Out of Jail

I'm going to ignore the last post. I'm not going to wonder how Claire knew my password or hacked into my account. (Though I can probably stop keeping my name hidden - everyone who reads this now knows it's "John," but I guess that's fairly nondescript.)

Professor Holly Sachs drove me back to the college campus, then parked next to a darkened building. She got out and started walking towards the building. I figured I had to follow her. The man in the truck bed also got out - he looked like he was in his late thirties with dark blonde hair, his chin covered in stubble. He barely looked at me as he followed the Professor.

Professor Sachs led me into a darkened auditorium, then flicked on the lights, illuminating everything. It looked sort of like the auditorium in my dreams, which kind of freaked me out.

"It's okay," Professor Sachs said, seeing the fear on my face. "They're not going to chase you here. They like to hunt their game slowly."

"Game?" I said. "Is that what I am?"

"Yes," she said. "I'm not going to sugarcoat anything. You are food for them. That's all. Anything they promised you, anything they said, it's a lie."

I looked at her and then at the blonde man. He was standing with folded arms behind her. "So what's going on? I mean, you obviously knew more than you were telling from before."

Professor Sachs sighed. "Yes," she said. "After Max...after Professor Gibbs was kicked out, some men came to the college. Men from the government. But they were from some agency I had never heard of, something that started with an S. They confiscated all of Max's research, even the notebook of drawings that had gotten him into trouble." She sat down and right then, I noticed she looked really tired. "Since there was obviously something about his research that was right, I decided to find him and talk to him. But when I found him...there were these kids following him. I thought they were hoodlums at first, like they were mugging him. But then I saw their eyes."

"They were black," I said. "They had black eyes?"

"Yes," she said. "Completely. And Max, well, he had obviously been prepared for them, because he pulled out a gun and shot a few of them. I drove away so quickly. But I called 911. Even if I had been hallucinating, I called 911. No bodies were found."

"Bullets don't kill them," I said.

"No," she said. "After that, well, I went through a lot of research. I found a lot of things that didn't make sense. I met Henry over there and he told me about some things. About what had happened to him and what he had seen. And then we began to get visits from them."

"The kids?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "They would show up outside class. We could always spot them, even when they didn't have black eyes. They never mingled with the other students. They wore jackets and hoods, even in warm weather. And they were cold to the touch." She paused and then went on. "One day, they attacked me. Luckily, Henry was there. They tried to bring me back to wherever they came from, but he knocked them back. That's when we decided to bring the fight to them."

I glanced at Henry. He looked like he could smash some heads. "And the fire hose?" I said, turning back to Professor Sachs.

"Got that at an auction," she said. "Bullets don't kill them. Don't know what does, actually. But they are cold and the thing they serve makes things freeze. So we shoot them with water and it slows them down at least. The hose gives the added element in that it'll knock them down." She paused again and looked at me. "So now we end of the Q&A part and come to the real question: what are you going to do now?"

"I..." I looked down at my hands. "I don't know."

"You could run," Professor Sachs said. "That doesn't always work, but it may. Or you could stay and help us." She held out her hand, much like Claire did before. "You could fight."

"You don't have to choose right away," she said, pulling her hand back. "But the longer you wait, the more likely it is you'll be taken by them. I don't know how many there are -- I've only seen about five at a time. But I know they don't stop. Not until you dead or one of them."

So there were my only choices: be like them or die, run or fight.