Step.
Step.
Step.
It was instinct, not thought. I ducked under the desk and hid. Time crawled past, each second dragging on longer than the last.
Footsteps rang in my ears like funeral bells, only the funeral would be for me.
No, I wouldn't be shaken this easily. I had already dealt with one of them; another would be a breeze. The problem was I didn't know what 'they' were. What was happening to the students? What was happening to the school?
My thoughts were cut short by the sound of a door slowly opening, the crack of wood causing my heart to rise. There were three more steps, then a pause. A long one.
I tried to steel myself, to prepare for the worst, but I was terribly frightened. My heart pounded against my rib cage like thunder, my palms were drenched, and my lungs burned from holding my breath.
It was too close, any sound might give me away. Kiki's twisted face plagued my mind, her lips dilated in a hungry grin, her features stretched as if puppeteered by someone with no regard for their limit, those amber eyes. I shivered.
It only got worse when a voice tore through the silence.
"I know you're here."
If I had to describe it in one word, I'd describe the voice as dissonant. Despite the voice being that of a young man, the words it uttered were spoken with a calm that betrayed decades of experience and an immense cruelty.
'It' took three more steps, away from where I was hiding. I wasn't sure it knew where I was hiding, but 'it' certainly knew I was in the room.
And there was a very limited number of places to hide in Ms. Kim's class.
'It' was drawing this out, 'it' wanted me to suffer. 'It' was doing this on purpose. I felt indignation at being toyed with like this , but my fear quickly swallowed that feeling.
[I have to move, I have to do something. I'm just delaying the inevitable by hiding.]
I gnawed at my lips, pushing my fear down as far as I could before slowly looking over the desk. What met me was a face with amber eyes mere millimeters from mine, its lips curled upward in a way that gave "ear to ear" a whole new meaning.
My fists moved before my mind, channeling every bit of strength I had into a strike that landed on 'its' chin. 'It' clearly wasn't expecting that, as I saw the light leave its eyes before falling limp on the desk.
Looking at it closer, it looked familiar.
It was a boy from my advanced literature class!
His name was Kyle, if I remembered properly. I didn't have much time to digest the fact as more footsteps came from the hall.
I forced Kyle's eyes open, brown. It wasn't much, but it felt like a start. I checked Kiki's eyes too, they were their usual sapphire.
CRACK!!!
The window shattered rather easily under the force of a chair being thrown at it, I climbed out and bolted to the point my legs felt on fire. The campus was pretty empty, it must've been rather later but I was in no mental state to pull out my phone to check.
My goal was the medical wing, there was a certain man there I needed to see. I also had a theory to test. What I had seen with Kyle and Kiki only gave me a vague idea; I needed to be sure.
[The front door won't work, I'm not sure I'll be able to evade 'it' there. Since 'it' only seems to be chasing me with such fervor, I have an inkling about what it's after. It's after that damn cryptid.]
I looked up to a window on the south side of the medical wing.
[When was the last time I did something like this?
[…
[Who am I kidding? It's been less than a week.]
A dry, humourless laugh left my lips as my hands found the grooves and crevices in the brick wall, allowing me to climb with ease. That was the easy part, now I had to find a way in.
With no chairs or anything else to throw through the window, I had to make due with my natural window openers.
A blood-covered fist shattered the glass. I had to bite my lips to stop a scream from leaving my lips.
[Keep moving, we're not done yet!] A small line of red fell from my lips as my eyes scanned the empty room, of course it was empty.
The scene had been wiped clean, well, almost.
There were small dents on the ground, almost imperceptible.
[Like someone dropped something heavy, I'd assume a human stuck in a block of ice would be rather heavy.] Eliya had talked about something similar, two men transporting Haylen away in what seemed like a giant ice chrysalis.
[If I had remembered earlier, I wouldn't have come here. I'm not exactly in a place to be wasting time. Where would I hide a trouble-atttracting ice man?]
As my brain racked for answers, coming to the medical wing started feeling like less of a waste. The last place anyone would look for Haylen after seeing him taken away would be the medical wing.
Hiding in plain sight.
[If that's the case, then there are only a few places he could be.]
"Like right here."
Eliya's room, I turned the doorknob and, who would've guessed, he was here. Lying unconscious in a cocoon of ice was none other than the boy who had broken into my dorm a few nights before.
I didn't know him at all, nor did I trust him. This had all started because of him, but I also knew he was the only one who could solve this. If I was dealing with two different cryptids, I think I'd prefer to deal with the one who had risked his life to save Eliya.
The door behind me locked with a click.
"Now that it's just you and me, ice boy," my eyes fell on the slowly melting ice. It would take a few days for him to fully defrost.
"Let's see what exactly you're all about."
I grabbed a scapel and struck the ice.