Its an early Monday morning in Sunset City and the streets are bustling. Cars and people are rushing to get from one place to another. One young man is making his way down the crowded sidewalk, pushing people aside as he does. He makes a left and approaches a large building. From the outside, it is very wide and looks like it has two floors. There is an American flag raised in front of a set of steps that lead three sets of double doors. The boy walks up to the left doors and yanks the door open. He rushes inside an enters what seems to be a front office. He stops and looks around the office.
"Strange," He thought, "Where is Miss Angie?"
Miss Angie was a sweet woman that was always kind to him. Sometimes when he would be late, she would write him an excuse. Today, it wasn't going to happen. Instead, he needed to get to class before he's marked totally absent. As he approached the exit of the lobby, the door creaked open and a head of long, red hair popped out.
"Excuse me, can you help me find my class?" the girl said as she entered the room, eyes looking down at a sheet of paper. When she looked up, her tone shifted, "Oh, hey Guy! Sorry I didn't wait up. I didn't want to be late for the first day of school. Although, it looks like we will be anyways."
Guy, as we now know him, recognized this girl. Her name is Christina and she is a good friend of his. Her apartment building is right next to his home, so they rode the bus together quite often. Once they started middle school, they lived close enough to walk.
"Hello? Earth to Gyles!" she said using his real name to grasp his attention, "We need to get going!"
"Oh shit, sorry." He replied without a sense of urgency. After all, they're already late and its not like there will be an assignment on the first day of class. "let's get going."
Before leaving the lobby, Guy pulled out his schedule he received during the summer. He and Christina have several classes together, including homeroom. As he looked over the piece of paper for probably the first time, he noticed something unusual. Their homeroom was in room C-111. To his knowledge, there were no C classrooms. A rooms were on the first floor and B rooms were on the second floor, so where could room C-001 be?
"I've never heard of this classroom before. Have you?" He asked Christina, who had been looking at his schedule over his shoulder.
"Nuh-uh," she mumbled.
"Let's check the first floor," Guy said calmly.
"Right, but we need to hurry!" she said as she grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the lobby exit.
The pair did a quick run-through of the first floor. As expected, all the rooms started with the letter A. They did notice that none of the clocks were working, but they quickly forgot as they ran around the school. After the check, they moved on to the second floor, which had identical results.
Guy and Christina stopped running and were slightly out of breath. Both were on the swim team, so they were reasonably healthy and in decent shape. What had them out of breath was the anxiety of being late for class. Despite his nonchalant attitude about the situation, Guy tries to be a good student.
"Crap," Christina exhaled as she panted, "what are we gonna do?"
"I don't know," Guy replied, also panting. "but they can't hold it against us if they screwed up our schedules," he continued, hoping it was true. "Lets head to the office and get them fixed."
"Fine, but I don't wanna take the stairs," she whined as she leaned against Guy, "Hey, let's take the elevator."
Guy reluctantly carried her on his shoulder down the hallway. Once he brought her insight of the elevator, she took her weight off his shoulder and made a break for the buttons and Guy chased after her. Christina's never lost her lead and reached the elevator seconds before him.
As they entered the elevator, Guy began to question Christina, "if you were going to run, we could have just taken the stairs."
"You're just upset you lost!" she mocked him.
"Whatever," he said, trying to not give her the satisfaction, "You had a head start."
She stuck her tongue out at him as he turned to the elevator's panel of button. The elevator was meant for handicapped and people with carts, so neither of them had ever used it before. Examining it, he saw three unlabeled buttons. He hit the first one. Instinctually, he hit the one on the bottom, but that only opened the elevator doors. Next, he tried the middle button, which closed the doors, but did nothing else. Finally, he tried the top button. The elevator shook, and the lights began to flicker.
"W-what's happening?" Christina exclaimed while backing into the corner, bracing herself.
Guy didn't respond. Instead, He stood petrified in fear. Luckily, the disturbance didn't last long. A few seconds later, the doors slowly opened, and the pair quickly exited the elevator as if it would give out if they stood on for another second. After composing himself, Guy began walking down the hall. Before he could take a second step, Christina grabbed him by the wrist.
"Wait!" she said as she pulled him back, "This isn't the first floor."
After quickly looking around, he nodded in agreement. This wasn't any part of the school he had seen before. They were in a long hallway lined with lockers and thin windows that were the only sources of light in the entire hall. All the light panels were either broken or turned off. At there were no doors or exits except for a classroom door at the end of the hall. Guy's first thought was that they had taken the elevator into some sort of storage area in the basement, but the windows disproved that theory.
Unable to come up with any other explanations for the events that had just transpired, he turned to Christina, "how about we go check that classroom?" he suggested.
Without waiting for a response, he tugged his arm free from his friend's grasp and made his way to the room on the far end of the hallway. Christina followed closely behind him, almost uncomfortably so. Upon reaching the door, Christina peeked out from behind him and looked at the room number and her schedule.
"This is the room," she whispered excitedly to Guy, "I hope we're not too late."
With that, he opened the door. As he did, light flooded the empty, dark hallway. The light was pleasantly warm and inviting. Guy held the door open for Christina as she entered. He quickly followed her in and pulled the door shut behind him. He let out a sigh and looked around the classroom. He saw some familiar faces, some unfamiliar faces, but most importantly, he didn't see a teacher. Christina had already gone over and started chatting with a blonde girl on the other side of the classroom. The girl's name was Claire. She was in a grade lower than Guy, but he was familiar enough with her. She was the type of girl who would rather burn to death on a boat fire than jump in the water and ruin her makeup. He had to give her credit, she was one of the best artists in the school. He had art with her last year and when the class had to put together a mural for the art festival, she led the project and won them first place.
After he observed Christina and Claire, his attention shifted to a pair of boys who were laughing away at the front of the room. One of them he recognized as Armando Irvington. He is a kid with dark skin and messy, brown hair. Guy was pretty sure he saw somebody on the school football team with that name, but who cares about middle school football? He always assumed that Armando was a dullard, but there are rumors that he's smarter than he seems. The kid that he was talking to was someone Guy had never met. He was smaller than most of the others in the room, so he was most likely a 6th grader. His height wasn't the only telling sign. His cargo pants and red sweatshirt were way too big, much like Guy used to wear.
The only other people in the room were Devin Zain and another kid he had never met before. Devin, unsurprisingly to Guy, was sitting in the corner reading a book. He was in the 8th grade too, but was younger than everyone else. He had skipped 4th grade and always got good grades. Guy only had a couple classes with Devin last year, but he knew enough about him. He was more interested in books than people. he also had a reputation for being rude to people he thought were stupid (which, compared to him, includes everyone).
The last person was a tall, blond kid sitting at the front of the class. At first glance, he looked like he was the same age as Guy, if not older. His pale, blue eyes were firmly affixed on an analogue clock hanging above the whiteboard.
"What do you want?" the kid asked Guy.
The inquiry caught him off guard. after standing there for a few seconds, he approaches the boy offers him a handshake.
"Hi, i'm Guy!"
"Cameron," the boy said without taking his eyes off the clock.
Guy followed Cameron's gaze and studied the clock himself. The clock was completely still. At that moment, he remembered that none of clocks he and Christina ran past were working.
"The school's system must be out of whack," Guy said trying to rationalize the coincidence, "what time do you have on your phone?"
"I already checked. It won't turn on."
Guy pulled out his to check, but it wouldn't turn on either.
"Now that is strange. I'm sure it was charged when I left home."
Guy waited for Cameron to respond, but he never did. After the awkward silence, he took a seat next to him and began to daydream. After a while, his eyes began to wander around the room again. It seemed to be an ordinary classroom, but with a couple things missing. First off, there was nothing on the walls. No decorations, posters, or any other sign to show you what classroom you were in. Another thing he noticed was the absence of the teacher's desk. Usually there was one in the back of every class or off to some corner, but in this room there wasn't one at all. There was however, a table at the front of the room. The only thing there was a laptop that presumably belonged to the teacher.
Guy leaned over and mumbled to Cameron, "Hey, do you know who our teacher is?"
"No," was all he got in response.
Unsatisfied with not knowing who the teacher was, Guy approached the front table and began investigating the computer. There wasn't any name tag or label on it. In fact, there wasn't even a sticker with the school's name on it.
Guy turned around to the rest of the class and waved to get their attention, "Hey, does this laptop belong to any of you?"
Much like before, his inquiry was met with no direct response. It did peak the interest of Devin, who had closed his book and made his way to the front of the room without saying anything. Once he reached the laptop, he knelt down by the table and opened the lid. After a few seconds of sputtering and grinding, the screen lit up and a synthetic voice began speaking.
"Hello," the machine spoke out loud with text on screen accompanying it.
The noise brought an end to everyone's activities and one by one they joined Guy and Devin by the computer.
"Is this part of our class?" said the younger boy, who's name Guy still didn't know.
"I don't know A.J.," replied Armando, who like the rest, genuinely had no clue what was going on.
"Hello, is anyone there?" The computer spoke again.
"No!" Screeched Claire as she hid behind the others.
"Calm down!" Devin said calmly, "it's not like she can hear us."
"She?" Guy questioned him, "what are you talking about?"
Devin's face turned dark red after realizing his blunder.
"it! I meant it!" He says trying to quickly move on, "there's no microphone on this old thing. If we want to talk to IT, we have to type it in."
He then went on to answer to the computer's question truthfully, reading aloud as he typed.
"Yes, there are people here." He said and typed, "Are you our teacher?"
The computer didn't respond with its own answer, instead, it asked another question.
"How many people?"
"Seven"
After he entered the last response, the computer began making a lot of noise again and the lights began to flicker. Soon enough, it gave it's final reply.
"That will do" it spoke before the room went dark. Several screams were let out before the screen flashed and went black again. After a few seconds, the lights came back on, but nobody was there. All seven kids were gone. All that was left was the sound of a ticking clock and a creaking door...