Hunter. Sydney Robinson
is it called a memory pool?” Angel asked, stopping short of the water in front of the stairs that descended into it.
“You have to enter the pool,” Scott commented, ignoring her question. Angel glared at him and did as she was instructed. He motioned for her to sit in the chair. And given that her body was attempting to float, it was rather difficult to do so, but she tried anyway. When she was seated, Scott strapped her arms and legs to the chair and pushed against the back of the chair above her shoulders to lower it into a reclined position in the water.
Scott’s voice was muffled above her as he spoke, “Just listen to the sound of my voice. Close your eyes. You don’t have to focus on the words, just the sound it makes.” Angel’s eyes slid closed as she felt his hand rest on her forehead, keeping her ears below water. “This pool works as a submersion tank for a version of hypnotism. It works much better to suppress memories and emotions than the drug they use, less breaking of the brain. Just lie back and listen to the sound of my voice.”
That was the last of what Angel could make out. After that, all she could really hear was the water trickling into her ears. She could feel the vibrations in the water from her breathing, from Scott shifting his stance. She could hear his deep voice above her, and then she felt all her worries drift away, all her problems gone. She was a Hessian Recruit, and that was all she needed to know.
Angel felt Scott’s hand leave her head, and the chair raised from the water. Her blond hair was dripping rivers down her soaked clothing. Scott was smiling at her. And Angel just looked back at him.
“How do you feel?” Scott asked. Then he frowned and quickly stated, “Don’t answer that. Sorry, stupid question.”
Scott unlatched her wrists and ankles, and Angel slowly stood up. Her balance was lost for several seconds as she attempted to regain her bearings.
“The reorientation process can take a minute,” Scott commented, noticing Angel’s disorientation and unease. “I should warn you, the barriers won’t hold. Something about you is different. I can’t close everything down and lock it away like the others…almost like him.”
Angel cast a glance at Scott. “Him?” she asked.
Scott looked down at his feet and, in the process, looked at his watch. His eyes widened in shock, and he turned and began to run up the stairs. “You’re low on time,” he called back. Angel was confused for a second. Why was he afraid? And then she remembered the Hessians. She was away from the academy, and she hadn’t even found Kelly yet. Angel ran up the stairs after him.
When she reached the top of the stairs, Scott was pulling a coat on over his soaked clothing. He cast a glance at her and spoke, “We don’t have a lot of time. I can drive you to forest road, but from there, you’re on your own.” Scott approached the last door in the backroom, and Angel realized she had missed yet another thing in this room. The door didn’t immediately open to a staircase. Like the one to the basement, it had a door built into the wall as soon as you stepped into the short hall. The store had a back door.
Angel followed Scott out to a back street and over to an old gray car parked right outside the door. “If you visit again,” Scott commented, unlocking the door for her and then walking around to the driver’s side, “use this back door. It’s a lot safer than coming through the front.”
Angel nodded and slid into her seat. The car started with a loud rumble from the muffler. The tailpipe might have been disconnected or something because cars were never in good condition if they were this loud. The ride was silent though over the roar of the car, and Scott came to a stop near the path that Angel had come down on.
“How…?” Angel began, but Scott cut her off.
“All in good time, and time is not something you have right now. Come see me again when these walls start to break,” Scott commented, tapping on her forehead as he did so. Angel frowned and got out of the car. She was about to walk away from the closed door when he stopped her. “I almost forgot. This is yours.” Scott passed her the knife through the window he had rolled down.
Again, Angel went to ask him a question, and again, he cut her off. “You need to get moving. I’ll be seeing you soon. I’m sure of that. Now go!”
With that, Scott pulled off and drove down the road. Angel stood there for a second before running back up the hill. She reached the school just as the moon passed below the trees. Stopping for a second, she remembered Scott’s words. How many schools have bars on the windows? Angel looked at the windows as if for the first time and realized that they did in fact have bars on them. As she entered the school through the rubble, she began to feel more like a prisoner than a student.
Chapter Five
The hot shower that morning felt like the best thing to ever happen in Angel’s life, at least as far as she could remember. The water drenched her hair again as she stood under the torrential downpour coming from the showerhead. Angel was so tired; she hadn’t gotten much sleep last night before her adventure and got none after it. She had only just made it to her room when the bell went off, and she had to quickly grab fresh clothing as to make it to the bathrooms and showers before anyone else noticed that she was sopping wet.
Scott had been right. The extreme emotions were gone now, but the smaller ones were still there. And she could feel the larger ones on the horizon just waiting to break free again already. Angel was already planning to try again at the end of the month. Shutting the water off, she dried and changed before heading out into the hall. Angel had no idea what to do with her wet clothes from last night, knowing that if she threw them down the shoot, someone would become suspicious. At the moment, they were in a messy ball shoved into the bottom drawer of her shelves, along with the knife.
Angel quickly towel-dried her hair before tossing her towel into the shoot and making her way to the entrance hall for PT. When she got there though, something was off. Seven Elites stood in front of the door and formed a ring around the students who were filing in. Angel made her way down the stairs to the growing crowd of people.
In a normal situation or location, Angel felt people would have been talking among themselves, trying to figure out what was going on and why everyone was there. But this was not a room full of ordinary people. To everyone in the room, except for Angel, this situation brought no questions and didn’t strike anyone as out of the ordinary. So what if the higher-ups chose to gather around them today? It was not their position to question their actions.
Once all the students had gathered in the room, a short two minutes after Angel entered, Jaroslav moved from his position near the top of the stairs. His voice echoed through the room as he spoke, causing everyone to focus on him.
“Last night, one of our students was killed on the grounds. We are unsure if the murderer is still among us. Because of that, the Council has opted to forestall calling in Elites from other outposts as well as from the field to deal with this. It is now on your shoulders to find the person responsible for this.” Jaroslav turned to a woman standing at his side. She passed him a tablet, and he began to read from it, “As follows is a list of temporary teams put together by the Council. These teams are meant to mimic the teams you would be placed in as a Prosworme.”
Jaroslav read off the names, and slowly the room filtered out as groups of people moved to different locations in an attempt to come up with some plan of action. Angel stood in silence. Someone had died last night, murdered by an individual who was potentially still among them. Angel looked around the room, searching for two individuals in particular and waiting to hear either of their names. Jaroslav was halfway down the list when Angel heard her name, followed shortly by the one name she was hoping to not hear—Erik.
The said boy slid into place behind her. With the crowd clearing, finding people in the hall became that much easier. Erik placed a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t turn around,” he ordered, his voice cold and calm. Angel moved her head so he was no longer talking into her ear, but he growled, “What did I just say?”
Angel stopped and stood still. Jaroslav’s voice in the background was now