Chapter 1
Tyson’s fist flew into the other boy’s face, over and over, relentlessly. He got screamed at, but nothing seemed to get to his head, he seemed to have blocked everything out in his fury, the other boy fell unconscious a long time ago and if Tyson didn’t get stopped, the boy would end up dead. Blood fell on the boy’s white jumper, mud and grass stains covered his back.
After a good five minutes of throwing punches, each as strong as the last, he got apprehended by at least five guards, each wearing the same black uniform with gold cording and gold buttons, their boots so shiny that they looked unused, the guards were too strong for Tyson’s liking though, his arms wouldn’t move when they held him down and his feet got shackled, “Let go of me!” He roared, “You fucking dick faces!”
As something got smashed into Tyson’s arm, his eyes drooped and he fell silent, his whole body going limp and the guards hauling him off, down a flight of stairs and setting him into a small room with a bench, sink and toilet, nothing more. All the walls were just concrete and the floor too, none of the surfaces were smooth or comfortable and the metal door didn’t help to add comfort to the room, but that’s how they had designed the room. A cold, damp and uncomfortable room to teach people that rebelling isn’t a good idea, but it had never taught Tyson, he had never learnt anything from it.
Tyson’s body lay sprawled out on the cold concrete for hours before he started to come back around, his head pounding and his eyes struggling to adjust to the light. He moaned in pain before dragging himself off the floor and slamming his fist against the door, then his foot, then his head, nobody answered. They had dumped him and left, they had taken everything off him except his clothes and shoes, his pens and his papers had gone.
This school had made this their own version of suspension. A set amount of time in a concrete box, alone, with nothing to do. Punishment enough for any sane person, but for Tyson, it may as well have been his home.
He paced around the room until he fell asleep, then upon waking he paced again, counting the seconds, minutes and hours, food came at even intervals, breakfast, six hours, lunch, six hours, dinner, twelve hours, and the cycle repeated it’s self. For three weeks this repeated until the keys hit the lock of the door. On the walls were his drawings of boredom, he had found a nail once, now he used it to carve into the concrete and he hid it behind a loose bit of the doorframe, nobody else knew about the nail, but they knew he had something to draw with.
He had almost finished the floor when he heard the keys, slipping the nail back into its hiding place, he sat on the bench and pretended to have sat there the whole time, glaring at the door.
The guard on the other side of the door looked at him with a raised brow and sighed, “Back to your room you go.”
Tyson’s guard had become used to his antics, locked up almost immediately after being let out, just a cycle of walking the same route.
Two more weeks passed of Tyson being punished before he got allowed back into his lessons, only to cause even more trouble. Just walking into the room late stopped the lesson for fifteen minutes while he got lectured. Something about not wearing his uniform correctly. Then ten minutes later he got lectured on not doing his work, or for having his feet on the desk, or for laughing at the teacher’s futile attempts to get back into their computer after he had locked it or changed the password.
All this built up over time made the teachers exhausted and made them sleep better at night which meant he could sneak out of his window, wearing all black he blended into the darkness and ran to the fence, to the hole he had cut weeks earlier, behind a small group of trees.
He darted through the different covers, small sheds and trees, watching his surroundings at all times.
He glanced around him before slipping behind the trees that surrounded the hole and dug up the bag he had hidden in the roots. He checked the contents and pulled at the fence, breaking the weakened links and opening the hole.
“Tyson Black. Where on earth do you think you’re going.” A figure appeared behind him and he groaned.
“Why? Why do you care? If I’m gone it means you don’t have to deal with me.” He snarled at her, “It’ll make your life a thousand times easier and I’ll be out of this hell hole. Win-win if you ask me.”
He stepped through the hole and started making his way down the small slope, sliding across the dry dirt, leaving an obvious trail.
He held the bag tight to his chest as he traveled before throwing it into a tree.
He’d come back for it after he lost the old hag following him.
Jumping through the trees, trying to make it difficult to follow him, he came to a cliff and got forced to stop. Behind him three people laughed, two guards and the headmistress.
He shuffled himself backward, right to the edge of the cliff, avoiding looking down to see what the impact would be like and how far down the drop would take him.
“Come any closer and I’ll jump.” He warned.
“No you won’t. You would never jump, not without your friend.”
“He’s got nothing to do with this.” Tyson snarled at the woman, “He’s gone, just like I will be if you three go back and forget I even exist. That’s what you really want, isn’t it?”
“And what will you do if we don’t? Murder us?” One of the guards laughed, “Oh, that’s right, you’re too scared of going to big boy prison for that.”
“Shut the fuck up! You three know nothing about any of it!”
“What don’t we know? That you’re a monster? That mama and dada gave up on you because you weren’t smart enough?” The other guard taunted, he held the boy’s back pack, rummaging though it he found the cash, the phone and the spare clothes, “Planning on going on the run?”
He looked through the other pockets of the bag and found a pistol that had been smuggled into the grounds, two knives from the kitchens, nails he had stolen from the workshop, wires from the computer rooms, gunpowder from fireworks in the store cupboards. Everything to make a shrapnel bomb and some weapons to protect himself.
“You’re not getting out of isolation for some time young man.” The headmistress’s tone turned from mocking to definitive. She flicked her hand, gesturing for the guards to go back up to the academy while she dealt with the runaway.
She took a step forward and he glanced behind him, the next five minutes were a blur of fighting, he threw punches but she dodged them all until he fell into darkness.
