"Mr. Kenan?"Out of all the things that could happen at the moment, this was the one I least expected. Mr. Kenan didn"t give me much time to get out of my initial shock, and started talking fastly:
"Shut your mouth and listen, I don"t have much time. It is now obvious to both of us that this... "community" ent.i.ty doesn"t actually have any good purposes. They are just good at bluffing and manipulating. I"m not exactly sure of their motives, but I think... perhaps they just want revenge from humanity. For some time, they"ve tricked all of us into horrible mistakes. Anyway, let"s cut it short and get to the point. Recently, I"ve had some "disagreements" with this community, like you might guess, and long story short; we are in a fight over here, right now. I had this short opportunity to inform you about the situation, and to protect you from the manipulations of "the community". Okay, listen closely now, here is the plan: If you ever get into contact, do NOT believe in whatever they tell you."
I was relieved to hear Mr. Kenan"s voice once more, but what he told didn"t make me feel the same way. He continued talking after a moment.
"Actually, here is a better plan: Avoid everything at all costs! Yeah. The storm is gathering over here, and h.e.l.l is about to break loose. Try to stay alive until the action is over."
"Where should I go? What is going to happen?" I asked. Mr. Kenan"s warning had caused a lot of panic and confusion, and I didn"t know what to do.
"I don"t know, just stay out of danger zones. Anything can kill you. Now that there are only two people alive in the building, "the community" possesses a great power over the physical world. They can use just about anything you see to kill you."
My thoughts turned upside down. As Mr. Kenan gave me clear warnings, panic and fear had completely replaced my momentary relief.
"I have allied with the souls of your dead friends in "our phase of reality". We are the only force that stands in front of the community"s complete control of the building. Even Melis is on our side, now that she is out of the effects of the manipulating force, but we are still heavily outnumbered." said Mr. Kenan, describing the situation similar to a military report.
I couldn"t help but think that it sounded like some fantasy plots I used to read; factions of evil and good mystical beings, fighting each other for the possession of power...
"So here is what you will do." said Mr. Kenan, cleaning my mind of all the silly thoughts. "Remember the story I told you when we were first stuck in the building?"
"Most of it." I replied.
"Okay, remember the first casualities of this school? The two teachers who hung themselves?" he asked.
"Uh... Yes, I do." I replied.
"Good, good." Mr. Kenan continued. "So, I"ve managed to contact one of those teachers here. After all, their poor souls were trapped in here, just like everybody else. It wasn"t hard to figure out where to find him... Anyway, he informed me that before they commited suicide, they have hidden some notes in the school building somewhere. Unfortunately, we don"t know where the notes are now; but their contents are very important for our cause. We need you to find the notes and contact us again. We will protect you for as long as possible as you search for the notes."
"What are the notes about? How will we know when we find them?" I asked.
"You will understand if you can find them. Stop asking too many questions, we don"t have much time." Mr. Kenan said. It was clear that he was worried. "Please find those notes as soon as possible, or all the struggle will be for nothing..."
Mr. Kenan didn"t explain a lot about the notes we were supposed to find, and I didn"t understand a lot. But I got how important this was for him, and I had to take action. I left the handset on table, still panicking a little bit.
"What do we do now?" asked Idil. She was listening to the conversation without interrupting.
"I don"t know, why don"t we start searching here?" I said. We started inspecting all around the princ.i.p.al"s room. The room wasn"t large, so it didn"t take too long to search everything in the room.
"Those are just administrative folders and stuff..." said Idil. "There is nothing interesting in particular."
"The sticky notes are full of phone numbers." I said. "The notes aren"t here."
"Where do we look next?" she asked.
"Maybe they left it in the cla.s.sroom they commited suicide." I said.
"We don"t know which cla.s.s that is." said Idil. "It will take forever if we look at every single cla.s.sroom in this building. Besides, if the notes were in one of the cla.s.srooms, somebody would"ve found them by now." She was right. It"s been many years since the teachers have died, if they have hidden the notes in one of the cla.s.srooms, it was near impossible for the notes to stay undiscovered for this long.
"The teachers" room... What about it?" I said.
"Could be... Let"s go!" Idil said.
We ran out into the hallway, and noticed that most of the hallway had transformed back into it"s new "school redesign" version. It was clear that the effects of "the community" around us had weakned, now that we were under the magical protection of Mr. Kenan and our friends.
When we were running to the teachers" room, the intercom activated.
"Stop!" shouted Mr. Kenan.
The structure around us had started to transform, and a desk flew across the hallway right in front of us at high speed. If we were hit by that desk, it would almost guarantee an instant death.
"That was close." said Idil.
"Keep yourself in the safe zones." said Mr. Kenan. He was referring to the non-transformed parts of the building, which resembled a school rather than a prison.
We kept running towards the teachers" room, but we stopped running when we heard something from one of the cla.s.srooms nearby.
It was a loud crash, followed by coughing and violent gagging.
Could there be someone else alive in the building? "No way" I thought. If there were someone else alive, we would know about it by now. But what we just heard was telling us otherwise. For once more, I was stuck in between the thoughts of "running away from the danger" and "finding out more about things". This time, my curiosity won the fight, despite all of the warnings by Mr. Kenan to stay out of the danger zones.
I walked in front of the door, and Idil followed me.
I gently pushed the door open...