The Academy: Book 2 (56 page)

             
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 dials 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?

             
“What is happening?” he said out loud. He slid down to the floor and hugged his knees. He tried to think, to make a plan, but nothing came to him in his tired mind. Then, he remembered. He wasn’t alone anymore. He had his teammates—they were his family. He could confide in them.

             
He stood, yanked the door open, locked it, and glided down to Viola’s dwelling. He stood at her threshold, banging on the door until she opened it. Her black hair was a mess. “Asa? It’s midnight.”

             
“We need to talk. Instant Message the whole team until they get here. I can’t sleep.”

             
Though Viola looked tired, she took what Asa was saying seriously. She let him into her dwelling, and he sat down at the long kitchen table beside the fire. Slits of moonlight light came in through the wooden vents in the roof and made stripes of silver on the floor. Viola sat across from Asa, opened her armband, and sent a message to the rest of the team.

             
All of the Sharks had installed a program so that if one of their teammates messaged them, the fabric would flap around violently, until they woke up.

             
“I’ll make tea,” Viola said.

             
Twenty minutes later, they had all arrived except for Stan and Janice, who Viola didn’t bother to message. The Sharks all had bags under their eyes and messy hair. Seeing how tired they were and knowing that they had to get up early made Asa feel slightly guilty. He wondered why he wasn’t able to wait to talk to them until morning.

             
Viola made tea and coffee for anyone who wanted it. Asa accepted some coffee, knowing that he wasn’t going to be able to sleep anyways. He stirred in two servings of vanilla cream, and sipped occasionally as he told them everything that had happened in the past two days.

             
He started by talking about how Teddy had been bitten; this was received with whimpers of anxiety from his teammates.

“Poor Teddy,” Viola said.

“So where is he right now?” Bruce asked in a raspy, tired voice. He was sitting so close to Roxanne on a bench that their shoulders were touching.

“Teddy is in Conway’s cabin. He has a sort of jail cell in the basement. I don’t know why; he never told me exactly what it was for, but it’s being used to hold Teddy.”

Viola poured herself more tea. “Do you think that him being bitten has anything to do with how odd he’s been acting? His pupils…” she paused, trying to find the right words, “are not normal. They’re the size of an owl’s!” She shook her head. “And he’s been doing so unnaturally well in all of his classes.”

“What are you trying to say?” Mike Plode asked.
His red hair was sticking straight up, and he stared at Viola with unmoving green eyes. He spoke with a bluntness that sometimes offended people. Asa believed this was a result of strong pragmatism, not a lack of sympathy or emotion.

Viola shrugged. “I don’t know. I just think that it’s a little weird that all of those things happened to
Teddy.
Why him?”

This had been troubling Asa too. “Teddy thinks
that on the day he was bitten, the Multiplier was waiting for me inside my dwelling. Teddy entered, and so he got bit.”

Lilly Bloodroot’s purple eyes seemed to glow in the firelight. She was staring at the wall, and had a far-off look on her face, as she often did. Asa didn’t know that she was listening until she asked, “What did the Multiplier look like that bit Teddy?”

              “I didn’t think to ask him last night,” Asa admitted. “I should have, though, and I will. I will also ask him about the other things—his dilated pupils, the math on the walls of his mansion, the good grades, and the generally odd behavior.”

             
“I think that’s a good next step,” Roxanne said. She was now snuggled up next to Bruce, who had his arm around her. Asa found this hard to look at, thinking about how Roxanne’s Multiplier boyfriend would literally kill Bruce if he saw this.

             
“He’s been way too smart this semester,” Viola said, repeating the idea. Knowing that she had noticed this too, made Asa somehow feel better. “I mean, he was always smart, don’t get me wrong, but this semester, Teddy’s been freaky. It’s like his brain is a computer, and when he watches Professor Stern write on the board, it’s like there’s a video camera behind his massive pupils, taking everything in. I can’t believe that he figured out about the clock in Flying Class. It makes me scared to think what else he might have been able to figure out. I’m curious about your dad’s riddle, for one thing.”

             
“Me too,” Asa said simply.

             
“Tell us what happened tonight, now,” Roxanne said. She was tired-appearing, but remained politely attentive as Asa relayed the rest of the story, talking about Carmen’s visit. He spoke for minutes on end, relaying what had happened while the rest of the team listened attentively. He began with finding Carmen in his dwelling, and ended the story at knocking on Viola’s door.

             
“How do we know she’s not from the Hive?” Jen asked. “Why should we believe what this person told Asa?”

             
“There are different Multipliers, remember,” said Boom Boom. “Don’t forget that Adam Trotter told us that the Academy caught a different kind of Multiplier and was interrogating him. For all we know, there could be dozens of different kinds of mutated humans. Maybe the Multipliers and graduates we’ve seen are just the tip of the iceberg.”

             
“True, but that doesn’t mean that Carmen wasn’t from the Hive.”

             
“I don’t think that she was from the Hive,” Asa said. “I think that if she were, she would have bitten me.”

             
They considered this for a while. The candle flames flickered and when Bruce next spoke, his voice sounded gruff and tired, like he was fighting sleep.

             
“What if she was from the Academy?”

             
“Why would she want to warn me of a Multiplier attack if she was from the Academy?” Asa asked. “The Multipliers in the Academy want me dead, or worse, bitten.”

             
“No,” Bruce corrected. “What they want is for the contract between themselves and your father to be broken. And all that needs to happen to break the contract is both you and Charlotte need to somehow fail out of the Academy. That includes dying, being bitten by a Multiplier, and, don’t forget, running away. Maybe she’s trying to trick you into running away.”

             
“But I don’t think that she was from the Academy. I’ve never seen her before.”

             
“Doesn’t matter. I’m in my fourth semester here, and I still see Multipliers that I’ve never seen before.”

             
There was another moment of silence. Lilly Bloodroot still had a dreamy look upon her face. “Imagine if we did leave, though. Wouldn’t that be kind of nice? We could travel together. I know there’s a chance that they’d catch us, but what if they didn’t? What if we were able to get away cleanly? We wouldn’t have any more schoolwork. We would be free of all this fear they hang over our heads. We could change our names; move into a city somewhere. Even if we couldn’t get a legitimate job, we could steal. As fast as we are, we would be uncatchable.”

             
“That would be nice, but then what?” Mike Plode drained his coffee and wiped his mouth hastily on his sleeve. “We just wait for the Multipliers to take over the Academy, and then the world? That’s what would happen. If Asa leaves, they only have to make Charlotte, fail, die, or run away, and then the contract is broken. Then they’ll be able to make Multipliers in the Academy. If they do that, who will be left standing to stop the Hive when they try to take over the world? No one. Even if we got away from this place, the Multipliers would come find us. They’d bite everyone until there were no normal humans left. Asa can’t leave. We’ve got to stay here; it’s our only option. I think the best thing that we can do is try to stand and fight.”