Since then, I ended up reluctantly helping all the littles when I could. I find myself wasting my time hiding them first and even giving them my food before finding a hiding spot for myself. They've started to follow me now - great, more unwanted attention. Every night when the sick game of hide and seek was over, the bell would ring, and the anonymous PA voice would list the number of students left and the quota for the next session. The nameless announcer never explained what being disqualified meant, but it was safe to assume it meant death. How many more deaths until they are satisfied? A third of us were dead and although that meant more food and less competition, fear turned me into an anxiety-filled rabbit. Each teacher only had to find a certain number of students a day; some would continue to search regardless of their daily quota for sick personal reasons. Every day a timer would go off; it lasted 18 hours; in those 18 hours, we had to be in our hiding spots, leaving us only 6 hours to wander anxiously. Teachers would come looking for us; if you were found by a teacher, your student ID would be recorded, and you'd be taken away after the test was over. Teachers didn't have to actually see you, they just had to know where you were hiding and then they could scan you and you'd be tracked down later that morning. It was scary how the children who were found were called by name. Some students who got found tried to run away and hide again, but we were somehow being tracked by the system, so they were found easily and dragged away, others just sat in silence where they were hiding until they were collected later without protest. No one tried to help those kids either since if they were hiding with the marked student, they'd risk being found out too. There were rumors the children who failed got used for experiments. Our teachers possessed magic like witches and wizards, and failures didn't seem worth keeping around anymore. We lost our humanity and became the institution's toys, our every move studied and at times as if pre-calculated, we didn’t know why this was happening to us and we couldn’t escape either. The school became our prison and our twisted professor's playground. Of course, there's always an exception. 

The 5th floor was the students' dorms. No one actually used the rooms for their intended purpose, though. I was usually good at guessing which floor would be closed off and avoiding hate from gangs or other students. But on the 9th day, I was only on the 3rd floor when the announcement went off to tell us to evacuate that floor. I quickly helped my sister and Emily out of their hiding spots. I instructed them to not leave their hiding places until I got them myself because I didn't want either of them or their hiding spots to become a target, so I didn't remove them until the coast was clear of watchful eyes. We rushed to the 5th floor since the 2nd floor would give us less time to find a hiding spot, and the risk of Emily, Azlyn or I getting frostbite while hiding wasn't worth it. The 4th floor was occupied by a gang, and I wanted to avoid an early death at all costs.

When we reached the 5th floor, we only had 10 minutes left to find somewhere to hide. I went to an old hiding spot, but a little girl was hiding there; she looked about 8 years old. We stared at each other for a moment. In her eyes, I could see the reflection of myself. I could see that she was afraid, afraid of me. Neither of us said anything to each other. I could tell what she was thinking. She probably thought I was going to drag her out and take her spot. I considered it for a few seconds. But my heart wouldn't let me do it; there was enough room for a second person so I could have hidden my sister there as well, but I couldn't trust that a small child wouldn't make a noise when the teachers started their search. I closed the door and moved the fridge over to hide the mouth of the crawl space so that the child would have a better chance of surviving hide and seek.

With my sister and Emily, I ran down a narrow hallway lined with offices. All the doors were open, and the main hallway was lined with thick opaque blue tinted glass with geometric grid designs on the panels. I could hear the shuffling of other students near me, but I didn't have time to look for anywhere else. So we ran to the second-last one; we hid in a closet under the floor. After Azlyn got in, I put a handful of clothes between us to create a barrier. If they found me, Azlyn would at least be safe if they couldn't see her in there with me. I tried my best to pull this heavy box over part of the entrance above us so it would cover the traces of someone hiding there, but I wasn't able to do much before the buzzer went off, and the test began.

We were in there for hours. When living in constant fear, you learn to slow down your breathing, and if you must speak, use your eyes. I was exhausted but no matter how many hours passed I'd never risk falling asleep. At least I couldn’t hear Emily; we left her in a tight crawl space in the shelving unit on the other side of the room.  They wouldn’t get above their heads right? Moving even the slightest could be a death sentence; the ones who can't bear the discomfort of staying in a cramped position for a long time and giving in to movement for comfort aren't always lucky. I’d have no control of my body if I fell asleep so I passed time by scratching sketches onto my ashy legs or pinching my inner arm. Staying alert means life or death after all. 

As we huddled in the closet, the silence was suffocating. The minutes stretched into hours, and the fear coiled inside me like a snake. Suddenly, the sound of heavy footsteps echoed through the halls. My heart hammered against my ribcage as the footsteps drew closer and closer.

I held my breath, my eyes fixed on the sliver of light that filtered through the crack in the floorboards of the closet. The footsteps stopped right outside the room we were hiding in, and I could feel my sister's grip on my arm tighten.

A shadow fell across the floor, and my heart began to feel heavy as the doorknob began to turn. I prayed that our makeshift barrier of clothes and boxes would be enough to conceal us. The door creaked open, and a sliver of light pierced the darkness of the closet. I willed myself to remain still, to not give in to the overwhelming urge to flee. The person wasn’t moving either, they stood there in the silence and I started to envision them staring straight at where we were hidden. My head pounded with thoughts like how I’d cover for Azlyn if we were found and who would protect her when I'm gone, what would happen to me. Would this be the day we die? The deadly silence made me feel so loud, I could hear every ruffle of my hair as it fell down my shoulders, our unsteady breaths, and the sound of me swallowing my saliva as it made its way down my throat.  

The seconds dragged by like hours, and then, mercifully, the door swung shut, and the footsteps receded down the hallway. We stayed hidden in the closet, our bodies trembling with the adrenaline of narrowly escaping discovery. I was relieved, but the fear lingered like a shadow, knowing that the teacher was still out there, hunting for anyone who dared to make a sound. We continued to mimic living statues until the buzzer signaling the end of the game went off. Although it was safe to wander around again we stayed hidden in silence. Once we finally relaxed, sleep hit us like a tsunami crushing a building to the ground leaving nothing left.