Killed in Action - A Spy School Story

Chapter 11: Academic Advising

CIA Academy of Espionage

Washington, DC

Hale Administration Building

April 19th, 2018

1300R

Zoe POV

My body was on autopilot as I maneuvered through the hallways, too preoccupied to fully concentrate on my movement. You'd assume that—given that I was meeting my academic advisor regarding my future with the Agency—I'd be focused on the near future. But the rumor had all but overtaken my entire consciousness.

The rumor had begun not long after Ben's death, with it first reaching my ears courtesy of another girl in my class. I would later hear it from Nate and Mike, independently from one another. One would chalk it up to gossip, but for me, what corroborated it to the point of unconfirmed reality was when I accidentally overheard two professors discussing the event in question, and how it was imminent.

But now, there was only one way to confirm the truth once and for all: the academic advisor, a small, bespectacled, middle-aged woman with reddish hair known as Mrs. O'Malley. All anyone—except for maybe the staff—seemed to know about her was that she had been a CIA officer for a long time, beginning her time at the Academy. Nobody had any clue as to what she did before returning to the Academy as an advisor, who Mr. O'Malley was, her first name, her maiden name, or anything else. Heck, she looked like a random mom of college-aged or older kids.

"Good evening, Zoe. Sit down, sit down," she greeted pleasantly as I entered her office, sitting in the chair across her desk while she opened a file on her desktop. "Would you like some cocoa?"

"I'm okay. Thank you, Mrs. O'Malley."

"Alright... now, do you have your paperwork?"

"Yes, Mrs. O'Malley." I pulled my packet from my backpack and passed it to her. While she looked through my packet, I sat in an awkward silence, still sitting on the question... before finally, enough was enough. "Question."

"What's your question, Zoe?"

"Is it true? The Academy's being... shut down?"

Rumor had it that, after this year's class had graduated, the Academy and any affiliated organizations would be shut down. The standing theory was that the new CIA director—the first to have never been a student at the CIA Academy of Espionage—was ordering its shutdown, horrified at its existence. However, there was an additional theory: a few of the professors had threatened to expose the CIA for this, along with a variety of other things, unless the Academy was shut down. Apparently, the CIA brass had lied to them, saying that students were not being deployed on operations, when in fact they were.

The death of Ben brought this fact to light to five professors in particular—our resident Cold War veterans—who immediately moved to expose the whole mess before Agency censors intervened. Under pressure from the rogue professors and the director, the Department of Misinformation (the people who ran the Academy) folded, and would close down the school once this final class graduated in June... at least, according to the rumors.

"Yes," Mrs. O'Malley confirmed after taking a sip of hot cocoa from her mug. "But your class and those old enough in the following one will have the same options. You excel in communications..."

But while my body remained fixed in the chair, my mind had already floated out of the room, in complete and utter shock at the news. The school had been present for decades, and I'd been here for six years—the rough equivalent of my middle and high school years—and it would be closing down.