Empowered Academy 1985 Read online

  Edgar looked almost as shocked as I was when he heard me say this. His face flushed red and he started looking around, worried that somebody had heard me.

  “W—what? How—how do you know?” he stammered out, his brow fixed in a deep, worried frown.

  “Why didn’t you show me?” I asked him. It felt weird that he would hide this from me, but then things started to make sense.

  It was basically impossible to explain how I could tell what somebody’s powers were when I absorbed them; in a way, I could feel them like some kind of sentient entity inside me, calling to me to use them. Everybody’s power had a different personality, too—Lizzy’s was mischievous; Blink’s was tranquil and unperturbed; Edgar’s had been... scared. And along with this came a basic understanding of how to use the power, which was how I knew what Edgar had hidden: the ability to change his appearance and morph into anybody he pleased.

  It shouldn’t have been a big deal, but oddly enough I felt betrayed. It would have been one thing if it was another, less deceptive power he had hidden from me, but this power made me question everything I knew about Edgar.

  Though he had grown on me tremendously with his sincerity and vulnerability, it was after all his model-like appearance that had first drawn me in, and now I was starting to wonder if that had all been just a sham.

  “I—I didn’t think...” he said, searching for the right words, but I cut him off.

  “Who are you?” I asked, tears welling up in my eyes. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of having been betrayed. I was really opening up to Edgar; I’d told him about my life and my troubles, and this whole time he could have just been wearing a mask.

  Edgar had been looking panicked up until now, but when I asked him that question, his whole demeanor changed. This dark somberness fell over him as he cast his eyes downward.

  “I’m just... a coward,” he said quietly.

  “That’s not what I meant, Edgar, I just want to—”

  He abruptly stood up before I could finish my thought and charged out of the classroom in a manner quite similar to what he’d done in the cafeteria before. You couldn’t just walk out of a class at the Academy, but Mr. Ward was talking with two students at another table and the other groups were all engaged in their discussions, so nobody noticed.

  As soon as Edgar was gone, I felt this strange hollowness inside me. Had my reaction been too severe? Mostly I was just in shock since I’d never absorbed—much less even heard about—a power like this before, and I wanted to know if the Edgar I was getting to know was the “real” Edgar or if he was literally pretending to be somebody else, but I didn’t expect him to run away like that.

  Edgar’s power was still swirling around inside me, and the sense of fear it exuded actually matched with everything I knew about Edgar—his shyness and his penchant for running away when things get out of hand. I couldn’t quite explain it, but Edgar had awakened something inside me; a desire to help him and show him that things weren’t as bad as he believed them to be. In fact, he not only had one incredible power but two, both of which would allow him to rise quickly through the ranks of the Empowered Bureau; if anything, he should have been full of confidence and brashness—so why was he so nervous and fearful?

  During the times I had shown him affection or interest, Edgar had reminded me of a love-starved puppy who basked in the warmth of the friendship I offered as though it were a rare treat. I furrowed my brow, wondering what kind of experiences Edgar had been through in order to become like this.

  When the bell suddenly rang, rupturing the fabric of my thoughts, I looked down and saw that I hadn’t finished a single exercise question.

  “Turn in the rest of the exercise questions for homework next week!” Mr. Ward said as students began packing up their things and rushing out the door. I followed suit.

  Since I’d only made contact with Edgar for a few brief seconds, I wouldn’t be able to retain his power for long, so I hurried to the nearest bathroom and locked myself in the first open stall. There, I took out my compact and steadied it on my face. I called to Edgar’s power, coaxing it up out of my core, and urged it to transform me.

  I almost dropped my mirror in surprise at what I saw. I watched in awe as my face literally transmogrified into Lizzy’s, which I had been focusing on in my mind. What was most incredible of all was how realistic it was. I didn’t look like Lizzy, I was indistinguishable from her; her dirty blond pixie haircut, her cute button nose, the scattered freckles on her cheeks that always reminded me of star constellations—each feature was reproduced with uncanny verisimilitude.

  I touched my face, curious if it was just a visual illusion, but it wasn’t—my face had actually physically changed to match the transformation. Then, wondering how much I could control the transformation, I tried to change my eyes from Lizzy’s blue to an outlandish purple, and Edgar’s power complied instantly, turning my irises an otherworldly violet.

  It was hard work though, and without any prior training in this ability, it was fatiguing me to hold the transformation in place, so I let it go. I kept my mirror aimed at myself as I watched the surreal process of my own features reclaiming my face, and within two seconds I was back to normal.

  I couldn’t help but wonder at the possibilities this power entailed. This could make Edgar the greatest spy in the world, and yet he was hiding this ability from everybody—for what?

  There had to be an explanation for all of this—Edgar’s anxiety and unwillingness to reveal this power—and it bothered me that I had no idea what it was. Edgar was the most enigmatic person I’d ever met, and for this reason he intrigued me very much. I was determined to learn more about him and his past.

  As I put my compact back inside my purse, I happened to glance down at my watch and saw that it was almost four o’clock. I rushed out of the stall, gave myself a quick once-over in the mirror (to make sure I didn’t still have purple eyes or anything), and hurried out of the restroom—I didn’t want to be late for my meeting with my dad.

  Chapter 5

  Emily

  The big headline on the cover of the New York Times on my dad’s desk read “Gorbachev Succeeds Chernenko; Urges Arms Control.”

  It was pretty shocking, but I didn’t think it was what my dad called me in here for. I was sitting across from him in his small, bunker-like office underneath the Academy. Sometimes I wondered why somebody like my dad, who was a senator and the director of the Empowered Bureau, didn’t have a fancier office, but it suited his personality well. He had always lived a spartan lifestyle, emphasizing temperance, self-control, and virtue, so he probably would have felt out of place in a nice, sprawling office like the one the Architect had on the mansion’s second floor.

  He was presently pecking away at the keys of the Macintosh 128K on his desk, stopping occasionally to stroke his thin, graying beard and read over what he’d just read, the glow of the bulky monitor shimmering in his thick glasses. After about a minute, he seemed to be finished with whatever it was he was writing (he never shared these kinds of things with me, and essentially kept me in the dark about most things involving the Bureau) and turned to me. I sat up obediently in my seat, giving him my full attention.

  “As you know,” my father began (he always talked to me like he was giving a presentation at a board meeting), “today is the anniversary of your mother’s death, so I thought it fitting that we should meet.”

  “Yes sir,” I replied. My dad had me refer to him as “sir” ever since I could remember, and I would never think of breaking that rule.

  My mom died when I was just two, and I never really had any memories of her. Nonetheless, I had always had this hazy feeling of my mom’s presence—this unimaginable tenderness standing over me, bright and warm, giving me a love that I’d never known anywhere else—but that could have very well been my imaginings, too. My dad never brought her up with me, but every year on the anniversary of her death we’d have a nice dinner toget
her in her remembrance. My uncle once told me that my dad changed completely when my mom died, but when I pressed him further, he seemed to regret having told me and didn’t want to reveal any more.

  “Now that you’re eighteen, I believe I can give you this,” my dad said in his usual unemotional tone, and then he took out a small jewelry box from one of his desk drawers and slid it over to me.

  My eyes widened when I saw the box. This was unusual indeed, and I wondered why he hadn’t given it to me on my eighteenth birthday, but then I quickly remembered that he hadn’t even been there for my eighteenth birthday; he had been in D.C. for some “important meeting.” Luckily, Lizzy had thrown an amazing little get-together for me with some of the people I was closest to in Maine, and then the next day the two of us packed our bags for the Academy.

  The small box looked old with its inlaid arabesque patterns and faded colors; it must have been my mom’s. My dad studied me coldly as I opened the box and took out the gold necklace inside. It was simple, with a thin chain and a small, disk-shaped pendant, but it somehow seemed meaningful to me. Not having known my mom, I’d never had to mourn or miss her, but—and maybe this was just because I was becoming an adult and had started to look at things differently—I felt the need to cherish and protect this necklace.

  “Thank you,” I said quietly, still admiring the refined beauty of my mom’s jewelry. “She must have had good taste,” I added. My dad didn’t say a word, and I saw no change in his expression that showed the necklace meant anything to him, but I was used to this—that’s how my dad had always been. I carefully put the necklace back in its box and placed it on my lap. My dad cleared his throat.

  “The world is only getting more dangerous, Emily,” he said, tapping at the Times on the table for emphasis. “I’ve been busy, but I’ve been following your progress this past month.”

  Hearing this, I tensed up. Though my dad was often out of state for work, the one thing he demanded from me—even all throughout my school years—was excellence. My biggest fear was letting him down.

  “And you’re going to have to start stepping things up if you really want to serve your country someday. You do want to serve your country, don’t you?”

  “Yes—of course, sir,” I said. Even I could hear the desperation in my own voice.

  “Then why doesn’t it seem that way?” he said, followed by a disappointed sigh. “There’s been word recently that the Soviets have been running their own EMP program for years already. They may even have empowered agents in the US now.”

  Tears were threatening, but there was no way I’d let them out. I had to be strong for my dad. I had to show him I was reliable. I gripped tightly at the antique jewelry box in my lap.

  “I will try harder,” I said, trying to reassure him. “I can already absorb the powers of three different people at once. And I can hold on to them for longer.”

  “And yet your recent simulation results have been lacking,” he pointed out quickly. “At any rate, I don’t want to hear excuses. I want to see progress, understood?”

  I stared down. “Yes sir.”

  “Good girl. Now get going.”

  He quickly turned back to his computer, and as I left his office I heard the hesitant clicking as he resumed typing on his keyboard.

  People thought it was so great having a dad that ran the Empowered Bureau, but they had no idea what it was really like. I knew a lot of the other students had never even met their parents, and sometimes—perhaps selfishly; perhaps foolishly—I wished I was like them. What good was it being able to access the secret facilities beneath the Academy if I only ever went there to get berated by my dad?

  I tried to ignore the crushing hollowness expanding inside me as I navigated the halls of the Academy back to my dorm room, stroking my mother’s jewelry box, hoping to find some kind of strength from it.

  Just as I turned the corner that led to my room, I ran right into Lizzy and we nearly collided into one another.

  “Em!” she cried excitedly and then jumped into my arms for a hug with a big smile on her face.

  As I returned Lizzy’s hug, I thought of how amazing she was, and I felt so blessed to have my best friend at the Academy with me. With just this one gesture, Lizzy reminded me that there were people in this world who really cared about me.

  As we separated, Lizzy noticed the small box in my hands right away.

  “Whoa, what’s that?” she asked, taking the box from my hands naturally and opening it up.

  “It was my mom’s,” I explained. “My dad just gave it to me.”

  “So that’s where you were,” Lizzy said, taking the gold necklace out and admiring it. She knew that my dad occasionally called me to his office, and she also knew that these meetings often put me in a terrible mood. “It’s beautiful. Are you going to wear it?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I never knew her, but... it feels special somehow. It makes sense, too; why else would she choose this one piece of jewelry to leave for me?”

  Smiling widely, Lizzy stretched out the necklace and placed it on me. I tucked the pendant into my shirt. The cool metal felt soothing on my chest.

  “So why were you looking for me?” I asked, lifting my hair out from under the necklace and letting it fall back down over the top of my shirt.

  “Oh yeah!” Lizzy said, her perpetual excitement coming out in full force once again. “Remember that kid I told you about, Matt? Me and Blink and some others are going to be hanging out in his room later tonight. He said he brought back something cool from the outside. You have to come.”

  “From the outside?” I said, furrowing my brow. “How did he get out?”

  “I thought I told you his power—he can teleport. Only like ten feet at a time, but it’s enough to leave the Academy without getting caught.”

  “Oh, right,” I said, remembering that she had brought him up before. “I don’t know though, Liz. I have a buttload of homework...”

  “And I remember one of your homework assignments is that you have to make more friends,” Lizzy said with a grin. “Come on, Em. I promise it’s gonna be fun.”

  “Okay. But only because it’s technically a part of my homework,” I said with a laugh.

  ━━━━━ ▣ ━━━━━

  I had hung out in a few other people’s rooms before (each time at Lizzy’s invitation), but this was the first time I’d been to a get-together at the Academy with so many people. There were about eight of us in Matt’s room, and even though each of our dorm rooms was incredibly spacious (they even all had en-suite bathrooms), his room actually felt small with all of us packed in here. After such a long day—our failed simulation, the disaster in the cafeteria, absorbing Edgar’s power, the meeting with my dad—I was beat, and so I was actually happy to be surrounded by these people in a relaxed setting, even if I didn’t know all of them.

  There were Lizzy and Blink, of course, and also Lizzy’s other... friend? Boyfriend? Boy toy? I wasn’t sure yet what to classify Wesley as, but at any rate, it was the norm at the Academy for women to shack up with more than one guy at a time because of the disproportionate ratio of empowered men to women. Though I had known about this since I first started attending the Academy, this was my first time verifying it with my own eyes, and it was hard not to look away. The three of them were sat up on Matt’s bed, Lizzy in between her two guys, and they were all getting pretty touchy-feely. Blink had his arm around Lizzy’s shoulder and was slowly stroking her short blond hair, while Wesley on the other side had his arm wrapped around Lizzy’s waist. Meanwhile, their lower bodies ended in a tangle of legs and feet upon the covers of the bed, and the three of them were giggling and whispering to each other. I didn’t know how they pulled it off, and I hadn’t yet asked Lizzy what kind of arrangement the three of them had, but while I had originally found the idea of having more than one boyfriend a little extreme (especially since I didn’t even have experience with one, let alone two or three), they were making it look quite appeali
ng.

  Aside from them, I also saw Carl, who had been part of our simulation team this morning. He normally liked to pester me, but presently he was sitting on an armchair near the bed with a girl—a student I had seen before but never met—sitting on his lap. It was weird that while I’d always found Carl annoying, seeing him totally absorbed with this other girl kindled a tinge of jealousy in me. I guessed I had grown used to his perpetual advances, and now that somebody had dethroned me as the target of those advances, it made me question myself: this girl was seemingly enjoying Carl’s overtures—could she see something in him that I could not? Was I too stuck up?

  I didn’t dwell on these questions for long, though, because my attention was soon captured by another student, Ramsey, who just now sat down next to me on the divan (yes—most of us had divans in our dorm rooms). Ramsey had been at the Academy for nearly six months, and while I hadn’t had any classes with him my first month yet, I knew of him.

  Hell, everybody at the Academy knew about Ramsey. People called him “the Hulk” because of his imposing stature and penchant for smashing things. He wasn’t my “type” per se—truth be told, I had always been more attracted to the artistic types, like Edgar—but it would be impossible to deny the deeply masculine sex appeal that Ramsey exuded. I was already petite as it was, but being next to Ramsey on the divan, which was the closest I’d ever been to him, I almost felt like we were two different species. His forearms looked to be about three times as thick as mine, and even just sitting down in this dark room I could see the round muscles of his legs threatening to burst the seams of his school uniform, which he almost looked ridiculous in. But with his granite jawline, cleft chin and piercing green eyes, he made heads turn wherever he went. The thick forest of hair on his head looked like he rarely bothered to groom it, but despite this, it had this unruly suaveness to it that only served to enhance his whole “Conan the Barbarian” aesthetic.