Astray

Chapter One

My eyes are still closed as my alarm rings out. I didn't need it since I didn't get any sleep. I slipped out of my bed already dressed, ready to go. My window slides open with only the faintest of creaking. It's only a small drop from my window to the ground, yet somehow, I manage to land on my back. I run out to my driveway, hop on my bike, and make my way to the old lab.

My best friend is Suzie. We've always been joined at the hip since we met in first grade. But things are different now. Now she has Chad, her stupid jock boyfriend. I'm not surprised she got with a guy like Chad. She's got long athletic legs and blonde bouncy curls. She has piercing blue eyes and porcelain white skin. She's outgoing and easy to get along with. Me on the other hand, I have black hair, grey eyes, and I can't stand most people. The gravel crunches underneath my bikes tyres as I make my way up the driveway. I can see Suzie and Chad waiting for me by the chain-link fence. "Hey Poppy" Suzie says.

Chad just looks bored and says, "C'mon let's go we already waited forever".

I ended up in this situation due to peer pressure. Suzie wanted me to come along and at first, I said no but she said that she really wanted me to go and that I owed her. So of course, I did the stupid thing and agreed to go. I watch as Chad squirms through the hole in the fence. He barely gets through due to his broad shoulders. Suzie then slips through leaving me on the outside. "C'mon Poppy. What? Are you scared?" Chad teases.

I scowl at him and climb through. I'm barely through the fence when Chad turns arounds and starts stalking up towards the main entrance. Suzie looks at me and shrugs then follows him.

Once we got up there, Chad's already trying to break down the door. "It's locked idiot. You can't open it" I said.

"Yeah, that's why I'm trying to break it down, stupid" Chad replied.

"But see that's the thing, why are you trying to break the door down when the window right beside you is open?" I asked.

He scoffed then turned around to look at the broken window then goes "Uh... Oops".

I roll my eyes as I watch Chad clamber through the window. "Are we seriously gonna follow this guy?" I turn to look at Suzie who just smiles at me and says, "C'mon Poppy relax, we're just having fun."

Peer frickin pressure.

The broken glass crunches under my feet as I takein my surroundings. Small beams of moonlight stream in from the window andthrough the crack between the other boarded up windows. Broken glass isscattered all over the concrete floor as well as old paper documents. In almost perfect unison all three flashlight click on. There were two hallways to either side of us. The one on the right had a flickering light and the one on the left was pitch black and had an extremely strong ominous feel radiating from it. We all looked at each other. The choice was clear. The right hallway had 8 doors along it and at the end double doors. Above the doors were numbers and other titles such as "Chemical Storage" or "Observation Room 16". It was eerily quiet in here. The old laboratory had shut down around 20 years ago due to a "chemical leak" but no one believes it. Ever since I was a little girl, I'd heard many different conspiracies. Jane Thompson believed that there was no "chemical leak" and that they created feral monsters that escaped from the lab, and she said that her dad had heard one of them howling late at night. No one listened to her or anybody in her family; they're all nutjobs. Paul Ortega used to say that they were hiding a portal in here. My other friend Lindsey was Paul's brother and she said that Paul had always been obsessed with the whole lab conspiracies. He had theories that children were experimented on here and all sorts of other theories but the one he made up about a portal was the one he always came back to.