The Academy: Book 1 (12 page)

              Charlotte was still immersed in the sight, taking in all that was around her when Asa saw the last of their group turn a corner and disappear behind a building. “C’mon, we need to keep moving,” Asa said, “they’re leaving us behind.”

             
They hurried out the glass door and the chill of the wind took their breath away. Asa gasped and took a step backward, shocked at the temperature. “Where are we?” he asked Charlotte. “Colorado?”

             
“I don’t think it’s this cold in a Colorado summer. And we traveled much further than that.”

             
They jogged through the cold air, their feet flapping on the cobblestone path. As Asa looked up at the buildings around him, his first question was—
what is this place?
—and his second was—
where did they get all this money?
From a distance the details seemed spectacular, but now, as he moved throughout the quiet town, they were absurdly extravegant. The doorknobs were carved of gold, the cobblestone was warmed to keep the snow from sticking, and the beautiful blue and red and yellow flowers sprouted up amidst intricate bushes, despite the below zero temperatures. Asa had never heard of flowers that could bloom in such cold weather.

             
Asa and Charlotte held their parkas up to cover their ears as they ran, trying to catch up. They heard the distant voices of their group and didn’t want to get lost in the unfamiliar territory.

A crow descended from the sky above and landed on a black stone mailbox on the sidewalk. Asa looked at the crow, and they caught eyes. He wondered if the animals were working out some kind of plan to get him out of this place, but he looked up to find a sky vacant of any birds. The crow was old, and had a broken beak and a missing left eye. At first, Asa thought that he recognized the crow. Seeing it in the snowy atmosphere reminded him of something. But, as he continued to run he decided that he was incorrect. Many crows look alike.

Their group came into view in front of them, people in parkas walking in a line that spanned the entirety of the cobblestone. McCoy was in the back of the line waiting for them when they came up. His black suit had seemingly grown a hood, and he looked at them with searching blue eyes.

“Where have you been?” he asked, angry. The relaxed demeanor that he often held was gone.

“We fell behind,” Charlotte said.

“Well don’t let it happen again. Remember what I told you two.”

They looked up and saw that their group was walking down a narrow road toward a dock that stretched out over a body of water.  Asa hadn’t been able to see the water from the glass bubble because the buildings surrounding had blocked his vision.

“Where are we going?” Asa asked McCoy.

“We have to cross the Moat and get you checked in at the appropriate residency.”

“The Moat?” Charlotte said.

“It’s not actually a moat. It’s just called that. It’s a reservoir. We’re on an island right now, and there is a body of water surrounding us, separating us from the Five Mountains. The Moat makes a complete circle around this little island, which is called the town. Do you see the steam coming off the water? It’s heated so that it never freezes.”

“How warm is it?” Asa asked.

“It’s still pretty cold. The water is probably in the fifties, if I were to guess.”

“Have you ever been in it?”

McCoy laughed. “Loads of times. You will too.”

Asa wrapped his arms around himself and couldn’t imagine being wet in weather like this. The fog drifting up off the water made the Moat look mysterious, inviting. It was a beautiful sight, sitting there beneath the snow-covered mountains.

As the group continued to move forward, more of the Moat became visible to them. It was enormous, and seemed to stretch a mile between the island that they were standing on and the mainland where the mountains sat. Asa saw that there was a series of enormous floating platforms out in the middle of the water. The biggest of the platforms, and the one situated in the middle looked like a giant checkerboard. The object was the size and shape of a basketball court with ten by ten cutouts made in the platform where the water shown through. These cutouts sat by equally large areas of platform. On either side of this checkerboard-like platform were what looked like a series of five large doorframes floating in the water. They floated directly in line with one another, spaced out about ten feet apiece, in an upright position just like a doorframe would normally sit.

“What are those platforms for?” Asa asked McCoy.

McCoy smiled, and Asa saw a woman in a black suit cast a sideways glance at McCoy. His relaxed way of moving had returned. “In time, my child. The Assembly is tonight. Many of your questions will be answered there.”

The boat that sat on the end of the dock was, like eve
rything else, beautiful. It was carved entirely of wood with hundreds of seats on the top. Sails sat on masts above the deck to move the vessel.

Asa looked over the group that he was traveling with and gu
essed that there were roughly 450 of them. All of the people in black (Asa overheard them being called
chaperones)
began to wave people down the dock and onto the boat. The small wooden vessel bobbed with the weight of the moving people.

Asa was staring ahead and didn’t notice the bald person moving in the opposite direction as them. He was tall, and when he talked his slimy black gums shone. He had dark eyes that were sunken in deep underneath where his eyebrows should have been
, but weren’t. He wore a pure white suit with a red rose pinned to his left breast pocket. There was a small, skinny man following in the bald one’s shadow.

This man who was following had a full head of hair and healthy pink gums. He wore a black suit, like McCoy, Conway, and the rest of the chaperones, but his figure was much less impressive. He was gaunt and seemed malnourished. His ribs poked through the tight fabric and his spine was twisted with scoliosis.

When Asa finally did notice the man with black gums in the white suit, he was no more than ten feet away. The bald man’s gray, cold eyes were set on Asa in such a stare that Asa froze where he stood for a moment. McCoy and Charlotte kept walking, leaving Asa at the back of the line, where no one could witness what happened.

The bald,
black-gummed man was barking orders and the frail, glasses ridden man in a black suit was hurrying to keep up, and trying to scribble down everything that the bald man said onto a yellow legal pad. “No! I
said
call Ken Pudman’s secretary and tell them that I can only meet on Tuesday at…”

The man in the white suit stopped talking for a moment and the frail scribe following behind him looked up expecting the rest of the sentence. Something about Asa’s face had made the man with black gums lose his train of thought.
The man’s nostrils flared, taking in the surrounding scents.

The incident happened so fast that afterwards, Asa debated with himself as to whether or not it had actually happened. Everyone else in line was in front of Asa, so he had no one to confirm or deny what Asa thought that he saw. The man in the white suit looked at Asa, his skin almost as pale as the surrounding snow. For one tenth of a second, or perhaps less, the man with black gums lifted his upper lip and brought the inside parts of his eyebrows together in a snarl that made Asa’s heart skip a beat. It was an evil, menacing look. He showed almost his entire top layer of gums, and the sharp, menacing teeth that hid between his lips.

As quick as it had started, it was over and the man’s face returned to normal except for the small hint of a smirk on his lips as he looked over Asa’s face. Asa wondered what kind of frightened expression he had made in the midst of the horror.

“…
four, and tell Ken’s secretary that I cannot…”

The voice trailed away behind Asa.
Asa looked around, and wasn’t sure that anyone else noticed what had just occurred.

McCoy looked back at Asa and gave him a stare that Asa couldn’t read. He thought it said,
be careful.

Asa was in a semi trance as he made his way over the dock, trying to stay as close to McCoy as possible. His heart felt like a hummingbird in his chest, and the adrenaline and cortisol
, stress hormones, that shot through his body made him forget about the cold. He felt as though he had just ran sprints for the last hour. He was sweating.

Ken
Pudman. He said Ken Pudman.
Asa ran through the name in his head. Ken Pudman had been the president of the United States last term.

What did it all mean?

He had no answers. He did not know. Every step into this new world, from Officer Harold Kensing, to the people with black gums that he had warned Asa about, only brought more questions, and no answers.

He was excited for the assembly that would be coming tonight. McCoy had said that he would be given information. Asa trusted McCoy.

Asa and Charlotte were the last to step aboard the ship, and so they were not able to select their seats. There were four spots still open, and none of them were beside each other.

Without saying a word, they parted and made their way to opposite ends of the ship. Asa held onto the railing as he walked to prevent himself from falling. As he was walking, a chaperone untied the boat from the dock and they began to
drift.

7

Fishie Mountain

              The wooden vessel began to creak as Asa sat down on one of the benches. He leaned up against the backrest and ran his hands along the smooth wood. There was a faint wind blowing around him, and most of the other Fishies were shivering, holding their parkas tight against their bodies. Asa sat up tall, and didn’t notice the cold. He stretched up his neck and looked back at the town the boat was drifting away from. Far down one of the cobble stone paths, Asa could see the man in the white suit—his pale baldhead was exposed to the elements, and he was moving with the fluidity of a cat. His assistant was scurrying behind, trying to keep up with the bald man’s strides.

             
He’s not a human,
Asa thought. He lowered into his seat some more and watched the giant masts above move to the correct position, seemingly on their own. Wind filled the sails and pushed them forward.
Human’s can’t move like that. Human’s don’t have black gums. Human’s don’t torture cops so that they kill fourteen-year-old kids.

             
Charlotte sat six rows in front of Asa, and she was talking to someone with a baldhead. Asa leaned forward and gripped the wooden seat between his legs. The person turned, and Asa could tell that it was a male. He was wearing a Fishie parka. He smiled and Asa saw that his gums were pink, normal. His head, however, was not. The person was tall, and so even though Asa sat far back from him, his head was in clear view.

             
The back of his scalp was covered in blotches of dark red skin atop his Caucasian head. The blotches of discoloration were arranged in a seemingly random way, as though someone had thrown a cup of maroon dye at him. The top half of his left ear was gone, and the skin stopped in a calcified, plastic-like twist of wine colored scar tissue.

             
But still, he was handsome.

             
Inner qualities, a confident and quiet soul, helped to overcome these deformities. He looked down at Charlotte as she spoke; her head came up to his shoulder. The bald person’s face seemed to feign interest while she was talking. His eyes flashed around the vessel, and then back to Charlotte. He gave the impression that he knew everything at once.

             
Charlotte’s eyes glowed at him. Asa was jealous.

             
She’s probably like that with everyone.

             
The bald man’s eyes shot over at Asa, registered that he was staring, and then went back to Charlotte.

             
Asa looked out over the water.
I don’t care, really I don’t.
He was gripping the bench even harder now.

             
The water had a low chop, and was the deep blue that gave the impression of immense depth. The Moat, as they had called it, spanned about three quarters of a mile, and they were a quarter of the way across. The wooden vessel was taking all of the Fishies North, in the direct opposite direction of the biggest mountain that loomed in the South.

             
In the exact spot in the water that Asa was staring, bubbles began to rise to the surface, and then a shadow. Asa leaned forward, trying to get a better view, trying to make sure that his eyes weren’t fooling him. They weren’t. A moment later, a ten-foot thick cylindrical body emerged from the water. The scales made horizontal white and black stripes along the body, like on a zebra. The body rolled, and then it was gone. Waves dopplered out from the spot where the thing had been, and rocked up against the boat.

             
Asa looked around the vessel with his mouth open in awe to see if anyone else had seen what he had. No one seemed to notice. None of the people had stirred.