CODY:

I brought my sheets up over my face as Erica shook me awake, the grin that split her face being the most disconcerting nightmare I had ever witnessed. “Let me sleep, please.”

“You’re going to be late for classes.”

“I have an alarm set for like.” I squinting at my phone screen, biting the inside of my cheek to refrain from cursing. “I have another ten minutes, please, this is all I have left.”

“You’re depressing before you’ve had a coffee.” Erica rolled her eyes, stripping the sheets from my bed and balling them up in her arms. I whined curling up into a ball as I pressed my face into my mattress to keep out the light that threatened to burn my corneas. “Come on, you have to lead Logan around today.”

That reminder is what got me out of bed, pushing past Erica as I ran to the bathroom.

My reaction was much more out of fear than it was out of excitement. I had watched as Logan took his timetable down from the wall last night and set it on fire in the palm of his hand. How easy would it be for him to do that to me?

I didn’t voice my concerns to Erica as I dressed and ran my fingers through my hair, the waves poofing up around my head like a halo of chaos. I was filled with dread as I noticed the utensils that Erica held in her hands and I knew that I was not in for the peaceful morning that I had hoped for.

“What the hell are you planning?”

LOGAN:

“Wakey wakey!”

I groaned, grabbing a pillow and shoving it over my head in an attempt to ignore the chaos that had suddenly entered my room. My skin grew hot and I didn’t doubt that if they didn’t stop that incessant banging that I would burn their precious little facility to the ground.

If only it were that easy.

“Erica, maybe we should-”

“Wakey wakey-” Erica dragged out the last letter as she sang, prancing around my room as she banged a saucepan with a wooden spoon. “Wakey wakey, eggs, and bakey.”

“I’ll cook you if you don’t shut up within the next second,” I growled, peeking out at them from below a pillow. I doubted just how intimidating I looked at the moment, but my glare should have been enough to toast them a little.

No such luck; Erica is made out of iron.

“It’s your first day of school, cupcake, we want our precious little boy out of bed and to classes as soon as.” She sang, dancing circles around Cody as he stood beside my bed, playing with the hem of his shirt as he too fought to ignore her.

“Y’know, I liked it a lot better when you hated me.”

“Still do. Annoying you is the fun part that makes the hatred all the easier.” She paused the banging for a second to explain herself before she was right back to it. I thought my brain was going to throb its way out of my skull; slide out of my ears and onto my pillow before I accepted my death.

That wasn’t the way I thought I’d go, nor wanted to go, but I accepted it the moment she started banging on that saucepan as if money was going to fall out of it.

“I’ll get up if you stop.”

“Nope, get up anyway.”

I growled, jumping out of bed quick as a flash, wrenching the saucepan and wooden spoon out of her arms as if her fingers were made of cooked spaghetti. Erica’s grin dropped as she glared at me, her hands on her hips. She was more built than me, and the more I stared her down the more unsure I grew of being able to take her on without setting her alight.

The thought alone made a smile grace my face. Thinking of that made hating her all the more easier.

Cody tugged on the back of my shirt, pulling me a step back from Erica. “We’re going to be late. We can grab something from breakfast on the way but we’ve got to be quick.”

“I’ll be in and out in a second, just please for the love of God, keep these away from her.” I thrust the saucepan and wooden spoon into Cody’s hands before grabbing a change of clothes from my dresser and retreating into the bathroom.

Erica and Cody were sitting on my bed, much more subdued than when I left them. Cody was holding the saucepan and spoon out of Erica’s reach whilst she sulked, pouting at me as I walked back out.

“You took your time.”

“I don’t even think I was in there for ten minutes.”

“…You took your time.” Erica stood from the bed and snatched her instruments of chaos from Cody’s hands before walking out of the room, banging them together one more time for effect.

I clenched my fists and went to storm out after her before I was stopped by Cody.

“It’s not worth it…she could crush you like a bug.”

I was stunned at his honesty considering my mood but I shrugged it off, storming out of the room with him trailing behind me. I let him take the lead once I realised I had no idea where I was going, my face flushed with embarrassment as I trailed behind him like a lost puppy.

Pathetic.

“How do you cope all day in your own head when listening to your thoughts for half a minute makes me depressed?”

I gaped like a fish. “I-Can you not do that?”

Cody smiled. “I’ll stop. Or will I?”

I rolled my eyes, knicking a muffin from the buffet on our way past.

The mess hall he had led me into was by far the largest room I had seen. The ceilings towered above us, with strips of lights the trailed the entirety of the hall. Tables lined the room and there were another two that went down the length of the room down the centre, with wooden benches on either side. At the end of the room closest to the door was the buffet, piled high with all of the foods I could possibly imagine and then some. I wiped the corner of my mouth at the sight, disappointed that I only had time to grab a muffin.

Who the hell cooks for all of these kids?

“You have English first with me this morning and then we have five minutes to get to maths. Erica has declared you hers after lunch up until dinner, so good luck with that.”

“Maths and English?”

Cody swallowed the bite of blueberry muffin that he had bit off before answering. “We weren’t taught anything back at the lab before we turned up here so we’re behind others our age, although we do have basic reading and addition skills. The classes are so that we can catch up and choose to maybe head to college once we turn of age if we do decide to leave.”

“How do you know all of this stuff about the lab if everyone has supposedly lost their memories?”

“It was one of Castaneda’s scientists who set up the lab in the first place. He runs the facility, so he’s passed the information down to us. He was still at the lab when Castaneda was working with the oldest people here.”

My eyes widened. “And you trust him?”

Cody nodded. “He cut all ties with the doctor and set up this place when he realised what was being done. He’s not like what you think.”

“I hope not.”

Cody led me down the corridor connected to the mess hall to a set of classrooms. Each had an interactive board at the front of the room along with double desks, two seats at each. The classroom should have been able to fit around thirty people, although there were only seven of us in the room so far.

“Why are there no windows in this place?” I asked, noticing how there were dim lamps lining the walls. The classroom was painted a cream colour, but the light made it look yellow.

Cody looked me up and down as if I had somehow magically grown an extra head in addition to my ability to set shit on fire. “We’re underground? This entire base is a connection of caves and tunnels that have been dug out and furnished underground, what is your head a sieve.”

Sorry if I was too perplexed by finding out I was being held hostage for a year after waking up with no memories. I’ll try again next time.

“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you,” Cody said after I went quiet and I growled. Our ‘teacher’ walked into the room before I could respond so I sent him glares out of the corner of my eye.

I was in for the longest day of my life.

Our teacher was…exactly what I expected. Her blonde hair was tied in a neat bun at the nape of her neck and she wore a neat white shirt tucked into a neat skirt. Everything about this woman screamed organized and-and-and neat and I knew right off the bat that we were never going to get along.

“Don’t toast the teacher.” Cody hissed out of the corner of his mouth, smiling at the teacher as if nothing was amiss.

The rest of the class slowly filtered in and I began to feel more and more cornered. People surrounded me on all sides, talking to who I guessed was their ‘friends’ because of their constant too bright smiles for the time in the morning that it was.

Ugh.

“Right, I want everyone to take out some paper and write about their earliest memory.”

I raised an eyebrow, slowly swiveling in my seat to look at Cody who had already started scribbling as if his life depended on it.

“Is this bitch serious?”

A hush fell over the class at my words, as I hadn’t exactly been quiet enough to fly under the radar, and a few snickered. The teacher, oh, her reaction was the best of all. She turned every shade of crimson that one could possibly imagine, looking a cross between angry and positively mortified.

Should I toss a coin for her to help her decide?

Cody kicked me under the table, his eyes downcast at his table as he shifted in his seat. He mustn’t have liked all of the heads that turned to look at us, and I didn’t exactly fancy it either, but I wasn’t going to cower in fear as if I wasn’t the one in this room to be cowering from.

“I am completely serious.” Her voice was deadly flat, but I found it hard to be intimidated by someone who could only be a few years older than us.

“Did you miss the memo then? Everyone’s memories are gone, capiche. We’re all going to be writing about the exact same thing; the train. Can’t you be more creative?”

I knew that I was, ironically, playing with fire, but the truth is I could not be bothered sitting in that classroom for any longer. My skin felt like it was about to crawl off my bones from merely being in the company of so many people who frankly, I couldn’t stand. I wanted to be out, I wanted to be out of the facility altogether, not writing some crap piece of work about my earliest memory that was in fact, a few days ago.

The teacher’s heels clicked along the classroom floor as she approached my desk and I found the energy to smirk at her. Cody looked as if he was ready to curl up and die.

“The purpose of this exercise, Logan.” She spat my name out as if it left a nasty taste on her tongue. I sure hoped it did. “Is to see how much people can remember before coming here. After a while, the serum starts to weaken and people can remember some of the time before. This exercise is to help them with that.”

“I thought this was English? Shouldn’t we be learning about some author who upped and died a hundred years ago so now we have to read their ‘greatest books ever’ which are frankly, indecipherable.”

She smiled, although she could also be bearing her teeth, I was unsure. “I suggest you put that vocabulary of yours to good use and start writing about everything you can remember.”

As I watched, claws sprouted out from the front of her heels and scraped along the tiles, her fingernails growing to rival the length of her fingers themselves. She was, in fact, bearing her teeth at me as she snarled, her mouth now filled with row upon row of needles.

Well, that was new.

I gulped. “Yes, mam.”