The Academy: Book 2 by Chad Leito Read Free Book Online Page B

opening the light was coming from. His chest felt strongly constricted at this point, and he was glad to look up into the opening and see that the surface was only ten feet above him. As the tunnel moved upward, it became brighter.
    But instead of resurfacing above, Asa remained where he was for a moment. Something wasn’t right.
    The last time Asa had been in the secret compartment, the water tunnel merely curved upward into the safe room. Now, instead of the tunnel making a turn, it continued on forward into the dark. The incline that led to the glowing surface was now an adjacent tunnel instead of a continuation of one tunnel.
    Asa looked at the fork in the water passage. Above him was the surface, and before him the tunnel went on for an unknown amount of time into the dark. Asa stretched his fingers out into the darkness and couldn’t feel an end.
    Has Teddy carved out a new tunnel? To what?
    His chest really hurting at this point, Asa released his breath and decided that he didn’t have enough time to continue exploring in the dark, cold water. His bubbles rose to the surface and he followed them.
    Asa took a deep breath and crawled out of the water into the candlelight. After a few more yards of a widening, inclining tunnel, Asa reached the safe room.
    It smelled wonderful. Asa saw the same kind of scented candles the Academy had furnished the rec room with glowing around the enclosure. I guess that Teddy stole those too. A hammock made out of intertwining green and yellow jungle vines hung wall to wall. The safe room was relatively bare, other than that. Along the back was a small drain that ran off the side of the mountain, far away. Above this drain was a working faucet: Teddy had explained last year that, using wristband drill attachments he had made, he was able to make a long, narrow opening on the mountainside that led to a compartment in the middle of the mountain. Snow was constantly filling up this opening and dropping down into the compartment above the safe room. Due to the heat of the fires in the surrounding dwellings, the snow then melted and would run out into the safe room whenever someone turned the knob. Asa knew that there was probably more to it than that, but Teddy didn’t bother trying to explain all the architectural facets of the project to Asa.
    The newest object in the room was the small television that Teddy had taken from the trash in the second-semester common room; the flatscreen was propped up on a small, stone stand. There was still a mass of cracks along the right side of the screen, but not enough to make the image unintelligible. The power cord ran from the back and had been modified on the end so that the three prong electric plug had been cut off. The wire was stripped at the end, and the conducting metal within was twisted together with metal coming off of Teddy’s armband computer.
    The television screen went from black to a glowing CNN.com homepage. Teddy turned and raised his eyebrows at Asa: “We’ve got internet now. Pretty cool, huh?”
    Asa was so taken back that for the moment he forgot about the dark tunnel that had been added to the water passage in the past two weeks.
    “It runs off my armband,” Teddy said. “I swear , it’s like they wanted us to hack this thing. It can do anything.”
    “Teddy!” Asa said, alarmed. “Aren’t you worried that they’ll be able to detect you using the internet on your armband?”
    “What’re they going to do, kill me?” Teddy let out a shrill laugh that Asa ignored.
    “How did you get the television through the water passage anyways?” Asa asked.
    “I found an ice chest in the rec’s kitchen. The television fit nicely inside; just barely fit through the water tunnel.”
    “You stole an ice chest too!?”
    “No,” Teddy said. “I borrowed it. It’s now back where it belongs. But come here, you’re going to want to check this out.”
    Dripping wet and cold, Asa walked over to a spot in front of the television