Offenders

Offenders (1)

This is the sequel to Defenders. Make sure to read that first!

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Having friends was the oddest thing.

I couldn't remember what it was like to have friends, to be completely honest. The last time I had ever been to school was in the sixth grade, and I couldn't even remember any of the names of the kids I had spoken to back then.

Some nights, since we shared a room, Kristie and I would just stay up and talk about the weirdest things. I would talk about what it was like to be locked in a room for five years, and she would talk about what it was like to not remember her past. Sometimes we would gossip about the boys on our team, sometimes we would talk about Hank and Nay, and sometimes we would just talk about Redrum. She was an airhead, but she was easily becoming one of my closer friends.

We hadn't fought Redrum for weeks, since the time they had kidnapped Kristie. We hadn't been on any missions after that either; we just trained to make sure that we were strong enough for whenever Malicius and Lynx decided to strike again. Surprisingly, Aiden didn't complain about this. After almost losing Kristie, he must have realized that being at our strongest was more important than just going out and fighting.

And then there were the boys on my team. Aiden was still completely devoted to Kristie, Anthony still didn't mind that he was left out most of the time, and Dex was just as confusing as always.

Dex was the weirdest of them all to be friends with, really. It didn't have anything to do with him, but everything to do with me. Whenever I was close to him, my stomach would twist and I felt like I couldn't breathe. His face would turn red and I would hear his breath catch in his throat. I just didn't get it.

Hank and Nay seemed to notice how I was feeling, and I wasn't so sure how they felt about it. They didn't exactly seem the happiest, but they didn't try to do anything to keep us away from each other, so it couldn't have been that bad, right?

For some reason, Nay wanted to talk to each of us separately. I couldn't help but feel a little nervous about this, because I had absolutely no reason what she would want to talk about with us by ourselves.

My foot tapped against the empty hallway floor, echoing all throughout the room. I had been waiting for what felt like hours, though it really had only been a few minutes.

When Nay said she wanted to talk to each of us individually, none of us knew what she had in store for us. In the weeks since our last fight with Malicius and Lynx, we had been training together to become even stronger. Were we now going to be training on our own?

First, she wanted to talk to Aiden. He wasn't in there for very long, but when he finally came out and it was Anthony's turn to go in, he wouldn't tell me what had happened when I asked him. That only made me grow even more nervous.

After Anthony, it was Kristie. Even my nerdy friend wouldn't tell me what happened, so I assumed that it was something horrible. Maybe once Kristie came out, I could crack her and she'd tell me everything that had gone on inside the conference room.

But I couldn't, and she kept her mouth shut. Dex went in after she did, and I thought I was going to die if I had to wait much longer. Why did I have to go last? The team name started with my initial!

And now I was the only one in the hallway, my other teammates having left after their turn was over. So I just continued to tap, tap, tap my foot away until the door beside me finally opened and Dex stepped out.

I stood up, eager to get this done and over with. If all my friends had been able to survive it, then it couldn't have been all that bad. None of them were sweaty or breathing heavily, so it wasn't any type of physical exercise.