Day 9

       Yesterday I had to open our hotel room's door in the quietest way possible, because Mom had advised me to come home at 5... and it was 9. If only she knew what had happened to her kid in this period of time, she would no more let me step into Oxygen building, and we would go back to LittleMountain.

       So I opened the door as a sloth, sloth, sloth... and it was all in vain.

       "WHERE WERE YOU, ANGELINA FIRENZE?"

      "Oh, hello Mom... and hello Sir."

       "Hello."

        "Well... I was at Oxygen."

         Mom glared at me with fulminate eyes and asked what time was it.

       "...5?" My lips contracted.

       You know, I always dreamed about having exactly that conversation with Mom. But in my dreams, the reason of a sudden rebellion was the pure happiness, a box of champagne in the night, with lots of friends involved, and even a handsome boyfriend who had the physic of William Gray. Never would think about a situation as the one living now, in which I had gotten late home not because of a boyfriend, but because of the pain in my arm.

       "Angel", Sr interrupted, "you can trust your mother. You can trust us."

       These words finished the job of killing me, piece by piece. I couldn't lie...  could I? Even the falsest lie would be better than the truth.

        "I was with... a boy"

       Mom gasped as if I had said the moon was about to fall over our heads. I was a genius. She knew I would never invent such a thing. Yes, Angelina Firenze could create a whole story with kidnappers and alien abduction to explain her delay, but would NEVER mention another person, specially a random person, specially a boyfriend with the physics of William Gray. For Mom, I was simply telling them my biggest secret, from the hidden part she has never touched in years.

       And with that confession, I ran toward my room and locked the door.

•••

       I woke up before Mom and Sr, glued a post-it on the TV, and went to Oxygen building. Wanted to meet my friends as fast as possible. Wanted to know why Damon Collins was so bad; who was Vince Snowfields, how he was he related to Oliver, and why he had burned himself to save me.

        "Guys, I am sure Damon attacked Oliver because of what Vince did to him..."

       "Angel! There is no Vince Snowfields." Zoey snapped. "I asked my tutor, he has been working in here for 12 YEARS, and he never heard of any Vince."

       "That's true." said Sky, "And besides, we know everybody. This Vince seems to be more than an ordinary person, we would have noticed him before."

         I opened my mouth to protest, but words failed. Someone did punch Damon the day before, it was a shadow, Vince was the shadow, I saw the bubbles in his hands while he squeezed Damon against the wall, I've seen it! And then he was gone, in a blink of eyes... he was gone through what looked like...

"The lateral door!" I began running to the elevator's direction. Zoey and Sky probably looked at each other without knowing if I was alright, but I could soon hear their footsteps following mine and we were making the way to the place I had seen Vince first... and last.

•••

       The 2nd floor's hall, one of the main ways to the Common Room, was empty. There was no Damon leaned on the windowsill; and no Vince either. I searched for the door. It was of the same color of the walls, no one would notice about its existence walking across the hall normally.

        "Here" I said, feeling its cold surface.

We watched the door for a minute.

        "Are we going to enter or not?" Sky said, breaking the silence.

I cleaned my hands on my jeans, that were sweaty, and pushed. We were in a narrow corridor, dark and very cold.

        "I don't think we should go — AAH!" Zoey clenched her nails on Sky's shoulder when the lights went on suddenly, activated by our movement.

There was nothing there to be seen unless normal emergency stairs. Sky yelled "cool!!", making the whole place shake with her echo. Zoey started to laugh, and her sound also reverberated.

      "And now? How are we going to find Vince?"

       "We can look for clues, Angel! C'mon!" Sky jumped on the first step up, to the 3rd floor.

      "Umm I don't think he went up"; Zoey said, "I mean, if this Vince didn't want to be seen, the best option would be going downstairs, out of the building itself."

       "But why you think he didn't want to be seen?"

       "Ah I don't know."

        "I think it is better if we split up, we are just looking for clues". I interfered.

"Okay then, let's go together."

       Zoey and I went downstairs. We had only one flight of stairs to wander, and it was as normal as normality could call normal.

       "ANGELINA! ZOEY! COME HERE! I THINK I AM AT THE SEVENTH FLOOR!!!"

       "There is no seventh floor, Sky, for god's sake!" Zoey looked at me, laughing. I looked back at her and turned together to fight the steps up the floors.

       It was maybe the middle of the way. I was running against gravity and my legs were hurting. That was when I caught something different glittering on a corner. My pace was broken immediately and I tried to warn Zoey, but she was already too ahead of me. I got closer, leaning my arms on both thighs, panting.

It was a chain, as a necklace, with a little tube hanging from its hoops. It looked extremely new, well-cared, and shiny.

       I took it from the floor and brought it under my nose; it smelled silver, with a touch of masculine scent.

       Was it Vince's?

        I breathed one more time trying to cage the smell in my head. The perfume felt more marked than before, remembering the male sections of fancy clothing stores. I studied the tube, cutely adorned with a symbol on its surface, and a thin line which cut the tube in two, which also meant that was an opening.

       I pulled the head of the tube out but my fingers just slid by the metal. Once more, this time with nails; it unsealed. "Oh man..." I murmured under my breath, turning the thing without cap against the light. As I suspected, there was nothing stored in there; but the tube itself was the cover of an incredibly sharped blade, almost transparent, as made of crystal. My eyes could be cut off just by staring at it. How could something be so small, so mortal, and so beautiful at the same time?

       I felt a sudden cold, chills spreading all over me, as if my spine was attacked by a ghost. I shivered.

        "ANGELINA WHERE ARE YOU?!" A high-pitched voice echoed from the stairs. With a low click the dagger was closed again. I put it safely inside my coat and ran.

        "What happened?!" I stretched my neck to give a better look at the corridor they were in, but it wasn't necessary. The wall. The whole wall was covered with words. Large and small letters mixed with other sentences in different colors; printed or cursive, commas, points and exclamations in the middle of illegible things, and there were parts with larger letters highlighting more important sentences, meaningless when scanned too fast. There were colored drawings, symbols and even a little Deathly Hallows, from Harry Potter. I don't know how I could see the Deathly Hallows in middle of all of that, by the way.

       "You see?!" Sky squawked. "What a mess!!"

        "And you haven't seen anything yet, Angelina." Zoey said, and pointed to something written in blue ink.

       Gene will cause the 3rd World War

       I read and reread it a lot of times. It wasn't making sense at all. "Do you think... This is true?"

       "There is a lot of other phrases saying the same thing. Here: Arians destroyed what all people had in common: weakness; and now there is a deeper precipice between us."

       "Freaky." Sky said.

       "Do you think Vince wrote it?" I put my hand inside my pocket, touching the chain. It was still cold and smooth.

       "Angel, there is no Vince!!"

       "Yes there is!"

       "Stop arguing!!"

"Okay! Let's read?"

Doctor Gene is growing up! Run!

2 more days 2 2 2 2...

*circle and a lot of lines*

*more crooked lines*

It was a real mess.

"I sincerely hate saying this, but we need to tell the Doctor."

•••

       We spent the way back to the Common Room in complete silence. My belly was roaring.

       "Okay, girls." Zoey stopped. "No words about that wall for others, right?"

       "Yes." We confirmed. Still didn't know if it was best telling them about the chain I had found at the stairs... maybe was the best to stay with the mouth shut, at least for now. The smell of stake and spaghetti filled my nose the second we entered the Common Room. All tables were reorganized to form a huge refectory. Food on the left, desserts on the right. I followed Zoey and Sky to an empty table near the spot people were getting big jars of orange juice.

       "Is this all free?" I asked as they filled two cups of juice for themselves.

       "Yes!" Sky smiled. "Isn't it cool?"

       "Of course this is not free, the government pays with our taxes." Zoey said.

       I laughed at Sky's tongue out for her and quickly escaped to the line to grab my food while they entered in an infinite discussion about the public money the government used to buy stuff for Arians.

       The guy in front of me was about my age, older perhaps. He had a flaming red hair, and was selecting which type of meat he would put on the pink tray he was holding for a red-haired girl about 7 old that was standing quietly by his side, watching his movements with big brown eyes.

       "This beef is too cooked!" He complained; and raised his other hand to touch the meat with his middle finger. The meat, instantly, went as red as his hair. "Ops..."

       I covered my mouth to avoid laugh.

       "Sebastian!!" The girl shouted. "I want a normal meat! Can you please stop inventing or I will tell Diana!"

       I imagined Sebastian twisting his face while staring at his sister's raw lunch. My hands couldn't help it, and I let out a loud chuckle. The boy's hair became more red and he turned around with a mortal gaze prepared to kill the person who was laughing at him; but the moment he saw me his expression softened. The piercing on the corner of his lips smiled at me. "Try to find better neighbors at the line next time." He said with sarcasm, sticking the shiny meat with a fork and letting it fall on my plate. I opened my mouth to protest, but he rapidly picked another beef from the broiler and left, the girl running after his heels.

       "Are you a wolf or something?" Sky asked when she saw the meat in the middle of my plate.

"Kind of..."

      "So guys," Zoey sat by my side. "Who is going to knock on the Doctor's door?"

       They both looked at me.

       "What..? Me?!"

       "Yes. You were the one who wanted to go there in the first place."