First day at college 5

In a room, there was a figure currently curled up in the corner. He was shivering, his arms hugged tightly around his body though he wore a black hoodie, scuffed up as it was.

Standing before him, or looming in front of him, was a slightly short woman. She had a jacket slung around her arm, and she was staring at the boy as she shifted her weight from one foot to another.

Further behind her was a trail of blood, brain and pieces of flesh. It ran along and ended under a chair, it looked like someone had dragged something and stuffed it under there.

The boy would whisper something occasionally and every time the girl would make a half step forward before retreating when the boy would whimper. Pushing himself away from her and closer to the wall.

“That boy was Harry”

“A pathetic little boy, if I do say so myself”

“Imagine letting such a beautiful and loyal woman suffer just cause you're a little bit scared. She was right and you know it”

“You're especially one to judge, considering what she did was kill a bad guy”

“What you did my friend…” Ortho laid his arm on my shoulder as he leaned in to whisper in my ear.

“You killed an innocent man, and now he haunts us like a fucking parasite!”

“Would you shut up!” I tried to whisper. To squeeze my palms around my ears but yet he never let up. I couldn't even get some peace and quiet in my own head.

His fucking droning!

And her damn shuffling too, could she be any louder?. And why couldn't she just leave like I fucking told her to earlier?!

I just wanted to go home to my blankets and my phone and just disappear. Yet here I was, once again in another crime scene.

I sighed and looked down at my hands at least he didn't break my right fingers, I needed those to hold my phone and scroll. As I said this, those fingers on my left ached in protest.

I pulled my head out to stare at them, I couldn't quite feel as much strength anymore and my vision was not as good but I could see their outline in the darkness. Not broken any longer and just ached a tiny bit. This “mana” thing was pretty damn good.

I heard a noise from in front of me, I guess me taking my head out meant that I was ready to talk in her book.

“Umm… Mas-” She tried to stammer out once more.

I just put my head back into my curled position. Everything about her disgusted me, even that cowardly voice.

In fact I-

We both turned towards the direction of the main entrance. We had both heard it, a squeak and groan from those old wooden doors. Someone had opened them.

After a long few seconds, there was still silence. It was not a comforting one though, it was a silence that held the whisper of danger. I couldn't hear anything whatsoever but maybe that's what scared us the most. The calm before the storm.

The door to the room we were in slowly opened, it creaked announcing something’s arrival with its loud protest. The girl moved in front of me and glanced around like a headless chicken.

I scoffed internally and I thought we might as well put a cardboard box there instead of her. But I still could feel my heart pounding in my chest, even after what I went through there's always more fear to be had.

My eyes were glued on that door, when two red lights pierced through the darkness and two monstrous figures entered.

From below the neck they were covered in black scales, they shifted and undulated as they moved and every time I looked at them closely, I felt my eyes hurt and my brain rush to forget them. I had to fight just to remember they were in the same room. The hoofs they had were large and intimidating on their feet and I wondered how they entered so silently.

On their heads were many eyes that shined and and seemed to lock right on to me, piercing through. Most frightening of all were their guns trained upon us, the red laser targets reminding me I was one finger squeeze away from death.

At the other end, by the window me and Toucan messed up there were another two. They kept their distance only laying their crimson sights on us two, these ones aimed for our chests as I saw two more red dots rest on them.

The ones inside were pointing at our heads. There was a pregnant pause as everyone kept silent and nobody moved a muscle.

One of the others in the room with us, suddenly raised their hand up to their head and did something. After that they lowered their hand, once more gripping their gun and saying nothing.

The girl was still standing in front of me, her slender arms were trembling as she held them up. I felt a hot lick of anger as I thought about how they were treating my woman. I was still rational though, even I was afraid to move myself in my curled position. I could only direct a glare at them, which I think one noticed and turned towards my direction, raised their hand up to their head again before putting it on their gun.

So we stayed like this for many minutes, in silence. None of us moved nor did we ask for an explanation, it was obvious we were waiting for something.

Until the faculty’s main entrance opened up again the door making the now familiar creak. We then heard the clacking (I don't know what sounds they make) of dress shoes against the floor. I couldn't forget their sound, my dad had a collection of them for different occasions and the sound of their footsteps were ingrained in my mind.

They also stopped by the door of the room we were in. Then they entered, in came a slightly tall man, around his thirties with a sharp edged face and messy brown hair. He was dressed in a light brown suit, red tie and black formal shoes, those things were not stealthy at all.

Right now Harold had a dumb look on his face, that totally contrasted with the tense situation.

“Harry? What the fuck? and more importantly who's this cute broad of yours?” He raised his hands pointing at us and sharply turned towards the others in the room, wordlessly asking for an explanation.

The one closest to him shrugged? Yes, it shrugged. They raised their hand up to their head about to do the thing again before Harold once more shouted.

“And take off those damn things! This is Jack's kid for Heaven's sake!”

They all suddenly tensed and froze, turning towards him.

His face got a little red, I swear it was funny how expressive it was. “Take them off now, you're already being rude little cunts!”

They all immediately lowered their weapons, clicked on them, proceeded to quickly disassemble them, store them in two pieces on their backs and finally all tapped the side of their heads. The synchronicity of their movements was strangely hypnotising and beautiful, they did this all at the same time and with much fluidness.

Their heads or atleast now I understand them as masks all seemed to melt down, making a strange sucking sound. They were all people of different genders or skin colours, older than me but all around their mid twenties.

They all looked at me with a variety of different expressions, from nervousness, awe and one even had a slight frown. I couldn't watch them any longer as Harold was already walking towards us. He grabbed the girl in a side hug and I watched her stiffen up, before I was also attacked with one. He was soothingly rubbing our heads and cooing, like one would do to calm a baby.

This was all witnessed by the other “agents” as they all awkwardly watched.

They politely stood there as we were comforted by this strange man. I honestly would prefer if Toucan came back and started torturing me again.

Until one cleared his throat and approached, It was the frowny guy.

“Sir, we still need to question them about what happened here,” he turned to his comrades for support and they all nodded slightly.

Harold sighed, “Fine, switch on the lights, If they don't work bring some light in”

“So you're telling me, one moment you're walking towards this guy about to finish him off and the next moment, it feels like everything is made of snakes?”

Me, Harold, the girl and some other agent who was scribbling some notes down into a notebook were sitting down on some chairs. The agents had combined a few smaller tables together and made a larger table for us to sit in and discuss at.

“Yeah like everything, absolutely everything. It's hard to explain, okay?” I was tired as hell.

It's been minutes since Harold has been grilling me about what happened. It was a struggle to keep my eyes open, and my stress wasn't helped by the girl who was silent and kept on pulling threads on her corduroys. I could hear the stretching and tearing of the threads every time I was supposed to focus. It was getting on my nerves and I was this close to…

I frowned and got annoyed, taking that fidgeting hand and tightly gripping it with my own. That should stop her from doing that annoying shit.

She yelped at this and quickly looked down at her lap. So cute..

Ugh fuck I'm supposed to be mad at her!

I look up to see Harold smirking and the agent politely staring at her notebook.

Harold continued, “Well that is typically an ability of well… their kind. Quite adept at manipulating minds it's puzzling to see it-”

The agent next to him, once again elbowed him before he shut his mouth. She has been doing this for the whole interrogation, responsible I think for Harold not saying too much and therefore depriving us of any useful information as a result.

He sighed and continued, “Afterwards then you were saved by this little lady here by her smacking him over the head, again,” He smirked at her direction, even though she had her head down and her hand was gripping hard onto mine.

Behind him were more agents that had come in, some had white lab coats on top of their scale suits and had these weird clunky goggles that would extend and reduce every time they focused on something.

Most were shuffling around, occasionally taking pictures of the area, they had dragged out the remains of Toucan and were collecting pieces of him that were scattered around and putting them in airtight bags and whispering amongst each other and glancing at me occasionally. Annoying.

“Now the final question is, how did he then end up the way he did, with his head… umm not there and dead?” He asked as he leaned back on the chair he was sitting on, maybe he wanted to see our faces better.

I tensed up and the girl's hand squeezed hard. She had an iron grip on me, her nails digging in slightly as I felt her tremble.

I couldn't let her take the fall for this, no matter how much I disagreed and was pissed off by her actions. She was still…

I felt a fierce heat in me when I thought of them taking her away.

“It was-”

“I did-”

We both started speaking at the same time and we glanced at each other then at them.

Harold had his hands behind his back, his signature smirk on his face, the minute-taker had her entire face hidden behind the notebook.

“Well it's inconclusive it seems. We don't know how exactly the subject died, maybe it was the backlash of his ability?” He says this with a meaningful tone and the note taker simply nods and starts scribbling again on her book.

He clapped his hands, “Honestly I was going to fudge up the reports anyways, when I heard it was you. No matter the consequences or the reasons”

An agent behind him, hands him a tablet and he briefly checks through it and claps his hands again. “But looking at what we've seen here, it's going to be easier to push things in your favour”

Harold hands it to the note taker, she spends a few seconds looking and they whisper a bit to each other. She nods and they lean away from each other again.

“I can tell you this much for your safety, let's say that this Master of his is not from around here. It was a rogue agent and is not here under our jurisdiction and thus you could be considered to have done us a favour.”

“Imagine if any other student in my school met him today, and he was already under our radar for suspicious behaviour”

If only he knew, I was the one who provoked Toucan that day.

Well I wasn't telling, neither was the girl holding my hand it seems. So it'll stay a secret another day longer it seems.

I nodded at him and he smiled. “I think I've extracted all the information I can from you. Now we begin recovery”

A bag is handed to him from behind him and he places it in front of us.

“We have to at least ensure you guys take a shower before we go anywhere.”

He led us through a few stairs until we ended up in front of a door that said staff. He fumbled around with some keys on a chain. Something bothered me about this and it was related to something he said earlier on.

“By the way Harold, how do you have the keys to this staff shower?”

He paused, raising an eyebrow, “That's what you ask?”

“When you have the leader of a secretive organisation all alone?”

I nodded.

“That's because I'm your Dean dummy,” He smirked and finally gasped in happiness when the key slid in.

What? This dumbass?

And how can you be both a dean and be doing this shady supernatural organisation work don't they conflict?

In fact my mind went back to what I found him doing when we first met, I shuddered thinking about that. This was definitely a problem having this guy as the leader of the whole university.

“There you go, I couldn't let you guys go to the student ones not clean enough, I even almost slipped when-” He quickly stopped himself and started abruptly walking away.

I shouted at his back as he moved away, “Wait! there's only one toiletry bag!”

He waved back, “You're washing each other's backs and that's an order”

“Or I'm arresting you two for murder!”

My mind blanked, shocked at this guy's shamelessness. What!?

I felt a squeeze on my hand and a wave of nervousness in my belly.

I gulped and avoided looking down at the person who had since then not let go of my hand.