Part One - Transfer
Eventually, as the students finished their compulsory chore, they began to sit down one by one, bored and confused by the strange behaviour of their doddering old teacher who was sitting at her desk, pulling nervously at her own fingers, rheumy old eyes darting around the room at the grumbling students. Calling out in that same odd wavering, almost tearful voice, she entreated the remaining children to sit down quickly so that the room could be inspected by a guard.
When they were finally all seated, however, Miss Claridge did not call in a guard. Instead, she got up from her desk and walked quickly out of the room, at which point a loud metallic clunk was heard plainly by all the students, and that sound could only mean one thing: the doors had all been automatically locked from the outside.
That sound had only ever been heard once before by them – when one of their former classmates, a lunatic kid called Kyle whom no-one really knew anything much about, had freaked out one morning in Latin class and held a knife to the teacher’s throat for making him conjugate verbs for too long. After this incident, when the enraged student had been wrestled to the ground by two guards and beaten to a bloody pulp in front of the locked-in class, Kyle had mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again…
Even the sound of the door locking made some of the more sensitive students panic. Reiko Abe and Park Lee-soo, in particular, were exchanging frightened looks, and some of the kids started to try to get up from their desks. But before they could, there was a sudden swift hissing sound, and the air suddenly became heavy and sticky with a strange chemical smell.
“f**k – we’re being f**king gassed!” cried Anna Morgon, suddenly launching herself from her desk to the window, to try and open it. But all the windows were locked firmly. More and more students began to beat feebly at the laminated windows and doors, choking and gasping for oxygen, one by one collapsing to the ground, or onto their desks, unconcious and inert save for a feeble and eerie wheezing which filled the room as they all sank into oblivion.
When it was judged that all the students were fully out for the count, another metallic clunking sound indicated that the doors were opened, and a small battalion of heavily-armed guards lifted the comatose kids out one by one, carrying them to a waiting coach that was parked in the courtyard.
For some hours, they were transported to a small town in the middle of nowhere, escorted by army police through a giant electrified fence. Once they had arrived at their final destination, the guards removed their sleeping bodies from the coach and dumped them into a small classroom in a strange school, surrounded by a ring of steel in the form of helicopters, tanks and military squadrons.
Another gas was released into the room, an antidote to the first to ensure that all the students woke at precisely the same time.
F***ing hell, Park thought vaguely, drifting in and out of sleep, stretching his lean body out over the floor langourously... I dunno what the f**k I was drinking last night but I won't be drinking it ever again... shit, my head hurts...
He struggled to pull his eyes open a crack, feeling the cold hardness of the floor against his back.
The floor - ?
What the - ? Where the hell am I?
He came to sharply, forcing his sore eyelids apart, to be greeted by a truly bizarre sight. His fellow students were all strewn bodily across the floor of a room Park did not recognise, all of them unconscious - or dead?
He began to panic as he remembered what had happened back in their classroom... they'd been gassed, hadn't they? He could see an image in his mind's eye of everyone piling against the windows and doors, beating them helplessly with their fists. He groaned, rubbing his aching head, knelt up and looked around, trying to locate his friends and try to help them.
Kyo had been lying sprawled across Park's legs, as though someone had simply dropped him from a height there. Park's head had been lying pillowed against Devon's thigh. Reiko, Ryu and Jennifer were all in a heap of limbs nearby; Sylvain and Chloe equally so. Paul and Leon, as ever, were together, but with the unfortunate addition of Hannelore.
The rest were scattered at random, some with their heads resting against the legs of chairs, some curled up as though they were simply sleeping. It filled Park's heart with horror to see it, but thank God they were all starting to come round at last.
"Kyo! Are you OK?" he hissed, shaking the nearly-comatose Japanese boy, as Dev groaned behind him, clearly also in pain.
Reiko and Ryu had already pretty much come around, and the shock had kicked in for Reiko: she was crying, disoriented and terrified by the events which had taken place. Ryu was white-faced, trying to shake Jennifer awake.
Sylvain, though, was having a harder time of it. The combination of nerve gases had messed with his medication, and he'd had a mild seizure as he regained consciousness. Now he was sweating, shaking, with chills and tremors shaking his frail body, being cradled caringly by Will Collins who, although not a friend of Sylvain's as such, was worried about his classmate's state of health.
"Hey... what the F**K is going on here?" Park cried out softly, trying not to burst into tears from his own disorientation and fear.
Leon slowly opened his eyes, his vision swam. Blinking rapidly he blinked back the tears that'd been formed by the gas.
He was lying on the floor in a tangled heap that comprised of himself, his brother and Hannelore.
Disengaging himself from the tangle, he stood up. The room they were in was one he hadn't seen before. remembering the widespread panic before he lost consciousness, Leon looked hopelessly for an exit.
Paul groaned himself awake, his first sight was his brother standing with a confused expression on his face "Where the f**k are we?" Paul's voice rasped. It seemed the gas had had some effect on his lungs.
His face had been buried in Hannelore's breasts "heh at least I had some good pillows for my nap" he chuckled, earning himself a disapproving sneer from the German.
The two untangled themselves and stood up and witnessed the confusion as the other students pulled themselves drowsily back into consciousness.
Kyo prised his eyes open, already wondering why he was being shaken so violently. It felt like an aftershock of an earthquake back in Japan, but was accompanied by a desperate voice.
"....uh...eh?" He held up both hands and pushed Park back, not realising who it was at first. When his senses finally returned the Asian student blurted out a garbled apology and bowed his head. The memories were still alluding him and he only noticed that they were in a different room several seconds later.
"...park-san? Doko desu ka?" <take as being; where are we?>
At Park's side Dev curled up and coughed violently to clear his lungs before sitting up slowly. He glanced between the small clusters of students and around this unfamiliar room. Suddenly everything came flooding back and for the first time in years Dev swore loudly.
Of course it only sent him into another coughing fit and cut off any protests he was about to launch into.
Park, with his panicking mind running in a thousand different directions, distractedly helped Kyo to sit up, supporting the shaking Japanese boy and cringeing slightly when Devon let forth a volley of screamed expletives, seemingly out of character for the usually super-cheerful skate boy, which didn't help Park's nerves any.
Something was ringing a bell in Park's head, although he couldn't figure out why he was finding this totally weird situation familiar. Certainly this was no room in the Institute that he'd ever seen - so they couldn't all have been kidnapped to Harvey's lobotomy quarters all at once... could they?
But it wasn't that, he was almost sure of it. No, no, there was something else this reminded him of... but he couldn't put his finger on it. Something he'd heard about in Korea, maybe...?
"I don't know, I haven't got a clue. I just remember us all being gassed and then - waking up on the floor. I think I must have been the first person to wake up, 'cos I thought everyone else was - was dead, or something," and his strained voice cracked a little. "I don't know what the f**k is going on. Sorry," he added as a stray tear of terror made its way down his pallid face, and he swiped it away angrily. All he could see and hear in the dimly-lit room was the other boy's eyes shining with fear, and other students crying and coughing.
"Dev - you OK, man?" he muttered, a little afraid to get any closer after his friend's freak-out fit.
Devon groaned, finally managing to catch his breath. He hadn't lost control that badly since...well in a long time and he could tell from the hesitant tone of Park's voice that he'd freaked the kid out.
Groping in the darkness he found Park's arm, or at least he hoped it was his and held on tight, "Y-yeah man, that gas just made me cranky...you okay?"
Kyo held back tears, distraught at the lost feeling welling up inside him. Of course Mr. Harvey was rumoured to have all these weird procedures to make students conform, but all of them? Was the mess in the classroom really justification for a mass lobotomy?
Without thinking Kyo latched onto the korean, little choked up attempts to conceal his fear escaping anyway.
As Sylvain's symptoms subsided as the gas-chemicals diffused through his bloodstream and decreased in effect, he looked at Will, who was supporting him, and said shakily, "Th-thanks, Will," still ashen-faced and trembling from the aftereffects of the seizure. It had been some while since he had had one of those, and he had forgotten how unpleasant they were.
"No problem Sylvain, are you feeling better now?" the other boy asked concernedly. Sylvain nodded, wrapping his jacket more closely around himself as the chills cut through him.
"Yes... a bit. Merci," and the blond nodded respectfully.
"OK, well, I'm gonna see if anyone else needs any help," Will said softly, patting Sylvain's shoulder, "Give me a shout if you need anything."
Sylvain thanked him again; nearby, he could hear Chloe crying quietly, so he wondered maybe if she could use some help - but did he want to risk getting his head bitten off again?
"C-chloe...? Are you OK?" he mumbled, stretching out his hand to squeeze her shoulder, but she wailed and batted his hand away as if it were an irritation.
"Course I'm not, you f***ing moron," she shouted, "I've been gassed and I've broken my f-favourite pair of f***ing shoes..." at which point she collapsed into hysterics.
If Sylvain hadn't been feeling so lousy, he would have slapped her - not because he wanted to stop her hysterics, rather because he thought she deserved a damn good slapping for being such a stupid, superficial bitch. Instead, he sighed, rubbing the sweat from his forehead with his jacket sleeve, and tried to look around in the shadows to see how the others were doing... trying to get some kind of answers to what was going on here.
"Yeah... I'm OK, thanks," Park replied quietly supporting both Devon and Kyo with an arm around each of them, still feeling slightly guarded, but a little reassured that Devon wasn't about to lose it and start trying to bash his way out of the situation - starting with the kids he was sitting with. "Can you breathe OK now? Man... I really really thought we were done for when I woke up and I was the only one... I thought they were trying to kill the lot of us or something..."
Glancing around, he saw that all the windows and doors were barred, so there was absolutely no point in trying to escape.
"Maybe when someone comes to get us, you and me might be able to take them on," Park muttered to Dev, "Providing it's only a couple of people, that is. Any more than that and we don't have a hope in hell of being able to fight our way out..."
But as he was thinking of other ways to try and escape, he heard some soft little sounds of distress from the skinny Japanese boy he was supporting, and realised Kyo was crying.
"Hey... hey, it's OK," he murmured, "Don't cry, there's no need. Whatever happens, I'll look after you, 'kay? I meant it when I said I liked you, man," and he held the other boy close, his arms around his neck, comforting him, near tears himself again.
As soon as it became clear there was no escape from the room, Leon's stomach crawled with fear. This was all too similar to what happened when he first came here, when.... Leon pushed the memory away, it caused too much pain and shame and certainly wasn't gonna help them here.
He turned to Paul and signed in the language the two had developed, something to the tune of "We have to get the f**ck out of here!"
Paul meanwhile, was having similar plans of escape. Usually he was quite good for coming up with ideas, his "Get Out of Jail Free Cards" as he liked to call them. But he wasn't exactly coming up with anything sophisticated right now.
He looked at Leon, surprised to see his brother actually shaking I mean, they'd been locked in prisons before, it seemed strange he was reacting so strongly. He signalled back, "when that door opens, we're gonna take out the guards" Leon looked at him and made two gestures. He mimed a gun firing and then slowly drew his middle and index fingers across his neck.
Paul stared, the meaning was pretty damn obvious. "sh*t!......"
Dev resolved himself to Park's idea quickly, afterall they were both fast, athletic and more than capable of taking a couple of people on. He just hoped it was only a few or they really would be stuck.
When he heard Park comforting Kyo all their hastily laid plans took a back
burner and he reached round, rubbing Kyo's trembling back for a moment.
Before leaving them to it, the conversation seemed to be taking a distinctly
personal turn.
In an exaggerated whisper he called, "Jennifer?? Ryu??" Trying to catch their attention and find out if they too were unscathed.
Kyo raised his head a little, tears still streaming down his ashen cheeks unitl he reached up to brush them away, angry and embarrased for letting Park and Devon see him being so emotional.
"G-gomen, I'm okay now, m'okay." He replied shakily, mostly to convince himself that his words were true. Park's words had soothed a little of his fear as well as the other student's closeness that Kyo was suddenly reluctant to give up.
Park gave Dev a thoroughly grateful look and a very small, very rueful smile as he left them to it, probably more out of embarrassment than consideration. Besides, Dev's strange outburst had left the Korean with a certain cautious feeling towards him... as if the Canadian boy had shown something to them which maybe they weren't supposed to have seen. Something which had been well covered-up for a very long time.
For some reason, the thought sent a chill down Park's spine, and he shivered, holding Kyo a little tighter to him. The little Japanese had at least stopped crying, and was making a positively monumental effort to pull himself back together again. But Park noted that he was making no effort whatsoever to extricate himself from the protective, loving arm that surrounded him.
"All we can do now is wait and find out what the hell is going on here. I guess they don't intend to kill us, at the very least, otherwise they would've just fed poison gas into the classroom and that would have been the end of us all. It would have been easy for them to do that," Park murmured soberly, thinking out loud, absent-mindedly stroking Kyo's shoulder in a very comforting, soothing way.
"But if this is the 'special cases' division of the school - and I know you know what I'm talking about - if they think they're gonna cut my f**king head open and mess about with my brain, they better think about it twice. I'll kill the bastards before I let them touch either of us."
"Or kill myself, whichever happens first... depends on whether they'll be escorting us to the operating room with guns, I guess..."
The reality of the situation had not yet sunk in: the sensitive Korean was, like the Japanese boy, still in total shock at all that had happened.
Ryu, on the other hand, was trying to deal with both Reiko, who was crying helplessly, mainly from the pain in her lungs caused by the chemicals, and Jennifer, who still hadn't woken up.
Perhaps she had gotten the biggest dose of the gas; whatever, she wasn't yet coming round. When he heard Devon's voice, he looked around in the dimness, grateful to hear someone sympathetic.
"Dev? It's me, Ryu. Can you come and help out here? Jen's still knocked out and Reiko needs me..."
Kyo looked up, horrified by the ideas which had already begun to form in his mind and were now put into words by Park. He began to tremble, but kept his feelings bound tightly away and eventhough his gaze was still slick with unshed tears he felt able to control them for now.
"It won't come to that, I know it won't." He whispered, reassured by the comforting prescence of the Korean's arms around his shoulders. Whatever was going on for now he would try to be strong.
Dev crawled through the shadows towards Ryuji's voice and round the various slowly reanimating bodies of his classmates, stopping to check on several of them before he finally made it to the Japanese teen's side.
The sound of Reiko crying made him shudder, but when he spoke up again his voice was its usually cheerful self, if a little muted, "Yeah, I got it Ryu."
Jennifer still lay sprawled out and carefully Dev pulled her up and checked her over cautiously. Softly he whispered her name, waiting for some kind of response.
Jennifer slowly regained conscious as Devon whispered her name.
“Just a bit longer,” she tried to say, however what came out sounded more like a grunt. Then she remembered she wasn’t at home and opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was, of course, Devon. “Wha- who…?”
She sat up, looking at Ryu and Reiko, who was crying. Confusion could be read in her face. “What’s happened?” Suddenly she became aware that this was in no way their classroom. It was far too gloomy for that, not to mention cold and… empty. Even if the classroom was full of students, she couldn’t escape the feeling of emptiness.
She tried to get up, but didn’t have enough strength and ended up falling over Devon. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice was starting to sound more like her now.
Hannelore woke with a start. F*cking hell, she thought, who the f*ck has got their head on my tits?
She scowled at Paul Courtney, who scuttled away when she shot an evil glare at him.
Where the f*ck were they? Some godforsaken hole, that's for sure. She wasn't sure exactly what Harvey had in mind for them this time - genocide, maybe? - but she was equally sure that it wasn't going to be enormously pleasant for them all.
She looked around the room. It was in an institution, for sure... board on the wall, chairs around the edge of the room... and bodies thrown into the middle of the space, some stirring, others still quiet.
She stood up. Over in the far corner, by the door, she saw a couple of armed soldiers mouthing to each other. One of them left the room, only to return a moment later with two more. They made their way towards her.
Hannelore realised something was about to happen, and turned away, trying to run off, though for the life of her she didn't know where. The guards grabbed both her arms from behind, however, and bodily dragged her towards the door and out of the room, undeterred by her kicking, punching and screaming.
Ami awoke and sat up slowly, her thin arms barely supporting her weight. It seemed strange to her, seeing so many of her classmates in fear and crying. She shook her head and sighed as she leaned her body up against one of the walls.
Looking around the room, it slowly became clear to her that she wasn't at Harvey any more. 'was there a raid?' she thought trying to remember what had happened. Shaking her head once more for clarity she remembered what had happened.
"They gassed us" she whispered as a single tear made its way down her cheek. She wiped it away, almost automatically, not wanting anyone to see hr tears.
As the men walked in and took Hannelore, Ami jerked back, pushing herself as close to the wall as possible. She watched, fear overpowering her senses and they took the screaming girl away. Sure noone liked her, but she was still a member of their dysfunctional group.
She pushed herself further back, trying to blend in with the wall, trying to remain hidden. Out of sight, out of mind. She slid herself along the room making her way to the back of the group. Hoping they would be taken before her.
The door to the classroom reopened, causing many of the students, already freaked out by both their location and the forcible removal of Hannelore, to cry out.
Hannelore, bloodied and beaten, was carried back into the centre of the room by two guards, each dragging her by a shoulder. It was clear she was not in much of a state to walk.
Karine Davide, who, while not exactly a friend with Hannelore, at least was one of the few who tolerated her company, looked nervously around and, crouching, approached the sobbing German who was collapsed in a heap, surrounded by her own blood and mucous.
"Hanne... what did they do to you?" she whispered.
"Karine... oh Karine... it was horrible. They took me into a room... they... hurt... me... hit me... punched me, kicked me... they said... they said it was for revenge for what I did to one of their friends... when all I did was sleep with him..."
And with that, she descended into sobs again. Karine put her arm around her to try to comfort her as much as she could. For what seemed like an aeon, she was racked by hysterical weeping. After a while, Hannelore looked up and stared Karine in the face.
"Look at me Karine... look at me. I'm going to make them pay for what they've done to me. To my beautiful face. You hear me? They're going to f*cking pay."
As the guards dragged Hannelore's badly beaten body back into the centre of the room and let her go, roughly dropping her on the floor, the other students parted like the Red Sea to allow the bloody girl to drop down, not wanting to be too near to her, all of them reeling with shock.
Park was absolutely terrified, and made no secret of it, scrambling backwards and shielding Kyo with his body, almost wanting to put his hand over the little Japanese boy's eyes to protect him from the horrible sight of Hannelore's injuries.
He whispered tearfully, "What the f**k is this, are we all gonna get beatings? Why are they doing this to us?... we didn't make that f**king mess in the classroom, we don't deserve to get beaten up! I don't understand this shit!" and now he was the one who was crying, despite his efforts not to give into the terror that was threatening to turn his shaking limbs to water and render him totally useless and unable to protect anyone from anything, let alone his crush.
And he couldn't allow that, couldn't allow anything to happen to the innocent kid who'd tried so hard to conform to save himself.
"I... I'm s-sorry, Kyo. I'm being pathetic now. But I swear I won't let anything happen to you," he muttered resolutely, pressing his fingers to his wet eyelids and clenching his jaw, riffling his trembling fingers through his scruffy dark red locks anxiously.
As Ryu tried to persuade Jennifer to sit down again and this time stay sitting down, he tried not to feel hurt when she sat down next to Devon - after all, these were pretty extreme circumstances, and no-one was thinking straight. But it did hurt, and he couldn't help but react.
Reiko, on the other hand, was secretly reassured to see Hannelore was the one to get beaten up: she probably deserved it the most out of all of them. After all, she was real scum, a thoroughly nasty piece of work. Reiko had always hated her... after all, it was Hannelore that had given her the horrible nickname 'Lollipop', which she knew full well the other kids called her behind her back. So as far as the pretty Japanese girl was concerned, Hannelore's beating was probably entirely justified. Hell, she'd have liked to have had a hand in it herself.
"Ryu... Dev... perhaps now they've beaten the shit out of Hannelore they'll leave the rest of us alone... do you think so?" she whispered, feverishly, her eyes shining with unshed tears of desperation, nestling into Ryuji's warm, comforting embrace, feeling totally unthreatened - after all, he only had eyes for Jen, and yet she appreciated the way he had comforted her and allowed his own arch-rival to look after Jennifer... that was a real best friend for you.
"I... I don't know, Rei, I just don't know," he said quietly, squeezing her tightly, "Sit tight and wait for them to come to us. That's all we can do right now..."
He turned to Jennifer, and only just resisted the urge to put his hand over hers which lay limply in her lap. Instead, he sighed painedly, and whispered, "How are you feeling now? You were out for a long time..."