LOGAN

My attention was drawn to the door by quiet knocking and it was slowly pushed open. A guy about our age poked his head into the room, his hair black with red tips as he smiled timidly, his eyes dark. He stood a couple of inches smaller than Erica as he stood between her and Brian, holding his hands behind his back.

“Cody will show you to your room. And hopefully to a shower.” Cody awkwardly waved as Erica introduced him, his cheeks pink.

I smiled genuinely for the first time since I had arrived at the facility. Something about him was…endearing. Whilst I still wanted to set the room alight, I sort of wished that he would step out first.

“I think you’re a couple of doors down from me.” He explained, leading me out into the corridor and thankfully away from Miss Intimidating and Sir Spineless.

“Are there many of us here?”

“

Most leave when they’re of age, but a few stay behind to help teach classes and supervise everyone else. There’s a bit of a turn around every couple of years, but I don’t think there’s any more than eighty to one hundred at any given time.” Cody explained, showing the way through various winding corridors and staircases. If I had been left to my own devices, which I was sure Erica wouldn’t have had a problem with, I would have lost myself in this place.

My eyes widened. “How are there rooms for everyone, that’s insane.”

Cody shrugged his shoulders, strands of crimson tickling the back of his neck. “It’s a huge facility. Castaneda couldn’t have designed a larger underground base if he tried, which I guess we’re thankful for.”

“Yeah, the only thing.”

“They gave you the rundown?”

I nodded. “Probably the most confusing one.”

“It’s a lot to be told at once.” Cody agreed. “You’re lucky that at least you knew and had seen your ability in action before your talk. It’s much more confusing for others who aren’t quite ready to be confronted with the impossible like that.”

“Is that what happened to you?”

Cody coloured. “Unfortunately no, I knew my ability before I even got off the train.”

“Wha-”

“This is your room.”

Cody cut me off, having led me up onto the floor above. The corridor was set out like an apartment block, although there were names directly laminated and blue tacked to the door instead of numbers. Cody’s room turned out to be directly next to mine, and although I planned on getting out of here at the nearest opportunity, I found myself feeling happy that he was so close by.

A friendly face perhaps? He seemed to be the nicest one in the facility thus far.

I pushed open the door and hesitated before Cody pushed me further into my room. The room was relatively small with my bed at the far corner away from us, and a bathroom branching off from that. There was a dresser beside my bed and a wardrobe on the opposite wall, although I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to put in it when I have no clothes.

“Your schedule is here on the wall.” Cody pointed to the laminated and colour coded schedule and immediately I had never seen such an offensive piece of paper, and I burned up the last one they gave me.

Ignoring Cody’s objections, I tore the timetable from the wall, and, holding it in my hand, I set it alight until the plastic of the laminate had melted and the paper had become ash. “Yeah, I’m not going to do that.”

“And here we thought the laminate would be Logan proof.” Cody rolled his eyes, pulling another timetable out of his pocket.

“What, did you know I was going to do that?”

Cody laughed. “I knew it before you even did it.”

He blue tacked the timetable onto the wall and I reached out for it.

Don’t even think about it.

I jumped backward and looked down at the boy who chuckled at me, brushing his hair out of his eyes. “Guess I should have warned you about the telepathy thing in case you decided to set me on fire.”

“

It wouldn’t be the first time I’d try to barbecue a person so yeah, that would have been smart.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “The telepathy thing?”

“I can hear people’s thoughts and speak to them inside their heads. Pretty freaky, right?”

“I don’t know.” I mused, however, I kept my distance from him. “What am I thinking right now.”

Cody frowned slightly, putting his hands in his pockets. “When will this nutter get out of my room?”

I bit my lip to try and fight the smile that came to my face. “Sounds about right.”

“Nice.”

“We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t all nutters.” I didn’t know why I was even trying to be nice to him, I was positive that I’d have this place behind me in a couple of days and then I’d never see him again. Being cruel would have been the better thing to do.

A smile twitched at the corner of Cody’s mouth and I forgot all of that. “Get some sleep. I’m taking you to your classes tomorrow and then you’re training with Erica. You’ll need energy and then some for that.”

Before I could reply, Cody closed the door behind him and I was left in my room by myself.

I found it strange that I couldn’t find any windows as I searched the room, looking for a possible escape route. There was no reason for the room not to have windows but it seemed to be the only thing that I didn’t have in there. The bathroom was clean and neat, a change of clothes sitting folded on the toilet seat.

I held the t-shirt up against my body as I looked in the mirror. A perfect fit.

'How the hell did they do that?'

I proved my suspicions correct when I searched through the wardrobe and found an entire selection of clothes in my size. Between training clothes to pajamas, there was everything.

As I surveyed my room, searched through everything, seen how they had analysed me down to a ‘t’ when I wasn’t even conscious, my every instinct screamed at me to escape as soon as I could.

And that was the plan.

CODY

Erica jumped onto my bed before I could even process that she had come into my room and I held back a squeak of fear. She grinned, taking her hair out of her braid as she got comfortable.

“You’re breaking curfew.” I put a bookmark in my book and set it down beside me.

“'You’re breaking curfew,'” She mocked, flipping her curls out of her face.

I rolled my eyes. “So why have you graced me with your presence?”

“What do you think of the new kid?” She scrunched up her nose at the mention, although even I could see that she was excited. We had never had someone quite like Logan before.

“He’s…he’s a lot like you which is why I think you’re both at odds.” Erica opened her mouth to object to me but I cut her off. “Not in a bad way, more like there can only be one trigger happy nut-case in the room at once.”

“How is that not in a bad way?”

“Because I said it with love?”

Erica scrutinized me with narrowed eyes before she laughed, nicking my book as she perused the back cover. “He’s going to be a problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“You should have seen the way he looked at us when we said he wouldn’t be able to leave until he came of age; I thought he was about to bite Brian’s head off.”

“So you think you would have been safe?”

Erica snorted. “You weren’t there when I knocked him out. The man dropped like a sack of potatoes. I can handle my own. I only need to run faster than Brian.”

“Your care for other human beings is astonishing. You’re at danger of becoming the next Mother Theresa.”

“Not if you keep goading me.” She grunted, tossing the book back down onto my bed. “Training is going to be quite a spectacle. I can’t wait to get my hands around his neck.”

“I don’t need to know-”

“Not in the way you just assumed,” Erica pushed me so hard I feared I was going to fall off my own bed, but I knew she had just underestimated her own strength. “I just want to know if throttling him would shut him up.”

“It would shut anyone up.”

Erica grinned. “Exactly.”

My hand went to my own throat as I gulped. I was no longer anticipating tomorrow.