Complicity [h.s]

07

6 years prior.
3:36 am, New York City.

Sebastian Walker

I feel ill.

Physically sick to my stomach.

Nerves will do that.

The fear of not knowing what to expect at any moment completely belittles your sense of confidence. I don't even know where I am or what I'm going to be doing. My life in the past twenty-four hours has been an abundance of fear and reckless choices.

I killed my father.

It was an accident, but I killed him.

A knife in the kitchen is the subject line to all of it.

I haven't been able to process everything yet. Because when that happened, everything fast-forwarded to this moment. I went from sitting next to his lifeless body on the floor to now sitting at a school desk in a room of fifteen other strangers my age. Concrete walls, no windows, a buzzing white tile light—I don't remember how I got here and I don't know if I'll ever be let out.

I turn my head to the right, seeing Oliver sitting at the spaced-out desk next to me. He stares forward at the empty concrete wall, slouched in his chair.

He got us here.

Everything that has happened in the past day just comes in flashes. My father dying, Oliver saying he can fix this, a man named Malikai coming into our house with a bunch of men to clean up the blood, getting in a black car, driving, sitting alone in a room, talking to Malikai, agreeing to things I can't remember, and now this.

Now I'm here in a room with a bunch of guys around my age. When I turn my head back, all of them look just as lost as me. Guarded too. Turning my head to the left, I see a guy slouched back in a grey hoodie over his head, fiddling with a match. His fingernails are packed with dirt, bruises up his knuckles. A pair of fingerless winter gloves stay on his hands, a dirty ripped bandana tied around his wrist. Was this guy living on the street?

He turns his head to me when he notices my glance, blue eyes meeting mine with blonde hair in his face.

I turn my head back forward.

The steel door in front of us suddenly opens, in walking Malikai with a stack of papers. The room stays so quiet that you can hear a pin drop. I stare ahead as he walks up to the first guy in the front row two down from me. He puts a paper on his desk before moving to the person next to me to do the same thing. The guy with the match doesn't even look up at Malikai when he's in front of him.

Once there's a paper on my desk, I see how it's full of information from top to bottom.

Harry Edward Styles is the title.

"Study the paper in front of you, because from this point forward you will only exist on this earth as these characters." Malikai announces while still handing out the papers, going to the rows of people behind us. "On these papers are your names and everything you will need to know about your origins and talents. These will be things you study in the next few months, a training period to help erase who you once were."

I stare at my paper, skimming it.

Once Malikai finishes handing out the papers, he walks back to the front and leans against the large teacher's desk.

"You all have one thing in common," he begins casually. "You're supposed to be in prison."

The room runs silent before he speaks again.