The Black Box

38

After I left Adam to find a sink, I walk into the hallway 'cause I thought I heard footsteps. I look out into the hallway and see Navi walking toward our room. He looks tired and he's not as sharp looking as he usually is. He doesn't have a leather jacket on so he's just wearing a gray t-shirt. I can see his dragon tattoo on his neck and I can't remember the last time I saw Christie.
"Where's Christie?" I yell down the hallway.

"She has some important matters to attend to," he yells back. As he walks closer, I see he has black circles under his eyes.

"Why are you coming down here for?"

"You still have some training to do." He shoves pass me and enters our room.

"We will continue training in ten minutes." He walks out, shoving me against the doorframe just like when he entered.

"We have to do more training?" whines Kevin. "I'm so sore." He starts to stretch his back.

"Whoa, look at your hands bro." I point to Kevin's hands when he's stretching his arms in the air. He stops stretching and looks at them. I walk closer to get a better look.

His whole fingertips are black and it slowly fades to his hands' knuckles. "It wasn't like this yesterday!" He shakes them frantically.

"Shaking them won't help!" I try to calm him down but he's too worked up to stop.

"They actually were like that yesterday," says Jax looking at Kevin's hands more closely. "It wasn't down to his hands' knuckles though. It stopped near his second knuckle yesterday."

"What's wrong with me?!" screams Kevin.

"It's probably our enhancers that were, let's say 'activated', that started our 'transformation'," imposes Annabeth. I swear her lightning bolts just flashed.

"That's means that Kevin should calm down," says Jax, directing his voice towards Kevin. Kevin looks at him and starts to calm down.

We walked down the hallway after about five minutes when everyone was done changing in their new clothes. Everyone, including me, was dressed in black. I completely forgot about my gear at my "old" home so I don't have my daggers or swords.

We're walking down the hallway to the training room when someone's running down the hallway behind us. I turn around which makes everyone else do it too. Christie's running down the hallway towards us. As she comes closer she has bruises and scratches across her arms. She's holding something in her hand.

She slows to a stop in front of me and hands me the thing that was in her hand. It's my swords and daggers from my house.

"How'd-" I start.

"Went back to get them." She winks. I put them on.

"Thanks." I blush.

"No problem. Navi, Isaiah, and Feye want you guys in a different place."

"Different place?"

"Yeah, other than the training room." She walks through our group of friends and walks down the hallway and stops about halfway. She motions us forward.

When we're where she wants us to be, she motions to a button that's camouflaged. If you ran through the hallway, you wouldn't even see it. It's barely raised so it looks like a little bump in the wall. She presses it and a hidden stairway opens up.

We walk down the very long stairway, lit up occasionally by little ceiling lights. It's a dead end at the bottom of the staircase.

"We walked down here for nothing?" asks Adam.

"Wait for it," says Christie. She knocks on the rock like a door with the same pattern that opens up the free fall into The Shaft and our living quarters. 1-3-8-5-2.

The rock slides to the side and opens up into a spacious room. On the walls there's all sorts of weapons like guns and on the other are different kinds of swords and daggers. In front of each wall is a metal table. On the opposite wall of this room are targets. The room would be at least thirty feet long and seven feet tall.

Navi, Isaiah, and Feye are talking near the wall with the guns. Isaiah sees us and starts to walk over.

"Hey, " I whisper to Christie, "are you gonna stay?"

"I can stay. For a little while," she whispers back.

Isaiah claps his hands together loudly. "We will teach you how to use our special weapons and hand-to-hand combat. Same groups from yesterday." Annabeth and I look at each other. He looks towards me and Annabeth's direction and motions us to follow him.

He walks us over to the wall with the guns attached to it. He takes one down and places it on the table. He goes to a hidden compartment in the wall and places his finger into it. He removed his finger and a metal bullet replaces the compartment. He takes it from the hole and shows it to Annabeth and I.

"This is our secret weapon. Few have access to it. If you are chosen, then you'll have access to it. Got it?"

We nod.

"Good." He looks at us and realizes Christie's next to me. "Don't you have to be somewhere?"

"I have time," she replies calmly.

"Anyway, " Isaiah rolls his eyes, "I will show you why this is our secret weapon." He inserts the bullet into the gun and walks over to the targets. He stands about ten feet from it. He calmly looks at the target and pulls the trigger. When the bullet makes contact with the target it instantly makes the target turn to dust. Isaiah turns around and smiles.

"It turned the target into-" I say.

"Ashes. Hence our name," Christie answers me.

"Ohhh."

"If we, of course, get shot, we will die. That's why we made a serum that makes it harmless if you did get shot," says Isaiah, pulling at a drawer, that's near the guns, in the wall. He walks towards us with two syringes in one hand, his gun in the other.

"That's why we have to inoculate you with the serum. Long story short, the bullet releases a virus that's extremely deadly when it comes into contact with an object and disintegrates the object, even if the object is non-living like the target I shot at. Inoculation before the bullet's contact will result into being immune to the virus. Your friends are being inoculated right now. Like I'm about to do to you now," says Isaiah. He swiftly takes the syringes and presses the plunger once he got the needle into our necks. It stung for a second, that's all I felt.

"Let's start target practice then." Isaiah leisurely walks over to the hole and gets a few more bullets. "Come on, we don't have all day."