His hands were soft and pale. Light from the streetlamp painted over his face. And between his lips, I saw a moment paused in time. There was no blood, and no bruises. Everything about him was nearly the same.

Except for him laying in the street without a breath in his body.

Derek’s eyes were pointed up. Their petrified state tried to tell me what he last saw, but it was of no use. The stillness of his resting fate urged a deepening curiosity.

Then, a rush of hyper awareness came over me. As I looked in every direction, I saw nothing. There were no packs of tall and built men cruising through the campus. No shadows or figures of people stirred inside the windows.

Ringing in my ears made it impossible to listen to the nothing all around me. Palpitations in my chest thundered with more cautionary warnings. I felt the blood drain from my face.

Right before I turned back to find help, a bag came over my head. Without a second to think, a hand wrapped around my mouth. I jerked my wrist to fight back, only to feel another set of hands hold me back.

Unable to see, I tried hard to listen. All that I heard were my feet scuffing along the pavement. Then I heard more feet. I twisted my body, attempting to free myself or catch someone’s attention. My attempt only tightened their grip. Not a word was spoken.

After being yanked to who knows where, I felt the temperature change. Suddenly we weren’t outside in the hot and dry air. Instead, an obnoxiously loud air conditioner revealed the change of venue. I darted my eyes around, trying to make out any details. Through the bag, I could only see the general sense of light or darkness.

The inside was dim. It was entirely different from the bright fluorescent overhead lights that were a hallmark of every other room across campus. Each breath I sucked in, the fabric stuck closer to my face.

For a while, I stood there. Over time, I felt the grip on me loosen.

Eventually, the grip was gone.

That’s when a door opened, and someone new had clearly stepped in. I heard a flurry of shuffling and what sounded like people standing up.

The footsteps of this new character came closer to me. Each step teased me with equal parts of anxiety and nausea. I held my breath, hoping I wasn’t served the same fate as Derek.

The man had stopped just in front of me. His breath showered through the cloth veiling me from his identity.

But his scent betrayed the attempt at secrecy.

“Adam?” I said, failing to gather myself with a single bit of confidence. My voice broke and the rest of my body squeezed itself to avoid shaking in its place.

Then, in one fluid motion, the bag that had been draped over my head flew off.

There, in front of me, was Adam and only a small handful of other guys. At least a couple I recognized from the team.

The room we were in lacked any windows. The floor was a patchwork job of cobblestone and brick, entirely unlevel. The walls arched inward, meeting at the epicenter of where a single light hung overhead. The air conditioner rattled in a corner untouched by where I could see.

Gently, Adam reached out to me. His approach was slow.

The expression on his face melted into a puddle of sympathy. How twisted, I thought, for a psycho killer.

I flinched immediately.

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t hurt me.”

Adam looked like he had just been dealt a blow. His emotions became wounded.

“Matthew,” he started to say. “I wouldn’t.”

I looked around the room at a small chorus of reaffirming nods which echoed his words. But my trust was only a figment of anyone’s imagination at this point.

“I saw Derek. I saw his body.”

I paused, not exactly wanting to relive the trauma from just moments ago. I hoped I could force a confession. Nobody volunteered the clarity to finish my thoughts.

“And, I saw what you did to him.” My words planted a field of tension between me and the rest of the room. That’s when a new hand suddenly hung on my shoulder from behind.

“They aren’t the ones who hurt him.”

I turned around. It was Artemis.

Understandably shocked, I examined his face to verify it was him. Not every detail was visible, but I saw scratches and bruises covering nearly the entire right side of his face. He was in poor shape. He looked a lot different from earlier in the day.

Still slow to understand, I stammered as I tried to press on.

“Adam hates Derek,” I said.

I protested, and explained my obvious rationale that Adam had all these guys fooled. They had no idea a wolf was among the sheep.

“I promise you that’s not what happened,” Artemis said.

Naturally, I looked back to the others for validation. Nobody gave any disapproving glances. But the rest were clearly following Adam’s lead.

Adam seemed in charge. His shoulders relaxed, and I felt his warmth provoke the questions and mystery brewing among us.

“Will you follow us?” Adam asked me.

Despite him asking, I didn’t feel empowered to decline.

“Come on,” he said.

Slowly, unsure if this was all a temptation to wade right into a trap, I followed Adam’s steps. He guided the group of men straight into a dark hall.

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I heard only a whisper of Adam’s soft-spoken words to the others as he led the way.

Someone shined a light. I couldn’t see the other end of where we were going, but the patchwork floor repeated almost infinitely ahead. The place smelled.

Silently, Adam stopped and motioned to one of the guys behind me. He stepped forward into the darkness, producing a large and almost comical-looking key. The key-bearer gave a nod to the flashlight-wielder, who adjusted the light directly in front of us; which revealed an unassuming and rotted wooden door.

The unlatching of the door gave way to another revelation on the horizon.

If Adam had killed Derek so brazenly and openly, I didn’t believe he would then go through so much extra effort to take me deep into wherever just for the same.

But my imagination went quiet when the door opened.

From the other side, light flooded out. After a temporary moment of blindness by the sudden adjustment, I saw everything.

The space beyond the door wasn’t exactly impressive. But, it was less depressing than the antique hideaway we just journeyed through. Everything inside the room reflected its shape, which was a small dome. The floor was sunken in the center, with a mixed assortment of older furniture roughly organized in a congregative group. It reminded me of old family friends who had houses built in the 70s.

A display of hastily plugged-in laptops on card tables caught my attention next. Most of the monitors displayed camera shots from around campus.

One of the monitors showed the outside of my room.

“You’re spying on me?” I accused everyone in the room, for their clear complacence, but directed my attention firmly at Adam. Everyone else was unmoved, but Adam accepted my rightful anger.

“No, we are not,” he said.

“That’s not what it looks like!” I pointed right at the monitor that had the image of my dorm.

“We understand your anger.” Adam motioned to the other guys in the room as he spoke. His brows were furrowed deeper than ever before on his face. Stress had eaten away at his demeanor. “We understand it, because each of us is also like you.”

I looked at Artemis, who had glanced down at his feet. In a nervous tic, he rubbed his thumb while averting eye contact.

All the guys found a place to sit down. Adam perched himself against a ledge buried in the wall while he stared at us. But first, he spoke directly to Artemis.

“We need to tell everyone what happened.”

Adam seemed to ask his permission, but it felt more like a courtesy.

So, Artemis nodded. Another long pause punctuated the intermission before Adam began.

“The committee killed Derek,” Adam said. “And they tried to get Artemis, too.”

A small, almost indiscernible tear, rolled down Artemis’ cheek as Adam spoke. His eyes darted, a tell-tale sign he was replaying the moments of what happened.

Adam ate his remaining words. He lowered himself off the ledge, and spoke softly to Artemis. I wasn’t sure exactly what he said. Then, he gracefully took a step back and allowed Artemis the room, and space, to apparently get something off his chest.

“We were in the woods,” Artemis started to say. “We thought we were alone. And safe.”

He took another pause.

“We met last spring,” he said.

His words held me in suspense. But somehow, everyone else in the room seemed like they knew where the story would go next.

“When I visited campus again this summer, we started talking.”

His story gradually caught up to today.

“We met up again. We were so careful,” he said. Emotion welled up inside his chest.

But then, the light in his eyes went completely out.

“We were near the creek. He said he only had a few minutes because of practice.”

Tears broke across his face as he thought back to earlier in the day. Adam gave him a pat on the back, suggesting he didn’t need to go into further detail.

Artemis fought hard against the rush inside his head. He was silently crying, but the rest of his face looked so stoic.

Other guys in the group hung their heads. But Adam carried on.

“Do you remember your orientation yesterday, Matthew?”

I nodded yes.

“Then, you might have been given a certain impression about the academy,” he said.

Again — the answer was yes. The rows of photos of boring and self-important white men had impressed upon me many things, but never the threat of death.

“Officially, the academy rejects men who don’t fit their slim standards of excellence,” he said as he gestured to the rest of the room.

He paused as if I had caught on.

“But, some exceptions are made,” he finished saying. “Each of us, unknown to the academy or the committee, is an exception.”

“An exception?”

“Guys who were forced to be here by their unhappy parents. Parents with money and influence. Influence that bought a less serious examination of who we are.” Adam came and sat next to me, with a serious and accusatory look in his eyes that convicted the certainty behind every word he spoke.

His confession wasn’t entirely shocking after everything else that had happened. But more importantly, my focus was brought back to Artemis. He was slumped over in his chair, almost catatonic and stricken with grief.

“So, Derek and Artemis?” I asked Adam directly.

“Were together, yes,” Adam said, before standing back up and pacing back to his original ledge. “Just like Derek and I saw each other before that.”

Naturally, I wanted to know more details behind that. But, it would have to wait.

“Ok,” I started to say. “But what exactly happened to Derek? He looked a normal amount of agitated after practice.”

I thought back, trying to remember if Derek had the fear of God in him. But, he didn’t.

“He got spooked,” Artemis said, breaking his lull of sadness. “He started back before somebody shot at me, and I tripped.”

Apparently, I was the only one hearing all the details for the first time. Everyone else seemed at a loss to say anything that could bring any comfort to Artemis. He fell back into a reserved position, with his hands folded under his chin and eyes staring blankly.

“I know this is a lot,” Adam said out loud, but directed to me. “But, the police are already on campus.”

He pointed to one of the monitors which showed a Sheriff’s car in front of the administration building.

Still, the question of who killed Derek was unanswered.

“Adam,” I urged.

“We don’t know,” he said more plainly, but firmly. “But the committee has put targets on all our backs. Some of them have ideas about us.”

He stood up again, and this time so did the rest of the guys. Artemis and I looked at each of them from our inferior positions.

“What are we supposed to do?”

Artemis just shrugged in response to me.

We hustled off past the way we came in from, through the creepy hallway. At the foot of the entrance, all seven of us split in different directions.

I worried, initially, watching Artemis walk off into the night by himself. But the callous mystery of Adam’s warnings was not lost on any of us.

Looking back as I left the musty labyrinth, I realized where we were. It was the old storage cellar of one of the abandoned warehouses in the business district for the town, just a few blocks from campus and separated only by a thicket of trees.

I stared off at the glow of the emergency lights in the distance. Silhouettes of the rest of the guys faded as they journeyed back toward campus.

All the guys, except one.