CHAPTER 1

A harsh glow seeps its way into the stark white edges of a dark room, reflecting its artificial blinding light over the bodies that lay there. The unanticipated luminescence seeping into the (before gloomy) room startle a few of them awake, and small eyes slowly creep up as the strong light beats down on their surfaces.

From across the room, eyes squinting as he yawns awake in the corner, Ahren mumbles faint tired sounds. He isn't fully awake yet, but he can already tell something isn't quite right.

He reaches over for his glasses but finds nothing there, leading him to another tunnel of confusion. A quick brush over his face and the search for his glasses is cut short. They are already on his face.

He quickly adjusts them and sits up so that he gets a full view of the small room he's in. When he sees his surroundings, his eyes widen and an unexplainable, eerie feeling seeps its way into Ahren’s bones.

He has no idea where he is, but it's not his bedroom. From what he can tell, there are other kids scattered all around him who are still mostly asleep. Something inside his stomach drops.

Ahren hears someone mumbling to his right, and flips his head to observe her waking up.

She restlessly turns around a few times before leaning over and rolling to a slumping sitting position. Her eyes remain shut as she stretches her arms in a full circle, and softly scratches at her medium length, box-red hair.

Ahren studies her face as her eyes slowly peek open. He lays back, bracing himself against a nearby wall and stares at her, wiping even the slightest idea of emotion off his face and crossing his arms menacingly over his chest.

It was safe to not let his guard down. He didn't know what was going on, and he liked safe.

A soft gasp escapes the girl's lips and her soft features twist from the sleepy face of the morning to one of pure confusion, then absolute fear.

Ahren notes that she’s probably just as concerned as he is, but still doesn’t allow his guard to fall. Either she was good at acting, or she was in the same boat as him. (all logic would lead to the latter, but you can never be too careful)

The girl's head flips sporadically around the room before landing in his direction, and in a split second her fearful face morphs into a confident mask.

Ahrens eyebrows raise, interesting.

He watches as she takes in the scene around them.

Laying sporadically around the room was around 50 or so young faces. They all looked to be in their teens. Slowly they were waking up one after another and realizing they were not snug at home in their beds.

The girl turns back to Ahren, narrowing her light blue eyes. For a moment it looks like she means to say something to him, but before she can open her mouth, Ahren feels a tug on his hoodie.

With a startle, Ahren shifts his attention to the side. He had been too concentrated on figuring out the small scarlet-haired girl that he didn't notice another person had been awake.

“What the hell is going on?” a boy mumbles nervously. “Is this a dream or something? It has to be a dream. right?”

The boy is gulping in deep slow breaths, and quietly shaking his head side to side

Ahren says nothing but instead switches to analyzing the boy in front of him. The boy has fluffy locks of dark ginger hair shifting around as his head shakes, and soft little patches of freckles popping out over his worried face. His panicky coffee brown eyes fall onto Ahren's darker ones; they look terrified.

Ahren watches as the boy’s already pale, white face fades into a dead ghostly white.

“It's… not a dream is it.” he whimpers.

Ahren follows the boy's figure down to where his shaking hands lay, still gripping onto the sleeve of Ahren’s black “Skyline High Science Fair” hoodie.

“I-” Ahren coughs, the realization dawning on him too. None of this made any sense.

He looks away from the boy's wide shaky eyes, clearing his throat again.

He shakes his head in response to the boy.

The boy gulps and lets go of Ahren's arm.

The boy himself doesn't leave though, and instead slides down the wall next to Ahren, and slumps over.

Ahren tries to focus on navigating the situation at hand, but his thoughts keep coming back jumbled. He doesn't like the implication that came with his brain tripping over itself like that. It was rare that Ahren couldn't think through a given situation. He was a problem solver. A good one.

Next to him Ahren hears sniffling and he turns to face the boy again.

From his tense eyes fall shining tears, too fast for his rushed hand to wipe away before more reappear in their place. His breaths are shaking, and Ahren can tell he is trying his best to keep quiet, but the tears keep falling, and with them the ability to stop.

Panicking, Ahren tries to think of a way to comfort the boy, but he draws a blank. People were not one of his strong suits.

“Sorry,” the boy whispers between wiping tears, “I'm just a little scared is all.”

Ahren nods, sighing.

He was almost sure now, after watching the others wake up, that nobody knew why or how they got here.

“We all are, I think,” he says nervously, leaning his head back on the wall.

The boy looks around at the mass of people on the floor, and then back at Ahren. “Yeah,” he says quietly.

By now most of the kids were awake and either nervously chatting or breaking down. Some were in daze-like states as the reality of what was going on sinks in. For a moment, Ahren watches the chaos unfold before him, prompting a headache to burst through his skull.

Rubbing his head to try to ease the pain, he glances at the ginger next to him again, only to jump in his seat when he finds the boy staring right back at him.

“You alright?” the boy asks, gesturing to what Ahren assumes to be a head of overly messy brown hair.

Ahren shrugs, suddenly aware of how insane his hair always looks in the morning and doing his best to fix his bedhead.

“Not really I guess. How could I be?” he frowns, wondering why he was the one being asked.

He should have been the one asking.

He opens his mouth to ask the question back, but before he can even breathe in, a voice cuts through the room.

“YOU!” a loud voice shouts over the hysterical chatter.

Ahren turns to the girl with cherry red hair, the one who woke up right after him.

When he sees her finger pointing towards him, aimed right in the middle of his round glasses, he nervously looks up to where she stands.

The room falls quiet, all eyes landing on Ahren and the girl.

“What?” he asks, shifting to a different position, allowing him the ability to stand up if he needs to.

The girl huffs, glaring at Ahren.

“As if he doesn't already know…” she mumbles and lowers her pointing finger.

Ahren frowns, he figured that she was talking about his emotionless, and probably kind of creepy staring from earlier.

“Ummm. If you're referring to me watching you earlier, I was just taking in surroundings,” he says. “Just some observation is all.”

The girl scoffs and takes another step towards him, but Ahren interrupts her before she can accuse him of anything.

“How do I know whether or not you, or any of these other people, have any clue to what’s going on?” he stands up to try and make himself seem more powerful.

He wasn't the tallest person ever, but even he had a few inches on the small girl yelling in front of him.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

He smiles wearily, “I was just gathering information for myself alright? And I had originally decided that you can be trusted.”

The girl gives him a doubtful look but eventually decides to move on, and goes over to the group of kids that was slowly forming around the only piece of furniture in the empty room.

The, also very empty, square table.

Ahren begins to debate with himself on heading over with her to get some insight on the rest of the kids in the room when the clicking sound of a latch unlocking echoes loudly through his ears and shifts everyone's attention to the left-side wall.

The world seems to freeze as the group watches a person-sized square swing from out the wall, followed by a man wearing a black face mask and suit. The sight triggers a chill to slither down Ahren's spine.

He backs farther away from the direction the man had entered out of fear and bumps into the ginger boy behind him.

He hurriedly turns to apologize but stops short when he sees how terrified the boy is. Ahren watches as he takes in gulping breaths of air and squeezes his eyes shut.

“He's looking right at me,” the boy whispers, his panicked voice shaking with every syllable.

Ahren slides closer, his heart pounding, threatening to tear through the skin on his chest.

“I'm sure it's going to be…” he starts to say, but he stops himself.

It wasn't going to be fine. How could it be? They were stuck in a strange room with nothing but a table, and god knows whatever lay on the other side of a small, square-shaped exit.

“Jiri Taylor. Come with me,” the man says, not taking his eyes off the boy next to Ahren.

Not even to blink.

Slowly the boy moves his shaking body to a standing position.

“Why?” He asks, voice quivering. “Where are we? Where's my family?”

The man takes a few steps forward, enough to allow him to grab Jiri’s arm, and forcefully pull him back towards the square door.

He looks to the rest of the kids sprawled nervously throughout the room.

“Don't ask questions. Just comply.” He says under his breath; His voice is deep and daunting. “Or just don't listen… I don't care much what happens to you, but I thought you'd like to know before anyone does something they'll come to regret.”

In a state of silent horror, everyone in the room watches, shocked, as the man gives Jiri a firm shove out the door. Ahren hears a muffled grunt come from the boy, and he looks into his scared coffee eyes once more.

Every last fleeting drop of hope or lightheartedness that might have been barely flickering in them before is drained, replaced with pure frantic pleading fear.

Ahren chokes when their eyes meet, and he can't help but offer some kind of encouragement, even if it is a straight-out lie.

“Fine.” He mutters, forming the word with his mouth as he stares at Jiri’s terrified freckled face. “It's going to be fine.”

He should have said it earlier, if not for himself, then for the nervous boy in front of him who really needed to hear it.

But it’s already too late for that.

The man is pulling Jiri away.

And slowly shutting the door.

But before the square exit can close completely he sticks half of his already half-hidden face back in and stares out at the sea of petrified faces.

“I'll be back,” He grunts and slams the door behind him.

Leaving the remaining in the room nothing to do but fear his return.

---

For a few agonizing seconds there is a frozen kind of quiet that weaves its way through the room, but soon enough kids start to panic.

One boy stands up declaring he is “far too gorgeous to die!” leading only to screams of “WERE GOING TO DIE?!” to which he shrugs and slumps back down on the wall next to him.

Ahren amongst all the chaos sits alone, back to the wall, silent.

He can't get the past few minutes to stop replaying in his head. The way Jiri was dragged off so suddenly and by a man who struck every other person in the room with a blade. One dripping with the kind of terror a person never thinks they will have to experience.

Ahren can still feel how the blade jerks around in his heart and infuses a shaking fear into his veins. Standing up seems impossible and thinking of the spark of safety he had felt sitting with Jiri only makes him ache more.

All at once around him everything about the situation sinks in. the panicked murmuring of quiet children morphs into a screaming realization of what was going on.

They are all in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar people, and have no idea what terrible things might happen to them (other than the scenarios lying within their very own gruesome thoughts).

If it wasn't chaotic before, it sure was now.

“We all need to calm down.” Ahren says to himself, finding it too challenging to actually say the words audibly.

He wasn't exactly the leader type, and had his doubts that the multitude of confused frantic kids around him would have any interest in listening to him talk.

Slowly, he pushes himself up off of the floor and hesitantly inches over to the girl from before. The group that had been forming before Jiri was taken away had all but dissolved into chaos now, leaving the girl sighing in defeat as she stood watching her fellow hostages scramble around and cry for help.

“Hi, um-” Ahren says it too quickly, causing him to trip over the words.

He stops and swallows awkwardly, doing his best to stand up a bit straighter.

The girl slowly turns to stare at Ahren with cool blue eyes that stab his plain brown ones like dozens of sharp icicles crushing hidden patches of soil.

“What do you want?” She scowls up at him.

“Hey i'm sorry if I offended you earlier” he says hurriedly, placing his palms in front of him and trying his best to look friendly. “honestly I was just scared and confused.”

Hesitant, she glares at him for a few more moments before letting her ridgid features soften.

Without her face all scrunched up, the girl had an oddly kind looking face. Her cherry red hair, cut with flowy curtain bangs, framed her fair face and fell just below her shoulders. From a distance you wouldn't have noticed, but she had a few freckles that lay on her face like sprinkles. In a way, she kind of reminded him of one of those fancy cakes he used to buy at a bakery in his hometown.

“Alright. I admit I was a bit on edge earlier too.” she sighs, stretching her arms behind her back.“Now tell me what your name is.”

“I'm Ahren. What about you?”

“Clair.”

The girl's eyes widen and she turns over to where Jiri had been dragged out of the room, because among all the ruckus and panic they hadn't even noticed him re-entering the room.

And Clair hadn't been the one to say her name.

“Clair Allard, come with me.” the man wearing all black says.

Clair hesitantly inched forward trying to stay confident, but Ahren could see her clenched teeth and the panic shaking in her eyes.

When she was close enough to the man she opened her mouth to say something. However, what she might have meant to say was stopped short when the man covered her mouth with one hand, and grabbed her arm with his other.

Clair began to thrash around violently in an attempt to escape the man’s grip, but it was to no avail.

Just as Jiri had before her, she was dragged out of the room with the heavy square door slamming tight behind her.

After that Ahren retreated to a far corner of the room in an attempt to distract himself from the fear and stress.

Obviously, it didn't really work, and he felt himself becoming more and more panicked as one by one, kids kept being forcibly taken from the room and off to who knows where.

All he could think about was how much he willed for his name to never escape the mouth of the man who came in and out of the room to snatch one from the group.

But he knew it was all wishful thinking and that his name would be called soon enough, whether he wanted it to or not.

The man had taken about 20 of the others before, sure enough, Ahren’s name was called.

“Ahren Meyer, come with me.”

Even though he had heard the name spoken with his own ears he refused to believe it. With a frightened paralyzation, he began shaking his head and slowly backing away from the entrance where the man stood waiting.

Seemingly tired of the countless kids who had tried to escape his grasp the man groans.

“COME WITH ME OR ELSE!” he shouts, wrathful eyes fixated on Ahren.

Scared of what the man might be capable of, Ahren begrudgingly shuffled his way to the door, and let the man latch onto his arm with a grip that felt like a steel clamp.

He kept his eyes focused on the floor as the door was slammed shut behind him this time and a dark bag was shoved forcefully over his head.

---

After being pushed through who knows where by the man, Ahren was eventually let go of. His arm felt free without the steel grip that had been dragging him around, and he stretched out his arms as one final shove plopped him onto a seat of some sort.

“We ask that you please keep your arms and feet parallel with the chair.” a clam sounding woman's voice says over an intercom.

Ahren lowers his arms down to the arms of the chair he must have been sitting in, immediately receiving a response from something.

There was a clicking sound, and Ahren was trapped. Locks had appeared over his arms and legs leaving him stuck to the chair.

He tries to tug himself free, but that only warrants an electric shock to course through his body, small enough not to be fatal but still big enough to hurt like hell.

“We ask that you please refrain from squirming around.” the eerily calm voice says again as the dark bag is finally removed from his head.

He takes in a deep breath of fresh air, letting it out nervously.

He was in a dimly lit room with smooth copper colored floors and crumbling tile walls. The tile on the side looked polished and rusty, as if it had sat there for hundreds of years only to have been dusted off later in an attempt to clean it off.

There seemed to be nothing in the room other than a small mirror that looked strangely clean when you took the rest of the wall into account, and him of course.

Compared to the other room he had just been in, this one was a disaster. It prompted a shuddering, sinking feeling to swim throughout his body.

What were they going to do to him here? He didn't want to think about it.

Squeezing his eyes tightly, he felt steamy tears dripping down his petrified face. For a moment he sat there, heart pumping like a snare drum and eyes dripping and tears streaming as if they were leaky faucets.

When he felt something touch his head though, his eyes bolted open and he suddenly realized the man who had brought him here was gone. He was alone in the room and something had just latched onto his head, leaving him unable to move.

It felt like some kind of machine and that only made Ahren more horrified.

“Patient secure. Initiating sequence in 5…”

It was the woman's voice this time, calm and collected as ever. How could she be so calm at a time like this, knowing whatever she was doing to this helpless boy sat restrained in a chair. Ahren didn't know what exactly was going to happen but he obviously had no way to stop it, so with one more shaky breath he tried to calm his strained nerves.

“2… 1… initiating sequence.”

Not even a split second after her last word an agonizing jolt of pain hits Ahrens shaking body, leaving the already uncanny room looking like a botched renaissance painting.

But that didn't even last long, after a few seconds the blurry painting was drowned in a quick stream of inky charcoal-black.