Don't Look Back! Part 2

Chapter Two: A new Life

Awakened by the alarm, Lucy rubbed her eyes and stared at a bed on the opposite wall. Stretching his arms, Darian sat up, waving at her. Happy to see him, she jumped out of the bed and wanted to hush to him, but in that moment the door at the end of the hall flew open and a dozen men entered the room.

"Stand in line" A uniformed man stepped forward, eyeing the children until they all had moved out of bed. "At the sound of your name, you will follow the person speaking"

Another man stepped into the middle of the room, holding out a list. "Nicolas, Samuel, David, Erik, Jasmine, Katy, Cillian, Agatha" as soon as the children had approached him, he turned and walked back through the door he had come from.

The play repeated itself four more times until the last man stood in the room. Watching the remaining twenty children, Darian and Lucy among them, he relaxed. "Okay, listen up. You have a few trials ahead of you to test your problem solving ability, maths, logic, teamwork, and general as well as common knowledge. That means work. After that breakfast, and then you will be sorted into groups, understood?"

Some of the kids nodded, others gave a short yes. However, none truly understood what the man wanted other than testing them.

Following him through a series of hallways, Darian held onto his sisters hand, guiding her to the final door. Behind it waited a room with computers in front of which each child had to sit and work. After that the man led them into several different rooms, always in pairs and gave them puzzles, riddles, and in the final room, locked them in with the instruction to find a way out.

Darian and a boy by the name of Daniel had to go first, after that more and more children left the room until Lucy, two more girls and a boy remained. At the sound of the alarm, Lucy and Kelly, as the girl introduced herself right before they entered the final task, worked together to get out of the room. As much as Lucy thought and searched, as little did Kelly want to do anything, on the contrary. She found a place to sit and waited, played with objects or told Lucy to be quiet when she thought out loud. After a few minutes, Lucy had found a note under a chair, discovered several more clues, and finally, a key under the top drawer of a desk and with it, opened a music box that played three notes on repeat. The short melody in mind, Lucy stepped in front of the door and inspected the colourful plates. Each plate, arranged by its luminosity and saturation should correspond with one note. Testing her theory, Lucy pressed the bottom left plate, paying attention to the sound it made. A blunt bass tone resonated from the speaker behind the plate. After that, Lucy pressed the top right note, and from that built a tone ladder in her head to figure out which plate would be which tone. Finally, she pressed a third plate in the middle as the code consisted of three notes and thus the false code had to be completed to be able to enter the correct code.

The second the third plate had been pressed after entering the correct melody. The door played the three notes, then more and a beautiful melody came from the door, the plates lit by light bulbs behind them to create a song of sound and light. A loud click and the door opened, releasing Lucy into another room where the man stood, checking a monitor.

At the sight of her, he clapped, gestured her to follow him and closed the music door with Kelly still inside the room. Lucy behind him, he walked into an office, after knocking and getting a come in as answer.

Sitting at a desk, Ava Paige studied a bunch of papers. Her glance rose when the man, colonel Willick she called him, entered the room. "Yes?"

"Dr. Paige, I believe we have found one" He stepped aside to reveal Lucy, who had hid behind him.

A smile on her lips, Dr Paige rose from her chair and, the stilettos clicking on the marble floor, approached Lucy. "Well, young lady, looks like I made the right choice with you" She took the papers the colonel had handed her and let her gaze fly over them. "Excellent. I suppose she might be a fit, let's hope so"