Salene opened the door, and Nadia hugged her. Salene returned the
hug. "It's okay, I get that I was acting weird. Nadia sighed. "I
shouldn't have belived it was you, you're too sweet." The girl
smiled, but it faded as she said anxiously, "Y-you won't tell
anyone about my brothers, r-right?"
“Of course not,” he said kindly. “I understand that you just want
to keep them safe. If my brother was here, I’d do the same thing.”
A little pang of sadness hit him at the thought of Cameron. His
older brother was only a year his senior, and quite reckless, to
the point where Colt was usually the one to look after him instead
of the other way around. Gah, they HAD to get off this island.
Nadia was about to say something, before the speakers blared to
life and the same filtered voice spoke. "I'm dissapointed, I
thought you genisues would figure it out. I'm afraid I'm going to
cut the power for awhile in order to give this game...a little more
edge." With a crackle, they were dead again and the lights began to
flicker. Salene hugged Nadia tightly, eyes wide. "W-what's going
on?"
With a hiss under his breath, Colt whipped the flashlight out of
his pocket, but didn't turn it on for fear of alerting someone to
their presence. "Salene, would you be up to guiding us through the
vents? Not to your brothers, but just out of this dead-end
hallway?" he whispered. "Somehow, wandering the school in the dark
doesn't seem like the brightest idea, no pun intended." While the
band room was devoid of access to the ventilation system, he knew
that through the chorus's storage closet just a couple doors down
there were multiple.
Salene nodded. "O-okay, but I don't know if you'll fit." Stiffiling
a giggle, Salene grasped Nadia's hand, leading them down the hall
to the Chorus room and getting to work on one of the vents. Nadia
stood next to her as the lights became dimmer and dimmer. There
were faint screams down the hall....
Shutting the door behind him, Colt grimaced. "Guess I'll just have
to cross my fingers and hope for the best," he said, sizing up the
vent. If he didn't fit, he'd just have to walk back the normal way.
No big deal, right? The sounds of other students screaming sent a
chill down his spine, and in an attempt to brush it off, he hurried
over to where the girls stood, turning on the flashlight to aid
Salene's progress.
After a couple of minutes, Salene had managed to pull the cover off
of the vent. Quickly crawling in, she quietly said over her
shoulder, "I know a way." Nadia glanced at the door nervously, the
screams getting louder, before crawling into the vent after Salene.
The tight fit nearly had Nadia's nose scraping the metal, but
keeping her eyes on Salene's bright red hair tie, she followed the
girl. "Colt?" She said aloud, not able to turn around. "You here?"
He sucked in his breath through clenched teeth, kneeling down.
"Yeah, just looking at that tells me the chances of my fitting in
there are... rather low," he said, pursing his lips. Rolling the
flashlight into the vent for Salene and Nadia to use, he proceeded
to lift the vent cover and fasten it back on, figuring that if he
couldn't follow them, at least he could make it less likely that
the Killer would guess where they'd gone. Keeping his voice steady,
he called, "Don't worry, I'll just go around the long way and meet
back up with you."
Nadia felt the flashlight hit her foot, and moved it so that she
could grab it with her finger tips, passing it to Salene. With the
flashlight, it was much easier to keep up with the fast paced girl.
Eventually, she stopped, adjusting her position over a vent. Salene
glanced at Nadia. "This room is far away, it'll keep us safe at
least for awhile." Nadia nodded, and the other girl passed her the
flashlight. She began to work at the cover.
Meanwhile, evreything was pitch black for Colt. The screams weren't
getting any quiter, though they weren't louder and were less
frequent, distant enough to be terryfying on their own.
Taking a deep breath, he stood. Yeah, okay, he was kind of scared.
However, while the idea of remaining in this room until the lights
came back on was rather appealing, who knew how long the
principal would keep the power off for? No, it was safer, more
practical, to progress through the darkness now. After all, weren't
they all affected by the low visibility? The Killer would be
struggling to find their way, too, or so Colt hoped. Keeping his
footsteps soft, he fumbled his way through the pitch black room to
the exit, opening the heavy wooden door as quietly as he could. Oh
goodness, now if only he could make his way through the halls from
memory. If he just stuck to the left, he'd be good, hopefully.
Salene sucessfully managed to pry off the cover of the vent, moving
it aside with a loud scraping noise that made both of them cringe.
Not only was it grating on the ears, but it might let the killer
know where they were. You never could tell, since no one knew who
it was. Add the aura of mystery to the fact that there was no
light, and it made the loud noise seem like a death sentence.
Still, Salene shown the light down. "It's the math room," she
whispered quietly. "It's the only room with the cheap weird looking
desks." Nadia nodded. "Okay, I'm going to go down, and help you,
capiche?" "Got it," Salene said, handing her the flashlight. Nadia
nimbly crawled through, dropping down onto one of the desks with a
thump. She helped the other girl down, and Nadia muttered, "Now to
figure out where in the world the dunderhead known as Colt is."
Though he had to move extremely slowly to avoid tripping over his
own feet or any of the tables in the commons area, Colt was
steadily making his way through the dark, his hand pressed against
the left wall. Gradually, he came to the main intersection of the
school, and frowned. There were three possibilities; Nadia could
have returned to the closet they had set up in and left Salene, she
could have brought her there, or the girls could be somewhere else
entirely. The storage closet was to the right, and he wasn't sure
if the left and right sides of the ventilation system were even
connected. However, deciding the safest bet would probably be to
hope she would assume he'd simply returned to where they had come
from, he turned to the right, now keeping to the right wall.
After a while of Nadia tapping the screen of her phone, doing who
knows what, and Salene sitting on top of one of the desks, worrying
about her brothers, there was a crackle. This time, the voice was
not filtered with the same alien quality, and was more of a hoarse
whisper. "Tiime's up." The speakers went silent again, and the
lights flickered back on. Nadia looked up with a grin. "Alright!"
Salene hopped off of the table. "Now that the lights are off, I'm
gonna go check on my brothers and make sure they're okay." Nadia
nodded. "Be safe, chica, okay?" Salene smiled, and nodded. She
quietly exiteted. Nadia sighed, storing back her phone. "He's
probablly back at the closet by now, I need to check the cameras
anyways." She opened the door, glanced down the hall, and started
walking back. She had memorized the layout of the school during her
many class-skippings, and quickly found her way back.
The return of the lights caused Colt to pause in surprise, then
break into a jog. When Nadia returned to the storage closet, he was
standing just outside, contemplating the disposal of the drywall
he'd hastily shoved back inside. Hearing footsteps, he turned
warily, but his face lit up when he saw it was her. "Hey!" he
called softly with a grin. "You didn't get stuck!"
She opened the door, smirking. "What, while you may be a giant, I'm
a lot smaller. Neither of us got stuck, we were hiding out in the
math room." She took a seat in the corner, opening the laptop and
scrolling through. "Now, I'll see what was happening while we were
gone."
He gave a mock shiver. "And while I may be a chemist, you couldn't
pay me to stay in any math classroom for any longer than is
strictly necessary. Just because I'm "good" at something doesn't
mean I have to like it." Turning to watch the computer over the
girl's shoulder, he added with a conspiratorial grin, "Once you've
finished, want to help me damage some school property? And by that
I mean do you want to go shove some drywall in a toilet?"
Nadia raised an eyebrow, smiling. "You're hablando mi lengua, my
friend." She turned her attention back to the cameras for a minute,
the smile fading. Eventually, she sighed, closing the computer.
"Nothing. Cero. The power outage left nothing." She ran a hand
through her hair, looking discouraged. "Dead end."
"Hey, don't worry. I don't think the cameras would have picked much
up in the dark anyway. For now, there's a bathroom just down the
hall. I can work on expanding the walls of the closet a bit and we
can dispose of the drywall there. It's not much, but if I were the
principal, I wouldn't be too happy to have to pay to have those
toilets fixed." Despite his words, he was beginning to feel a bit
hopeless. The two of them seemed safe for the moment, but they also
were nowhere near close to finding the Killer. At least they'd
cleared Salene and her brothers, he supposed. That made a little
group of 5 people who knew they could trust each other. There,
something positive. Colt knelt down and scooped up the broken
plaster and began to move make his way down the hall.
Nadia nodded slowly. "I'm just..a little scared. I feel powerless
to help." She shook her head. "Forget it, it's fine. As long as we
keep working, there's got to be a way to get out of here." Nadia
stood up, brushing off her hands. "C'mon, let's go clog some
toilets with drywall, huh?" She walked to the doorway, leaning
against it. "Or does the big strong guy need help carrying it?"
"Okay, Tinkerbell, I suppose I could allow you to assist," he said
with a mischievous grin, straightening to his full height and and
trying to balance the debris in his arms. A bit more seriously, he
added, "If now's not a good time to be scared, I don't know when
is."