by Tim Mettey
When I got to school, I went straight down to the locker room to look for Riley, but no one was in the coach’s office, not even Coach Miller. I saw Coach Hoff hurrying to his first period class in front of me, but he was too far ahead for me to yell to him to see where Riley was. I would have to wait until a little later in the day to track down Riley, because he had a free period in the beginning of school.
When my Spanish class ended, I walked down the hall toward Riley’s classroom. I saw an unusual glow coming from the lunchroom. It looked like someone was turning on the lights to the stage in the theater. When I got closer, I could see there was smoke too. It was a fire! I ran to the edge of the lunchroom and it was all ablaze. The entire room below me was engulfed in fire and heavy black smoke billowed up. I could hear someone yelling for help somewhere below. My body reacted; I hopped off the balcony into the fire and ran through it with ease. The dancing fire slowed down around me, allowing me to move by without it having a chance to touch my skin. But the smoke burned my lungs, making my chest hurt. I covered my mouth with my shirt, trying to filter out some of the smoke.
Oliver was yelling for help. He was trying to get into the kitchen, but was unable to get through the flame-covered door. Was he the one who started this fire?
“Oliver,” I yelled, “what are you doing?”
“Nicholas, there are people trapped in the kitchen. I can’t get in there to help.” He looked frightened. The look on his face told me that he wasn’t responsible for the fire.
“I’ll help them; you get everyone else out.”
“Okay,” Oliver said and went running off.
I heard some screams from behind the door that led into the kitchen. I kicked it open to find three of the lunch workers trapped back behind a stove that was engulfed in flames. Everything slowed. I grabbed a metal tray and put it underneath me as I jumped into the air and over the fire so the slow moving flames wouldn’t burn me. The three of them were gasping for air; I had to get them out. The back door that they were trying to use to escape wasn’t opening. With one swift thrust from my shoulder, the door swung open. The door had been locked from the outside by a thick chain, which now lay on the ground next to the door. The three lunch workers staggered out into the fresh air. The smoke was still burning my lungs, and my eyes were beginning to sting, but I knew I had to go back in. Something wasn’t right. It had to be Xavier and his Seekers. My thoughts raced to Elle. I had to find her.
I ran back into the kitchen and into the lunchroom, jumping and moving through the flames to get out to the hallway. My strength had increased. I could feel the blood and adrenaline pumping through my veins. I had to get to Elle. At every exit on my way to find her, crowds of people were trying to escape, but the doors were chained shut like in the kitchen. I had to keep pushing to the front of the crowds to break down the doors, helping everyone get outside to safety. At one of the exits Oliver was breaking a window with a chair for more people to escape, and at another exit I saw Riley. He, too, was moving as fast as he could, breaking open door after door to free the people trapped inside. He saw me, nodded, and continued to the next door. I knew he and Oliver would take care of the remaining doors so I continued on, looking for Elle.
The school was now totally consumed by flames. I ran back toward Elle’s classroom, avoiding falling pieces of the burning ceiling. Everyone was out of the room already, which gave me hope that Elle was safe outside with the others. I ran past the counselor’s office and searched in there. It was empty too, just like every other classroom I checked. My last stop was the coach’s office to make sure no one was in there. The sprinklers finally went off. Water was falling onto the fire, having little effect on the flames. It doubled the amount of smoke, making it harder to see. At the bottom of the stairs to the locker room and coach’s office, I saw someone lying motionless. I took all of the stairs in a single bound and rolled the person over. It was Oliver. He had blood running down his neck. It appeared he had been hit. I got him sitting up. He was delirious. He stood quickly, trying to get somewhere but he didn’t seem to know where.
“Nicholas, thank God you’re here.” He grabbed my shoulders. “After I finished helping get people out of the school, I came down here to check on Coach Miller. But then something hit me.”
Oliver staggered down the hall, pulling me along with him toward the locker room. As we got closer, I could see a body lying right inside the door.
“No!” Oliver screamed, running over to him. Coach Miller was on the floor, covered in blood.
We rolled him over. He didn’t move at all. Oliver started to pull him up and I helped. We had to get him out of the burning building. We carried him to the hall when I heard a scream from behind us.
“Oliver, can you get him out? I’ll go back to help whoever is left.”
“I can,” he said, pulling Coach Miller down the hall toward the outside door. I ran back into the locker room to see who was still in there.
“Is there someone here?” I yelled. The fire hadn’t reached in there yet, but the sprinklers were going. I moved quickly to the back of the locker room to search. The water was slowing down, making each droplet look like it was suspended in mid-air.
There in front of me was Bryce standing over Elle. The drops of water slowly hit him. Elle was groaning; she looked like she was in agony. I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed at the sight. I couldn’t tell what was going on. Seeing her there made me flash back to the night when I pulled her out of the water. Bryce stood over her like a lion guarding his kill. His grin was sinister.
“Bryce what are you doing?” I screamed.
“Come on, Nicholas, you’re not that stupid, are you?” he responded calmly. “We have been watching you for over a year now, and it’s your turn to accept your fate and join the Seekers. Xavier will be happy to clear a spot for you.”
Elle groaned.
“What? Are you kidding? I’ll never join Xavier.”
His eyes lit up with joy. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
I moved toward Elle, but he moved just as fast as I did. He turned and kicked her back into the showers behind him. She landed with a groan, her head hitting the tile violently. I lunged and hit him, flipping him over me. I turned to see him moving slowly through the air just like the water was. I drove my fist into his stomach with all the fire in me, catching him mid-air, driving him to the ground with a loud, thunderous crash. He didn’t move.
I got to Elle who looked more dazed than hurt, which was a relief. I looked back at where Bryce had been lying. He was now standing up, looking like nothing had happened.
“Not bad, Nicholas, not many get the best of me. But I have bad news for you—there’s no way you will be able to get both of you out of here. No one gets the best of me twice.”
“Bryce, it’s not too late to—”
“Nicholas, give me a break. Do you think we’re in a movie? I don’t see any cameras, and I hate to break it to you, but the bad guy is not going to have a change of heart in the end.” He took a bow and grinned.
“I’ve been waiting for this day for such a long time,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t join us. If it were up to me, I would have killed all of you before the start of school, but Xavier had his plan, so I had to wait,” he sneered. “First, we fixed up this stupid school of yours. He knew it would upset you. It was just something to throw you off your game and it worked. Also, it made it a whole lot easier to start this fire with all of those new flammable decorations. Then school began and I had to act all pathetic, like you, so you would feel sorry for me.”
Bryce was pacing back and forth. He looked so happy, like he had been waiting for this moment for a long time. He was loving every minute of it. I had to keep him talking to buy me some more time to get Elle out of here.
“So it was you who loosened the video screen at the quarry party, wasn’t it?”
“Very good, Nicholas. I have to admit that it was pretty clever of you to get everyone away from the stage by challenging Chad to a
rite of passage. Simply brilliant. But what wasn’t brilliant was me having to date that twit Erin,” he said with a disgusted look on his face, and then he laughed. “I hope she doesn’t make it out of the fire today. That would be a perfect ending. If you want to know the truth, I would have much preferred to cuddle up with Genevieve. That’s one hot piece of—”
“You’re a coward,” I yelled, interrupting his thought and hoping that he would keep talking. I could hear the fire raging outside the locker room. I also thought I could hear sirens coming from outside the school. I got down on my knees and got Elle into a sitting position.
“Coward, ha! This was all part of the plan. Like when I placed that bid for you to dance with Genevieve. You should have seen Elle’s face. It was priceless. She looked like you had just chosen Genevieve over her. That was a thing of beauty and I did that one on my own.” He took another small bow and then continued walking back and forth even quicker than before. “Elle was playing right into our plan to isolate you from the rest of the group; it was perfect. Xavier was right. All of these distractions have hindered you from finding the 4th,” he scoffed.
“Oh yeah,” Bryce continued, “it was so nice of you guys to check on me and my dad, or should I say, Xavier and me, during the storm.”
Xavier has been right under our noses this whole time! I thought.
“The attack during the storm was to determine who was the strongest out of the three of you. We had to make sure you were Seeker material. You were faster, stronger and smarter than all of the others. Instead of pursuing me farther into the snow after the plow hit you, you turned back to the house, clearly showing that you were the best. Most would have just fallen further into the trap. You only took the bait in the beginning.”
“You broke the latch in our spare room, didn’t you?” I said, remembering when I saw him walking down the stairs at our house.
“Of course I did. I was going to kill the girls, but you got there just in time.”
There was a loud bang that sounded like it was above us.
Caught up in his storytelling, Bryce had drifted past the exit. I saw our path to escape.
“And after you proclaimed last night at the Council meeting that you had formed The 7, we couldn’t take any more chances. So we lit this fire to trap and kill you if you wouldn’t join us, hopefully killing other Thusians in the process, like Coach Miller. We can’t let those weak Thusians have hope. But I do have some good news. You’re at least going to die trying to save your beloved Elle. And I do emphasize the word try. You will either die in the fire or from the water in the pool above us. I don’t think the supports can hold the weight much longer after all of the damage they’ve taken.”
He kicked a column close to him and it cracked. Looking around, I saw that most of columns were already cracked or damaged to the point of collapsing.
“And knowing you, this is how you would like things to end anyway. The fire should be at the point where it has spread all the way down the hall. I will have just enough time to escape, but you and Elle won’t be so lucky.”
He was just far enough away; it was my chance. I got to my feet and scooped up Elle. The water coming out of the sprinklers overhead stopped again in midair. I got past him with ease because he was still marveling at what he had done. Bryce scrambled after us, realizing we were trying to escape. I was carrying a weightless Elle in my arms. I was halfway to the exit when the double doors exploded into flames. Pieces of the doors splintered out everywhere, knocking us backward and making time return to normal. I fell to the ground, making sure to cradle Elle from the blast and fall. The blast had knocked Bryce back, also. He was lying just feet from us. He looked up, scared. He had a large gash on his forehead. This was not part of his plan. I got to my feet, picking up Elle. Then there was another loud explosion, but this one came from the ceiling above us.
“So, Bryce, was this part of your plan, to die with us? You are nothing to Xavier, just an expendable pawn.”
“I don’t care, Nicholas. All I know is that you will die, too.” He ran past me, blocking the burning exit. “Nicholas, you can’t win. Don’t you know that no matter what you do, you can’t escape your fate, your Final Sacrifice?” he screamed.
I set down Elle to confront Bryce because I couldn’t take him on with Elle in my arms. Even if I were able to defeat him, there was no clear way to escape. “If you don’t fight, you will die,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Bryce said, confused.
I closed my eyes and a complete calmness took over. The fire in me was gone, but I knew exactly what I had to do. I opened my eyes and ran toward the lockers, tearing off a locker door like it was a piece of paper. Bryce went after me. He swung wildly at me but missed. He was moving slower than me. His movement was slightly blurred. I swung the locker door as I passed him, hitting the column in the middle of the room and lodging the door halfway into it, taking a large piece of the concrete out of the back. Time returned to normal.
“How pathetic, you missed,” Bryce laughed. “You’re faster than me and you had a chance to kill me and you missed.”
“Who says I missed?”
I got back to Elle, just as a large chunk of the ceiling started to cave in on top of us. Time slowed enough for me to get us out of its way. When time returned to normal, Bryce was lunging at the place where Elle and I were before we moved. The largest part of the falling ceiling hit him.
I put Elle down and rushed over to Bryce. He was covered with part of the ceiling. I removed the pieces off the top of him. He had been crushed by the weight. Blood was everywhere, and he was barely breathing.
“What were you trying to do?” I said, not sure why I cared.
In a broken voice, he replied, “I saw that you were about to get crushed and I tried to knock you out of the way, but you had moved already.” He wheezed and blood trickled down the side of his mouth. “Seekers can’t deny our Thusian side, either. I guess my Final Sacrifice was to save you guys,” he laughed. “Or maybe it was to share some information with you.” He coughed up blood onto his chest. He was dying and there was nothing I could do for him. “Nicholas, you are destined for great things. Xavier is not really interested in you at all. He is searching for the book.”
His eyes fluttered and then rolled back into his head. He was gone. He had died from the same curse that haunted me, the Final Sacrifice.
There was a roaring sound from above me. I picked up Elle and moved her back into the showers away from the fire and the falling ceiling. The column that the locker door went into was giving way like I had hoped. The ceiling couldn’t hold the pressure of the water anymore. It caved in, sending water from the pool above flooding into the locker area. I held Elle up as high as I could lift her. The water rushed out of the locker room into the hallway, quenching all of the fire that was in its path. The water filled the shower too and swept us out toward the hall. The water revived Elle enough to hold on to my neck. We rode the wave of water toward the exit, allowing us to escape without getting burned. The water knocked down the outside door, washing us onto the ground. We were safe.