Viper

Ch.1

  I couldn't help but groan when I heard the door to my apartment slam shut at the end of the hallway outside my door. Dad was home from the cereal factory where he worked. Thankfully, he turned into the kitchen where Mom was baking. Our apartment layout was a joke. The entire floor was basically just a hallway with six doors branching off the horribly painted, gray walls.
  The first door on the right, when entering the apartment from the long flight of rickety stairs that zig-zagged back and forth up the edge of the building, was the living room, sparsely decorated with a TV, an old coffee table, two tattered, overstuffed chairs, and a small couch with so many holes torn into the fabric, it looked like we had sicked a lion on it. The latter three were picked up on the side of the road for free. To describe it briefly, the room looked like we had just moved in and hadn't finished unpacking. No one used the space for anything other than an occasional sports program. The NFL didn't intrest me as much as it did Dad. Even during football season, the television was only turned on, at most, once a week.
  The kitchen, the second door on the right, was only slighly less unnoccupied. Surprisingly, my stingy father gave my mother a much bigger "allowance" for the appliances. We aren't poor, believe it or not; neither are we rich, though. Cereal factories don't pay a high salary, much to Dad's dismay. Anyway, turning our attention back to the practically unused appliances, a brand-new dishwasher sat nestled under the wooden countertops that could have easily been from the 1800's. Our refrigerator had one of those fancy windows that let you see inside without opening the door. (no one ever opens the door in the first place, so don't ask me why we have it.) The oven boasted a glass stovetop and two oven doors. Every applince we had clashed horribly with our outdated countertops, table and chairs, and light fixtures.
  The third door on the left hid a surprisingly nice bathroom. Rock tiles covered the walls of the large shower that hogged most of the space in the room. A beautiful brass double-sink sat on matching basins. The porcelain throne stood sentry near the shower door. A pale gray paint covered the walls.
  Opposite the bathroom, my parents sat in their bedroom, the baking having been put aside early due to this afternoon's event. Their queen-sized bed, adorned with throw pillows and comforters, filled up most of the floorspace. Two nightstands sat on either side of the bed, holding elegant lamps and their phone chargers. Two giant, stand-up dressers completed the symmetry of the room.
  My room, the last one on the right, was perfect. Well, perfect for me, at least. I never needed a large bed like other teens that I knew. Cough, Oliver, cough. It only held a threadbare blanket and a flat pillow (as well as a mattress, of course. I'm not a psychopath); everything that I needed to sleep. I bought a mini-fridge, stocked with a few energy drinks for cold days, with some money that I managed to earn from doing odd jobs for the neighbors. A small table, covered only with an empire can and a dirty paper plate, sat up against one of the baby blue walls. The best part of my room was the window seat, the only window in the house. A couple unread books that Oliver lent to me lay on the cushion. Two shelves on the wall above and slightly to the left of the table held all of my wardrobe except for what I was wearing: a pair of worn jeans, a black t-shirt, and an old black hoodie. On the shelf sat another pair of jeans, a couple more black t-shirts, some underwear, a few pairs of socks, and a random silver chain that I don't remember picking up (to be clear, I don't  wear the chain, it's just on the shelf).
  I lounged on my window seat, trying to punish- I mean- expand my brain with one of the previously mentioned books. Reading just wasn't my thing. Once, I read a long fantasy about a magical kid with a cape; that was okay, but I haven't found anything else yet.
  Through the incredibly thin walls, I heard the sound of impending doom: footsteps coming from the staircase behind the sixth and final door of my apartment. If the decision was mine to make, the door and staircase leading to the apartment below us would have been boarded off. Although, I doubt that any number of boards I nailed across the door would be able to keep Oliver, who's real name was Ostentatious, from barging through and spouting random lines he learned from Tik Tok or Instagram, or pickup lines he created. He can't help it; it's literally in his name.
  When we metacryptals are named, we're named with a characteristic which we grow into as we get older.
  As if on cue, my best friend nearly broke down my door. "I want waffle fries," he said with exaggerated intonation, grinning from ear to ear. I wondered if doing this frequently pleased him somehow.
  I set my book down on the cushion beside me before walking to my fridge and pulling out glass bottles of root beer for both of us, all without saying a word. If you think I'm going to give him three cups of coffee's worth of caffeine in one drink, you've gone crazy. Root beer is about the most caffeine he can ingest without crashing soon afterward. You could say he's a caffeine lightweight.
  He popped off the cap instead of twisting it off like a normal person and gulped down a swig. "Are you ready for the trial?"
  "It's not a trial," I said with a pitiful attempt at a forceful voice. Unfortunately, the words decided to come out as a weak rasp. I cleared my throat. "There's nothing to try me for." This time, my voice was normal; a soft and quiet murmer.
  He placed a hand on my shoulder sympathetically. "Sorry, Silas. It slipped out." Oliver crossed the room and sat down on the bed. I took my place back on the window seat. "Whatever it is, are you ready?"
  I rubbed my temples. A month ago, I was found in the wrong place at the wrong time. My root beer supply ran out so I ran to the nearest convenience store to restock. Little did I know, the store was being held up as I walked in, just in time to meet the police. In typical fashion of our area, the issue still hadn't been brought to legal attention. "Is it possible?" I asked.
  Oliver laughed. "That's a fair point, but you still have to get your sorry butt over to the court in half an hour."
  "It's not even full," I said.
  My parents, being as cruel, heartless, and selfsh as they were, decided to name me Silent, with hopes that I wouldn't cry as a baby. Now, as a junior in highschool, my throat will hurt if I speak too much. Also, my sentences tend to lose some of their meaning when I try to say them out loud. Oliver, over the years, had become adept at filling in the blanks of my spoken thoughts.
  "Yeah, it does suck that they're only giving you an informal trial, but things could be worse. They don't have the means to send you to a human school. I overheard my parents talking the other day, and they said that the last potential pairing for the public school punishment had already been sent."
  One of the metacryptals' (my species) punishments for children still young enough was to send them to a public human school for a year with a partner; usually a fellow criminal. We, as a species, are usually home-schooled for our education, though small schools aren't considered uncommon.
  "That's not much consolation," I said, trying to determine what kind of verdict they would hand me.
  Oliver whacked me on the back. "Suck it up, buttercup. You're seventeen years old, and you're a pretty powerful metacryptal. You can handle anything that they decide to have you do."
  No matter how prideful I felt in believing what he said, it was true. I looked at my watch and sighed. "We need to go," I said.