Chapter 15: Part 2

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At the back of my mind, I funnily suggested that I offer him Drask's head, though he had no relevance to Eric. I took Eric's threat as a warning but I never listened to him for I was going to catch Drask no matter what. However, if I were to catch him, I had hoped for him to have money on him, or something radically unlikely, like Vernon's head, in order for Eric to exempt me.

"If you went into the public in uniform, you should be thankful that you're still alive," he commented.

"And why is that?"

"Gang rivalry, and with that get-up, you were bound to be caught. I don't want our uniforms being recognized by other groups whom are better at torture than reading. You're lucky it was daytime," Eric warned, presuming I went elsewhere other than the vast desert.

After I was permitted to leave his room, I slowly paced away from Eric but before he closed his door, he announced loudly, so that everyone around could hear, "Not even a Silverist, and he's already contributed over four thousand dollars to this establishment," he then begin clapping, which led to the other Silverists awkwardly beginning to applaud me.

I was pulled to a stop as the applause for me only grew louder and louder. At first, I did not know what exactly to think of this spontaneous act from Eric, but it seemed like a harmless act of politeness and gratitude; however, my mind would never stop overanalyzing every situation to a T, so I replayed his quote in my head over and over again. After doing this, I noticed that there was a sense of sarcasm in his tone, which wiped my bright smile from the acclaim I was receiving.

Due to the excessive clapping, I started to believe that I was being mocked by him. My mind then leapt to the conclusion that Eric did this to paint a target at the back of my head, for I noticed a couple of fellas in recruit jackets applauding me as well, when their commendation was unnecessary, probably for the sake of respect. Yet, their overall facial expressions, which included devilish eyes and gloomy frowns, did not seem to correlate with any sign of respect.

I did not know whether they were doing this to respect either me or Eric, or they had some sort of clapping competition, or they were clapping for the sake of clapping. There were too many instances where the recruits were clapping not because they respected me or admired me. I had not yet figured out why they were clapping but I could tell that, behind their sinister expressions, lay devious thoughts and plans of some sort.

Those teenagers, whose jackets were completely identical to mine, were not from my allocated group of twelve. I had not known much about them, but I did not intend to for I avoided them, due to their intimidating presence and stance, as I knew they would only swear back at me. It was only seconds later that I realized they were my competitors, and I was a threat to them, as well as them to me. However, there was a question in my mind that rung in a continuous loop for about a minute. That question was, 'What were we competing in?'

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