Give me a sign

– Well, they are probably looking for us, – Denis muttered quietly, looking at the dry rations and feeling his mouth fill with saliva. I wanted to eat incredibly.

– Will they find it and what will happen to us next? – the excellent student was reasonably indignant. We are in the forest! Where will we go? The darker it gets. And here wild animals walk. We’ve got strange chips on us, they’re probably tracking wherever we go.

– Smart such!? Maria said with a sneer. “So we’re going to vegetate here?”

The branch cracked. The teenagers fell silent, staring fearfully into the darkness. The pale moon provided poor illumination, and angry shadows flickered among the dark silhouettes of the trees. Or is it wild imagination? Denis looked around and, noticing that one of the Ouroboros employees accompanying them had a machine gun, picked it up from the ground and pointed it into the darkness.

– Wait! We will shoot! – the guy said in a trembling voice, realizing that he did not even know how to pull the shutter.

The footsteps stopped.

Ira put down her textbook, rested for five minutes and moved on to the next subject. She had an excellent memory, perseverance and the ability to memorize everything, even if there was no understanding of the subject. Red diploma has become the meaning of life. After all, grades matter. Excellent students are always forgiven a lot, they will have the opportunity to enter any university in the world, and then work, career…

She could do nothing but study, study and study again. But sometimes I wanted to do something, so when urging the Losers on any boil, the girl was not worried. The teachers won’t believe she’s capable of doing nasty things or supporting something like that. Irina considered herself better than other people. Despised those who are unable to learn. She hated beauties like Masha, who achieved everything thanks to money, connections and a pretty appearance. Only study, only hardcore!

Therefore, Irina chose strict suits for herself, actively participated in school life, and joined the club of human rights activists. Everything where study was needed interested the girl. She did not have any feelings for people below her in “internal” rank, and curry favor with those who could influence her “promotion”. She denied the “excellent student syndrome”, considering this nothing more than an excuse, and continued to cram, doing her homework in full and thrilled only with praise, again looking down on her classmates.

– Chapter 5-

Defeated, but not surrendered

The door taken out frightened Alena, who was already hysterical. Eugene did not pay any attention to the crybaby, examining the abandoned house. In the next room, two sports bags with a poor content were found: two flasks of water, matches, a flashlight and two packs of bandages. When Eugene came to himself, he found a crying classmate who, smearing tears on her cheeks, was wheezing, not intending to calm down. A light dress and jacket are stained with mud. Zhenya just rolled his eyes and patted his pockets to find that the phone had disappeared from his jeans pocket. The T-shirt is cool, so he zipped up the jacket and touched his neck. The skin hurt and almost immediately the fingers found a small button on the neck. Turning his gaze to Alena, Evgeny noticed exactly the same chip, which, apparently, was implanted in all the project participants.

The rumble of the fallen door made the guy flinch and jump up from his seat, ready to fight back against the unknown troublemaker. Alena screamed in fright, starting to cry even more. “And where does she have so many tears?” – the guy thought aloofly.

The floorboards creaked and Dimka entered the room. The classmate looked collected and as if ready for anything. On his shoulder hung the same bag that lay against the wall. Dimka is dressed simply: jeans, T-shirt and jacket. “Well, at least the uniform at school was canceled, otherwise it would be inconvenient,” Zhenya thought dejectedly.

“Oh, you’re here,” a classmate remarked without surprise. – And tearful here. Che, long since woke up?

“Recently, I suffered from hallucinations,” Zhenya admitted, pinching the bridge of his nose. – Where are we? Where are the others?

I don’t know, I just found you. This is an abandoned village.

“Yeah, you never know such places around the country,” drawled a classmate.

– Hey, – Dmitry turned to Alena. – Hare whine, your head already hurts.

The girl nervously fell silent, trying to suppress her tears.

– And what to do? Jenny folded his arms across his chest.

– Play. We are in the project, we are being tracked, – he nodded at the chip on Alena’s neck. “So we need to get out of here, find clues and get to the rally point.

Alena made a strange sound, as if she was about to burst into tears again. Tiredly rolling his eyes, Dmitry looked out the window and clarified:

Are you going or are you staying here?

– Let’s go, – Zhenya quickly decided and, picking up the backpacks, pulled the girl by the hand.

Awkwardly shifting her feet, Alena walked, stumbling all the time in her shoes, which she received not so long ago as a birthday present.

– Why are you crying again? Stupid! the mother yelled, which made the girl even more hysterical and annoyed her parents.

– No, look at her! – the father was indignant. – There would be no mother to help, but she is crying!

– Shut up! Shut up!!! – Mom brought a belt over her head. In the next second, the blow fell on the girl’s head.

“Why do everyone have children like children, only you are stupid with me,” my mother continued to swear furiously.

– No need! It hurts me, – the girl tried to stop another spanking, but she only made it worse.

– She looks at the boys. It would be better if you were so interested in studying! Maybe you also sleep with anyone you get? Things to check!

Mom grabbed her school backpack, emptying all her pockets. Later, she checked the desk lockers and her daughter’s personal belongings, as if she wanted to find compromising evidence.

– Mommy, don’t! Alena roared, but another slap on the head silenced her.

Alena shuddered, driving away the surging memories and sniffing for the last time, she wiped away her tears. Dmitry confidently walked along the road and soon led a small company out of the village. There was a fork ahead. Choosing a wider road, Dima straightened his bag and looked at the darkening sky.

– Or maybe we should have stayed in the village? Elena asked softly.

“You can come back,” the boy waved.

Zhenya just sighed. It was a bad idea to split up, it was not for nothing that all the cringe in horror films began precisely when the characters began to walk one by one. Wandering along the dark road, Eugene quickly felt tired. He was completely unsuited to long physical exertion, preferring books to walking. There was nothing left in his parents’ apartment that could entertain Zhenya, except for three telescopes and a fake Indian elephant donated by friends. It slowly turned along with the globe and smiled enigmatically as the glowing numbers on the map of Asia turned green. And now, together with a warm apartment, he was walking along a wet road, somewhere far from civilization.

The dark forest frightened each of them, but Dmitry tried not to succumb to the collective panic, not to lose the face of a lively guy who doesn’t care about anything. Here one could see terrible charred stumps, harsh overgrown shrubs, broken trees with bare roots, swaying in the wind. But above all this, the dark blue sky froze, and a bottomless bowl of the night luminary reigned overhead. In such places it is difficult to maintain peace of mind. Alena sniffled. There would be at least someone who just at that moment painfully wanted to cry. For a moment she was filled with such self-hatred that she screamed, and her hands clutched at her shoulders of their own accord, and her face contorted as if with a terrible premonition. But that only lasted a moment. And then everything returned to normal. The guys shuddered in surprise, but said nothing and continued to walk forward, choosing a more beaten path.

Dimitri was the first to notice the bright shadow ahead. Something whitish translucent strangely trembled in the light wind, vaguely resembling a child’s figure in a light dress. The figure sat on the road with its head bowed. There were brown spots on the light fabric.

Zhenya stopped right behind his classmate’s shoulder and waved his hand to Alena, asking her to be quiet. The girl stopped, cautiously peeking out of the guys’ backs.

– What is it? Yevgeny asked quietly, noticing that a forest could be seen through the figure. Ghost?

– Some kind of crap, – Dmitry noted in surprise. – Hey! Are you all right?

The girl got up from the ground, shook off the sand and blood from her dress and slowly walked along the road, looking around in surprise, approaching the company of her classmates. Her movements were unnatural, suspiciously sharp, alarming. Catching her gaze, Eugene saw a genuine feeling behind the mask, a mixture of grief and fear. Something happened in the life of this child, an event occurred due to which her former strength disappeared into a fog, that was the impression that was created. Yet there was something subtly unsettling about her. With an unexpected jerk and with unnatural speed, the girl ran towards her classmates, making a terrifying sound, like a loud whistle, crossed with a wheeze. And then, just like in the cartoons, she had her own language, complex, creepy and incomprehensible.

– Let’s run! – Dmitry was the first to turn around, rushing headlong into the village, along the way, dragging Alena. – Let’s! Move the rolls!

The frightened girl, not paying attention to her heels, tried to keep up with her comrades in misfortune. Adrenaline rushed into his blood, seething, igniting from the inside. The company fled without looking at the road, pursued by the ghost of a little girl. Having freed her hand, Alena felt her lungs burning, and almost immediately it hurt in her side, but fear drove her forward, forbidding her to think about pain.

Zhenya lagged behind a little, turning around every now and then. When he looked up again, he didn’t notice his classmates. Fear paralyzed him and in the next second he stumbled, falling to the ground, ripping off his palms to the blood. Turning to the impending threat, the guy did not have time to understand anything, as his face burned with pain, and his consciousness faded.

Next courses. He felt like a role model and this has always been confirmed. Remember your mom’s friend’s son? So this person has always been Eugene. He knew how to cook, knew a bunch of clever terms, studied well and always agreed with his mother. Studying was a pleasure, I liked to learn new things, to learn languages. The future was already planned: the first and second education, work in a large company, and then career growth. Everything was decided by the knowledge that Eugene stuffed himself to the fullest. Unlike Irka, he did not strive to get only good grades, but tried to understand the material, realizing that knowledge is power. But the future lies in the use of knowledge. Everywhere work experience is required and they say: “Forget everything you were taught before”, so Evgeny always found the use of all the information that he drew from any open sources. But classmates saw him as a botanist and a nerd, and valued him only for the opportunity to write off, because Irka never “stooped to such a thing.” Trying to get universal love, Eugene often took additional essays from classmates, so to speak, bribed them. Him additional knowledge, exciting pastime and gratitude, and classmates finished work.

Sometimes he wondered what would happen if he refused to do homework for others? Would you continue to appreciate it? Or, on the contrary, they would have been rotten, like Denis, because there is always a reason for persecution. Therefore, more and more communication with people, Zhenya preferred books and the Internet. He followed the social networks of acquaintances, lamenting that people were wasting too much time instead of studying the material and preparing for the school day. But everyone’s life seemed richer. The guy wanted to be called to a school disco or a party, but, as Dmitry put it: “Bespectacled people have nothing to do there!”. It’s a shame and unfair, but Eugene was convinced that later the world would fall at his feet. You just need to wait, gain experience and knowledge, and soon everyone will talk about him, because it is he, the very son of his mother’s friend. They will take an example from him, and the girls will bite their elbows with envy, realizing that they have lost such a groom.

– Chapter 6-