The Phantom School - 57 Friendly Fire

“You are that old woman…” I said.

“After you were gone, I thought I would start using the voice I had when I was younger.” she said. “A nice change, don’t you think?”

“Nice change, indeed.” I said, and thought for a while. “Excuse me, but… Don’t you have a name?” I asked her.

“I don’t use a name. It wouldn’t be fair if someone adressed me with a personal name. When I speak, I speak on behalf of an entire community. So far, I managed to communicate with people without a proper personal name of my own. And I think that it is worth noting, you and Mr. Kenan are the only living entities I directly communicate with.” she replied.

“It feels weird, though… What was your given name at birth?” I asked.

“Please, no… I’m no longer that person, so I would rather not use that name.” she said.

“All those years… have you been waiting for me to come back to the building?” I asked.

“Right now, I really can’t decide if your return to this building was merely a coincidence, or you were destined to come back here eventually.” she said.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“Well… You might have been brought back here by the influence of the implant. I bet the scientists want to inspect their subjects after all those years… If that’s the case, you already know what will happen. I can’t risk letting you roam around.” she answered.

“But… it is impossible that they have brought me here. I’m a teacher, I was sent to this school with an official-”

“Cool story.” She didn’t let me talk. “We’ve learned a lot about the experiment while you were away. But for now, we have a job to do before you are caught.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Do you know how many more generations were pulled into this evil experiment after you were released from the underground facility?” she said. “After you were released, we never got another chance to put a stop to all this madness. It still continues, even now…”

“Do you think I’m responsible for that?” I asked.

“No.” she answered at first. “Actually, come to think of it… Yes. You are partially responsible for that.”

“Are you out of your mind? You can’t ask someone to kill himself. You are the other half of all the evil here.” I told her.

“See… You are still under influence. We have told you what would happen if you were left alive, yet… You didn’t listen. Let me tell you; after you were released, you pulled five more victims from the next generation into the trap, thanks to your implantation.” she explained. “We know it all. Even in today’s generation, we know who the victims are, and we closely observe them. But, thanks to all the strict teachers gathered in the school, we can’t get a chance to perform the necessary sacrifice. We can no longer risk choosing a living human as a representative after the failure of Mr. Kenan. So, maybe… Maybe we can start performing the ritual with the victimized teachers.”

Items around the chemistry lab started shaking slowly. I felt a soft breeze.

“Hold on!” I yelled.

“Pick your final words carefully. I wouldn’t waste it begging for mercy.” she interrupted, but she was no longer using the phone. Her voice was coming from the building’s intercom. White noise was filling the atmosphere.

I was already used to their methods of offensive action because of my unpleasant memories of this school. I immediately started looked around, watching for potential threats. Unfortunately, the chemistry lab was one of the best places to get myself killed. While looking around, I’ve heard something on my left. The clock on the wall was shaking. I’ve noticed that the hour and the minute hands of the clock was rotating backwards very rapidly.

I had very little time to react before I was attacked.

“Stop, my implantation was destroyed!” I finally shouted.

Everything stopped shaking in a moment. The white noise got a lot quieter.

“Eh? How so?” she asked.

“Mr. Kenan performed an operation on me to disable my implant.” I told her.

“That’s…” she didn’t say anything for about a minute. “That’s good news.”

Suddenly, the door of the lab opened. Mr. Kenan came in.

“Work on your reaction time.” he yelled at me. “You almost got us both killed.”

“What happened to you? Where have you been?” I asked in shock.

“I warned you about those guys. They had a change of mind just now, and they had me trapped while we were alone.” he said. “This damned community.”

“We are trying to help you.” the voice on the intercom said. “All of the events until now was caused by misunderstandings. If we could just work together…”

“Shut up.” shouted Mr. Kenan. “You are not fooling anyone.”

“We were unaware of the implant being destroyed.” the voice got louder. “We no longer have a reason to be hostile. Besides, if we work together…”

“We believed you many years ago. You lead everyone into death.” I said. “Why are we even spending our efforts explaining everything to each other?”

“Because we NEED to know about each other. Yes, you are right that we killed people, but the people we killed… All of them were victims already. You did not have enough knowledge to free them of possession, so we had no choice but to kill them, for the sake of upcoming generation. Think of it like medical amputation. If we had killed you all, the next generation of students would be safe. The experiment couldn’t continue, and that was all we wanted.” she was frusturated.

“Hardly an excuse for mass murder.” Mr. Kenan replied.

“We no longer have a reason to kill the two of you. Tell us what we can do to prove that we want to work together to stop the experiment once and for all.” the voice said.

“Tell us about the victims of the current generation.” Mr. Kenan said. “And promise you won’t touch them.”

“Are you going to remove thier implants as well?” the voice asked.

“Did you tell them everything about the operation!?” Mr. Kenan yelled at me.

“I had no other choice.” I told him.

“Well, I’m not a surgeon, I can’t perform operations. The operations we performed so far were extraordinary situations. Besides, none of the current students in the school knows about the experiment. And furthermore, I would definitely get arrested.” Mr. Kenan told The Community.

“Maybe it is about time that they know everything about the experiment.” said the voice.

“I can’t trust them with keeping silent about it.” Mr. Kenan replied.

“Well, then I am sorry. In that case, we will have to kill them.” the voice replied.

“So much for cooperation…” I murmured.