Aims

The Other World

Logan laughed at her suggestion to build a game room. That would definitely bring the place to life. Yet, her lighthearted chat quickly turned serious. He watched her become jittery, looking around the room and rubbing the back of her neck. She didn’t want to talk about it; that much was clear.

“Listen, I just want to get it back and go back to normal. That old dude said he could help. Now, where the fuck is he?”

Her tone had shifted again, this time to anger. He sensed that she had fickle emotions, that she was trying to cover up something else. Honestly, she probably thought she would sound crazy. And she would. But so would Logan. What was he supposed to say to comfort her, hey, my sister died from this shadow-stealing thing, and so don’t be afraid. you’re not crazy. Yeah, that wouldn’t scare her or anything. He didn’t know how to comfort her, to ensure her that it was going to be okay.

Heck, he wasn’t sure it was going to be okay. He just wanted to make it out of here alive with his shadow.

Logan didn’t have a chance to answer her, because Harris came in, like he had heard her summon him. He had that perpetual lost-in-thought look on his face, lines around his mouth stuck forever. His forehead made him look concerned, or worried almost, lines deep between his eyebrows. Logan found comfort in his presence, in the way he sat down at the head of the table and turned towards Logan without paying any mind to Olivia.

“I trust you’ve met Olivia?” he asked, and Logan saw the girl look over at him.

“Yes, sir. I have.”

“Your initial impressions?” Harris understood how observant the boy was, in every situation. Logan had a knack for reading people, seeing what was going on under surfaces. He wasn’t always right, but that was besides the point. The boy thought for a moment, popping his knuckles.

“I think she is spontaneous,” he started off, meaning emotion wise. “I think I’ve seen four different emotions while we’ve been sitting in this room. That’s not a bad thing; it means she’s adaptable. She’s got a sense of humor, which can mean she has a good personality.” He paused for a minute and smiled at the girl. “But that’s just from observations.”

Harris coughed again, making Logan look back at him. Maybe the man was sick.

“And I trust you’ve met Logan, Olivia?” he asked, swiveling his chair to face the girl.

Apocalypse (With Aims)

You're fine!

I'm just glad we aren't dropping.

The Other World

I will work on a reply tomorrow. :) I'm back from dying.

The Other World

I'm taking the Praxis exams. My last one is tomorrow so I'll work on getting a reply up once I come back from my panicked state.

The Other World

((I'll switch then, so there's some uniformity. It'll annoy me if I'm doing something you're not! XD))

Logan felt the knot in his stomach contract. He took the door knob from the blonde woman, fighting to hold it still because of the sweat on his palms. As the woman walked away, he bit his lip.

Meeting new people had never been his favorite hobby. With his parents, networking was the most important thing you could do. Life was all about who you knew and what they could do for you. In school, he had kept quiet, dog paddling his way to graduation. Life was about surviving. Logan glanced down at his feet, sighing. Better face up to it, he thought to himself, turning the door handle and pushing his way in.

The room was surprisingly empty. He had expected to see Harris, of all people, arms crossed and face blank. Yet, there was only one person in the room, a girl about his age, who looked like she might die of boredom. He walked further in the room, listening to his shoes squeak against the marble. The chairs were all messed up, turned every which way and pushed away from the table. It looked like she had been running an obstacle course while she waited. Yet, she was so- It took Logan a minute to find the words. Empty. That was a good word for her face.

Logan let out a breath and sat down across from her, propping his elbows up on the glass table. The glass was covered in fingerprints, like it hadn't been cleaned. He knew for a fact the cleaning crew scoured the place everyday. It was unlikely that they hadn't been here, which meant the room was used often. How many new people came through here everyday? Quite quickly, Logan realized he was zoned off into his world. He looked up from staring, giving the girl a smile. Wait, giving Olivia a smile.

"You look immensely bored," he said, with a laugh, "Nothing ever happens around here; so, you should get used to it." He rolled back and forth in his chair, sweat forming in his palms again. He could feel his cheeks getting red. God, calm down, he thought to himself, biting the inside of his cheek, it's just another human being. "How long has yours been gone, if you don't mind me asking?" He figured he could leave the specifics to Harris, whenever he was. Logan knew the details of the mission at hand; he just wasn't a messenger.

"Sucks, don't it?" he added in a whisper, standing and holding his hand over the glass table. It served as a mirror. Where his hand should have been, there was nothing. The first time he'd been in the room, Harris had said the exact the same thing, holding his withered hand over the table.

The Other World

How long had it been? I glanced up at the clock, for maybe the thousandth time. Three o’clock. It had been two forty-five when I looked last. The seat under me was too hard, made of little rocks all crammed into a fabric covered trash bag. That’s what it felt like anyway. The lights were way too bright, whiter than I remembered. Then again, I had never been in this room.

A few hours ago, the same man who had picked me up several weeks ago led me down the longest hallway of my life and into this room, which was marked as a “Waiting Room”. Despite the fact that Headquarters looked like a giant hospital from the outside and inside, this was the first “waiting room” I’d never seen.

“What am I waiting on?” I had asked, sitting down on the boulder chair.

“I’m going to pick up a girl who has just recently lost her reflection. She’s not been handling it very well, according to our agents in the field. Our research says she would be a good match for you to go in, but we have to calm her down first,” he answered, holding that book under his arm. I’d thought one too many times about stealing it from him and reading it.

When he first picked me up, he had used the book’s hand drawn diagrams and pictures to tell me about the other world which had no name, the world where our reflections were disappearing to. I remember that it looked ancient, yellowing edges and hand binding. He’d never let me touch it, only pointing at it with his pencil fingers, neatly trimmed nails. Every time I saw him he was in a suit, one of three colors: navy, gray, or black. He changed it up by wearing matching ties and cuff links. Every day, I wanted to ask where he went suit shopping.

“Good, it’s getting sort of lonely in here,” I said to the empty walls, listening to the sound of the clock. When Harris, the old man, had picked me up, I hadn’t went back to my house. There were rooms in the HQ, and no one had noticed I was gone yet. After a few days of being here, Harris decided to let me stay. I was an adult; my parents could get over it.

I looked around the room, noticing the pictures on the wall. Landscapes, all of them. It was a collection of beach scenes. I didn’t remember the last time I went to the beach. As wealthy as we were, my family didn’t have time for vacations. My family didn’t have time to do anything together. At least here I ate dinner surrounded by way too many people in the cafeteria. While people complained about how loud it was, it was like music to my ears.

There was a knock at the door, and it swung open without a sound. Like a hospital, everything around here was eerily quiet. A woman in a black dress stood in the door, holding a clipboard. She had blonde hair, pulled up into a high bun. She looked at me with a smile.

“Will you come with me, Logan? There’s someone Harris would like you to meet,” she said, a voice smoother than cream cheese on a bagel. It gave me goosebumps. I simply nodded, standing up. She took off at what felt like a sprint, the sound of her heels a sharp drumbeat against the marble tile. These hallways were much more familiar, since they were the same first hallways I had seen. Blank white walls, white floors with little black flecks in the marble. Each door was black metal, numbered in silver paint on the front. At the end of the long hallway there was a set of frosted glass french doors. I remembered wondering if there had been something to hide over here when I was on the other side.

The woman stopped when I did, her hand on the door handle.

“What’s her name?” I asked, not wanting to be rude or scare her. I’d been told that my blue eyes were intimidating.

“It’s Olivia,” she said with another smile.

The Other World

@HylianRose

The test is a week away, but it's absolutely killing me. I keep studying, and I just realize that I don't know anything. XD Which means I panic more!

I am studying Middle Grades Education in Mathematics, with a secondary concentration in English. ^^

I'm going to work on it now, before I delve back into the world of studying. I assume that I've been in the SS (which I hope the nickname is okay, I thought it was funny.) for a while longer than you. So I thought we might start after you're first picked up and brought to HQ. If that's cool.

[Casual] Cravings. :) [Always Open]

I'm sorry but I'm not familiar with that. :(

@DemonMiyu

The Other World

I'll work on it tomorrow. Studying for a really big exam. :)

The Other World

@HylianRose

My CS is finally complete. :)