Empowered Academy 1985 Read online

  I felt so relieved that Lizzy approved of Edgar. “He’s gotten a lot better since then, too. He’s had kind of a rough past, so there’s some stuff to work out.”

  “So, how far did you get last night?” Lizzy whispered, shimmying up next to me. “Second base? Third?”

  “Only first,” I said, patting Lizzy away from me playfully. This was an unusual reversal of roles for us, as usually I was the one asking Emily for details about her dates, her being the more experienced one. “It was crazy, though. I held on to his power until the morning after kissing him. It’s like absorbing his power through a kiss was more potent than just touching him.”

  “Then I wonder what would happen if you two...” Lizzy said, raising her eyebrows suggestively. Apparently she was getting a big kick out of teasing me about my newfound love life.

  “Oh my gosh, come on,” I pleaded, pushing her away again. But inside I was as giddy as ever, and the truth was, even I had wondered what it would be like to make love to Edgar.

  “I’m just kidding,” Lizzy said with a smile, finally returning to her normal self. “So are you guys like, official?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, looking back for a second at the table. They were all still chatting and eating; Edgar seemed to be fitting in pretty well. “I guess? We haven’t really spoken about it.”

  “Well, official or not, he sure seems to like you.”

  “Really?” I asked hopefully. “You can tell?”

  “For sure,” Lizzy replied confidently. “The way he looks at you. The way he stays close to you. I’m kinda jealous, actually.”

  “As if. I saw how protective Wesley and Blink were toward you last night.”

  “The three of us? It may seem peachy on the outside, but it can be a struggle some days,” Lizzy said with a sigh as we went over to the drink station for freshly squeezed juice.

  “How so?” I asked. I had never tried to pry with Lizzy’s relationships, but it seemed like she wanted to talk about it now.

  “It’s nothing too serious, really. I can feel that they both love me, but... sometimes they don’t always get along. It’s like I’m the common thread connecting the two of them to me, but there’s nothing linking the two of them to each other.”

  That was something I had never even thought about before. I could only imagine how complicated it was trying to juggle the feelings of three people at the same time. Given my highly limited dating experience, I felt wholly unqualified to comment on Lizzy’s situation. Thankfully, she understood that my silence meant I had no idea what to say.

  “Anyway, I don’t know how much longer we can pretend to be getting food,” she said with a laugh. “We better get back to the table.”

  We went back and joined the others at the table, and with Edgar by my side, surrounded by friends, I was finally starting to feel like I had “found my tribe.”

  Chapter 10

  Ramsey

  It was ten o’clock at night when I got the call that I had to gear up and report to the Test Chamber Alpha briefing room. I had been chosen to go on a field mission.

  It was my first, and I was fired up. I had no idea what teacher they were going to be sending with us, or who my partners would be, but when I got to the locker room, I saw my buddy Chad.

  “Clutch,” we both said in unison when we saw each other, landing a killer high five that echoed through the otherwise empty locker room.

  It made sense that they put us together—the Academy designated squads of EMPs based on who each person meshed the best with, and Chad and I were as tight as Sonny and Rico. Since Chad and I were the only ones in the guys’ locker room, though, that meant the other people in our squad were chicks, and I wondered who the Academy had picked.

  I got my answer when Chad and I arrived in the briefing room and saw who the other two members of our squad were: Caitlin Ernst and Emily Stride. Caitlin made sense; I’d been flirting with her for weeks and finally managed to bang her out on the lake a few nights ago. Given that much time, the Academy was definitely aware that the link between us was strong. Not only though, but Chad had had a fling with her when he first arrived at the Academy, which made us Eskimo brothers, so the three of us would definitely work well together, especially in our ability to empower one another.

  I couldn’t figure out why they’d put Emily with us too, though. She and I had done nothing but argue the few times we’d been forced to work together, and since we handed in our Survival paper a few days ago, I had tried to steer clear of her. She was the type of chick I wanted to ogle from a distance, but she was too much of a pain to even try to get with. And the daughter of a senator? That was just the rotten cherry on top—no thanks.

  So did that mean that she and Chad had something going on? When this thought flashed through my mind, I felt a surge of anger rise up in me. I didn’t know why, but the idea of Chad getting with Emily made me majorly pissed. It made no sense, either; I had told myself that she wasn’t worth the trouble, so then why should I bet upset that my good bro was trying to get inside her pants? But no matter how I tried to convince myself, there was still something about Emily being with somebody other than me that didn’t sit right with me. Overcome by this strange frustration, I glared at Chad as we walked into the room, wanting to see proof that he and Emily were close, but he barely acknowledged her. He instead went and sat next to Caitlin and the two of them started talking enthusiastically. This put me at ease, and I let out a big sigh of relief.

  “First field mission, preppy?” I asked Emily as I sat down next to her.

  She looked sexier than ever in her dark-gray combat uniform. It was skin-tight to allow for greater maneuverability, but that had the side effect of clinging to her supple curves and accentuating her firm tits. I could almost see her perky breasts rising up and down with each breath she took, and this caused a similar rising in my pants that I had to be careful to hide beneath the briefing table.

  “Yeah,” she said. She looked a little nervous, which aroused something strange inside me—some feeling I couldn’t quite describe, but which I had never experienced before.

  “Looks like you’re the newbie here,” I said, gesturing to Caitlin and Chad, who had both been at the Academy for several months like me, “so you better just follow along and try to keep up. Going out into the field isn’t like doing a class exercise or running a sim; your by-the-books attitude will get you killed if you don’t learn how to adapt.”

  Emily scoffed. “What do you know? Isn’t this your first field mission too?”

  I had to admit; her hot temper was actually growing on me. “It’s all of our first field mission, but it’s just a fact that you’re the least experienced one here,” I said.

  She was about to say something in response, but just then the door to the briefing room flew open and Mr. Novak strode into the room.

  In terms of sheer physicality, Mr. Novak was one of the only other EMPs I had ever met who could match me. Most of the students called him “Superman” because of his appearance—square jaw, muscular build, commanding presence—and his super-strength. The coolest thing about him was his prosthetic right arm, which was way more advanced than anything I’d ever seen before. Apparently he had lost his arm during the Test, and the Architect made him this sophisticated metal prosthetic after he graduated and became a fully-fledged EMP.

  “Let’s go,” Mr. Novak said as soon as he stepped into the room. “Drug bust on Gardner’s Island. We have to move now. You’ll be briefed on the road.”

  ━━━━━ ▣ ━━━━━

  Not being a native New Yorker, I had no idea what or where Gardner’s Island was. Turned out it was one of the largest privately-owned islands in the US, just off the coast of Long Island, but it had fallen into disrepair as inheritance disputes between members of the Gardner family throughout the 70s and 80s made it illegal for any of them to live there. As a result, drug runners began using it as a drop-off point for drugs—and who knew what else—going from Florida in
to Manhattan and the other boroughs.

  We were presently in a black military speedboat cruising toward the northern end of Gardner’s Island. Intelligence reported a fairly large contraband transfer happening at midnight and we wanted to get there first to set up an ambush. I looked back at Long Island as we drove away from it; there were essentially no lights along the coast, and only occasionally I’d see the lonely light of a single car driving down one of the roads. It made sense; it was mid-April, and the tourists and Manhattan elites wouldn’t start flocking to Montauk and the Hamptons until June, so the eastern tip of Long Island was still quiet for now. Looking ahead to Gardner’s Island, however, I saw an even blacker and more desolate landscape, and I wondered how long it had been since anybody had lived on this private island.

  We had to keep all of the lights off in the boat for stealth purposes, and the moon was mostly hidden behind dark clouds tonight, but my eyes had adjusted pretty well to the lack of light. Mr. Novak was piloting the boat while the four of us sat in the back. Since one of the major purposes of this operation was to get us used to using our powers in a real setting, they only gave each of us an Mk23 pistol each. This was mainly for protection, however, as ideally we were supposed to arrest them and then call it in to the Coast Guard. Personally, I preferred smashing people with my fists, anyway, so I wasn’t too concerned about the guns.

  As the boat skipped and jumped across the cold waves, I was feeling a little jittery. It wasn’t nervousness, since I was confident in my abilities; it was excitement. Being an EMP was my way of leaving my mark on the world; it was how I proved myself and displayed my greatness. I could do this in simulations, but succeeding in a field mission would be undeniable proof that I had what it took to do something great.

  “Ready to clock some drug-pipers, bro?” Chad asked me.

  I didn’t fully understand his slang, but I liked his enthusiasm, so he and I banged heads together like we had done before simulations in the past.

  “I got your back, bro,” I said aggressively through clenched teeth as he and I ground our foreheads together.

  “Um, how about ours?” Emily said, gesturing to herself and Caitlin who were sitting on the other side of the small boat.

  Caitlin laughed. “Let them have their bromance. It’s just how they get psyched up. We’re all in this together.”

  “Right,” I said. “We’re in this together.”

  It was true; Chad and I were obviously a killer duo, the Bert and Ernie of the Academy, you might say, but all four of us had to be on point if we wanted to make this mission a success.

  Emily looked toward Gardner’s Island, which we were fast approaching. “We’re almost there,” she said. “Let me absorb your powers.”

  I watched as Emily first absorbed Caitlin’s power, which gave her the ability to freeze people in place as long as she looked at them. Caitlin had used it on me out on the lake that night because I was curious about what it felt like, and it was pretty freaky; I could still breathe and look around, but all my muscles were tensed up so they couldn’t move. As Emily and Caitlin held hands, Emily’s body writhed in a way that looked almost like sexual pleasure, her stomach and hips undulating, her eyes closed, her chin pointed up. Caitlin was having a similar reaction, but my attention was all focused on Emily, and once again I had to mash my frustrated half-boner down into one of my pant legs.

  “Whoa, that was wild,” Caitlin said when they finally stopped holding hands. She looked like she’d just had her head dunked underwater and had finally come up for air.

  Emily moved on to Chad next, and once again I felt that jealous anger rise inside me as they clasped hands and Emily began to absorb Chad’s power. I told myself it was just my competitive spirit, but I knew that wasn’t entirely true. After all, Chad and I were Eskimo brothers with Caitlin, and that didn’t bother me in the slightest. But with Chad’s pyromancy combined with Caitlin’s ability to immobilize people, Emily would be pretty formidable during our mission.

  When she was done absorbing Chad’s power, which took about ten seconds, Emily turned to me.

  “You can absorb three different powers at once?” I asked incredulously.

  “I’m working on four,” Emily said with a prideful smirk. “Come on, give me your hands.”

  I reached out both my hands with my palms up, and Emily clasped hands with mine without any hesitation. The very moment we made contact, I felt her energy mingling with mine, and I nearly jizzed in my pants right there from the incredible sensation Emily was causing throughout my whole body. Now I understood why Emily had been writhing like that before; it really was a feeling that bordered on being sexual. It was intimate too; her power was wrapping around mine and coaxing it out of me.

  It only lasted for a few seconds, but it felt like an hour, and to be honest, I didn’t want it to stop. When Emily finally pulled away, both of us were panting.

  Emily was looking at her hands and arms in wonderment, and it took a while for me to realize that she must have been feeling my power, which allowed me to control the density of my body parts (I could increase the density of my fist as I threw a punch or raise the density along my skin somewhere to absorb a blow, for example) flow through her.

  “Not bad, huh?” I said with a grin.

  “Not bad at all,” Emily replied.

  I was going to ask her how she automatically knew to use the powers she absorbed, but then the boat came to a sudden stop and I noticed the black forest of Gardner’s Island looming over us.

  Mr. Novak turned to us, his metal arm reflecting a patch of moonlight that had escaped the cover of the clouds for a brief second.

  “Roll out,” he said, and then hopped onto the shore in one deft leap.

  I tightened my utility belt one last time and jumped out of the boat behind him.

  Chapter 11

  Emily

  Ramsey’s power felt different from any other that I had absorbed before, and I almost felt drunk on the strength it empowered me with.

  To be honest, I had never really understood exactly what his power did before. I knew he could adjust the density of different parts of his body, but I never really realized how strong that could make you.

  On top of that, the emotional impression of his power was potent. Much like Ramsey’s own personality, his power was brash and bold. I had only just started getting used to absorbing three different powers at once, and now with Caitlin’s, Chad’s, and Ramsey’s powers all inhabiting my core, Ramsey’s stood out as the most domineering of them all. What fascinated me the most was how assimilating Ramsey’s power had emboldened me. As I jumped out of the little speed boat and we made our way to the ambush point, I felt readier than ever to take on whatever threats awaited us.

  Following Mr. Novak’s lead, the four of us snuck across the forest, skirting by the old mansion, which had been left derelict for years, and made our way to the southern shore of Gardner’s Island, where intelligence said the transfer was going to take place. There, we took up positions in a thicket of shrubs and tall grass along an escarpment overlooking the shoreline just in time to see the first group of drug runners arrived in a speedboat that looked mighty similar to ours, with the exception that it was filled with burlap sacks that seemed to be overflowing with what contraband I could only guess. There were three of them: one driver and two others carrying shotguns. They hopped out and waited near the boat while the driver kept the engine idle.

  None of us were going to make a move without Mr. Novak’s command, and none of us dared talk in fear of blowing our cover. I was happy that all my studying had paid off—as we had maneuvered across the island and now through the shrubbery overlooking the shore, we relied on hand signs alone, and I knew them by heart. This allowed me to react instantly whenever Mr. Novak or Ramsey, who was the de facto second-in-command given his seniority, issued them.

  As we lay in wait, I tried to keep my mind clear from distraction, but I couldn’t help but keep wondering if my dad would be proud i
f he saw me now—dressed in full tactical gear, wielding the powers of three different senior classmates, dutifully following the orders of one of the most promising EMPs in the whole organization. I hadn’t talked to my dad since the last time he told me to get my act together, but I knew I’d be hearing from him if I blew this mission. I had to make sure nothing went wrong.

  Not long afterward, a bigger center console boat—not the kind meant for speed like ours—came cruising into view. It may have looked like a normal old beat-up fishing boat, but there was something ominous about the way it approached the island.

  Mr. Novak gave the command for us to split up. He, Caitlin, and Chad went off to the right; I stayed with Ramsey and would follow his lead. I knew that although Ramsey often grated on my nerves, I had to put that aside and follow whatever orders he might give during this mission.

  We didn’t take action until the drug smugglers—about six of them in total once they all revealed themselves—had completed their transaction; the criminals that had come in the center console boat offered a metal briefcase full of cash in exchange for all of the large sacks that were in the smaller boat.

  When Ramsey had him and I reposition ourselves further away along the shore, I knew what he was planning: the three others would cause a ruckus at the boats, taking out or apprehending whoever they could, and Ramsey and I would be waiting down the beach to intercept whoever ran away.

  And sure enough, that’s how things went down; Ramsey and I had just taken cover behind a large boulder when suddenly we heard shouting coming from the boats. I heard a couple of shots being fired—some of which were the shotguns I saw the smugglers wielding—and saw some flames that were way too bright to be muzzle flashes, and a few seconds later two smugglers had broken off from the main engagement and were sprinting down the beach—directly into our second ambush.

  As they approached, I considered my options; I wanted to take them in alive like Mr. Novak had stressed, so I thought about using Caitlin’s power to fully immobilize one of them while I got my zip ties around his wrists, but doing that would leave me exposed to his partner, who might have been able to blast me if he was quick on the draw.