Postby Jay Candice » Sat Jan 25, 2014 1:47 am
Large post. It still has quite a bit of tying-up, but that's mostly during the end. But the long, less interesting stuff is more important to the plot, if anybody cares about that.
“You’re back,” I said, crossing my arms.
“You stayed up all this time waiting for me?” Jen yawned, before crashing on her bed.
“Of course I did!” I exclaimed. “I’ve been worried sick. Do you know how long you’ve been gone? Five hours! You were gone for five hours! What the heck happened to you?”
“I wasn’t exactly wasting time out there. In my defense, I wasn’t doing a whole lot in the five hours, and the last thirty minutes I was trying to make Lexie look less like a pink mummy.”
I sighed. She was hopeless. I had tried to stay mad at her, but it was really hard when relief was winning out over anger. But she had me worried sick, for so long! I couldn’t describe what it was like. I had stayed up, waiting for Jen to come back. I could hear voices everywhere, people running around. But they had all started after most of the others had gone asleep. I had stayed dead-awake the entire time, listening, wondering if I should go out and try to help Jen.
“So, how’d it go?” I asked.
“I found the dang thing we were supposed to be looking for, met a few new people, hated a few more, the usual,” Jen replied, flopping on her bed, her eyes closed. “Man, am I tired.”
I rolled my eyes. “I can tell. If you’re back, then that means that this entire thing is over. What was it?”
She gave me a slip of paper, which had a paragraph, a poem scrawled onto it.
Remember as you walk by,
As you are now, so once was I,
I walked amongst these hallowed halls,
Unless stopped, we all must fall,
I am hidden, beneath the eyes,
Know that your friends speak only lies,
As I am now, so you shall be,
Remember this and follow me
“Ominous, right?” Jen said, her eyes still closed.
“What do you think it means?” I asked, quickly copying it down on my notebook.
“I don’t really care, I’ll think about it in the morning,” Jen replied. “I’ve had a long night.”
I softened. Jen was exhausted. I wondered what she had been through, she seemed different. Still annoying, but different. “Sure, rest. See you in dreamland.”
The next day Jen handed it over to Ms. Kaine, who was very pleased with what Jen had done. We had a copy slip, so that was all well. Jen had then walked out, going outside for whatever reason, but I didn’t mind.
I went on Jen’s newly acquired laptop, looking for what the words might mean. I wasn’t too experienced with computers, our family didn’t have one. But I had used ones at the library and at my old school, so I was able to navigate pretty well, even though this fancy gadget was five years ahead of anything else I had worked with.
I wondered what was really going on here. This was way bigger than either of us had previously thought. Something was going on here, and it seemed that no one wanted to do anything about it. Naturally, Jen thought that that meant that WE had to do something, which was more often than not bad news. But this time, she might actually be on to something.
First of all, we knew that our headmistress, Ms. Kaine, was the one behind this grand scheme. Also, apparently she had enough money to do pretty much anything, but not enough for us to get better cafeteria food. Well, what the heck.
Second, it seemed that they chose their little red-uniform club out of people not only worthy, but people that needed the prize at the end out of necessity. It had touched me that Jen had done it for my mom, but still, everyone else seemed to have equally daunting reasons for their desire to win. Still, if I had to bet, I would bet Jen hands down.
Third, Hannah seemed to be in the center of all this. She was the original reason we were caught up in this dang thing anyways. Goal number two was finding her, after winning. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do about goal number one, so that meant it was probably up to me to find Hannah. According to Lan, who wasn’t altogether trustworthy anyways, Hannah was still here in the building or something. This meant that we could find her. Theoretically.
I looked up as Jen barged in. As usual, we were alone this morning. Jen had been gone maybe two hours, and it was almost lunchtime. Morning, but almost lunchtime. One of those times where you feel like you still have the rest of the day to do things.
“Honestly,” I said, “you seem to run off like this more and more. Where are you going anyways?”
“Never mind what I’m doing,” Jen said. “You find anything on that piece of paper?”
“Actually, yes,” I said, surprised that Jen would actually go to the more serious business. “It’s an epitaph, at least part of it.”
“What’s an epitaph?”
I sighed. “An epitaph is the words and markings on a gravestone. So what you’re looking at, what we found, is called ‘Passing by’, or at least a variation of it.”
“So, why’s it a variation?” Jen asked.
“Some of it was added,” I replied. “The original script is:
Remember man as you walk by,
As you are now so once was I,
As I am now, so you shall be,
Remember this and follow me,”
“What’s different?” Jen said, rolling her neck. She sat down next to me on the bed.
“Well, if you even spent a minute to look at the first one we found, it is VERY changed. The script that you found is effectively doubled. It has different wording stuck in the middle.”
Jen nodded, but her eyebrows bunched a little. However, her expression changed quickly again, more passive. “Okaaaay. So what? What’s cool about the new wording? What does it all mean?”
I studied the original message. “Well, the original epitaph is about death. It means that since the person is dead, the one that’s reading will be dead too, no matter what they do. The dead is reminding the living of mortality.”
“So what’s different?” Jen asked.
“The script we have here, it’s more like a warning.” I studied the piece of paper I had copied the script down on. “It’s telling us that they are still around, and that we shouldn’t trust people too easily. Also, it’s saying that we’ll suffer the same fate as the writer if we don’t do something about it.”
“Ominous,” Jen agreed. “So what do we take from it?”
“Don’t know,” I replied. “Not much we can take from it. Did Ms. Kaine tell you anything?”
“I’m pretty sure she still doesn’t like me,” Jen yawned. “But she was impressed, I’ll give you that. She said that she didn’t think I had the guts.”
“And what did you say to that?”
“I said that I didn’t think much of someone who has to send little girls to do their dirty work.”
“That must have gone well.”
“I was practically booted out of her office.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Well, I can’t say you didn’t deserve it.”
Jen laughed. “Sorry, but I couldn’t resist.”
I shrugged. “Whatever.”
Jen shifted on the bed. “Did you know two more people disappeared?”
“I wasn’t informed.”
Jen looked out the window. “Yeah, I just heard about it on my way here. Two more, that makes five missing. What are we going to do about this?”
“I can’t believe your still going on about US doing something.”
“Well, who else is doing anything? We have to. This is wrong. No one else is going to step up, so it might as well be me. And you, since I’m dragging you up with me.”
I grumbled. “Perfect.”
“I’m getting a new assignment soon,” she continued.
I sighed. “Not another one? Don’t they give you a moment’s break?”
“Relax, they’ll tell everyone involved about it tomorrow. I can rest easy today.”
“Like we ever rest easy. Just be careful.”
“I’ll be fine. You worry too much.”
“For good reason.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so.”
“Good for you.”
“Hey!” Lexie waved over at me as I walked across the greenery. It was where we were meeting, to get on our next little adventure. Well, great. Lexie wasn’t the only one waiting though. Lan was there too, but if she seemed unhappy to see me, she didn’t show it. She simply nodded as I walked up.
“Ready for our next mission?” Lexie said with a smile.
“You make it sound like we’re secret agents,” I shrugged.
“Sorry,” Lexie apologized, not sounding sorry at all. “That last time was really fun, minus how we were tied up and all. I can’t believe you actually completed our task by yourself.”
“Ouch,” I replied, thinking back on the task. Three days had past already. “You give me too little credit. I handled it easy.” I hadn’t told her about my encounter with Jeannie. I had seen her across school a few times, and since our little talk, I didn’t know WHAT I thought about her and what she had said. It was just too jumbled up to share that information with anyone but Lucy, and that was for obvious reasons.
“So, Lexie,” Lan said. “What are we doing today?”
“We weren’t actually supposed to meet like this,” Lexie admitted, reaching into her coat pocket. She brought out two bracelets, bright yellow, the color of those crossing-guard people’s jackets, so they reflected light.
“What are these for?” I asked.
“This is an individual event,” she said. “We each put one on, and we can’t take them off. The point is to hunt down others with the bracelets, collecting as many as we can. The obvious point is to incapacitate others, and then just steal off their wrists, but it doesn’t need to be like that.”
“If we can just snatch it off of someone without them knowing,” Lan said doubtfully, crossing her arms.
“Yeah, but we do things together, so no going after each other,” Lexie said.
“Got it,” I said. “When does this start?”
“Uh, ten minutes ago, actually.”
“Then why are we standing here?”
“We really shouldn’t, I guess.”
I sighed. This girl, why was she always like this? “Okay, let’s go.”
Finding girls that were already victims were no problem. Once again, the halls and doors were closed; it was after curfew, etc. That meant that there was nobody out but us, which meant, well, yeah. Anything could happen, and we could get away with anything. As it was, we had already found three opponents tied up in front of us. Lexie and I had wanted to free them, but Lan reminded us that they would only become our opponents. She sounded so much like Jeannie, but I knew she was right. We were in this together, but who knew what these stranger’s motives were?
I looked at my reflective band. The thing practically glowed in the dark. It had a lock on it, and we were each given a key. However, our key couldn’t unlock our own, so that prevented the method of just taking off your bracelet and hiding it. Your key would only unlock other’s bracelets. Very clever. Whoever thought of this method was very worried about possible cheaters.
As well they should have been. All was fair in love and war, as they say. Whoever “they” were.
The three of us decided to set up a trap. Now, I was no Indiana Jones, so I could never make a trap or detect one, so I left it to Lan, who seemed to know exactly what we were doing. Lexie seemed to take the hint too, so I followed, wondering what the heck we were doing.
Once explained, I realized it was quite simple. We would go into one of those empty classrooms, then get find some sort of broom or something similar. Then we would tape the broom horizontally maybe a foot above the ground in front of the door. So when people walked in they would trip on the broom and we would take them down. Easy peasy.
We couldn’t really find a broom, so instead we stole a mop from a janitors cart-thing. To be honest, I didn’t really think we HAD a janitor; it was just a punishment for girls who misbehaved. Like me, for instance, when I set the trash can on fire. Good times, good times.
I helped my two friends (or sort of friends, whatever) to tape the broom up, and we tested it a little bit, but not so that we would make too much sound or that would just be asking for bad news.
Finally, when we decided that it was trap-worthy, or as trap worthy as it was going to get, we hid inside the classroom, just behind the door, out of sight. We could easily tie them up or whatever once they tripped. If there were multiple victims, then well, we were screwed. However, Lan was going out as the bait to try to lure some people into our trap. So that left Lexy and I to wait.
And wait…..
And wait………..
And wait……………..
If you hadn’t noticed before, I wasn’t too good on patience. If you asked me, I would rather have everything just happen immediately. If you want something done, the do it. If you want to go somewhere, take the fast lane and hit the gas. Simple, right? If you don’t, then you’re just wasting time where you could have done what you want to do in the first place, if that made any sense.
I hadn’t really known Lan very long, but I definitely preferred her with me rather than against me. She was always pretty focused and she was a quick thinker. At least, she was a quick thinker when Lucy and I had first met her. Anyhow, she was good at this entire thing.
Speaking of which, I was starting to suspect she might have gotten caught or something, because this girl was taking FOREVER to be bait. For heaven’s sake. Lexie didn’t really seem to be in a talking mode, so I was bored out of my mind. Honestly, I would rather be tied up than just waiting around. I mean, when you’re tied up, it’s not your fault that you can’t do anything. Plus, when you’re tied up, it’s more like the sensation of helplessness. It was different from doing nothing. Similar, but not the same. Like, you were TECHNICALLY doing nothing, but you were being forced to do nothing, so…… Never mind.
Suddenly, Lexie perked up and looked at me, a finger at her lips. I listened, and I heard footsteps. Running. Almost definitely Lan.
Finally, she was here!
Almost on cue, the door swung open and Lan vaulted over the broomstick. Unfortunately for the girl following her, she had no idea what was coming. Her foot cracked against the broom and she fell flat on her face.
Lexie was already moving and I was right behind her. The girl was (thankfully) the same age as us, so we could easily overpower her. She had her long hair in a braid in the back, along with the standard red uniform.
I grabbed her wrist and unlocked her wristband with the key, pocketing her wristband. Lexie secured her mouth and arms while Lan was tying up the girl’s ankles. This new girl was squirming, trying to wrench loose, but it was honestly three against one, not too good odds for her.
I went behind her and helped Lexie by getting out a gag. By now Lan was already tying knots on her knees. The girl didn’t want to open her mouth, but after some prodding I was able to get some tissues inside then tie a cleave gag through her teeth. I secured the gag at the back of her head, muting her squeals. Now, I could just stand back and watch as Lan started tying her crossing her wrists and tying them together. I was feeling sorry for her; she looked the same age as me, but hey, she fell for it. Not my fault.
Lan was really fast, but efficient as well. She was able to loop it and tighten the cotton rope in seconds, giving the girl barely any time to struggle uselessly at her bonds. Each time Lan finished a tie the girl got more and more restricted. When Lan was finished, the girl’s elbows were tied together as well. Her arms were pinned to her back by ropes above and below her breasts, and then her knees were tied to her chest by their respective bindings at the knees and shoulders. Finally, Lan had tied her wrists to her ankles, making a ball-hogtie. The girl couldn’t even roll around; all she could do was wiggle helplessly in her bindings.
“I feel kind of bad about this,” Lexie muttered.
“It’s fine,” Lan said. “She’ll be found. I’ll find a place to dump her.”
“Let me go with you,” I offered. Honestly, I was getting bored of this cooped up old classroom, even if something exciting had just happened. I needed to get out and walk around, to do something.
Lan shrugged. “Okay, fine. Let’s go.”
“See you when you come back,” Lexie called.
I followed Lan, picking up the girl by the bindings attached to her back. She was heavy, but I suspected she was probably lighter than average. Just walking for a minute made my arms sore. Lan didn’t slow down either, and I wondered where we were going.
We walked across the school and outside one of the doors. Lan walked right into the woods and carefully placed the girl down on one of the bushes, way out of the way where her muffled cries of help would most likely not be heard for a while. Lan was gentle, but expressionless. Together, we started walking back.
The cold when blew and I licked my lips, freezing. It wasn’t winter or anything, but still, cold. Not my kind of weather.
“So,” Lan said. “What are you up to?”
I shivered. I had wondered when this would happen. “Meaning?”
Lan kept walking, not looking at me. “You and your sister, Lucy. What are you two doing? I still remember what happened. What you two did.”
“Sorry about that.” I held the door open and the two of us walked back inside.
“I wasn’t asking for an apology.”
Sheesh, I don’t apologize to just anyone. This time, she really did deserve one, or maybe not, since I was doing the right thing. I think. Anyhow, Lan wanted answers, but how was I supposed to give them. Lucy should be the one doing this, not me. I didn’t have the patience to go around explaining about everything I wanted to do and had done.
“You know what we’re doing is wrong,” I said. “We all know what we’re doing is probably wrong, but we’re all doing it for selfish reasons. My cousin and I want to stop them, somehow, or at least find out what they are doing and leak it out to the government.”
“That’s quite a thing to do,” Lan commented as we walked up the steps to the second, then third floor. “If that’s what you want, then why not do it? Just snap a few pictures and turn them in. That’ll be enough for the police to come looking, and it will all unravel from there.”
I gave a bitter smile. “It’s not as easy as that.”
“No,” Lan interrupted. “It IS as easy as that. But that’s not what you’re after. That’s not the only reason you’re doing this, why you are so wrapped up in everything. You want the prize yourself. That’s the only thing preventing you from doing just that, from shutting down this entire thing. That’s the only thing everyone’s doing this for.”
I blinked, stunned. She had figured it out in a heartbeat. Then again, she was probably having a similar mindset on the entire situation. After all, we were all in this together. We all had something in common, the desire to win. “Fine. You got me. Then why do you want the prize in the end? What’s in it for you?”
“That’s a secret I’ll be keeping to myself,” Lan replied.
“Naturally,” I muttered. We walked down the hallways, back to the classroom where Lexie was. It was dark, but my vision had long adjusted.
“Your cause is quite noble,” Lan said with a smile. “But do you really think you’ll be able to stop this entire thing? It’s bigger than you could possibly imagine.”
“I can imagine an awful lot. To answer the first question, heck yes. This thing is going to come down bigger than 9/11.”
“You presume,” Lan said, “that you and your sister, two teenage girls, can take down an entire organization of this magnitude?”
Lan still wasn’t looking at me, but I turned my head towards her. “First of all, Lucy isn’t my sister, she’s my cousin. Second, you seem to know a lot more about this than you’re letting on. How exactly big of a thing are we dealing with?”
“We? Whoever said anything about that?”
“Why I outta-“
“Shut up!” Lan’s demeanor changed instantly. Her eyes changed from slightly mocking to serious and she held a finger to her lips. I listened, but didn’t hear anything. I wondered if Lan had hearing problems.
“What are you-“
“Shut up!”
Gosh. Well, whatever. Be that way. I stood as still as I could, trying to breathe through my nose. What was it that she heard? If she heard someone then she must have the hearing of a rabbit. Either that or I was really loading up on the earwax.
Then, I DID hear something. Voices, coming closer. Not good news. Lan turned to me and held up five fingers. Five people. Way too much for us to handle. One, sure. Two, maybe. Five? Yeah right, we might as well try to run from a cheetah. There were too many of them.
Lan pointed the other way, and we sneaked away from the direction, trying not to make any sound. But that meant we were going pretty slowly. Soon I could hear individual words.
“This is where we’re supposed to meet up, right?”, was the first words I heard.
Lan realized it a second before I did. Voices were coming from the direction we were headed too. We were trapped on both sides.
Dang it.
The group behind us had stopped, but that wasn’t going to do us a whole lot of good, seeing as how another group was going to catch us right then and there. Great, just great. This was most certainly a lose-lose situation.
She pointed two fingers ahead, and mouthed “On three.” She held up three fingers. One…. Two…….. Three!
Together the two of us bolted to the voices. They must have heard our footsteps because the talking abruptly stopped. I soon saw them despite the poor lighting, more like shapes and silhouettes than actual features.
I saw the surprise in their faces as Lan barged right past them, knocking one of their feet and the other off balance. I slammed into the second girl, sending her to the ground and into her accomplice. By the time we heard yells for help we had a pretty good lead.
I smiled as I ran; the sheer exhilaration was both terrifying and exciting. My desperation lent energy to my legs, keeping me at my top sprint when I would have otherwise slowed down. Despite this, my speed was nothing compared to Lan. I was actually a pretty athletic girl, better than Lucy at least. When I had done P.E in my old school, I was most certainly above average. But Lan was in another class of her own, at least in running. She took long strides, but quickly, and her legs practically blurred. She was impossibly fast, gaining quickly even at my sprint, and only increasing in pace.
I could hear the other girls, five or six of them, running after us. We were fast, but there sure were a lot of them. Lan slowed down a bit and grabbed my hand, and we raced down the stairs forever, at the same pace. We took the stairs three at a time, racing down to the second floor. I risked a look back to see that the girls jumped from the third floor to the second parkour-style, rolling to come up.
Lan seemed to be some kind of never-ending running machine, but that wasn’t me. Despite my adrenaline, I was running out of diesel, and fast. I had presumed that Lan had grabbed my hand to stay at the same pace, but I knew I was just slowing her down. She would have lost them by now.
Gosh, I hated being a liability. I actually liked other people being a liability for me. It’s not that I liked being better than others (that was fine with me) it’s that I liked helping or slowing down for people who weren’t as good as me. So, being the liability this time was to say a new experience I suppose.
But the good news was our running was starting to pay off. Despite my apparent lack of speed, it was faster than our pursuers. The sounds of those behind us soon became quieter and quieter, as we got farther and farther.
That is, until things went very, very wrong.
Three girls stood in front of our path, maybe thirty feet away, hands on their hips, in the lamest self-superior position they could think of. Please. Still, it wasn’t so good for us. How could they get here so fast? Had they anticipated our destination? I didn’t see how, seeing as how we had no idea where we were going.
“Other way,” Lan said, practically skidding to a stop. She didn’t even sound out of breath, while I was huffing and puffing behind her. We turned, but that gave our chasers just enough time to close the gap behind us. We were trapped. Again.
Lan cursed, and we stood back to back. The good news was that our pursuers didn’t look so good; they were just as tired as we were. The bad news was that the newcomers looked pretty fresh and ready to go.
I really hoped Lan had a plan, becaue I didn’t. They advanced slowly, partially because they were tired. Lan wasn’t even panting, but there were five girls, all clad in the red uniform.
With lightning speed Lan rammed her shoulder into the smallest and youngest in front of her, knocking her down. Using the element of surprise, she pushed down the second one. The third tried to grab her, but Lan stepped forward, grabbing the girls shoulder and slamming her head into the other girl’s, causing her to stumble and topple to the floor.
Unfortunately for me, I had turned to watch Lan take care of business on the other side. The two girls had grabbed me, one grabbing my arms and holding them behind my back, another muffling my cry with a hand clutching over my mouth. I had been so distracted I had completely forgotten that I had to pay attention.
Lan looked hesitant, but the girls she had just shish-kebabed were already coming to. She gave me a sorrowful look and ran off, leaving me alone.
In the end, it matters not how many breaths you took, but how many took your breath away.
-shing xiong
We are not retreating, we are advancing in another direction
-General Douglas MacArthur
Fall down seven times, stand up eight
-Japanese Proverb