Presenting to you *drum rolls and whoops* Rhiannon's POV!
Rhiannon's POV
She knew that this day wasn't going to be good. Call it female intuition or anything else, she just felt weird. She was almost always right on this matter. The last time it got confirmed wasn't a pretty sight. Rhiannon got up from her bed and prayed for her world to not be turned upside down or blown to pieces.
Rhiannon was not a morning person but today she defeated the alarm clock. She was dreading the day and dreading the test. She was good at Math and Physics but she was unsure about the rest. Chemistry she could manage but she feared Biology very much. Those weird Latin or Greek names and those equally strange diagrams made no sense to her. Give her the diagram of a solar powered engine block and she would sail through. She had her own great ideas regarding improving the engine block. She would gather every bit of information on it via her dad. She wanted to reduce sand mining to obtain silicon for making those solar cells. She didn't have any definite plan but she would come up with it someday.
Enough rambling about my great ideas. Those sexist idiots at the forge would drive me away. She thought.
It was true. She had gotten entrance into the forge at the age of fourteen only when her dad had called her in. After a couple of years, the workers had reluctantly accepted her in but still the occasional twisted comment would be directed her way. She had learnt to brush it off. She would show them someday.
She alighted from her bed and went into the bathroom. Her vision was a total blur, as it is every morning. As always, her hair had puffed up in a little mushroom or cloud, whatever you'd like to call it. She tamed her hair. She set her thick glasses upon her nose. It was pretty early, 6.30 am so she went for a talk with her family for a while. She silently crept outside the dorm and went outside the main building.
The park had a very few visitors at this hour. She liked an occasional early morning run and a few people were doing exactly that. They ignored her and she went into the apartment complex which was on the two sides of the main building. Her parents lived on the Eastern part of the complex. Even though the Eastern and Western wings of the complexes looked similar from the outside, the internal structure was completely different but these buildings had the same East and South facing windows and balconies. The convention was that the odd numbered complexes were on the West side and the even numbered ones on the East side. Jeanine knows why.
Her parents lived on the second building which was on the East side. She climbed to the fifth floor of the building and knocked at Apartment 5001. After a while of knocking, her mom opened the door with a sleep –laden face. Rhiannon entered the apartment and hugged her mom tight. She hadn't seen her for two whole days. Her mom held on tightly.
"Hey mom, did you miss me?"
"Oh no, I didn't miss my daughter whom I hadn't seen for two days." She says sarcastically but that doesn't compare to her happiness. Her dad comes in checking to see what's wrong.
"Hey dad, do you want to go to the forge with me after this initiation nonsense ends?"
"Oh sure, I would call initiation nonsense because it keeps you away from us." He replies.
"Did you make some friends?" Her mom asks, her hazel eyes shining with concern.
"No, maybe today is my lucky day." She tries to justify the weird feeling in the morning as a stroke of good luck. Although this raven-haired guy always seemed to find her in the library.
"Okay, child but I want to see you with a group of friends when this ends!' Her mom adds inflection and a sort of deadline to her words.
"I am going to check on my brother."
She enters her brother's room and trains her eyes around it. The familiar blue walls and familiar pictures of so many things stuck to the wall smile at her. She finds her brother's clipboard. She flexes it and brings it close to his ear. It explodes with a big 'snap!'
"Wake up and smell the roses, big brother! Guess who is here?"
"Stop it, Rhiannon. I really need to sleep right now." He replies groggily.
"Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! I need to talk to you." She takes a seat on the corner of his bed.
"What happened that you arrived in my room so early in the morning? If you think I am going to give you hints about initiation then forget about it."
"I'm not here to talk about that, Alev." Her brother had the most infallible moral compass in all of Erudite.
Alev messed her short hair in a typical big-brother way. His blue eyes were so glad to have an uncensored conversation at least once with his dear sister. She was five years younger but they treated each other as equals from a very small age, not like their parents who patronised them sometimes. Even more so when that tragic incident happened.
No. Don't think about that. She blocked it out just the way she had taught herself.
"So, how is it going?"
"Fine, I just wanted to talk to you about..." Alev cuts her off.
"If you are going to talk about what I think you are going to talk about then I'll tell you after initiation. I am bound by rules which cannot be broken and I could lose my job. Meanwhile, let's talk about something else."
"What is there to talk about? I just spend all day in the library or in the forge. This initiation is so mentally and emotionally exhausting."
"Okay, so don't focus on the exhaustion. Have you prepared your Biology well?" Always the studious one. No wonder he got into Jeanine's class and graduated in Math. She wanted to graduate in Physics and Math. No wonder both of them were so radically opposite to their mother, who was a successful animation artist. She had a studio in Erudite. She had visited it occasionally but the forge was her favourite place.
"No, those words don't make sense to me." She was nothing if not a first grade procrastinator in terms of Biology. A new engineering project would make her forget food and water while Bio simply failed to catch her attention.
"What will you do if you don't study Bio?" Alev said jokingly although he also didn't like Bio.
"Well, have you seen Jeanine's new black car on the streets?"
And off they burst in jolly conversation, the likeness of it which cannot be experienced by anyone except a brother and sister. She glanced at the clock; it was late as in 7.45 am.
"Oh no. I have to go. Goodbye Alev." She hugs his brother and gives him a good kiss on the cheek. Little did she know that it would be like kissing a cactus.
"My mouth hurts. Get rid of that unsightly stubble or are you trying to impress somebody?" She says while laying a hand on her mouth.
"Run away now. I have to do a lot of work." He said.
"I should come here every morning, to make sure you show up presentable every day."
"Ugh, please go and kiss mom on the cheek or someone okay?
She exits the room and heads towards the main door. She gives a kiss on her mom's cheek. She would meet her dad later.
"Okay, I've got to go. See you later"
"I'll need to keep you away from Alev so that you'll actually talk to me next time. Make some friends, alright?" Her mom replies, happiness and the tiniest bit of concern in her eyes.
"Yeah, sure." Rhiannon steps outside the door.
The day begins full force as soon as she steps into the dorm. She returned in time but a few alarm clocks beep. She gets inside the girls bathroom and readies herself for the day.
"How are you doing?" Willow asks. She would consider Willow to be an acquaintance, not exactly a friend.
"Fine. I am freaked out because Alev told us that we would face a simulation today." She doesn't tell why she is freaked out. Too silly a reason like superstition for an Erudite.
Willow glances up at her with an almost frown, probably because she used the cliché and unintelligent phrase 'freaked out'. Rhiannon replies with an almost wince.
"Trust me, Rhiannon; it will pass away like a blizzard. Probably with equal damage." She says and heads into the bathroom.
She enters the dorm with wet hair and ties her shoelaces. She paces into the main hall and waits for the other Erudite born. She learnt quite a while ago that pacing instead of ambling makes you look purposeful which would probably be appreciated in Erudite.
They come out in droves along with the transfers. They are deep in thought about the sim. She isn't. Her face just looks like she is. Her style is to improvise and go with whatever they throw at you. Thinking about it was useless and your mind would conjure dangerous hypothetical situations. It was like your brain constructs a sim before the actual one happens. Her restless hands preferred doing, not mindless thinking.
Alev orders the initiates to get into a line. Both of them had joked about it endlessly with him claiming that the whole pack looked like a group of lost sheep waiting to be herded.
They get into a straight line, perpendicular to the floor and following the walls. The raven haired guy was exchanging a word with his friend, his green eyes dark.
They enter the simulation room. The room is divided in two halves with a thick wooden door. They take a seat and wait for whatever they are waiting for. Aster comes in with her blue coat pressed flawlessly and not a fold out of place. She infects everyone with her early morning enthusiasm. Rhiannon feels grumpy and ignores her blather.
Alev calls the names one by one. The first one, a transfer enters the dismal room. She had seen her exchanging words with the green-eyed guy.
Stop. Was green-eyed guy or raven-haired guy an epithet for a normal guy? Why am I even thinking about him? My mind should be consumed with fear, not with some guy.
The names go on slowly. Everyone takes at least ten to fifteen minutes to pass a sim. She learns that the green-eyed guy's name is Caleb Prior. Soon, the room is almost empty with four end-of-the-alphabet people. Alev calls her name.
"Rhiannon White, you are requested to enter the simulation room." Alev says in the exact same tone he uses with the other initiates. Chaos could erupt if somebody let out that Rhiannon was his sister.
Aster plugs her forehead to the electrodes and injects her with a cloudy white serum.
"All the best, sis" Alev says in an indistinguishable whisper. Those are the last words she hears before the sim pulls her under.
She stands in the library. The librarian has a really grotesque face, like a vampire. She read about those things in a book called 'Twilight'. It was a really stupid book but the picture before her is totally different than that Edward Cullen. The librarian is not pale or sparkles. None of those silly stereotypes but has vicious fangs an inch long. Her eyes have dark shadows of someone who has seen way too much tragedy. She is horrified at this picture of that innocent librarian. She knows that speaking is useless.
Rhiannon grabs whatever she finds. A book on Draculae. She would almost laugh at the irony if her brain hadn't vapourised due to the fear. The vampire sinks her teeth into her neck but fails because she had smacked it upside the head with a book. She doesn't dwell on her Dauntless moment because the vampire gets up madder than ever before.
Uh oh. She remembered that a vampire wouldn't die with a few boxes to her head. So she complies and the vampire sinks her lethal fangs into her shoulder.
The excruciating pain fills her for a moment, making her vision black at the edges. Her mind becomes blank, as if it was already expecting the pain. She imagines the life going out of her like a pale white wraith.
She forces the sim to move on. The mind numbing pain vanishes leaving an equally mind numbing fear. She is surrounded by a vast oily marsh. She skirts around the edges when her feet get caught in a knot of grass. She falls backward, the sky drifting further away and her equilibrium is lost even before she falls. The clouds seem to vibrate and sing her a fatal lullaby. Half of her head is submerged in the quagmire.
Think, reflect and use your hands. She tries her usual approach to solving problems. Rhiannon thrashes around wildly. This shows a faint glimmer of hope for about twenty seconds and then it comes to her that fighting against quicksand will make you sink deeper.
She calms down and gladly steps into the dark embrace of the mud. Her lungs overfill themselves. She can't open her eyes, is simply not able to.
Her scalp sinks. Her neck along with it.
Her ears. The world is hushed right now as if mourning her death.
She can feel the mud on her cheekbones and midriff.
Her midriff's probably sunken completely.
Forehead.
She shifts her head around to at least save her eyes and nose but that is not possible.
She steps in completely. It is like swimming in water with hundred times the resistance. She thinks that hundred times resistance would probably mean that she is just under the upper surface of the mud. She focuses on the positives and calms her breathing. That is almost impossible as she is running out of oh-two and her mind is in a heightened state of panic. She remembers the hundreds of psychology lessons fed by her brother. What is the best way? Oh right, keeping calm.
She gathers the courage to do the impossible once more and detaches herself from the situation completely. It seems to work but dwelling on it will make the whole thing backfire. Just when she is sure that 'death by suffocation' would be featuring in her obituary, the sim moves on.
She opens her eyes and the sim has ended. She begins to hyperventilate and would collapse on the floor if she hadn't landed in the arms of her brother, Alev. She reminds herself to not take him for granted at any time. She knows that she got off easy this time. God knows what choices would she be forced to make in the next one which would almost certainly feature all of her family members.
"It's okay, initiate." She glances into Alev's eyes and his voice longs to say, "I won't let them get you next time, dear sis."
"You are dismissed, initiate." Aster says.
She gets out of that dismal room as soon as humanly possible. The café looks like a funeral service.
She gets into a table at the side. The same old every day, with no one to sit beside her. She grabs whatever looks good and dumps it on the plate. Useless exercise, everything tastes like motor oil now.
Lunch ends in silent misery. She remembers with a sigh that there is a Science exam today. A bell rings from a huge speaker from the centre of the café.
The Erudite born and the transfers get outside the café and form a line as if they were magnets with the opposite poles facing each other.
Oh yeah, I'm the only like pole magnet here. She shakes herself out of her weird thoughts.
"Erudite born initiates, please lead the transfers into Examination Room 1" Alev breaks the silence."
The long human centipede passes the main hall and Jeanine Matthews's eyes stare as if they were the bugs she intends to squash under her shoe. It looks like she has spared their lives only because those shoes would get dirty.
They go into another hallway and three chrome labels with Examination room 1, 2 and 3 call out to her like the three Fates of Greek mythology. The line gets into the first room and waits for whatever they have to wait for.
They sit in neat rows. She sits in the middle but behind part of the hall. Not too far ahead to be on the teacher's radar and not too far behind to be even more on the radar. The room is built in the same way that all Erudite classrooms are built. Blue benches, enormous whiteboard/ projector and the like.
Alev whispers a warning to Caleb, who had probably got in trouble earlier. She knew that he had a special technique to make his whispers unnerving. It didn't affect her very much as she was his sister but to other people, it could scare the heck out of them.
Alev walks to the front of the hall and speaks, his voice booming due to the acoustic effect walls.
"You will get three hours to complete thirty questions each of math and science. Reading time is an extra ten minutes. Math has three sections, Arithmetic, Algebra and Geometry with ten questions each. Science has three sections, Physics, Chemistry and Biology with ten questions each."
"You are provided with necessary stationery. I expect this case to be with you whenever you are attending a class."
She glances at her watch. It is 1.00 pm. Reading is the usual ten minutes so the exam will commence at 1.10 pm. It will end at 4.10 pm.
He begins the usual drill of distributing a sheet of paper and a question paper to each bench.
"Do well in this one, sis." His voice is a ghost of a murmur.
She reads the paper, not mustering the courage to read the Biology section yet. The Math section is a breeze with each one disguised as being difficult. She wasn't a prodigy but she could do those sums easily.
The Physics section is also very easy with the rules imprinted on her head.
The Chemistry section is also a piece of pie.
"Your reading time begins now, initiates."
She didn't listen to Alev announcing that the time is over. She begins the math section at a manic pace, her hands and left brain go on autopilot while her right brain thinks, 'What the heck am I doing?' She shuts that part down. It would not do well to doubt herself. She gets the Arithmetic done in twenty five minutes and starts on the Algebra.
The usual with her hands getting on autopilot in the first two questions. The third one puts the brake on the autopilot and she stares (glares, really) at the question for a while.
She finishes the math section and moves on to the Physics and Chemistry. It is all finished in an hour. She has another hour and the dreaded Bio section to scale.
She begins reading it and those ten questions suck the life out of her. No matter she usually slept in the back of the room in class. It really hits her now. Wonder, becoming factionless just because she failed in a bio test. She puts a stop to those day nightmares.
Come on Rhiannon, what the heck is plasmolysis? She makes her disgust known by swearing out loud in her head, not wasting her time with euphemisms.
She solves seven questions and leaves space for three. She reads those questions again but is not able to come up with any suitable answers.
Let it go, you wouldn't fail for not writing three answers.
She glances around and sees that Xander is talking to his minion.
Boom! A minute and an anonymous informant later, Xander has been caught. She would congratulate him/her as soon as she finds out the name.
Alev grabs him and leads both of them, Xander and Rick and drags them to Aster's office where soon a new case file would be opened. Her brother really hates liars and that is why he pays no attention to their argument of asking for pens. The room is unsupervised for a few minutes but no one dares to talk now.
Alev comes in and fifteen minutes later the examination ends.
They get into lines and go out of the examination room. Her mind is already in the library before she is. She rushes out of the corridor and doesn't bother with Willow's pleasantries. She goes into the library with her mind at a hundred miles per hour. She goes to the Engineering section and grabs a book on solar powered engine blocks. She glances up from her table and sees that Caleb Prior is sitting in front of her.
Caleb has a subtle oh-my-god expression on his face while the one having that should be her.
This Caleb guy finds an excuse to talk to her. He asks for the English book on her table and she passes it on gladly.
"What is your name?" His green eyes were so mesmerizing.
"I am Rhiannon White."
She dismissed the weird feeling as a fluke or a warning of greater things albeit bad things to come.
How did you like it? The last chapter was a reference to Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die! by Panic! At The Disco.
