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Chapter 19

Luke was about to head towards the locker rooms when he noticed a light coming from inside one of the classrooms. It wasn't like a regular light. It was faintly blue and wasn't very strong. It looked more like light from a computer screen.

He hadn't found anything condemning yet, but any information regarding the situation could prove vital at this point. He checked his watch and decided it wouldn't make any difference if he was a little later to class and headed down to look at it.

Nobody was in the room. There were no inside doors or walk-in-cupboards, and the corridor beside it was silent both ways. There were no visible cameras. He knew it was safe, but he still felt uneasy. He wasn't breaking any rules, but for some reason it felt strange to be in the room. Or maybe it was just the heat.

The light turned out to be a blank computer screen. It glowed blue but apparently was on standby. Breathing slightly faster, he pressed Enter, and information filled the screen.

It was some sort of record of everyone in the town. He scrolled down to his age group and waited until he saw his class. He saw Quinn's name fairly near the top with a large tick next to it. Rolling his eyes, he continued to scroll down. Jem Conner's name was also ticked off. So were Avery and Noah's, Emma Green and a few other people he didn't know. It looked to be everyone in his class.

He recognised the name, 'Adam Evans' near the top too, and remembered adding him to the list only a few days ago. He'd barely seen him since. There was a line through his name, so he guessed he must have been removed from the system again.

Maybe Quinn had removed him or something. He hadn't seemed particularly keen to be there in the first place, and the two of them had seemed fairly close. He'd seemed too quiet for her. He'd barely spoken at all during their last interaction, just watched in silence. And he was clearly much more intelligent than he'd let on back in the scrapyard, if his test sheets were anything to go on, but he hadn't said anything to defend himself whatsoever.

Some small, stupid part of him regretted what he'd said that day. Guilt was a near-constant for him. Sometimes it was overwhelming. And also infuriating, since he had the fewest reasons to feel it out of anybody. There were strict rules and guidelines put in place for them to follow, and for the most part he was the only person to oblige willingly. But the genuine panic in the boy's - Adam's - face had made him hesitate, even then. It really had felt like he was signing somebody's death warrant.

It was odd that the two of them were so close. From what little he knew of them, he couldn't imagine any two people less alike. She was loud and brash, and he'd barely spoken. Where she looked sturdy and frustratingly unafraid or anything, he looked fragile, like a single misstep could send him careening to the ground. And from what he'd written when he was being put into his sets, he was clearly a lot smarter than he chose to appear. By the end of the day, Luke definitely had some kind of fascination with him.

He reminded himself that people like that almost always had another side to them that was much less palatable. He'd still broken the rules, and she had still helped him do so. His conscience was clear. It was entirely on them. Then again, he guessed some people would do just about anything for a nice face and good bone structure.

He realised he was getting distracted and kept scrolling down, noticing that almost every name was ticked off. He tried to see if anybody else he recognised was left off, but he couldn't find any. And every name that wasn't ticked seemed to have a red cross next to it on the right-hand side.

He kept scrolling down, until he reached his name. Instead of a green tick or a cross, there was nothing.

He wasn't sure he needed a code to know what it meant, but he looked anyway. In the top left-hand corner, there was a key for the symbols. Next to the cross was the word, 'Deceased.' Next to the tick was the word, 'Controlled.'