Secrets Are For Keeping

Chapter Twenty-Two

The world began to fade slightly as my senses dulled. As I stared down at the patches, they slowly began to disappear. My skin was normal once again, and I wasn't attached to anything. When I looked up again, the walls were no longer white. Actually, the walls weren't even there.

Instead a vast city landscape was laid out in front of me.

And I wasn't alone.

Other people in the street that I realized my feet were planted on. And when I inspected them closer I realized they were all other students. All of the gray containers were happening at once, and every simulation was apparently connected.

And then I noticed Pepper standing only a couple yards away. Actually, not really standing. It was more like she was appearing. Her body slowly pixelated into existence.

I walked over to where she was now standing, and she looked over at me as I came near her. Her eyes lit up in recognition, before she continued to observe our surroundings, probably wondering what task Mr. Neilson had been referring to.

"Has anything happened yet?" she asked once I was within hearing range of her.

"No...I just appeared here too." I noticed a couple more students appearing in random spots along the street.

"Do you know what we're supposed to do?"

Sudden gunfire rang out above the voices of the crowd of people on the road.

I ducked down towards the ground automatically, just as shouts rang out from other students in the crowd.

Gunshots?

What?

Another round of bangs exploded from somewhere above our small group of students who were all cowering close to the ground. They were coming from above us, in the rooftops of the skyscraping buildings and higher level windows.

More rounds of gunfire rained down at us and then someone was crying out loudly, and the crying didn't stop. I looked up from where I was stooped down and noticed a group of people creating a sort of circle around a figure that was lying on the ground, and I realized the figure had been shot. Then the body dissolved into thin air, and the crying stopped.

But it left an impression.

People now looked genuinely fearful for their lives.

I looked over Pepper whose eyes mimicked the fear in everyone else.

"What is happening?" she whispered, looking close to tears. I could see the horror in her entire expression and hear the way her voice cracked when she talked. She hadn't even imagined that something like this could happen. I hadn't even considered this as a possibility for a simulation.

But it was. I couldn't change what I had no control over. And at the moment, sitting around waiting to get shot at didn't seem like the best idea. I grabbed tightly onto Pepper's hand and began sprinting down the road in the opposite direction of the crowd of people. A couple shots followed after us, but none of them hit.

My feet pounded against the pavement as we ran, and soon the crowd of other students was far behind us. I paused in the middle of the street, bringing Pepper to a stop along with me, and stared up at the windows of the buildings surrounding us, wondering if whatever enemy that was shooting at us happened to be spread throughout the entire city and if so, why they weren't shooting at us.

I got my answer when something exploded in a ball of fire to the right of me, sending me rolling across the pavement, my hands and knees scraping against the ground. My hand was no longer gripping Pepper's. The world wasn't upright anymore either, everything seemed to be tilted slightly to the side and extremely blurry. A loud ringing bounced around in my head and I groggily brought my hands up to my ears, trying to shut out the noise but it was inside of me. When I realized my hands weren't helping I brought them back down in front of my face and saw dark red fluid covering them both.