2024-01-10 00:22:26“You have thirty minutes to answer the questions, the person with the highest marks quality for entry. Good luck!”
It's dead silent save the sound of an enormous ticking clock in the room.
I'm not sure why it's there but it sure does help increase the tension. It always catches my eyes whenever I raise my head.
The first page is a name page with clear instructions.
Rule 1; We see you.
Rule 2; We hear you.
It's a clear threat just in case it crossed my mind to turn my neck.
With deep breaths I brace myself and head for the next page, and then–
“How was it,” mum asks the moment I slam the door shut.
I sigh, murmuring under my breath, “I– don't want to talk about it, please not now.”
Racing straight to my room I crash on the bed, and take a few moments to recount just how stupid I was.
I want to forget it but I just can't.
‘There's absolutely no way I'm getting in.’
*****
Knock!
Knock!!
“Good morning Tad, what is it?” Mother curiously asks, pretty surprised to see our neighbor at our front door at 6am in the morning.
I draw a little close to find out what's going on myself, when I notice a bunch of teenagers running into one direction.
A sense of dejavu hits me, as I rush straight into my room.
“Good morning Mrs Rachel, my mum says I should tell Ande that the results are out!”
The results are out!
“The results are out?” Asks mother worriedly as I dash out of the house.
Mixing up with the crowd, I hurry straight to the town square where the notice board has been places.
The place, flooded with people aspiring to get into the Academy just like myself.
Dammit!
I hate this many crowd, it's one of the reasons I need to leave this damn place.
Pushed-
Crushed-
And stepped on-
I make my way to the front row in search of one thing.
“Ha!
Where's my name?!”
I spend the next ten minutes checking each name on the board, but mine was nowhere to be found, but more disturbingly, no one on the list made it.
“Did you seriously think you were going to get in?
Your name isn't even on the list, you probably didn't write anything at all.”
Ah!
Of course that voice.
Angered and frustrated, I turn around while wearing a fake smile, trying my best to hold back.
It was my biggest interest to not offend him and sarcasm was the only way to handle him as I could never take him down in hand to hand combat.
“Well Zane, whether I did or not has nothing to do with you especially since I believe you also didn't get in.”
“Hey!”
Zane leaps forward barely held back by his minions when an officer walks back forcing him to get his character in check, and giving me time to run of course.
Although disappointed that I didn't get in, everything seemed to be going well, for the time being at least.
Knock!!!
Knock!!!
Knock!!!
“What is wrong with some people!” I yell while waking up from sleep.
I glance at the clock, it's barely six in the morning, why are people visiting around six in the morning?!
“Is this the home of Rachel Deer?” I hear an unfamiliar voice speak.
“Yes,” she nervously answers.
“I have a message for your son, if you don't mind, can we come in?”
Mother goes silent for a while.
I sure hope Zane isn't responsible for this, I don't know how I'd be able to fight off his father's men if either of them is at the front door.
“–of course.”
I hurry down the stairs, struggling to put on my shirt when I'm met with a rather unfamiliar scene.
About seven men are waiting in the living room and they look nothing like our Division, or the Officers.
Seeing as I make my way to my mother's side, they all revert their gaze to me.
One of them suddenly gets in the way between my mother and I and stretches out his hand.
“What for?”
“You don't know what a handshake is?”
“Oh!”
Well isn't that a nice way to call me dum.
“Congratulations Ande, I'm actually pretty surprised to see such excellent grades, I'm sorry if you nearly got a heart attack during the release of the result. We don't usually let the winners know until a week later because they're special,” he says.
“What?
I got in?
I didn't fail? You weren't angry with my answer.”
“Angry? Ha! If anything it made everyone laugh, believe me we needed that laugh,” he responds.”
What a very strange man.
He grins a bit excitedly and then with a snap of his finger the men rush in while carrying some boxes.
“This is everything he would need to get ready for his first day at school. I'm certain he'd like to meet the rest of his classmates, so do well to get him prepared.”
“We will,” mother says.
The strange man chuckles lightly and proceeds to leave when he halts by the door and turns around like.
“Oh and Ande,” he calls out to me.
“...”
“That's quite the spirit you've got, we'd be looking forward to seeing it pretty soon.”
Oh shit, I knew I pissed em off.
“Ande, what's she talking about?”
“Oh it's nothing.” I laugh.
‘To think I also got in!’
I can still remember pretty clearly how I felt after finding the first question.
Stupid.
Not because I was stupid but because they wanted to show me how I stupid they saw me as or rather us.
That's just how low they thought of us, fortunately for me, I inherited countless books and a nice memory from my father before his passing, there was no way I was going to fall for this.
I smiled at the papers and wrote boldly on the paper, “I'm not stupid!”
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Chapter 138. Escaped Helpers.
"We're not your enemies. We're students, too. We escaped the school just like you." I hesitated, my grip loosening. "Prove it," I demanded. "How do we know you're telling the truth?" At last they took off the mask from their faces, they looked nothing older than eighteen at most, but I wasn't going to be fooled, definitely not by their appearance especially. We pointed the guns at them, cold sweat dripped all over my face but that wasn't enough to make me tremble, at least I wouldn't allow myself to fall victim to such trickery. “No problem, no problem, I'll prove it, I'll show you that we mean no harm I swear,” the female of the group yelled. “Please, just back off with the gun a bit, that thing's dangerous and I doubt you even know how to hold them properly which makes it more dangerous.” Was she mocking us or what? I couldn't make due with it. I took a quick look at her and her colleagues behind us. They didn't seem to have any sort of weapon on them and they didn't retali
Chapter 139. Defiance.
I could hardly believe my eyes at first, but that was the honest truth apparently, and just like that, we had finally escaped the school, but freedom felt like a distant memory as we trudged through the arid landscape. Where we would go from here, that was the next question. Amid the celebration and excitement from my classmates I looked around, something didn't feel right, not in the slightest, but what was it? Suddenly, it occurred to me to look ahead as if I surveyed the land. "Does anyone have a binocular?" I asked. "A binoculars? I think I got one while we were escaping, it was amongst the staff gadgets," someone said. At once it struck me. Why exactly would they need such in the first place? The more I puzzled about this uneasy feeling the more restless I felt. The girl handed over the device with a bothered look on her face. I grabbed hold of the device and peered through. Scanning- Scanning- The coast looked clear, crystal clear however, what was this cloud of dus
Chapter 138. Break The Illusion.
(Diego's POV)I dart through the shifting corridors of the maze, my heart pounding in my chest as I try not to lose sight of the others. The disorienting twists and turns of this twisted landscape make it difficult to keep my bearings.And I'm finding it harder and harder to keep on going.As I watch my classmates struggle to cross the swaying platforms, a seed of doubt begins to take root in my mind. Something about this whole scenario doesn't feel right. The way the walls shift and the floors move - it's almost as if it's an illusion, a trick of the mind.I take a step back, studying the maze around us more closely. The patterns on the walls seem to shimmer and distort, and the very air feels charged with an unnatural energy. Narrowing my eyes, I focus my senses, trying to pierce through the deception.Suddenly, a flicker of movement catches my eye, and I whirl around to see a shimmering figure in the distance. It's the teacher, I'm sure of it. A wild surge of anger rises within me
Chapter 137. Space Manipulation.
(Ande's POV)We wait patiently for Ethan in the game room, the few of us that are still free, trying to cross check if we have everything. It was almost….. peaceful.Alas, things were not meant to be, as the world around us suddenly shifts and distorts.I grip the railing as the building contorts before my eyes, the once familiar corridors and classrooms twisting and distorting like a kaleidoscope. The floors seem to shift beneath my feet, and I struggle to maintain my balance as the world around me turns upside down. "What's happening?" I shout, my voice laced with panic as I glance at my teammates. Ava clings to the wall, her eyes wide with terror, while Chris braces himself against a doorframe, his knuckles turning white.A sinister chuckle echoes through the disorienting space, and I feel a chill run down my spine. "Did you really think you could escape me so easily?" The teacher's voice, dripping with malice, surrounds us.I whirl around, searching for the source of the sound.
Chapter 136. Divide Map.
(Ande's POV)After washing out the blood from my clothes, I looked down with a heavy sigh of disbelief, I could not believe that this was what I had been reduced to. A monster, perhaps. "We have to go," Chris said to me, his hand upon my shoulder. Yes, there was somewhere we had to be and I refused to let anything come in the way of my freedom, not even myself. Chris and I rejoin the others. The students from the lab are gathered, their faces etched with a mixture of fear and anticipation. They couldn't possibly reject me and I knew that, I was one of them and they were just like me, we had the same substance or whatever it was that was put in me running through their veins, they couldn't possibly bail on me. "Ande," one of them says, her voice tinged with relief. "We've been trying to make sense of what happened back there."As I explain what I found in the lab and the chip I retrieved, their expressions shift from confusion to horror."So they were trying to turn us into desti
Chapter 136. Hybrid Solutions..
(Ande's POV)I shake my head, refusing to believe what they're telling me. "No, I can't have done this. There must be some mistake." I couldn't accept that in the slightest bit, how could everything turn out this way, we had come so far and yet this was supposed to be the result?No, it couldn't possibly be this way. "Ande, listen to us," Ethan says, his tone urgent however I looked away from him, the last thing I wanted on my plate was someone to interfere with how I felt but he was persistent an attribute that I had hated for quite a while now. "We all felt... different, after what happened in the lab. And now, with what's happened here... we can't risk staying any longer. For our own safety, and for yours."I want to protest, to demand answers, but the fear in their eyes gives me pause. I took a deep sigh, surely this wasn't the end of everything, I knew there had to be some sort of way but the opportunity seemed difficult to come by. "I understand but I'm sure there's a cure
