7.
The next morning began with light streaming in through the gap in my curtains, and I smiled even as I squinted against it. I'd allowed myself a lie-in, since there was nothing important to do until lunchtime, and it was nearly half past ten by the time I got up. Chris was out at his lecture, and I presumed that Luke and Tom were still sleeping, so I allowed myself a relaxing shower, using up all the hot water for the morning and not even caring. I wrote 'Good Morning' in the steamed up mirror, listening to the squeak of my skin against the glass, and added a smiley face for good measure before leaving to get dressed.
Wanting to make a good impression, I pulled on a white jumper with thin black stripes and some black skinny jeans. I brushed through my hair as I arranged my stuff in a small pile on my newly-made bed, sorting through my lecture notes to find the information on entropy. I found my badge lying on the desk and pinned it to my jumper where it could be seen but wouldn't draw too much attention. Rehearsing what I was hoping to say in my mind, I shoved a purple scarf into my rucksack and left it lying beside the bed.
I still had an hour to go before I was needed at the Cavern Club. If I gave myself fifteen minutes to walk there and another five minutes to arrive promptly, I had to find some way to kill forty minutes by myself in the flat. I put some money in my wallet so that I could pay for lunch and studied the map Matt had given me, looking to see where the monitors were patrolling at this very moment in time. They were on the complete opposite side of town, and obviously worked fairly systematically so that they would arrive here in the late afternoon. I found myself wishing that it was like the Marauder's Map, just so that we could see their exact positions, and shook my head in despair at my own idiocy.
With half an hour still to go, I started drumming out a beat on my desk. I paced the room, humming to myself, and unwound the knots in my headphones. I rearranged the order of the food in the shared fridge, Tom finally getting up and eyeing me strangely as I shuffled out of the way to allow him to reach the cereal boxes.
"I'm off to the club," I finally told him, unable to keep waiting around for any longer. "I'll see you later, yeah?"
"We've all got lectures today," he told me between mouthfuls of cornflakes, "so there might not be anybody in when you get home." I patted my pockets to make sure I had my keys with me, because I didn't want to risk getting locked out and having to wait for them to get home.
"That's fine. Have a good day, Tom." I left then, hurrying down the stairs towards the exit to the flat. I could hear my footsteps on the linoleum floor of the hallways and chatter coming from the doors that were slightly ajar, but it wasn't as loud as I'd expected. Even the other day, when Chris and Luke had invited some other students over to get drunk, they hadn't been that loud. Maybe my hearing was just going.
I glanced over at Matt's house as I passed by on my way. It looked completely empty and lifeless, and I wondered if they were all convening before I arrived there. As I looked, however, I noticed that Matt's window looked out towards mine. We could probably see each other if we got the timings right. I winked at the security camera on the side of the building and made my way down to the club.
I hadn't really considered the position of the place before, aside from grumbling that it was out of the way and difficult to find, but after finding out all the information from Matt, it made sense that it was so hidden away. The monitors probably knew of its existence, but it was likely that they'd miss it out accidentally when walking along the street simply because it was behind a few other buildings. They probably checked the place thoroughly and definitely wouldn't miss it out on one of their detailed checks, but it obviously wasn't frequented. I made a mental note to ask Matt whether they'd been there much before and where he hid his folders when they did come around.
When I reached the club, I pushed the door open and was able to hear music floating around the room, drum fills cutting through what seemed like an endless mash-up of slap bass and punk pop. Matt was slumped on one of the bar stools, leaning over the counter itself to talk to Sophie. She was washing up some glasses and they spoke quietly, so I couldn't hear them over the music. I tiptoed up behind Matt, holding my finger to my lips when Sophie saw me, and I saw her own lips twitch slightly. She continued talking to him as if I wasn't there so, when I dove for his waist with my hands, he squealed and leaped from his seat.
"Dom!" he laughed, high pitched giggles spiralling up into nowhere as I pulled my hands back. "Cheeky!" I shrugged.
"I like to keep things exciting. Dramatic entrances are too mainstream," I said flippantly.
"You're a little early. I'll admit, I wasn't expecting you just yet."
"I like to be fairly prompt." He snorted and Sophie hid her grin behind a tea towel.
"So I see. Next time I'll give you a time five minutes later than we begin, and you'll probably still be here early." I rolled my eyes at him.
"I'm only ten minutes early. There was nothing to do in the flat so I figured I'd come down here and see if I could help with anything."
"You could help me do the washing up," Sophie suggested, throwing me another tea towel anyway. I caught it and slid behind the counter to dry my own share of glasses. Presumably they didn't earn quite enough to afford to get a dishwasher in the place.
"The others should be here in just a minute," Matt informed me. "Morgan and Paul were out food shopping when I left, so hopefully they won't be too long."
"Dan was practising when I left. I texted him a couple of minutes ago to remind him, because you know what he's like when he gets on that piano."
"Can't say I can find anything wrong with it. He's really quite helpful. Sophie's brother Dan's been teaching me the basics of piano," Matt added, for my benefit.
"Matt's picking it up really well." An uncharacteristic blush morphed on Matt's usually colourless cheeks and he mumbled to himself, looking at the floor and brushing blue hair out of his eyes.
"Oh, wow. That's pretty cool," I commented. "I wanted to learn it as a kid but I wasn't very good at being musical, really."
"You look like you could carry a beat, though. You should get behind the kit sometime and we could have a jamming session."
"What's this about jamming sessions?" a booming voice asked from the doorway. I turned to see another young man standing there, flipping the sign on the door to 'Closed'. He had floppy, sandy blonde hair and tanned skin, and he walked with a swagger verging on over-confidence.
"Never you mind, Dan," Sophie answered him, throwing her dishcloth at him and coming out from behind the bar counter. "Have you seen the other two?"
"I saw two figures hurrying down the street when I parked, might've been them. Not too sure, to be honest."
"How're you doing, Mr Lopez?" Matt cut in.
"No different to when I last saw you on the weekend, Mr Bellamy. You're looking well, I see." Matt gave a breathless laugh and got up from his bar stool, pacing around the room as we waited for Paul and Morgan to arrive. As soon as the two boys could be heard in the hallway, Matt ran to the front door and locked it. Paul sat down cross-legged in the middle of the floor and the five of us sat in a circle. Once Matt was satisfied with our secrecy, he joined the circle.
"Morgan," he began, "what's your favourite colour?"
"Lime green with a dash of tequila," came the reply, and I felt a frown forming as I watched Matt go around the circle asking questions.
"Paul, which beach did you used to visit every day for a year?"
"Westward Ho!" he answered.
"Dom, can I see your badge, please?" I unpinned it and handed it to him, still bewildered by the interrogation, and he turned it over in his palms before handing it back to me.
"Matt, are you sure this is a good idea?" Dan questioned. "We've never included the students before for a good reason. You might've handed this badge to a spy and not realised."
"Dan, I trust him, okay?"
"I can see that, but you remember what happened recently with the onslaught of spies that weren't quite careful enough. They integrated themselves into the society and you would've been caught out if it weren't for those trust issues of yours. Just because Dom seems like a trustworthy guy doesn't mean he actually really exists." Part of me was hurt that he doubted not only my worth, but my entire existence, but I knew that it was just a precaution. He had every reason to be wary of me. The rest of me swelled with pride that Matt trusted me already, as the others seemed to regard him as generally paranoid.
"Dan, I'm the leader of this group, am I not? I don't like to use this authority over you but I'm going to have to remind you of your place here. Dom, tell me something that nobody knows about you." I paused, swallowing audibly as I tried to think of something that nobody would ever find out but wasn't too embarrassing that I couldn't admit it to the group.
"Er, I've got a birth mark on my right leg?" I told him, unable to look anyone in the eye. I heard a derisive snort from Paul and I looked up to see Matt unsuccessfully trying to hide a wicked grin, his ocean eyes dancing.
"Interesting," he teased, and my cheeks heated to impossible temperatures as I sensed the rest of the group laughing at me. "That'll be your security question, so make sure you don't forget that one." I had a feeling I wouldn't forget this mortification for quite a while.
Matt asked the rest of the group for their identification, comprehension finally hitting me through the daze, and then he slammed a folder down in the middle of the circle.
"Research is on a go-slow. I can't find anything new- have any of you?" The other slowly shook their heads and Matt sighed. Tentatively, I reached for my rucksack and pulled out my notes.
"I-I have something, Matt," I mumbled, the shame hanging over me refusing to retreat as I stumbled over my words.
"Go ahead, Dominic." After a second to gather my thoughts, I laid the notes out in front of me. Matt immediately picked one of them up and started scanning it, hungry for the new information. "Imagine the spotlight's on you." I blanched. "Or don't, if it makes you feel better."
"Well, erm," I wrung my hands and tried to remember my plans from before leaving the house, "I made a few observations about the town. There've been students missing from several different courses, and I know that my main professor is missing too. It seems strange for them all to be ill at once, especially for the first week."
"More disappearances," Morgan noted with a nod. "I've seen that around the town, too, but I thought I was just imagining things."
"I was in a cafe last night and I asked the woman who runs the place if she's noticed anything strange about the town. She seemed like she wanted to tell me something but instead just regurgitated the same information about the locals avoiding the students, but, I don't know, do you guys have something on that?"
"I did a little asking around, did a questionnaire on a few friends, and found that lots of us are actually jealous of you guys," Sophie said, chocolate brown eyes focussed steadily on me, "because you can leave this place and we can't. It makes them uneasy knowing they're trapped here."
"We can't just do questionnaires for everything, though," Matt interrupted. "People will get suspicious if we just go around asking them for their opinions like some scam company selling holidays."
"I was thinking maybe I could help out by asking questions for my studies," I explained. "I need to do quizzes on people and study their responses, and although some things need a single focus point, some of them need a broader spectrum of answers for good analysis. I could pretend that's what I'm doing my final paper on, if you guys need any extra information."
"That'd be...really helpful. Thanks, Dom." He gave me a genuine smile, crooked tooth partially hidden behind his lips, and I felt myself relaxing a little bit, my shoulders dropping. "What's this you've got here, though? It looks kind of complicated."
"Oh, the physics thing? Well, er, I was doing a little research last night. This'll sound completely insane and I'm probably wrong but I was looking up the isolation system theories and instead came across something about isolated systems, which has something to do with thermodynamics..."
"In an isolated system, entropy can only increase," Paul breathed. "I did Physics here at the University and I remember that being one of the first things we did a paper on. We had to learn about the full thing, all the different laws and the contradictions. You're right, Dom."
His eyes were wide as he stared at me, and he pulled one of my pieces of paper from the middle of the circle and began reading it intently. The other four were giving me blank looks.
"Basically, entropy represents one of two things. Either it stands for the fading of energy from a system or the gradual descent into madness," Paul elaborated.
"So, here in Exeter, we are living in an isolated system, and this means that one of these things will happen. Either we will cool and just end up subdued, or we will go mad just like before all of this began, with the two rival groups fighting for control over the city. We'll just boil over. Either way it's a recipe for disaster," I continued.
"Where did you find this?" Matt inquired softly, his face inquisitive.
"I went to the library and looked at the old government records. And then I did a little extra research on the internet for the science-y side." Silence fell over the group as they read through my notes, murmuring with agreement as they took in what I'd written. I shifted awkwardly on the floor, my legs digging into the hard surface, and tapped my knee absently.
"This could actually be a genuine find. This is really serious stuff, Dom. And it explains rather a lot. If the disappearances are supposed to symbolise the loss in energy, it means the government will be trying to subdue us. We need to stop that. Dom- you're a genius!" he exclaimed, a huge smile gracing his sharp features.
"Well, I mean, I wouldn't go quite that far," I scoffed disbelievingly, knowing I couldn't really take the credit for typing a few words into Google.
"Matt, what are we going to do?" Morgan asked, the group turning to Matt for orders.
"Well," he began slowly, thinking through his response. As the 'leader' of the group, he had to make the main decisions and we were to follow him. If he did something wrong, he was the one to blame. Everything he said had to be carefully processed in his mind first, and from what I'd seen of Matt's spontaneous nature so far, I imagined that it was quite the difficult task for him. "We can create an action plan, now. I think we have sufficient research to actually start doing things. If they're planning to make sure we all fade out, even getting the students involved, they're obviously following this entropic thing. Of course, we can't really do anything just yet, but I'd like to get going as soon as possible."
"Dom and I could try and do a little more research before the next meeting if you want, Matt," Sophie interjected, and I nodded to show my approval.
"If you could, that'd be brilliant, thank you. Next meeting, I'll make sure to bring all of my research. It's been a little while since they checked here, so we'll have to make sure we have everything secure and safe. If we meet same time next Wednesday, would that suit you all? Make sure you bring anything and everything that could help us, and be extra careful for this next week, okay?"
"Matt, you were saying the other day that you wanted to get on with this quickly, and now you're saying that we have to wait. What are you thinking?"
"I'm just thinking that we need to be cautious. One wrong move and we're out. We need to go slow and steady, but we can't keep waiting too long, you're right about that." He ran a hand through his hair and sighed heavily, squeezing his eyes shut. "We'll need a plan, of course. If we can, we should try and keep a record of who's in the city to see if anybody else goes missing, ask around about strange disappearances to keep track of their plans. If they take out many more people it'll become public suspicion, which may be just what we need to get them on our side. Perhaps..." he drifted off, lost in thought.
"You're not suggesting that we take people out ourselves and pretend that they've been kidnapped by the government, are you?" Dan questioned, a dubious tone to his voice.
"Well, not exactly, but-"
"Matt, you know that's not going to work. Don't even think about it. We need to be figuring out where these people are going and what they're doing with them, not messing around trying to fake something that we don't know about."
"I know, Dan, but it's not that easy." Exasperation leaked into his tone and a hand reached up to tug on his bright hair.
"But it could be that easy," Morgan added. "We could sneak in, infiltrate the system and see what they've done with the people and gather information on the place at the same time. You know how the town hall's all locked up? I bet they've got something going on in there."
"We know they've got something going on in there, mate. You'd have to be stupid not to realise that. I just don't think it's a good idea going in there this quickly when we don't know what we're doing." Matt's speech was now at breakneck pace, and he stammered over some words in his haste to get everything out there.
"Matt, mate, what are you waiting for? What happened to you? A week ago you would've been rushing into this without even thinking and now you're telling us to hold back? This is the first time we've actually felt confident about this and you're stopping us from moving forwards as a group. If we don't do something soon, the opportunity will be lost," Paul said forcefully.
"Paul, I know bu-" I could see the tension building in Matt's shoulders as the muscles clenched and unclenched beneath his shirt, and began counting down silently.
"He's right, Matt," Sophie interrupted. "You need to listen to us. Our time is now. You're no-"
"Shut up!" Matt yelled, his face flushed with rage. His eyes were ice cold, and I felt my heart freeze as his gaze passed over us. "All of you, be quiet. We aren't doing anything today and that's final. The next meeting will be at the same time Wednesday week. If you have suggestions for an action plan, we can go through them sensibly and calmly, but for now, we're being too hasty. This is the final decision. The meeting is over." As soon as his snap had begun, it ended. I was left windswept and stunned, watching as the others began to leave.
"You'll be lucky if we even turn up next week," Dan grumbled, hauling himself up from the floor and stalking out. Sophie raced after him, calling his name. Matt remained on the floor, his legs crossed and his head hung, seemingly intently focussed on a speck of dirt on the floor. Paul got up and loomed over me, staring me in the eyes.
"I don't know what your relationship is with Matt, but whatever you've done to him, it's not appreciated," he hissed. And just like that, he was gone. Shocked, I gaped after his retreating figure. All the research I'd done, all the help I'd offered, was discounted now. All they were going to think about is that I'd 'ruined Matt', when in truth, I hadn't actually done anything to him. How naive of them to think that I could actually affect this man in such a way! He was almost invincible. If anyone could lay a finger on his soul, it certainly wasn't me.
Morgan gave me a helpless look and followed Paul out of the club, the door slamming shut behind him, and I was left alone in the silence with Matthew. I could hear water dripping down the sides of the building and the sounds of the city outside these walls, but the rest of the room was completely blanketed with nothingness. I began to wonder whether Matt was even breathing.
I managed to startle myself by clearing my throat, and then whispered, "Matt, I'm really sorry." His head shot up to stare at me, the ice in his eyes beginning to thaw.
"Dominic, you don't need to be sorry for anything. I should be apologising to you," he admitted, his tone warm despite his posture remaining hostile. "I let my anger get to me and messed everything up. Even after all that research you did for me- which you didn't have to do at all, but I'm grateful you did- I just couldn't think of a plan. I'm truly sorry."
"Hey, don't worry about it. It's not your fault, Matt. They shouldn't have pressured you so much. I heard them questioning you about your haste last week, so I don't know why they've had a sudden change in heart. It's unfair of them to take it out on you."
"No, no, they have every right to. I'm a poor leader and I'm fully aware of that. I know that they're uncomfortable with me leading but I don't trust any of them enough to hand over the role. You saw them just now; if Paul had been the leader, we'd be out there fighting them right now. They're so eager to get going and think that, now we have this information, we can just go out there and save people. But it still needs processing, and you know that, don't you?" I nodded at him, awkwardly reaching out a hand to pat his shoulder and then thinking better of it.
"I don't really have any ideas of what to do with it, to be honest, but I figured it'd be helpful for something."
"It really is brilliant, Dominic. You are brilliant." I breathed a laugh, shaking my head and feeling my hair bouncing against my cheekbones with the vigour of my denial.
"I'm really not, Matthew. I just looked a few things up, is all. I was bored and went to the library. Nothing special about that."
"Nobody else thought of it, though. It seems so simple and yet none of us even considered that idea. You're a genius for even thinking of it. I'm really glad I met you. Really, really glad." He looked up at me, eyes shining, and I had to look away, unable to return his gaze. I shivered under the intensity of it and nibbled on my bottom lip, desperately trying to squash the inappropriate thoughts running through my head. They weren't particularly foul, but they definitely weren't things I should be thinking about a friend. A straight friend.
I felt his hand between my shoulders and turned back towards him. He held the hand out towards me with a smile and I took it with my own, letting him haul me up from the floor.
"Are we going to have lunch, then?" he inquired, quirking an eyebrow at me, and I returned his grin. Wiping my other hand on my jeans-please note that it was Matthew that retained my hand, and wasn't by my own force-I took in a deep breath and cleared my thoughts, steadying myself. I was grounded. I was sane, I was patient, I was Dominic.
"Sure."
