Chapter 4: Physical conditioning and other forms of torture
The rest of the day passed mainly without event, except for Zahira making good on her promise to come to dinner armed. The minis had a time trying to get her baseball bat away from her, but they still ended up with half of her pizza, and she ended up with quite a few scratches and bites, which she endured in stoic silence.
She kind of scared Aly, sometimes.
Upon returning to their room, the two girls met their other roommates – Kimmy West, who looked to be about college-age and was very knowledgeable about the books, much to Zahira's delight, and Mia Cervantes, who was fully eleven years Aly's senior, which made Aly the youngest person in the room. She was inclined to be grumpy about it until she actually started to talk to Mia, and they united in their mutual hatred of the Marie/Jason pairing and adoration for the Twu Wuv that was Nicky/Jason. Kimmy and Zahira were getting along like a house on fire, chatting about some boring book thing or other. It was midnight before all of them decided to just call it quits for the night and go to sleep.
I'm lucky, thought Aly as she drifted off. I didn't even need to change into my pajamas…
AWOOGA! AWOOGA! AWOOGA! AWOOGA! AWOOGA!
"BATTLE STATIONS!" Zahira yelled, fighting with her sheets and eventually crashing out of bed onto the floor in a tangled pile. "To arms, men, to arms! It's an air raid!"
"Zzuh? Wha?" Kimmy sat up in her own bed, rubbing at her eyes. "'s goin' on?"
"Make it stoooooooopppp," Aly groaned, stuffing her head under the pillow.
"Aaa!" Mia yelped, practically jumping up. "What time is it?"
"Four-thirty," the pile of sheets on the floor said.
"You mean in the afternoon, right?" Aly said, struggling to be heard over the continuous alarm.
"Morning." Zahira poked her head out from the sheet-lump and wiggled out.
"Should we change?" Aly asked, extricating herself from her sheets.
"No time!" Mia said, hobbling over to the door and opening it. "Look!" For a crush of students was stampeding through the hallway, each and every one of them wearing their pajamas and wondering just what the hell was going on.
"Let's go," Kimmy said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and stumbling into the hall. Mia, Aly, and Zahira followed suit. It was almost like being caught in a river – signs had been posted to direct the flow of traffic, and all that the students could do was just keep their feet moving. The crowd did the rest.
Finally, the column spilled out onto the grounds, still following the signs, but thankfully not in such a closely compacted formation. Aly could actually breathe now, and as she trotted along with the column, she glanced over at Zahira. Her roommate looked at her and said, in a low voice, "Moo."
"Moo?"
"Moo. I feel like cattle."
"Oh." Aly made a fish face at her, which Zahira imitated right back.
"What's that all about?" Zahira asked quietly.
"Well, tinned sardines don't really make a sound."
"Oh."
"Hey, I think we're slowing down," Mia said, just before she crashed into Kimmy's back and the two of them went tumbling to the ground. Before Aly could have a chance to laugh, she smacked right into the back of another student herself.
"Whoa! If I didn't know any better, I'd, like, think you were crashing into me on purpose," the other student said, helping her up to her feet. "Did you even change from yesterday?"
Aly brushed some of the loose dirt off of her pajamas. "Sorry about that, Ray. And no, as a matter of fact, I didn't."
"You need to be at least five feet away from him at all times," Zahira said, catching them both by the shoulders as she barreled between the two. "Good morning, princess."
"Just because I like men does not make me a princess," Ray said calmly, allowing himself to be towed along.
"I need to give everyone an emasculating nickname. It's a compulsion," Zahira explained. "Just be thankful I don't call you Sparklypoo McUnicorn-kins."
"I am literally speechless with thanks," Ray said dryly.
"I'm just speechless," Aly added.
The crush of students had in fact begun to slow down and spread out some more, mostly because the column was unsustainable in the students' half-awake state. "So what's going on, anyway?" Kimmy asked, picking a twig out of her hair.
"No idea," Zahira said, and immediately shut up when an airhorn blast rolled through the crowd.
"Attention, students!" Aly realized with a sinking feeling that the voice from the megaphone was that of movie-Conklin, and he sounded full of malicious glee. As she jumped slightly on the balls of her feet, she could see that he was dressed like a gym teacher, complete with a New York Mets baseball cap and noisemaking paraphernalia. This did not bode well. "You must complete one circuit of the Academy's campus before you are allowed to go to breakfast! This is a daily exercise. If you insist on writing insanely overpowered operatives, it's only fair that you must undergo the same physical conditioning as they would. I see that none of you have had the foresight to search for proper athletic clothes before you ran out of your rooms. Chilly out here before the sun rises, isn't it?"
"But how were we supposed to know?" one of the male students asked, shivering in his boxers and nothing else, and looking very disheartened at the prospect of going on the long run barefoot.
"Not my problem," the former coordinator of Treadstone said smugly. "If you wanted to know, you should have checked your schedules, which I believe were delivered…oh, about ten minutes ago."
Aly remembered why she hated him and wrote him as a jerk so much. He was a jerk. He was a total jerk. She would have to find him and kill him in his sleep. Of course, getting him away from his posse of mini-Jackals would be difficult, but that was secondary. She was going to kill him, she was going to kill him, she was going to kill him.
These wondrous thoughts were shattered by another ear-bursting blast from the airhorn and the students were off like a herd of stampeding wildebeest.
"Aly?" Zahira asked as they began to run.
"Eh?" the other girl asked, momentarily jolted from her mutinous musings.
"Why are you muttering 'I'm going to kill him, I'm going to kill him'?"
"Because I am," she said viciously, surprising herself with her candor. "I'm going to teach him the true meaning of pain before he dies."
"Are you seriously thinking about killing the old dude?" Ray panted, jogging alongside them.
Zahira scowled. "I take great offense at that comment! He's not old. He's…mature. Like a good cut of beef." Her eyes got all misty as she ran, and it was obvious that she'd gone to the Fangirl Place. "Mmm. Beef."
"Okay, I'm not even, like, going to go there," Ray said delicately.
"Yes. I am going to kill him," Aly snarled, gasping for breath. "I mean, this is ridiculous. We're being bossed around by an ugly jerk of a wannabe-gym teacher who's supposed to be dead, and we're running all the way around the grounds of the freaking CIA, and it's four in the freaking morning and this doesn't make any sense. It's like this place is run by a bunch of freaking Nazis or something, and—"
Aly was cut off in mid-rant by three of the suits hustling at her from the side. Barely losing speed, two of them grabbed her and the third jabbed her with a needle, then slipped a hood over her head. The suits caught her as her legs crumpled, and continued running off to wherever they were headed, now with their prisoner.
"…wow," Zahira said after a long minute, too scared to stop running. "I think Aly just got Renditioned."
"Don't you mean, like, rendered?" Ray asked, just as freaked-out.
"No, I mean Renditioned. You need to watch more movies, princess…"
The two of them wisely decided to stay away from any topic that could be construed as threatening towards the staff or the institution for the rest of the hearty jog.
-o-
The first thing Aly saw when she came to were rows of sharp, impossibly white teeth. She shrieked.
"Kruetz, that's enough, get down," a voice said, and the mini-Jackal snapped its jaws shut and leapt off of her lap to go sit by its master's feet. There was a glint of metal in the darkness. Aly looked around the room frantically. It seemed to be much like those police interrogation rooms that she'd seen in Law and Order sometimes.
"Where am I?" she asked, struggling in her seat. She'd been propped up in a metal folding chair, and her hands were tied behind her back.
"Nowhere you need to know," a different voice said, and its owner stepped out of the shadows. Aly gulped. It was Miss Stephanie, and she was smiling. Miss Christine followed, Kruetz the mini tagging close along on her heels. The metal Aly had seen was a scalpel, which Miss Christine was twirling like a pen.
"Congratulations, freshmeat," Miss Christine said all too cheerfully. "You've broken a rule."
"What? I don't understand! What rule did I break?" Aly squeaked, struggling against her bonds. The two Staff members had been quite thorough; the rope was looped through the bars on either side of the chair, and then around each of her feet. She was trapped.
"Ah, now that would be telling," Miss Stephanie said.
"That's not fair!"
"That's a shame. Neither are we," Miss Christine said carelessly, still twirling that scalpel. "But since this is your first offense…"
"Threatening any member of the staff of the Academy is immediate grounds for punishment," Miss Stephanie said. "And wouldn't you know it? I'm the Director of Discipline. Non-Jackal discipline, anyway."
"Wh-what are you gonna do to me?" Aly asked, still trying to escape from the chair. "Pull out my fingernails? Set my hair on fire? Make me watch Barney and Friends?Waterboard me?"
"Now, now, Haskell. That would be torture, which I am duty-bound to inform you that the CIA neither condones nor practices," Miss Stephanie said.
"But we do practice enhanced interrogation," Miss Christine chimed in.
"What's that?" Aly asked dubiously.
"Exactly what it sounds like." The black-clad Staff member grinned scarily.
"But wait!" Aly shrieked. "You can't do this to me! What about the First Amendment? Freedom of speech, yeah?"
"Yeah, except you're in the care of the Academy, and here, as at your high school, threatening faculty members is strictly verboten," Miss Stephanie said. "But you'll learn more about the American government in the relevant class. And freedom of speech doesn't protect slander."
"Slander?" Aly was confused.
"You said some very uncharitable things about Mr. Conklin," Miss Christine clarified.
"The absolute defense to slander is truth," Aly muttered.
"What was that, Haskell?"
"Nothing! Gah! Okay, I swear, I won't do it again," Aly said desperately. "Can I go now?"
Miss Stephanie shook a finger at her. "Tch! You haven't been punished yet. Christine? If you would, please."
Miss Christine disappeared into the darkness, hissing something that sounded like "Eeeevillll…" That did not raise Aly's hopes for herself one bit. The Jackal-handler returned shortly, bearing a silver platter that she set down in front of Aly with extreme distaste.
Aly peered at what was on the platter. It was a small, pale green square that couldn't be more than an inch or so wide. It looked, as a matter of fact, a lot like a Starburst. "That's it?" she asked before she could stop herself.
Miss Stephanie nodded briskly. "That's it."
"The Pale Green Evil!" Miss Christine growled, and made a clawing motion at the demonic Starburst.
"So what do I do with it?"
"You eat it, Haskell," Miss Stephanie said.
"And?"
"And then you can go to breakfast."
That doesn't sound too bad, Aly thought. "Could you please free my hands?"
"Certainly. Christine?" Miss Christine darted around behind Aly and sliced neatly through the ropes with her scalpel. The student immediately grabbed her wrists and rubbed at them, trying to restore feeling in her hands.
"Spare us the theatrics, Haskell, just eat your punishment," Miss Christine said.
With trembling hands, Aly picked up the small square. It was a little bit squishier than a Starburst, almost like a paste. Before she could even think about what she was doing, she popped the square into her mouth.
Huh, she thought as the square sat on her tongue. It really isn't that bad. Sort of a clean—
And that was when a small oil-rig fire erupted inside her mouth. "Augh!" she yelped, and tried to clap her hands to her face, ready to spit out the piece of torture.
"Keep her hands away from her mouth! Make sure she eats it all!" Miss Stephanie shouted, grabbing one of Aly's arms.
"Mmmmf! Haaaaaar!" Aly groaned, sticking her tongue to the roof of her mouth to try and rid it of the Pale Green Evil. That only made it worse – the paste spread and coated the entire inside of her mouth. It felt like she had been electrocuted. "Aaaaaar!"
"I thought we weren't allowed to torture students," Miss Christine said over Aly's agonized wails.
"It's not torture!" Miss Stephanie retorted. "It's a culinary experience!"
"Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!" Aly was trying to scrape the paste off on her teeth, to little effect.
"I think she disagrees," Miss Christine said dryly.
"All right, Haskell, you're done. That ought to keep you from speaking slander and making idle threats," Miss Stephanie said, hauling Aly to her feet.
"Ought to keep her from speaking at all," Miss Christine added, before snapping her fingers and yelling, "Sha-zam! Ooh, I'm on a roll today and it's not even past breakfast."
They slipped the hood back over Aly's head and spun her around before leading her out of the secret room. After a few minutes, the hood was whipped off, and Aly blinked at the comparatively bright light of dawn.
"Go have some breakfast, if you can," Miss Stephanie said, smiled grimly, and disappeared, leaving the student coughing and sputtering on the ground. Her eyes stung and watered, and she rubbed at them with grimy hands. Once she felt well enough to move, she stood up and wandered in the general direction of the cafeteria, unable to speak and thoroughly miserable.
It took her a while, but Aly finally stumbled into the cafeteria and made her way to Ray and Zahira's table. "Good gracious, what happened to you, sunshine?" the Arab-American girl asked, staring at her disheveled roommate.
"Ghha," Aly tried to say, looking at her equally messy friend. "Hha rrarah ha bleh?"
"Oh." Zahira looked down. Her pajamas were splattered with egg yolk. "Um…the minis take breakfast, too. Remind me not to get poached eggs again without a tranquilizer gun."
"Why are you talking funny? Did they pull out your tongue?" Ray asked, sounding morbidly fascinated.
Aly glared at him. "Hha," she said, sticking out her tongue at him. "Hi hahh hee' hy huhhnh."
"I don't speak gibberish," Ray said.
"It's not gibberish," Zahira said, grinning slowly. "She's speaking in tongues."
"Hhuh khu," Aly said, sitting down.
"Whoa! Language. Here, we saved a bagel for you," Zahira said, passing the food to her. Aly took a bite and immediately winced. Her tongue felt completely raw, like someone had been dragging it on a sidewalk. She finished chewing the bite and put the bagel down.
"Hi hee' huh hawaaa," Aly tried.
"You what?" Zahira turned to her and blinked. "Phwaw! Man! What are you doing with wasabi-breath?" A pause, then, "Oh. Oh."
"What?" Ray asked.
"They gave her wasabi to keep her from talking," Zahira explained. "I did that to my brother once. Here, Aly. Have some water."
"Haah huu," Aly said gratefully, and drank deeply from the offered cup. It soothed the awful burning pain in her mouth, though not enough to let her talk comfortably.
Zahira smacked herself in the head, as if just remembering something. "Hey, we've got to get back to our room! That's where our schedules are!"
"And?" Ray asked, munching on a piece of toast.
"And they're totally crazy here, so class could start any minute!" Zahira finished. "I don't want to end up like Aly! No offense, Aly. But who knows what they do to latecomers here?"
"Ahh uh ahhah ohh," Aly tried to say fervently.
"That goes double for me," Ray said. "Or, like, whatever you said."
"Come on, let's go," Zahira said, getting up from her seat and going for the door as quickly as her cramping legs would allow her.
"Aw, crap," Ray said, and limped after her, Aly close behind.
At least today couldn't get any worse…right?
Somewhere, the Ironic Overpower laughed.
--
Apologies to Mia and Kimmy for any character assassination that may have occurred. They and other new students will definitely be more involved in the next chapter! Which, by the way, is going to be a doozy. Hopefully it'll be up before the end of the month.
And if you're wondering about the Pale Green Evil…Christine knows why. As does Stephanie.