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19
Bianaca
There was a palpable tension in the air. Something thick and dark, settling over the students like a tar. It clung to their skins, their pristine uniforms, their slicked-back hair. It made all the whispers and fidgets diminish like a flame being blown out until the large room was still and silent. The only sound was our own shoes pounding on the linoleum tiles.
The shortcut Kelly had led us to had worked. Surprisingly, we had arrived before the masked professors.
But everyone knew that something was about to happen, something that would alter our lives forever. Was it a feeling, perhaps? The type of feeling you get when you are standing in a crowded room with eyes caressing your back? The type of feeling you get when you know there is a monster beneath your bed and no one else believes you?
The air was too thick, too polluted, as I moved toward the table in the direct center of the cafeteria. Kelly branched off, but I didn’t look to see where she was going. Tanner, Aiden, and Kace immediately glanced up when I arrived, their conversation halting. Tanner’s eyes perused my form, as if checking me over for injuries, while Aiden narrowed his eyes into thin slits. Kace seemed nonplussed, humming beneath his breath and not at all bothered by what was about to go down. I was beginning to wonder if something was wrong with Kace mentally. One second, he was curled into a ball and the next he had a singularly beautiful smirk pulling at his full lips. His change in attitudes was giving me whiplash.
“What did you do?” Aiden hissed darkly before I had even sat down. Beau moved to sit beside me, his large arm landing comfortably and protectively over my shoulders. Tanner’s eyes twitched at that, but he didn’t comment.
“Me?” I scoffed. “I didn’t do anything. Apparently…” I cast a quick look in both directions of the cafeteria. It was silent, yes, but I knew that if I kept my voice down, no one would hear us. I leaned across the table until my face was inches from Aiden’s. “Apparently, someone tried to escape.”
I gauged his reaction carefully, marking every tightening of his eyes, every downward pull of his lips, every color draining from his face.
His expression did all that for only a second before it was replaced by his customary apathetic mask.
But I had seen it. A theory I hadn’t even realized I had was only confirmed.
“Shit,” I whispered, stunned. “It was you, wasn’t it? All of you.” I purposefully glanced at Tanner and Kace so they knew which “you” I was referring to. And then my eyes slid to Beau who was staring intently at the tabletop, color rising to his cheeks. There was no mistaking the guilt in his eyes.
And that guilt slammed into my gut with the force of a bowling ball. I was the pin being pushed over, landing straight in the gutter. Betrayal. That was what this felt like. Knife after knife being slashed across my skin, embedding itself so deep that nothing could remove it. I was just waiting for one of those knives to hit an artery or my heart.
“Beau?” I whispered tersely. I stared at my best friend, the man I had been in love with for years, and I only saw a stranger. His tall frame was huddled over the table as if he could somehow disappear from my prying eyes, but I still saw him. I always saw him.
But unlike the comfort and love he usually evoked, I only felt pain.
Whatever he was going to say, whatever rebuke he was going to give, was interrupted by the professors striding into the cafeteria. As was their usual, they took positions around the perimeter of the room. Caging us in. Herding us.
I wished I could see their faces behind those masks.
There was a crackle of electricity before the mechanical voice reverberated through the loudspeaker.
“There are two rules. One, you follow all instructions and go where the professors tell you to go. Two, you never, not ever, try to escape. Failure to follow these rules leads to the immediate expulsion of said student.”
There was a long, pronounced silence as everyone waited with bated breath. I knew my own heart was working overtime, attempting to put blood back into my pale face and frigid hands. Fear like no other clamped around my heart and refused to relent its iron hold.
I may have been pissed at Beau, I may have hated Aiden, Tanner, and Kace, but the last thing I wanted was for them to face the same fate as those other students. Sacrificed…to a monster. My tongue felt like lead in my mouth. I was watching a car crash in slow motion, knowing inevitably that everyone was going to die but being unable to stop it.
Each heartbeat tugged, pulled, pounded, until I feared it would break free from my ribcage. Ice slithered up my spine.
And then the mechanical voice spoke once more. “Jessica Feeney, Tiegan Mayn, and Jeffery Heart.”
The next few minutes were chaos. A girl, her dark brown hair cascading around her shoulders and framing her sharp green eyes, jumped to her feet and immediately ran toward the cafeteria door. Two men from separate tables came as well. A professor lunged for them, but one of the men stealthily side-stepped and landed a punch onto his—her?—shoulder. The professor didn’t even flinch, instead grabbing the student by the scruff of his neck and pulling him up off the ground. His feet dangled in the air as the professor showed a considerable and completely ethereal amount of strength.
“Tiegan!” The girl, Jessica, more than likely, screamed. She immediately turned toward him, but another professor cut her off. Before the brown-haired girl could blink, something was jabbed into her neck. A needle.
She collapsed to the ground unceremoniously, the professor not even bothering to cushion her fall.
Jeffery, the only one of the trio left, glanced cautiously from side to side. He looked like a cornered, rabid animal as he was herded against the wall. His body shook, tiny beads of sweat dripping down his face.
“Please,” he whispered hoarsely, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. One of the professors calmly glided toward him and wrenched his arms behind his back. Jeffery let out a pathetic whimper, but he didn’t fight. He knew, as well as everyone else in the cafeteria did, that fighting back was futile.
The large cafeteria doors opened, and the professors exited, single-file, their new treats slung over shoulders or dragged by their feet.
The macabre, demented scene only lasted a few minutes. The second the doors closed, chatter resumed as if it had never stopped. As if three students hadn’t just been carried away. As if death didn’t await us all like an ominous, bloated storm cloud threatening rain.
