Selection (Book 2 of P.O.E. chronicles)

Chapter 5 - Nirmal Ganesh

“Name.” one of the guards asked with a heavy Chinese accent as we approach the gate dividing us. If they thought the group was exceptionally large, they didn’t say anything.

“Trevor Holland.” Trevor replied and the guard pulled out a device from his pocket and proceeded to scan his eyes. The device made a bleeping sound and flashed green afterwards and the guard nodded to his comrade who pressed a button on the wall.

The gate rose up quickly and Trevor stepped through swiftly. The rest of us followed quickly and I tried to act as natural as possible. The gate closed after us almost immediately, causing Oscar at the back to jump away a little in fright.

“How come you have such a large group?” The guard asked just as we were approaching the door that lead to the outside world. My heart froze and my hands started to sweat.  I had never been more annoyed at myself with all my stupid physical reactions under emotional stresses. Seriously. Look at Oscar; he looked perfectly at ease, like he does this kind of thing every day.

“We ran into each other on the way in.” Trevor lied convincingly, then turned to look at Tom. The guard followed his line of vision and eyed Tom up for a while.

“Next time come in separately.” The guard said before resuming whatever it was he was doing before we arrived and the other one did the same. I breathed a silent sigh of relieve and followed the others out the door.

The moment I stepped outside the door a wave of sound, noise and smell hit me. It felt weird and yet familiar. Although truth be told I had never experienced a crowd like this before; Yunan Citybase was packed with people. Stalls were set up either side of the streets each selling different things; pedestrians had only a narrow gap to squeeze through and there were an awful lot of bantering going on. It was so different to London Citybase that I felt like I was transported into another universe. The fact that they were yelling a completely different language added to the effect.

Although English was supposed to be the main language used worldwide, the UGE never enforced it. Partly because of political reasons, but also to avoid a loss of culture; however with the new schooling systems everyone should be able to speak English fluently.

“Follow us. Try not to get lost.” Trevor said and started worming his way down the street. No one seemed to had paid any attention to us even though we had just walked out of a tiny house; however we did got a few extra glances due to the fact that we were predominantly white.

Afraid to loose someone in this narrow street I instinctively grab Natalie’s hand, who was  in front and reached  my hand out to the person behind me. ther person behind me hesitated for a few seconds before taking my hand; curious I turned around to see.

My eyes widened when I saw that it was Tom. He was purposefully looking away from me to the right; a blush made its way to my cheek and the warmth from his hand made my palm tingled. I turned back around and felt my stomach fluttered nervously. Shut up hormones! This is Tom!

We carried on walking in a chain, meandering through the Citybase. The stone paved streets and houses all looked older than the Citybase itself, with numerous monuments scattered in between. This must be one of those Citybase that was built on the old city itself.

After ten minutes or so we reached a little alley way that I would have totally missed if we weren’t following them. Squeezing through the narrow entrance the noise level had suddenly dropped and the air around us cooled under the shadowed path.

“Come in.” Patrick was holding the door for us. I looked up and saw an ordinary house that looked identical to the one either side of it. Before I could take a better look of my surrounding I was ushered inside the room.