Y - Novel Teaser

XX

Escape. At last.

He'd maintained his composure as long as it'd taken to reach the door leading out of the classroom. Once he was outside though, Rohan let out a breath he never knew he'd been holding. He stepped to the side and leaned back against the wall, closed his eyes, and heaved out a sigh as he ran a hand through thick, messy blond hair. Escape. Free at last.

The teenage boy looked up with a start as he heard the door slide open again. He'd half expected to see the familiar, frustrated features of Instructor Lee poke out, intent on lecturing him again on the finer points of assignment focus and fulfilling criteria. He'd even braced to receive her lecture.

Instead, it was another boy that emerged. Complete opposites in appearance save for gender and the black-trimmed silver uniform they shared, he grinned in contrast to Rohan's exhaustion. His skin was dark to Rohan's light, his eyes a sharp green to Rohan's warm brown. The boy elbowed Rohan in the side as the door whirred and slid back into place again. "Oh, c'mon, Ro! It's not that bad!" He leaned back and stretched for a moment, and when he settled back into place he was still half a head taller than Rohan.

The old nickname dragged a groan from Rohan. Thankfully, in the early evening when detentions usually finished on the education floors, there weren't any of his fellow classmates left around to hear. Only two people called him 'Ro' and didn't do it to tease him, and he only really liked it from the one. "Just 'cause you can parrot to the Instructors doesn't mean I can, Kaden," he muttered.

One of Kaden's arms draped over Rohan's shoulder and helped to guide him off the wall. "Hey, I was in there for being a smartass. You don't have any excuse."

Rohan grumbled wordlessly to himself as he straightened down his jacket. Kaden was right, in a way. He could have just written a class presentation on the rise of the United American Territories like all the other boys. But no, he'd had to go and dig himself a hole by looking too deeply into the data. "The presentation was on-topic," he finally replied.

Kaden's arm slipped down and off Rohan's shoulder, and his hand dragged for a moment down along his companion's arm. "Lee didn't think so," Kaden pointed out with another little smile.

A grimace spread across Rohan's face as he glanced at the wall. The screens set there always went dark after schooling hours, and provided a decent enough reflective surface that he could see the frustration on his face. "Lee didn't like that I wasn't patriotically extolling the virtues of the UAT breeding program," he replied with a shake of his head. "That's all she wanted."

With a chuckle, Kaden gave Rohan's side another, firmer elbowing. "C'mon, Ro. You heard her. That's not what she wanted." He smirked. "Someone decided the tower intranet didn't have enough data and had to hack his way out to play on the exonet again, didn't he?"

Rohan couldn't help the little smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth as he nudged back at Kaden with his side. "I wasn't playing on the exonet," he drawled as he rolled his eyes. "The tower archives are just... incomplete. I thought the presentation would go better with better data." As the pair rounded a corner, the corridor stretched out toward the doors of an elevator. "You're heading back to your dorm?"

"Yeah. You walking me there?" Kaden threw Rohan a hopeful smile. "Protect me from all the big, bad security guards doing their drills today?"

Rohan mirrored that smile as he held Kaden's stare. "Only if you promise not to get me in trouble this time," he insisted. "Especially with security. Last time, Cameron almost caught us out."

Kaden just laughed. "Aww, it wasn't that bad," he countered with a broad grin. "Besides, you didn't seem too worried before he came in."

Rohan rolled his eyes as he tilted his head to hide the blush drawn from that memory. That was Kaden. The only thing he liked more than getting himself into trouble was his ability to fast-talk himself right back out of it. Rohan, however, lacked his friend's silver tongue. "You know, one of these days you're gonna spin a lie for someone and it's gonna bite you in the ass."