"I'm Mexican. What. do. you. expect?" She shot back. Rolling her
eyes, she put her phone back into her pocket. "I'll check it out,
but only because you, tough guy, shouldn't need any help to build a
door." Poking his arm, she stepped out of the hole and into the
classroom. "I'm going to go head down. I don't come back in an
hour, I'm probablly dead."
Colt grimaced. "If you don't come back in an hour, I'm coming to
look for you." Gah, with every passing moment, he was becoming more
and more upset with the principal; normally, that would be the sort
of joke people would make without a second thought, but now, it was
hard not to take it seriously. Taking a deep breath, with an
attempt at a smile he added, "Assume it's because I'm afraid to be
alone." He then set to work on the plywood, figuring that, while it
wouldn't be much, if he could make it so it only opened in a
certain direction, it might be just a bit safer. Reaching into the
bin of tools he'd nabbed, he came up with two channel strips, the
likes of which one would find in a dishwasher or sliding door,
matching wheels, and a small single cylinder euro profile cylinder lock with a
thumbturn on one side, complete with a key. With a wry thought
regarding how much of a woodworking nerd he was, he began to plan
out the door. If he made an appropriately sized hole for the lock
in the bottommost right of the board, he could hide it in the
bottom corner with only the small keyhole showing. The thumbturn
would allow whoever was inside the room to leave without a key, and
the lock itself would keep the door shut while allowing him and
Nadia to enter and exit without breaking the plywood. Thankfully,
there was a wooden post that continued through the wall that he
could install a strike plate for the deadbolt in. The tracks and
wheels would allow the door to move diagonally, but not if the lock
was engaged.
She left through the door, saying under her breath with a smirk,
"Supongo que el idiota también es un gato asustado." She opened the
door and left, walking to the library. The librarian was long gone,
so she walked through. "Paper copies aren't really my thing, but
that symbol is gonna nag at me if I don't at least try to figure it
out." She went to the back of the library, and found a computer.
"Perfect! This should allow me to find what I need." Sitting down,
she went to work. About 20 minutes later, she had found little
about the symbol. She kept looking for awhile, pausing on one
newspaper article. She made a copy of it, folding it up and placing
the copy in her pocket. Putting evreything back, Nadia went back to
the room, leaning on the doorway. "You've been busy," she said.
"And you've been alive," he said back, focused on boring a proper
sized hole. Small shavings of wood fells to his feet as he used a
handheld, non-electric drill for the purpose. His tone didn't show
it, but he was somewhat relieved that the girl had returned. It
wasn't, as he had joked, that he was afraid of being alone, per se,
but more so that he was afraid of not knowing what was happening to
others when he was. Dropping the drill and picking up the lock, he
carefully fitted it in the hole. "Yes!" he said aloud, removing the
device from the board and retrieving a tube of super glue, which he
began to apply to the metal.
She clapped her hands lightly. "Congratulations. Now you want to
know what I found?" She sat on one of the desks, pulling out the
peice of paper and smoothing it straight. "Of course, you could
keep geeking out about your woodworking project."
"Suuurrreeee thing, one sec, just need to finish this. Otherwise,
it'll permanently adhere to whatever it touches." Carefully setting
down the open tube of glue, Colt pressed the lock into the hole
he'd created, holding it there for 15 seconds. "Alright, that'll
need 10 minutes before we can use it, and be fully cured in 24
hours." Standing and brushing the shavings off of his jeans, he
turned and walked towards Nadia. "What've you got?"
"So, first I tried to find out what happened to the old room with
the symbol. I thought that it might give us some clues as to why it
was there in the first place. That was a dead end. But, I did find
some interesting pictures." She showed him the copy, pointing to
one of the pictures of a group of students. "See that boy? That's
Konnor Luswire, he was one of the top students here." She unfolded
the rest of the article. "He was found a week after this picture
was taken, dead with the creepy symbol above his head. And I think
that the place they found him was that washroom, obviously they hid
it because of what happened."
A shiver ran down Colt's spine. "So... the room that we're planning
to use to hide from the Killer is the place where a former student
was possibly murdered. Great, wonderful. Peachy."
Nadia nodded, glancing back at the door to the hidden room. "Wait,
isn't that-" She was cut off by knocking on the door. Her head
snapped around to the main classroom door, before looking at Colt.
"Should we open the door?"
Safe to say, the boy was now quite unsettled. "Er, do the cameras
have any functionality left? Or are they, like, dead dead?" he
asked, rubbing his arms and following her gaze. Did Salene know
where they were staying? Perhaps Nadia had told her. All the same,
they couldn't be too careful, could they?
"Is there one that could pick up whoever is at the door?" he asked,
glancing over her shoulder, then back to the door. "It might just
be Salene, or a teacher, but it's best not to take risks, if
possible, right?"
"Alrighty, so door equals open, then?" he asked, visibly relaxing a
bit. The boy started towards the door, but paused, turned, then
moved back to the storage closet to close it, kicking at the white
drywall residue on the ground.
"Yes Colt, a door means open," she said sarcastically, getting up
and walking to the door. Pausing a minute, she opened it up, a fake
smile on her face. "Hi Mrs. Luswire, is something wrong?" Mrs.
Luswire shook her head. "No dear, I just wanted to check in on you.
Not a lot of students are coming to classes anymore, so I wanted to
make sure you were okay." "Well, er, we're fine Mrs. Luswire." The
teacher smiled. "That's good. I know you students are so good, so
full of virtue." She gave them both a long look, still smiling,
before walking away. Nadia closed the door, sighing. "Mrs. Luswire
has got to be the strangest person."
Colt froze, trying to keep a smile on his face until the woman was
out of site. "Nadia," he began, his voice oddly icy, though it
wasn't directed at her. "How did she know where we were?" Another
thought crossed his mind, and he whirled around, hurrying back to
the hidden room and kneeling before the place where Nadia had found
the odd symbol. "Do you have my flashlight?" he whispered hoarsely.
"Yeah, Salene gave it back to me right before she left, why?" Nadia
walked over, pulling out the flashlight and following him in. She
flicked it on and handed it to Colt. "As for the knowing where we
were, she might have seen me coming out of the library."
Shinning it on the mark, he let out a soft growl.
"'We-are-of-virtue', could alternatively be translated as 'We are
in virtue' or 'We are on virtue.' Yeah, I don't like this." He
stood, crossing his arms with a shudder.
Nadia raised an eyebrow. "What does this have to do with Mrs.
Luswire? I mean, just because she said we're full of virture
doesn't really mean anything."
Colt sighed, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. "What sort
of a teacher says that about their students? I dunno, maybe I'm
over reacting, sorry, this is just weird. Really weird. What's
"really weird" in Spanish?"