The Academy: Book 1 (8 page)

              It hurt. Asa noticed with panic that his vision was tunneling down into a thin beam. His brain was in dire need of oxygen, and his chest was beginning to tighten and plead for air.

             
He could see the lakebed below him now, caked down with thousands of pounds of water sitting on top of it. Green and brown weeds reached up towards the far-off surface, waving as if welcoming Asa into their reach. In half a minute, he would be among the thick vines. Even though he was certain he would parish no matter what the circumstances, he had an illogical fear that there was some kind of foreign, scale-covered lake creature that would take bites from his skin with sharp teeth as he finally came to a rest at the bottom of King Lake.

             
He smiled nervously at the thought.
What’s it going to do, kill me? Probably no faster than the lack of oxygen surrounding my body.

             
Asa’s eyes were wide open, still searching for the beautiful girl among the tangle of deep-water plants. He scanned all around; he had an incredible urge to get just one final look at her.

             
Asa cocked his head to the side. He had heard it again, and he was almost positive that it wasn’t a hallucination this time. The whine of an engine came to his ears; the noise was growing louder by the second as he neared the bottom of the reservoir. He noticed that the plants that grew from the floor weren’t just moving with the water currents, but something was making them vibrate from beneath the dirt.

             
The metal plates that Asa was chained to slipped below the deep-water vegetation and out of sight. The weight continued to drag Asa lower, and the slimy fingers and tendons of the seaweed wrapped around his arms and legs, then brushed his face and neck. He let out a moan accompanied with a dozen bubbles when an edge of plant brushed his ear and he mistook it for a snake out of the corner of his eyes.

             
The plates beneath him struck hard, slime covered dirt, and Asa bobbed up and down for a second, still chained to the weight below. He had an innate instinct to blow out all the air in his lungs and to inhale water—but he suppressed it. He tugged hard at his chains, but they still wouldn’t budge. The whine of a motor was obtrusive at the bottom, and Asa wondered what could be this deep.

             
Is it some kind of filtering system?

             
His head was throbbing, and just as he gave in and blew out all of the air from his lungs and saw the bubbles disperse around him and race up to the summer air he felt a jerking sensation. He wrapped his hands around the chain that was pulling him down and felt that it was pulsating. He looked down and saw that the weights that he was attached to had sunk down beneath the bottom, and that he was being pulled into the dirt.

             
They’ll never find me.

             
The chain continued to tug and he was jerked through thick mud, hands first. The wet, cold lake bottom moved around his body, and he felt little resistance at the top. He took one last look up above to the surface of the lake, and then he was completely buried. He was in utter darkness.
As dark as a tomb.
Inside of the mud, the engine noises were almost deafening, and he thought that through it all he heard a man’s voice.

             
A slurping sound reached Asa’s ears and then something jerked him downward with a force that made his neck whiplash in the mud and his stomach drop. Asa fell and landed on the weight plates and the chains.

             
He gasped and pulled in precious air. His eyes seemed to sear in the light surrounding him. Compared to the dark tomb he had just been in, this room was as bright as the sun. At first, he couldn’t see anything but blinding light.

             
He wretched in another breath of air and felt something cold and slimy run down his nose. Asa propped himself up on his knees and coughed and vomited. His face was still covered in mud from the lakebed and he had inhaled some of it into his lungs. He had an instinct to reach up and clean his face, but found that his hands were still locked securely in his handcuffs.

             
Blood was pounding in his temples as he hacked and spat up mucus and mud onto the floor below him. He flexed his back and shoulders and the handcuffs dug deep into his skin but he kept pulling. He was still gagging and forcing himself to inhale between bouts of coughing and retching up lake content from his breathing passages. His lungs were screaming, and he found that no amount of air satisfied him. Tears were streaming down his face as he continued to cough and breathe, too preoccupied with his own body to pay attention to his surroundings.

             
“Stop pulling on that! You’re going to break your wrists!”

             
The voice barely penetrated Asa’s consciousness. He had no idea whether it was a male or female, and he certainly didn’t know what the voice was telling him. In his gasps and gags he was only dimly aware that there was someone else beside him.

             
“Asa, stop!”

             
Still, Asa was in his own world. He had coughed up all obstructions from his throat and now he was bent over, enjoying the sacred air that surrounded him. His body had been pushed to its limits of oxygen deprivation and now, sitting there, churning in and out as much air as possible, trying to save himself from brain damage, Asa couldn’t use energy thinking about something as trifle as who was talking or why. He was beginning to feel better. The tears were slowing, he kept his eyes closed, and he wondered why his wrists were hurting so much.

             
“Asa! Stop it!”

             
Someone grabbed him and he went into frenzy, kicking and pulling and screaming and writhing on the floor. The hands were off of him, and then everything was quiet for a moment. He opened his eyes and looked at the room he was in.

He was panting, and so was some
one else. Asa saw the girl sitting against a wall, still chained to the weight plates that had dragged her to the bottom. Her face was bruised on the left side and her hair and clothes were drenched and muddy. Her green eyes locked with Asa’s.

The floor was trampoline material that stretched the between the four walls and was held up by a series of springs surrounding. Asa looked down and watched as a trickle of blood dripped off his wrist and onto the trampoline. The droplet sat there for a moment before falling through the pours of the substance and onto hard tile situated half a foot below the trampoline. The blood droplet, along with all the water dripping off his and the girl’s bodies slid down a slope in the tile and then fell down a drain. Asa saw that the weights attached to him pulled the trampoline surface down so much that it touched the tile.

The room was lit with small, circular pads in the ceiling. All of them glowed blue-white and seemed to be a part of the surface rather than a bulb attached to it. It was as though every once in a while the ceiling decided to glow. The ceiling itself was a mixture of swirling shades of brown, and was shiny on the surface.

The walls were ornately and beautifully decorated with a mountainous theme running throughout the room. The walls themselves belonged in a
museum. They were painted with pictures of goats standing high atop mountainous peaks, looking below at sprawling landscape as though admiring the feat that they had accomplished. The detail was amazing; the animals’ beards moved with the wind, their hooves had indentions and textures to them, and their pupils were horizontal slits of black.

There was another person in the room. He was emaciated, pallor, and slumped over in a white coat. He was wearing a surgeons mask and had a stethoscope draped around his neck. His eyes were yellow, and when he coughed a deep noise rumbled in his throat. His skin was cracked and dry. Asa had an instant guess at what this person was suffering from.

“Who are you? Where am I?” Asa asked. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have felt that asking those questions so initially and directly would have been rudely blunt, but after being kidnapped and nearly drowned, he thought they were appropriate. Asa saw that the beautiful girl was watching the man in the white coat, and he wondered if she was as nervous as he was.

“I’m Dr.
Varbas and you’re at Alfatrex Station number 63.”

Asa noticed the black outline of a viper on the man’s coat—
Alfatrex’s symbol.

“
Alfatrex?” Asa asked, confused.

“Yes, I know what you’re thinking. It’s the same one that makes the
Wolf Flu virus.” He paused. “Vaccine. The Wolf Flu Vaccine. Excuse me. I’ve been sick lately and when I’m sick I can’t think straight.”

The man wasn’t lying.
He was
, Asa thought,
very sick
. He talked and moved slow, like a drunk. He reached for something on the inside of his coat and Asa saw that his fingernails were yellowing and that his hands were shaking.

“Let’s get you two
uncuffed. Conway and McCoy should be here any moment.” Dr. Varbas unhooked a key ring from the side of his hip and took the metal cuffs off the beautiful girl’s and Asa’s wrists and ankles. Asa’s wrists had deep cuts in them where he had tugged on the metal, and they were sore when he moved them.

“Conway,” Asa said to himself, almost at a whisper.

“What was that?” Dr. Varbas asked.

“Nothing. I just think that I’ve heard Conway’s name before. He seems familiar.”

Dr. Varbas’s yellow eyes stared at Asa from above the surgical mask. They did not move for a moment, and Asa couldn’t see what the man’s mouth was doing. They seemed to say something to Asa; or maybe he was just exhausted with fatigue from the deadly virus that was consuming his body.

Asa’s thoughts were interrupted by another slurping sound, and two pairs of feet were hanging from the ceiling. Mud and water fell below onto the trampoline, and Asa realized that the brown, swirling ceiling above was the bottom of the lake, suspended there by some kind of reflective membrane. Conway and McCoy landed gracefully on the floor, looking around with goggles and a mask on. The goggles and the mask were both black, just like their suits, and they were sleek and thin. The lenses of the goggles were made of heavy glass, and Conway and McCoy’s eyes seemed to be magnified by the way the glass was curved. The mask portion of the goggles came down from the nose bridge to cover their noses and mouths. Each of them pressed on the side of the goggles and the mask retracted upon itself until it disappeared into the nose bridge. They removed their goggles and stored them somewhere in the sleeve of their arms.

“I told you you’d be fine,” said McCoy. His blond hair was matted down with mud. He smiled, showing perfect white teeth.

Asa and the beautiful girl didn’t say anything. Asa thought that it would be better to sit back and try to get a better bearing of what was going on before starting to add to conversations.

Conway looked at everyone in the room except for Asa, his left eye turning above his scar. The man stood rigid, and beneath his clothes Asa could see the outline of each of his tensed muscles. He seemed comfortable in a military attention stance and Asa could sense that the man worked tirelessly, and that he couldn’t understand anyone doing otherwise. There wasn’t a hint of fear or humor on his leader’s expression, and the strong lines of his jaw led down to lips pursed slightly together. He looked as though he were mildly upset, as though he had a million things to do and formalities were keeping him from doing those things.

Where do I know
him from? Where have I seen that scar beneath his left eye, or those veins on his arms? I’ve seen him, I know it.

McCoy stood relaxed. He kept his hands behind his back and his feet spread wide, balancing himself on the trampoline surface. He wore a small smirk on his face, as though the formalities tha
t bothered Conway only humored himself. He caught eyes with Asa for a moment and Asa saw in the way that he moved the deep blue irises that he was looking at a man who honestly believed that he could do anything.

“What’s the plan?” McCoy asked the doctor.

“We’ll have a quick meal and then send you on your way.”

“Is anyone else coming?” asked Conway. He stared up at the ceiling, as if expecting more people to drop down.

              “No, this is the entire party. This way, please.”

             
Dr. Varbas had a hard time walking over the moving surface. He took slow, careful steps and everyone else stayed still as to not make the floor bounce more until he had made it across the room and had his hand safely on the doorknob. He was perpetually stooped over, his spine exhibiting premature arthritis. He turned and spoke casually through the surgical mask. “C’mon, now.”

             
He pushed open the door and walked through. Conway and McCoy quickly followed, making their way over the trampoline without any apparent difficulty.

             
Asa was alone for a moment with the beautiful girl. They shared a glance and he saw fear for a fleeting second in the green eyes, and then she walked out the door looking calm and composed, water dripping from her clothes and hair onto the floor. Asa followed.