Change [Book 1 of The Elemental Marks]

Chapter 7

Lina awoke maybe five hours after that, though there was no clock in the room so she couldn't be sure.

She found herself surprisingly reluctant to leave her new room. There were two sides to this. The first was that she truly wanted to explore all this new room had to offer. She was bubbling with questions and all of the answers were surely hidden on the bookshelf opposite her. But where was she even supposed to start? She doubted she would be able to find a starter book in the mess. What she needed was someone to teach her the basics.

That led to the second side: she wasn't sure who she could talk to in this strange new place. She already liked Carson, but he was clearly on a higher pedestal than her. Did she know Wyatt and Alia well enough to ask them without seeming like an annoyance? Staying in the room would be so much simpler than trying to figure it out.

But that clearly wasn't an option. If she stayed in here too long, she was pretty sure Damian would have no problem sending one of the others in to get her. And besides, she had the entire rest of the institute to tour. That was worth seeing, wasn't it?

Peaking out the door, she saw that the upstairs hallway was completely silent. She took that opportunity to check out at least this floor. There were four other doors. Two were slightly ajar: a bathroom and one of the guys rooms. The other two were completely shut, and Lina was not about to risk opening them. She headed downstairs, where she could hear chatter.

She took the path she knew, though the stairs also connected with another hallway, and ended up back in the living room. There, Damian stood poised over the couch, which Carson was sitting on. Alia was leaning against the wall opposite them, looking tense and brooding.

"Hi," Lina said with a smile. When they turned to look at her, they all looked very tired.

"Lina!" a voice called. Lina took a step farther into the room and found that it connected with another hallway through a doorway. In that room, which must've been some sort of kitchen, Wyatt was smiling in front of a bowl of cereal. "Morning!"

"Morning, Wyatt," she replied.

"How'd you like the room?" Carson asked, standing up from the couch. His tone was more relaxed than it had been the night before, but he seemed to want a serious answer to this.

She managed a shrug. "It was fine. I slept well enough," she replied. He nodded like he would mark that as a good thing. Somehow it wasn't hard to imagine him over a pad of paper writing down his various observations and thoughts from the day.

"Ready for your tour? Or are you hungry?" Damian asked her. He motioned toward the kitchen. "We've got, uh, cereal, probably some fruit."

"I don't usually eat breakfast." Even with that spread.

At home, she might've been reminded for the who-knew-how-many-th time that it was the most important meal of the day. No one here did that.

Instead, Alia informed her, "It's more like lunch now." She pointed toward a wall clock over her head, and Lina saw it was nearly noon. Had she really slept for that long?

"Just the tour then," Damian said decisively. "If you have any questions along the way, feel free to ask."

About the Institute, of course. Otherwise, there would've been a million already. Instead, she did her best to pay attention to where they were going. She had a knack for getting lost in the simplest of places, but she didn't want to make this institute one of them.

"We can check out the training room first," Carson suggested. He headed straight through the living room, out the door that they had originally come through when Lina first arrived. She followed him with the rest of the group trailing behind.