🎥 Chapter 3. Dmitry
February 13
The police interrogated Nicholas for about two hours before letting him go. All things considered, he was extremely lucky. They found no clear evidence that he was guilty of causing bodily harm.
Three days after his detention, this morning, he showed up for physics lesson. The class counselor, as usual, went in to check on the class to recognise the students present. As she was finishing, her phone rang. It was the school security guard. By themselves, there is no reason for a security guard to call a mere class counselor. But the fact of the matter was that in addition to that position, she held the position of vice headmistress.
Expecting it to be about some trivial matter, she took the call right in the classroom. But what she heard stunned her. She gloomed and left the room without finishing the student count.
Soon enough, not only she and the guard were standing on the roof of the lyceum, but also the headmistress herself, as well as the ambulance staff. In front of them, on the ground, an injured student lay unconscious. After feeling her pulse, the doctors realised that she was alive.
Not aware of these events was Dmitry, who received a notification on his phone. Discreetly for the teacher, he took the phone out of his pocket and read the contents. A message from an unknown number.
«Hi. Let's play a game. Within 5 minutes you have to knock over any occupied desk other than your own. If you don't, the person at the blackboard will get a poison dart in their neck. The game has begun!»
He looked in front of him. His classmate, Yaroslav, was writing the solution to the problem on the blackboard without guessing anything. Dmitry realised without a doubt that this was no joke. He was friends with Nicholas and clearly remembered the story he had told him. About three games he'd been forced to play. An electronic marker, a button in his briefcase, and running away from school. When he saw the message, he realised that whoever had set them up was targeting him as well. Which meant Yaroslav was at risk.
The young men weren't friends and didn't socialise often. Yaroslav was a quiet and shy student. In addition, because of his disease, always stuttered. He rarely started conversations with his classmates. Nevertheless, Dmitry treated all his classmates kindly, and didn't want Yaroslav to get hurt.
In fact, Dmitry was similar to Maria. He always answered in class, did homework in all subjects, and got mostly good grades. But he didn't spend a lot of effort on his performance and didn't prioritise it over everything else.
There was a little oddity about him: whenever he walked, he would always put his head down. You'd think he goes to the blackboard just to quickly say or write something, though that wasn't the case. But now he was looking round in a hurry and picking out the desk he was going to knock over.
After a minute of identifying his target, he stood up.
— Excuse me, can I do one thing?
Everyone in the class looked at him in surprise.
— What thing? — the teacher clarified.
— Well, one... — he hesitated.
Then went to the second desk of the third row and looked at the two classmates sitting at it.
— Can I do something, and after that I'll give you an explaination?
One of them inquired:
— Do what?
— I'll explain everything, but later, okay?
Without waiting for an answer, he took hold of the front edges of the desk, repeated:
— I'll explain everything.
And pulled them towards him with force. The desk, along with the textbooks and notebooks, collapsed to the ground.
While everyone was recovering from the shock caused by Dmitry's behaviour, he had already run to the door. He came out of the office, turned round, took hold of the door and closed it halfway:
— I'll explain everything! — then slammed the door shut and ran out.
The student fled down the corridor to the first floor, wondering what he should do now. He had left his briefcase in the classroom. His phone and house keys were in his pockets, and his jacket and a change of shoes were in the cloakroom, so he could run home, but without the briefcase.
As he stopped and caught his breath, his phone vibrated. It turned out to be a message from the past sender.
«Congratulations. You sacrificed your reputation to save a classmate. In that case, let's play one last game. Go to classroom №300 on the third floor for further instruction.»
Dmitry was angry, but obeyed and moved to the desired location in the blink of an eye. He was very nervous, but got over himself and turned the handle of the front door. There were no extraneous people inside.
On the teacher's desk, he noticed a strange audio player that hadn't been there before. No one used such players anymore, so it was immediately conspicuous. The student stepped up to the item and pressed the «Рlау» button.
«Right now, your class counselor and physics teacher are on their way to this room. They'll be discussing why you knocked over a classmate's desk, and they'll be sure to think of a punishment for you.
I'm giving you a chance to avoid it. Under this desk are two syringes filled with a sedative that will make anyone forget everything that has happened in the last hour. All you have to do is inject it into them.
I estimate that the adults will be in the room for no more than thirty seconds. The game has begun!»*
Dmitry looked under the table, saw a couple of syringes lying on the floor. There was no choice. He had a reputation as an exemplary and excellent student, perfect relations with his teachers, classmates and class counselor, and couldn't lose all that. So he breathed deeply, took syringes in both hands, stood at the door, pressed his back against the wall and waited.
After a minute, heel steps were heard, becoming more and more distinct as they approached. Until eventually the door opened. Just as the stranger had predicted, the women arrived in the classroom.
— Where is he? — the class sounselor looked around carefully, but found no one. — He went this way!
— I don't know. Maybe he left?
— I guess so. What's that thing?
— Where?
— On the table.
They looked at the unknown object with interest.
— Seems to be a player.
— It looks a bit strange, — the class counselor picked it up, twirled it around, then put it back. — Okay, he's probably gone. Let's look for him in the other classrooms.
As soon as they turned their backs, Dmitry jumped out from under the desk. He swung his right arm, stuck a syringe into the teachers's neck and began pumping the contents into her. It took effect so quickly that the victim had no time to do anything about it. Her legs gave out and she fell to the ground.
Having witnessed such cruel treatment, the other woman cried out, but Dmitry had already swung his left arm and put a second syringe into her neck. A few seconds later, she lay unconscious on the floor.
The phone vibrated. A new message.
«You won, you can go.»
At first Dmitry rejoiced, but that feeling was replaced by anxiety at the realisation that the unknown man had been watching him all this time. The classroom was equipped with video cameras that could be viewed over a local network wired to the school computers. This meant that he was being watched from one of them.
The stranger was somewhere nearby.
«I'll find that bastard!»
Feeling a surge of anger, Dmitry rushed down the corridor and checked every classroom, hoping to find whoever was forcing him to play these creepy games.
Simultaneously, a video automatically switched on on the electronic board of the classroom where physics was being taught in his absence.
In all its glory and high quality, his classmates could see Dmitry hiding under a desk in the empty room, the class counselor and the teacher entering, and him injecting syringes into their necks, the contents of which would make them collapse on the floor.
The video was uploaded to the board's file system and played back by the remote access software. Which could only have been arranged by someone among them, as no one else had come inside. But no one was thinking about that now. Everyone was looking at the board fascinated. Except Nicholas, who understood everything. Not wanting to leave his friend in trouble, he exited the room and went in search of him.
Since the other classes were having lessons and the corridors were empty, the task was simple. Reaching the stairwell, the student instantly heard footsteps from above and ran at the sound.
Suddenly a strange loud thumping sound came from up there, not at all like footsteps. Nicholas stood still and listened. After a few seconds the knocking came again. Each time the interval between them shortened. Nicholas realised that something was rolling down the stairs.
Something large and heavy.
Upon waiting for it to appear, he immediately regretted staying.
It was an iron ball with a radius of one and a half metres. But there was something else unusual about it that Nicholas couldn't see. Just in case, he moved away. The ball was rolling down the last step. And before Nicholas realised what had happened, the ball fell to the floor with a bang, and the blast wave threw the unfortunate man straight into the wall, breaking several tiles and leaving a black mark on the walls. He hit his head unluckily against the wall and fell unconscious, splattering everything around him with his own blood. If he had been even an inch closer to the ball, the consequences would have been much worse, possibly fatal.
Meanwhile, on the third floor, by the stairs, stood Dmitry with a phone in his hand.
«INVISIBLE NUMBER: You made the right decision. Nicholas would have found you and turned you in to the headmistress.»
«DMITRY: What do I do next?»
«INVISIBLE NUMBER: The leftmost window is open with a rope hanging from it. Climb down and go to the back of the lyceum. After that, you will be able to escape through the fence.»
«DMITRY: But what about my briefcase?»
«INVISIBLE NUMBER: It's by the fence.»
«DMITRY: Wait, how did you get it out of class?»
The person he was talking to didn't answer.
Realising that the conversation was over, Dmitry did as he was told. Having reached the specified part of the building, he saw his briefcase. No one was walking in this place, which gave the student an opportunity to escape unnoticed.
Calmly, slowly, he walked home, just in case, along the deserted road, and invented an excuse for his parents.
«I can tell them that the last two lessons were cancelled. Anyway, the class counselor is "asleep" now and won't refute my words. Whatever. I'd rather just sit in the driveway, play Wolvesville for an hour and come back. No one will ever guess anything.»
In the meantime, some tenth grade girl was going up to the first floor to find the teacher to whom she planned to report for a bad grade. As she approached the classroom, a large amount of black dust on the walls caught her attention, something that had definitely not been there before. When she walked a little further, she saw that the floor tiles were badly shattered. But what appeared to her eyes next made her drop the notebook in horror.
In the corner, under the window, lay the bleeding student's body.
Clueless about it, everyone in Dmitry's class was discussing the video they had just watched. And no one even noticed the man entering the classroom. Not with a cheerful expression like everyone else, but with a big and evil grin on his face.