Meta (Book 3): Rise of The Circle (6 page)

W
ow
. I feel much, much better. It's like I've got a new lease on life. I leave the bathroom practically whistling and take a look around the building I'm in. I didn't notice much on my way in; I kinda had blinders on for anything that even vaguely resembled a restroom sign.

The building is surprisingly quiet, but it is a classroom building, and it is the weekend after all. Somewhere off in the distance, out of sight, I can hear a machine polishing floors somewhere upstairs. I'm standing in a large lobby, which has a strange feeling I can't quite place. I walk over toward a glass case that looks like it’s meant for displaying awards or art, but it's completely empty except for a thick layer of dust lying on the shelves.

I realize what feels off. This building is old, but it lacks any kind of history. It's just been sitting here empty for a decade. It was built to accommodate thousands of students everyday, but not even one has walked through the doors practically since it was built.

After gazing at the empty cases and walls for more time than is necessary, I find my way back to the front door. As I cross the street, I see Derrick again struggling with an armload of boxes.

"Did you fall in?" he asks.

"Funny," I say as I jog across the street toward him.

"Here, give me a hand," Derrick says. I stop and clap for him briefly, giving him a taste of his own “bad dad joke” medicine. He doesn't take it well and deliberately drops the box he was holding on the ground.

"Whoops," he says flatly.

"Thanks. What if that was my nice stuff?"

"You don't have any nice stuff," he deadpans.

"
T
his is it
?" I ask after opening the door to my new dorm room. The door hits the corner of one of the two casket-sized beds inside a room that is maybe the size of a nice walk-in closet. Derrick laughs. He must realize that it's way too small for two people to live in too.

"Yeah, of course it is. What were you expecting?" he asks.

Dammit. He’s laughing at me, not the room. I push harder against the door, pushing the bed slightly across the floor. Once the bed is out of the way, I'm able to fully open the door and take in the space. "Taking it in" only takes about a second or two. I sigh and throw my duffel bag down on the closest bed.

"You know, when I was your age-" Derrick begins.

"Really, Derrick? You're going to actually pull the 'when I was your age' thing? You're twenty-nine, not ninety. I don't want to hear it."

This just makes Derrick laugh even harder. I'm starting to wonder if there's really a meta training facility here at all or if Derrick just thought this would be a funny way to get rid of me for the weekend.

"Man, I had no idea you had gotten so spoiled already. We've only been in the new apartment a few months and already your standards are all out of whack."

"I'm just saying, if I'm still supposed to keep you-know-what a secret," I say, flicking my wrists to materialize my metabands just in case Derrick isn't clear before flicking them again to make the metabands disappear, "then it might be a little hard if I've got someone sleeping six inches from my head every night."

"Relax," Derrick says as he rips the tape off of one of the cardboard boxes full of my books. "These people know what they're doing. I'd be pretty surprised if they roomed you with a regular person, considering the need for privacy. You should be glad. When I went to college they stuck four of us in a three-person room that was probably smaller than this one. I would have killed to have had to share my room with only one other person."

"But I'm not
in
college. I'm still in high school, just now I've got an extracurricular activity that takes up all of my time. What time does that go until every day?"

Derrick says something quietly and coughs at the same time purposefully so I can't hear him before he gives me the answer.

"Nine forty-five," he says. I honestly don't know how to react at first. I just look at him, waiting for him to say he's just kidding, but he never does. He just continues unpacking the box he brought up until it's empty of books.

"So I have a grand total of about fifteen minutes to myself every day if I want to get any sleep?"

"Hey, with great power, something something. I'm going back to the car to get another box. Start setting this stuff up. I've got to get going back to Bay View City pretty soon, especially if the traffic is still this bad."

"I'm pretty sure the traffic was
leaving
the city that's been taken over by megalomaniacal super-powered dictators, not going into it."

"Oh yeah, you're probably right. I don't drive enough to think about these things, I guess." Derrick exits the room and walks down the hallway, back toward the staircase we took up to my new room.

"You know, you can keep the car here if you're not going to use it," I yell out the door and down the hallway. Derrick laughs even harder at this than he did to my reaction to the size of the room.

I take another look around, hoping that it'll feel a little bit better now that there're half as many human beings inside of it. Nope, still looks ridiculously tiny. Maybe I am spoiled, but one of the upsides of having a brother who's so much older than me is that I’ve never had a share a room before.

"That's my bed, bro," a voice behind me announces.

I turn around just as the owner of the voice squeezes past me and into the narrow cinder block room. He's bigger than me by a fair amount, and I mean that in terms of both height and width. While he's not exactly in great shape, he's not what you would call fat either. If I had to guess, I'd say he spends a good chunk of his day at the gym, though. He's wearing a pair of mesh lacrosse shorts, a plain red t-shirt, and a sweat-stained baseball hat that he’s turned backward and is resting on top of a nest of curly brown hair.

He doesn't offer his name or what he's doing here, so I'm left on my own to guess that he's my roommate. Great.

"So, are you my roommate?" I ask, trying to start something resembling a conversation.

"Yeah," he grunts back, not looking up from his phone to greet me. He's standing in the corner of the room, leaning up against one of the two bare desks. After a few seconds, I realize that he’s serious about the bed my stuff is currently on being his.

"Uh, if you want this bed, that's cool. I didn't know someone was in here yet, so I just threw my stuff down on the first-" I begin to say as I pick up my bag. Before I can finish, though, I'm interrupted by my new roommate almost kicking me in the face as he plops down hard on the bed I just vacated. During the entire movement, his eyes never strayed from his phone. Guess he was really serious about wanting this bed.

"Tyler, honey, where do you want us to put your things?"

I look up and see a middle-aged woman struggling with a box that’s almost the size of her. Instinctively, I rush over to help her with the box right before it looks like it's about to topple onto the floor. My new roomie doesn't even bother looking up from his phone.

"Thank you so much," the woman says. "You must be Tyler's roommate. How exciting!" She puts her hand out for me to shake it.

"Yeah, that's me it looks like. I'm Connor Connelly. It's very nice to meet you, Mrs. ..."

"Gordon, and it's Miss, but that makes me feel old, so please, just call me Stephanie."

"Okay, Stephanie," I say, feeling awkward calling a grown-up by their first name, which is weird because I hadn’t felt awkward about calling a grown-up “Midnight” for the past few months.

"Give it a rest, Mom," Tyler says from what is now officially his bed before he heaves himself up. "Are you going to get the rest of my stuff or what?"

Stephanie Gordon gives me a 'what are you gonna do, kids will be kids' sort of look and turns around only to walk right into Derrick, who is carrying a box that is blocking his view almost entirely. He stumbles and drops the box, spilling my underwear out onto the floor. This makes Tyler laugh maniacally. He’s definitely laughing way harder than how funny the situation actually is, which even I'll admit is kinda funny if for no other reason than Derrick is more embarrassed about it than I am.

"Oh my goodness. I am so sorry about that," Stephanie says to Derrick as she begins picking up my underwear and stuffing it back into the box. Okay, I take it back. Now I'm pretty sure I'm more embarrassed than Derrick.

"No, no, that's okay. It was my fault. I should’ve been more careful about where I was going," Derrick says.

It's obvious that he's not going to touch my underwear and pick it up off the floor, which is fine since I'm already trying to grab as much as I can before Ms. Gordon does. She realizes what she's picking up, why her son is laughing, and how red my face is, so she places the few clothing items in her hands into the box and allows me to pick up the rest. It's only now that she lifts her head up and looks Derrick in the eyes for the first time.

"Oh my," she says, blushing slightly and fluttering her eyelashes. "Now how on earth can a man this young and handsome have a teenage son?" Now Derrick is the one blushing.

"I'm Connor's brother, Derrick," he says, offering his hand for her to shake.

"Derrick, this is Ms. Gordon," I offer since it seems like she's too busy looking dreamily into his eyes to remember to do it herself.

"Colin, I told you to call me Stephanie," she says, still holding her gaze at Derrick.

"It's Connor, actually," I say.

"And it's Miss Gordon, not Ms. We wouldn't want anyone assuming the possibility that I'm actually still married," she says, still holding on to Derrick's hand. Now she's the one laughing maniacally, and I see where her son gets it. This might be the most uncomfortable I've ever seen Derrick.

"Give it a rest, Mom. None of the other parents are acting like this," Tyler says.

"Oh now, Tyler, I'm just being friendly. This is how adults talk to each other. He's always getting so embarrassed by me," Miss Gordon says to Derrick. "I'm sure your brother feels the same way about your parents, Derrick."

"Actually, no. Both our parents are dead," I blurt out, hoping that the shock of just coming right out with this will cause enough embarrassment on Miss Gordon's part that she'll stop flirting with Derrick. Although it's fun to watch, we actually do need to get moving. Though it would be fun to just walk out the door and finish unpacking myself, leaving Derrick here to fend for himself. My plan doesn't work.

"Oh my goodness. That is just the most awful thing I've ever heard," Miss Gordon says, covering her mouth with one hand and placing the other on Derrick's arm. When I said before that I've never seen Derrick so uncomfortable in my life, that's no longer true.
This
is now the most uncomfortable I've ever seen him in my life. "And you took care of your little brother here?"

"Yeah, I'm his guardian," Derrick manages to get out with volume barely above a whisper.

"That is just the most heartbreaking and brave thing I've ever heard. You're a hero, Derrick. I mean that. You don't see a lot of men who are so selfless like that nowadays," Miss Gordon says, her voice trailing off toward the end.

"I'm going to get food," Tyler announces as he jumps up from his bed and stands, waiting for his mother and Derrick to move from the doorway so he can pass.

"I'll come with you, sweetie," Miss Gordon says. "Not to eat, of course. The only thing I eat is salad," she says to Derrick, trying to impress him.

"Are you sure you don't want to just stay here and continue embarrassing yourself?" Tyler asks. Neither of us knows where to look.

"Oh, stop! Now you're just being ridiculous. Your mother is allowed to talk to a stranger once in a while too, you know. Not that you're a stranger, Derrick. Not now anyways," she says, looking into his eyes again.

Tyler pushes past the pair and heads down the hallway, intent on not waiting any longer.

"I'd better go catch him. It was really a pleasure meeting you, Derrick."

"You too," I say before Derrick has the chance.

"And you too, of course, Connor," she says, barely turning around to look at me.

"You too. I'm sure we'll see each other around," Derrick says to her.

"I certainly hope so."

T
he rest
of the move goes smoothly, thanks mostly to the fact that I really didn't bring much stuff. A lot of my things are still in boxes from the last time Derrick and I moved, so my rule was if I hadn't taken it out of the box and used it by now, it probably wasn't all that important in the first place. I'm feeling pretty smart about that decision, which means I'm sure to find out that I forgot something super important at the worst possible time in the very near future.

Derrick gets a phone call from his office and has to leave in a hurry. He doesn't tell me what the call is about, and I don't ask. Nowadays it could be a breaking story or it could be that the water cooler needs to be refilled. There doesn't seem to be any problem too small to bother Derrick about lately.

This is fine by me since it's not like there's a whole lot of room to hang out in my dorm room. Even if there were, I don't think I could take the awkwardness of watching Derrick getting hit on by a woman twice his age again.

I was hoping to get a chance to walk around the campus and get a better look at everything, maybe even meet some people. I probably wouldn't have actually gone up and talked to anyone, you know, the thing that is required if you actually want to meet new people, but it's still nice to have dreams. My pretend mingling will have to wait until later, though. On his way out the door, Derrick told me he’d heard back from Michelle and that she wanted me to come meet with her now. Hopefully this means I won’t be getting my messages from her through Derrick anymore. Otherwise, this is going to start getting really tedious.

The place she asks me to meet her at is way, way on the other side of campus, which I'm actually thankful for. It's a nice fall day, and the walk gives me a chance to take a look around. Classes have already started for a lot of the people here. Since there's a steady flow of new students all the time, new classes are starting up every week. Maybe the only good thing that will come out of having state-mandated learning for the years prior to this is that everyone technically should be on the same page as far as lessons go, which should make it easy for students to come to this new school and pick up right where they left off ... at least in theory.

On paper, that all sounds great, but in reality I have to imagine people are still all over the map with what they've already learned and what still needs to be taught. Not everyone learns at the same speed, which is what the smaller classrooms are mostly used for, according to Derrick. Those rooms are perfect for after school tutoring and catch-up lessons. I was already warned to make sure I pay attention during class, because I won't have time for either of those.

The campus is full of people coming and going all over the place—the chaos of families dropping off their children. There seems to be thousands and thousands of students, a lot of them even younger than I am.

After walking what feels like the entire campus, I find the building where Michelle has asked me to meet her. The building looks out of place, but not for the reasons you'd expect. It looks out of place because it just looks ... ordinary. On a campus full of ugly, faux-futuristic buildings, this is the one old-brick building that wouldn’t actually look out of place on a traditional college campus. The building is large with three floors, but still smaller than many of the others I've seen. From the outside, the building looks to be made entirely out of brick with a handful of windows in every classroom. The windows look like they haven't been washed in a decade, which is probably true.

There isn't an obvious entrance to the building, or at least there isn't one that looks like the big entrances I've seen on all of the other buildings on campus. After wandering around the outside of the building for a few minutes, I decide to start trying the windowless doors that look like they're emergency exits. The third one I try opens without a problem.

Rays of sunlight pour in from the outside, illuminating the absolutely insane amount of dust coating the floors and lockers. Looks like the cleanup crew either hasn't gotten to this building yet or they forgot it exists.

I walk down the hallway, checking the door numbers to find room 143, where Michelle is apparently waiting for me. At the end of a very long hallway, I find the room. There's a window in the door, and through it I can see an empty classroom. The walls are bare, but the desks are all neatly aligned and facing the front of the classroom. There's something else different: the room is clean, or at least much, much cleaner than any of the other classrooms I've looked into in this building so far.

I momentarily wonder if I should just wait in the hallway for Michelle since I don't see her inside the classroom. Maybe she'll be right back. Or maybe she got tired of waiting for me and left. Ultimately I decide that hanging out in the hallway here might not be a great idea. Even though this end of campus seems deserted, it might look suspicious for me to be standing around in the hallway of an abandoned building. The windows on the opposite side of the hallway face the campus, and anyone walking by would be able to see me plain as day.

Carefully, I check the doorknob of the classroom to see if it’s unlocked. The knob turns with little effort, so I push the door open and immediately almost jump out of my skin. Michelle is standing right in front of me, waiting just inside the door.

"What the...?" I ask no one in particular.

Michelle is stifling a laugh at my reaction to her scaring the crap out of me. I pull the door closed and look through the window again: nothing, just an empty classroom. Swinging the door back open, there's Michelle, still standing there.

"Come inside; I'll explain," Michelle says with a smile as she takes my hand and leads me into the classroom. With her other hand, she closes the door. "Take a seat."

I choose the desk closest to the door in the front row since it's the nearest, and I actually feel a little bit dizzy after experiencing whatever the hell the trick was with that door.

"It's not a window. It's a very, very high-resolution 3D monitor panel. That's why you couldn't see me standing inside the room, because you weren't actually looking inside the room," Michelle explains.

"So it was a video feed?"

"Something like that. It's actually a little bit more complicated, but all you need to understand is that prying eyes won't find anything in this classroom if they come looking."

"Why go through all of that trouble just to conceal a classroom, though? There's nothing in here that looks like it's worth keeping a secret."

"Oh, Connor, you really think that this is just a regular classroom? You're disappointing me."

Michelle walks over to the desk at the front of the classroom and sits behind it. She fishes a set of keys out of her pocket and uses them to open one of the desk's drawers. I can't see what's inside the drawer from where I'm sitting, but I can see a faint blue glow emanating from it. A series of blue lights in the shape of a grid appears over Michelle's face, and I realize this must be some type of security system. Right on cue, I feel the ground beneath me moving.

It's subtle, making no noise at all. In fact, the way I notice it's even happening is that once again, I feel slightly sick to my stomach. While I'm not consciously noticing that the room is moving, my body can sense it. I look over toward the windows, and my suspicions are confirmed. Slowly, almost unnoticeably, I can see the outside view through the windows changing as the room descends and the bottom of the windowsill darkens.

"The initial descent is slow to avoid any disruption that might be noticeable from the outside. Once we clear the building's foundation, you'll notice that it'll start to pick up a bit."

The windows are completely dark, the outside world no longer viewable through them. I'm just going to assume that whatever electronic witchcraft powers the window in the doorway also does the same for the exterior windows.

All of a sudden, a huge pit grows in my stomach. I can feel that the room is dropping at a much, much faster rate. In fact, it almost feels like we're in a complete free fall. Out of instinct, I grab on tightly to the desk in front of me, like that would actually do anything if the room suddenly bottomed out.

"Sorry about the drop. It'll be over momentarily," Michelle says, looking so calm that you wouldn't think she even noticed it. And then, out of nowhere, the sensation just stops, like we've been caught. There's no jerk or anything. We just come to a smooth, but complete stop.

"Here we are. I told you it wouldn't be that bad," Michelle says.

"Actually you didn't tell me anything before you hit the basement button in your magic desk over there," I reply.

"Sorry about that. I thought it would be a waste of time to explain it to you when you were about to see it for yourself anyway."

"Still, a heads-up would have been nice. It might have helped me keep my breakfast down."

"You'll get used to it over time. Right now let's take a look around, shall we?" Michelle walks across the room and takes the doorknob in her hand. She waits for me to stand before pulling the door open and revealing what has replaced the dusty old hallways.