Extraction: Infinite Hunger

Chapter 62: I Lost My Card

Seven days into the academy’s pre-tournament break, the sound of daily life had returned to the academy. Ash could hear it from his room. Third-years running drills in the courtyard, doors opening and closing in the residential corridors, the ambient noise of a school that had mostly stopped thinking about the fact that in two days, the main bracket would begin.

Daro finished his assessment with an audible tap on his tablet and a not-so-subtle sigh. His treatments had covered the same areas as every other session he had this week. His left intercostal section, his shoulder junctions, and the cartilage that ran along the lower rib that ground regardless of whether Ash breathed the way Daro told him to breathe.

"What’s my progress like?" Ash said.

"I don’t deal in those." Daro clicked the tablet shut. "The tissue is moving where it should be." He looked at the rib line, not at Ash. "You won’t be at a hundred percent by the first round if that’s your next question."

Ash looked at the ceiling, counting the bumps in the popcorn texture.

"That’s all I have, and all I can do," Daro said. He gathered his equipment, crossed to the door, and pulled it open.

Alina and Alexis fell through the doorway.

They hit the floor with their limbs tangled together. Alina’s ear, which was pressed against the door, slammed against the floor of Ash’s room. Alexis’s cape flew over her, covering her head entirely. They were groaning in pain, but otherwise tried to avoid eye contact from either Ash or Daro.

Daro looked down at the girls on the ground, then at Ash. He didn’t look surprised. He simply adjusted the grip on his tablet and equipment and cleanly stepped over the two of them without apology.

"I’ll leave you three alone," he said. "Be safe."

He walked down the corridor out the boys dormitories and headed to his next appointment.

Alina lay on the floor a moment longer, staring at the ceiling. "We heard," was all she said, skirting around why both of them were pressed against his door to begin with.

Alexis sat up and smoothed out her cape. Other than that, her usual theatrical projection and performance were gone. Her eyes were sincere and looked like she wanted a problem solved yesterday.

"There’s two days before the main bracket," she said.

"I know," Ash said, getting up from his bed. He didn’t have much to offer his uninvited guests, but he’d been keeping water bottles and energy bars in his room so he wouldn’t have to go far. He offered one of each to Alina and Alexis.

"We all need to enter that facility you talked about," Alexis said.

Ash took a deep breath, trying not to wince or look weak in front of either of them. "I know," Ash repeated himself.

Alina sat up, beginning to open the water bottle, though she still struggled slightly to open it fully without all her attention going to the mundane task. "Do you have a key card to enter?"

"If I had a card," Ash began, "I wouldn’t have spent the last week lying here waiting for Daro to visit me daily."

"Who does, then?"

"People I know. None of them are answering. They’re either enjoying the days off from school or preparing for the tournament."

Alexis was already on her feet. "Then we acquire one by other means."

"Yeah! That’s it!" Alina said. "We’ll camp out by the entrance and wait for—"

"I’ll stop you there," Ash said. "Unless you want to have an uncomfortable conversation with Evelyn and school administrators, we aren’t tailgating another student in."

"Aha!" Alexis yelled. "We shall steal one from students or faculty."

"Students would probably notice their card going missing," Alina added. "We should focus on getting one from a faculty member. They’re less likely to realize their card is missing."

They left Ash’s room and made their way to a corridor adjacent to the main faculty lounge. Under the guise of an otherwise ordinary Tuesday evening, they ran into no students, staff, or administrators that would ask questions.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Alexis whispered.

"You’re the one that suggested it," Ash said. "And speak up, it’s not like there’s other people in the area but us."

They hid in the service corridor and waited for ten more minutes until any of them had the courage to step into the faculty lounge. The service corridor was narrow, reeking of cleaning solution and old pipework. Alexis found a stretch of bare drywall and inspected it like it was the most interesting object in the area. Ash crouched just at the edge of the hallway.

"You look like you’re planning a heist," Alina said, killing the silence.

"Is that not what we’re doing?" He responded.

"Yes, but..." she trailed off. "You really look like you’re planning one."

Their conversation was stopped by the sound of footsteps. Ash raised a fist, telling the two of them to stop what they were doing. Professor Harrison came around the corner, casually thumbing the flap of a heavily overstuffed envelope. He was humming a song to himself that only he knew, and even he seemed uncertain of how it was supposed to sound.

Then, his eyes made direct contact with the three students hiding in the service corridor. He continued walking, then stopped once he finally processed what was wrong with what he saw.

"If I ask you what you’re doing here," he said, "are you going to tell me something that makes me responsible for knowing it?"

"No," they said all together.

Harrison looked at each of them again. Then, his free arm reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out a key card. He held it between two fingers then flicked it directly at Ash.

"I told you, I had four hundred on your team." He patted the envelope in his other hand, then checked his jacket pockets, where Ash glimpsed several more envelopes tucked away. "I lost my card. How foolish of me," he said, turning back the way he’d come.

"That was easier than expected," Ash said once the coast was clear.

They waited another five minutes before leaving the service corridor.

Ash could feel they were close to the Restorative Facility when the faint wisps of hot steam brushed against his skin. Walking past the blue curtains and into the foyer, they saw the two locked doors that separated the two genders.

Ash pulled out Harrison’s card and used it on the boys’ side. The lock clicked open. He pushed the door open an inch, peeking through the gap to see if anyone was waiting.

The pools were empty; the fog sat low over the water. The only sounds in the room were the slow movement of water current between the connected basins and the hiss of the heating systems just below the floor.

Before Ash could turn and say the coast was clear, Alina and Alexis pushed the door open for themselves. When Ash turned back around he already saw Alexis folding her cape and clothes neatly on a dry bench. Alina didn’t spare so much thought where her clothes or shoes went, flinging them off and content with their landing.

"Come on you’re not going to get any better from there," Alexis said, submerging herself deep in the pool.

"This is just what I needed," Alina said, inhaling the steam rolling off the water.

Ash shook his head and sighed. "Fine," he said smiling. "I’m coming, just... turn around for a minute."

The water enveloped his lower ribs immediately. He sank until the water reached his chin, the cartilage that ran along the lower rib that ground together regardless of whether Ash breathed the way Daro told him to. Ash closed his eyes and tipped his head back against the stone rim, letting out a long ragged exhale.

Alina was submerged up to both elbows, holding herself still as best she could. The blood loss she had suffered in the final phase of the preliminaries had been deeper than the surface wound suggested.

Both of their recoveries were interrupted by the sight of Alexis. Instead of staying put and submerged, she floated on her back, letting the water current take her where it wanted to.

"So Seth," Alexis said, not making eye contact with either of them.

"Yeah?" Ash asked.

She finally turned her head, one eye under the water, the other just above. "Are you going to fight him the way he deserves?"

Ash thought about it. "I don’t know what he deserves." His vision narrowed on the inches of water just in front of him. "I’ll find out when he’s standing in front of me."

Somewhere between Ash thinking and answering, she had fallen asleep, nearly drowning herself. The sudden shock caused her to splash the water at both Alina and Ash.

"Hey, did you hear?" Alina asked. "A senior year student left the academy recently."

"Cowardice?" Alexis questioned.

"Or maybe she just had a really good reason," Ash responded.

He rested his head against the pool’s edge.

Through the walls of the facility, past the athletics wing and residential block, his first-round matchup was waiting in two days.

He closed his eyes and let the water do its job.

The three of them left before the early morning staff rotation.

Outside the corridor was still empty. Alina walked without needing to drag her heel. Alexis moved like she remembered the performance she was supposed to do. Ash found that breathing came and went without thought.

Ash pocketed Harrison’s card.

"Get some rest," Ash said at the junction where they split toward their respective blocks.

"You too," Alexis and Alina said back to him.