She sat next to him as he flipped to the first book in the New Testament and began scouring the pages until he found the 22nd chapter. She didn't miss the slight fingershake as he located the 14th verse.
"Matthew 22:14," he read aloud, "For many are...
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"Before we go further, we should all be on the same page," Star said, drawing all eyes on her. In the sunlight, I could actually see what she looked like. Her eyes were dark, her hair pin-straight and almost down to her waist. Her cheekbones hadn't looked sharp because of the weird lighting from the tunnels, the girl just had the facial structure of a queen.
"I am not staying trapped in here," Jack answered, looking around. "Can't we take this outside?"
"It's locked," the other boy answered. "There's a key in this room."
"How do you know that?"
Star fixed Jack with a stare. "Because that's how it works. That's how we made it this far. If there's a locked door in front of us and a door that locked us in from behind, that means there's a key somewhere in this room. We'll get to it shortly–"
"I don't think we should leave," Taylor mumbled.
Star sighed and shot her a look that could have frozen a snake. "If you had it your way, we'd all be crushed to death in the first room." She looked around at everyone, completely confident. "Staying still too long isn't safe. So let's not have anymore annoying interruptions."
We nodded, but part of me felt bad for Taylor. She just didn't want to go through this, and she shouldn't be put down because she was terrified. But was I about to say that to Star?
No.
"Okay, good. We'll start with the first memory. A masked man named Algernon told us this was a Trial, and that he was our Captain."
"We had the same dream!" Jack exclaimed.
Star didn't bother to answer him and looked at Reed, who nodded in confirmation.
"The six of us are two halves of a whole, just like the Bible we found. So I assume this is it–we're all a team now. We work together."
Again, we nodded.
"I'm Star," she gestured to herself and then jerked her thumb at Taylor, who was standing even further from the rest of us than she had been before. "That's Taylor. And that's Nyla."
"Jack," Jack said. "That dusty giant is Reed. Quiet boy is Grey."
Grey.
I looked at him briefly and looked away when he caught me. Even with the knowledge of his name, I still had no clue how or why I knew him. He just felt familiar.
"We've only completed one test," Star went on, "and still we almost didn't make it. We have to do better, they aren't going to get any easier."
"This first 'test' was hard enough," I muttered. Not in my head, like I'd first thought, because Star shot back, "It's only going to get harder. That's why we need a plan."
"What kind of plan?" asked Jack.
"We don't know what else we're going to encounter." She made it a point to look at every single one of us. "We have to think things through before trying anything out. Reduce the risk of anyone being hurt. Or locked in a tunnel."
