The Academy: Book 2 (29 page)

             
Asa had never seen any injectable recreational drugs before, such as heroin or ketamine.
Is that what I’m seeing? Are those drugs that deep of a red? And if that is a recreational drug, why is The Boss getting high before a meeting?
Asa had known people with diabetes before he entered the Academy, and didn’t think that their insulin looked like that.

             
Robert King removed his right, leather shoe, and the patterned dress sock on his right foot. He tied the blue elastic band tightly over his calf, to temporarily cut off the circulation. He unwrapped an alcohol-disinfecting pad and dabbed it on the area. The green-blue veins on the top of his foot grew, and he flicked them a few times to dilate the vessels even further. Then, he took the syringe, injected the needle into one of his veins, and pressed the plunger down until all the liquid was inside his body.

             
He’s injecting in his foot instead of his arm so that people don’t notice his track marks? What is he injecting, though?
Asa’s mind was going wild with guesses. He wondered if the man he saw wasn’t the real Robert King.
Maybe he’s injecting a serum that makes him look like Robert King?

             
The person that looked like Robert King untied the rubber tourniquet, and withdrew the needle from his body. A thin trickle of blood began to run down his foot, towards his ankle. He reused the open alcohol pad, cleaning the blood, and then he applied a skin-colored band aid. He leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. He remained like that for minutes, not moving. A stingray floated beneath Asa. The David in the metal cage continued to color.

             
For no perceivable reason, Robert King sat up after a few moments. He opened one of the drawers on the side of his desk, and discarded the dirty syringe, the trash from the band aid, the syringe wrapping, and the alcohol-swab in there. He put the tourniquet and the vile of blood-red liquid back in the top drawer, where it came from.

             
Asa noticed that he was moving
very
fast.

Robert King
grabbed his patterned dress sock, tugged it on, and then slipped his foot into his shoe. He sat up straight, and shook his face out, as though to shake the tired off.

             
It was then that Asa noticed the similarities between Robert King, after he injected himself with that red stuff, and how Teddy had been acting recently. Robert King’s pupils were enormous, nearly the size of nickels. He twitched his head quickly to the right, just as Teddy had been doing recently, Robert King looked much less tired than before he injected himself with the drug. He reached down, pressed a button underneath his desk. After an initial buzzing noise, The Boss said, “bring him in.”

             
There was a series of metallic clicking noises and then the heavy front door opened slightly. Volkner was pushed inside, where he collapsed and rolled onto the floor, and then the door was shut again.

             
“Nice to see you, Rasmus,” said Robert King, addressing Volkner by his first name and looking him over with his dilated pupils. Robert King’s posture was different than Asa had ever seen it: typically, the man took a relaxed pose, slouching his back a little. A trademark of The Boss was that he talked out of the side of his mouth. All of this was gone. He held an erect, military-style pose, and he talked using his whole mouth. Robert King used to mumble some when he talked, and now he enunciated each word clearly, using his lips and tongue excessively to shape each word. “I can see that Jamie’s hand-me-down shorts are fitting you nicely! Jamie, what do you think?”

             
Upon the arrival of Volkner inside the room, the David was no longer coloring quietly at his table, but was now hanging halfway up his golden bars by his hands and feet. He pressed a hairy knuckle up to the metal apparatus around his neck, and as he did so the red light turned green. “My pants fit you,” came a male, computer-voice from the monkey’s neck, and then the David screamed out a high-pitched series of laughs. Asa realized that the metal band the monkey wore allowed him to somehow speak in an electronic voice.

             
“Do you like wearing Jamie’s clothes, Rasmus?”

             
Volkner did not respond. He was facedown on the marble floor, breathing.

             
Jamie turned a knob on his voice-producing machine, and when he spoke next, the voice was of a female with a British accent: “Volkner, he’s talking to you.”

             
Volkner remained face down, and said, “Yes, sir. I am grateful for them, sir.”

             
“Good,” Robert King said. “Now get up and come over here. Take a seat. We need to chat.”

             
Volkner stood, slowly, on trembling knees. He looked so much different than he had two months ago, when Asa last saw him.

             
He was naked except for jean-shorts that didn’t at all fit him: they appeared to have been made for a child, as they were Jamie’s hand-me-downs. They were ripped along the sides and the back, and an extra elastic band had been added to them to hold the torn article of clothing to his body. The only covered a fourth of his thighs.

             
Jamie jeered at Volkner as he walked past the golden cage. “My jeans! My jeans! HAHAHAHA!” the monkey said, still in its female English accent voice.

             
Volkner’s left eye was swollen completely shut, and his right eye danced nervously around the room. His pale face and scalp were covered in deep, half-healed gashes and scars. Blond hair so bright it was almost white had grown half an inch out the back and sides of his scalp: Typically, he kept his head shaved, but it appeared as though in the midst of whatever had been happening to him, they hadn’t allowed him a razor to do so.

             
Asa could see by the positioning of Volkner’s cracked lips that he either no longer had teeth at all, or that he was simply missing the majority of them.

             
His body was spotted with yellow, purple, and green-brown bruises, the worst of which covered a 6-inch by 2 feet area extending over his left hip.

             
Volkner was missing two toes on his right foot, and he was dripping blood from somewhere.

             
The worst part of his appearance was his emaciation. The last time that Asa had seen Volkner, he had been lean, but filled in with muscle. Now, he looked to weigh half of what he used to. On all portions of his body, his joints were wider than the sinewy regions between them. His hips, his knees, his ankles, his shoulders, and his elbows were all twice as wide as the disturbingly thin regions between them. You could count his ribs from twenty feet away: they cast hard shadows on his pale flesh.

             
He limped across the room and then slouched down in one of the chairs facing The Boss’s desk. All of the confidence that he had had before was gone. He was a broken man.

             
The water trickling down into the aquarium was the only noise in the room for a few minutes. Robert King stared down at Volkner, not saying a word. Volkner couldn’t look up at the stare, and was shifting uncomfortably. Suddenly, he broke into sobs, his bony chest hitching with rapid breaths.

             
Robert King took a seat behind his desk, and pressed a button located on his chair that lowered the platform he was atop until he was eye to eye with Volkner. “We need to talk, big V.”

             
Volkner nodded, but continued to sob.

             
“I’m very angry with you,” Robert King said, matter-of-factly.

             
“I’m very angry at you,” Volkner spat back at him.

             
Jamie screamed in rage from behind his golden bars and Robert King’s face remained unchanged.

             
“I was your most faithful,” Volkner said, continuing to sob. “I was loyal to you, Robert!”

             
The Boss slammed his fist upon the desk and Volkner flinched. “
Nonsense!
You were my least loyal, continually trying to throw me under the bus! You wanted this organization to crumble so that the Hive would have less opposition.”

             
“You’re crazy,” Volkner whispered, trembling.

             
Jamie threw one of his coloring books through the bars, aiming at Volkner, but it clattered harmlessly to the floor before reaching its target.

             
“That’ll be enough, Jamie,” Robert King said, not taking his eyes off of Volkner.

             
“Sorry, sir,” Jamie said, utilizing his electronic male voice.

             
Robert King’s too-dilated eyes were moving quickly over Volkner’s body in a motion that reminded Asa of Teddy’s eyes. He then began to talk very fast, just like Teddy had been doing lately. His voice rose, and his anger waxed and waned as he spoke.

             
“Let us review an aspect of the contract that Edmund Palmer made regarding the Academy: If Charlotte Stokes or Asa Palmer are unfairly disqualified of killed, the crows will write letters to news-outlets around the world, detailing crimes that we have committed. Now, let us review how you have handled Charlotte Stokes and Asa Palmer’s coming to the Academy. You tried to poison both of them, you sent Professor Kayce’s mountain lion after them, and you gave them each Blood Canaries that were supposed to kill them. Does that sound
fair
to you? Huh?”

             
Robert King stood, his face was becoming red and he was now talking even faster. “Because the crows sent out letters to the news outlets, letting them know that I was behind the Wolf Flu! And then, oh, THEN, Troy Webber sneaks on my property, makes a video saying that he’s killing me because of my connection with the Wolf Flu, and shoots the head off of one of my accountants who I had altered to look like me!”

             
Robert King breathed for a moment, then slammed fists down onto the wood of his desk: “
THAT COULD HAVE BEEN ME!”

             
Volkner was sobbing harder than ever now.

             
“What were you doing, if you weren’t trying to bring the Academy to the ground! How are we supposed to exist without the funding from the Wolf Flu vaccine?”

             
Volkner shook his head, still staring at the floor.

             
“What were you doing if you didn’t want us to be taken down?”

             
Volkner leapt up and threw his chair against the wall next to the golden cage, where it was smashed to pieces. After crumbling, Asa could see that odd, metal devices had been installed in the now broken chair. Though Volkner was emaciated, he was still incredibly strong—much stronger than a human could ever be. Black purulent saliva was running down his chin and he growled: “I was trying to kill the boy so that you could create more like me! I wanted there to be more Multipliers in your organization so that you would be more protected!”

             
Robert King took a few steps back from his desk to distance himself from the enraged Multiplier, but he still continued with his verbal attack: “I hear things, Rasmus! I have
ways
of getting information that you wouldn’t believe! I heard you talking to Professor Kayce about the Hive! I know that it exists!”

             
“It doesn’t exist!”

             
“Then why is Professor Kayce dead?”