Petrified by the intensity of the faces looking at me, I wondered if it would be a great idea to get plastic surgery or at least change my name after this. I could tell that a lot of them were blank stares, because they didn't recognised me. But a few...
"It's her!" One of the girls at the back screeched, like I was the reason her family was dead. "She's the girl that was always hanging around Tom."
"And Diego." The girl still clinging onto Diego huffed, and the boy looked at me apologetically. Mr. Andrewson was also watching me as girl after girl glared or shout at me and I resisted the urge to sigh dramatically and cover my face.
"Please, it's not like any of you had a chance with Tom." Casey's voice echoed out from the door, a bemused Viktor trailing behind her. While it warms my heart a little to see her defending me, I knew she was just going to make things worse.
"Casey!" I shouted, but it was too late.
"Tom and Gail are together, so you can all cut out the jealous act." Casey continued, before giving me a I-got-your-back-look. I could feel the surge of emotion coming from an alarmingly large number of girls in the room, barely able to contain their outrage. However, the relief from the minds of the Diego fan girls was equally impressive. Gosh – did every boy I knew got a fan team around here?
"Despite the fact that I encourage everyone to express their emotions, because they tend to implode when held up too long." Mr. Andrewson said, cutting across the chatter once again. "I think we have a more urgent matter to address."
"First thing first," Mr. Andrewson said, "We need to gather everyone up and get ready to defend ourselves when the barriers fall in five hours."
"The problem with our own backup defense system is that our power source would not last more than a day itself, seeing as our source of powers had been cut off or died down over the past six months." Mr. Andrewson said and the mood of the Great Hall began to sober up. "However much I want to shield you from this, the time has come for me to tell you the truth. The attack seven months ago was orchestrated by the Apocalypse, and they are the one who are attacking our school right now."
"Why are they doing this?" A girl asked, her voice shaking and another girl wrapped her arm around her. "What do they want from us?"
"That, Miss Harper, is the million dollar question." Mr. Andrewson sighed. "However, it is reported that they are abducting young POE all around the world. Whatever their agenda is, that remain unknown."
Scanning the faces of everyone, I noticed that while most looked scared by this revelation, a few looked thoughtful. It wasn't a question that I hadn't asked myself, but I believed that whatever the reason behind that was, it's definitely not good. My mind shuddered as I imagine being experimented upon; it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibilities for the Apocalypse to use us as lab rats.
"As the headmaster of the Academy," Mr. Andrewson looked across the hall and made eye contact with everyone as he spoke. "It is my duty to protect each and every one of you. I had already failed some, and I will not let the Apocalypse get their hands on you. The fact that a team was dispatched to make contact with us means that others would be on their way, all we have to do is hold out until help arrives."
A few mummers broke out in the crowd and I knew what they were thinking. What if help never arrives. I glanced towards Iris surreptiously and wondered whether or not the UGE would send help to get their two operatives out. Or would they rather let them die along with the rest of us.
Now more than ever did I hope that Katerina had foresaw this and warned me. And that she had a rescue team all planned out to come swooping in at the last second. But I knew better than to rely on wishful thinking.
"Earth Elementalist, you are to report to Mr. Fisher and help strengthen and create additional barriers around the school wall" Mr. Andrewson started barking out orders, and a handful of people started moving towards Mr. Fisher, our History teacher. "Technopaths, please go with Mrs. Tam to the labs and ready whatever weapons will have. Except for Becca and Greg, would you two go to the control room and see what you can do about our electrical barrier?"
A pair of teenagers nodded and dashed out of the room, with a dozen other following out behind them, but heading in the opposite direction with Mrs. Tam, our IT technician. There were still a good number of us left and I shuffled uneasily.
"Natalie, can you please take the rest of the medic trainees and report to Mr. Oscar? Miss Sewell, would you please go with them?" Mr. Andrewson addressed Natalie at the back, and then Saralisa, who gave a small nodded. Natalie gave an encouraging squeeze to Fred, and gathered a group of five people before heading out of the room as well.
"Bradley, bring the rest of the school prefect team and start setting up the defenses around the Academy." Mr. Andrewson said and the head boy nodded. He hugged a blond girl goodbye, who must be his girlfriend, before charging out of the Hall with a dozen other people.
With about fifty odd people left, I looked at the smaller kids and sighed inside. Turning to Megan, Mr. Andrewson broke into a small smile. "Megan, would you kindly take our younger students to the simulation room? Bring a few people with you."
Nodding, Megan gave me a tight-lipped smile and gestured for Elise and two other girls to help her round up the younger kids. When they were finally gone, there were only about twenty of us left in the room; this finally released Diego from his fan girl.
"Fred, can you lead the rest of the Elementalists and Physicals except for Ivan and Grace. Go see if Mr. Fisher needs any help. If they don't, go to Mrs. Tam and see if you can come up with a plan of attack."
Surprised flickered through Fred's face as though he couldn't believe what Mr. Andrewson was asking him to do. But he recovered quickly and left with a few other people. The rest of the group consisted of two Mental section whom I vaguely recognised, the two Physicals who were addressed by name, Diego, Casey, Viktor and of course the teachers.
"Would all the teachers gather in my office, please?" Mr. Andrewson said and the teachers filed out, leaving the fourteen of us with Mr. Andrewson. Finally turning to face me, Mr. Andrewson's expression caused the alarm bells in my head to go off.
"Abigail." He started and I almost took a step back. "I need you and Diego to lead the rest of the students to make a break when our defense finally falls."
"What?" I blinked, not sure if I heard Mr. Andrewson correctly. After all the trouble I had gone through to get here, he was asking me to leave?
"We can't rely on being rescued by someone else – and when everything else fails; I need to know that at least some of us would get out of here to warn the rest of the world." Mr. Andrewson grabbed me by my shoulders and my heart skipped a beat at his expression. He had never looked this serious in his entire life.
Straightening up quickly, Mr. Andrewson motioned for the rest of us to come closer to him. I nodded at the four people that I didn't know, and wondered how they would trust me, and how I would trust them to get each other out of here.
"Abigail is going to lead your group around the Academy, assisting any group that is under stress." Mr. Andrewson smiled at everyone and I did my best to keep my face straight and nod with the rest of them. Diego sent me a questioning glance which I ignored; trust him to sense that something was off with me. "I am going to meet up with the teachers now. Abigail, lead the group and come out with a plan."
With that, Mr. Andrewson quickly disappeared, leaving the Great Hall to us eight lonesome. Knowing the awkwardness was coming, I coughed to get everyone's attention.
"Hi everyone." I said, then realized that it was kind of lame. "I don't think I have met all of you personally before. My name is Abigail Beckett, I am a telepath and I can do telekinesis. I came to the Academy last September from London Citybase."
I stopped short, not exactly sure how I could carry on anyway. What happened after the test was a journey that seemed strangely hard to convey into words, at least, not words that I can finish speaking in the next hour. And honestly, it was very personal too, and I didn't know if I could just tell a couple of strangers about it.
"Nice to meet you, Abigail, I think I have seen you around the Academy before." The older girl of the Mental section smiled at me and nodded at Diego – of course they would know each other. "I am Orla, Orla Finn originally from Dublin Citybase, so we are not that far from each other. My power is hypnosis."
Hypnosis? Isn't that just compulsion? My mind tried to draw up the distinction Mr. Andrewson talk about in his notebook but I couldn't really remember anything. But hypnosis sound less evasive.
"And I am Aulia Onbekend." The younger girl said, her tan skin and deep, hooded eyes were unlike any I had seen before, and I briefly wondered where she was from. "I am from Jakarta Citybase." She said, and my mind clicked – it was the only Citybase in Indonesia but it's apparently massive. The complexity of the islands and proximity to the ocean made it very difficult to construct and defend multiply citybases there, and even with the current Jakarta Citybase there are constant talk of evacuating the entire population and distributing them to less difficult Citybases. "My power is Psychometry."
Psychometry. My mind did another search – it was the power to gain information through the traces left by human. It's very unique and niche – something that Mr. Andrewson thought I could do, but in reality I couldn't. It's very useful when one is scouting though.
"I am Ivan Kustkova." The heavy looking boy said, his eyes were the colour of pine-wood, and hair was the lightest blond. "I am from the St Petersburg Citybase, I can fly."
"And I am Grace Stewart, from Dellas Citybase. I have X-ray vision." Grace quickly cut in and tucked a strand of blond hair back nervously.
Casey and Viktor quickly introduced themselves too and Diego really didn't need to say anything. Meanwhile, I was trying to come up with a plan. I didn't want to leave the Academy anymore, but I understood what Mr. Andrewson needed us to do.
"We have five hours," I started, "Let's go and have a look around and see if anyone needs our help." I said and everyone nodded, so I took that as a good sign. Figuring we should start on the outside so we could circle back at the end, I started moving towards the door.
"Let's head out." I said, gesturing with my head and led everyone out. I didn't expect things to go as smoothly as this, anticipating some kind of snarky comment or maybe even a challenge like what happened with Iris and Vulture. But then I remembered that I was in the Academy. A place where the Originals created to help young POEs to learn their powers, to be under guidance and to be a community supporting one another; and that we could all trust each other. And it's what the world is supposed to be like. United.
Walking out into the still deserted corridor, I made sure I knew where the nearest exit was before I made a turn. I heard a choked cough from Casey and knew that she was laughing at me. That girl thought my lack of directions was the funniest thing in POE history.
Once we were outside, everyone looked up at the pulsating barriers that still surround and protect us. The clear, eggshell like barrier 2 and the electric blue barrier 1 were still shielding us from the attackers outside; at least for now. Following the sound of voices, we turned around a right bend and saw a group of Elementalists already engrossed in erecting earthen walls against our existing wall – and it looked like hard work.
"Let's keep walking." I said and Diego waved to Mr. Fisher from a distance, who fortunately waved back and made me feel more assured. We rounded a corner and saw Bradly and his team pulling out some trolley things that resemble a catapult – something that I didn't know we have.
"Hey Diego." Bradly abandoned his trolley when he saw us and jogged over to give Diego a huge hug. Diego smiled big, and for the first time since we came back, I saw the old Diego surfacing and it was nice.
"Bradly." Diego smiled, clasping the head boy on his bicep. The two seemed to have some kind of silent communication before Diego turned towards me. "This is Abigail, I don't think you two have met before."
Plastering a smile on my face immediately, I studied Bradly up close for the first time. His blond hair hung in waves and his eyes were a mix of grey and blue. He looked younger than nineteen, but at the same time he seemed wary of the world. Giving me a tired smile that was probably as forced as my own, he extended his hand to me.
"Hi Abigail." My name rolled strangely off his mouth and I resisted the urge to tell him to call me Gail. "I have heard a lot about you. It's nice to finally get to meet you."
Giving a strange side-glance at Diego I quickly shook Bradly's hand, not sure what his speech was about. "It's lovely to meet you too." I finally replied, lacking any meaningful response. "We wanted to see if you need any help?"
Smiling broadly at us for a change, we ended up spending the next hour helping Bradly moved those catapults, which I found out was part of a summer fair and is used to launch fireworks into the sky. They were pretty sturdy things, having been worked on my generations of POE students and can easily launch heavy rocks and fireballs. We set them up a safe distance from the wall and made sure it covered the entire perimeter – which meant a lot of walking and we even had to fix a few.
Over this period of time, I had come to know a little more about Bradly as well as my teammates. Aulia was a warm, caring girl who started telling funny stories of what each catapults told her and didn't seemed at all faze about the coming dangers. She said there was enough practice back home. Ivan wasn't as rigid and cold as he looked either, a stark contrast to Vladimir. Although he was a bit sexist, kept referring to himself as a big strong man and constantly tried to flirt with Grace and Orla. Orla is a sweet Irish girl who was bubbly and full of gossips, she couldn't stop pestering with questions about Tom and it took Casey engaging her in conversations to get her off my back. Grace was a lot like me, except she was loud in every possible way. She had a loud voice, an amplified personality and it felt like she is doing X-rays on you all the time. All in all, I had nothing bad to say about them. Bradly was also every bit the big brother a head boy was supposed to me, although I had to say I wasn't a huge fan of his over authoritative attitude, like the world was supposed to listen to him and that he had the best opinion on everything. Typical men.
My personal device was bleeping at the end of the hour, signifying the agreed time that we were supposed to meet back with the UGE. I looked up to the sky to see if I could spot a helicopter passing by, but my guess is that with the surveillance cameras they had around the woods, the UGE would have known that we were under attack.
Whispering for my personal device to send a message to the UGE, I watched as the screen flickered into a black and white fuzz before telling me that there was a signal failure.
"Someone is scrambling our signal." Diego observed from beside me, tapping on his personal device too as Bradly peered at us with interest. His eyes narrowed and he tilted his head upwards just as a crackling sound pierced crisply through the air.
"The first barrier." My lips went dry as we all raise our heads in alarm as the electric blue barrier fell into pieces, shimmering as it descend and disappearing into nothing. "It's already fallen."
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Hey guys! Sorry this chapter is late :P It's always harder to write the chapters inbetween big plot markets and reveals, which Revolution is going to be full of because it's the last book of this trilogy.
But this has end up being one of the longest chapters - almost 3,000 words! And I want to address this before some of you comment: why is there always so many new characters that come and go? And never return?
Well - think about your life. Do you ever just keep meeting the same people again and again? The answer is no. You are going to meet people who will be brief visitors in your life; like that girl you met at summer camp, or the cute classmate that you never talk to. You then meet another girl or classmate, and never see them again. And that's life. It's full of main characters and rotating cast of other people because THIS IS A REAL WORLD - and that's what I am making the POE Universe about. I mean, Nigel making a come-back was about as far as I go with recycling minor characters.
It also dawn on me that I really want to expand and uncover the global network of Citybases - that's why Aulia is in the story :) and something that I will work on when I rewrite the whole series.
On a side note - have everyone heard about SciKick? I am so excited about being part of the team that the other 10 authors are constantly being spam by me. We are currently doing a interview of each of us, and will do competitions etc soon! So go give us a follow, check out our interviews and comment below with any questions you want to ask us!
As always - don't forget to comment and vote!