How could anyone...
I could barely feel the rounded plastic edges press in against the palm of my hand. I didn't even bother turning around when I took out my frustration on the others. “Do you guys even know why you're here?” I waited in silence, fully expecting nothing or only Rachel to answer with a snarky comment, but someone else finally let at it.
“Do you?”
I opened my mouth, only to close it again as my thoughts began to coalesce.
What if I didn't? I had not initially figured Ryan to be as dangerous as he really was, and now people were dead because of it. I had completely underestimated how unconditionally fucked I was. So what else could I have been wrong about?
I turned around. I didn't need to ask who had spoken up. Everyone already looked at the source and my eyes fell on the little one. Her eyes looked like they had been soaking in water. I took a step closer. “What's your name?”
She took a little breath and I could see the bump in her throat rise and fall as she tried to swallow air, but she didn't back down. If there was anyone else in the room that didn't want to be there as much as me, it was her. I was sure of it. She was going against the grain. It didn't seem too unlikely for Ryan to want to keep everything quiet. Maybe even the girls themselves were pressuring each other not to talk for one reason or another. I needed to know why.
She started weakly and pulled a bang back over an ear, past red eyes, sniffling courage back into her lungs with uneven breathes. “Ellie...” She cleared her throat. “My name's Ellie.” She glanced to the side again, at everyone else, away from Rachel's scour from the corner of my eye. She was nervous. She knew something.
“Get up.”
She hesitated for a moment before sliding out of her desk. The scared were surprisingly obedient, but if I was going to get anything out of her, it would have to be away from everyone else.
I grabbed her chair and dragged it back towards the window, the legs squealing across the floor, a sound not too much more unpleasant than Rachel's incessant interrogation.
“What are you doing?”
“Improvising.” I stared outside and knocked on the glass in front of my face, only to feel a hollow thud bounce back. Some of the windows at the schools back in the city had been shatterproof, not at all because we had all been angels. I guessed Arrino had not counted on one of the crazy ones paying a visit. I looked back at Rachel and everyone else. They already knew where this was going. “Cover your eyes.”
I brought the chair back behind me in mid swing just as everything changed. I turned around to see the door open and a middle aged woman walk in with a suit on.
Ryan 2.0
I could hear the door lock behind her and she merely stepped behind the desk at the front, not even bothering to pay the crazy girl with the battering ram in the room any attention. But my first impression was wrong. She was nothing like Ryan. Her nerves already seemed broken, as if her body wasn’t sure if it should smile or cry hysterically. She must have willed it to smile. “Good morning, everyone. Why don’t we all start by taking a seat?”
I didn’t even bother giving the notion a single thought.
The woman tried not to take particular notice of me, but I quickly forced her hand by dropping the chair and letting it fall to the floor.
Ellie flinched at the crash next to me and the woman finally peered at us, still as calm as ever. She cleared her throat. “Jessica, sweetie, why don’t you sit down? You must be tired.”
Really?
Of course she knew my name. It really pissed me off.
I took a step forward and Ellie grabbed my arm. I stopped and looked back down at her, only to get a slow shake of the head. Was she trying to protect me? I tried to ignore it, but she gently pulled me back.
It was good enough for our new teacher to continue. “Well then, I see we've all met the newest addition to our group.” She interlinked her hands together to keep them from shaking and forced another smile. It took me a moment to realize it had been a really, really bad joke while an awkward silence quickly pervaded the room.
“Okay...” The woman teetered back on track. It was like she was trying to salvage a sinking ship, except that this one would be full of sex slaves and child molesters. I couldn't wait to see it burn. “Who would like to start us from where we left off, hmmm?”
I was surprised to see a few hands go up, business as usual.
The woman pointed at a girl in the front row. “Yes, Tammie. Why don't you go ahead?”
She took a breath. It was the type of excitement one only got when they were the first in anything. “Knox... is a hero...and—and he saved us from the Seds. They wanna hurt us. They
—
”
The woman stopped her, squinting. “Well hold on. Slow down. You're going a little bit too far back. Let's think about what we learned last time. We know that Knox wants to protect us, but why? What is it about the
Seditionists
that make them so dangerous?”
For the love... please don't pick on—
“Yes, Rachel?”
She brought her hand down and straightened her back. “Seditionists are Paranormals that went against society.”
“That's correct.” The woman gave her a quick reassurance, only for it to fall apart. “And as we all know, Paranormals are very different from the rest us... and very dangerous.”
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I glanced over at Ellie to see her stare at the front, a slight purse to her lips. She must have known better, but for how long? How long had all these girls been forced to listen while Ryan pursued his Knox fed agenda? What the hell was the point in teaching them to hate Paranormals like everyone else if they were just going to be used at bedside and discarded like a piece of trash?
I couldn't take it anymore. I took another step forward, this time even too much for Ellie to handle. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
The entirely class slowly shifted in their seats and the woman looked back at me with her glassy eyes, so close to breaking, so delicately balanced, and yet I saw no problem in being the one to shatter her into a thousand pieces. She tilted her head again and pretended like it wasn’t the most obvious question in the universe.
It didn’t do anything to calm me down. “These are
kids
.”
She blinked a little too much before taking a breath and starting over. “Jessica... if you don’t sit down, I’ll have to go and get someone.”
Go ahead, bring Ryan.
At that point she must have noticed the scissors in my hand. Her sophisticated adult mind had probably put the two together and realized a shitty attitude never copes well with sharp objects. She went to open the door, but for once I was too quick.
I knocked over a desk to get at her just as she started to fumble. I pushed her away and spun her around, bringing the threat up against her neck to hush her scream. I swung her against the blackboard with my hands still tight on the open blades that pushed up underneath her jaw.
I could only guess all the girls got up on the edge of their seats to watch, but she instantly gave in. “Please! I swear to God it wasn’t my choice! Please don’t kill me. They made me do it! Please!”
I just stared as the only real grownup in the room began to break down and cry. She had faltered. She wouldn’t have fought back. I would have met no resistance if I had decided to force her life to slip past a crooked gash in her throat. It would have been a real case of dying from guilt.
Blood started to trickle down my hand as I held my grip. One of the blades had been pressing up against each of my fingers. I had barely noticed it until then. I readjusted so that I held the scissors with the fine twin points conjoining at her adam’s apple and she flinched.
Her freckles trembled and I could feel each breath through her neck. Soft wisps of her hair dangled on top of her lips as each quiver in her veins struggled to pump blood throughout her tensing body, yet even then she still wouldn’t look at me. Why wouldn't she look?
“Jessica...” Someone called for me from behind, but I kept the pressure on. “Tess.”
I looked at the hand tugging back on my arm again.
“She's not one of 'em,” said Ellie.
So what was she?
I looked back at the woman in front of me, a veiled husk of whatever she had once been. Now she was just an animal, a scared piece of life trying to preserve itself any way it knew how. She could only stare back and know that I was in control. I decided what would happen. I would be the one to complete the next outcome of her life. I was dangling her above the unknown. I controlled her. She belonged to me.
“Please,” said Ellie. “Don't do it.”
I blinked, and a wave of uncertainty passed over me. Ellie was right. The woman had probably never hurt anyone. What the hell was I about to do? I found my grip slowly loosening until she slid down with her back against the wall, her head hanging low in her lap. She began to let it all out at the first relief. Coming back from that was almost too much for her to handle.
I let my hand drop down my side and watched blood start to patter onto the floor. I had no reason to take anything out on her. I knew what death was like and she didn’t deserve it. Nobody did. But I was betting I could still try to find an exception. I grabbed the woman's arm without warning and she started to let it all out again. “Get up.”
Ellie immediately got in front of me as I forced the woman towards the door. “What are you doing?”
“Leaving.” I tried to move, but she still wouldn't get out of my way.
“What makes you think they won't kill her too?”
I held the woman close to me as I thought about it. Ellie was right. Hiding behind a hostage wouldn't do any good if it would only turn into me carrying a lifeless body. She was smart, already a step ahead of me, which meant she knew what was really going on.
Ellie eyed the bloody blades in my hand and brought her hands up carefully. “I can get us out of here.” She pointed out towards the hall. “They'll see us if we try to go out the front, but I know where to go. If it's just the two us, we can slip by and—”
“No.”
That one had at least caught her off guard.
I stared across from her and then at the rest of the girls. “We're all going.”
It didn't take long for me to convince her.
She led us down the hall, a few feet ahead of the pack, while I pushed the woman in front of me with the points of the scissors up against her back. Rachel and the five other girls still learning to cope with puberty followed close behind.
The woman continued to sob and tried to gain some sense of composure as I held her hostage. Anyone would have been able to hear her mumblings from a mile away.
I increased the pressure on her back, careful not to break skin, and she cut it short with another tremble. “I’m not gonna hurt you...” The words had barely left my mouth before I remembered I was practically stabbing her in the back, but I couldn’t think of the right words to say. I had to convince myself the trauma would be for her own good.
I forgot about it as soon as Ellie stopped us in front of a set of double doors with her hand hovering just above the handles, seemingly unsure.
I glanced around the empty halls to make sure we were still alone, but we couldn't just sit in the open. “What's wrong?”
She made up her mind. “It's a shortcut.”
I followed her into the school's theater. Small seats lined the rows on either side of us with our next exit just ahead. We were halfway there by the time I glanced at the stage. It was still set up from its last production, plus the addition of two fully fledged adult men who turned to look at us.
I immediately swung back to Ellie, but she had already stopped, frozen in place with her eyes behind what I still assumed to be the line of girls following me to their freedom. She started to reach out and I only realized what was going on when a sharp pain burned itself into the back of my neck.
I dropped down and screamed. I let go of the scissors and somebody kicked them away. The pain came back at my side as I crumpled up into a ball, breathless from the torture. It was a few seconds before I was able to look up at the man standing above me. He held something in his hand. It must have been the source of my agony.
“Jessica, is it?” he asked, his voice booming through the empty space. “We were just talking about you.” He had a little extra weight on him and carried himself like he owned the place. I already decided I preferred Ryan more. He lifted the small black box in his hands. “You know what the best part about a taser is? It doesn’t leave a mark—well, not a big one—and we got batteries galore. I mean, we could do this all day long.” He pointed it at me. “That’s twenty-first century thinking for you right there.”
I craned my neck to see Ellie and the others already grouped together, and the woman from the classroom with an armed man ushering them back.
“Get 'em outta here.” He paused for a moment, the next part only loud enough for me to hear. “They don't need to see this.”
I watched the group leave from where we had come from and the doors closed with a bang. I was alone again. I didn’t want to get up. My time deciding my own fate was over. I had been left with whoever I had to thank for my new headache.