Interstellar Academy by Kennedy Harkins (read books for money .TXT) 📕

so it was no surprise he was still asleep. It was tempting to leave him there, and let him miss the test.

Instead, I dumped my glass of water on his head. He woke up sputtering and reaching for his stun stick. Swing the stick high, he tried to whack me with it. I barely ducked out of the way in time.

But it was worth it.

He pulled on his suit quickly. Mine was already on, including my favorite pair of pink combat boots. Dru gave those a disparaging look, which just made me like them all the more.

We stopped short of going to class, however, because the door leading to the tube was closed and bolted. I’d always seen it shut behind the four of us when we went to class and open back up for us after, but I never dreamed it’d lock two of us in. Feeling the wall for an unobtrusive keypad, I racked my brain to think of a password.

I found a keypad, but the search through my mind proved less fruiting. Glancing back at Dru, I nodded to the piece of tech on the wall. “You know how to get it open?”

He shook his head and looked annoyed with me. Somehow this had become my fault.

Pursing my lips, I punched in a code that I’d seen one of the AI guards use. Excellent eyesight along with the malicious intent to use it are two of my many talents.

The door slide open to the the smooth, dark expanse of the tube. Jumping immediately, Dru and I didn’t give any thought to the anti-gravity, which had always worked before. I left my stomach behind, the air cutting at my flailing limbs as we plummeted. Out of the corner of my eye, Dru made small movements with his wings, but the space was too small for flight.

We were only on the first floor, but it felt like we fell farther than that. My bones, rather than the ground, shuddered on impact. I felt like I swallowed my tongue and tried to choke in breaths while untangling my legs from Dru’s.

I pressed my fingers into the foam we’d landed on. “This mat leaves a lot to be desired.” Getting to my feet, I dusted myself off. “Come on, we’ll be late to class.”

But we weren’t on the ground level. The hole in the tube didn’t open up to the park like area of the commons in front of our apartment. It opened up to a small boiler room--or something that looked like one, as I doubted this state of the art campus had any rooms that antiquated.

There were tables set up around the small, dimly lit room that looked like they were made of cardboard. The piping was all exposed, running along the rounded walls and ceiling. A drop of water dripped from one of the bent ones--there were many-- and landed on my forehead. It wasn’t clear.

Making a face, I wiped it off quickly. “This place isn’t in very good shape.”

“Yes.” Dru walked over to one of the tables, lifting up one of the many piles of scraps burdening it. It was cylindrical shaped with the wires exposed and the metal slashed and dented. “Too bad of shape. The academy goes through renovations every year to keep it in excellent condition.”

I picked up a similar hunk of metal, though it was much smaller, about the size of my finger but a little longer. “Looks like they missed a spot.”

He didn’t reply, but shuffled over to where we’d landed, peering in and up to the tube we’d fallen through. Crouching down, he ran his hands over the sides and bottom of it. The skin of his hands came away filthy, caked in soot and dirt. It made me vehemently glad I hadn’t tried it.

“We’re below ground. Must’ve blown past the exit to the commons,” Dru said. “Which shouldn’t be possible, because there is no below ground at campus. There’s a thin layer of dirt under everything, but that’s it. Under that’s the engines and mechanics.”

That was probably the longest utterance I’d ever heard him say. “This doesn’t look like an engine room--or any room that’s regularly visited by people.”

Nodding, he didn’t turn around when I moved to stand next to him. I really didn’t want to touch anything, but I grit my teeth and felt around for a keypad. If it came down to getting a little dirty or getting stuck down here with Dru forever, there was no contest. Especially since death by boredom happens so slowly.

“Found--”

A rattling noise cut me off.  I’d set my hunk of metal on top of Dru’s and back onto the table. And now, my little piece of scrap was bending in the middle and crawling towards us. It moved at an agonizingly slow pace, like an inchworm. Or like a zombie coming to eat our brains.

Dru got closer, giving it a good once over as it changed direction miniscule to go after him. I didn’t get to enjoy that for long, though, because the other pieces had started moving too.

Most of the hunks of metal didn’t have any way to get around, shaped like logs or big rocks, so they just vibrated maliciously at their spot on the table. One piece, however, was making great headway, already passing the inchworm and it had just started. It reminded me a bit of my spider shoes, though it didn’t have eight legs, only five. But it perched up the similarly, it’s body held above--and slightly behind, not like my shoes--the legs.

I backed up, suddenly not seeing shoes at all. I held my hand out in front of me and made my fingers walk around. It was the same. There were no logs, rocks, inchworms, or spiders. The pieces were thighs, heads, fingers, and mobile, detached hands.

“Dru,” I said slowly. “We should get out of here.”

He nodded, not even seeming to care that I called him by his hated nickname. Obviously, he’d made the connection like I had. I was already at the keypad, so I just spun around and furiously typed in the code.

“Access denied,” the computer system chirped.

My eyes widened. I punched it in again, taking care with each number, double checking it in my head. My breath caught, and I pressed enter.

“Access denied.”

I shot a frantic glance behind me. The hand was just a few feet from us now. Whipping my head back around, I went to type the code in again.

Dru caught my wrist. “Stop. Too many wrong enterings and the system will shut down.”

I wrenched my arm away. “Then, hopefully, we can get someone down here--now.” I pulled out my holo, but the call feature wouldn’t activate. “You’ve got to be kidding me! It’s not working.”

Frowning, he took out his--with a little more urgency than he’d had before. A few clicks later, he said. “Mine either. There must not be a signal.”

I blinked. “Is that even possible?”

“It hap--Ow!” He flinched and looked down at his leg.

The metal hand was wrapped around his calf, squeezing the life out of it, with nails digging into the flesh. He kicked out, trying to shake it off, but it wasn’t letting go, like a raccoon with something shiny.

I screamed--not proud of it, and something rustled from behind a curtain at the edge of the room. Something a lot bigger than the pieces crowding in on us. Most few just a couple of feet away by now. I clamped my mouth shut and turned to the keypad, taking a deep breath before typing in the code.

“Access denied.”

“Deny this,” I said, ripping the panel off the wall to reveal the raw, colorful wires underneath.

Dru inhaled sharply, still trying to free his leg. “What did you do? You’ve trapped us in here, human.”

I pulled wires out frantically, looking to their connections to find the ones I’d need.“Pipe down, Kver. Or I’ll leave you down here with your new friend.”

I felt something at my pant leg, and I moved even faster. I peeled the protective covering off the three wires and pushed the bare, metal tips together, sending a little jolt through my fingers. Pulling my hand back, I let out a little yelp.

The doors above us slid open, and I grabbed Dru by the back of collar, pulling him into the tube after me. We didn’t have time to disconnect the hand, the other metal parts too close to us, so I just had to keep myself away from his leg--easier said than done in the tiny tube.

For a moment, nothing happen. We stood in tube where we’d crashed, watching the body parts crawl towards us. Then, the marvelous, leave your stomach behind feeling of weightlessness kicked in, and we were soaring upward, out of that hell hole.

The tube pitched us out onto the common’s cool grass. I rolled over my shoulder and collapsed into a heap. One of Dru’s wings landed right on my--and it was a lot heavier than it looked. I exhaled all the air in my lungs in a harsh cough. The weight was gone in the next instant though, and we stared at each other with mutual dislike.

There were more pressing matters, however. I gripped the mechanical hand with my human ones, planting my feet firmly. Gritting his teeth, Dru glared at me as I tried to pull the thing off. he cooperated though, holding his leg as still as possible.

“This,” I said while panting from the struggle. “AI part is putting up quite the fight.”

He wiggled his fingers under the palm, trying to help add force to the pulling. “Illegal AI part. Any broken or malfunctioning robot must be sent to the scrap heap for incineration.”

I was putting all my weight into it, but I managed to shrug. The lawfulness of it all didn’t concern me as much as it did Dru. Or at all, really. I liked to think of galactic laws as galactic guidelines--to be ignored or used at my own discretion.

I pulled the hand free and dropped it before it could latch onto me. It plopped down on the grass, wriggling around and trying to get off its “back”. I toppled over not far from it, the force of releasing it knocking me off balance. Scrabbling away, I crab crawled over to Dru.

“Illegal, legal, I don’t care. Let’s just lock it up before someone catches us with it and--”

“--grounds us for the field trip to Parvu,” he agreed.

I nodded, uncomfortable with any moment where we saw eye to eye. “Or worse.”

Drusus

 

November 15th:

The next month flew by in a paranoid haze while I was waiting for the “or worse” the human girl had been talking about. I’d shut away the hand in a titanium box with a thumb print lock supplied by the girl. I didn’t ask why she had something like that among her possessions, didn’t want to