The Academy: Book 1 (15 page)

             
Asa looked around him at the dingy corridor.

             
“This place isn’t the prettiest,” McCoy said. “But people don’t use it much. You’ll use this corridor for the first month and a half or so, and then it will go unused until the next bunch of Fishies gets here.”

             
“Why will we stop using it?” Teddy asked.

             
“You’ll have your wings by then. You probably won’t be strong enough to fly, but you’ll be able to glide to wherever you need to go from the towers. And once you can glide, you’ll be allowed to climb up the ladders on the side of your dormitory tower. That will save you loads of time. This path isn’t exactly a straight line to our destination. We’ve been walking for fifteen minutes and we may not even be halfway there. It’s impossible to tell. Anyways, I’ll see you two around. I’m supposed to be up at the front. Excuse me. Pardon. Excuse me.”

             
They heard his voice trail off as he walked ahead of them.

             
“Who do we talk to if we don’t want to do this?” Teddy rhetorically asked Asa.

             
“I don’t think that there’s a protocol for that,” Asa said.

             
“I wonder if anyone’s tried to escape this place.” Teddy pulled his hood over his head and kept walking.

             
When they had made it through the tunnels and multiple flights of staircases, Asa thought that McCoy had underestimated the length of the hallway when he spoke with them earlier. Asa’s feet were dragging and his eyes were tired as he followed the line up one final, rickety staircase at the end of the corridor.

             
They emerged in a room quite different from the tunnels; this room had a warm, welcoming feel to it and was, like much of the Academy, flush with items that cost outrageous amounts of money.

              “Wow,” Teddy said.

             
Asa grunted in agreement.

             
They were standing in the far corner of the male dormitory. It was much different than Asa had imagined; when they told him that they were to be living in dorms, Asa had taken that to mean small, dingy, yellowed apartments with bunk beds. There were bunk beds, but nothing else that Asa had imagined.

             
Sprawled out before them was a vast expanse of thick, dark, rich, hardwood floors that spread out to reach logwood walls. Each wall rose forty feet in the air, where it met an ‘A’ shaped ceiling that slanted up to a sixty foot high point in the center of the room. Asa found that he was automatically taking off his parka. It was warm, and dozens of fires danced in rock fireplaces around the room.

             
There were over two hundred bunk beds, each with one bed on top of another. They were so big that grizzly bears could have slept in them comfortably, and Asa wondered what you call a mattress that’s bigger than king size. They, like the floors and walls and beams that crisscrossed high overhead, were made of thick, well-oiled wood. Each of the beds had a chest at the foot that was the size of a small couch.

             
The far wall was made of thirty-foot windows. Outside, the jungle canopies could be seen, lit by the light of the torches on the foot of the mountain. Dark terrain beneath stars and a high moon seemed to stretch forever beyond this.

             
Besides the abundance of space in the room, the thing that Asa noticed most were the taxidermied animals. At first glance, they didn’t disturb Asa. They seemed normal. It was a room that resembled a cabin, and cabins often had dead animals hanging on the walls. But when Asa studied closer, he found himself puzzled. More than that, he was scared.

             
The animals weren’t moose, or deer, or bass caught out at a stock tank. They were bears, and lions, and hawks, and apes and monkeys, except…different. Asa looked up at a black bear situated on the wall ten feet above his head. The taxidermied creature began at the torso, with barred teeth and sharp claws, ready to attack. It was as though the animal had jumped straight through the wall. The animal was bigger than any black bear should have been; it appeared to be able to take down a full-grown elephant by itself. But still, that wasn’t the oddest thing. The thing that Asa noticed the most was the animal’s
skull
. While everything else on the animal was twice the size of a normal black bear’s, the skull was three times the size. Not only that, it also had different proportions so that the top of the head, instead of being flat with the ears sitting on top, jutted upward so that the ears sat on the sides of the black head. It made the animal look almost like a human. It made the animal look sentient… Like it wasn’t really an animal but a person that looked like a bear.

             
The thought seemed familiar to Asa…

             
...s
entient…

             
“Next,” a chaperone called, and the line Asa was standing in moved forward. The voice had broken Asa’s chain of thought. He and Teddy shuffled their feet forward and then stopped. A chaperone in black was giving Fishies instructions and then they would go pick out their beds.

             
The line moved slowly until Asa and Teddy were in the front. They stood before a man in all black with graying peppered hair. The chaperone would have been handsome, except for the way his nose was deformed. It appeared to have been broken hundreds of times and was so twisted that Asa wondered if he could actually breathe out of it.

             
“You two; what are your names?” The chaperone asked.

             
“Teddy June.”

             
“Asa Palmer.”

             
The chaperone tapped on his forearm. Asa guessed that all of the chaperones had some type of computer system attached to their suit. He wondered what all of the capabilities were. “Okay,” the man began. “Here’s what you need to know—be aware that in the dormitories, like all the Academy facilities, you are being watched on hidden cameras. They are everywhere. So do not destroy any of the property and treat it with respect, or you will face punishment. There is no promise that it won’t be cruel, and it will most definitely be unusual.

             
“You can choose any bed that is not taken. If you cannot tell if someone else has already claimed the bed, look on top of the chest. If it has not already been taken, there will be instructions projected onto a metal panel. If it has been taken, the metal panel will be blank. Follow those instructions and then that bed will be yours for the next six months. Choose wisely, because you cannot, under any circumstances, trade beds with anyone. After you have chosen your bed, walk to that hallway and follow the blue line on the floor until you reach the nurses station. There, you will be given vaccinations, and a physical exam. Shortly after, there will be a brief assembly, and then dinner.

             
“Next.”

             
Teddy and Asa were ushered further into the bedroom and the next group was given instructions. The two walked along the hardwood and Teddy opened up the first chest that he saw. Directly under the wood was a panel of black metal. There were no instructions on it. “Guess this one’s already taken,” he said. “Where would you like to sleep?” Teddy asked.

             
“In my bed at home,” Asa said. “But if that can’t happen, a bed next to the window would be nice. I’d like a view.”

             
They made their way to the end of the room and found that there were more beds that hadn’t been claimed. To Asa’s delight, there was an open bunk only ten feet away from the row of thirty-foot windows.

             
“This alright with you?” Asa asked.

             
“As long as I can have the bottom bunk,” Teddy said. “I don’t do well with heights.”

             
As Asa climbed the twelve-foot ladder to the top bunk, he wondered how Teddy would handle flying, if that were really something they would get to do. The mattress was layered with luxurious sheets and blankets; a white bearskin was folded at the foot of the bed. Asa felt it and found that where he expected fur, he found bristles. He looked at it for a moment before deciding that it must be polar bear pelt.

             
Asa crawled over to the edge of the bed. Being twelve feet above a hardwood floor made him slightly weary, but the bed was sturdy and his mattress was wide. The chest on the foot of his bed opened up away from him and he saw white directions projected on the black metal, just like the man with the broken nose said there would be.

Instructions for using your chest:

First, make sure that you are satisfied with the bed that you have selected. After you follow through with these steps, you will have the chosen bed for a six-month period.

Once you have chosen your bed, place your palms down on the black metal and hold them there for five seconds. Palms may be placed anywhere on the surface. After this is done, you have officially claimed your bed. From that point onward, your chest will open each time you press your palms against the metal. No one else will be allowed to access your chest, and, likewise, you will not be able to access anyone else’s chest.

Enjoy!

             
Asa rubbed his palms together before putting them face down on the cold metal. He waited, and after five seconds, he heard a click. The metal was pressing up on his hands with light pressure, and when he released, the chest opened. Asa looked down into it.

             
Four horizontal bulbs situated in the surrounding metal walls lit the inside of the chest. The chest was completely empty except for a cylinder that stuck out of one of the walls. It was metal, and as thick as the head of a baseball bat. Curious, Asa reached out and touched it. The metal cylinder, as if reacting to his touch, expanded for a moment, and then shrunk back down. Asa withdrew and didn’t touch the cylinder again. He stowed his parka in his chest, shut it, and then climbed down the ladder.

             
Asa and Teddy both made their way from the window to the hallway that led to the nurse’s station. The hallway was situated next to the staircase that they had entered from. People were still waiting to be called by the man with the broken nose when Asa and Teddy passed. Many of them were staring at the animals on the wall.

             
They entered the hallway and saw that it departed from the log cabin theme and took on the look of an antebellum mansion. Everything was sparkling white. The floor was shining tile that appeared to have been recently polished. It was as smooth as a puddle of milk. The walls were whitewashed, and there were five portraits hanging at eye level. They were each set in gold frames and hand panted.

             
The first two were easy for Asa to recognize—Robert King and Ken Pudman. Robert King smiled out at them with his crooked mouth. His blue eyes seemed inviting. He had an air about him, that Asa attributed to the fact that he was the wealthiest man on earth.

President
Pudman was traditionally handsome. He had jet black hair that he combed back from his face, and a smile that looked good on posters and commercials. Asa believed that he was elected president because he
looked
like he could make a good leader. Asa believed that he wasn’t reelected because time showed what his image lied about.

             
Asa stared at the other three the longest—they were people that he had never heard of before.
What were their portraits doing, hanging there next to two of the most important men in history?

             
Directly between the two men was a portrait of a woman with short, spikey blond hair and tattoos covering her neck and arms. She was wearing what appeared to be a dirty tank top and her eyes looked out at onlookers, challenging them to comment on her appearance. She did not appear to belong. The plaque underneath the portrait said, “Stormy Rubins.”

             
To Ken Pudman’s left sat, “Vinny Natale.” He had olive colored skin, gelled black hair, and he wore a crisp suit. He looked closer to belonging than Stormy did. His neck was nearly as thick as his head was, and his shoulders were as broad as a bull’s.

             
Finishing off the line of portraits was “Dr. Sean Gill.” Dr. Gill’s head was adorned with a messy puff of white hair that rose from his head in thin wisps. He was not smiling in the portrait, and his eyebrows came together in a charming expression of curiosity. He wore plastic glasses. A red tie held his button-up together at the neck. His shirt had wrinkles in it.

             
“Who are these people?” Teddy asked.

             
“A drop in a bucket of water,” Asa responded, referencing what Teddy had said earlier. “One of many questions.”

             
Teddy smiled.

             
Along the smooth, white floor were seven lines, each painted in a different color: yellow, blue, red, purple, green, pink, and orange. Following the directions that the man with the broken nose had given them, they followed the blue line to the nurse’s station.