Her Compound

Chapter 10

"Wakey, wakey," a voice called, summoning me from my peaceful sleep.

"What do you want?" I groaned, squinting through the bright light while the back of my hand rubbed against one of my eyes.

I sat up and Willow's face soon came into view and I could see Matteo looking at me as he leaned down to tie his shoes.

"When do you fall asleep?" He asked after tying his first shoe. He then moved to his second. "Because a whole natural disaster could happen and I swear you would just continue to lay there and sleep through it."

"I don't know," I yawned. "I don't think I got to sleep until two or three, and it's..." I reached over to the edge of my bed, near my pillow, and picked up my watch from where I put it last night. "...it's six-thirty!" My eyes glared daggers at Willow. "Why did you wake me up?"

Logan opened the bathroom door and stepped out, wearing a new set of dark clothes. "Zack came by and told us to wake you up and then be ready to go start training in fifteen minutes," he said while plopping himself next to Matteo and picked his shoe up to put on. "That was around eight or nine minutes ago." He glanced at Matteo and Willow before looking back at me. "I told them you could use an extra few minutes and argued with them until the few minutes ticked down – your welcome by the way – and then I finally let Willow wake you up."

"I see," I said with a small laugh, shaking the tired feeling away from myself.

Logan did a dramatic bow which coughed up a few chuckles before I picked up my basket from under my bed and made my way to the bathroom, closing the door behind myself. After doing the things that I need to get done, I changed and then looked at myself in the mirror. My hair looked a little messy from the tossing and turning but the braid still held its shape, so I decided to keep it in and pack up my basket.

After all that was done and I was ready to go, I opened the bathroom door to see Zack opening the other door at almost the same time. His eyes immediately met my own before he looked away and nodded towards the sixteen teens that were waiting out in the hallway.

"We have a big day today," he said as the four of us followed him out of our room and he closed the door behind us.

We followed him down the hall in silence, making a left turn, and then eventually passing the mainly empty cafeteria. As us four walked quietly in the middle of the group of teens, I could make out through the mass of bodies a gun that was strapped down to the thigh of Zack's pants.

It made sense, I guess. We were going to be training with knives, and I suppose he didn't trust us enough to be unarmed.

We then made it to the training room where Zack opened the doors with a key that he fished out of his pocket. He then gestured for us to go ahead and we did as he commanded. Once we were on the other side, he closed the doors behind himself and then walked with us to the target range side of the training room.

There were twenty or so targets placed on the wall, five to ten meters away from us, and there was a table near where a long piece of tape ran from the far target to the one on the other side. I assumed the line on the ground was where we were going to have to stand behind when we threw the knives.

Zack stopped beside the table and gestured to the hand-sized knives that were laid out neatly on the table and that shined from the light overhead of all of us.

"When I tell you to, I want you all to come up here to the table and pick up three knives each. After picking your three up, you will resume to your positions that you are in right now. Then I will show you the basics of knife throwing and then you can try it yourselves." His eyes ran over everyone's before he spoke up again. "I do not want anyone using the weapons in any way that would result in injury, so be careful."

Zack then stepped out of the way. "You may get your three knives now."

We all shared a look before stepping forward and picking up the knives. The cold metal felt strange in my hands as I walked away from the table and stared down at my faint reflection in the blade.

A loud crash suddenly could be heard and a ringing soon resonated from within my ears as I jumped at the loud noise and spun around.

The first thing that I noticed was that the table had been knocked over, causing the remaining knives to be spread out all across the floor. The second thing I noticed was that Zack had put himself between the rest of us teens at lightning speed and whatever had caused the crash, with his gun in his two hands. My eyes then followed to what he was pointing to and my eyes widened and my mouth opened and I could feel my head shaking as everything went numb.

A boy that I didn't know had a knife in his hand,... and it was pressed right up against Logan's throat.