Until Zero Hour

Chapter One

My music sounded muffled. I shifted my computer slightly, The thin sheets of the asylum bed moved across my leg. I looked around the room, it was entirely white just like my thin dress-like clothing. I leaned back and closed my eyes. I ran my hands through my shoulder-length blonde-almost-white hair, I pulled at the red tips. I had been in this place for a month at least, but I couldn't be sure as they didn't tell us. Probably so we would lose our sense of time and forget how long it had been. A soft tapping came from my door but I didn't bother to get up to see what the nurse wanted, they would just barge in anyways. The door creaked open, I looked over and to my surprise a middle-aged man with gray strands of hair peppering his dark black hair done up in a pompadour almost, with pieces of hair hanging down into his face. He wasn't wearing the standard nurse or doctor uniform, instead, he had a long-sleeve, light orange, button-up shirt that was tucked into a pair of black slacks. An orange and black tie completed the look. But, even though he looked so nice I could see the tiredness in his not-quite-brown-but-closer-to-crimson eyes. I wondered what they would look like not so tired and dull. Would it be like the raging fire that engulfed the nearby college killing my older sister? Or would it be more like the Redwood tree in my backyard that I used to climb on? The nurse peeked out from behind the man. "Sir, this is patient 789-" the nurse said only to abruptly stopped by the man's smooth deep voice. "Nasir Tkachenko, sorry for the rude intrusion but you need to come with us". I became curious what would they want from me? Maybe they thought I didn't need to be here, maybe they thought my outburst was just teenage hormones and not linked to my mental health. I don't know why I was being so optimistic, nothing ever turned out the way it was supposed to. Anyways, I followed the man out the door and down the long, winding, brightly lit halls. An awkward silence followed up down the halls which the man finally broke with, "I'm Professor Xiradakrya", he said just as we stopped in front of a wooden door. "And this is my office", He swung the large door open. "I'll be back soon just wait here" Professor Xiradakrya threw some clothes at me and shut the door. I heard the click of a lock, that probably meant he didn't fully trust me, or he was scared of me. That was both a good and bad thing. I looked down at the clothes the Professor had given to me, It was the same outfit I had come here in but there were no bloodstains, That made me suspicious, I flipped the overalls to the knee and my suspicion instantly melted away. The patch that my mother had sewn on soon before we came to America, the patch was the flag a Belarus. My home country, Belarus both my parents had been from there and I had been born there and lived there until a year ago. I still wasn't that good at English, a jump from Russian and Belarusian to English was hard. I quickly changed out of my hospital clothing and into my normal clothes. I felt as if I big weight had been lifted off and I was finally able to see and breathe. I ran my finger over the little flag on the knee of my overalls, when just then the Professor walked in with another kid. The kid looked about my age with blonde hair and hazel eyes. The Professor looked at us, threw the kid some clothes and said "Why don't you guys get acquainted" then left and locked the door. The boy looked at me, smiled, and said: "Hey dude, my name is Abraham Cox, but please call me Bram". He looked at the clothes and held them up "I'm assuming we put these on considering you are wearing your normal clothing". Bram seemed to study me for a minute until saying "Are your eyes naturally red"? I wasn't that surprising as I got that question a lot "Yes my eyes are naturally red." The statement sounded a bit offended by the wording I suppose because Bram replied "Okay okay jeez sorry" I hadn't meant it to sound like that "No I wasn't offended I just don't speak English as well as you I hadn't meant to come across rude." He went behind the large filing cabinet, into a corner where I could no longer see him. "I'm just getting changed" he called out. Suddenly the door swung open again, it was the Professor again but this time instead of one kid he had two. A boy and a girl who looked to also be my age, but they seemed to be twins. The boy ran up to me and immediately grabbed me and hugged me, and introduced himself as Alec and his sister as Alex, the weird thing was that Alec was super hyper while his twin sister, Alex had not spoken a word nor moved. The seemed to be complete opposites. I went up to Alex and said "Hi, my name is Nasir, you're Alex right?", Alex said nothing yet creepily stared at me. It was very unsettling, kind of look you give someone when analyzing them. Just then Alec came up behind me and yelled, OMG ARE YOU RUSSIAN YOU HAVE SUCH A THICK ACCENT!!!!!" that caught my attention and distracted me from the creepy sister. "Uh actually no I'm Belarusian" The boy looked at me with a confused look and said "What Bela-Russian?" I sighed "A Belarusian is a person from Belarus, a country near Russia in Europe" Apparently that was not a good explanation Alec just said, "Never heard of it". Just then the Professor's voice interrupted us. "As you may know my name is Professor Xiradakrya, the world has changed quite a bit since you left it. It has been thrown into chaos, now it is your job to fix it. A terrorist group has taken over and now you must stop them." He smiled, which was pretty unsettling considering what he just said. I could tell even though he said it with a monotone voice it scared him. A professor would never mess up his grammar that bad.