Chapter XIV: Omen
No matter how far he attempted to open his eyes, everything was covered in a heavy cloak of black. The only clue to his surroundings was the edges of a jagged wall scratching through his clothing into his arms and back, which wasn't especially helpful in identifying where he was and why. He tried to lean out of it, which turned into recoil when another steady shove pinned him back. His neck bent back on reflex, turning the already uncomfortable task of breathing through the heavy, humid air into a major struggle that he was determined not to show. No matter the circumstances, there was no benefit to groveling, and screaming for assistance wasn't an option. His throat had tightened too much for him to manage a scream even if he wanted to.
Voices overlapped one another with a heavy echo, blurring together into an indistinct mass of nothing but malicious intent. His skin seared from the lick of flames that he couldn't perceive. What was left of his clothing was soaked through with scalding liquid that smelled more like alcohol than water, though it was hard to tell through the smoke. He was consumed with the understanding that he had to escape, but his arms were restrained behind his back, and he could barely cough for long enough to take a breath inwards while still maintaining his balance. If he panicked to breathe, the heat from the flames would kill him, and if he stopped breathing, the result was fairly obvious. There had to be an alternative he was overlooking.
With another burst of attempted energy, he tried to snag the restraints against a crevice in the wall to pull them apart. The chains rattled behind him, refusing to budge. The sound of mocking laughter began to pierce into his mind, distantly echoing as if it wasn't in the same room as he was. Startled, he began to take in a sharp breath. In a sudden but anticipated wave, the heat of the smoke ran down his throat. Just as he began to bend forward from cringing, he spotted the flicker of two distant blue lights ahead of him, along with that same, reoccurring Cheshire smile.
The moment that he started to gasp, the force of two hands started to pull down on his lower jaw, forcing it open. He continued to struggle, and the result was so dizzyingly uncomfortable that he could practically feel his throat twisting. If nothing changed, he was going to fall unconscious. Desperate to put up at least some sort of a resistance, he began to slide down the wall far enough that he could press his way up and forward, and then bite down. He was able to create enough of a brace on the ground to start to lift up when his breathing stopped entirely, and the slight source of light turned back into distorted darkness.
Cian awoke to the echo of his heartbeat ringing in his ears and the slightest sliver of early morning sunshine sneaking in through the side of a curtain facing the bed. His right arm had become inexplicably numb. He sat upright, picked the currently useless limb up with his other arm and started to jostle it in an attempt to regain mobility in his hand. In the meanwhile, he turned his head to check the clock on a nearby table. The digital display showed the time as five-ten in the morning. His mind was immediately struck with the complaint that it shouldn't have been allowed to be light outside at five ten in the morning. Still exhausted and far too impatient to deal with being awake before his alarm, he turned over in his bed to lie on the cooler side of the sheets and faced the wall.
A few weeks ago, and a dream that he was able to feel sensations from would have terrified him so much that he would have woken up still trying to scream. Today, his pulse was already calming down to an average, inaudible pace. No matter how disorienting or frightening a prospect it could be at first to have Nightmare on Elm Street style visions each time he tried to get a few hours of rest, after experiencing it for a while and not actually dying as a result, it eventually became normal. He couldn't help but to think that it was a very telling story about how his life had been going as of late that he was able to reach the point where experiencing nightmares he could physically feel had somehow managed to become normal. He released an inaudible sigh and tried to think of something else. He failed.
Everything he thought he was experiencing was psychosomatic; a manifestation of building paranoia that he kept on imagining was true. He was fairly confident that was the reason, and yet there were still a few aspects he couldn't bring himself to ignore. The images changed slightly each time, but they'd been keeping the same general theme of fire and that single shadow. Irritating as it was to get the same lovely awakening each day, there wasn't anything he was aware of which he could do to fend off these visions, either. He could try to stop being paranoid, but that would lower his guard when he had every reason to be suspicious of everyone and everything he happened across. Along with so many of the other problems with his life, it was just something he had to cope with.
Having felt him budge by rolling across the bed, Eulalie awoke as well. She wandered beneath the covers of the blanket until she was able to settle in the warm spot where Cian had previously been lying. She bumped her head against his back affectionately and curled up to waste away the remaining hours of the morning before school in a nap of her own. It was much simpler for her to fall back asleep than it was for him. Eulalie didn't need to think about the people sleeping just outside this room, or even more unsettlingly, the one lurking in his closet, watching.
Contrary to what he initially expected out of it, having his old memories didn't help Cian to be much more at ease with Sebastian's presence than he otherwise would have been. The additional memories he had acquired read about as accurately as anyone else's recollections of what they were like fourteen or thirteen years ago. He no longer had to worry about the basic facts since an understanding on an outline was etched into his brain, but personal information and emotions were impressively indistinctive and everything as a whole felt distorted by his current perspective. It wasn't as if his previous personality was going to rise up and take control over his body in order to provide a dissertation on what these glimpses were supposed to mean.
If he was being honest with himself, he didn't know what he wanted Sebastian to show him. He couldn't rightfully expect for the demon to understand him when not even he could figure out what he was searching for. Fourteen years ago, he had a purpose, but presuming that his other parents' murderers were dead, that purpose was gone. Nowadays, the only motivation he had was to be while getting by, spiting other people through his own stubborn existence. How was Sebastian supposed to fit into an image so vaguely defined that not even the person who created it could explain it?
It was with that growing puzzle in mind that he finally brought himself to lie still, and with a great deal of frustration towards himself, finally drifted off back into sleep, much to the relief of the observing party. Had the boy stayed needlessly awake for much longer than that, it would have become increasingly difficult to wake him in time for school, among other things. Sebastian knew better than to intervene. His presence would have done more harm than good; not even he could console the unwilling.
Approximately ten minutes after Cian's breathing pattern slowed enough to indicate that he was deeply engrossed in his sleep; a gentle rumble crept into the room and filled it with the sound of mechanical whirring. It was the sound of the garage door being opened and shut. The upcoming signs of winter weather had urged the owner of the house to park his vehicle inside upon his arrival late the previous night. The man's departure was becoming easier to track than ever. It was convenience to knowing how best to avoid him that there was a signal every time he came and went. That way, Sebastian knew just when it was safe to open the door and not run the risk of encountering a stranger he'd be better off not having met.
In the month that he'd stayed here, Sebastian did find it peculiar that he had avoided an accidental encounter with his master's father. They took proper steps to avoid it, but he couldn't help but think for a moment that it shouldn't have been that simple of a task to accomplish. Yet, it was, and he was in no position to complain about what was ultimately a benefit, however strange it might be.
Sebastian pressed a finger to the edge of the wood ahead of him and slowly slid the closet door open. He softly set his feet against the floor, treading across the room without making a sound, until he was standing at Cian's bed-side. He paused for a moment and leaned over the edge in order to take a glimpse at the figure resting in discomfort. He reached across the bed towards the opposite corner of the blanket, and straightened out both sides to tuck the boy in without disrupting his attempt at finding a moment of peace, or otherwise. Sebastian's stare lingered on Cian's face for a few moments longer, watching him sleep up close. He smiled gently for just a moment, and then turned his back to continue on his way.
Sebastian checked the locks in the room. The latches on the window were all set in place, and the only door in was set to unlock only from the inside. Sebastian would have been able to break through it regardless, but he was wagering that anybody who could potentially cause a problem wouldn't make it past him towards the door. For that matter, he was under the impression that nobody was going to approach in the first place, at least not yet. These precautions were for preparation's sake, and for the most part they were relatively unobtrusive. The single downside to setting the lock was that Eulalie was trapped inside as well. Sebastian had to assume that she was too comfortable to mind. She appeared to be quite content while sleeping beside her owner, so it wasn't likely to be that major of an imposition.
Now that security was as settled as it could be, it was time for him to prepare breakfast. He had two hours left to complete the preparations for school that day. Fortunately enough, it was surprisingly easy (for him) to grade test papers in the darkness of a closet, so there were only a few minor chores to attend to.
There wasn't much of a change in what had become the morning routine. Sebastian woke Cian up with some difficulties, waited for him to finish breakfast, got the car while he got dressed, and together they left for school. The weather was chilly but pleasant enough that it wasn't unreasonable to walk instead of drive. Cian had woken up quickly enough that they weren't behind schedule, thereby enabling the two to split up without Cian being tardy. While it was technically a risk for the two of them to be in separate places by any form of routine, there had been such a distinct lack in activity that taking every possible precaution seemed as if it would draw more attention than relaxing one of them did.
The walk to school was uneventful to the point of being boring. A few of his fellow students passed by him on the walk, one of whom appeared to be very tempted to walk across the street and start tormenting him. Cian averted his eyes in the opposite direction and continued on. Aside from that one moment, nothing of particular interest occurred.
When Cian arrived at school, there was nothing unexpected in the hallways, nor was there anything even remotely interesting about his homeroom class. After his aunt and cousin had paid their brief visit, nothing of note had happened, and life seemed to be settling into a lull. The dates on the blackboard tended to change, but he wouldn't have been all that shocked if he had reappeared at the previous day. The topic of conversation and gossip was identical to what it had been the week before, the principal made the same reminders on the announcements, and they were even reviewing the same topic from last week in his first period class. Words failed to express how much he would prefer not to be here. Why couldn't he test out and just go to college, again?
He didn't intend to be so negative about it, but he couldn't help it. In theory, monotony was a good thing. It implied that there hadn't been any recent attempts on his life or miscellaneous accidents in the school. Safety was a definitively positive product of normalcy. However, it would have been much more enjoyable as a victory if he wasn't spending the time engrossed in tension, being consistently paranoid about the moment when that condition was going to stop.
To add even more unnecessary problems, one of the many rumors that had started to float around was that he was responsible for the accident in the chemistry lab. The instructor had spoken to him about it, and after a lengthy discussion on the subject of why he knew how to identify what had been in the vials without being involved, was excused from suspicion. The students weren't quite so willing to listen to reason. As much as he preferred to think he couldn't care less if others spoke to him, having a collective silent grudge directed towards him for something he had specifically attempted to stop was incredibly annoying. Still, there was nothing he could do about it, and life moved on.
Specifically, it moved into second period, then third period, and so forth. The latter classes did manage to be marginally more interesting by introducing new material. Third period, he was able to see Sebastian in class, which he expected would become the highlight of his day for a number of reasons. Sebastian's lessons tended to be notably more interesting than most of the other teachers'. There was a level of understanding he managed to convey which implied a strong involvement in the events he was outlining, which made sense, considering he had most likely seen everything first-hand. The second reason was more influential. While he was in the history classroom, Cian didn't need to be quite as wary of his surroundings. There were very few items in the vicinity which could be sabotaged, and even less of them that he believed would be. The only remarkable item that was being used in the classroom at that moment was a pull-down map which was briefly displayed over the blackboard, and he'd have loved to see how that could be turned into an effective weapon. He wouldn't deny that it was possible, but it would be a spectacle to see the cloth pull away from the board, move on its own and start smothering students, so he didn't regard it as likely.
The third period bell seemed to ring quicker than the others did, most likely because he hadn't felt inclined to smash his head against the desk at any point during the lesson. Cian sat back in his seat as he watched the other students leave. He wasn't going to bother standing up quite yet. There wouldn't have been a use in attempting to brush his way past, especially not when there were some people in this room who would find a sense of accomplishment by blocking his path on purpose. It was immature for them to do it in the first place, so he wasn't going to let it bother him. Sebastian could write a note if he ended up being late. That aside, he wanted the students to leave before him. There was something he wanted to discuss.
He folded his hands across his desk and kept an eye on the others as they shuffled out the door. One by one, they broke off from their clusters to leave for their next class. He didn't bother to budge his books or move his chair. While everyone else was leaving, Cian just sat there, slouching forward with his mouth hidden behind his hands, staring at the front desk. Sebastian noticed immediately. How could he not have? The once respectful, attentive stare Cian had worn during the lesson had shifted into demanding one. They needed to talk.
Sebastian waited until the last of the other students had walked away from the classroom to leave his desk. He stopped beside the entrance and shut the door, creating the false impression that he had left the room between class periods. He twisted the blinds shut over the window, ensuring as much privacy as he would be able to create, and turned around to face the desk on the opposite side of the classroom, respectfully facing the young master.
"We have two minutes, sir," Sebastian advised, making sure that this was clarified before the discussion could begin. If Cian had something to say, it was important that he was direct about it, or the time limit might prevent him from reaching his point.
Cian's eye followed Sebastian as he walked across the room, the rest of him not budging very far. He rose up against the back of the chair enough that he was slouching slightly less forward, but he couldn't bring himself to move his hands away from his head, and he was still hunched over the surface of the desk. He was doing his best to mask it, but it was still somewhat evident that he was distraught.
"This isn't working," he murmured, speaking up just enough that he could be comprehended through what sounded like pain. Specifically, it was a headache. He'd been fending the annoyance off all morning, and it was steadily catching up to him while taking a toll on his patience.
Without that context, Sebastian was left with a rough guess and not much understanding of what he was supposed to see. "Is there anything in particular you wish to do to fix this, or are we being vague merely for the sake of it?" Sebastian asked as he continued to approach.
Cian pressed his hand further into the side of his face and ran his fingers through his bangs, ruffling them in frustration. He wasn't quite sure how to express this particular thought. "I mean school, classes, everything. It's just not," he murmured, making it blatantly apparent that he was grasping for words. Sebastian continued to watch him in expectation. What he had said hadn't helped to create specifics about anything. Cian took this as a signal to revise his approach.
"Write me a pass. Say I have a migraine. It's not much of a lie, regardless. I'm going home," he ordered. He had intended it to sound like a demand, but it lacked the usual strength of persuasion that usually stayed in a command.
Regardless of how it sounded or not, there was nothing that Sebastian should have done to enable that. Cian's request was unreasonable for the situation. The boy should have known full well why it was such a horrible idea, which might explain why his inflection was so unconvincing.
"If you are feeling unwell, it would be best if you rest in the infirmary. You are aware I can't leave this suddenly," Sebastian suggested back, trying to come up with an alternative that would still be of some help. It wasn't a horrible idea by any means, but it wasn't the response that Cian wanted to hear.
In theory, it was safer for them to be together at any given time, but that distinction was by such a slim margin that not even this was secure. He was relatively certain that whatever had been at work, the sole hint it had was the school, so it wouldn't put him in danger to take a few hours off and leave. If only he left, it wouldn't be of note. Cian's hand shifted away to rest directly over the top of his eye instead, eliminating his view of his surroundings. It was darker that way, and thus more comfortable. "I don't need you to be there. I'm going home," he insisted.
It was at this point when Sebastian was able to determine with the utmost certainly what had to be bringing this insistence on. After the weeks that had passed them without any specifically threatening events to speak of, it was starting to take a toll. Sebastian could understand why. That didn't make it commendable. "Are you certain that being rash is the best course of action, here?" he questioned in return. It wasn't his place to specifically say no to an order, but he could question it.
Unfortunately, Cian seemed to recognize this for being the ploy that it was. "I have to do something else than hear people talk while I have this ruddy headache, so," he paused, then released an irritated sigh, unintentionally proving that Sebastian was under precisely the right impression.
"As unpleasant as this is, their frustrations are likely to be worse," Sebastian suggested back, attempting to encourage him.
"I'm aware of that. In a way, it's the problem. Every day increases the likelihood that they're going to come back. Every day, I have to watch with more caution. I understand that we need to bide time, but being able to reason through that doesn't mean I can ignore it. The only thing it does mean is that I'm not going to be able to get rid of this ruddy headache." Cian paused to take in a deep breath. It sounded more like a heavy sigh.
Sebastian wanted to say something about it, but he couldn't. As much of a problem as it was to let him stay in this state, Cian's reasoning was sound. They were at a disadvantage from the beginning and stuck on the defensive. There really was nothing that could be done to fix that, and it wasn't a pleasant position for either of them to be in. Neither of them could change that, and from a practical standpoint, nothing Sebastian could say would make a difference. Well, there was still one thing that Sebastian could theoretically say that would help, but sending him home wasn't a possibility.
"I suppose that is understandable. However, I am not legally permitted to release you without a guardian present. If you wish to rest, you shall have to settle for the nurse. So with due respect, no, you cannot go home," Sebastian answered. Letting Cian leave would have been a temporary fix at best, and it created too much of an opportunity if they were being watched. No matter what way he looked at it, it wasn't practical. That the school wouldn't allow him to do it anyway was just a reasonable excuse.
Reason was something that Cian was past the point of wanting to accept. "I can make you send me home if I want to," he spoke back, on the verge of making a demand.
"You can be responsible for the loss of my employment as well, if you so choose," Sebastian said, insisting by pointing out what should have been obvious. If he were to purposely bend the school rules for Cian and was caught, there would be consequences for it, and it wasn't likely they would be able to speak through them. Willing reality away could potentially alert someone if they were being watched by someone who was immune enough to know, so they didn't have another option but to abide by human constraints.
Cian's eye narrowed in further frustration, directing it towards the person in his way. It would have been a far more threatening expression if his face hadn't started to flush. "Maybe that would be a good idea," he grumbled. He abruptly stood up from his desk, grabbed his books from where they were resting on the floor, and started marching towards the door. If there wasn't going to be any positive progress from it, he wasn't in the mood to waste any more time on this discussion than he already had.
Sebastian leaned away from his own desk and followed along towards the door. He didn't want to let the discussion end on such an abysmal statement. The boy already looked sick enough. If it was possible, it would be best not to leave him so agitated. "If there was an alternative, I would allow you to. Unfortunately, it's not under my control," he tried to explain.
Cian paused by the door frame and looked over his shoulder. He could understand what Sebastian's point was, but it didn't please him in the slightest. He knew full well that he was the one being unreasonable in this situation and Sebastian was simply trying to keep him in check. It didn't make him any less reluctant and bitter to listen to him. "Fine. I'll be in class. I'll see you this evening. Expect to grovel," Cian spoke through a glower.
Sebastian responded to the gesture by placing on his most accommodating smile. He looked forward towards Cian with the most charm that he could muster. "I shall look forward to it immensely."
Dissatisfied yet again, Cian slammed the door behind him. His next class was being held nearby. So long as he rushed to get there, that exchange wasn't enough to make him late. It was only enough to make him frustrated and drastically worsen his headache.
If there was anything he could do to alter this situation, he wanted to. His anxiety was rising so steadily that he didn't think it would take much more for him to dive off the metaphorical edge and lose it. In theory, one person would only be able to balance on the brink of insanity for so long.
It was this thought that caused him to pause when he turned a corner and look back in the direction from whence he came. Hadn't he experienced a rise in this feeling previously? If he was recalling correctly, on multiple occasions, his sense of unease had taken a sharp turn up immediately before something started to go awry. It hadn't happened every time, and it was an absurd idea to jump towards, but it was no more absurd than a lot of the other things he had come to accept lately. What if he had started to feel this way because someone was about to strike?
He turned around to walk back down the hallway, towards the room he'd just come from. Standing around here contemplating the idea wasn't a good idea. If he was right, then he had to at least tell him about it.
"Sebastian," Cian started to call out as he walked towards the corner. He came to an instant stop when he caught full sight of the hallway ahead of him. The door to his classroom was open, and there were already other students approaching to enter inside. If he were to go back now, he'd be calling further attention to himself. The clock was ticking. Whether he was right or wrong, there wasn't enough time to reach him before classes started.
With a shake of his head as he walked onwards, Cian dismissed the thought. At this point, every idea he had was purely speculative. There was no good reason for him to be so entirely convinced that something was about to happen, nor was there a reason to panic. There was, however, a very sound reason not to anticipate whatever he was going to face behind that door.
Cian walked into the boy's locker room and headed immediately over to his locker to grab his change of clothing from inside. A few of his fellow students glanced in his direction as he passed by, but no one bothered speaking to his face today, which was enough of an improvement for him not to bother thinking about it. Ordinarily, he would have preferred to change in one of the few stalls, but he needed to make up for the time he'd spent pleading with Sebastian, so once he was relatively certain no one was looking in his direction anymore, he turned his back to the other students and switched clothing as hastily as possible. As he pulled his head through the collar of his t-shirt, he heard the warning whistle blow, beckoning the class into the gymnasium. He wriggled the collar over his head and wasted no time in following. He was already going through the agony of being here; he didn't want to end up getting half credit for lagging a few seconds behind and be counted as tardy because of it.
By some strange fluke or plain act of laziness on someone else's part, Cian wasn't the last person out the door. He stood as far towards the back wall as he could without running the risk of hiding himself and overlooked the rest of the room. Under most circumstances, the gymnasium was divided in two during the winter in order to accommodate both the boys and girls gym classes at the same time, but today, the space was completely open and the girls were standing on the opposite side. A row of rubber playground balls had been arranged along the center line, spanning along the distance of the gym. It didn't take much in the way of deductive reasoning skills to guess what today's activity would be.
The short but burly middle aged man in charge of their class marched up to the front of the pack of boys he had gathered. He lowered his whistle from his mouth, puffed out his chest as he took a deep breath, and prepared to make his proclamation. Cian shifted a few steps to the side and positioned himself directly behind another student so he wouldn't be in the teacher's immediate sight. He opened his mouth and started mouthing the words along in disinterest around the same point that the teacher began shouting them, if not a few seconds ahead of time. Cian didn't need to hear him speak in order to guess with remarkable accuracy exactly how and what he was going to say.
"Listen up, boys, I'm not grading you on how well you can hold a discussion. That's why debate class exists. Here, you're going to actually use something other than your head. Today, we're playing dodge ball. The rules are simple; if you've got a ball, try to hit someone on the opposite side. If you don't got a ball, either run the heck away and get one, or catch it. If someone on the opposite side catches a ball you tried to throw, you're out. If someone on your team catches a ball, one person on that team gets to come back in. If there are no people left on your side in the field, you're out. And if you don't want to get hit or break a nail or something stupid like that, then you'd better do a good job at dodgin' or it's your own fault. Comprende?" the teacher barked at the class. The group nodded their head as a collective entity, agreeing whether or not they actually had listened closely enough to know what he was talking about.
Satisfied with their response, or at least as close to it as he was going to get, the teacher stepped backwards across the room and approached the center line. He picked up one of the balls from its resting point and tossed it up and down in the air a few times, watching over the group like a vulture waiting for prey. Once he had finally found one, he chucked the ball ahead and hit one of the students directly in the chest, which they missed. They jolted upright, startled. "So unless you like embarrassing me and everyone else around you, pay attention- to me, to where the ball is, to where you are, to everything- and then, maybe you stand a shot of not embarrassing yourself in front of the other girls you'll be playing with. They're a heck of a lot cuter than you are, so you'd better do something to impress them."
The teacher turned his hand, motioning to get the ball back. One of the other students towards the back of the group picked up on the cue and passed it to him. He caught it and hoisted it up into the air for a moment before finally setting it back down on the center line. "Now, I've got paperwork to do, so today, you're going to be monitored by Ms. Carr. You know your usual numbers- evens to the back, odds stay where you are. If I hear one thing goes wrong, you all know what'll happen, so don't. I'll see you on Monday."
With that last statement, their usual gym teacher marched back into his office with his chin raised high and his footsteps making a notable thud each time he passed by. The class stood by at attention, waiting for him to go. He turned his head over his shoulder and shot an intimidating look in their direction. He didn't even need to speak this time in order to convey what he wanted the group to do and get compliance to it. The students who had been assigned even numbers on the class roster at the beginning of the year walked along to the opposite side of the classroom, and the odd numbers, including Cian, stood awkwardly in place and watched cautiously as the instructor finally left.
Physical Education was never really a specialty of his, but Cian was even less in the mood to deal with this class than usual. He went out of his way to face diagonally, avoiding all potential outside contact, and stuck towards the back of the group. His head bobbed forward slightly from a combination of general exhaustion and increasingly annoying stress headache. He jolted himself back upright when he began to hear footsteps shuffling as most of the students got into their positions and prepared to charge. Cian stood still. He had a different type of plan, today.
The whistle rang throughout the air and the stampede began to rush forward, grabbing for the balls in desperation and throwing them every which way in a rush. He waited by the sidelines for the first few moments, standing completely still in wait while the scrimmage went on. Casualties amassed on both side as the most reckless and energetic of the group took one another out. He maintained his ground, watching over the scene as he waited for one of the stray balls to scatter in such a way that it rolled along through the crowd towards him. A couple of minutes later, one of them did.
Cian reached down and picked up the ball. He strode between the few students in his way until there were no blocks between himself and the center line and threw the ball with as little force as he could while still getting it into the air. It bounced against the ground and over towards the other side. The general lack of velocity behind it made it easily caught. He feigned an expression of disappointment for about half of a second and walked off of the court with absolutely no intention of trying to enter back in. He had made it appear as if he tried, and that was good enough.
He walked over to the back right corner of the gym and flopped back against one of the mats on the wall for support. As he collided with the mat and slid along it, the mat started to slip as well. The Velcro at the top of the frame unlatched, causing the upper corner to drop down and smacking Cian's head. He jolted for a moment. One look in the direction of the cause later, his expression dulled. Cian languidly smacked the corner back into its proper place. It started to droop again. He shifted to rest his right side against the cushion before it could try and repeat the incident. He let out a light sigh and closed his eye to try and pretend that he was absolutely anywhere else but school. This didn't work nearly as well as he had intended.
The moment that his eyelids shut, the commotion taking place on the court was overlapped by a completely different type of chaos. The entire room sounded as if it was engulfed in static, buzzing off the walls like a television with poor reception. Cian opened his eyes again reflexively in an attempt to make the noise go away. Instead, it continued to build along an unsteady gradual crescendo, intensifying to the point where it was close to causing actual, physical pain to listen to. He turned his head to evaluate the room as a whole and furrowed his eyebrows when, for some reason, he couldn't. They were standing right in front of him, but it was difficult to see details any more substantial than a silhouette through the heavy, cloudy haze that obscured them. It wavered in and out, swirling and flickering while it tried to sustain itself, and nobody else appeared any the wiser to its presence.
Cian raised his left hand and rubbed against his eye. He blinked a couple of times with the expectation that the distortion would dissipate and something would change. Nothing did. That was the last form of confirmation he could have possibly needed to see in order to be certain. He couldn't distinguish enough detail to know what, but his suspicion about today wasn't misplaced paranoia. There was a line between sheer coincidence and a correlation, and this crossed it at a leap.
He surveyed the room to the best of his severely limited abilities to make sure that Ms. Carr was occupied enough monitoring the game that she wouldn't spot him and try to interfere. The second that he confirmed this, he sprinted to the closest door and into the boys' locker room. He hadn't had much time to think of a plan, but even without one, he knew that whatever he was about to do, he couldn't initiate it while in plain sight of the other students. Before he could do anything else, he had to reach Sebastian to tell him about what he'd seen. Cian didn't have the capacity to exert much influence on his surroundings, but Sebastian certainly could.
He made it about halfway through this thought before he skidded to a stop in his tracks, both his thoughts and his feet frozen by a sudden realization that hadn't occurred to him while he was fleeing away. He stared ahead towards the row of lockers and the brushed goldenrod tiled wall, a lump of saliva compiling in his throat. The color in his face drained in an instant. Class was still in session, students were in the rooms, and the man who was supposed to be his current teacher was sitting behind a glass wall just behind him, supposedly working on paperwork. Cian couldn't leave. If he tried to get Sebastian in person, the source of the interruption would be blatantly obvious, and if he tried to speak to him aloud, there was still someone in sight to catch him talking to himself. Either way, his actions would serve as a signal to his identity. Whatever he chose to do, he would need to take action on his own, and there was no time to waste worrying about what that action was.
Taking the only logical turn he could, Cian pivoted in his place and started walking briskly but silently in the opposite direction, passing by the door to the teacher's office in complete silence. The moment that he had passed by the last glass window, he glimpsed back towards the opening to assure that he wasn't being monitored and took off in a full sprint towards the lavatories. The bathroom was located in a small, separate attached room that was barely bigger than a closet and only had enough space to fit a single occupant. The door was shut. He tried to twist the handle, and his stomach sank when it stuck. He checked the bottom of the door and noticed that there was no light inside, so it was unlikely that the door was locked due to someone else being in there. He shoved his elbow into it and tried again, twisting the handle in each direction. It gave way, allowing him to stumble inside, set his back against the door and turn the lock behind him.
A list of potential outcomes swarmed through his mind simultaneously, branching off into action and attribution all at once. There were only a few ways to guarantee that students were forced into leaving a building, and he needed one that couldn't be traced back to him. Anonymous tips for a bomb threat were always taken seriously and it could be considered possible, but he'd just left the room and it would show up on his call history. Minor as it was, that left a trail and it could be incriminating enough, and he couldn't guarantee that the message would be passed along quickly enough to be acted upon before it was too late. He needed something faster; something that could only end in one potential action. That didn't leave him with much in the way of options, and the one to come to mind made him grimace in uncertainty. He ran a lot of risk of revealing himself if the teacher had seen him and made a connection between his presence and what he intended to follow. This wouldn't act as a perfect solution by any means. Still, it was the best he had to go on, so he needed it to work.
A misty, faintly purple haze began to seep in beneath the cracks in the door. It rose upwards in waves, creeping to the ceiling like a cloud of smoke. It flickered in and out as he tried to move in an effect he couldn't help but to acknowledge was somewhat dizzying. He'd dealt with enough hallucinations lately to understand that the visual was nothing more than an attempted warning of danger, so he made a conscious decision not to pay any further mind to the aura and concentrate on the task at hand.
He shut his right eye. That seemed to eliminate the distraction, at least for the time being. With that problem out of the way, Cian started searching throughout the room for his resources. He reached into the pocket of his gym shorts and rummaged around to check for whatever was in there as well. He paused when he spotted the light fixture above the sink, noticed where the cord was, and followed it with his eyes to see where exactly it led. He crawled beneath the sink, opened up the cabinet and found an electrical outlet.
"If I don't state aloud what I'm doing, maybe there's a chance this'll actually work," he muttered to himself as he reached inside of the cabinet. He jammed up a piece of notebook paper that he had kept inside of his pocket, unplugged the light, wrapped the piece of paper around the metal prong and plugged the light back in. What would usually be an extraordinarily stupid thing to do was instead going to cause precisely what he needed to happen, or so he hoped. He hadn't gotten the opportunity to test the theory whether or not this would do what he intended for it to.
He shoved whatever else was in the cabinet as close to the outlet as he could, retracted his hands, and waited for a spark. Soon enough, he started to smell something a little abnormal. Taking that as the closest thing to a sign as he was going to get, Cian climbed on top of the toilet and used it as a step towards the window. He pulled the curtain rod off from its perch, removed the curtains and tossed the pole aside.
A bit of correctly tinted smoke began to rise throughout the room. He stuffed one of the curtains beneath the door for the time being to prevent it from leaking out. If he waited too long, he'd get smoke inhalation from trapping himself inside of here with no outside oxygen, but he could withstand at least a minute or so as long as he was careful about it. He used the second curtain to fan at the opening, trying to direct the smoke towards the alarm at the top of the ceiling. If enough of it compiled, then it was only a matter of time until it began to buzz incessantly and nag everyone out of danger whether they were especially compelled to leave or not.
He stared down the blinking red eye in expectation, intently analyzing each momentary pause for a sign of uncertainty. There was little point in him keeping an eye on the flames when there was little to be gained from leaving. His skin didn't feel too much excess heat, and as far as containment went, the generally non-flammable appliances in the room didn't place him in any danger. The only thing he had to focus on was that one little blip and the signal he needed it to send. It didn't respond.
His impatience began to escalate steadily. If he had to spend another thirty seconds in this room, puffing out his cheeks like a rodent storing nuts, he'd be about ready to skip the transference and pull an alarm himself. Then, the light stabilized into a constant state of vibrant, fire red. The alarm vibrated. That was as much of a cue as he needed to get out of there as quickly as possible.
Cian referenced the window above the toilet for about half a second and instantly decided it was far too small for a person to plausibly climb through, so he reverted to leaving the same way he came. He snatched the curtain away from beneath the door, tossed both of them wherever in the room they might fall, and ran back towards the gym to join the others. It wasn't as if the school had video cameras, so the best chance he had at avoiding suspicion would be to pretend he hadn't left for more than a minute in the first place and pretend he was slow to respond. He darted through the locker rooms, pushed open the door to the gymnasium, took a few stumbling steps inside, and skidded to a narrow stop with his arms partway outstretched to force himself to balance in spite of the unexpected.
The lights within the room snapped off, dimming his surroundings instantly. Only the cloudy skies outside the wall length panel windows lining the other side of the room provided any light by which to see. It was still bright enough at midday that nothing was truly obscured by the sudden change in illumination. The sole thing the shift in intensity accomplished was to be foreboding. It did this exceedingly well.
Cian rocked backwards just far enough to stand back upright once again. He looked out across the room in search of any sign of life just in time to hear a door slam on the exact opposite side of the room. A girl Cian didn't recognize by name came stumbling out the other side. The moment that he laid eyes on her, it pulled a sense of foggy familiarity out of him. He would have questioned it further, but circumstances were demanding and he didn't have the time to make any distinctions. All that mattered about her was that she went to this school, had also been in the bathroom long enough to get left behind, and was stuck directly in the middle of something that should not have been her problem to face.
The shock of almost falling over had caused him to instinctively open both of his eyes. The moment that he had the time to start observing his surroundings past the point of them being dimmed, he was forced to see that the aura had swollen significantly since he left. It engulfed the entire room, overlapping the upper half of the gymnasium inside a practically impermeable solid coat that nearly gave off the appearance of a sea on the ceiling. There were a number of ways he could choose to interpret that, none of which struck him as being especially promising.
Not wanting to waste any more time, he forced himself to recover and started walking across the room to reach the exit. He made it no more than five steps before the ground began to rattle and creak with the reverberation spreading through the old walls. Making it out the door wasn't going to be nearly as promising of an option as first thought.
Cian backed away from the exit and the adjacent wall. He ran along the edge of it until he came across the door to the storage closet. If he was lucky, the rush to depart from the potentially imminent disaster would have encouraged the teacher not to waste time locking the door. He twisted the handle. It refused to budge. He tried to shove his shoulder into it and force it to open with absolutely no success at doing so. He signed in exasperation, tempted to place his frustrations into more concise, effective words, but lacking the time with which to do so.
"It's time for plan B. What's plan B?" he muttered with a light, impatient sigh under his breath. With this much pressure, he hadn't much time to think of something practical, but he didn't need for it to seem reasonable so long as whatever he came up with managed to be effective.
The lights hanging from the ceiling started to clank about as their chains hit together, parting the sea of smoke in waves and forming so much of an unnecessary distraction, his brain may have been clogged. He turned to his right and continued to scour the area for anything that even remotely resembled a possible idea. His concentration didn't last for long.
" 'Ey there! Hurry it up! Unless you really want to be a charred pancake person, it's prolly a good idea!" the still-unidentified classmate shouted towards him. He looked around the room until he spotted her. She was currently standing about hallway across the gym, beside the back wall, and facing in his general direction with an increasingly incredulous stare, truly curious as to whether or not he saw her there in the first place. Aside from that one brief glimpse in her direction, he didn't seem to even acknowledge the fact that she was there as well.
The moment he noted where she was standing, Cian had started looking in another direction. The girl wasn't exactly a necessary part of the decision making process in self-preservation. At the rate at which the vibrations were increasing, it was apparent that whatever was going to happen, it was going to happen before he could escape through an open door. He ran a few steps along the back wall until he was standing beside the edge of a cushioned mat and pulled with as much force as he could muster. The Velcro that supported it gradually gave way, detaching from the wall into a long, unexpectedly heavy cushion. He hoisted it over his head and was easily lost beneath the musty piece of foam and pleather. Cian pushed the drooping front of it backwards far enough to peek around. Soon enough, he spotted the other girl, bounding back towards the women's locker room and the inevitable disaster to come.
This wasn't a scenario that lent itself well to careful calculation and logical thought. There was no time for him to respond with anything other than pure reflex. Cian bounded across the room as fast as he could possibly move while still lugging the mat along with him. Not even he was entirely sure how he managed to overtake her pace and caught up with her, but he did.
The moment that she was in his sight, he reached out an arm and grabbed onto the back of her hair. It slipped through his fingers almost immediately, but it was enough to make her stumble, and that was all the opportunity he needed. Her pace started to slow so she could catch her balance. He slipped one step ahead of her, fell to his knees and grabbed her by the ankle before she had the opportunity to. She collapsed to the ground as well. A number of curse words began to gurgle in her throat, preparing to erupt in the most vicious way possible. They seared on her tongue, but they never had the chance to come out.
Scrambling to make the last effort he could, Cian tried to pin the girl momentarily by placing one knee on her back and pushing down. One hand pressed against the floor to hold him upright while the other one, along with his head and the upper portion of his back, held the mat up above them. His other foot struggled to keep the bottom of the mat securely down, with a questionable amount of success. The floor vibrated beneath him, continually escalating in intensity, attempting to throw him off of his balance at the last second. He held his ground.
A clamor rushed over the room as every window lining the northern wall crashed in a single blow. It started with the ringing of glass shattering, turned into a wave rushing through the air, and was followed by the crash of fragments colliding to the ground, clawing at the surface with every speck of force it had. He couldn't remember how the end sounded. His senses were too overwhelmed to hear it anymore.
In the grand scheme, this wasn't that horrible. He could directly recall experiencing far, far more excruciating problems than this. Being branded like cattle seared both one's skin and pride. Losing his eye and having to deal with the fact that nobody would ever be able to stare straight at him without seeing a scar rather than a person; that was agony. A few shards of glass being chucked in his direction and some pressure in his chest really weren't a big deal in contrast to what he had already endured. The trouble with contrasting those prior experiences was that, unlike everything he could so vaguely remember, his back was poked through with numerous shards of glass right now. Right now, they still kept throbbing, and no amount of memories was going to make that stop.
Cian had yet to see whatever damage had come to the room as a whole. The instant that the wall of windows lining the gym had broken and sprayed across the area, he'd stopped directly observing anything around him besides the back of the mat he'd tried to use as cover. Out of the very few options he had at the time, it'd seemed like the most useful item available. In contrast to the bleachers, wearing a dodge ball as a hat or doing absolutely nothing, it had served him fairly well. He could feel the remnants digging into his back, so obviously he was alive at this point.
As he struggled to continue leaning upright, Cian coughed. There wasn't that much smoke in the air in this room, but at this point there didn't really need to be in order to trigger that reaction. He blinked a few times as he struggled to re-enter a state of full awareness with arguable success, though he couldn't really state for certain how successful he was when the only thing he'd done thus far was stay in precisely the same location as he'd been for the past thirty seconds or so.
A wave of nausea pushed through him, swaying him even further off balance in the process. He flopped to his right, leaning in towards the ground. The mat moved along with him, causing certain shards of glass to poke in new, innovative ways that made him feel even worse. He moaned lightly and began to wonder exactly why he'd thought that was such a good idea in the first place. A couple of seconds later, he had a relatively reliable explanation for that. He'd taken that action because he wasn't thinking. Sure, he didn't want to get a bystander hurt due to a problem his presence had caused, but even with that condition he couldn't help but to note in retrospect that pushing someone else away to take the damage had been exceptionally short-sighted.
"What in the heck was that about? Divin' in like you're some kind of ground based super hero mole worm creature… I mean, I appreciate it, but I coulda kinda used a warnin'," the girl spurted out, evidently a little bit achy herself. She jostled her way out from beneath Cian as he tried to stand up, the combination of which knocked him even further off balance.
He stayed on the floor for a few moments longer, not bothering to put forth the imminently painful effort to move from his spot. While it wasn't exactly comfortable to be sprawled out across the wooden floor, bleeding from lacerations he couldn't see or even necessarily prove were there at this point, he wasn't overly inclined to budge in the near future.
The girl stood up off of the ground and began to pace around the mat. Cian could hear her footsteps. He tried not to care. This was proven rather quickly not to be a viable option. No sooner had he started to close his eyes did she yank the mat off of him and unceremoniously chuck it to the side of the room with even less warning than he'd bothered to give her. He was too shocked by the twist in what had to be a larger room to make a scathing remark about the hypocrisy of what she'd had to say. His eyes shot open.
He started to move one of his arms towards his mouth to cover a wheeze in his sleeve when he froze mid-motion due to a sharp pang again. Well, at least now he knew there was more than one major injury to treat. His eyes snapped sharply open, widening on reflex due to the shock. His view expanded just in time to get a very clear image of the increasingly familiar face staring over him.
"Thanks for the feedback. I'll be certain to keep that in mind, next time I use myself as a human shield on your behalf," Cian commented flatly back to her, trying to hide any sounds of pain in his voice but not entirely succeeding. He lowered his head back behind his arms and tried to forget everything that had come rushing into his head. He really didn't want to continue staring at her freckled face when the memories that accompanied her were so uncomfortable for him to process.
"Ey, this is no time for being cheeky. Sure, you're a bloody mess," she glanced in his direction with an expression on the verge of a wince. He returned the stare dispassionately.
"That much is relatively obvious," he remarked back.
"But it aint' gonna get better standin' around! C'mon, we've gotta get outa here," she tried to urge him on. Cian didn't bother suppressing his groan this time. He started to slowly rise up to his feet. Each time he tried to arch his back, it tried to turn rigid against his will. This twitching happened about twice before the girl previously known as Doll lost her patience with it. She grabbed onto Cian's arm and started to pull him up. He started to stumble on reflex until eventually the process had caused him to stand on his feet. He was on the verge of saying something sarcastic back to her just to relieve his growing inner frustration with the whole scenario when she started pulling him along with her towards the exit.
As much as it may have hurt, but he really did need to get out of here- both of them did. It was deeply unsettling to keep being prodded around like this, but at least he understood not to take it personally. The looming miasma within the area was still just as murky as before. He could hardly see down the length of the hallway. If he was anywhere even remotely unfamiliar, it would have been all too easy to get lost within the winding maze of the school grounds. Even his mind was beginning to feel mildly hazy, though he was fairly sure that the aura engulfing the area wasn't at fault for that part.
His eye started to flicker shut, but he started to fall over the instant that it closed, so he managed to snap them back open and go on as intended. He looked from side to side with as much caution as he could muster. The aura was still here. There was a strong possibility something else was going to happen, or what was worse, someone else was still here. If it did, he had to be braced for their appearance. And yet, peculiarly enough, no one came. Every lurking shadow remained as a shadow, and with absolutely no further disruptions, the two of them emerged on the other side.
Five or six steps out onto the sidewalk, Doll skidded to an eventual stop. She gasped for air, thoroughly relieved to see the clear sky. She turned her head to face Cian, a playful smirk growing over the pleasant surprise that escaping the way they had actually worked. "That was a real close one, eh-" she started to speak, but cut herself off almost immediately when the person she was searching for wasn't there to be seen; at least he wasn't seen in the spot where she expected him to be.
The second that Cian's foot made contact with the grass, his sense of balance slipped out from underneath him. His will to make it to safety had been set with the internal condition that he only had to make it out the door. The moment he was outside, reasonably and logically in the same location as Sebastian would be, he'd be safe. Meeting that condition used all of the will and energy he could gather. He collapsed face-first into the bushes, crashing deeply into unconsciousness.