mouth again. “Hush, Asa! I’m not a Multiplier. I’m a Multiplier Hunter.”
“A Multiplier Hunter?”
“Yes, the Academy doesn’t know about us.”
“What do you hunt?”
She smiled crookedly. Asa concentrated on her gums and saw that they were not entirely black, like a normal Multiplier’s would be. Instead, they were tinged with pink. “I hunt Multipliers. Hunters are a kind of mutated Multiplier. We have all the strength of Multipliers, but without the instinct to Multiply. My name is Carmen, by the way.”
Asa gaped at her.
“We hunt other things, too. Those red birds for instance. Surely you’ve seen them.”
“The big red ones that were killing the crows?”
“Yes! You’ll notice that there aren’t as many as there used to be. The Academy created them in an attempt to try and kill off the crows. But we are taking care of them.” She walked over to the padlock and began to twist the di
als in her fingers.
“How did you get in? The padlock was on the outside,” Asa said.
“I had a friend. I don’t have very much time; I’ve got to leave soon. If they find me, they’ll kill me. They’ve already found one of my kind here, and we’re not sure where he is.”
Asa’s mind was whirling. “Wait. I’ve heard about this from one of the scientists. They caught a Multiplier on the back of King Mountain. They say that he doesn’t drip Salvaserum.”
“That’s got to be him! Gregory! Do you know where he is?” She undid the padlock and stood there, palm on the door.
“No, I don’t know. I heard about him a while ago.”
She frowned for a moment, and then put her hand on the doorknob, seeming eager to leave. “I came to deliver a message. It’s simply. You’ve got to leave, Asa. You have to. Multipliers—real ones, not Hunters—are gathering. They are planning on attacking the Academy.”
“What? When?”
She shrugged. “Fran doesn’t know for sure yet. But she says it will be some time at the end of the semester.”
“Who is Fran?” The name sounded familiar.
She waved a hand at him. “I don’t have time to explain. But listen! Pick a night, and leave, okay? They talk about how the surrounding forests are highly monitored, which they are, but there’s a chance you could make it. If you stay, you’re just waiting to die. These Multipliers aren’t like any you’ve encountered. They’re uncivilized, savage.”
Asa had so many questions. “Are the Multipliers from the Hive?”
“I’m sorry, Asa. I have to go.” Carmen slipped out the door, and Asa tried to follow her. He yanked the door open and stepped out onto the threshold. He let out an echolocation cry, and looked around fervently, but couldn’t see her. She had disappeared into the night.
Heart thudding, Asa went back inside and shut the door. He ran a hand through his hair and moaned. What should I do? Should I leave? Right now? He was breathing hard. What if she was lying? Why haven’t I heard of Hunters before? If she was a Multiplier, why didn’t she bite me?