Fallen University: Year One

“All right,” I said finally. “What would you like to do?”

Before she could answer, there was a bit of commotion by the cafeteria door. One of Toland’s assistants was calling the room to attention.

“When you hear your name, follow me,” she said once the room was quiet. “Beatrice Aaron. Adam Ackles. Arnold Alvarez.”

The three students slowly rose from their seats. Beatrice rushed toward the teacher with her face hidden behind her hair. One of the men grinned back at his friends and said something that made them laugh, while the other simply glowered at the world at large.

Good, it’s started.

Now they’ll get to the bottom of it and Sonja will have to find some other reason to be a bitch.

Chapter Fifteen

Everywhere we went for the rest of the day, the same thing happened. The assistant would come in, say three names in alphabetical order, and leave again. The clusters of names didn’t seem to be in any kind of order at all, strangely enough. She bounced around from A to R and back to D with no apparent rhyme or reason.

I got the strangest feeling of being circled, like they were spiraling around to my name and making it look random.

My group had slowly scattered throughout the day as we tried to find ways to entertain ourselves. Honestly, I didn’t see the reasoning behind a mid-year break if we couldn’t even visit home. Sure, the media and art rooms were open, and the cafeteria was running all day now. Plus the library, of course, and the gym downstairs in the basement. Hannah and I wasted a solid few hours sparring, but my heart wasn’t in it.

We all gathered together again at dinner.

“Any of you guys get called in for questioning?” I asked.

Xero, Kingston, and Jayce all shook their heads. Kai wasn’t in earshot. He’d gone back to being utterly avoidant, but that was fine. Well, it wasn’t, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.

I bit my lip as a spark of anxiety curdled my gut.

“What’s wrong?” Jayce asked. I wasn’t sure if it was because he and I had gotten physically closer than I had with the others or what, but he was so in tune with my emotional state it was like he knew what I was feeling before I did sometimes.

“I just want to get it over with.” I sighed and shook my head.

“Can’t wait to tell all your lies?”

Just what I needed. I turned around to find Sonja sneering at me.

“Hi, Sonja, do me a quick favor, would you?” I smiled sweetly, enjoying her confused expression.

“Um… what?”

“Get a fucking life.” I turned back around. My spine tingled as my body braced like she was going to hit me, but I deliberately relaxed. Let her. I could use a good brawl to work out this case of nerves I’d developed.

She walked away instead.

More power to her, but damn I would have loved to make a fool out of her in front of everybody.

Over the next week, as more people were brought in for questioning and released in various stages of disgruntlement, the atmosphere in the school grew more and more hostile. Whispers turned into loud conversations, with accusatory stares going in all directions. They came my way more often than I would have liked, but I took solace in the fact that I wasn’t the only one.

Everybody was suspicious of everybody else, and tempers were short. Shouting arguments could be heard in the hallways from morning to night. With every day that passed without the admins calling for me or my guys, my anxiety grew. Sure, rumors were flying around about everybody, but the stories about me and my men were by far the most prevalent. If I were Toland, I would have gotten us out of the way first. What the hell was he waiting for?

Exactly a week after the fight, it finally happened. As soon as the assistant stepped into the cafeteria at breakfast, the room fell silent. We’d learned the drill.

“Neil Lane. Oran Lake. Piper Lawless. Follow me.”

“Fucking finally!”

Every eye in the cafeteria turned to me. I glared back at them. They were all feeling the same way, I knew they were. The dread of anticipation wasn’t something most people could stomach easily. I brushed past a crowd of mean-girl wannabes and followed the assistant. The men who went with us kept their distance from me. Good. Fuck off.

I expected to be taken to Toland’s office, but the assistant led us downstairs instead. The basement housed the gym and a bunch of storage rooms. I hadn’t bothered to find out what else was down here—I had assumed it was just more of the same. She brought us through a heavy metal door I’d never looked at closely, into a labyrinth of corridors I had never seen before.