"He didn't knock me out immiedeiantly. I heard footsteps, and a
voice saying something like," her face screwed up as she tried to
remember, "Leave her, get later, poison will work? I couldn't
really understand what was going on." Nadia placed a hand on her
shoulder. "Thank you for telling us this, Salene. Why don't you go
check on your brothers?" Salene nodded. "Okay!" She hurried off
down the hall.
Colt was furious. Furious that Dan had the audacity to lie to and
trick him and Nadia like that, to knock out Salene and plan to kill
her. Furious that the principal would do this to them. Furious that
he felt powerless to help the other students. Taking a deep breath
and turning to Nadia, he asked, "What should we do?"
Nadia thought for a minute. "We can't confront Dan about what he
did directly, he's got a reeeally bad temper. One time, the PE
teacher called him out on something, and he slashed all of the
bastketballs. That's why we were playing floor hocky for a week. If
we accuse him, he might lash out. I'm a little more concerned about
who Dan was talking to after he knocked out Salene."
Nodding slowly, he glanced down the hall. "Back to the cameras,
then? Hope they might have caught something in the general
vicinity? Or are the ones down here not working?"
Nadia glanced up. "I really don't know. I can't remember which ones
are on or not, but it wouldn't hurt to check." She started heading
back, and immieadiently went to the computer. She sat down, tapping
a few keys. "Ookay, pulling up those cameras...hmm."
Following her, Colt was 100x more on edge than he had been
previously. So it seemed like the Killer had an ally, whether the
Killer themself was Dan or Dan was said ally. While the boy may not
have said it outright, to himself he admitted he was terrified, and
what intrigued him was that the majority of that terror wasn't even
on his own behalf. If something happened to Nadia, he honestly
wasn't sure how he would react. All he knew was it wouldn't be
positive. Shaking himself, he entered the classroom and shut the
door behind him before going over to stand behind her. "What've we
got?" he asked in a falsely cheerful tone.
"The camera feed is kind of blurry, buut if you pause here," she
tapped the space bar, "And zoom in," she spread her fingers across
the screen, zooming in, "What symbol is that on the shoulder of our
mystery friend's hoodie?"
Letting out a mix between a whistle and a hiss through clenched
teeth, Colt crossed his arms and stared at the screen, almost in
disbelief. "Well, mushrooms. I can't decide if that's a good or bad
thing. That it's the same symbol. The symbol itself is clearly a
bad thing."
"I think, if we can somehow get Dan to slip information of any
kind, it should allow us to at least figure out who this mystery
person is. That should at least tell us if Dan is the Killer,
though I'm thinking that it's Dan. Just because they wore the
symbol doesn't nesccesarilay mean that they're the one behind all
this." She sighed. "I can baerly think. After that..experience, I'm
drained."
Glancing at the little timestamp on the computer, he registered
that it was almost lunch time. "If you'd like," he offered. "You
could stay here and rest. Lock the door, take a nap, etcetera. I
can go to the cafeteria, grab some food, bring it back. I know we
technically aren't allowed to eat outside of the designated eating
areas, but what's life without breaking a couple rules, especially
in circumstances such as this?"
"Okay then," Nadia yawned, standing up and walking over to the pile
of gym mats, sitting on it. "Remember the procedure? If you're not
back in an hour, I go looking for you."
"If I'm not back in an hour, I got bored and felt like skydiving,"
he grinned. Opening the door and setting the lock so that it would
fasten behind him, he then set off down the hall, his rubber soles
making a soft mix between a squeak and a click as they hit the
tiled floor. He was slightly thrown off to find a large number of
students gathered there, although he'd been expecting it. Stripping
his face of emotion, he calmly moved to stand in line for food,
struck by the odd sense of normalcy the action invoked.
The line was a lot faster than usual, which was to be expected. It
wouldn't take Colt long to go through. Meanwhile, Nadia was fast
asleep on the gym mats, oblivious to the sounds of footsteps,
liquid dripping, and quiet humming.
Hurrying back, Colt figured he probably make quite the sight,
balancing two plates of pizza with fruit, cartons of strawberry
milk, and curly French fries on them. When he returned to the
classroom, he used his foot to knock on the door, doing his best
not to drop the food but also wake Nadia up.
Nadia yawned sitting up. Sleepily scratching her nose, she stood up
and walked across the room, opening the door. "You look stupid but
I want food so I won't elaborate."
"Thank you, Madam Cheerful, for the warm welcome," he teased.
"Don't mind me, I'm just from room service. I'll be going now. You
can leave my tip at the front desk." He made a show of handing her
both trays, bowing, and turning as if to walk away.
Nadia took the trays from him, one glance admiring the food. One of
the few things she liked about this place was definetly the
food."Hey!" she said with a laugh. "Curly fry and you stay?"
"Hmmm, alright. I suppose I can accept your donation. Trust me,
it's for a good cause," he chuckled, returning to pluck one from
the tray in her left hand and then grab the one in her right.
"Wanna rewind the feeds, just in case something happened while you
were snoozing and I was being an errand boy?" he suggested with a
grin, popping the fry in his mouth. Truth be told, he was more than
happy to do anything to help out, but that didn't mean he was going
to let it slide by without joking around about it.
"Sure, but I am seriously going to finish this pizza by myself. I'm
starving!" She popped a fry in her mouth, walking over to the
computer and setting the tray on one of the desks. With a slice of
pizza in hand, she took a seat at the computer, tapping at the keys
one-handedly. She paused it. "Ready to see what the camera saw?"
"You betcha," he responded, also setting down his tray and opting
to start on the fries first so as to ward off any revenge fry
stealing. Carrying the container over to where the computer was set
up, he sat down on one of the desks.