Day 1 12:15 pm
John looked across the room at the timid figure of Nick talking to a group of much larger individuals. It was an interesting collection of bullies, meatheads, and wannabe gangsters. He had no idea how Nick had managed to find such a get such a group together, but he must have promised them something for them to give him so much attention.
More concerning was the fact he had enough brain function to breathe let alone talk. When Mark said he could do it and John had absolute faith that he would. So why the hell was he fine? “I thought you said you dealt with him, why the hell is he still able to stand.”
“I did, I pulled him into one of the bathrooms and knocked him out. Something must have happened there’s no way he should be walking.” Both Mark and John had agreed that something needed to be done but it was only now that John realized they might have been thinking of doing different things.
“When I offered to help you I didn’t mean beating him. The bastard deserves to die for what he tried to pull. Painfully.” John meant every word that he spoke. In this world there were good acts, there were bad acts and finally, there were acts so despicable that even death was to light a punishment.
“John, what are you talking about? You can’t just kill someone, murder is wrong.” Mark turned to look at him as the anger on his face was replaced with shocked disbelief. “He’s a bastard but we can’t just kill him.”
“Sure we can, it’s not murder if he’s guilty. So, if you’re too afraid I’ll do it myself.” Mark just didn’t get it, someone had tried to touch their sister and now no response was too much. Nick was going to get what he deserved, John would make sure of it. But he was going to have to wait though because as long as he was surrounded by his cronies he was effectively untouchable.
Mark was about to reply but John sighed heavily cutting him off. “It doesn’t matter, as long as he has that goon squad of his theirs no way we can touch him.”
Mark opened his mount to speak but was interrupted again. This time by a cheery upbeat voice from behind, “What’s going on, can I help?”
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“No Hopps, don’t worry about it. You don’t want any part of this.” John turned to look at the younger boy, he looked about as average as possible and had an annoyingly positive attitude. Still, he was honest and hardworking meaning John was happy to work with him in practice so he could be the starter on the JV team. It would be better for him to stay out of this.
“Okay then won’t ask again.” Hopps wasn’t dumb and knew better than to go poking his nose were it didn’t belong. A surprising amount of people on the team had things they would rather others not be involved with. Hopps like many others on the team had figured out that unless someone had asked for help it was generally better to let them handle whatever problem they had.
“Anyways, how long do you think we’re gonna be in here? Whoever put us in here can’t just keep us locked in here forever, I don’t know how much longer we can be in here before we start killing each other.” Hops asked looking around the room with a concerned look on his face. The entire room was tense and waiting for something to happen.
“They’re not going to, they’re taking bets to see how long it takes us to die from our own body odor.” It wasn’t John’s best joke ever but it was the only thing he could think of on the spot. Still, it got a chuckle out of Mark and Hopps.
“Na, we got 30 minutes till someone has to use the bathroom and goes on the floor. That’s what’s going to get us.” Mark’s retort was a lot less funny than it seemed. Mostly because it was true, the nearest bathrooms were on Main Street which they couldn’t get to cause of the locked doors.
With the two thousand students packed into the relatively small room was also starting to warm up and John felt sweat starting to form on his brow. The nearest water fountain was also outside of the cafeteria on Main Street. The prospect of death by dehydration suddenly seemed a very likely outcome if they weren’t let out in time.
John could feel the nervous tension running through the sea of people. It was an infectious vibe and John started running his hand through his long blonde hair trying to get tangles out. It was pointless as his hair could generally be referred to as a mop, but it gave him something to do. It was then he noticed that the black deceive carved into his wrist had turned on.
In plain white text it displayed a simple timer counting down, 13 minutes 43 seconds till orientation, thank you for your patience.
“Hey, look at this the arm thing just turned on.” John held out his arm so the other two could see. “What do you think it means, 13 minutes tell we all get blown up?”
Mark and Hopps also held up their wrists so the 3 of them could see. Both of them looked concerned compared to John who was happy something was finally happening.
“No probably not.” Mark said seriously, “I think that we might finally get some answer about what’s going on.”