The Academy: Book 1 (21 page)

            Asa entered in silence among the other
Fishies. He took his seat, and waited patiently for what would come next.

            In the back of the room was a doorway opposite the one that Asa entered. A beam of light shown out and Asa guessed that it was a closet. From the back of the closet, an additional door opened and closed, and the shadow of a person was spilled across the floor, stretching into the classroom. Asa was staring at it—the figure was long and thin, and was bustling around in the closet, seemingly looking for something.

            Asa glanced around the room at all of the Fishies. He counted twelve. A curly haired male two rows up turned his armband into a laptop, and others, including Asa, followed his lead.

            A horrible, but faint smell was filling the room. It reminded Asa of the time a rat had died in his home’s ventilation system. He couldn’t tell, but he suspected that the smell was coming from the man in the closet.

            Whenever the man stepped out, Asa closed his eyes for a second. Asa took one breath, and opened them; he didn’t want the man to see Asa scared.

            He was wearing the same white suit that he had worn when he had poisoned Asa the day before. He smiled at the
Fishies, his eyes gray and cold, and Asa noticed that his gums were not only black, but also swollen, and riddled with small growths.

            Asa took a moment to take stock of the situation—
He poisoned me last night, and now he’s allowed to come into a small classroom with me? Why? Why would they let him do that?

           
And, why me? Still, why does he want to kill me? Why did Harold Kensing pull me over? Why put so much effort into getting rid of me? What have I done? Why do I pose a threat? What is to gain by my blood?

            And then there were the shootings in class today. They killed one student for saying, “bless you,” and another for screaming. I didn’t know that screaming qualified as communication, but a few seconds after she opened her mouth, they silenced her. So, then, why did this man try to poison me? Why not shoot me right now? Why be secret about it? What would be the consequences?

            The man in the white suit greeted himself: “Hello, my name is Volkner. I will be your Introduction to the Academy Professor this semester.” His voice was smooth and even. He squared his shoulders, and seemed to talk with his entire body, giving subtle messages with the way that he shifted his weight. It was impossible not to listen to him; he was magnetic. “I’m glad that everyone could make it,” he said, and eyed Asa with a sneer.

             
Volkner opened up his jacket, and slid out a long, pointed knife. He placed the weapon on the desk at the front of the room and said—“I shouldn’t have to, but I will remind you that the talking ban does not cease for another six days. Should anyone attempt to speak, I will have to physically stop it.”

             
He paced back and forth and continued to talk. “Now. I know that I’ve seen a few of you out and about, and I recognize some from the cafeteria. Let me start with this: The Academy is a big and confusing place. One third of you, statistically, will make it out alive. Understand the stakes, and give it your best. That’s all that you can do.

             
“Do not let yourself get too worked up. I can think of a dozen students off the top of my head that have literally been driven insane by the workload and schedule that you are about to endure. You will always feel like you are drowning. It will be a suffocating feeling, and some of you, matter of fact, will suffocate. But the ones who make it are the ones who keep a positive attitude; who don’t let the dire, dim circumstances affect them too much.”

             
Volkner sat down atop the desk and crossed his long legs as he looked out at the twelve, typing students. “Where to begin?” he asked himself. “Ah! I forget. I am supposed to explain what I am to new students. As you may have noticed, I am not like you. I have no hair, the cold doesn’t bother me as much as it does you, and the tissue on the inside of my mouth is black, a product of virulent bacteria.”

             
He smiled. “You may, actually, be able to smell it. Some describe the smell of the bacteria as decaying flesh. I cannot smell it anymore, as the bacteria are constantly sitting before my nostrils; however, whenever I was like you, I remember that people like me did, in fact, smell of decaying flesh.

             
“I am called a Multiplier, and I am different in ways that you cannot see, or perhaps weren’t keen enough to notice. For one, I am much stronger than people like you. I am much stronger than even the chaperones are. My eyes move faster than the normal human’s. I breathe only three times a minute, unless I’m talking, in which case I must breathe to produce air to make my vocal cords vibrate. It is not for a need of oxygen. You see, The Academy is, among other things, a place that capitalizes on private advances is genetics technology.

             
“This, on its own, is a dangerous thing. Your nurse injected you with multiple vaccines. Many of you may have experienced a pain in your upper back. You are, believe it or not, growing wings. This alone is a risk for obvious reasons—the method has only been around for a decade and a half. And it has remained private so that the testing sample is extremely small. You could, for instance, grow bones in your heart (this is an example that actually happened) puncture your myocardial tissue, and bleed to death internally. Or, a former student’s wings grew too far forward, and when they were fully developed and they were supposed to shoot straight out of the skin in her back, they took with them her spinal cord. She died. And, many more just collapse and we never figure out what’s wrong with them.

             
“Don’t be mistaken—growing wings is not the most extreme mutation that you will undergo here. There are some that are much more pervasive and extensive.

             
“The principal behind our genetics is simple, but the practice of manipulating it is complicated. Your entire body—every hair on your head, every cell of every fingernail, and every drop of pigmentation on your skin—is controlled by DNA. DNA is like a tiny, twisted ladder that sits within each of your cells, and contains information that tells your body how to grow.

             
“The funny thing about DNA, is that a bunch of it is simply junk. You may have heard, for instance, that chimpanzees differ only 1.5% in DNA from humans. On the surface, this doesn’t make sense. Two twins may seem to be 98.5% identical to us, while a chimp looks degrees and degrees different from a human.

             
“If a chimp, my genetic cousin, were standing beside me today, you would find that there were many differences between us—the chimp’s hands would be larger, and have thicker skin than mine. The chimp would have thick, full hair covering its whole body. The chimp would have bigger teeth than me. The chimp’s nose wouldn’t protrude like mine. The chimp’s big toe would be longer, more flexible, and more coordinated than mine.

             
“I could go on, but I think that you get the idea.

             
“Although the chimp and human’s DNA is 98.5 percent identical, their features are not 98.5 percent identical.

             
“Why is this?

             
“The answer to this seeming discrepancy is that only two percent of human DNA is ever ‘turned on’.

             
“If we were to travel up or down one of your DNA ladders, we would find vast patterns of genes that were turned on, followed by even vaster patterns of genes that were turned off. Whether or not a gene is turned ‘on,’ or ‘off’ is controlled by little switchboards on the ladders.”

             
Volkner picked up the knife and played with it in his hands as he spoke the information. Asa was typing fast, trying to get it all down.

            “Because of this, genetic manipulation isn’t as difficult as it was once thought. This is because a lot of people have a bunch of ‘junk cells’ that can be turned on to alter the body. For instance, even though humans’ do not grow wings, they still have the genetic capability to. But, it’s just turned off. So, we give you an injection to turn it back on.

              "There is an abundance of truly remarkable things in these 'junk cells,' many of which remain to be undiscovered.

            “Other animals have bits of DNA information like this too; the majority of the vast library of instructions in their cells is 'turned off'. You might have noticed the raccoons. They are an example of an animal that we have genetically altered their temperament. When the Academy was founded, we needed an efficient, cheap way to clean our facilities. So, we searched for an animal that already had a natural preoccupation with cleanliness—raccoons keep their dens in tip-top shape. We brought them here, and attempted to alter them until we got the perfect mix. I believe that we killed ten thousand before perfecting the formula, but it was well worth it.

            “What was I talking of originally? I tend to go off on tangents.

            “
Mmmmm, yes. I was talking about what I am. I am a Multiplier.

             
"Me being a Multiplier means many things, but for the sake of security, I will only focus on the few that you will need to know. The first thing that it means is that I am not an Academy graduate. Graduates are the members of the Academy who go out and perform the ground work for the organization. Multipliers have been band from this responsibility for the past 11 years. The second thing that my post means is that I benefit from genetic advances that no one else does. I am stronger, and faster than any non-Multiplier on earth. My muscle fibers are bound to a degree that makes them seven times denser than a normal humans." He smiled, his black gums showing again.

             
Vokner paused and twirled the knife in his fingers. Asa looked up from typing and concentrated on the pain in his lower back. He shifted forward and flexed his muscles, trying to feel the two distinct spots where his wings were growing—trying his best to ensure that they werent' coming in in a place that would spontaneously shoot out his spinal cord.

             
"Now that I've properly and thoroughly introduced myself, I will begin the task of introducing the Academy."

             
Volkner cocked his head at one of Asa's classmates and Asa saw, to his horror, that he was raising his hand. The Fishie with his hand raised was bald, and Asa noticed, after a second of studying him, that it was the same tall, lanky Fishie with the wine-stain scars on the back of his head that Charlotte had been talking to on the ship ride across the Moat.

             
Is he going to ask a question? Has he forgotten about the warnings and the talking ban? Is he trying to get himself killed?

             
Volkner picked up his knife and walked over to the Fishie, who was sitting in the front row. Volkner tossed his blade as he went. He stood over the boy so that his shadow fell on him. "Do you have a question?" Volkner asked. His eyebrows were raised and his mouth was contorted in a dreadful way that Asa didn't know whether to label a snarl or a smile.

             
The Fishie had one long, slender hand raised in the air, and was staring at his computer screen as though he didn't know that Volkner had even approached. "Why is your hand up?
Communicating
that you need something?" Volkner asked, stressing the word communicating.

             
The scarred Fishie kept his hand in the air and did not move his eyes from his computer screen. He kept as still as a statue.

             
Volkner bent his knees and knelt, limber as a cat, beside the Fishie. He looked him in the face. "They've told me about you," he growled. "They told me how smart you are. They told me about how you argued against Einstein on that YouTube video."

             
The Fishie kept his right hand held erectly in the air, and stared at his computer screen. Volkner took his blade up from beside him and pushed the laptop with the tip, making it slide across the table and out of the Fishie’s view.

             
Volkner's voice dropped even lower. It was an awful, unearthly sound, too low for any human to make. It sounded like a lawn mower talking. "They told me that you want to be called Stridor—that you came up with the name yourself. They told me that you were bold, and smart, and that you were special. Can I tell you something, Stridor?"

             
A stream of black liquid, as thick as molasses and dark as night began to run down Volkner's chin from the corner of his mouth. He reached his white sleeve up and wiped away the drool, leaving a stain that looked like motor oil on his shirt. "You're not special here. I don't think you're special. You haven't proven anything to me."

             
Stridor kept still. He honestly looked like he didn't know anyone was speaking to him. This seemed to infuriate Volkner who was kneeling beside him. Asa could smell the breath from where he sat, two rows back. A Fishie with soft blond hair sat beside Stridor. She looked to be only twelve, even though Asa knew that she had to be around fifteen. Her hands were shaking and silent tears were rolling down her cheeks. Asa could sympathize with her: something in the way Volkner smelled, something in the stench that came out of his bacteria ridden mouth made Asa's instincts scream at him to pick up his chair, hurl it at the predator, and run for his life. His heart was racing, his blood pressure was up, and he was taking deep, quick breaths in and out of his nose. Stridor, on the other hand, seemed to be about to fall asleep. His face looked bored, and he still kept the convincing appearance that he was not aware that someone was holding a knife and breathing into his face.