Young Writers Society

The hallway gave Tara an uneasy feeling.

Yet, she knew that she had no choice but to follow the others through the door. Her heart was beating out of her chest and she was starting to feel self conscious in the sparkling blue dress, totally inappropriate for walking down a dark hallway to God knows where.

"Maybe there's something we all have in common?" Tara offered.

Hmm. Colleen thought over Tara’s question.

“But what could be linking us?” She asked, cursing her more-often-than-not habit to answer a question with another question. “I know I’ve never seen you all before.”

She didn’t want to be left inside the room, so she also stopped into the hallway.

“Do you think the room you all were at could be helpful? Or should we just go on to another place, if CB lets us?”

James looked down the hall. All of the doors in sight looked like they were closed, and he wasn't sure how many of them would be unlocked. He also wasn't sure if they were being watched at this very moment by CB either. If they conspired to do anything and tried to escape, they wouldn't have any sort of element of surprise.

He sighed. Queenie was right. They were victims to CB's whims and orders until CB told them why they were there and what they were supposed to do.

But... so far it didn't seem like CB wanted them to do anything. CB was just having them run around this little mansion - or whatever windowless place this was - and... he didn't know. Discover information about each other? About CB? They'd been encouraged to "get to know each other" back in the dining room, but that had only gotten so far. Strangers never wanted to share anything too personal.

If that was what they had to do to meet whatever CB was trying to get at, he didn't know if that would happen.

"I don't think we need that room anymore," he said tersely, still trying to consider if they had any other options.

"We did what CB asked. Until CB tells us to do something else, I think we should be free to at least roam the halls again. Maybe we'll run into another room that's open. I don't know. But if - well if we're looking for anything we all have in common," James said, "I don't think we'll figure that out unless we all start being really honest with each other really quickly."

He turned back to the group, scanning them. They were all still dressed up in their stupid fancy outfits, and he knew all of them were feeling the same thing: they were anxious to get home. And annoyed.

Well at least, he was annoyed.

His eyes landed on the books under Odris's arm, and he froze for a moment, catching the name on one of them. Hawke.

That was his last name.

He looked at Odris and met his eyes.

"Odris... why do you have a book with my name on it?"

Odris froze.

He hadn't expected that anyone would try to steal the book away from him once its subject became apparent, but he still wished James had asked him privately. He gave Queenie and Tara nervous looks - since they were in the room with him earlier - before holding it out to James in a poor excuse for a peace offering.

"I found it in the room we went to earlier," he said. "I didn't read it - I just flipped through the pages until I realized it was yours. I...thought you wouldn't want anyone to see something so private, so I grabbed it."

He shifted uncomfortably.

"I was going to tell you about it, but I didn't get a chance to," he added.

James took the book and looked down at the blank cover with a strange feeling stirring in his stomach. The book was thick, and the pages and the cover were worn. Apart from the fact that it was apparently a book about him, it felt like something that could be a part of his world, unlike almost everything else in this place (aside from the room he'd woken up in).

"Thanks," he said tersely, holding the book close and tucking it under his arm. He wasn't going to look in it, as nagging as his curiosity was.

Tara pursed her lips when she saw James’ reaction to the book.

“Somehow, whoever CB is, he knows everything about us,” Tara said. “He had pictures of my family. But he also knew my favorite candle scent. My favorite movies. He had the book they wrote about my mother. My mom and her friends.”

Tara pursed her lips. Maybe she shouldn’t have said the last bit. She just hoped she wouldn’t have to explain herself now.

Colleen decided to speak up after Tara was honest about what CB seemed to know. She didn't want her to be the only one that was trying to mention what secrets could help them figure out how to get away from this weird house.

She coughed into her elbow, swallowing down the urge to sneeze. Ugh. She didn't want to be seen as weird by the rest of them.

"Thank you for your honesty, Tara," Colleen started, then glanced at everyone else in the hallway. "My current profession requires secrecy and code names, but my own is associated with red. CB has some kind of humor to dress me in this." She shrugged, remembering she had on a red dress.

"Very few people know my moniker, the color that came with it, and my actual identity. Most of them are probably dead," Colleen ended with a smile, trying not to bring down the morale of the group.

Queenie gave Colleen a once-over after she'd given her little explanation. The girl, clad in red, apparently had a job in Queenie's field. Or, that was how it sounded. There was always a slight possibility that she just worked at a particularly scandalous library or something. Not a very good possibility, but still a possibility.

"Do all of you have secret other-lives?" Queenie asked incredulously.

Odris was still processing the implications of what Colleen said when Queenie spoke. For a moment, all he did was give her a blank look; the words hadn't really registered.

But when they did, he let out a quiet sigh.

"..The different names would have already given it away," he said, "but I do have a few secrets. I'm from another world and another time - I wasn't born on Earth."

He glanced down at the tablet tucked underneath his arm.

"I live there now," he added. "And, like Colleen and Tara, CB knows more about my life than he ever should have been able to learn. My past is classified information. Unless he had some access to the highest level of American government, there would have been no way for him to find it. Even if he was able to, he knows more than he could have found in my files."

James held his book close. Tara's confession and Queenie's question had acted as a springboard for confessions, but James didn't feel like ripping off the veil on his own life just yet. And he could tell that Queenie wasn't either. In asking the question, she'd both excluded and included herself. She was making it sound like she was exempt from having a "secret life" but James knew, and felt like it could be easily inferred, that she wasn't all she seemed.

He looked at the others with a stony expression.

"CB seems to know everything. All of our secrets. Mine included," he said. "So yes, I have a 'secret life,' but no more than any of you."

Well, that was something she hadn't expected. Even in her time, space travel - other worlds, specifically - wasn't a viable possibility for sustaining life. At least, not that the American government knew about.

She would know about it if they did.

She had, however, expected that dodge from James. Maybe she thought he'd be more subtle about it, but she couldn't guess everything.

"Alright, so Tara over here is ashamed of her pedo father, Odris is an alien on his world, and CB knows all of this because...well, my guess is the crystal balls on that table of theirs."

James nodded. "Seems like it. From what little has been shared though, I doubt that the common ground we have lies in the nature of our secrets - it may be only that we have them at all. Which seems like a loose tie between us, but its something."

Odris blinked.

...What had Queenie just said about Tara? His gaze quickly shifted over to Tara. He wasn't really judging her - he was just really confused. When had that come up in conversation? All that Tara had mentioned was her mother and her mother's friends. How did Queenie know about the other side of the family, and how did she know that?

Had he missed that during the argument? He should have been paying attention more earlier. Why did he have to tune out raised voices? It was great when he meetings to go to all of the time, but it was really inconvenient now.

"Ah, that could be, James. Now, I'm curious though." Colleen tilted her head, not looking at anyone in particular. "We all must have had books at the library you three had been in, so should we have them on our person, or do we know our secrets already?"

Hmm. She wondered how CB would have described her childhood, as she still found it a bit odd to go over how different her life had become in such a short time period. Colleen didn't quite know what "pedo" meant, alien seemed to mean that Odris was from another planet, which was true, and they should definitely check out the crystal balls then.

"What to do, what to do," she muttered quietly to herself.

CB's feminine voice came back loud and clear, but this time, it didn't feel like it was coming from a source-less void. It sounded like it was coming from behind him.

"Maybe I can help you with that," CB said.

James spun around to see a woman, dressed in a long flowing white dress that dragged on the floor behind her. She seemed to be hovering, just a few centimeters off the ground, but noticeably enough that it was unsettling. The dress, though, pooled around her feet, covering them in what looked like a misty haze.

Her skin was pale, like it had never seen the sun, and her ears were long and pointed. Her hair was long and almost white, and it hung down to her waist in loose waves. She had a knowing smirk on her face as she looked them all over.

James stared at her with an intensifying glare as she stepped closer, entering their circle.

"I got a little impatient," she said with a shrug. "You rubbed off on me."