I Become Shadow (7 page)

I triggered the sensor on the door and it slid open in front of me.

Cole was holding some boy down with a move that looked way too familiar. The bruises on my arm and throat tingled. But there was no malice in Cole. It looked like he was instructing. My appearance was met with a grin; it was not comforting.

“Welcome back, Ren,” he said. “Come inside.”

My eyes immediately found Junie and we shared a smile, both happy to see the other was okay. Four long nail marks were visible across his neck but otherwise he looked fine, especially when compared to the others. They looked like the bruised and battered survivors of the zombie apocalypse. The shooting of Katie and my quick dispatch had worked. Nothing like the threat of a bullet to motivate you. Everyone had fought when told to and fought hard.

I started to take my place with the others, Junie was scooting over, but I stopped when Cole said, “No, no. Stay where you are, Ren.” That grin again. “How are you feeling today? No lingering injuries?”

I shook my head and said as nonchalantly as I could, “I’m fine. Tip-top.” I didn’t want him to think he could hurt me. Big mistake.

Cole smiled wider. “Excellent to hear. I was afraid you’d be unable to complete your assignment from yesterday. But since you’re ‘tip-top’ … you still owe me a fight.”

He helped the other boy up; a hulking kid who, unlike
the others, looked completely unscathed from the previous day’s battles. “Young Tom here will fight again, right?”

The boy looked down at Cole—yeah that’s right, looked down on him because he was freaking huge—and shrugged as he said, “Sure.” He kind of sounded like Voldemort. I could have fit into one of his pant legs. I looked around for the tank I would need to beat this kid.

Katie’s voice was in my head again:
You need to become someone else
. So I unzipped my tracksuit jacket and tossed it to the side, pretending to be unafraid. That was definitely ‘someone else.’
Do I make fists? Karate-chop hands?
My hands were visibly shaking.

Tom looked disinterested in the whole process.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Cole said from his customary fight seat.

Tom took one step forward before Cole interrupted him by saying, “Remember, bow to each other.”

Tom stopped and bowed to me which lowered him to my height. My bow put me eye to eye with his kneecaps.

To say I was about to get my ass handed to me would be selling ass-handing short.

Now it was on. He took a big step forward and raised his fist. I failed to do anything except scrunch my face up and raise my hands. His knuckles felt like a boulder as they smashed into my cheek and sent me flying across the room onto the floor. His foot slammed into my stomach before those two massive hands hurled me into the padded wall. Love ya, whoever padded those up.

My head spun. I landed in a sitting position to see Tom
striding forward for more. I knew I didn’t have much more time in this fight and wanted to do something on the offensive before it was over, so as Tom reached down to grab me I kicked up. My foot caught him square in the face. I think it surprised me almost as much as him. He backpedaled, grabbing his nose. “Damn it,” he hissed.

I rose to me feet and put all of my strength behind what I knew would be the finishing blow. Unfortunately, my accuracy was off and I wound up hitting him directly in the right tit. But it was a vicious tit shot; I knew it. Totally left a bruise.

I heard Cole snort with laughter. Tom didn’t find it funny though. He grabbed me by the throat and picked me up in the air. My would-have-killed-a-normal-man tit shot had really pissed him off. My feet dangled helplessly two feet off the ground before he slammed me down onto the ground onto my back. It knocked the wind out of me. Tom’s grip around my neck didn’t falter; it only tightened as he crouched on top of me. I couldn’t breathe. The only things I could see were Tom’s snarling face and his crotch, which was way too close.

My eyes rolled and the lights were going out again. I only had one move left in my arsenal. Call it dirty, call it cheap, it’s all I had left. I reached up and grabbed his junk like a fistful of cash. I gripped and twisted with all my might. There was a scream of pain, and the grip on my throat weakened as I kept on squeezing and twisting. But it was too late. The lights were still going out, and everything went black. Again.

GUESS WHAT? I WOKE
up in the hospital. This time it was not of my own choosing but by a nurse with some vile smelling salts.

“Good,” she said as I woke up, trying to brush the smell from my nose.

I looked around and realized that I was in the same bed as this morning. Had they even had time to change the sheets?

She tossed the smelling salts in a trash can, checked her watch, and said, “You can either go eat lunch with everyone else or you can have it here. Which’ll it be?”

Maybe the magic word was “everyone,” but I wanted to be with my group. I didn’t want to miss out. I was getting a little tired of only seeing them for three minutes at a time punctuated by hours of unconsciousness.

“I’ll go,” I said.

“Good choice. Food’s a lot better in the cafeteria.”

“Cafeteria? Food?”

“Well yeah. What, did you think you were going to have to eat that mush all the time?”

My jaw dropped.
Yes, I had. How was I supposed to know better?! Real food?!
I hopped to my feet, wobbled a bit, and then made a beeline for the exit.

“Wait!” came the nurse’s voice behind me. “Take this and keep it on your face.” She handed me one of those disposable ice packs. I had completely forgotten about the damage I had taken from Tom. I looked around for a mirror to see for myself, but I couldn’t find one. All I could find was a blurred and fun-house worthy reflection in a stainless steel medical fridge. Worthless.

“How bad is it?” I asked.

“Keep the ice on it and you’ll be fine,” she said warmly.

Whew, still have a shot at Hollywood
. I almost said the words aloud. Instead I mumbled, “Thanks for the ice.”

She nodded and said, “See you later.”

“Probably a good bet,” I yelled over my shoulder as I jog-walked out of there. The thought of food had pushed all thoughts of pain from my mind.

I followed the trail of lights until I reached the cafeteria.

It felt like Christmas morning as I entered what looked like a normal, old-school cafeteria. Except that everyone in it was yellow. I saw kids eating sandwiches and scarfing down pastas. My stomach growled.

I went to the first counter I could find. It was full of pre-wrapped sandwiches. I grabbed one, didn’t care what was in it. The next counter was pasta. Got a big bowl of that too. The last counter was a salad bar. Skip-a-roonie.

I grabbed a glass of apple juice and looked out into the cafeteria for Junie. I saw him waving his hand and rushed over to the table. Our whole group was there, and they welcomed me with a loud “Hey!” Even Tom, who was sitting on a donut cushion.

“No hard feelings?” he said.

“I think I should be the one asking you that,” I said, smiling. He grinned and patted the seat between him and Junie. I thunked down and tore into my pasta.

Junie pushed a bowl of untouched cereal in front of me and said, “I’m stuffed. You want this?”

“Sure,” I was able to blurt out.

But that gesture had instantly flashed me back to my brother and how he would always have a bowl of cereal ready for me on Saturday mornings. At that moment I wanted to go home so badly it hurt. I shoveled more pasta in my mouth to hide my sudden lapse. If anyone had noticed, they didn’t say.

We all ate in silence. Maybe like me, they were all content to be doing something normal after the craziness of the past forty-eight hours. Kidnapped from home? Check. Crap beaten out of us? Check. Witnessed a murder? Check, or check for the others, I knew the truth of it. So forgive us if we didn’t really want to chat.

Junie had other ideas though.

“Okay, I can’t take this anymore,” he blurted out, tossing his fork onto his plate for good measure. It clanged loudly. “It’s like a morgue in here. Doesn’t anyone have anything fun to talk about?” He looked around at the table and was met by blank stares. He turned to me last. I shook my head.

“Come on. Ren, you literally tried to castrate Tom as you passed out. And now you’re eating lunch with him and he’s sitting on a donut. That’s kinda funny.” He laughed when he said it. My face went red. I couldn’t help but smile. Even Tom smirked. “Come on people. We can do this.”

Some of the other tables were now looking our way. Junie fed off the attention. “Okay, game time,” he said. Everyone listened to our de facto leader. “It’s called
‘Looks Like Who?’
I used to play it with my brother all the time at the mall. Here, I’ll go first.”

He scanned the room and then said, “Easy one. Goth Justin Timberlake.”

We all exchanged looks, silently trying to figure out if we were actually going to play. That answer came in the voice of Stacy, an Asian girl at the end of the table as she quietly said, “Three tables over.” She pointed for good measure.

We followed her gesture and found him. He had black hair, was paper white, but totally looked like JT. The resemblance was uncanny.

“Yes! Nice,” Junie yelled excitedly. “Now your turn.” His enthusiasm was rubbing off on us.

The girl stood up and looked around biting her lip as she thought. When she sat back down she said, to suddenly eager players, “Fat Ryan Reynolds.”

I laughed at the thought of it and joined the others as we craned our heads to find him. Mauricio, our Brazilian classmate, found him sitting on the other side of the room. It was totally a fat Ryan Reynolds. Spitting image only, you know, heavy. We all laughed and when I heard Tom’s deep
ho-ho-ho
ing I laughed even harder.

“Nice one,” Junie said with a nod. “Who’s next?”

We all took turns and before long we were standing up and walking around the tables to find our celebrities. Some people, like Junie, were good at the game and named a lot of folks. I only did one. I found a very pretty boy who looked like Anne Hathaway and aptly named him Manne Hathaway. It was a stumper but when they all found him they loved it. I knew I’d never top it and quit while I was ahead. I was having more fun looking for the celebs than naming them anyway.

After that we slid right into a good old Cole-bashing session. We mocked his looks, his skinniness, even made up stories about his parents so we could make fun of them too. We finished on his broken nose. We made up rules for it. Every time it whistled, we had to cough. When it would leak, we had to scratch our ears. Whenever he touched it, we had to sneeze.

We spent the rest of lunch laughing. As in real laughter. If those in charge were watching (and I knew they were), they kept silent. Would we actually follow through on any of the CNRs, or Cole Nose Rules? Junie was adamant we would. For the briefest of moments it felt like we were all in regular old high school together, that this was a normal place and we’d be off to math or history next.

And that was my first lunch. It was the perfect break. I later came to understand that this was exactly the point. While we were to become killing machines, even
they
understood we were still young and needed time—even if only for a bit—to goof off and be ourselves. Learning to be human weapons was our new vocation, but underneath it all, we were still just fourteen-year-olds. Every day we would get a one-hour break from the constant training to be ourselves. To be kids again.

IT WAS TOUGH TO
leave the cafeteria. But I felt a new strength. I was determined to make a better effort to stay conscious through our morning sessions of hand-to-hand combat with Cole. Lunch was not something to be missed.

We worked our way down the maze of hallways and ended up outside Armory 6H. The numbering made me wonder how many armories this place had. The answer: a lot.

Inside the room and immediately to our right was a short, stocky young woman. Only the first thirty or so feet of the room were lit; the rest was completely blacked out, but I could tell by my echoing footsteps that it was a pretty big space. There was nothing special from what I could see: rows of long tables similar to what I’d had in my science classes back home, situated between the vast black nothingness and the door.

There was a bottleneck, so we all stopped, unsure of where to go.

“Two to a table, please,” said the stocky woman. Her voice was strong but feminine.

Junie and I, without needing to speak, found a table in the middle. Not right up front like brownnosers, but not in the back like the C students either. The woman watched everyone find their places. Once in place she scanned each of our faces. When her eyes fell on me she stopped. “Ren Sharpe?” she asked coldly.

Crap. Had I kicked her in the face too? Cole’s sister maybe?
I nodded slowly but kept eye contact with her.

From beside me Junie whispered, “Oh, great.”

“You …” the woman said. She walked and stopped on the other side of my table. There was nothing but silence as she glared at me. I gulped. It was so quiet I heard some kind of venting system kick on. AC? Heat? Who knows?
Why am I thinking about vents?!