The Academy: Book 2 (30 page)

             
Asa felt chills go up his spine. He, Teddy and Charlotte had been involved in Professor Kayce’s death last semester.

             
“What does that have to do with anything?” Volkner asked.

             
“HE DISAPEARED AFTER I CONFRONTED YOU ABOUT THE HIVE! HE KNEW TOO MUCH! YOU HAD HIM KILLED!”

             
Volkner threw his hands up in frustration, and walked in a small circle. “What do you think that place is, anyways? The Hive? There’s no such thing!”

             
“You told Kayce about it,” Robert King said. “Didn’t you? Don’t lie to me.”

             
“No,” Volkner said.

             
“Swear to me that you didn’t tell him about it.”

             
Volkner looked at Robert King for a moment, measuring him. “I swear.”

             
The Boss stood solemnly and then said. “Let’s sit back down.” They did so, both men still looking angry at the confrontation that had just occurred. Anger seemed to bring Volkner’s confidence back.

             
“I will admit that some of the choices I made last semester were…ill advised,” said Volkner. “But I promise you, I had no motives of bringing this place down. In trying to kill Palmer, I was only trying to help it.”

             
Robert King rocked back and forth. Volkner averted his eyes from The Boss’s massive pupils. “Then why, when I put you in charge of getting rid of the boy and Charlotte, did you not do something like we are doing this semester?”

             
Volkner looked blank. “I don’t know what you’re doing this semester.”

             
Robert King sat up straighter, excited. “It was mine and Gene’s idea.” He rubbed his large hands together. “Remember, the crows will see any unfairness as a violation of the contract. I think next time, they’ll tell the world’s armies about the location of The Academy. Then we’d be done for sure. They’d nuke us, I think. I don’t think they’d take kindly to us kidnapping teenagers and turning them into super humans—it’d freak people out.

             
“But, we still want to get rid of Palmer and Charlotte. If we’re able to do so, we can have an army of Multipliers to guard the premises! The advantages to having creatures like you guarding us over ordinary Academy graduates would be enormous. For one, your kind is much stronger. You don’t sleep, you’re much more diligent, too. We need more of you. But in order to do so, Palmer and Charlotte must die. But, it must happen fairly. They must have the same chance of graduating as the rest of the Academy.

             
“The solution is so simple. We’re making this semester’s task much more lethal than ever before. Increase the number of students that die, and you increase your chances of killing Palmer and Stokes. And, if it doesn’t work, there’s always next semester: We’ll just have to devise a task harder and more lethal then. And, if they survive to their final semester, we might just put all the students in a situation where they’d all die. Why not? It’d be fair, wouldn’t it? All would have an equal chance!”

             
Volkner considered. Before he could answer, Robert King spoke up.

             
“Do you believe in God, Rasmus?”

             
“I…sir…I don’t see the point in the question.”

             
Robert King tilted his head, and put his fingertips together. “What I’m wondering, more specifically, is if you believe in destiny?”

             
“I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”

             
“I want to know if you believe that the future is fixed, pre-ordained. Do you think that God, or something, put me here, in charge of the Academy? Do you think that if he did, he’d be mad if I made it implode? I’ve been thinking about doing away with this place, Volkner. Another question: Do you think that Jesus always knew he was the Son of God, if you believe in Jesus, of course.”

             
“Sir, I…”

             
“While, Rasmus, I think that you’re scum, I think that you’re smart scum.” Robert King looked at his watch. “Our meeting is about to come to an end. I don’t think that you’ll like what happens next—our meeting was a test, and you failed. But, being smart scum, I thought that I’d ask you a question first: If I was the true Son of God, how would I know it?”

             
Volkner looked worried. He smiled nervously, showing three teeth on his bottom black gums and one tooth on the top. These were the only teeth in his mouth.

             
“Or, how about I frame it this way—I think that I am special, Volkner. I offer intellectual an challenge: Can you prove that I am not special?” Robert King’s head twitched to the right.

             
“I-I-I,”

             
“Answer!”

             
“I think that you are special, sir! You’re the richest person in history! You don’t get that much money by being ordinary.”

             
“True,” Robert King said. He snorted. “Now, can you think of any reason why I wouldn’t be the Son of God?”

             
Slow tears trickled down Volkner’s face. “Don’t put me back in the box! Please! I don’t want to go back there!”

             
“You’re going back there, Rasmus. You failed your test, remember? I’ve said this already. Can you not recall that?”

             
“What test?” Volkner said.

             
The Boss laughed. He flipped a switch underneath his desk and shackles came out, locking Volkner to his chair. Volkner writhed and squirmed, and then started to scream.

             
“Relax, it’s simply an injection in your neck. It won’t kill you. But, you do need something to subdue your strength a bit. It can be frustrating how strong you are sometimes.”

             
Volkner pulled and tugged on the metal, but it was no use. He was trapped.

             
“You asked about the test: The test came when I asked you if you had ever told Professor Kayce about the Hive.”

             
“NEVER!”

             
Robert King waved a finger in front of Volkner’s face. “You’ve failed again, Rasmus! You are lying to the Son of God. You realize that, don’t you? Let us listen to a clip.”

             
Speakers popped, and then a voice was played throughout the room. “But what is kept in this Hive?” came a voice that Asa recognized as Professor Kayce’s.

             
Volkner’s voice responded on the recording, except it was much deeper then than it was now. And the words were clearer, because he had all his teeth at the time the recording was taken: “It’s a place where we do what we’re made to: We Multiply. I can’t tell you where yet, but in time you’ll see. I’ll take you there. There are a quarter-million Multipliers living there, waiting to come out. They have carved tunnels deep underground, with thousands of hallways. We have gatherers that sneak out at night, steal humans, and…”

             
“I think that’s enough,” Robert King said, and he cut off the tape.

             
Volkner’s face had gone even paler than usual.

             
“Tell me, Volkner, was the Multiplier who bit this Brumi girl from the Hive? Are there Multipliers on the premises that do not work for the Academy?”

             
Volkner did not respond, and he pursed his lips.

             
“I know that you don’t want to talk now, but you will. Maybe after a few more weeks in the box, you won’t lie to your God any longer.” He pressed the intercom button and asked the guard to come in and retrieve the prisoner.

             
Volkner kicked and screamed and begged and cried. Two Academy graduates came in and injected yet another syringe into Volkner—this one knocked him completely unconscious. They unstrapped him from the chair and drug him outside.

             
Asa was breathing hard as he rested upon the beam, staring down through the water at Robert King’s office. As the two guards secured Volkner’s near-naked body, there was a loud, monotone sound, and Robert King looked from where he sat out at his enormous aquarium.

             
The hair on the back of Asa’s neck stood up, and he was frozen with fear. Robert King was looking up at the surface, where Asa and Jen had been spying on him.

             
Directly following the tone, the ocean creatures began to swim to the surface. An orca swam directly below Asa, and he could have reached out and touched its black, wet fin. Sharks circled, along with dolphins, turtles, and all types of fish. The tone seemed to have signaled them to come to the top.

             
Asa could feel his heartbeat in his neck.
What is going on?

             
Then, the same tone sounded again, and thousands of metal hatches opened up from the ceiling. Thousands of camels, giraffes, goats, and cows were dropped into the water, where they made enormous splashes. A camel was dropped four feet from Asa. It splashed into the water, and its head emerged wet and shrieking moments later. It had time to doggy-paddle three paces before a shark bit heavily into the animal’s abdomen, ripping out a string of intestines.

             
That tone meant that it’s feeding time for the animals,
Asa realized.

             
The water beneath them grew blood red, and even more animals continued to fall.

             
With the water obscured, Asa and Jen began the long journey back to the outside world. 

             
As they quietly made their way over the beams and through the various tunnels, Asa thought of the possibility that there was an underground facility somewhere that housed a quarter-million Multipliers. Is that possible? Asa was under the impression that all the Multipliers were confined to the Academy.

             
He decided that he would again try to contact Conway. Conway didn’t want to give Asa information, but now that he had it, maybe he would be willing to piece it together for him. And, if not, maybe Mama would help him.

14

First Winggame Match: Sharks Versus Armadillos

              After warming up, the Sharks sat in one of the generic underground locker rooms that teams were permitted to occupy prior to their games. It was a cold, damp, stone room that was currently dripping water from the ceiling. There was a drain in the floor through which the water could exit. The chairs and tables were made of undecorated metal that smelled of rust. The locker rooms were unlike the vast, decorative, expensive rooms that the were normal in the Academy.

             
In the front of the room, Bruce Thurman, one of the fourth semester students on the Sharks, was addressing his teammates. Bruce Thurman was ugly. He was stout, and abnormally large features characterized his face. His lips, his nose, and his ears all were chronically puffy and swollen; they looked as though they had just suffered multiple wasp stings.

             
By watching interactions during practice and meetings, Asa had come to the conclusion that Bruce Thurman was attracted to his team captain, Roxanne Hurst. Obviously, with Roxanne dating a Multiplier, Bruce recognized that he could be killed for ever making a formal statement or gesture that revealed his attraction to Roxanne. Still, the subtle signs were there. Bruce seemed to be excessively encouraging and supporting of his captain whenever she had an idea. When Roxanne told a joke, Bruce would laugh at a degree that was not proportional to the humor of the jest. Asa thought that when Bruce and Roxanne spoke, Bruce would drift too close to Roxanne’s face, and would make too much eye contact for the interaction to be viewed as normal.