The Academy: Book 2 (48 page)

             
“Mr. Palmer, we’re sorry to come knocking on your door so late, but there is an investigation going on.”

             
Asa furrowed his eyebrows and his legs flexed slightly. He did not respond, but instead prepared himself for a fruitless fight; if it came to fighting, he would surely lose.

             
He knew these Multipliers. The one on the left with the dark eyes, the black hair, and the toothy smile was Derden, the Multiplier who had shot Brumi. His trench coat hung heavily all the way down to his boots, and the shiny leather reflected the silver moon like oil.

             
Beside him was Travis, Roxanne’s boyfriend. Asa noted that his carefully buzzed head was showing its first short gray hairs. The cajoling, charismatic expression he often wore was gone, replaced with a face that might have been carved out of stone for how unflinching it was. “Can we come in?” Travis asked, his voice husky.

             
Asa was frozen in fear. Out the door, he could see the Town. There were no burning buildings, as he would have expected in a Multiplier attack. A crow cawed. “An investigation?” he asked, surprised that he was able to find his voice.

             
Travis put a wide palm on the door, ensuring that Asa wouldn’t close it. “I asked you a question Palmer.”

             
“Huh?”

             
“Can we come in?” he growled, showing black gums. “Pretty please?”

             
Asa looked at the firm hand jarring the door open. There was no way that Asa could keep them out using force. Travis’s question had been fake; the Multipliers were going to force their way in if Asa didn’t allow them to enter. “Yes, come in,” he said, backing up.

             
The Multipliers walked in, gazing about the room, which was dimly lit by the embers in the fireplace. With their backs turned, Asa gazed out the door, and thought about running. While the Multipliers were stronger than any Academy student or graduate, they couldn’t fly. If Asa were able to get into the air…

             
“Shut the door.” Derden said curtly.

             
Reluctantly, Asa obeyed. He was betting on the odd chance that these Multipliers were actually authorized to come talk to him. He didn’t want to give the Multipliers any reason to punish him.

             
“Stand here,” Derden pointed out a place on the floor. “Keep your hands where we can see them.”

             
Asa obeyed, crossing his hands in front of himself. Behind Derden, Travis was digging through the stone drawers beside Asa’s oven. He roughly tore out all of every drawer’s contents, scattering pots and pans noisily onto the floor.

             
“Do you know where Teddy Jujune is?” Derden asked, scrutinizing Asa’s face.

             
“No,” Asa said.

             
“You haven’t seen him today?”

             
“No, sir.”

             
“He’s not in here?”

             
“No.”

             
Travis was now removing the animal furs from the wall; Asa wondered what he was looking for.

             
“We have trackers on your armbands,” Derden said. “Our GPS says that Teddy’s armband is somewhere in your dwelling. Is that true?”

             
“Not that I’m aware of.” Asa could say this honestly; he had no idea where Teddy was, or his armband. He hadn’t seen him in over a week.

             
Asa’s heart rate rose as he thought about the secret compartment above his dwelling. His mind went to the additional portion that Teddy had carved out of the underwater tunnel that led to the safe room.
What if Teddy died up there? What if he overdosed on whatever he’s been injecting himself with?

             
Sweat beaded on Asa’s forehead as he saw Travis tear the animal skins from the furniture, leaving a mess on the floor.

             
“Teddy hasn’t shown up to class in two and a half days. Do you know why, Palmer?” Derden sneered.

             
“No, sir.” His anxiety was growing. Travis was now moving towards the bathtub near the fireplace; directly overhead was the water tunnel that led to the secret compartment.             

Asa was
more frightened by the changes to the secret compartment than anything. He hadn’t been up to see what it looked like in months, and yet every night he heard Teddy (
or someone, at least
) drilling in the rock above him. For all Asa knew, Teddy could have stashed a dozen multiplier corpses up there.

“Your friends with Teddy, correct, Palmer?”

“Yes sir.”

Travis was running his hands along the lip of Asa’s bathtub, looking for
something of interest. All he had to do was gaze upward and he would find something extremely interesting—a secret compartment.

“And you haven’t been concerned for him?”
Derden growled. “You don’t know where he is?”

“He’s a bit flakey, sir. I’ve learned to not be too concerned about Teddy. He disappears to study a lot.
”

Travis was now looking at the wall of the fireplace. He stepped onto the lip of the batht
ub and directly above him was the tunnel that led to the secret compartment.

“We searched Teddy’s dwelling before we came here, Palmer. Why does it look as though no one has lived there
all semester?”

“I don’t know,” Asa said, swallowing.

Asa saw with horror that Travis had now looked above his head at the hole in the ceiling. The red glow from the fire’s embers made him look like a devil, and he smiled with his infected mouth. “Look what I found, boys. What is this, Palmer?”

It’s a safe room in case you bastards ever try to kill me,
he thought.

“It’s a place where I can store snow and melt it into water,” he said. “For bathing.”

Travis pressed his palms into the stone on either side of the tunnel above his head and was able to hoist himself up so that he was eye level with the water. Asa’s heart was beating like a snare; he could hear it in his own ears, and hoped that Derden wouldn’t be able to detect his increased anxiety.

Travis’s grin washed from his face. “
Derden, get over here. Look at this.”

Derden
eyed Asa threateningly, and turned towards the bathtub. A moment later, he was facing the water alongside Travis.

Asa felt like he might faint.

The two of them looked at the water. Asa rubbed the bottom of his sweating foot on the leg of his suit. Finally, Derden and Travis jumped down.

“That little reservoir you’ve got,” Travis said. “It’s disgusting.” And he spat on the floor. “Let’s go,
Derden. He doesn’t know anything.”

Travis began to walk out the door, but
Derden turned to face Asa. He got so close that his nose and Asa’s were one finger-width away. Asa had a strong urge to turn away, to back up, but refused his instincts.

Derden’s
breath was hot and stunk of rotting meat when he spoke out his purulent mouth. “I better not find out you’re lying to me, Palmer,” he said, challenging Asa’s eyes. “I’ll kill you myself, if you are. I’m going to give you one last chance to tell me something I don’t know. You’re hiding something. I can tell.”

Asa breathed through his nose despite the terrible smell of
Derden’s Salvaserum secreting mouth. “I’m not hiding anything.”

Derden
growled briefly from his throat before spinning and marching out the door. The Multipiers had left Asa’s dwelling a mess. Paintings were strewn over the floor, along with animal hide and papers that he had scribbled school notes on. His cabinets hung ajar, and all of his kitchen supplies were scattered.

22

Teddy Changes

The Multipliers had left the door to Asa’s dwelling open. Asa walked over, slammed it shut, and secured the lock. He leaned his back on the wood and groaned. His heart was still hammering, and he wanted to curl up on his hammock beside the fire, holding his knees to his chest in the fetal position.

No. Think! What is there to do?

Asa looked at the mess of pots, pans, and furs that Derden had thrown across the floor, and decided that he would have to clean his dwelling later. Right now, he had to think of a plan. He looked around at the stone, contemplating. He could see the Multipliers’ handprints in the soot below the secret compartment.
They had been so close to figuring out what that was! I can’t let them come back here!
Asa was sure that when they first noticed Teddy missing, they had searched his armband in their GPS system. The system had probably given them latitude and longitudinal coordinates that matched up with Asa’s dwelling.

It’s the altitude they’re wrong about. Teddy’s probably right above me.

Asa was also sure that if they didn’t find Teddy’s armband soon, they’d come back.
And they won’t find it elsewhere, because it’s probably above me.
The second time the Multipliers came to visit Asa, they’d do a more thorough search; he didn’t like the chances that they would overlook his secret compartment twice in a row.

And what will happen if they do find the secret compartment?
Asa wondered. For a moment, he breathed, feeling better.
I guess that there are no rules that say I can’t have a secret compartment. Maybe it’s okay. Maybe I’m just paranoid. Or, maybe there is something to be worried about. Teddy has been doing SOMETHING up there—he’s been drilling for hours every night. What if he’s been killing graduates up there? Or doing drugs? Or what if he’s been using the internet to tell the outside world about the Academy?

Teddy hasn’t been doing anything bad up there,
Asa told himself.

Then why does he never talk about what he does all night?

It seemed like the room had suddenly grown cold. He had been concerned for Teddy since the beginning of the semester when he started making cynical jokes about killing his friends. Teddy wasn’t normal then—that was obvious. But his sporadic nature only increased as the semester went on, and now, Asa was able to admit that he was scared of Teddy.

“I’m very scared of him,” he said out loud, and then whispered, “
terrified.
”

More than that, he was scared of what he would find in the secret compartment above him.
Bodies? Drugs? Weapons? Teddy’s corpse, eyes wide with a syringe beside him?
There was no way to know without looking. He would have to go investigate. Otherwise, the Multipliers would be back, and they would discover his secret.

“And I’m worried about him. I love him.”

Asa stood still for a moment longer. He didn’t want to go up, through the cold water tunnel and discover what was up there. In the past months, he had lulled himself into a false sense of security by never taking steps to
know
what Teddy was doing.
What you don’t know can’t hurt you,
the saying went. Willing himself to move, Asa walked towards the bathtub and hoisted himself up so that he could see the cold water. The water was entirely still, as though it was a pane of dark glass.

Looking at the dark entryway, Asa thought of the first time he had discovered the extra hallway that Teddy had carved into the water-tunnel. Remembering that time, he realized how frightened he was that his friend would murder him. He had been hesitant to follow him into the safe-room in the first place, and was jumpy—becoming anxious with Teddy’s every action. He had known that there was something threatening, terrible, about his friend at that time, but he hadn’t accepted it yet.

I was in denial.

He lifted himself above the water and turned the heat on his suit up, quickly rotating the dial. From the smooth surface of the water he could see a red, distorted version of himself in the light of the embers.

And then he plunged in.

The water was icy enough that an instinct to gasp tickled at his throat, even under water. He kept his eyes closed as he slowly crawled forward; it was dark enough that his vision was of no use. The worst part about the tunnel was the narrowness of it. Asa’s elbows were smashed in on either side of him, and he knew that if Teddy had collapsed the tunnel down to make a dead end, or installed a gate, that he wouldn’t have room enough to turn around. An impeded route would force Asa to try and crawl backwards through the lightless, cold water.

After thirty seconds of pulling himself onwards, he began to feel the algae-covered, slimy walls around him for the opening that led to the safe room. Asa did not plan on stopping here. There was a sureness in his gut that he would simply find a barren, cold room carved out of the mountain.

His heart pricked with anxiety as his numb fingers found the rounded edge of the tunnel that led to the safe room. He stretched his arm before him, and passed this tunnel, moving onward.

Remember how I used to kid myself, thinking that the extra tunnel that Teddy dug must just be for architectural reasons that I didn’t understand?

It disturbed him to think that he could turn such a blind eye to the truth.

The extra tunnel went on for a long time, widening out. There were small grips for his hands, similar to those found on an artificial rock-climbing wall. Asa utilized these, yanking himself forward. He opened his eyes, which had no benefit, and continued to tug. After pacing himself down the tunnel for over one minute, he realized that if he continued he wouldn’t have enough air to turn back around. He thought of the George Washington quote, and he wondered what would happen to a corpse in watery tomb.
And what will I do if I reach forward and instead of my palm landing upon the next grip, my fingers slip into the cold mouth of a corpse—Teddy’s corpse.

Asa mentally reprimanded himself for thinking this. It was disturbing, not useful.

His ears began to hurt with the water pressure. His chest was beginning to beg for fresh air when he saw the first hint of light in the far distance. He whimpered out bubbles in the melted snow that Teddy had siphoned into the tunnel and dug his fingers into hold after hold, pulling himself forward.

He continued to descend for two hundred more yards and then the tunnel opened up completely and he was in a pool. He looked upward and sa
w blue and green light shining onto the dancing surface. Seeing these lights, he thought of how he was about to finally know what all the drilling was about. He was still for a moment; his hair floating around him as he wondered if he actually
wanted
to see what Teddy had been doing all that time. There were so many oddities about Teddy as of late—the straight A’s, the dilated pupils, the aggressive jokes, the twitching that was so similar to Robert King. Asa looked back, into the dark tunnel from which he came. His lungs felt like they were about to burst. Even if he didn’t want to find out what Teddy had been doing the past few months, he had to now. He didn’t have enough air to return to his dwelling. He pushed off from the slick stone bottom with all the force he could use, and kicked his way to the top.

He emerged and sucked air deep into his chest.
He spun around, looking for Teddy, afraid of what he might find.

Teddy was nowhere to be seen. What he found was not something he had anticipated. Even though there were no dead bodies, or computers connected to outside governments, what Asa saw made him uneasy.
The room was vast, stone, and lit with torches holding blue and green flames. Every small wave of the water and every one of Asa’s breaths echoed terribly loudly. He couldn’t suppress the need to cough, but was afraid to make much noise. He sunk down under water, coughed out muffled bubbles, and then came back up. He was terrified of making too much noise.

Asa waded over to the edge of the pool, and pulled his dripping frame out of the water. He turned up his suit to an even higher temperature and sat, hugging his knees, breathing, and looking about him.

My God, Teddy! What is all this?

The room was the size of a church, a comparison that was made stronger by all of the statues that watched Asa. There were
statues of angels on one side of the room, carved in the dark stone. They were life sized, with feathered wings stretching out beside them. They held spears in veiny hands and cast long shadows on the walls. Their noses, their eyes, their ears—everything about them was made with such precision that the pieces were comparable to some of the greatest works of art.

On the opposite side of the room were statues even more decoratively carved—
demons. There were a dozen of these, perched about the area, and all roughly seven feet tall. They had claws for hands, long fingernails, and sharp, terrible teeth. Some were standing upright on the ground, stone assault rifles strapped across their naked torsos. Others were perched up in high corners, suspended thirty feet up into the air. Their expressions were of rage-filled agony, with wrinkled brows and noses. Their mouths were unnaturally wide, reminding Asa of the unhinged jaw of a python. Out of their hollow mouths, noses and eyes came thick, black smoke from red fires that burned within the statues.

My God, Teddy!
Asa thought.
How much time have you spent up here, friend? And why? Why work this hard on something so intricate—so obsessive? Have you gotten into some strange cult? Are you worshiping these creatures, Teddy?

A hypothesis rose to Asa’s mind. He compared his running to Teddy carving;
maybe Teddy works in this place to occupy his mind so that he doesn’t have to think of other things.

But if that’s all that’s going on here, why didn’t he tell me about it?

Asa was convinced that the strange, cavernous enclosure held terrible secrets about his friend.

Thick wooden beams crisscrossed along the ceiling, adding support. Black stone crows hung down from these beams, supported by thin wires
in positions that made it look as though they were flying. The room was entirely empty except for Asa, but there was a doorway near the top of the wall nearest the demons.

Asa looked up at the high doorway.
Why did he make this opening so far above the ground? Is he trying to keep someone out? Is there an architectural reason that I don’t understand.

Asa extracted his wings as slowly as he could and then softly flapped them, rising himself up to the doorw
ay. He locked his cold fingers onto the bottom of the doorjamb and pulled himself up, closing his wings behind him as he entered a hallway.

The stone hallway was cold, and packets of ice intermixed with the cracks in the stone. The place smelled of chlorine.
At the end or the corridor was a room that glowed red with a roaring fire. Asa gingerly tiptoed over the rock in his bare feet; he was acutely aware of each noise he was making, frightened that his neurotic friend would appear from the lit room with pupil-dilated eyes and a hatchet in his hand. With every few steps his ankles popped and in the silence the noise sounded like fireworks to Asa, but he kept moving. At the beginning of the hallway, the floor was icy on his bare toes and he breathed out fog. Towards the end, he felt the heat of the next room, and his breath became invisible once more.

Asa halted at the threshold of the room with the fireplace, listening for any sound. There was nothing but the faint popping of burning wood in a fire.
Someone has been tending to that fire in the week since Teddy disappeared. Is Teddy doing this? Or could he have been captured? What if a Multiplier killed him, and is living up here, enjoying Teddy’s mansion—tending to the fire, eating Teddy’s flesh?

Asa
stared at the far wall for any movement of the jagged shadows that were projected onto the stone. Not wanting to rush himself into a dangerous situation, he waited there for minutes before peaking around the corner. He could hear blood rushing near his ears. He felt panicked. Moving at a glacial pace, Asa slowly tilted his head so that he could look around the corner. His eye made it past and then he was looking out into the room with the fireplace. The chamber appeared empty, although there were chairs and couches that could be concealing Teddy or a lurking Multiplier—some of the furniture was bare stone, some was wooden, and some was covered with animal furs. The wall in which the fireplace sat had dozens of hallways running to other rooms.
How big is this place?