The Thirteenth Union: Prelusion

Chapter Ten: I Could Definitely Be Doing Something Else Right Now...

Warren had requested that I dress comfortably in dark clothes, and promptly at eight o'clock I was pulling on my black tennis shoes. My only pair of jeans were conveniently dark enough to meet the bar; I had a thin black cardigan. If there was a need to dress in the shadows, I was sure that there would be a need for me to pull my hair back-I settled on a taunt braid that made my scalp tender.

The girls were very sad that I had declined Warren's offer for Homecoming-I told them the entire story while behind held hostage for class. But what I didn't tell them was that he hadn't been to keen on wanted to go either. There was nothing between us that would remotely solicit "dating," we were just really good friends; not something that any of my roommates could claim to have when it came to the opposite gender. They took their dates-even Sylvia-and left in their satin and chiffon dresses, hand in hand with a tuxedo.

A knock came at the door just as I tucked the bow of my double knot into the side of my shoe. I rolled onto my feet and tentatively pulled the door open.

Warren Dallas stood proudly in the doorway. I noticed a small backpack on his shoulders, over the dark navy blue hoodie, zipped up halfway. He was grinning. "You ready?" he asked.

"Yeah," I slipped out of the room and closed the door. There was a checklist I was running through in my head. It was precautions I made so that Perkins didn't freak when she inevitably found out I was missing from the dorm-which shouldn't really be a problem. "But we better hurry," I warned with a glance at my watch. I grabbed the sleeve of his hoodie and we jogged down the hallway. "The Imperial Watchdogs are going to figure out that I'm not at the dance like I said I would be."

"You lied to them?" he whispered at me as we swung ourselves into the stairwell.

"It was my only option, Warren," I reasoned with him. "It just simply had to be done. Where are we going anyways? Not to spray paint anyone's dorm door, I'm hoping. That would be a careless decision that could get our scholarships revoked and ourselves expelled."

He tapped a finger off the tip of my nose. I found that I didn't like it. "That would be too primitive a project, Jessie Joan," he said. "It would be a waste of our skills. I've come up with a much better plan."

We took the stairs two at a time. And by the time we reached the top, my heart was hammering with a refreshing speed in my chest.

On the side of the bend, we reached a set of elevator doors that could only be activated with a keycard scanner, keypad, and retinal scanner. Instead of stopping, like he had, I kept on up the stairs, until he half-shouted my name. I turned to see him pulling a keycard out of his hoodie pocket. He waved me over with it between two of his fingers.

I looked at him sideways, still halfway up the next flight of stairs. "You can't be serious," I said, padding down the steps to meet him.

"Oh, but I can, and I frequently am." He swiped the card through the scanner, punched in a twelve-digit code, and then stared into the retinal scanner. A blue light fanned out, swiped from the top of his eye to the bottom, and then the silver doors spread apart. "And at this moment," the stupid grin dropped from his face, making way for a dark mischievousness, "I am not but."

The doors began to close, but he looped his hand inside and stopped them open for me, waiting for me to enter.

"How'd you get yourself into the scanner's database?" I asked, flabbergasted. I didn't move. What was he planning for us to do tonight? I thought with a dubious step forward. And why did it involve using the restricted elevators? "Those things are only for department heads and workers. You're just an Academy kid."

"So I am." He motioned to his entire body. "But tonight we are nobodies, so come on."

"Nobodies don't know how to incorporate themselves into a database that they have no reason to be apart of."