the Lost One

knife throwing

When I got to training nobody was there so I decided to start practicing my knife-throwing skills. We are apparently supposed to be learning that over the next few weeks so why not start early?

After a few throws, I kind of got the hang of it. I kept throwing, again and again, I might've even enjoyed it. Hopefully, I don't enjoy throwing that at someone, oop-

"Hey, you're pretty good at this." A voice said behind me. Eric. He must've come in while I was throwing.

"Thanks, I trained myself," I say, trying to sound bratty.

"Have you found him yet?" he asks, suddenly becoming serious and I turn around.

"No," I say as I look down. "Do you know how hard this task is for me?" Suddenly, I'm furious. "I have a few days until the deadline to find my older brother whom I haven't seen in almost a decade. I don't even know what I would say or what I would do when I finally find him. What should I do? Would he recognize me? Would he hate me or would he like me? Have I met him already? Seen him already? SO many questions and preparations, Eric, I'm going insane!" I finally spit out, completely out of breath. 

Just as that last word spits out of my mouth, Josh comes running in. I turn to him awkwardly and give him a weird face.

"Why the rush, J?" I ask him.

"Oh, you know," he says awkwardly. "Just preparing for the first training lesson," he's obviously nervous. "Why the new nickname?" he says, suddenly his mood changing.

"I don't really like the name Josh," I say, brutally honest. That's who I am. He looks hurt. "and J has a good ring to it, don't ya think?" I say, trying to make it up to him.

"Um, yeah, sure," he mumbles.

"I, um, have to run a few errands today," Eric all of a sudden says while looking at the file in his hands. "Four will have to train you guys alone," he says, walking out of the room as the rest of the transfer initiates walk in.

A few minutes later Four walks in, he looks exactly the same as I saw him when he woke everyone up, sleep-deprived. 

"Hello everyone, today we will be working on throwing knives," he starts. "You will all be marked on your skills, the more you improve, the higher score you get, the less you improve, the lower score you get, everyone understands?" everyone nods.

"Great! Stand in front of a target, then throw, just make sure you're not throwing while everyone is picking up their knives. We don't want any unnecessary trips to the infirmary," he says, taking a step back so he doesn't get hit by all the knives flying through the air. 

unnecessary trips to the infirmary? who does he think he is? 

I had been throwing for around 10 minutes, hitting the target almost every time. 

"Do you guys do some secret combat fighting in Erudite?" Sarah asks, a hint of joking in her voice.

"Hah, no, believe it or not, this is only from books," I say nervously.

"Well then you must've done a lot of reading," Four is standing behind me out of nowhere, examining the way I throw and how I hold the knife. 

"I may have watched a few videos," I say, hoping he doesn't suspect anything. 

"You really were eager to get out of that place, huh. It was that bad?" he chuckles and walks to the next person.

Right before I throw my next knife I hear a scream. A very loud scream. I'm guessing I wasn't imagining it since everyone stopped throwing and looked at the door, then at Four, who clearly had no idea what to do. After a while, he opened the door to the training room and saw everyone rushing towards the Pit.

"Everyone stays tightly in a group and follows me, don't make any eye contact, and don't lose me," he said. Everyone could hear the concern in his voice and the message he gave us didn't make us feel better about the whole situation. 

Everyone huddled in a group as Four stepped outside and went with the flow. I decided I couldn't stay with the group. I had to find Eric. He's the only one I trust. What the hell is going on? I slipped away and made sure that nobody saw me as I went in the opposite direction as everyone else. 

After a while, I came to an entrance at the other side of the Pit and saw Eric standing in the middle of it, amongst Four, Lauren, and other leaders of the faction. They were all watching something, or someone being dragged out of the Chasm. I saw a few of Four's friends all huddled up close to the Chasm, could it have been someone they knew? They all gasped and looked away when they saw who was being dragged out. Yeah, must've been someone they knew. I saw other people coming up to them, comforting them, dragging them away. The whole Pit was silent. I'm guessing this doesn't happen very often or does it? I saw the blonde girl I almost knocked out the first day I came here. She was shocked, stunned even. I could see the tears silently crawl down her pale face as she watched the horrifying scene. I couldn't take this anymore, so I left.