Briella
The light against my closed eyes felt funny. Too bright one second, and then dull the next. Almost like I was under a disco ball. I knew it wasn’t any party though. I wasn’t the clubbing kind of girl. And I had been at work.
There definitely weren't any disco balls in school.
I remembered everything. I had taken a step away from the desk after feeling faint and gone down hard.
A gas leak. That's what it had been.
My students.
Just thinking about them made my eyes snap open. Where were my students? Were they ok? Guilt swept through me. My job as their teacher was to get them out of dangerous situations safely, and I had failed them. What would I do if they were hurt? I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.
The moment my eyes opened, I wished I was still unconscious. My skull felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. My mouth, which had been as dry as the Sahara, flooded with saliva as nausea rolled my stomach. Groaning, I pressed my hands to my eyes, rubbing at them with the heels of my palms until fresh stars erupted.
I had to get myself together, be the adult and make sure my students were ok.
“Miss?”
The voice was quiet, barely a whisper but it seemed unusually loud in the deafening silence. Turning my head to the side, I took a second to enjoy the feel of the cool, almost wet floor against my cheek before my eyes focused on the girl crouched down at my side.
She looked terrified.
“Miss, are you awake?” Another urgent whisper.
“I’m here.” With a groan that seemed to echo off the stone walls, I pushed myself upright. Glancing around me, my head swam, but I could blearily make out the small room I was in. A tiny room, with roughly hewn stone walls and no windows. One wall was completely made up of rusted bars.
This wasn’t a room, and it sure as hell wasn’t the room I had been in when I had blacked out. It was unlike any room the school had ever seen.
It was a damn cell.
A prison cell.
“Where are we?” I didn’t take my eyes from the bars in front of me. They were the only thing I could concentrate on. Why the hell were we in a cell? In a room that looked like it came straight from a medieval castle.
“I don’t know. We just woke up here. Some of us anyway.” Her words made me turn my head towards her sharply.
“Some of you?” I searched her ashen face. “What do you mean ‘some of you’?” My heart slammed into my chest plate.
“Some are still sleeping, and some…” Even as I watched, a tear slipped down her cheek, leaving a trail on her grime-covered cheek. “I think some are dead.”
“Dead?” I squeaked. Climbing to my knees, I let my eyes take in the room around me. My students were all there, gathered in corners, crying softly with their arms around their knees. “Stay here.” Scrambling to my feet, I hated the way my voice shook. “All of you, together now.” My voice rose, but I didn’t need to shout. The young adults in my care were already scrambling to do as I had told them.
I didn’t want to check the three figures I could see lying motionless on the floor, but I knew I had no choice.
Reaching down, I pressed my fingers to the neck of the first. His skin felt cold and clammy, slimy like a fish, but I could feel a pulse. Weak and thready but there. “He’s alive.” I glanced behind me. “Someone help me get him up.”
I didn’t want any of my students near those bars. Not until I knew exactly where we were and why.
Grumbling, two boys came forward. Catching the unconscious lad under the arms, they dragged him away to the safety of the group. Not that I was fooled that we were indeed safe. Someone had obviously drugged us. Maybe even pumped the classroom full of toxic gas so we had lost consciousness and taken us to God knows where.
I didn’t want to touch the next student. I could tell by the way her eyes stared, glassy and unseeing at the ceiling, that she was dead. Her face had an awful, grey, waxy pallor, her features twisted in what looked like agony.
The third was the same.
Two students were dead and at least a dozen had been kidnapped and were being held hostage.
I needed to move the bodies, cover them if I could find something to do it with.
