I was conscious again. I opened my eyes. It was no longer pitch black, and I could actually see colors. Although I felt a bit relieved for my well being, I hated having missed all the important events that happened when I was unconscious. Also; my back, arms and face were hurting very badly.Someone slapped me on my left cheek. It hurt very mcuh, but I couldn"t scream. I was still struggling to get in control of my body completely.
My vision was cleared and focused in a moment. I was laying down, and Idil was looking straight into my eyes. She was about to slap me once again.
"Hey, hey, hey; stop it, I"m aw"
*slap*
I didn"t scream, but I could see her looking at me in tears. We just stared into each other"s eyes for a while.
"I"m awake." I said. "How heavy-handed are you?"
She started crying, silently.
"You got me really worried, idiot!" she said.
"It is okay." I replied.
She wiped her tears.
"No, it is not." she said. "Nothing is okay."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Bad news are... We couldn"t make it out in time." she replied.
Referring to that simply as "bad news" was a big understatement.
I saw Mr. Kenan approaching me. He looked down at me.
"How do you feel?" he asked me.
"I"m... okay, although I feel a little weak." I responded.
"We all do." he said. "Take care of yourself."
I slowly got up on my feet and looked around. We were close to the main exit, which was now closed. I started walking towards the door.
"Don"t spend your energy on that." Mr. Kenan told me. "We"ve already tried."
"Oh... Alright." I said, staring at the door. "Was the fire extinguished?"
"That part is a bit complex." Mr. Kenan said. "While you were unconscious, we have been waiting for the firefighters to arrive. But after the black smoke dispersed, we noticed that there was no fire in the chemistry lab. There literally was no damage at all. It was like a fire never broke out in the first place."
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"It is possible that we"ve experienced another phase shift when the smoke covered the hallway. "The community" is doing everything to keep us in here." Mr. Kenan said. "So... to summarise, we are trapped once again, and the firefighters will never arrive."
"I still don"t know what exactly a "phase shift" is." I told him.
"I told you that before, you don"t have to completely understand everything. I only know what is going on because I have died. You didn"t." he replied.
I sighed, and looked back into the hallway. Everyone was here, we were together for the time being. This would help us survive the night, but of course, it wouldn"t solve everything.
"I am sorry." I said. "If I didn"t rush into that cloud..."
"Don"t be." said Mr. Kenan. "It is not your fault, or anyone"s. If we had tried going around it, we would be too late anyway. We can only plan for the future now."
"Speaking of which... We have no plan at all." Onur said.
"Maybe we can just stay together and make sure no one harms each other." Ata suggested.
"Not bad, but things are a little more complex." Mr. Kenan said. "To give you a better understanding of the situation, I should give you a more detailed overview. Let"s head to that cla.s.sroom over there."
"With all respect, we can get trapped inside cla.s.srooms." Idil warned.
"We are too big of a crowd to easily get trapped." Mr. Kenan responded. "Remember, you were only three people when you were trapped. This is why we will stay together, and it will be okay."
We entered into one of the cla.s.srooms nearby, and left the door open. Mr. Kenan told everyone to sit down around him as he sat in the middle of the cla.s.sroom. He started telling everyone the whole story with all of it"s details. It would take some time as we had experienced many things most of our friends did not.
- - -
After Mr. Kenan was done telling the story, everyone was trying to process the information, oca.s.sionally chatting with each other. Even though we knew a lot about the dangers now, we still didn"t really know what to do.
"I"m hungry." said Onur.
I was hungry as well. In fact, a lot of us were. We have been running around the school building for so long, and we haven"t eaten anything the entire time. We were hungry, and out of energy. If we just sat there and tried to stand it for the entire night, there was a pretty good chance that we wouldn"t make it to the morning.
"There we go." Mr. Kenan said. "We are not even half an hour into our imprisonment here, and we already have a problem." It wasn"t clear how serious he was.
"I"m hungry too." I said, as I couldn"t hold it in.
"M... Me too." said Melis, like she had been waiting for this moment the whole time.
"Okay, okay, I get it." said Mr. Kenan. "We can go to the cafeteria to find something. I bet every place around here is unlocked since the building was evacuated in a rush."
"Unless "the community" had tampered with everything." I said.
"Stop giving them ideas." Idil said.
"They probably already did." Mr. Kenan said. "But it wouldn"t hurt to try."
We exited the cla.s.sroom and headed towards the cafeteria. The door that leads to the cafeteria was open. We were walking there as a group, but suddenly, Onur started running.
"The door is closing! Hurry!" he yelled.
He was right, the door was closing. But there was no chance the entire group could make it to the cafeteria"s door in time.
"Come back here, stay with us!" Mr. Kenan shouted at Onur.
Onur had already reached the door and he was trying to keep it open. We started running as a group, but our speed was limited by the slowest runner in the crowd.
That was when everything went worse. Onur could no longer hold the doors. We couldn"t reach him in time, and he was trapped on the other side of the door.
A few seconds later, he let out a terrifying scream.