Chapter 6
Nya's POV
"Are you sure we're supposed to be out here?" I ask as we walk deeper into the woods. Seeing how guarded and monitored this place is, it doesn't seem like they would allow being in the forest.
"I know for a fact that we're not supposed to be out here," he quickly glances over his shoulder before he continues walking.
"What?" I ask, panicked. "Then why are we out here?"
"Because you wanted a place they didn't show you. We entered the forest in the blind spot of all the security cameras anyways. They have no idea we're out here," he informs me victoriously as we move deeper into the forest.
"So the place they didn't show me is the forest?" I ask. He shakes his head.
"No, it's something inside the forest they don't know about. The only people who know about it are me, Skylor, and her 'not boyfriend'. We're almost there," he explains. After about five minutes of walking, he stops in front of a tree.
"A tree?" Nothing appears to be special about it. It's slightly bigger than the rest, but nothing else.
"Just wait," he walks up to the tree and squats down by a rock. He picks it up, taps it a couple of times, and the front of the tree opens up as if it's a door. It's lit up inside, and I can see a ladder leading downwards. "A fake tree." He smiles and starts to walk in. Having nothing to loose, I follow him the door shuts behind us.
When I say I have nothing to loose, I mean I have absolutely nothing to loose. Out of this place, I have no family. My parents and brother are gone. The blacksmiths shop has almost reached bankruptcy, and I have no friends because of the incident with Adrian back in the seventh grade.
*Flashback*
Today was the day, the day I would finally talk to Adrian and tell him how I feel. He's always caught my eye, or at least since the sixth grade, and I can't wait to tell him how I feel.
I run my tongue over my braces, a nervous habit I have, when he walks down the hall. His hair is quiffed up like every other boys' in this school, but he can pull it off way better than all of them. He has on a pair of red skinny jeans on and a black t shirt. His hazel eyes shine brightly. Next to him walks the queen bee and her possy. They're always all over him.
Quickly, I look at myself in the mirror. My black hair flows all the way down to my waist where it hangs loosely. I make sure nothing is in my teeth (which isn't effective since I have braces), readjust the glasses that sit on the bridge of my nose, untuck my engineering club shirt, and walk over to him.
"Ummm...hi Adrian," I awkwardly wave. The girls next to him stifle laughs, making me look down at my shoes.
"Hi?" he says it more like a question, looking like he's holding back laughter too.
"I wanted to tell you that I really...really like you," I get the words out. The girls next to him start laughing while he just looks horrified. Suddenly, I become really self conscious.
"Isn't that cute? Maybe when you invest in a haircut and actual self care, he'll actually like you," the girl closest to him cackles. Instinctually, I start twirling my hair. I really liked my hair. It can be styled elaborately and freely. Now, however, I just want to cut it off.
"And nerd club? You could do so much better. Oh wait, you couldn't, four eyes," the girls laugh, turning to walk away. I'm on the verge of tears; they're threatening to spill out of my eyes.
"Nya, I'd never like a poor, disgusting girl like you," a smirk crosses his face as he turns around, his taunting laugh echoing through the halls. I turn the other way, both my heart and confidence crushed.
*End of flashback*
After that day, I changed drastically. I cut my hair to the short bob it is today. Instead of glasses, I invested in contacts. I also stopped inventing in public even though I still did it in secret. I might have lied to that guy in the car, but I like to push that memory to the back of my mind.
"Nya, are you okay?" Jay's voice shakes me out of my flashback right as I'm about to run face first into a door.
"Yeah, just lost in thought," I push Adrian to the back of my mind. Jay types in another code in front of him to the door. Once there's a large clicking sound, he pushes the door open. He walks into the pitch black room before flicking on a light switch. Once the lights come on, the whole room is exposed. Several machines in progress are scattered around the room. Screws and bolts are randomly sitting around the room. Tools are lined up against the wall. In all, this looks like a paradise. When I look over at him, his eyes are trained on the ground, his hands resting in his pockets.
"You probably don't like this type of stuff. I should've just shown you the roller rink...," he trails off, obviously not seeing how impressed I am with this.
"No, this place is so cool," I interrupt him, wandering over to a contraption that looks completed. "What's this?"
"It was supposed to be a lie detector, but something's up with it. It turns on, but it always says the person it's attached to is lying," he shrugs, glancing over at it quickly.
"Do you have the blueprints? Maybe I could try to fix it," I offer, causing a small smile to come over his face.
"You like to invent?"
"I love it. I've never met anyone who also likes to," I admit, seeing that he obviously does by all of the inventions around the room.
"Same here except for..." he starts to talk, trailing off at the end, probably getting distracted. He grabs a book off of one of the tables and tosses it to me.
"What's this?" the azure book sits in my hands as I look over the cover.
"It's a step by step book of all my inventions so I can look back and see where I messed up later. The lie detector is on page 387," after giving a brief explanation, he goes over to a contraption that I have no idea the purpose of. I flip to page 387 and start looking over the steps.
---
"This isn't going to work," I laugh. After fixing the lie detector, Jay and I decided to make a small roller coaster model. It was good at first, but then we got a little too ambitious, and there's literally a hole in the track that the marble is supposed to jump over.
As I say that, Jay drops the marble on the track. It glides down the first drop, taking a few sharp turns along the way. After going up and down a couple of hills, it reaches the jump. It clears the jump a little too good and flies off the track.
"Darn it," he mumbles, walking over to get the marble off the ground.
"Jay?"
"Yeah."
"I heard Skylor tell you to tell me about the rules. What are they?" At the mention of the rules, Jay's mood seems to drop drastically.
"There are 12 of them to 'keep us in check' or also known as keep us from escaping I getting motivation to escape. The only person here who's broken all twelve rules is your roommate. Her 'not boyfriend' has broken all but one, and several other people have broken a lot. The only people who haven't broke a single rule are Lloyd, Cole, and Zane," he starts to ramble. I nod, seeing how Skylor would be the type of person who doesn't care about the rules.
"Which ones have you broken?" I ask since he wasn't included in the list near the end.
"5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10," he shrugs casually even though he's broken half the rules.
"What're all the rules? I want to make sure I avoid the bad ones," I ask.
"Rule number one is don't leave your room when it's dark unless you're accompanied by a guard. They have less guards at night, so they don't want us trying to sneak out. Rule number two is no dating or romantic relationships. Because they practically want to make elemental masters extinct, they don't want us have kids, and being in a relationship increases the chances of that happening. Rule number 3 is no talking back to guards. They're easily irritable, so I'd avoid talking to them if I was you," I take in the first couple of rules. "Rule number 4 is no profanities or cursing."
"What's considered cursing here?" I ask because different people see different things as cussing.
"I don't really know. I'd assume anything worse than heck and dang because all of the guards are overly sensitive and want to see us in pain. Um, rule number 5 is no going into the forest unless accompanied by a guard," as he goes to continue, I interrupt him.
"So I've already broken one rule?" I ask.
"Two, but if you break rule number five, you break rule number six too, which is that you have to ask a guard for permission on everything you do that isn't usual. It's so vague that I usually ignore it though. Rule number seven is no meeting in clubs or groups like clubs which goes with rule eight of only 5 elemental masters being able to hang out at one time. There's power in numbers, and they don't want us to have power, just look at these things," he tries to pull the cuff off his arm, but it doesn't work.
"What do these do exactly?" I look down at the cuff. It obviously does something, but I don't know what.
"They're made of vengestone. It muffles our powers and keeps us from using them. It's so annoying," he starts pulling it again, but still nothing happens.
"Rule number 9 is no lying, but that one is hard to prove, so I ignore it too. Rule number 10 is no going onto a living floor that you don't live on. So I couldn't go to your room and vice versa. Rule number 11, the rule they get most strict with and give the most punishment for, is no talking about the outside world or your past in the outside world. They don't want us to talk about our families because it gives us motivation to try to get out of here. The last rule is number 12, no forms of physical affection, so no hugging, kissing, hand holding, any of that type of stuff."
"There's no rules on fighting?"
"Nope."
"Violence?"
"Nada."
"That's ridiculous," as I say that, a loud beeping sound starts to go off. I jump at the sound. "What's that?"
"The sun is setting. We need to be in our rooms in 30 minutes, and it takes 20 minutes to get back. The sun sets earlier here than it does in Ninjago because the walls are so high. You can't actually see the sunset because it actually sets a lot later in the day. In here, it just gets darker with no cool sight," he starts to ramble again as he grabs his phone and jacket. Within the next minute, we're back in the forest and are walking back to the small town.
---
When we get back to the building we started at, I'm hit with a wave of disappointment. Although she hasn't done anything, Skylor is intimidating, and hanging out with Jay was actually fun.
"Thank you for bringing me there instead of the roller rink. I had lots of fun," I admit, glancing up at the building right next to us.
"I haven't had this much fun in a while, so thank you," he says before glancing inside the building. "Do you want to go back tomorrow? You don't have to, of course, but you can if you want," he nervously starts to go off, putting a small smile on my face.
"That'd be fun. What time?"
"Is 2 good?"
"2's great. See you later, Jay," I wave and start to walk away.
"Wait!" He calls. I turn around. "Can we keep this whole thing a secret? If Harumi found out you were hanging out with any of us, especially while also breaking rules, she'd flip out and try to make your life miserable. It's what she does to Skylor, and I don't want it to happen to you too," he pleads. Being on the princess's bad side doesn't sound fun.
"Of course. Do you want me to keep it from Skylor too?" I check. He seems to think for a moment before answering.
"Yeah, she might tell my roommate, and he might accidentally tell Harumi."
"Okay. I'll see you tomorrow," I tell him as I continue my path up to my room. I walk through the lobby and over to the elevator. From there, I go up it, get to my floor, turn down the hall, and walk into my room. Skylor is lying on her bed while also on her phone. When she sees me, she smiles.
"Hi Skylor," I greet her, walking over to my own bed.
"Hi Nya," she sits up, placing her phone face down next to her. "Did you have fun with Mr. Walker?"
"Who?"
"Jay. I asked him to hang out with you for an hour, and you two were gone for a whole 4 hours," she smirks, taking a sip of whatever drink is on her nightstand. "So what'd you do?"
"We just hung out, walked around and talked, nothing special," the lie flows out of my mouth. She raises an eyebrow but then shrugs it off.
"Alright then. Whatever you say," she picks up her phone again.
"How was your thing?"
"Eh, like always. Pretty boring, but we are making progress. I kind of forgot I needed Jay here though to talk about something, but oh well. There's always next time," with that, she flops back onto her bed and starts texting.
A/N: that update took a while but it happened! I have the rest of this story fully planned out with an outline for each chapter
Any predictions? How'd you guys feel about this chapter?
Thank you guys so much for reading. Don't forget to comment and vote
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