The Academy: Book 2 (68 page)

             
Asa would have waited for hours before getting out of the desk, but shortly after the Multipliers left, Jen broke out into gasping, hysteric sobs. “Bruce,” she said. She shoved the desk away from the wall, and it collapsed to the floor.

             
“
Jen!
” Asa whispered. His eyes took in the foyer. If the Multipliers were anywhere close, they would have heard the noise.
“Come back here! What are you doing?”

             
Jen wasn’t listening to him. He heard the bottom of her shoes sucking in puddles of blood and Salvaserum as she made her way across the classroom. She flicked on the lights and then got on her knees beside Bruce’s grotesque body. She cradled his head, and wept.

             
Asa covered his mouth and leaned his back against the wall. He was scared the Multipliers would return. He was revolted by Bruce’s figure, and wondered how Jen was able to cradle his skull without disgust. She had blood all over her shirt now, her hands, and her knees. Her face was inches away from Bruce’s, and her tears fell on his exposed tendons and muscles.

             
“My God, Bruce,” she wept. She bent down, and kissed a spot on his hair that wasn’t bloody. She closed Bruce’s eyes, sat his head gently down on the concrete, and stood up. “We need to go,” she said. She looked frazzled, and her eyes were red with tears.

             
“Go where?”

             
Jen sniffed and looked at Asa as though confused that he didn’t already know. “We’ve got to follow them.”

             
“The Multipliers?”

             
Jen nodded.

             
“That’s crazy.” Asa felt sick. He was so disturbed by what he had just seen the Multipliers do that he felt like he might never be normal again. The last thing that he wanted to do was follow them—to have more experiences with these Multipliers.

             
Jen scowled through tears, and pointed a finger at Asa. “You should come. You said that you wanted to learn more about these guys, and here is our chance. Ned is still dripping blood; we could follow them to their base; he’ll leave a trail. I don’t know about you, but I want to get back at these bastards for killing Bruce. I’m doing this, Palmer.” She turned on her heels and began to stride out the room.

             
Asa stood there for a moment, thinking of what to say. He stammered, and then called to her weakly. “Jen…” He didn’t have much time to think, though, and his brain wasn’t working as well as usual. He looked over at Bruce’s carcass—they were the only ones in the room—and shuddered. He heard his feet on the bloody floor, and felt himself turn off the lights as he moved into the foyer. He followed Jen, but it was strange—he felt distant from himself, numb.

             
Asa would never have followed Jen if he had been in a better mental state. But he wasn’t. He could not compute how bad of a decision following her was.

             
As Asa came out of the Lab, he saw Jen running ahead of him in the moonlight. It was easy for Asa catch up, because he had received more strength mutations than Jen.

             
There was a light breeze in the air. Streetlights from Town twinkled off the gently shifting water of the Moat, which was to Asa’s back. After a few minutes of running, Asa realized that he and Jen were headed through the Arctic jungle to the backside of Fishie Mountain. He had never been there before.

             
The Multipliers were easy to follow. They were fast, but they couldn’t fly, and so they left footprints in the snow and the dirt. Even more noticeable was the trail of blood that followed behind them. Allen, Rose, and Ned were all bloody, and Ned was still bleeding.

             
Asa and Jen moved on foot through the darkest places in the jungle. The canopy was so thick that the moon only shone through in trickles the size of silver coins that littered the ground. They moved deeper, jumping over logs and ducking under hanging vines, but Asa’s mind was elsewhere.

             
He was thinking about what to do next. In his mind, he could see Allen sitting on top of Bruce. He could hear his rumbling voice as he said,
“We have a mission that we will complete tomorrow night. The wheels are set in motion, and nothing will stop us now.”

             
Asa’s breath came out white in the cold.

             
So it’s true,
he thought.
They are planning on attacking the Academy tomorrow, just like Carmen the Multiplier Hunter had said. We have one more day of safety, and then tens of thousands of Multipliers are going to swarm over the Academy, killing and Multiplying every human they can.

             
There were two events planned for tomorrow—the Winggame Championship, and the dance. Asa looked up ahead and saw his date dodge a tree in the dark jungle—she was still covered in blood.

Asa saw advantages in the Multipliers attacking
during the events tomorrow. In both instances, the majority of the Academy would be gathered in one place; an attack at either the championship or the dance would be devastating.

             
Asa longed for a way out of this situation. He understood Boom Boom’s point about the best decision being to stay at the Academy and fighting to the death, trying to inflict as much damage as possible on the Multipliers.
But I don’t want to die,
he thought. If he had his way, it would be the Multipliers who would perish.

             
He thought about the resources at his disposal, and wished that he commanded some kind of army that could drive through the jungle and take out the Multipliers. He wished that there were some kind of way he could get Robert King to understand the danger the Academy was in. He longed to stumble across a solution to the problem that he had had all along, but hadn’t yet noticed.

             
A similar thing had happened earlier in the semester.

He thought of how wonderful it had been when Teddy had figured out how to shoot the target with the spear gun in Flying Class. It had been a problem that bothered him for months, and yet the solution had been right above him all semester in the clock.

              His face brightened slightly as he thought back to that time, and he instantly knew what he must do. He should go to Teddy and speak with him, right after he and Jen were through with spying on the Multipliers.

If you ever do get out of here,
a voice in Asa’s head mocked.
You barely got out of the classroom—and you had planned on going there. You were hidden hours before the Multipliers arrived, and they still caught one of you. How can you expect to go onto their turf and get out alive? They could have spies out.
Asa looked around and the voice continued in a husky whisper:
there could be someone watching you right now.

Asa brushed the voice away and thought back to Teddy.

Teddy had advised that Asa change tones in Flying Class, and had figured out that the invisible barriers to the target were in sync with the clock. He was a genius. He had shown time after time that he was able to think of things that other people weren’t.

And I know right where to find him.

Asa was mildly concerned, however, that Teddy might give bad information. He knew that Teddy was his friend, but he was also a Multiplier. He considered how irrationally angry the Multipliers could become, and thought that he should proceed with caution;
Multipliers can be dangerous.

Asa and Jen crested a grassy hill and were now on the backside of Fishie Mountain. He had forgotten how incredibly high up the Academy rested in between the mountains. Silver clouds loomed in the distant over frozen marshe
s, and he could see for miles over the moonlit landscape. It was beautiful. Asa still didn’t know exactly where in the world he was. The only true indication of the Academy’s whereabouts he had was the temperature—they were either very far North or very far South.

As Asa looked out on the land, he wondered how Stan was doing—if he and Janice had been able to successfully leave the Academy or if they had died in some way. He wondered where they would go, if they did make it.
What is beyond the long plains on all sides of the mountains? What language do the nearest people speak? How far away is the Academy from the closest human civilization?

There is no time to think of this now,
Asa thought.
I have to concentrate at what’s at hand.

             
As they ran, Asa wondered what they would find if they were able to successfully follow the Multipliers.
Where are Ned, Rose, and Allen returning to? Have they taken over a group of abandoned buildings on the backside of Fishie Mountain? How are they staying hidden?
Asa found it hard to imagine thousands and thousands of Multipliers hiding on Academy grounds.

             
But they must be doing it.

             
The blood on the ground was becoming more and more sparse as they began to move down the decline on the rocky slope. Every few yards, there were red droplets, but the volume had lessened significantly since they left the Lab. This was predictable; Multipliers heal quickly.

             
Asa followed Jen. Out of the two of them, he knew that she was the keenest; she had a knack for noticing things that others didn’t. For instance, earlier in the semester, she had found out how to infiltrate Robert King’s office by first noticing the door to the raccoon’s living quarters, and then by realizing that they must clean his office.

             
They continued down the mountain, and the experience reminded Asa of following Jen through a maze of raccoon dwellings, and over an enormous aquarium to Robert King’s office. He felt very similar to how he had that day, except now he was much more nervous.

They passed a waterfall far on their left, and then began to backtrack and pace over towards the sound of rushing water. Asa could no longer see the blood or footprints, but he trusted Jen. They climbed lower and lower, and Asa wondered how cl
ose they were to the Multipliers’ lair. The earth grew rocky, and they were close enough to the waterfall now for the humidity to have increased. They came to the shoreline of a river. They were twenty yards downstream from the waterfall, which was wide, but only fell five stories.

“The trail ends here,” Jen turned and whispered to Asa. He could tell by how quietly she spoke that she believed they were close.

She crouched behind a large boulder and Asa followed her lead, not being sure what she saw. Crickets chirped away in the freezing air; Asa knew that the crickets had to be mutated to thrive in such an environment.

“What are we doing?” Asa whispered.

Jen didn’t answer, but reached her hand up and put it over Asa’s mouth to tell him to hush. Her eyes were wide, and she peaked around the boulder. Asa did the same.

A harsh, h
igh-pitched noise broke out in the air. Asa looked around to find the source, and then saw Joney—one of the Multipliers he had seen killing Davids at the beginning of the semester. He was standing on the same shoreline as Asa and Jen. He wore boxer shorts and a flannel—no pants—and flip-flops. He was dripping wet, as though he had just swum out of the river. The high-pitched noise was coming from his pursed lips; he was whistling.

In one hand, he held a bottle that sloshed with coppery liquid. He picked it up to his mouth,
spilled some over his shirt, and then drank heavily.

Do all the Multipliers from the Hive use alcohol and drugs?
Asa wondered.