mutated

chapter one: does the lock down drill even exist?

My name is Jade. Jade Wong. Most people know me as a classic bookworm/nerd, or as some of my friends put it, tsundere. Well, thanks for that. Most people know me as an innocent, perfectly normal 13-year-old high school student. I wish.

I'm much more than that. Actually, scratch that. My entire class of loners and gamers and geeks and nerds are much more than that. We're a secret elite force in a secret society.

And this is the story of how my life took a 180 turn from aspiring to be an author or a radiologist into becoming a secret agent.

Or an assassin. Whatever works for you.

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It started off on a normal Monday morning. The alarm rang at 7, I turned it off, ended up waking 15 minutes later, rushing to get ready for the next day, barely scraping an on-time registration, and taking the lift up to our 5th-floor music room/tutor room. I sighed as I walked in, glancing at the huge gender split in the room, with all the guys in the far back corner next to the drums, and all the girls right in front of the door.

Right in front of the door.

Carefully maneuvering myself around the sloppily placed bags that littered the floor. I sighed again, walking towards Karyn, who was happily banging on the piano some random wedding songs. Abby was occasionally blurting out when her future husband would watch her walk down the aisle, and gaze at her lovingly, while Meredith just rolled her eyes as she continued to watch her K-Drama.

Ruby, Charlotte, Sophia, and Alicia were playing a game that would translate to '7 levels of pig', while Alyssa, who would usually be staring at them with her earphones plugged into her phone which was plugged into her laptop, was probably late and not here yet. That would be all of the girls- wait, almost forgot Camellia, who was flitting around the guys.

"Don't cheat on Winter, Cam!" I called, walking towards the guys now since wedding songs were definitely not my thing. "He'll be hurt." Most of the boys were playing Clash Royale, shouting about using fireballs or pekkas or whatever, while others were playing this car racing game. Ryan Yip, however, was playing Phantom Forces by himself, and somehow, I pitied him. Sure, he was a pain in the ass, loud, rude, and just plain annoying, he wasn't all bad sometimes.

He opened his mouth and gave a loud holler, and I winced at the loud noise. Too loud for Monday morning.

Nevermind that. He was annoying.

Mr Nicholson, our favorite form tutor sat on his wheelie chair, legs on the desk, scrolling aimlessly through the bulletin. "There's assembly tomorrow." He said happily, and he was responded with a collective groan. Nobody liked assembly. All we did was sit on the floor of the SSC and listen to Mr Lewis drone on and on about cyber-bullying or his TED-x group. No, we don't have any cyber-bullying in our class, our class has no life. No, we don't want to join TED-x. Thanks.

"Jade, Jay, you two better be going to orchestra rehearsal tomorrow lunchtime. Don't forget." He called again, and this time, only us two groaned. Oh, how I wanted to quit, but my mom wouldn't let me. 'You've got your Grade 8, now use it.' She said. Bullsh*t. Like joining an orchestra will help with my grades, when all I do is repeat the same few notes over and over again.

"If you hate it so much, why don't you quit?" Asked Camellia curiously, and I sighed again. I have done a lot of sighing today. I literally just thought about it in my head. How I wish people could hear my thoughts.

"Mom would let me quit, says that if I quit it's a waste of my talents." I did air quotation marks as I spoke.

"Ah." She nodded and then turned back to watching the boys game. I sighed a little at her antics and whirled around as I heard the door slam open, revealing in her late glory... Alyssa!

She grumbled before flinging her bag to join the messy pile and plugging in her earphones. Wow! Off to a wonderfully social morning!

Not.

"Hello, class! I'm just gonna go pop over to Ms Swain's room, so, don't set the place on fire when I'm gone!" Nicholson said cheerfully and was greeted with silence. Honestly, no one cared. Even Sophia Li was starting to learn that ignoring our cheerful and try-hard form tutor was probably the best course of action. He pouted and crossed his arms. "Fine. Be that way. Don't mess with my PC."

I gave a half-hearted nod and made my way towards the gambling quartet. Why was I always flitting around? According to Buzzfeed, my spirit animal was a butterfly, so I guess that's why.

As I walked towards them, a large boom reverberated throughout the entire school, and I nearly tripped over my own feet. "What the fück was that?" Alyssa scowled as she looked around.

"Rubes, I'm scared." Charlotte clung to Ruby's arm, and I suppressed another eye roll. I'm sorry, Lottie, but you are a scaredy-cat.

Well, not so sorry, but brutal honesty here.

"Suck it up, please." I groaned before another boom sounded. "Okay, what was that?"

"Maybe it was just the construction," Sophia said, a smug smile on her face. "You know, they might have dropped something."

I shrugged and sat down, taking out my laptop as I began to load up my google doc files. As I turned to speak to Ruby, the lockdown sirens suddenly began to ring, and I covered my ears. Oh, why did the speaker have to right next to our door? "Have we even had a lockdown drill in STC?" Elliot called over the voice.

"Only in SJS!" I answered. "But I think I remember the basics! I'm not sure though." I ran over towards the door, and putting a green card on the window on the door, I closed the latch, before tumbling over to the pianos and tables. "Can a tall person close the windows?"

Meredith laughed a bit at this and sauntered over. "You're short."

"I know." I crossed my arms, and she obliged, climbing onto the tables to close the windows. As she shuffled towards the last windows, another boom went through the school and Meredith toppled on to the ground. A canister followed her, spewing white gas, and our door was knocked down, a man in black and a ninja suit rammed in. Everyone in our class immediately ran towards the windows, frightened out of our minds.

Instead of following the rest of them to the back of the room, my stupid self did the worst thing possible.

I pulled off my flat (I couldn't run in them anyways) and threw it at his face.