The clock on the wall ticked toward 11:30, and Mr. Calder was still talking about the fall of Rome.

  His voice had that tired rhythm teachers fell into when they’d given the same lecture too many times. He played with the dry-erase marker, underlining a half-smudged date—476 A.D.—and said something about Visigoths and barbarian migration. Lisa tried to follow. She really did. But the numbers and names just rolled together in her head.

  Two days into her new school, and she felt like a stranger who had walked into the middle of a movie.

  The classroom around her was disturbingly quiet. A few students were taking notes. The couple near the window, Daryl and Mia, she’d overheard, sat close enough for their elbows to touch. Daryl’s pen hovered over his notebook, but he was drawing something, not writing. Lisa caught a glimpse: a floor plan? Maybe a map? To their left, Theo and his hoodie-wearing crew of quiet boys were gathered around a tablet balanced between their knees. They whispered to each other without looking up.

  Juno sat in the back row, one leg crossed over the other, lazily chewing gum and scrolling through her phone under the desk. She didn’t bother to hide it.

  Lisa sat in the third row, second seat from the left. Assigned seating. She hadn’t spoken to anyone but Mr. Calder so far, and even that had just been “yes” and “no” and “I’m new.” Nobody had bothered welcoming her. Nobody had been rude, either. It was like she didn’t exist yet.

  She tapped her pencil against the desk, trying to focus. But something was troubling her. The second hand on the clock made each tick sound like a tiny hammer. Nothing else was moving, though, except for the lazy turn of the ceiling fan overhead. And Mr. Calder… he was slowing down. He had repeated the same sentence twice now, without realizing.

  Lisa glanced around. Nobody looked surprised. If anything, they looked... prepared.

  Theo Cheng adjusted the clasp on his watch, watching the second-hand tick down with surgical calm. Behind the lenses of his glasses, his eyes didn’t blink. Not once. He already knew where he’d go when the bell rang. Knew the hallway angles, the blind spots, the panel in the chem lab that jammed if you opened it too fast. The routes had been mapped, memorized, simulated on his tablet under the table. He and Amir and Javi had spent all of lunch running it again, timing it to the second. Theo didn’t believe in luck anymore. He believed in redundancy.

  A soft buzz in his ear told him Javi had activated his mic. “West stairwell’s clear,” came the whisper. Theo gave a single nod and tapped twice on his watch. Two minutes.

  Juno Mireles leaned back in her seat, blowing a perfect pink bubble with her gum. It popped silently. Around her wrist, she wore three hair ties, one of which contained a hidden garrote wire she didn’t plan on using, unless someone slowed her down. She hated running. Hated sweating. Hated this stupid school and its stupid rules and how no one ever did anything about it. The teachers? Complicit. The principal? Vanished last fall. The counselors? She didn’t even think they were real.

  But the Game? The Game made things clear. You run, or you die. And she was damn good at running.

  Amir Patel sat with his leg bouncing. His hand shook a bit as he reached under his desk and clicked the release on his tablet case. The blade inside fell right into his palm, folding into his sleeve. He didn’t want to use it. Not again. But he would. He glanced at Javi, who gave him the smallest thumbs-up across the aisle. One minute thirty. Amir mouthed a prayer.

  Lisa Bell sat three desks from the front, arms crossed, staring straight ahead. She didn’t know what was happening. She’d only transferred in Monday, and things had seemed normal. Cold, but normal. No one talked to her, not really. A few polite nods. A girl named Mia had smiled at her once in the hallway, but hadn’t said anything. The teachers were dry. The students were weirdly quiet. She figured it was just nerves. Or maybe a culture thing. New school, new vibes.

  But today… today felt like something else. Everyone kept checking the clock. Everyone except her. And Mr. Calder… God, what was wrong with Mr. Calder? His voice had started skipping like a broken record. She looked down at her notebook. Her hands were trembling.

  The whiteboard squeaked as Mr. Calder dragged a fading blue marker across its surface. “Four-seventy-six A.D.,” he said, underlining the date. “The traditional fall of Rome. But what does that really mean, hm? Was it a single event? Or a long, slow decline…”

  Mia barely heard him at the back, lost in some daydream. Her head rested gently in her hands as she stared out the window. She was rather pretty, Lisa thought, in that effortless way some girls just were. Probably popular too, though not in an obvious or loud kind of way. Whatever had happened to Rome, she seemed far more interested in the view.

  Outside, though, the sky was bright and clear. Just another day in late spring. Nothing out there hinted at what was coming. A bird fluttered past the glass, catching the light before disappearing.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Mia exhaled, long and quiet. Without turning her head, she leaned toward Daryl and passed him something small and metallic. “You’ll stay with me, right?” she asked. “I don’t want to be alone when it happens.”

  He turned to her slowly. “You know I will.”

  “I’m scared,” she whispered. “I know it sounds stupid, but… I’ve been trying so hard, Daryl. I don’t think I can keep doing this.”

  “You can,” he said softly. “You have. Every day these two weeks.”

  “That’s the part that scares me.”

  The clock ticked. 11:28.

  Daryl reached over, resting his hand on top of hers. “Hey,” he said. “Look at me.”

  She hesitated, then did.

  “You and me,” he said. “When that bell rings, we’re going. Straight through that door. We don’t stop, we don’t split. And whatever happens, we don’t look back. Okay?”

  Her eyes welled, but she nodded. “Where? Where are we even supposed to go?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Anywhere but here. That’s all we need.”

  She blinked fast. “You always say that like it’s easy.”

  The clock ticked again. 11:29. Somewhere across the room, someone coughed.

  Mia closed her eyes for a second. “Do you ever find yourself thinking about how things used to be?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes.” He looked at her. “What about you?”

  “I dreamed we were walking out the front doors. Just like that. No alarms, no screaming. Just… normal. Sunlight and everything.”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  She looked down. “I didn’t want to wake up.”

  He leaned in, whispering. “Then we try. We make it real.”

  Mr. Calder cleared his throat. He turned from the board slowly, tugging at his collar like it was choking him. “I swear, this heat’ll kill me one of these days,” he muttered. “Don’t know why the school board decided to cut the air conditioning this year. It’s getting worse by the minute. It’s ridiculous.”

  He paused, both hands gripping the edge of his desk. “Guess they just expect us to sit here in this oven and say nothing?”

  Lisa opened her mouth to speak, to ask if he was okay, but something in his face stopped her.

  “Well, I’m not some fresh-faced kid off the dean’s list,” he said, the words hissing through his teeth. “Twenty-three years I’ve been here, and they still can’t fix the damn thing. You know what it was like when I started? Respect. Students paid attention. Now look at you…”

  His eyes twitched rapidly between students, like he was counting them.

  The clock on the wall ticked louder.

  Tick. Tock.

  “That means all of you.” His gaze swept the class. “Really think I don’t see what you’re doing? What you’ve been up to, hm? Hiding things. Moving things behind my back. Laughing when you think I can’t hear…”

  He leaned over his desk.

  Tick. Tock.

  “But I hear it. Oh yes. I hear and see everything. Every word, every little game you’ve been playing… well, I think it’s time we played a different kind of game. And if any of you thinks he can get away with it, well—”

  Tick. Tock.

  He straightened slowly.

  “You know what I always say…”

  Tick. Tock.

  “Don’t let me catch you down the hall.”

  And then—

  Ding. Ding. Ding.

  The clock struck 11:30.

  Mr. Calder collapsed. His mouth opened, but no words came.

  Chaos exploded all at once.

  Desks scraped back. Chairs toppled. “Go!” Daryl shouted, grabbing Mia’s hand. Theo’s group scattered, two of them pulling open a maintenance panel behind the whiteboard, a panel Lisa hadn’t even noticed was there. Juno vaulted her desk and kicked open the door to the hallway.

  Mr. Calder convulsed behind his desk. His head snapped forward, then back. His skin peeled like paper. His arms stretched outward and long, clawed limbs emerged from the ruins of his sleeves. In seconds, he was no longer Mr. Calder. The creature that stood in his place towered over the desks, limbs unnaturally jointed, face hollow and disfigured, as though someone had tried to draw a man from memory and gotten the details wrong.

  Lisa couldn’t move. She was still in her seat, frozen, her body refusing to process what her eyes were seeing.

  Juno noticed. She paused at the door and sprinted back. “Come on!” she said, grabbing Lisa’s arm. Lisa stumbled to her feet. Her books were scattered across the floor. “Forget it. Just run!” Juno yelled.

  They bolted into the hallway. The world outside the classroom was worse…

  The hallway was chaos. More students were already running, some from other rooms, some already halfway down the corridor. Screams echoed from every direction. Doors slammed. Lockers burst open. A boy with a bloodied arm barreled past them yelling, “North wing’s blocked! Don’t go north!”

  Lisa ran without asking questions. Her legs ached but she didn’t slow down. Behind them, the thing that had been Mr. Calder stepped into view. Its claws scraped against the wall. Its head turned, very slowly.

  And then it sprinted.

  Juno pulled Lisa down a side corridor and through a half-open door. They stumbled into a darkened science lab, rows of tables and scattered equipment looming in the shadows. They slammed the door shut behind them.

  Lisa collapsed to the floor, gasping. “What—” she started, but Juno held up a finger.

  Footsteps passed outside. Slow, heavy. Scraping. Juno took a small silver key from her pocket and slid it into a hidden slot near the frame. The doorknob jiggled once. The handle glowed faintly red. Whatever was outside let out a long, low snarl.

  Then silence.

  Seconds ticked by. Then the heavy footsteps moved on.

  Lisa could barely breathe.

  Juno leaned against the wall, wiping sweat from her brow. “You okay?”

  Lisa shook her head. “What the hell was that?”

  Juno glanced around the room, making sure it was secure. After a moment, she said quietly, “You’re new. Right. That explains it.”

  “Explains what?”

  Another pause. Then Juno looked her in the eyes. “We call it the Game. Every day at recess, one teacher changes. We don’t know why. We don’t know how. It just happens.”

  Lisa blinked. “And everyone just… plays along?”

  “If you don’t, you die.”

  Juno sat beside her with a sigh. “There are rules. Some places are safe. Some aren’t. There’s a group of us who know how to fight back. But most people just try to survive till the bell rings again.”

  “How long until that?”

  Juno checked her watch. “Twenty-three minutes.”

  Lisa leaned her head against the wall, trying to make sense of it. She didn’t succeed.