Origin (Book 2)

Chapter 12

It never occurred to me that waking up at five in the morning would piss me off so much.

I mean, I'm sure the only reason why he chose five was because he knew I'd probably be sleeping then.

The next problem was that I had no clue where to go. I went through as many of the frustratingly identical doors as possible, ad the only progress I made was finding out where the washing rooms were and the lounge.

The said lounge was past the first door I chose to look through, and it ended up being the place I decided to wait for help.

By now- I checked my watch- it was ten minutes to five. Assuming I would make it there at all, I would probably be too late for it to matter.

That is, until I saw Cassie walk by.

I debated whether or not I should go talk to her. In the end, I needed her to tell me where to go.

"Cassie!" I jogged to catch up with her.

She turned around, reflexively smiling until she saw me. "Oh, hey, Jay," she said disappointedly.

"Hey." Gosh, I hated confrontation. "So, do you know where the training room is? I need to get there for my session this morning."

"You mean the gym? It's down the hall on the left."

"That's it?"

"Of course it is. We try to keep everything identical so that someone from the outside wouldn't know where to go."

"And the new people on the inside," I said to no one in particular.

"I guess so," she said.

I rocked from toe to toe awkwardly. She crossed her arms and looked down at the floor.

"So what are you doing up so early?" I asked.

"Nothing. Just looking for someone. Have you seen Brady around, by any chance?"

"He's here? I need to talk to him, too."

"Yeah. He is. He has to get a mental check after what happened at the school. I didn't know that was you and him fighting." She raised her eyebrows at me.

My cheeks began to heat up. This's feelings...they weren't as buried as I had thought. But Cassis was a jerk. A female version of one. I had to keep reminding myself that.

"Okay then, jeez. You didn't have say it so loud." She walked away at a brisk pace.

"Sorry," I said apologetically. I didn't know what else to say. But she shouldn't have been in my head again.

After that, I made my way over to the door she told me to go through. Praying that it was the right one, I twisted the knob.

This place was really lax on security, but they made up for it with cleverness, I gave them that.

On the other side, the gym looked like a replica of the one at my dimension's Afterlight. They even had the same skid marks from before I had gotten there.

I laughed out loud to myself. Enough time has finally passed that I could joke about destroying the facility.

"West! Over here!" The same middle-aged man who had targeted me barked from across the gym.

It struck me that I didn't know his name yet. I named him Coach just because he reminded me of mine back home.

He was standing with Alissa and Jason in the farthest corner of the room.

I tossed my bag up to the bleachers. "What's first?"

"Informational packet," he said. "After I explain this to you, someone else will take over. Because I have more important things to do than to watch newbies get their asses kicked."