Contest: Keeper Exams

Host: THGF1234

"Cole?" I question, knocking on his office door.

"What?" He barks, frustration taking over his mood in a flash.

"Damn, I haven't seen you in a week and you're already annoyed with me?" I snark, opening the door without permission. Cole looks up from his desk and scowls, a slight color of amusement in his eyes.

"Shut up, what're you doing back here Zarah?" He wonders, staring down at the computer screen built into his glass desktop. Instantly, I sober up and drop the foolish act.

"You asked that I notify you when I'd located the last of the apprentices. Well, I found the last two yesterday, all forty-five are accounted for." Cole looks up abruptly from the screen, his eyes as wide as saucers.

"What?" He whispers and I roll my eyes, slumping my shoulders slightly in annoyance.

"You heard me. They're waiting for you." Cole frowns and a hauntingly distant look creeps over his face. Slowly, he pulls himself to his feet and shuts the computer screen down. Without hesitation, I make my way over to the wall and press my palm against the seemingly plain white wall. A blue light appears and scans the length of my hand triggering a secret compartment to flip backward into the wall. I reach inside and pull a midnight black medallion from within; the Keeper's magick.

"Wait, already?" Cole asks me, pressing his first and second fingers against his temple and closing his eyes. I spin toward him and hold the medallion out toward him.

"Yes, already."

"But-"

"No buts, you're the Keeper Cole. It's time." Cole sighs heavily and nods, taking the medallion from my grasp. He loops the item around his neck and gestures me forward with his hand.

"Let's go then. The Keeper Exams won't start itself." He says with a forced smile and pulls the huge metal door open and walks out into the silent halls, out footsteps being the only noise. The door was at the end of the hallway, it was the only thing not white along the entire length of the empty space. The closer Cole and I got to it, the harder my heart beat against my ribs.

This was it. The start of the Keeper Exams. The beginning of our end.

I'd only ever stepped foot in that room once when I was competing in the Keeper Exams. This would be my second time as well as my last time. And I wouldn't be the girl slumped in her seat in the back row because she didn't want to be there. I would be the one standing at the front of the room staring out at a sea of new faces just as terrified and excited as I had been forty years ago. I would be the only face they recognized, it was my job to keep them in check while Cole spoke to them.

Cole and I come to a halt before the door and he presses his thumb against the fingerprint scanner beside the door. A bubble of palpable tension bursts through the empty hall way as the machine beeps, verifying Cole to be the one and only Hybrid Keeper. A handful of moments pass before the metal door clicks and swings open, exposing a room with forty-nine sets of eyes on us.

A mass of forty-five seats are lined up in the center of the room, and in each one sits a possible successor for Keeper. And the others, they get my job. A bright white light illuminates all the faces before us and the range of emotions I see blows my mind away. Fear, anger, excitement, determination, confusion, and so many others without proper names; I could see them all and it reminded me of myself. Of who I was when I entered the Keeper Exams, I was scared and confused. I understood them, but I was no longer like them. I was ready for what was to come, to die at the right hand of my Keeper. To sacrifice myself for the good of my people.

Cole walks slowly into the room, standing at the front and looking out over all the new faces. I stay close to his back, folding my hands calmly behind my back and drawing in the magick of the Guarde. If anything were to go wrong, both myself and the four other Guarde members positioned on the edges of the room would be the only type of protection for Cole. Not that we couldn't handle it, Cole had more power in his pinky finger than the mass of the apprentices together. But still, it made me nervous.

Cole shifts and glances back at me, a tiny flicker of indecision crossing his face. Quickly though, he turns back toward the apprentices and squares his shoulders, standing up straighter. Breathing in heavily, I level my gaze at each apprentice, watching them carefully and feeling a sense of deja vu.

The apprentices were scared, I could tell. Even if they pretended that they weren't. Every face I saw was clouded with so many emotions it was impossible to pinpoint them all, but fear was a constant on all of them. I couldn't blame them, they'd been ripped from any life they'd known and thrown into another with people they'd never seen before. I was the only familiar face to them, considering it was I who tracked each one of them down and brought them here for the Exams. And each apprentice had reacted to my presence differently, I could tell which would accept my help and which would not. I assumed though, that eventually they'd all come around. They had to. This was the beginning of the rest of their lives.

Cole coughs and I'm shaken from my tangled thoughts. Blinking, I press my palms tighter together behind my back and lay my gaze on Cole's back. A trickle of sweat runs down the side of his face and I feel a tinge of pity for him. The task before him was not going to be easy. It was his duty to find a successor before the Keeper magick rejected him and we and the entirety of the Hybrid society perished. He only had a bit of time left to do it.

"My name is Cole, I am the Hybrid Keeper. As Keeper, my job is to protect the secrets of the Hybrids, enforce order among our people, and retain the peace between us and the humans that know of our existence. I am the highest power and those under me are called the Guarde. They follow out my orders and protect the Hybrid citizens, myself included." Cole's explanation is met with a series of confused faces and a scattering of nervous mumblings. I straighten up just a bit.

"We are located within a hidden compound known as the Hybrid Headquarters. This building is impenetrable as it is several hundred feet below ground level. It houses the Keeper, the Examination Training Facilities and Realms, as well as all of you; the Apprentices. Knowing this, I would strongly advise you to discard any ill ideas of escape. As you, being only an apprentice, will not succeed." Cole threatens in a calm, leveled voice but his point is not missed among the apprentices.

"Now, you are here because you are the best of your Work. You are the strongest, the bravest, the toughest, and the most powerful Workers of your Gift. There are fifteen Gifts in all and each one of you possesses one of them. You all have been chosen by the Keeper magick itself to become the next Keeper. But only one of you can win, and the other forty-four of you will be given a place on the Guarde."

"I know that some of you have no idea what a Hybrid is, or that you are one because you were raised as a human. However, some of you have spent your entire life training for this chance under the watchful eye of your parents and mentors." A few confident apprentices nod their heads in agreement to Cole's words. I raise an eyebrow at their superior complex and resist the urge to huff. They had no clue what they were in for. No idea how different the real thing was from the training grounds.

"For those of you who do not understand, I am the Keeper and you are about to undergo intense examinations to become my successor. We are Hybrids, humans born with altered DNA that gives us special abilities such as Telekinesis, Telepathy, and Teleportation. All Hybrids have these general abilities, but only fifteen percent of the population is born with specific talents. All forty-five of you are in that fifteen percent."

"The reasoning behind the Exams is to utilize your powers for good rather than allowing you to grow up and abuse the Gift inside you. With a Keeper, that fear is eliminated because the Guarde can only do what the Keeper allows of them. And the Keeper is only given the power to achieve what the Keeper magick wishes."

"The Keeper Exams are designed to weed out the weaker ones first. there are three stages to the tests and various realms within each stage. The first stage specializes in your Gift and all of you will participate. Most of you will probably make it to stage two but only half of you will continue to stage three where a Keeper will be claimed by the magick." Cole pauses, allowing for the mass of apprentices to absorb the information he has so willingly given to them. But I knew the next part of the speech, and I knew it had the potential to cause an uproar. He would have to tread lightly.

"Forty-four of you will die during the tests." Cole's statement is met with outrage and I step forward slightly, placing my clenched fists by my sides in warning. Cole raises his voice, fighting to be heard over the cacophony of terrified shouts. "The people sitting next to you will be your killer, there is nothing I can do about that except to assure you that you will be resurrected. There are forty-four Hybrids on the Guarde, all were chosen to participate in the Keeper Exams beside me. They died and came back, and so will you." The angry shouting pauses long enough for Cole to regain their attention.

"I promise that I am not here to scare you. There was a Keeper before me who stood in the same place that I do now and gave the same speech that I give you. They were my friend as I am yours. I am simply telling you what to expect, what happens is entirely up to you." Cole emphasizes, pausing for a minute to give each apprentice time as he continues to bombard them with a stream of information.

"My time as Keeper is coming to an end. I am no longer as strong as I once was and the magick can feel my life draining. And because my Guarde lives only as long as I do, the weaker I get the weaker they too become. It is now my sole purpose to find a successor before the Keeper magick rejects me and the Hybrid society is left leaderless and exposed."

"There is only one way to win the Exams and that is to survive. Forty-five of you will enter the Exams but only one will live to become Keeper. The others will die and be resurrected as part of the Guarde."

"From this point forward, you are alone. You can trust no one, you are not friends because the people who sit on either side of you will kill you if given the chance. That said, I will not dissuade you from making alliances with whom you see fit. Being an ally does not depend on trust but rather intelligence the courage to recognize when the alliance is no longer needed. Be aware that you will benefit from alliances in stage two and possibly stage three, but stage one is individual."

"You are fighting to take my place as the Hybrid Keeper. Remember that and be prepared. Enter the first stage knowing that not all of you will move on. I wish you all good luck, may the best of you overcome." Cole's speech comes to an end and the silence that greets him is deafening. I clear my throat and reach out to Cole, brushing my palm along his arm. He flinches and glances at me, walking slowly toward the door with a partially glazed look in his eyes. He turns away from the apprentices, refusing to watch the array of emotion that dances across their faces.

"Escort the apprentices back to their rooms." I command of the other Guarde members standing on the edges of the room. Cole pulls on the metal door and lurches out into the hallway, pressing his shoulder into the wall for support. I watch as the Guarde members begin to gather the apprentices from their seats and escorting them through a door at the back of the room before following after Cole.

"Cole?" I question in a rare show of worry and stand before him. "Are you okay?" He looks up with weary eyes and nods, scrubbing his hand over his face.

"I'm fine, we have work to do Zarah. The Keeper Exams have begun and they're not going to run themselves."