Kept in the Dark

Kept in the dark-chapter2

"As I am sure most of you have heard we are having a tournament in three weeks time. What's the big deal some of you might ask?" he looked pointedly at me. Gulp whoops. "This is not an ordinary tournament this is an international tournament. Yes I know the United States is the only place with the twenty third chromosome but what you don't know is that not every city has a training ground actually very few cities have a training ground so about half of the kids were taken over seas and have been training in foreign countries. These facilities aren't exactly small."

Pf didn't I know it. I once walked from the front door of "the prison" to the end of the training field was a good ten minute walk. This place had to cover over fifty acres! We had to be moved from California to Wyoming just south of some place called Raderville wherever that is. But we had miles and miles before you hit our first neighbor nice guy I got to meet him once. Just to feel him out and make sure that he didn't suspect anything going on up the road. He didn't. He was more interested in his chickens than his neighbor which was fine with us. I forced myself to pay attention to what Kallum was saying.

"This tournament is basically the same as before you fight who the panel chooses, you will be studied, and whoever wins moves on. Because this is for scientific purposes you may fight more than once, you may fight in groups, you may fight each other, be prepared for anything. We will be training extra hard for this. Obviously the purpose of this tournament is to compare training abilities and technique. We do want to beat them but it is not our only purposes please remember that if and when they ask you to fight with the guests.

"What?!" Almost everyone questioned. It was more of a gasp that they made into a word than a real word. Hanging jaws and wide eyes were all I could see. Geeze people these aren't the enemies.

"Thank you Grace." Oops. I whipped my head back to Kallum who had that stupid heart melting smile on his face. Off limits off limits. But his laughing eyes weren't laughing? Whoa that wasn't good. Alarm sharpened my senses but I kept my face a cool mask. Throwing a smile back his way I glanced at Lane who was watching me. I raised my eyebrows in a what? gesture. He gave me a raised eyebrow in return. I scowled and stuck my tongue out. Alright so Lane didn't believe my tough guy attitude. He was probably sensing me right now, knowing Lane he has probably been sensing me since I walked in late even whilst meditating, technically it was against the rules he was suppose to be focusing but he was so good at sensing he could probably do it while sleeping. Being an animal ascendency he communicated with animals humans were a piece of cake compared to that! He would never admit it but I had a sense that he could read minds even if the cor said it wasn't possible. How could they even say that? People were learning new things every day! Stupid cor. Anything is possible especially in this place. Actually the only place it was crazy was on the training field we weren't allowed to use our abilities inside. PERIOD. As in like if we get caught we get exiled. I don't know what that means since they won't tell us but I assume death or.....well I pretty much assume death so no powers inside.

The group had separated, like we always did, into pairs. You were partnered with your closest power which no one else carried except Kallum so he took off his shirt, another favorite part of my day, and we made our way towards the center of the dome. The first part of training was hand to hand combat, Kallum made sure everyone was in their places we bowed and then it was time to focus. There was never an easy part of training with Kallum but this was the part I hated the most. As much as I wanted him to touch me and to be on top of me I knew that it was off limits, in a big way another exiled kind of way. Something about the emotions being too hard to control. Staring into his eyes I watched in my peripheral vision his hands. The left shot out, I easily dodged it and countered with a right hitting him straight in the kidney. he let out a cough but didn't show any pain. Control. he inched in instead of backing up with him I quickly lifted my knee and hit him center chest but being so close gave him room to grab my knee and hold it. He reached out and punched my side; I pushed myself closer and shoved my arms under his. But just as I thought I might have had the upper hand he used his full strength pushing his arms down and locking me into a death grip. I locked my legs around his torso and kicked my heel into his back not as effective as I would have liked given the position. I was too light he wasn't even on the ground I used the air behind me and pushed him over I lifted my hands from around his back so that he hit the ground and hit it hard. His arms loosened and I threw a punch onto his side. Hopping back quickly I prepared for another fight but he didn't move.