Akarnae (12 page)

Alex’s eyes widened in realisation and she looked at Bear. “I can’t believe I forgot! I didn’t even think to ask for your help.”

Bear just grinned and said, “Don’t worry—there’s always next time.”

She nodded in agreement and continued to think about the possibilities as they stood and headed to Medical Science.

Professor Luranda spent the first half of the lesson droning on and on about the properties of Silver Cloverfoot, a beautiful—and deadly—purple and silver flower. Just when Alex thought she might drop off to sleep, an alarm sounded. It wasn’t the usual gong noise that signalled a class change or meal times. Instead it was a wailing, keening, high-pitched siren that caused Alex and her classmates to clutch their ears and cry out in confusion.

“
Silence!
” Professor Luranda shouted from the front of the room, her rainbow robe contrasting with her rapidly paling face.

Everyone froze at her command and all noise ceased until the only sound left was the screaming of the alarm.

Alex watched, ears ringing, as Luranda picked up her Communications Globe. It was a black, glassy sphere about the size of a tennis ball with swirling white mist inside. When Alex had first seen one in her History class, Bear had explained that the Globe allowed the academy staff to contact one another immediately in the case of emergencies. Sort of like an intercom or a phone, but with both visual and audio output. Plus, they all had built-in Bubbledoors for instant transportation to… somewhere.

Bubbledoors, Alex had learned early on, opened up wormholes that worked like teleportation devices. When she’d first heard about them, she had asked her friends why the headmaster couldn’t just use one to zip back to the academy and send her home. They hadn’t been able to answer her, other than to say that Marselle must have his reasons for staying away. Whatever those reasons were, Alex struggled to believe they were good enough to excuse his negligence, not when he could just come and go in the blink of an eye. Like everything else in Medora, his continued absence didn’t make any sense.

Luranda spoke quietly into the Globe with her back turned to the students. Over her shoulder Alex could see the faint outline of Jarvis’s face inside the swirling mist of the sphere.

Eventually the professor lowered the Globe and turned back to her students. “We are to wait here until further instructed.”

That’s it?
Alex wondered. She knew better than to question the strict professor, but she shared a glance with Connor who was seated beside her and she could see he was thinking the same as her. What were they waiting for?

To her surprise, the professor didn’t continue teaching. Instead, Luranda took up a position next to the transparent door at the front of the room.

Alex leaned in to ask Connor about the purpose of the one-way visual doors. “Why are—?”

She stopped because two things happened. First, the siren ended, trailing off into a ringing silence. And second, the room instantly blackened.

Alex heard her classmates scraping their chairs away from their benches and standing. Once again there were exclamations of surprise, and in some cases, fear. While uneasy herself, Alex didn’t think it was wise to get up when she couldn’t see anything. They were in a medical laboratory, after all. The last thing she needed was to stumble in the dark and fall onto a scalpel.

A moment later the lights in the classroom came back on. Alex blinked away the stars in her vision and noticed that the corridor on the other side of the transparent door was still an inky black, thick and gritty.

“Please take your seats, students. There’s nothing to worry about,” Luranda said. “It’s just the Lockdown procedure.”

Her words weren’t convincing. Luranda was clearly anxious about something, and she continued to gaze out into the dark corridor.

Alex turned around to see how Jordan and Bear were faring, and she felt better when she saw them calmly reading their textbooks. She tried to get their attention, but they were too caught up in their work.

She turned back around to the front of the room before her brain registered what she’d seen and she snapped back to look at them again. Jordan and Bear
never
did schoolwork unasked.

Alex narrowed her eyes and peered closer at her friends. She gasped in surprise when, as Bear moved to turn a page of his
book, she could see
through
his arm to the wall behind him. Even the book was partly transparent.

Without thinking, Alex started to rise from her seat, but a hand pressed down on her shoulder and pushed her back onto her chair.

“Don’t move,” Jordan whispered in her ear.

He must have been using his gift, but she had no idea why—nor did she know how there was a semi-opaque copy of him doing homework up the back of the room. And she couldn’t ask, because Luranda chose that moment to take her eyes off the door and glance around her classroom, making sure everything was still in order.

Alex held her breath as the professor’s cool gaze swept over her. She could still feel Jordan’s hand on her shoulder and she prayed that Luranda wouldn’t notice her not-completely-solid friends up the back. She released her breath only when the older woman seemed satisfied enough to return her attention to the door.

Alex didn’t dare speak, but she pulled her paper close and wrote four words:

What are you doing?

It was the weirdest thing ever when her pen vanished and writing appeared on the paper, letter by letter.

INVESTIGATING. YOU COMING?

Alex kept her eyes facing the front of the room but gave a quick nod. There was no way she was going to miss out on whatever he had planned.

She flinched when a different voice spoke in her other ear.

“Drink this,” whispered Bear, and a vial was pressed into her hand under the table. “It will feel a bit weird, but try not to move much.”

Jordan being invisible—
transcendent
—she could understand, but Bear too? She decided to worry about that later and instead knocked her pen off the bench, giving her an excuse to bend and retrieve it. While she was under the table she quickly swallowed the contents of the small vial—which tasted faintly of strawberries—before sitting back up in her seat and holding as still as possible.

It only took a few moments before she was overcome by the oddest sensation. Her flesh began to tingle as if she had pins and needles, while her heartbeat throbbed loudly in her ears. Her temperature spiked feverishly and the warmth expanded slowly outward from her body, growing like a tangible presence as it pulsed in time with her heart. Even her clothes were pulsing outward, only stopping after they had risen about half a centimetre above her actual self. As she looked closer, she realised that her expanded figure wasn’t completely solid, but it was still convincing enough to get by. Just like the copies of Jordan and Bear studying up the back of the room, Alex now had her very own copycat illusion.

“Are you ready for this?” Jordan whispered once the pulsing finished.

Alex nodded again and his grip tightened on her shoulder. One moment she was grounded, sitting in her seat, and the next she felt like she was soaring through the outer atmosphere. She closed her eyes as the feeling washed over her, enjoying the floating sensation.

A moment or two passed before the feeling began to fade. She still felt like she was soaring on a cloud or floating in water, but she also had a better idea of where her feet were and how to use them. She opened her eyes and blinked a few times, trying
in vain to clear her vision. It was like a shower screen covered her eyes; she could still see everything, but it was all slightly blurred around the edges. No matter what she did, her sight wouldn’t clear, and she realised it must be a result of whatever Jordan had done to her.

“Let’s go,” Jordan said quietly, keeping a tight hold on her arm and pulling her up from her seat.

She was about to protest—surely Luranda would notice the movement—but she snapped her mouth closed as she watched her body step out of the replica, leaving the copy in her seat. Her decoy didn’t move much; she just stayed looking towards the front of the room, blinking.

No one noticed that there were two of her in the classroom, and since she could now see Jordan and Bear perfectly while everything else around them was still blurred, she guessed that Jordan must somehow be covering her with his gift.

“How—?”

“Shh!” Jordan interrupted. “I’ll explain outside.”

With one hand on her shoulder and the other gripping Bear, Jordan led them straight towards the wall.

“Jord—!” Alex didn’t even get a chance to finish whispering his name before he thrust all three of them into the wall.

Or rather,
through
the wall.

Oh. Right. She’d forgotten he could do that. Instead of slamming into the solid barrier, she felt as if her body had been sucked into a vacuum and spat out the other side. Real pleasant.

Steadying herself, Alex looked at her new surroundings. All she could see was, well, nothing. It was still pitch-black.

“Let’s try and get outside,” Bear said from somewhere to her left.

She couldn’t see either of the boys, but she was comforted by Jordan’s hand which was still on her shoulder. He pushed her forward once again, and all she could do was trust that he knew
which direction they were heading in—or that they’d again be able to move through anything solid in their path.

Walking blindly through the dark hallway was eerie, and Alex was relieved when she felt the vacuum sensation again, which meant they were moving through another solid object. Light soon pierced her eyes, and even though her surroundings were still blurry, she could easily see that they’d entered another classroom. A Chemistry lab, to be specific, and one that was currently in use.

Alex crept with her friends towards the other side of the room, hoping neither Fitzy nor any of his students would sense their invisible presence.

“But why is it necessary?” one of the boys in the class asked. Alex recognised him from her Equestrian Skills class, but she couldn’t remember his name.

Fitzy either didn’t hear him or didn’t care to respond. Unlike Professor Luranda, the Chemistry teacher wasn’t staring out the door of the lab into the dark corridor beyond. Instead, he was at the head of the room, writing frantically on his board.

“Fitzy?” the boy tried again.

The wacky man turned at the sound of his name and seemed to realise that he still had a classroom full of students.

“What’s that, Wilson?”

“The Lockdown, Fitz,” the boy—who she now remembered was named Ryan—seemed exasperated. “You were telling us about the Lockdown, remember? Why is everything dark out there?” He indicated with his hand towards the corridor.

“Oh! Lockdown, you say?” Fitzy straightened his glasses and squinted towards the corridor. “That’s not good! Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

He hurried over to his desk to pick up his Communications Globe, but Alex didn’t find out what happened next because she was pulled through another wall into the darkness beyond.

And then another.

And another.

Eventually they reached the outer wall of the Gen-Sec building where, without warning, Jordan’s hand disappeared from Alex’s shoulder and she fell like a dead weight to the ground.

Eleven

The drop was only short
, but her breath was still forced from her lungs with an “
Oomph!
” when she landed on some kind of bushy hedge.

After rolling off it and onto the grass, Alex looked up and realised firstly that her vision was clear again, and secondly that the three of them had just fallen from the second floor of Gen-Sec. She rubbed her shoulder and turned to glare at Jordan.

“Sorry about that,” he said, offering her a hand up. “I didn’t want to risk finding some stairs to get to a lower level. And I knew this bush would break our fall.”

Alex thought it best not to respond.

“What’s a few bruises, hey?” Bear said, clearly excited by their escape.

“How did we get out here?” Alex asked, brushing leaves and twigs out of her hair.

They looked at her as if she had a few screws loose.

“We walked. Then we fell,” Jordan said carefully. “Did you hit your head when you landed?”

“No, Jordan,” she huffed. “What I meant is… You used your gift on us, right?”

He continued looking at her strangely. “How else do you think we got out without being caught? And walked through walls?”

“I just—I didn’t know people could do that. Share their gifts, I mean.”

“Some people can’t,” he said, “but since mine is a physical gift, I can make it work for other people too.”

“That’s… really handy,” Alex said, impressed.

“It has its limitations,” Jordan admitted. “It only works with physical contact, which is why I had to be holding onto you the whole time.”

“So, I’m not transcended anymore?” Alex asked. That would explain why her blurred vision had cleared—and where it, and the earlier anti-gravity sensation, had come from to start with.

“No,” Jordan confirmed. “But we should be okay out here since everyone else will be stuck inside with the Lockdown.”

“What
is
the Lockdown?” Alex asked.

Jordan looked at Bear and they both shrugged. “No idea.”

“That’s what we’re investigating,” Bear said, practically bouncing with anticipation. “Let’s go see what we can find out!”

“I think we should head to the Tower,” Jordan said. “That’s where Jarvis’ll be, and if anyone knows what’s going on, it’ll be him.”

Decision made, the three of them headed towards the centre of the grounds, carefully keeping to the sides of the buildings and staying as sheltered as possible. When Alex asked why Jordan didn’t just keep them all invisible, he explained that it was tiring to use his gift on other people. But even so, whenever they had to cross an expanse of uncovered ground, he grabbed onto them and hurried them invisibly towards the next building.

The Tower wasn’t too far from Gen-Sec, but they took the long way around the apprentices’ dormitory and the food court so that they’d have more cover if anyone was looking out at the grounds. When they eventually reached the entrance to the Tower and stepped inside, their journey became more complicated.