STAR ACADEMY

CHAPTER FIVE

Carter woke to someone shaking his shoulder. He opened his eyes to find Reginald standing over him, fully dressed, looking like he had not slept at all.

"It's five-thirty. Dr. Mora is ready for you."

Carter sat up and asked "Ready for what?"

"The first procedure. Come along," Reginald replied.

Carter was led downstairs, then down another flight into what appeared to be a basement level. But this was not like any basement he had ever seen. The walls were white and several beeping equipment lined the hallways. It looked more like a private hospital than a basement.

They entered a room that looked an operating theater. Carter noted the surgical lights and a table in the center with restraints. A woman in scrubs stood by a tray of instruments.

'She must be the Dr. Mora Reginald was talking about,' Carter thought to himself. She had the kind of face that might have been pretty if it ever smiled. It did not smile. She looked at Carter the way a mechanic might look at a broken car.

"Sit," she said, pointing to the table.

Carter sat. His heart was racing. "What exactly are we doing today?"

"Facial adjustments. Minor but necessary." Dr. Mora pulled on latex gloves. "Your nose needs refinement. Your cheekbones need slight augmentation. Your hairline will be adjusted. Nothing dramatic. Just enough to perfect the resemblance."

"You're doing surgery on me." Carter's mouth was dry. "Right now?"

"Take it easy. I'll administer a small anesthetic so you'll be conscious throughout. Try not to move too much." She prepared a syringe. "This will numb your face."

The next two hours were a nightmare. Carter felt the pressure of her instruments even though there was no pain. Felt the tugging and cutting and reshaping of his face. The sound of it was worse than the sensation. Small crunching noises. The snip of scissors. Dr. Mora's breathing, steady and unbothered.

She worked in silence except for occasional instructions like, "Turn your head left. Hold still. Breathe normally."

When it was finally over, Carter's face felt like it belonged to someone else. Swollen and numb and wrong. Dr. Mora held up a mirror. He almost did not recognize himself. His nose was straighter. His cheekbones more pronounced. Subtle changes but they made all the difference.

"The swelling will go down in three days," Dr. Mora said. "The bruising in five. After that, we'll do your hair."

Carter spent those three days in his room, face aching, eating soup through a straw. Reginald visited twice a day to check on him but said little. The rest of the time, Carter was alone with his thoughts and his reflection, watching himself slowly become someone else.

On the fourth day, Dr. Mora returned. This time with hair dye and cutting tools. She worked for three hours, transforming his dark hair to Owen's blonde. She cut it shorter, and styled it differently. Applied the chemical dye in stages until the color matched exactly. It left Carter wondering if she should consider a career as a hairdresser, because she seemed damn good at it.

"Don't wash it for forty-eight hours," she instructed. "After that, you'll need to maintain the color every three weeks. I'll teach you how."

The contacts came next. Blue, like Owen's eyes. Dr. Mora showed him how to insert them, how to remove them, how to care for them. Carter practiced until his eyes were red and watering.

"You'll wear them every day," she said. "Eventually, you'll forget they're there."

On the sixth day, the real training began.

An instructor arrived. Her name was Madame Chevrolet. Though, Carter started calling her "Ma Chevy" just to get on her nerves. On their first meeting, she took one look at Carter and made a sound of disgust.

"This is what I have to work with?" She circled him like a shark. "Stand up straight. Shoulders back. Chin level. Good posture is not optional for someone of Owen Grace's station."

She spent six hours correcting his posture. Making him walk back and forth across a room with books balanced on his head. Adjusting the angle of his shoulders, the position of his hands, the way he turned his head. Every time he slumped or slouched, she rapped his spine with a wooden rod.

"Owen Grace does not slouch like a hoodlum," she snapped. "He moves with purpose. With grace. That is why he has that name. Grace. You have none. We will fix that."

The etiquette lessons were worse. How to sit in a chair. How to stand at a party. Which fork to use for which course. How to hold a wine glass. How to shake hands. How to make eye contact without staring. A thousand tiny rules that rich people followed without thinking and Carter had never known existed.

Madame Chevrolet was merciless. Her voice kept ringing through house as she corrected him: "Wrong. Try again. No. Again. Are you stupid or simply determined to embarrass yourself?"

Carter's temper flared on the third day and he yelled, "Christ! Cool it, lady! I'm doing the best I can."

"Your best is inadequate. Do better," She replied as she hit his knuckles with the rod. "Again."

The voice coaching started in the second week. A different instructor, Mr. Pembroke. Pembroke was British and obsessed with diction. He made Carter repeat phrases until his throat was raw.

"Owen Grace speaks with style," Pembroke explained. "He uses an Upper-class American accent with hints of British influence from his time at boarding school. Your accent is Brooklyn street. We must erase that nonsense."

Carter practiced vowel sounds, along with consonant placement and the rhythm and melody of upper-class speech. Pembroke recorded him, played it back and pointed out every flaw. He also made Carter practice the same sentence fifty times until it sounded right.

"The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain." Over and over. "How now brown cow." Again and again. Carter's throat hurt constantly. And he couldn't help but notice how his voice started changing and becoming something foreign.

In the evenings, Reginald drilled him on Owen's history. They sat in the study with files and photos and timelines spread across the table.

"Owen attended Exeter Academy from ages fourteen to eighteen," Reginald said. "His closest friends were Sebastian Holt, Mark Gold, and David Ashford. Sebastian is still his friend. The other two had a falling out with him junior year. Do you know why?"

Carter had read this already, so he replied, "Because Owen slept with David's girlfriend."

"Correct. Owen has a history of poor impulse control when it comes women. Remember that. It will be relevant." Reginald pulled out another file. "His father sent him to Switzerland for summer abroad programs three years running. He speaks French and German well. Though, his Italian is a bit poor. You speak none of these languages, which is a problem."

"I can't learn three languages in a few weeks," Carter concurred.

"No. But you can learn phrases. Common expressions. Enough to fake recognition if someone speaks to you in French. We'll drill those daily," Reginald said with a small smile as Carter groaned.

The easier part of the training was the social media study. Carter spent hours every night scrolling through Owen's Inogram, Tweexter, TikTak. Thousands of posts. Tens of thousands of comments. He memorized the names of Owen's top followers, and how he responded to certain comments. Owen posted rarely but on purpose, sharing photos from expensive places with vague captions like “Finding myself” under a picture on a yacht or “Growth is pain” beneath a sunset. Everything was made to look meaningful while actually saying nothing at all.

"He's performing," Carter said to Reginald one night. "Every post is an act."

"Yes. And now you will perform the same act." Reginald closed the laptop. "You're learning. Good. But you need to be faster. We have one week remaining."

Soon, the days blurred together. Wake at five. Surgery or medical check with Dr. Mora. Breakfast while studying Owen's files. Etiquette training with Ma Chevy until lunch. Voice and accent coaching with Pembroke until dinner. Social media and history with Reginald until midnight. Sleep for four hours. Rinse and repeat.

Carter’s body ached all the time, his face sore from the medical adjustments and his throat raw from the voice training. His back hurt from hours of posture drills, and his head throbbed from taking in too much information at once. But he was changing, and he could feel it. His walk was different, his voice was different, and even his thoughts were starting to sound like someone else’s.

On the twentieth day, something new arrived in a locked case. Reginald brought it to Carter's room after dinner.

“Tomorrow we install the Protocol,” Reginald said. “Dr. Mora will do the surgery at six in the morning. The recovery will be hard, and the integration even harder, but without it, you won’t have any chance of success.”

Carter stared at the case. "What if something goes wrong?"

"Then Dr. Mora will remove it and we'll terminate the arrangement." Reginald's tone was flat. "But nothing will go wrong. The technology is sound. You simply need to survive the adjustment period."

"Survive. Great," Carter said sarcastically.

"Get some sleep, Mr. Hayes. Tomorrow will be the hardest day yet."