She pointed behind herself. “You’ll be safer up in the catwalks! Get to a higher ground!”
The students looked at each other. Then they looked at their teacher. Slowly, they got to their feet. Hwa threaded herself through them, and started bashing on the door to the hall with a fire extinguisher. As she did, other students started streaming out of the room. She watched as the last one left, and then kicked open the door and got out into the hall.
The hall was a loop that made up the vocational pod. Mr. McGarry’s shop was around the bend. This time, she paused and looked through the window first before raising the fire extinguisher to the lever. No one was inside. Once the door was open, she dashed in and put the fire extinguisher down. The entire wall to her left was a pegboard of tools. The red chalk outlines for each tool’s shape were all bleeding down under the sprinklers’ onslaught. But the tools themselves were still in place and ready to be used. Including the big gas-powered nail gun, complete with its backpack of fuel.
Hwa wiggled her fingers. They were mostly numb. “Come to Mama.”
Threading her injured arm through the straps of the backpack made the wound open up again, and she wished she’d taken that other pad from Joel. Then again, it was shop: Mr. McGarry probably had the best first aid kits in school. Hwa found one on the wall and popped it open. Right there was the syringe of puncture-filling foam. She bit the protective cover off the needle and spat it out. Hissing, she managed to peel back the padding and fill the wound with foam. It stung mightily and she howled in shock. She suddenly felt a lot more awake and alive. Endorphins were a wonderful drug.
She checked her specs. The shooter was back on the main floor, now. The same floor as she was. He’d gone up and around and down, covering the whole school. Looking for something. Or someone. She had to get him before he found the open door to the drama department. Before he found the other students. Before he found Joel.
Hwa checked the fuel gauge on the tank. It was in the green. She added a couple of cartridges of nails to the toolbelt. Then she wiped the specs dry with a chamois from Mr. McGarry’s desk. In the security tab, she changed the video feed to a basic semitransparent map in the lower left of her vision: the shooter was now just a red dot on a set of lines, and she was the blue one. It would be easier to see what was in front of her this way.
Easier to aim.
She took a few deep yogic breaths to centre herself. It wasn’t easy with a heavy pack on, but it was necessary. In (two, three, four), hold (two, three, four), out (two, three, four). And again. The pain dissipated. So did the endorphins. There was only her—a calm person accustomed to hurting other people—and him—an imbalanced student who probably came here with a death wish. They were probably equally frustrated by the fact that the cops hadn’t shown up. One way or another, they would have to end it themselves.
Hwa entered the hall. She moved past the doors. In other classrooms, there were kids pressed up against the windows. She felt them watching as she walked to the main hall. There, way on the other side of the school, was the shooter.
Behind her, something splashed.
Hwa whirled. At first, she couldn’t see it. But in the rain created by the sprinklers was a … shape. A human shape outlined in water trickling off its surface. Only, she could see straight through it. Without the water it would have been completely invisible. She ripped off the specs.
It moved. Glittered. Like a poltergeist caught in the act. It wasn’t real. Couldn’t possibly be real. She knew that. And yet. And yet. The longer she stared at it the less real everything became. The hallway. The water. The shooter. Even the pain. It was all broadcasting from somewhere else, some other channel, and she was just watching it happen. Blessed, merciful calm descended over her like a hot towel fresh from the dryer. She recognized the feeling. It was deliciously familiar, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d experienced it. Hadn’t felt it in a long time. Derealization. That was the medical word for it. That moment when everything around you seemingly shifted to another phase of reality. It was one of the brain’s many self-defence mechanisms. In Hwa, it was preparation for a seizure.
“Oh, Jesus.”
All her calm vanished abruptly. She was cold and wet and wounded and alone. And she was about to seize for the first time in three years. It made sense: she’d barely eaten anything, meaning there was a dramatic change in her blood sugar, and she was under physical and emotional stress. Her brain had handled all of these challenges just fine until now, and now the sparkling aura in her vision was warning her to sit down and hold on before she hurt herself. Scintillating scotoma. That was the term. Scintillating, the doctors called it, like it was something to get excited about.