Taken

5 - Paparazzi

PAPARAZZI

"Where are you going?"

Those four words had enough power to make me completely halt and freeze up on the spot.

I slowly turned around to face whom the voice come from.

"Uh, washroom." I blurted out quickly.

In the middle of the hallway, Jake stared at me, a confused look on his face. "Dude. Washroom's that way."

I gulped nervously and took a quick glance at the opposite direction he was pointing at.

"Ohh, my bad! Thanks, I'm really off today....!" I exclaimed enthusiastically, attempting to lie. It worked, right?

"What are you doing here anyways?" I asked curiously.

Jake laughed. "Uh, washroom." He mocked, rolling his eyes. "Hurry up, class is going to start."

With that, he turned around and hurriedly made his way to class. I exhaled loudly as soon as he was gone.

Phew.

If he wasn't so obsessed with perfect attendance, he might've followed me.

A few steps ahead I found myself standing next to a wall decorated in colorful instrumental graffiti.

Band class.

I looked around for Khari and saw her a few seconds later peeking out from behind a wall.

"What are you-"

"Shh!" She hushed, motioning for me to go to her.

Acting as if I was a regular student striding through the hallways trying to get to my next class, I slyly made my way towards Khari.

Before I knew it, I was shoved through a door and into a tightly packed room.

"Ok," She whispered, quietly closing the door.

I looked at her in confusion. "We're inside a Janitor's closet."

"No shit. It's so that nobody will hear our conversation." She retorted, walking over to a pile of stacked paint cans and sitting on it.

Wow.

"But anyways," she continued, looking up at me. "As promised, I will tell you what's going on. I'm trusting you, so don't tell a soul about this, you understand?"

"Okay, I promise, I won't. Just tell me, It's stuffy in here."

She sighed and rested her chin on top of one hand. "Alright... So you know about the people who've gone missing recently, right? Well-"

"You know who kidnapped them?!" I blurted, eyes wide and mouth open in shock.

"Can you shut the hell up?" She snapped, making me shut my mouth immediately and let her continue.

"As I was saying, I do kind of know who is kidnapping these people. But it's not just a single person... It's an organization."

I gave her a blank look and she continued talking. "They kidnap innocent people and use them as an experiment-"

"What th-"

"Guess what the experiment is?"

She answered her own question before I could reply. "Clones. They turn regular people into clones.... Identical versions of themselves."

I stared at her again with a blank face, blinking once or twice.

Is she seriously trolling me right now? I did not ditch Civics class and come all the way over here just to hear some bull-