The Necklace: The Trial Realm

Chapter Seven: We Are One or We Are Nothing

"Wake up, Newbs!"

The overhead light blinks to life and my roommate groans as she flings back her covers and rubs her sleepy eyes.

The light and the noise don't bother me a bit. I haven't slept yet, so why be mad to get up? This room is ridiculous. Its big enough for two beds and a shared table right in the middle. I haven't had this much space in my whole life. The bed is a story all its own. I couldn't even sleep in it. It was so soft and the blankets so warm, but the room was so quiet. Cut off.

I'm used to the noise of the wind, the soft whimpers of the little ones, and the smell of dirt taking me to sleep. This is too nice to even enjoy.

Then there's my roomie, Noah.

She's spoke all of one word to me, and it was. "Mine." As she'd pointed to the bed on the left side of the room. Other than that, when we came back from the mess hall she'd kept her mouth shut and stayed on her side of the room.

Even now as she gets out of bed, rolling her eyes at me when she sees me sitting cross-legged, already dressed, with my back against the wall, she doesn't mutter a word. She just stomps over to the table where her uniform is folded up and she stalks out of the room, presumably to go change in the restroom.

That's another crazy thing.

On each floor of this building, all eight of them, have restrooms. With toilets the flush and everything. Now that I've experienced that, I don't think I could ever go back to what passed as our version of restrooms back in the Ring.

And showers.

Just thinking of it, the way that nice warm watered rained down on me and cut through all of that dirt and layers of mud that I'd come to think was my own skin...I have to shake my head, reminding myself that I took another shower in the middle of the night and already got ready so I can't do it again right now. But I can later. Definitely doing it again later.

I get off of the bed, stretching my arms and legs out for a minute before I head out into the hallway.

It's maddening out here.

Tons of people in their dark blue jumpsuits running this way and that.

I press through them and head for the stair well at the back of the building. They'd let me try out an elevator last night, but I was in no hurry to do that again anytime soon.

I make my way down the deserted stairs and come out in a long hallway that runs the length of the backside of the building. Much like the giant room at the front with the doors leading into different sections of the building, the same is true back here.

I find the one marked Auditorium/Offices and push through it into another hallway.

"Hey!" Someone shouts out from one of the bisecting halls. "Hey, wait up!" I pause as the boy jogs out to meet me. I smile when I realize it's the boy with the purple eyes who was asking so many questions from the night before. "You look like you know where you're going."

He smiles, his big eyes crinkling in the corners and I find it hard not to smile back. "I'm going to the auditorium." I tell him and he nods.

"Ah, yes, as am I," He tilted his head. "But as you see, I'm not the best at directions and I'm lost."

I glance around, the one main hallway spotted with extra smaller hallways that cut off could be confusing I guess if you aren't pretty good at navigating and your memory isn't so great since we were just here last night. "I know the way." I say, turning so he can follow me.