Free Minds

Chapter 71.

   Out of sight, out of mind, said some old white guy centuries ago.

   Yeah, right.

   Because I could no doubt forget that I'd just seen an uncountable stretch of teenagers in a giant, cube shaped room, with red fluorescent lights and white padded walls awfully similar to what one would find in a mental hospital in a horror movie. All I had to do was stop looking at Rav's laptop screen.

   And yet, even after I'd stopped looking, the dilated eyes, pale faces, blue jumpsuit clad frames and statue-like poses assumed by the students of Zavlon Academia and the large, scary Yunies posted at the corners of the room were still recurring images in my mind, playing over and over like one of the creepy, old people broken records my mum inherited from her great great grandsomething.

"I don't understand," I eventually spoke up from my spot on Cami's bed. After what was probably eternity to the rest. "How is Camera Six even on in the first place?"

   When I left Camila about thirty minutes ago, our biggest problem was that though connected to Rav's device and responsive to the camera remote, Camera six wasn't capable of giving any visual coverage.

   So why had I just finished looking at a screen full of mind controlled Zavolonians and Yunies?

"It's actually a funny story," Rav snickered.

"Not really," Camila shot him a glare.

   According to her, Rav and Dorian (guess he was done unleashing his anger at wherever), walked in barely five minutes after I left for lunch. Cami said she took her time in explaining our discoveries to them, ending with the issue in Camera Six.

"But some genius thought it would be a good idea to still screw around the remote." Another scowl toward Rav by her.

"It's me," Rav told me, oblivious to Camila's dagger eyes. "I'm the genius."

   Anyway, she proceeded to reveal that Rav's fingers had gotten too attached to the buttons of the remote, so much so that she believed that he was going to damage it if she didn't step in.

   Rav's resistance to Cami's attempts in prying the device from his hands resulted in a mini tug of war.

"Mini tug of—" Rav cut himself with a scoff while responding to her narration. "Dude, you almost ripped my arm off."

"Anywayyy," Camila continued, "unknown to us, that led to both of us now messing with the remote's buttons, leaving Camera Six at their mercy. Eventually—"

"She let the remote go during our struggle, causing me to lose balance in my footing and fall flat on my ass!" Rav shrieked. 

   This time Camila didn't frown. She now wore a grin as she turned to him saying, "Turns out you were right, it is a funny story."

   Anywayyy (according to Rav this time), during their exchange, Dorian pointed out that something different he noticed about the laptop's screen. Sure enough, there was. The midnight black colour of the screen was invaded by a red flash.

   Though faint, that same light was what led to the shocking discovery that the problem was not with the camera's lenses. It never was.

   Through ways that'll forever be beyond our understanding, the device, after being detached from Talise, had ended up in an enclosed space with next to no lighting whatsoever.

   That's why the laptop screen was dark. Being synced to the camera, the laptop was merely showing us the environment that the camera was capturing.

"As we made the camera follow the light," Rav didn't sound so playful anymore. "The images around became clearer. We soon realised that the device was in one of Zavlon's deserted lower vents."