The Academy: Book 2 (93 page)

             
Asa muttered something inaudible, and walked inside. His face was pale and sweaty.

             
The door automatically shut behind Asa, and little, glowing green fish inside of hanging glass spheres lit the initial hallway on either side. The fish were ugly, with tiny eyes and sharp teeth. The entirety of the animals’ bodies were phosphorescent, and the greenish light they gave off reminded Asa of the way directors sometimes lit cemeteries in scary movies.

             
He walked forward, occasionally glancing down the vast, green hallways that led off the main corridor.
I wonder if Volkner is being tortured somewhere in this facility,
Asa thought.

             
The long hallway ended in a jewel-encrusted gold door, which automatically opened wide when Asa approached.

             
“Come in, Palmer. Take a seat.” Robert King sat behind his massive mahogany desk, wearing a maniacal smile as though something was very funny. His eyes were black orbs—all pupils—and his hair was immaculately combed over to the right side of his head. Jamie sat atop his desk. There was no leash coming down from his neck today. The David was wearing a clean white collar, a New York Yankees jersey, and shorts tailored to fit his chimp legs. He eyed Asa as he came in and sat down.

             
Even though Asa had seen Robert King’s office before, it was still startlingly impressive to him. The right wall shone through to the biggest aquarium in the world; the rippling water above sent a calming blue light into the room. On the left was Jamie’s giant playroom, which was enclosed in golden bars. Pictures lined the walls—some paintings, some photographs.

             
Asa’s eyes stopped on one particular photo and he felt his breath stop in his throat. The image was of his father and an orangutan, both of whom were smiling. The picture was labeled, “FRANCINE BLACK AND EDMUND PALMER.”

             
In his mind, Asa could hear his father’s voice telling him to find Francine Black.
Francine Black is a David?
Asa thought.

             
He did not have much more time to think about this, because Robert King spoke: “Do you like the photos?” Robert King asked. His head twitched to the right—a side effect of Vipocrit—and his country accent had been replaced with clear and fast speech.

             
“Yes, sir,” Asa said, turning back to Robert King casually, as though he did not know that Edmund Palmer was his father, or anything about Francine Black.

             
Robert King smiled—or he showed his teeth, at least. “Let’s get down to business, Palmer. Why do you think that I brought you here?”

             
Asa went with a safe answer: “I don’t know, sir.”

             
Robert King showed his teeth again. He seemed to be more on-edge than last time he met with Asa. “Where did you go the night of the dance, Palmer? You didn’t stay there all night, did you?”

             
Asa’s mouth felt terribly dry. “I-uhhh…”

             
“What’s that, Palmer?”

             
Asa tried to swallow. He felt trapped. He hated how Robert King never revealed how little or how much information he had. He wished that The Boss would slip into one of his rants about how he might be a god, instead of going forward with this line of questioning. “I was with Multipliers,” Asa said. As soon as the words were out, he regretted them.
But what else was I supposed to say?

             
“I know,” Robert King said, although Asa wasn’t sure if he believed The Boss’s words. “Why were you with them, Asa?”

             
Sweat was gathering on Asa’s forehead, and he wiped it away with the sleeve of his suit. He felt so helpless. He desperately wished he had come up with a lie to tell anyone who questioned him. Now, he found that the only plausible story he had was the truth. He decided that he would attempt to leave some crucial things out.

             
“I was trying to stop them. I started feeling sick at the dance, so I went out for a walk. I was getting some fresh air when I spotted the Multipliers.”

             
“A walk?”
Robert King asked, his eyebrows raised to indicate that he knew Asa was lying.

             
“Well, it was more of a fly,” Asa corrected. “And I saw some people on the banks of Fishie Mountain. So, I flew down to see what they were up to.”

             
“I see,” said Robert King, his black eyes rolling in their sockets. It was impossible to know what he was looking at. “So then, what?”

             
Asa was breathing, thinking hard. He had already skipped the part about Teddy so that Conway and Mama wouldn’t get in trouble for illegally keeping a Multiplier in their basement. He also didn’t want to tell about how he was bitten. “And then they took me as a hostage.”

             
“As a hostage?”

             
Asa nodded. He looked over at Jamie, who was shaking his head in disbelief. Asa went on: “They said that they were going on some kind of mission—they wanted to steal something, but wouldn’t tell me what. They said that they wanted me as a hostage in case someone attacked them. Then, we got in a boat, and came over…”

             
Robert King’s hand pounded down on the top of the desk and Asa jumped. “Listen, Palmer, I’m not asking you to get information, I know what happened that night. I’m asking you to see if you’re lying.”

             
“I’m not lying,” Asa said. Something in Robert King’s face made Asa believe that The Boss did not have all the information that he claimed to. Asa was not going to tell the truth. If Robert King found out about the secrets that Asa’s DNA held, he might be subjected to cruel laboratory tests.

             
The Boss rubbed his temples. “Here’s the deal, young Palmer. I know you’re lying. I know it for a fact. But I also have…incentives not to punish you. Never mind that. Let me make you understand something; I don’t care if you killed a graduate that night. Honestly, I don’t. I don’t care how you got into the situation you got into. All I care about is one thing—did the Multipliers get what they were after?”

             
In truth, the answer was
yes and no.
They had not acquired the vaccines, but they had gotten away with some of Asa’s blood, which was on Allen’s shirt and was laced with DNA that could code for the same results the vaccines could produce. Asa hesitated, and then said bluntly, “I destroyed the vaccines.”

             
Robert King’s eyes widened, and Asa saw with some pleasure that he had actually surprised The Boss. “Under the Shop?”

             
“The vaccines are gone. The Multipliers didn’t get them.”

             
Robert King nodded, and then reached down for something in a lower desk drawer. He sat up straighter, cradling an item beneath the desk so that Asa couldn’t see it. “You did a good thing, Asa. And I like to reward people who do good things. Put your hand on the desk, palm up.”

             
Asa hesitated.

             
“Don’t hesitate, Palmer. It will do no good. You don’t really have a choice.”

             
This was true. Robert King had the power to make Asa do just about anything. Asa put his hand on the desk, palm up.

             
Robert King rubbed the inside of Asa’s forearm, just below his suit, with an alcohol pad. The smell burned Asa’s nostrils. “What are you doing?” he asked.

             
“Giving you a reward,” Robert King said. “I’ve already told you that.” Then, The Boss pulled a tiny syringe filled with white liquid up onto the desk. He flicked Asa’s arm to make the veins stand out. “Don’t be nervous. It won’t hurt much.”

             
The needle went into Asa’s vein, and Robert King squeezed the plunger so that the white liquid shot into Asa’s cardiovascular system. Asa’s heart was working hard due to his anxiety, and he expected to collapse at any minute from whatever drug Robert King had just injected.

             
Robert King removed the needle, and then dabbed at Asa’s blood with a gauze pad. Asa sat there for a minute, feeling normal.

             
“You can go, now,” Robert King said.

             
“What was that? What did you just inject me with?”

             
The Boss winked. “It’s a mutation. You’ll find out. Go now, Asa. I don’t want to have to ask you again.”

             
A little scared about what might be running through his veins at that time, Asa stood up and began to walk out. He looked up at the picture of Francine Black and his father as he passed it.

              Two hours later, Asa found that the white vaccine Robert King had injected him with still had no effect. Deciding that there was no point in lying around Viola’s dwelling all day speculating about what his body might do, Asa grabbed his shovel and set off into the forest behind the dwellings to work on what he had planned for the day.

             
His father’s words played in his head as he walked over the crunching leaves:
“If you show compassion for the Davids, they will find you. Honestly love them. Develop a charitable heart towards them. Don’t think that you will ever control them. Do these things, and they will find you.”

             
Asa thought about his father’s view of the Davids regularly.
Will Jamie ever truly have allegiance to Robert King, always being locked up?

             
The sun glinted down through the forest leaves and hit the dark-dirt floor in a series of scattered beams. Dust hung in the air. Asa walked past the spot where he had buried Harold Kensing’s body; if he had not memorized the configuration of trees surrounding the spot, he would not be able to identify it. The area where the man was buried looked just like any other spot of dirt on the mountainside.

             
It had been, in part, thinking of how he had buried Harold Kensing’s body that made Asa conceive the task he was now participating in. The idea of a fellow human rotting above ground had disturbed Asa, so he had given the policeman’s body a halfway decent burial.

             
Honestly love them.

             
Asa walked further in, giving his Rolex the occasional glance as he moved on to make sure he would not miss tonight’s graduation ceremony. The birds sang overhead, and the bushes occasionally shook with the movement of a scurrying squirrel. He went on like that for hours, letting his mind wander on different topics. He did not have a systematic way of finding what he was looking for, but instead hoped to stumble upon one. He knew there were still more out here. He had found a dozen in the past three days.

             
He thought a lot about Teddy. Seeing his friend change into a monster had transformed his thinking of Multipliers. Before, he had viewed them as malicious and evil creatures that longed to destroy. Now, Asa compared them to drug addicts, and believed that they were something to be pitied. They were beings that hurt others because they are hurting. Drug addicts sometimes stole for drug money.
The Multipliers bite, scheme and plan to take over the humans because sitting idle and knowing that unbitten flesh is still present in the world is painful to them.
Teddy had betrayed Asa—this is true—but he did it out of what he felt was a necessity.
The Multipliers are addicted to power—they are addicted to anything that gets them closer to controlling the world.