Zachary Rawlins - The Academy

Alex wondered how they were going to enter the building, given that the door appeared to be twelve feet tall and cut from a single piece of wood, but as they got closer, he realized that the door had a secondary, standard-size entry set in it, so close to flush that it was invisible from a distance. Michael held it open, gesturing for Alex to enter.

It was cold inside the building, and Alex shivered as he walked inside the enormous central chamber, a long expense of alternating black and white marble tile with curled stairways at intervals along the hall, climbing up to the ornate girding of the second floor. The hallway went far enough along in a straight line that Alex could not see the end of it. The building appeared sparsely populated, as he saw only a handful of people moving purposefully from office to office, dressed in typical business attire rather than the school uniform.

“Welcome to the Administration building, Alex. We’ve got a few things to take care of here, regarding your enrollment, then we’ll see about giving you a look around the campus, and get you set up in the dorms. Right through here…”

Michael led him down the hall, then up the third staircase on the right, through a heavy walnut door, and into an airy office with an excessive number of potted plants. There was a heavy-set woman in a purple dress there, working behind a white-painted desk, who smiled cheerfully when they walked in. Michael greeted her with a wave.

“Mrs. Nesbit, my secretary extraordinaire. Alexander Warner, a new student. Could you prepare the paperwork?”

She nodded and began tapping away at her keyboard, while Michael led Alex through another door to a smaller back office. He sat down behind a desk littered with books, piles of paper, and an aged desktop computer, nodding wearily toward a comfortable-looking chair in the corner of the room. Alex sat down gratefully, his back sore and his forearm aching, even after his stay in the hospital.

“You’ve got good timing, Alex. We are between sessions right now,” Michael said, clearing an area in front of him by moving what appeared to be a partially disassembled firearm, piece by piece, into a desk drawer. “Most of the students are back at home. We’ll be able to get you installed at the dorms and enrolled in class right from the first day.”

“What kind of classes?”

Alex spoke in monotone, unable to hide his unhappiness at the thought.

Michael laughed.

“I doubt very much that you’ll find it boring, Alex, but I can’t tell you much until we figure out what you can learn, okay? We won’t try and teach you anything that you don’t want to know.”

“I don’t get it.”

Michael seemed terribly amused by Alex’s recalcitrance.

“Don’t worry about it too much. At first, it will be general stuff. We’ll have you do some tests, so we can figure out the proper placement for you. It’ll probably be a bit hard, to start with, but I think you’ll find that it’s not that bad once you get the hang of how it all works.”

“Will everyone know what’s going on but me?”

“No, but you will be at a disadvantage,” Michael said thoughtfully. “No use pretending otherwise. Sometimes the talent runs in families, but mostly it doesn’t. Some of the students here have been raised as part of a cartel, but most of the others, like you, were discovered in the world, as children or early teens. It’s a bit unusual to be starting at your age, but it’s not unheard of. But yes,” Michael added sympathetically, “most of the students will probably have a better idea of what’s going on than you do.”

“You’re going to have to explain it, then,” Alex said firmly. “I’m going to need to know about it all, Michael.”

“I’ll do my best to explain,” he said, as Mrs. Nesbit entered with a quick knock and deposited a stack of folders on a recently cleared patch of desk. “Two coffees, Mrs. Nesbit. How do you take yours, Alex?”

Alexander hesitated for a moment. He’d never cared much for coffee. It made him nervous. But then again, given the circumstances…

“Milk and sugar,” he decided, because it sounded right to him. “Lots, please.”

Mrs. Nesbit nodded and bustled back out to the main room, shutting the door behind her. Michael deposited the new stack of paperwork on one of the already daunting piles and then sat back in his swivel chair, folding his hands behind his head.

“Do you mind if I start with the hard part first, Alex?”

Michael’s smile folded up and disappeared, and his big, brown eyes got sad. Alex braced himself without knowing what was coming, and then managed a nervous nod.

“Okay, then. Nobody ever likes hearing this part, but most of the time, people have a bit more choice in the matter. You got the short end of the stick, son,” Michael said, so sympathetically that Alex couldn’t help but wonder if he was being genuine.

“We had no choice in the matter, you see, because of your injuries,” Michael continued. “You were dead by the time they got you to the infirmary, Alex. Your heart stopped on the elevator ride up. And even if the doctors had gotten it going again, you had spinal trauma and massive blood loss, not to mention clotting and impacted bone in your forearm. You would have died again on the operating table, you have to appreciate that.”

Alex was not entirely convinced that he did, but he let the big man keep talking.

“You were injected with almost two-ounces of water saturated with billions of particles of nanomachinery, Alexander, programmed for replication and recovery protocols,” Michael said, almost casually, as if it were a normal thing, regrettable perhaps, but something to be expected. “Your heart started beating about twenty seconds after the injection, and you started breathing again within a minute.”

Alex looked at his hands, at the blue veins running just underneath the skin, and wondered.

“Are they still inside me?”

The question seemed somehow terribly important, his throat dry and his voice hoarse. He had to fight the urge to scratch at his skin.

“I’m afraid so,” Michael replied, looking sadly at Alexander. “It’s not a reversible procedure, Alex.”

“Why would you do that?” He was almost shouting, halfway out of his chair and onto his feet. “Who told you could do that?”

“Sit down, Alex,” Michael ordered sternly. “I won’t bother to repeat the ‘you were dead already’ part, since we covered that, and move to the other half — we would have done it to you, anyway, regardless of the injuries. We would have asked your permission, but, hey, I was there, watching you bleed out, son. If you’d prefer that I explain myself fully to an unconscious kid, before deciding to try and save his life, well, I’m not sure how realistic your expectations are.”

Alex glared at Michael, hands knotted around the arms of his chair, for a long moment. Then he sat back, sighing.

“What exactly have you done to me?” he asked, resting his head in his hands.

“It’s not as bad as all that, son,” Michael said, his smile back. “They did save you, after all. And those little machines, the nanites, they can do it again, too, if it becomes necessary. You’ll find dying pretty difficult from here on out, my friend.”

Something in Michael’s tone resonated with Alex.

“Do you have them too?” he asked, almost pleaded. “Are there machines inside you?”

“Sure I do,” Michael said, reassuringly. “And so do all the students here, and the entire faculty. For people like us, it’s an absolute necessity.”

“Why?”

“You’ve got power inside you, Alex, like everyone else at the Academy, to one extent or another. We don’t know why, but you were born that way. But power isn’t everything…”