The Academy: Book 1 (9 page)

             
Asa’s mouth fell open in awe as he entered the next room. This one, like the last, was painted with the skill and attention to detail that one would expect to see in a museum. Asa looked up and saw that the smooth surface of the ceiling was painted like a sky on a perfect, spring day. Clouds were weightless in the sky among a series of angels playing harps and singing and dancing. The angels were all children, and all of them were naked. They had red, cheery cheeks, curly blond hair that looked like McCoy’s, and plump bellies, legs, and arms.

             
The walls surrounding were painted to look like a Roman marketplace. People were bartering with vendors at wooden stands beneath huge straw umbrellas. In the painting, men and women were entering and exiting stone structures and talking with their hands while laughing. One boy was in the process of throwing a ball high into the air. A few feet away, a group of ten children and a dog were all gathered together, tense and ready to volley for the ball.

             
A chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling, and beneath it sat a massive wooden table with appropriately massive wooden chairs surrounding it. The table’s legs were carved to look like angels holding up the central piece of wood. These angels were all adult men with bulging muscles with swords attached to their hips, and folded wings behind their backs. They looked much more serious than the angels painted on the ceiling.

             
As they sat, Asa looked above them and wondered how many thousands of pounds of water sat above them, and who would want to bring, or create such beautiful art work so far underground. Not for the last time, Asa suspected that he was among criminals. It was the only explanation that made any sense to him.

             
Dr. Varbas sat at the head of the table, and McCoy and Conway flanked him. Asa sat beside Conway, and the beautiful girl sat beside McCoy so that Asa was directly across from her.

             
Conway sat down just long enough to unfold his napkin before standing up and announcing that he had to use the restroom. He disappeared behind a massive oak door at the side of the room and they heard his footsteps disappearing behind a hallway.

             
McCoy, Conway, and Dr. Varbas didn’t
look
sinister to Asa. They seemed as relaxed and calm as men going about their daily, boring routine, and yet Asa did not trust them. They had kidnapped him and the beautiful girl and brought them down to this lair beneath the biggest reservoir in the history of man.

             
Why us? Why me?
Asa thought. The girl seemed normal enough, but he knew nothing about her. She could be the daughter of some kind of celebrity or government official. But he, fourteen year and eleven-month-old parentless Asa Palmer had nothing that would separate him from others in the eyes of a kidnapper. He had no one who would pay a ransom for him. He doubted that anyone would even notice that he was gone if they killed him down here.

             
Asa looked over the painting of the Roman marketplace. Directly above the beautiful girl’s head there was a church painted on the wall. In front, there was a fountain, and a series of wide stone steps leading up to open doors that revealed an aisle and an alter beneath stained glass window. The building rose with flying buttress arches and stone patterns of gothic architecture to the roof, which was painted high up on the wall, and almost reached the dining room ceiling. Just below the top of the structure, gargoyles jutted out on small stone platforms with grotesque faces, angry eyes, and claws that gripped to the stone. Atop the center inanimate object perched a crow, gazing up at the angels in the sky. The black bird’s beak was shiny and half open, as though it were smiling at the heavenly children above.

             
Asa’s stomach dropped at the thought of the crows as he realized that there
was
something different about him. There was something that set him apart. He had no way of knowing how, or if any of this was connected to his relationship with the winged creatures.

             
He continued to stare up at the crow, examining its every feature. The sharp claws, the way the knee joints bent slightly, the way its relaxed wings matched perfectly with the rest of its body. Asa was so absorbed in examining the attention to detail that he jumped, startled, whenever McCoy spoke.

             
“Are you nervous?” he asked the beautiful girl. He leaned back, smiling, and watched the two people he had helped kidnap.

             
The beautiful girl crossed her arms and looked at the wall painting without responding. The only evidence that she had heard was a trace of defiance in her green eyes.

             
She’s strong,
Asa thought.

             
“What about you?” McCoy asked Asa directly.

             
Asa kept his hands beneath the table at his lap so that no one could see that they were shaking. He looked at the beautiful girl and then McCoy. “Yeah, I’m scared,” he said. Saying it made him feel better.

             
“Don’t be,” Dr. Varbas said. “We’re not here to hurt you, only to help.” Asa couldn’t see the doctor’s mouth, but his yellow eyes were warm and smiling.

             
McCoy rapped his fingers on the wood, as if pondering what to say. He tilted his head. “You know, I wish I could tell you why we brought you here, but protocol says that I can’t. You’ll find out soon enough, at the assembly.”

             
“What assembly?” the beautiful girl asked. “There’s an assembly of
you
people?”

             
McCoy laughed. “What do you mean,
you people?
You guys are one of us too now, if you pass. I was in your shoes once before. I was scared to death whenever they took me from my mum’s house in the middle of the night. Back then the Retrievers would tell the recruits exactly where they were going. Protocol’s gotten a lot stricter lately.”

             
“If we pass what?” the beautiful girl asked. “We’ll be like you if we pass what?”

             
McCoy was about to speak when Dr. Varbas interrupted, putting a sick, emaciated hand on the English man’s shoulder. “That’s enough Rob. They’ll find out at the assembly. If Conway walks in and you’re talking about this with the kids, he’ll lose it.”

             
“Conway’s too uptight,” McCoy said.
              “That may be true, but he’s also the best.”

             
McCoy smiled and looked at Asa. “Your Dad was quite fond of Conway. He helped him get to where he was, you know?”

             
“McCoy! Hush now!” Dr. Varbas reprimanded. “Don’t say things like that! You’ll get us fired!”

             
“I didn’t say anything. Did I, Asa Palmer?” McCoy flashed a threatening smile and his eyes grew dark.

             
Conway’s footsteps were returning and Asa could feel the beautiful girl watching him. Asa shook his head. “No, I didn’t hear anything.”

             
“Good.”

             
Asa could feel the beautiful girl glowering at him. He felt weak for giving in, but he thought it had been the best decision. His life and safety were worth more to him than his pride.

             
These people have me confused for someone else,
Asa thought.
They think that my father was an important man. But he was just a truck driver who died of a heart attack. Acute myocardial infarction, they had called it at the hospital. What will happen when they find out that they kidnapped the wrong Asa Palmer?

             
Conway came in, sat down, and was followed shortly by three people in chef uniforms. They each balanced two huge metal trays on their hands, and they came around and organized food and drink throughout the table.

             
Each person was given one liter of chilled bottled water, a plate, and silverware. An absurd amount of food was placed throughout the center of the table in decorative bowls and plates. The food was served family style, and everyone was encouraged to help him or herself.

             
If they’re going to kill us, or if they’re trying to make ransom money from us, why serve such expensive items?

             
There was enough food to feed a small army, and Dr. Varbas, McCoy, and Conway immediately began to pile their plates high with different items. There were melted flatbread steak sandwiches, mashed potatoes with cheese and bacon cooked inside, green and red peppers stuffed with various meets and cheeses, piles of lobster and shrimp, entire loafs of freshly baked breads, sliced apples, sliced pineapples, bananas, muffins with grains and raisins cooked inside, steaming bowls of macaroni and cheese, steamed vegetables, bowls of stew, and a chocolate cake topped with banana cream icing. Asa wondered how much all of the items had cost, and what kind of people these were to not be morally or financially opposed to wasting so much food.

             
Dr. Varbas ladeled some stew onto his plate and took a muffin. He pulled down his surgeon’s mask and took slow bites of his stew. Asa saw that his lips were blue and chapped.

             
McCoy and Conway, on the other hand, loaded up their plates as though they were picking things out for entire families to eat. They both took more than two serving of each item, piling the things high up on their plate. Asa thought that it would be impossible for either of them to eat what they had served themselves. The beautiful girl ate nothing. Asa took a muffin. He wasn’t hungry, but he didn’t want to seem rude.

             
Conway spoke as he ate. “Did you hear about the angel sighting?”

             
Varbas blew on his stew. “No, what happened?”

             
Conway continued. “Somewhere in North Dakota there was a couple on the news. They said they saw an angel flying over their farmland. They produced a blurry cell phone video. You can see a dark object flying through the air.”

             
“One of our guys?” Dr. Varbas asked.

             
Conway shrugged. “There’s no way to know. The video is pretty blurry.”

             
McCoy spoke through a mouthful of sandwich. He was shoveling food into his mouth as though he had been starved for a couple of days prior to the meal. “They can’t prove anything! The couple who saw it was hicks. People are always saying that they’ve seen aliens, or that the Virgin Mary was burned into their toast. It’s ridiculous.”

             
“Not when it’s true,” Conway said. He looked around the table and caught eyes with everyone but Asa. He hadn’t looked at Asa the whole meal.

             
“Was anyone from the Academy deployed to that area?” Dr. Varbas asked. He sat his spoon down and rested his chin in his hands.

             
“Yeah. Kelly was supposed to visit their water purifying sight. Apparently there’s some no-name there that’s been running a lot of tests.”

             
“Does the Boss know?” Varbas asked.

             
“We’ll find out,” Conway said.

             
They didn’t talk for the rest of the meal. The beautiful girl remained still with her arms crossed, Dr. Varbas relaxed with his head in his hands, and McCoy and Conway finished everything on their plate over the course of the next hour. Asa chewed his muffin slowly and watched them.
How are they eating so much? And how are they not morbidly obese?
He played the last conversation over in his mind and tried to figure out where he was.

5

The Train Ride

              Shortly after the meal was finished, Dr. Varbas stood up, excused himself, and left the dining room, coughing as he went.

             
Every ounce of food had been eaten off of the massive table. Stew bowls sat empty except for a small amount of broth, lobsters had been emptied out, and the sandwich plate was clean of everything but bread crumbs.

             
Conway was asleep at the table. He had pushed his plate forward and was resting his head atop his forearms. His muscular abdomen bulged beneath the black fabric, but neither he nor McCoy seemed to be in any great distress after eating the incredible amount of food.

             
Asa first felt the sensation. A low rumble began in the floor, softly shaking the table. Asa could see the water moving in his water bottle with the vibrations. Then he heard it. There was a low whining sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once. It was quiet and low at first, and then it amplified until it was a deafening scream and there was the squeal of metal on metal.

             
Conway shot up, startled, and his chair fell to the ground. He hollered in surprise and Asa saw panic in his eyes. It wasn’t until the noise had stopped and everything had calmed down that Asa was able to process what was coming out of the man’s back.