The Next Move

Teresa Paloma

T + 60 minutes

Pacifica Academy, Lockdown Room A13

It had been sixty minutes since Teresa Paloma escaped to the lockdown room with Harrison Meritte, forty-five minutes since Xavier's broadcast ended.

Teresa paced the room in uniform intervals that matched her controlled breathing. Hands held behind her back, her fingers tapped the other wrist nonstop, like the hands of a piano player hitting the chorus of Beethoven's Fate Symphony.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Her Counselor had taught her a simple yet effective breathing technique. It worked while she was consciously aware of it.

The silence was grinding everyone's mental strength. The room was filled with sobs, sighs, and stillness. Teresa tried her best to not let anything show on her face. She was the President of Pacifica student council. She was the face of the school, the voice of the students. If she showed panic, others would lose it, or so she kept telling herself. But her last bit of stubborn pride was starting to crumble under the endless waves of anxious thoughts.

At the moment, the voice of anxiety spoke of her brother. She had to find him, Thomas Paloma. He was just a freshman. He wouldn't be able to handle all this. If they found him… God. Awful thoughts popped up one by one. Xavier had promised nobody was hurt, but Teresa could not stop thinking about it until she could verify personally.

And what about her fellow protestors, whose statuses remained unknown. The only reason she was sitting safely in this room right now was because she abandoned the protest, the protest that she organized. It didn't matter that she had just been away to get lunch after hours of speeches. She didn't deserve to hide in this room while her teammates were nowhere to be found, maybe taken hostage, or maybe killed.

Her Dad's words echoed in her ear. Like every young person, you believe you are unstoppable, because you have witnessed the full scope of your achievements, yet you never had to feel the true weight of responsibility. Was this what he was meant? Should any of her comrades be hurt, Teresa would bear the weight for the rest of her life. She got them into the mess.

At least the direness of her current situation alleviated some self blame. You and I and the moral Pacifica students all know, that a personal plight is the best antidote to others' sufferings. Well, if Teresa was to be driven insane either way, she would much prefer the agony from uncertainty of her own safety.

Had her Counselor been here, she would have understood. Counselor Victoria would have probed a bit too deep for her liking, but it was better than being abandoned to drown in the ocean of emotions. Teresa hated it when there was a problem she could not solve, a mind she could not sway, or a challenge she could not surmount. After all the Counseling sessions, she began to understand that, her ultimate challenge would be facing herself.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Teresa could almost hear her Counselor's voice calling out the breathing patterns. Empty the mind. Don't let those raw emotions instigate immoral behavior.

On the side, Harrison eyed Teresa curiously for a few seconds before shifting his gaze away. She knew that he had noticed it. The perfectly circular pacing. The rhythmic finger-tapping. The patterned breathing. While other students would have taken this as a sign of calmness, Harrison knew very well that this was a combination of her coping mechanisms and her OCD, or as her Counselor would say, compulsions for coping with anxiety.

After their breakup, Teresa had tried to hide these coping mechanisms in front of Harrison. To be fair, Harrison had never once judged her, even when they had been together, but these compulsions were too much of a vulnerability. These few months, she was fine with hanging out with him. She was fine with having friendly or even flirtatious banters with him. But she hated to have Harrison see her vulnerable.

She tried once again to suppress the coping mechanisms. She focused on her legs and forced them to stop moving, but her fingers began tapping more furiously, and her heart started racing faster. She would burst into pieces and her world would crumble if she couldn't keep up the intervals. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

Teresa quickly resumed pacing, hoping that a voice would soon spring to life on the PA, reassuring everyone the campus had been secured and the shooters arrested. However, there was no sign of this in the next twenty minutes.

"I think we should go to Free Speech Square," Harrison muttered under his breath, halting Teresa's thoughts faster than her own mental gymnastics.

"Are you mad?"

"From what I see so far, Xavier is intelligent."

When Harrison said someone was intelligent, they had to be extremely, extremely smart. This was unsettling.

"If he wants to take hostage or hurt others," continued Harrison. "He would have done so already. He wouldn't just ask everyone to walk out so blatantly."

"He's not really asking." Teresa pointed to the storage cabinets in the lockdown room, in which the supplies could last only 48 hours.

"No. 48 hours is a long time, even for hostage situations. But right now we are sitting in the dark…"

"You are not heading there because it's reasonable. You want to head there because you are curious."

"Teresa," said Harrison in a hushed voice, pulling Teresa close. She could feel the air from his lips brushing lightly against her cheeks. But now was no time for imagination or reminiscence. "When was the last time any institution in our nation got shaken. We are at the crest of a historical wave."

Teresa shifted her gaze from his lips to his eyes. His eyes were glowing with dark excitement. His gaze was burning with sinister cynicism. Like how Teresa lost control over her compulsions, Harrison was losing restraint over the facade he donned everyday in this perfectly moral society.

"Shhh," Teresa clamped a hand over Harrison's mouth, out of habit, before she quickly became aware and pulled it away. "There are cameras in this room."

As if suddenly realizing what he had been doing, Harrison took a step back. He blinked a few times, and the dark flames were hidden away by the usual emotionless countenance.

"The more important question is why he wants all of us to assemble there," said Harrison. "For easier management? For a head count? He couldn't even ensure that half of us would be there. But even if half of us had been there, just armed with tasers and mace, we could overpower them easily."

"No. Psychology with a crowd works differently. You put a group together, everyone wants the others to be the action takers. The bystander effect. No matter how much Pacifica education trained us to step up against bullies or proactively call the police, raising arms against shooters is a whole different case."

Harrison silently reassessed her words.

"Also, conformity becomes much easier when the group gets bigger." Teresa continued. "If Xavier points the gun at one single student and asks her to give up the location of her friends, she would likely refuse. However, if she were to see a few others giving in, then the guilt of succumbing would be much smaller."

"Are there any ways to neutralize these psychology tricks?"

"I hope there are, but I don't see any at the moment."

Teresa and Harrison sighed. They sat back down, strategizing the next moves in their heads.

"If you guys wanna do something useful, staying here isn't the way." A voice came out. A tall, muscular figure stepped forward and stood a meter away from Harrison and Teresa.

They knew who he is. Everyone in the school knew who he is. Dimitri Marakov, captain of Pacifica basketball team, MVP of Pacifica volleyball team, star player in tennis, in fencing, in literally any sport you could imagine. He spearheaded the athletic mentorship program in Pacifica, where top athletes would train novices. He raised campus-wide awareness on fitness, taught nutritional science to elementary school kids, and contributed everything that a star athlete like him could to the community.

But Dimitri was also known for his hedonistic side, or as he would call it, Epicurean philosophy. Harrison despised it. Teresa found it intriguing. There wasn't one weekend where his dorm wasn't filled with earthshaking music. While alcohol was forbidden in Pacifica, Dimitri could always get his hands on some. Even when drinks were on dire supply, he never failed to bring his friends to a similar state of ecstasy through substitutes like drumbeats, dances, and sex. Although these entertainments occasionally resulted in minor disciplinary infractions, the Counselors concluded that they were more like products of natural teenage rebelliousness than of any serious moral issue.

"Dimitri Marakov," Dimitri held out his hand and offered Harrison and Teresa a firm, powerful handshake. Teresa and Harrison returned an introduction. This introduction was really meant for the others in the room, though it was unlikely for any Pacifica student to not have heard of their names.

"What would you suggest?" Teresa asked.

"If your concern is people acting stupid, we should probably all go there as early as possible, before the snowball goes rolling."

"Hold up." Harrison interrupted, "We? You planning on joining?"

"Hell yeah. Can't miss all the fun!" Dimitri laughed in his loud, unrestrained voice.

Teresa could never understand why a hostage situation would be "fun" for Dimitri, but Dimitri's logic — if it even existed — never spoke to her in the first place. Harrison looked rather skeptical with this idea. He didn't trust Dimitri enough. Not surprising, given that Dimitri's personality was literally the polar opposite of Harrison's. However, Dimitri's street smarts and fine athleticism would come be a great help. Let me rephrase this to avoid misunderstanding. Teresa and Harrison were also sensible and fit, and their physiques were enough to draw enamored glances from the other Pacifica students. However, Dimitri was a professional athlete. That difference, converted to intelligence, was the difference between a simple regional math champion and Harrison Meritte himself.

"So what's your plan?" asked Teresa.

"Well. Same as you. We go to Free Speech Square. Whatever he says, we play along."

"That's not what I'm suggesting," said Harrison, annoyed that his words were quoted by someone like Dimitri. "I meant that we go near there, to observe and to plan. We are not walking right into their guns!"

"Yeah? What difference does that make?"

"We could find more options if we spend a bit more time analyzing what's going on."

"And what have you been doing, Harrison?" asked Dimitri. "If your reputation holds true, then I doubt you have just spent the past hour spacing out. Have you made any masterplan?"

Harrison could not speak, but his gaze remained defiant. He finally responded after a few seconds.

"What good will walking into the Square do? If I were Xavier, I would get hands on as many students as I could reach as bargaining chips."

"Here's your problem, Harrison. You are always thinking too much," said Dimitri. "You keep asking, what will he think, what will she think, what will Xavier think. But these don't matter. The only thing that matters is what is done. And from what I see, Xavier hasn't killed anyone yet, and he's nice enough to walk the extra mile to reassure us that he wouldn't hurt us. Now he wants cooperation, and he's holding the guns. Do you think it's better if we cooperate while he's nice, or piss him off with whatever clever tricks you wanna pull?"

Teresa considered Dimitri's words. They did make sense. To be completely honest, she wasn't expecting this much wisdom from the partying athlete. She glanced at Harrison. He was bothered that Dimitri was talking sense, but he was reasonable enough to accept it despite his personal dislike for Dimitri.

"But what about you?" said Teresa, asking a question she had always wanted to ask Dimitri, even way before the incident. "If you are doing this, are you not afraid?"

"What should I be afraid of?"

"They could hold you hostage. Shoot you. You could die!"

"If they try to lay a hand on me, I'm gonna put up a fight. If they capture me, then I'm gonna pay the ransom. If they injure me, then I'm gonna take morphine. If they kill me, then so be it. I can't feel regrets if I'm dead."

"But why put your life in danger, when there's so much ahead of you?"

"This is not danger. This is only the fear of uncertainty. Perhaps one day, whatever lies in the dark will kill me. But if I stop venturing into the dark, I am living every day as if I were dead."

Teresa nodded. Dimitri did not wait for her response. He headed for the door. Teresa and Harrison followed.

With that in mind, the trio walked slowly out of the lockdown room. About eight or nine students tailed them quietly, but by the time they reached Free Speech Square, only three remained.