How to Keep a Secret

Chapter 8- Tell Us A Secret, Any Secret

Hazel was the first to move. She looked around at our group, then confidently moved towards the hallway on the left. "Might as well pick 'em now, guys-- we only have twenty minutes, after all," she said as she disappeared down the hallway. I took one last look around and turned to follow her, ignoring the stares of my fellow trainees.

"Einey, Meany, Miney... Mine!" She said as she stopped at a random door and opened it. "Oh wow, this is nicer than I expected," I heard her say as she entered the room. I took the room next to her, running my finger absentmindedly across the numbers '108' engraved in the dark mahogany door. "Mind if I take this one?" Cameron said, motioning to the vacant room next to me.

"Sure," I said, looking past him towards the commons, where the group of trainees still standing around had dwindled considerably. I took a deep breath and opened to door to the room I would be living in for the next three months.

Hazel's reaction was an understatement; the room was beautiful. A dark wood desk, dresser, matching bedside tables, and a queen sized bed took up most of the lavish space. As I walked further into the room, I noticed the flatscreen tv on the wall above the dresser, facing the futon to the left of the bed for convenient Netflix bingeing, although I doubted we would have much time for TV.

I continued to admire the rest of the room's amenities for a solid ten minutes. I was in the middle of examining a mini fridge under the desk when Hazel pranced into my room and sat on the edge of the bed, swinging her legs and whistling to herself. "Nice place you got here. Identical to mine, believe it or not," she said, and I laughed. 

"Who knew? By the way, what time did Amanda say we had to be at the training center by?"

"Six forty-five, which is in approximately... eight minutes," she said as she checked her wristwatch. "Want to head over there early, so we have time to check out the training facility?"

"Why not," I said, and with that I headed out of room 108 towards CHQ.

"So tell me a bit about yourself," Hazel said as we walked towards where we assumed the training facility would be. "Well, I'm eighteen, I can't throw a knife for my life, and I love makeup. What about you?" 

"I'm pretty sure I'm around nineteen or so, I can't stand boring people, and my weapon of choice is a 9mm pistol," she said nonchalantly. I didn't even have a chance to ask her what the hell that meant before she spoke up again. "This looks like it. Shall we?" she said as she gestured to the door in front of me.

The training center was like the rest of the compound: huge. Bright fluorescent lights were hung on so high up that they only cast a dim light on the concrete floor. Large grey mats lined the ground to the left of us in an orderly, straight pattern, while to our right shiny new gym equipment filled the space. Everything else was too hard to make out clearly, due to the size of the cavern and the dim lights.

"Well I must say, I'm impressed," Hazel said as she walked around, her neck craning upwards to try and see the ceiling. I looked around at all the equipment and mats, feeling small and out of place.

"Nice to be the first ones here, don't you think? We have all this to ourselves for a few minutes," Hazle said, her voice echoing.

"That's not entirely true. More like ONE minute, not minutes," Cameron said as he walked up to us, with two boys by his side. "Hi, I'm Kenneth. You probably remember me from my stupid question earlier," the taller of the two boys said.

"Yeah, I remember you. Your question wasn't stupid, though. I'm Gracie," I said as I gave Kenneth a quick once over. His dirty blond hair was messy, as though he had just crawled out of bed before he had arrived at the compound. For all I knew, that might've been the case. "And I'm Quincy. Nice to meet you," the darker skinned boy on the other side of Cameron said as he nodded in greeting. He whistled as he looked around the training center. "Check this place out, Kenny, isn't it neat?"