Shadows

Chapter 15

Code Black...

All students must head back to their dorms immediately. No student should come out of their room until they're told to in an email sent by the university.

Code black...

"Will this person shut up already? I'm pretty sure that everyone within a five-mile radius has heard the announcement," Joanna mutters angrily, clearly fed up after hearing the guy's annoying voice repeating the same thing over and over for the past five minutes.

To be honest, I can't blame her. "What even is code black? I didn't even know that universities have codes like these." I ask curiously as Joanna, Blake and I speed walk towards our dorms.

Judging by the nearly empty hallways - save for a few students here and there - we along with the other club members are probably the last people still in the hallways. However, before you start to say that we're not taking the situation seriously or that we're slacking off, I have to remind you that the art club's room is on the last floor of building 'Von', which is at least a ten-minute walk from the dorms' buildings, so no one can blame us.

"We didn't have these codes until last year," Blake says bitterly. "And code black means that there's either an intruder on campus, which I'm guessing is not the case, or that something serious has happened, and they don't want the students to know just yet."

Clearly, someone's not happy with these codes.

Or maybe he's not happy because of the reason those codes were put in the first place.

Bingo!

How didn't I think of that? If these codes were only put last year, then that means that they were probably put after something happened - like a student getting kidnapped from the middle of the campus.

But it looks like Joanna didn't figure that out because she looked clueless. "Are there other codes? And why would they put these codes last year only? Why not when the university first opened?"

"It's a long story. I'll tell you both later," he responds before muttering under his breath. "I can't believe that they didn't tell you what happened before you came here."

Joanna looked at him strangely before letting the subject go when she saw that he didn't want to elaborate. Entering the hallway where our dorms are located, we bid each other goodbye and then enter our respective rooms.

Shutting the door behind me, I lock it when I hear rustling coming from the direction of Lena's bed.

"What do you think happened?" I hear her asking from behind me.

"Blake said that code black indicates that there's either an intruder or that something serious has happened," I sigh as I throw myself on my bed.

"What kind of a university needs to have such a code?" she asks while scrunching her face in confusion.

"The kind where a student gets kidnapped from her dorm."

"You're right," she says while laughing. "I can't believe that this university had the nerve to not tell us about that before we got accepted. Do you know that we didn't get to come on a tour last year during admissions because that girl who lived here got kidnapped around that time?"

Hearing her say that made me sit up and look at her with wide eyes. "What? Are you sure?"

"Yes, Riley told me. We're kind of friends now." She was looking at me waiting for some kind of an explosion, so I made sure to keep my face emotionless.

It's not like I am not hurt that she became friends with Riley because I am to be truthful. It's just that I realized that Lena has every right to be friends with whomever she wants even if that person can't stand me. So, I ignored that piece of information and continued talking normally.