Academy 7 (6 page)

 

Her name, Dane soon learned, was Aerin Renning, and though she was nothing outstanding to look at, she had a mind like an Ephesian slicer. During science she rattled off the structure of an H
₂
0 replicator; and in Universal Literature, she was the only student to translate the ancient poem, “Migracion Humana.”

Still, with the lure of food less than an hour away, Dane might have lost interest in her. If the events in technology class had not rendered that impossible.

The tech lab was in the basement. And based on the semi-crumbling state of the other classrooms, Dane would not have been surprised to wade through a swath of cobwebs on his way through the door. Clearly the government’s decade of slashing the general fund in favor of defense spending had taken its toll on even the most famous school in the Alliance.

But the real condition of the room surprised him. Silver walls glimmered with data strips. Glassy panels covered the ceiling. Rows of cushioned, swivel chairs lined the tables: thirty chairs, one for each of the thirty state-of-the-art computers.
Ravens.
Dane recognized them. The tech lab must be supported by the Council.

A plump man in striped green robes gestured for the students to take their seats. His bushy beard flared out from his chin, and blue eyes sparkled above a crooked nose. Judging by his smile, he rather enjoyed the students’ stunned reaction to the lab.

Dane noticed Aerin enter the room, take a few halting steps, then sink down, her attention riveted on the shining black machine before her. He slid into the chair beside hers.

“Welcome to the Academy 7 tech lab,” said the robed man, stuffing his hands into large pockets and rocking back on his heels. “I’m Mr. Zaniels, and this is my domain.” He stuck out his chin in a smooth circle. “The database you can access from this room—and this room only—is the second largest in the Alliance. Your room code will serve as your password and will give you access to any data that might help with your schoolwork.”

You mean the code will restrict us from anything we aren’t allowed to see.
Dane had heard about the Academy 7 database. There were supposed to be high-security files on every student ever to pass through the school: leaders, heroes, and criminals alike. Not even the military had control over those files.

Zaniels went on, “If you haven’t seen this type of computer before, don’t worry. Each of you is seated at a Raven ZL. The Raven has yet to hit the open market and works a little differently from other machines. Your challenge today is to be the first to retrieve the file titled”—he paused for emphasis—“Academy 7 Code of Conduct.”

A chorus of groans greeted the name. “If you get stuck and are not sure what to do,” continued Zaniels, “try something. Begin.”

Dane glanced at the blank screen before him. He failed to see how winning would prove anything other than that he owned a Raven back on base. At his side, Aerin was running her hands along the edges of her machine. She tugged a strand of mousy brown hair between her teeth, then let her fingers hover over the keyboard. “Something wrong?” he asked her.

She pulled the strand from her mouth and eyed him warily. “We’re supposed to figure it out for ourselves,” she whispered.

Dane shrugged and lowered his voice conspiratorially as he leaned toward her. “Technically, Zaniels didn’t say we couldn’t help each other.”

She pulled away, maintaining her distance, but her eyes flitted toward the other screens lighting up around the room. She bit her lip, then jerked her head in a quick nod. “Where is the power switch?”

He blinked. Sure there were differences between the Raven and other models, but this was not one of them. “It’s already on. Just type in ‘Alliance’ for the entry code.” He reached for her keyboard, but she beat him to it, her head whipping around and her fingers flying over the keys. She did not thank him.

Incensed at the sudden brush-off, Dane punched the entry code into his own machine. He typed in his password, skipped over an introduction that would have taken time to download, and zapped away a bothersome graphic. Within seconds, he was in the database, scanning an endless list of files. Unbelievable. There must be twice as much data here as on base.

There it was: the file’s name. A message popped up listing the download time for clearing security as three minutes. He pushed his seat back and glanced at Aerin’s computer.

The words
Code of Conduct
glowed in brilliant purple letters at the center of her screen. His mouth dropped.

Something resembling a smile twitched across her face, making it not quite so plain. She stretched a skinny arm over his keyboard and hit the Restart button.

Anger replaced shock. “What do you think you’re—” he started to protest.

“Freeze it,” she interrupted.

“What?”

“Just shut up and watch.” Both her hands now usurped his keyboard. A few steps later and he was staring at the bright purple words blinking on his screen. Neither he nor she had entered his password.

Understanding scaled the inside of his chest. She had bypassed the entire security system.

And shown him how to do it.

Chapter Five

AERIN TRIED TO BLOCK OUT THE DEAFENING NOISE OF the cafeteria: utensils banging onto plates, plates onto trays, trays onto tables. Chairs scraped across floor tiles. Machines beeped at the entrance. And over it all came the jarring clash of a hundred voices talking about the first morning’s classes.

She wanted out. Needed out.

But if she left, someone might notice. Instead, she retreated inside her head, bringing up the vision of the Code of Conduct, its list of three rules spinning on the backs of her eyelids.
Question. Commit. Strive.
She clung to the words. For six years her only code had been survival.

Here survival was different, the pitfalls invisible to the naked eye, obscured by the unknown. She had been on edge all morning, certain she would make a mistake.

“You know you made a fool of yourself today.” A sharp voice confirmed her own fears. Painted-green fingernails brushed against the side of Aerin’s tray, and an olive-brown hand propped itself on the table’s edge. Yvonne leaned forward, balancing a salad plate on her left palm. “You can’t possibly not know who he is,” she said, biting into a hot chili pepper, then waving her hand as if to cool the taste.

Who
who
is?
Aerin chose not to respond. One lesson she had learned on Vizhan was never to confirm another’s accusation.

“You really don’t, do you?” Yvonne’s voice glinted with astonishment. Bending across the table, she whispered the name, “Dane Madousin,” then pulled back, searching for some type of reaction.

None came. Aerin scrambled through her mental database, but the name meant nothing.

The girl gestured toward a young man lifting a gooey pastry from the dessert table. His sleeves were pushed up past his elbows, a white scar on his lower arm marring the brown-ness of his tan. Pale shadows traced the slight hollows of his cheeks and the rim of his jaw. His black hair curled halfway down his neck, and Aerin recognized the way he surveyed the room, his eyes searching without appearing to do so.

It was the boy from the tech lab, the one who had offered to help, then given her a strange look when she had asked how to start the machine. As if he knew there was something wrong. That she did not belong.

“He’s the son of General Madousin.” Yvonne’s words came slowly, with heavy emphasis. “The Council member. And the head of the Allied military.”

An ominous twinge pricked Aerin’s stomach.

Yvonne went on, “During debate you criticized the Alliance for not saving some slaves or something, and he actually argued on your side.”

Aerin’s spoon tightened in her hand. The events from debate came flooding back. She had not meant to argue with the teacher, but he had rejected her first answer. And she could not afford to fail. He had made her so angry, hedging around her question, then dismissing all those people on X-level planets, all those victims, as if they were nothing. And then it had turned out the teacher was only testing her to see if she would stand up for her views. Well, she had. Precious little good it would do the people she had left behind.

Yvonne was still talking about Dane. “He even pretended to criticize the Wyan-Ot mission when everyone knows his father is in charge of it.”

“Pretended?” The question slipped. Aerin vaguely remembered someone joining in her side of the argument, but by then she had been too upset to pay heed.

“Of course. You didn’t think he was serious, did you?”

Aerin blinked, her cheeks flaming. He had been making fun of her then, perhaps all morning.

Yvonne lifted a hand to wave at a group of girls across the room, then shifted her plate and stood erect. “I just thought you should know.” Her hips swayed as she walked away, and the backs of the green-painted fingernails on her right hand grazed against the arm of the young man she had been discussing.

Aerin cringed and stared down at her bowl. The cheese had congealed at the top of her soup, and the smell of garlic now turned her stomach. All month she had spent studying, but it had taken her less than a day to betray her own ignorance and become a target.

“Mind if I sit?”

She looked up.

Into the deep brown eyes of Dane Madousin.

“I was just leaving.” She lurched to her feet but banged the table with her knee. Her tray jolted, and the milk glass tumbled sideways, spraying liquid all over the front of his uniform.

He stood there, frozen, his tray still in his hands, milk dripping down the black folds of his shirt and pants.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she gasped, then cursed herself. Why apologize when he had destroyed her entire morning? Flushed, she brushed past him, trying to ignore the burning stares of the other students.
Run! Get away!
her head screamed, but she made herself walk calmly. Somehow she dumped her tray onto the conveyer belt and strode through the swinging doors before breaking into a sprint.

Her feet pounded across the path. She burst through the outer fringe of the garden and continued on, deeper and deeper into the tangled core. At first she was just running, heeding neither where she was going nor the scratching branches. Then a small trickle of blood oozed into her eye and brought her to a stop.

She wiped a finger across the scrape, decided it was nothing serious, and moved on at a slower pace, pausing now to avoid raised roots and low-hanging limbs. A flash of white glinted through the trees, and for a moment she thought she might have circled back to the path, but as she listened, a sustained whisper reached her ears.

A chill slid along her neck. Another ten steps and she found herself standing on the edge of a white paved circle, ten feet wide. At the circle’s center rose a plume of clear water, arcing up and outward, then tumbling in a fine spray.

The fountain acted as a trigger, releasing tension. Aerin’s feet gave out from under her, and her body slumped to the ground just beyond the water’s reach. She pulled her knees close to her chest and dropped her head.

Was this what she had become? A coward hiding within an even tighter circle than the Wall. She could not,
could not
live like this. And what was she running from? The rude behavior of one young man?

Nothing at the school truly frightened her. It was not this place, but the thought of it as being temporary. Of being sent back.

She closed her eyes and tried to force away the images of the beatings she had seen given to captured runaways. The slow, painful deaths on display for other slaves who might consider the same course of action. The blood. And the screams.

Yet she had chosen to run that risk. And she was not about to let one small mistake, or one person, interfere with her chance at a future.

Rising to her feet, Aerin brushed herself off. She would be a fool to think she could flip some switch and change the natural course of her feelings, but she would have to try. Facing down one challenge at a time. Beginning with Dane Madousin.

 

Dane turned out to be a greater challenge then Aerin had anticipated. The afternoon instructor, Miss Maya, who was in charge of physical fitness and combat training, ran all the first-years through a rigorous set of fitness tests at the south end of the lawn. Tests of speed, strength, and agility: running at a short distance, running at a long one, throwing weights, climbing nets, and jumping pits. Competitions for the most pull-ups in five minutes, the most sit-ups in ten. Timed rope climbs and an obstacle course.

Without exception, Aerin came second in every single test—right behind Dane. By midafternoon break, she no longer cared about conquering her fears. She just wanted to thrash him at something.

“Enough,” Miss Maya called, clapping her hands and blowing on a silver whistle. “Huddle up.” The teacher’s youthful face and petite body made her look almost as young as the students, but her tight fitness suit revealed the toned muscles of a trained fighter. No one disobeyed her orders.

“All right,” she said, “you have all seen enough to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of your classmates. Find a combat partner with a similar build and fitness level.”

The huddle splintered, and Aerin tried to back away from the throng, but a tight grip clamped down on her shoulder. “Your partner is right here, Miss Renning.” The teacher steered her in front of Dane.

He cocked a black eyebrow and held out a hand for Aerin to shake.

She declined, then frowned at the grin that spread across the width of his face. He must think he could easily defeat her.

Within minutes the class had split into pairs. Again Miss Maya blew her whistle. “The person you are standing across from may or may not be your partner at the close of today. We’ll start with some basic challenges, and I will reshuffle you as you work. Your cohort at day’s end
will
be your partner for the rest of term.