The Academy (Part 2 of the Syndicate Series)

Chapter 5- Forte

Daitan gave me a sad pitying look, "Nyoka used to be great at that stuff but we don't have a lot of tech up here. I have a phone, but it hasn't worked in a long time. But we can find you a way to call home, I'm sure of it."

"That must be rough for all of you," I observed as I noticed their nonchalance. "How often do you get to talk to your families?"

Daitan shrugged, "I only ever call them if I'm down in town on one of our monitored field trips and I have cell service. Even then, it's only for a couple minutes. I like my mom well enough, but I had a deadbeat dad who left us as kids, and my mom's new boyfriend sucks. He didn't much like me either, and shipped me off to this place."

"Same boat here," Nyoka added. "Sort of. Parents and I never got along the best. They were rich foreign dignitaries, travelled all over the world representing their corporation. Didn't really want to drag me along with all of the luggage, so it was off to boarding school for me. I don't mind, though. Before we moved around so much that I never had the chance to really make friends, and now I have these two."

I nodded and fell silent, wondering if Phoenix would actually give me an explanation or just shrug again, but she did give me a short response. "Parents died. Got a scholarship. Figured what the hell."

"I'm so sorry," I offered, almost mentioning that I had lost my own mother. She didn't seem like the person that wanted sympathy, however, so I just left it at that, and she nodded and kept her face down.

Daitan had led us to the edge of the gates at that point, and pointed outwards. "That down there is the lake, you can barely see it from behind the hill. And over there....."

I felt bad tuning her out, so I tried to multi-task by nodding as she spoke and trying to gauge the level of security surrounding the campus. The most obvious concern was the security cameras- they sat up on the fence every few feet, constantly swiveling to track any motion around them. Even a bird perched on the fence a few feet away had a camera focused on him.

"..... but even if Phoenix doesn't love it, she'll usually come sit by the lake with her books while we do. How about it? Maybe we can get permission later this week?"

I was thankful that I could use context clues to jump back into the conversation. "Yeah, that sounds like fun. I love swimming."

It would be just my luck if the lake had tight security too, but I had to at least hope and try. Maybe that would be my best chance. So far I hadn't seen anything else that was more promising.

Nyoka finally interrupted her friend's ramblings about how she missed seeing the ocean, "Well we hit the highlights, and all of the places you might need to go for class. Is there anything else you have a question about?"

I thought for a moment, telling myself that even if I could manage to get away soon, it would be better if I could halfway enjoy what time I would have to spend here. "Any chance you've got a gym in this old castle?"

"It only looks old, thankfully," Daitan joked, waving me after her again. "There's a state of the art gym, you'll love it."

That was some small piece of comfort. Even if I couldn't go on runs around the property, I could probably find a treadmill. I made sure to mark the path from my room to the gym on the hand drawn map, so that I could find it again later alone.

It was unassuming from the outside, but I couldn't hold back my smile when I saw the inside, especially the punching bag towards the back of my room. The way my trio of friends looked around made me think they knew where the room was, but hadn't been in it before. They must not work out a lot, so if I wanted to spar, I supposed I would have to ask around.