Chapter 30

"I really don't know anything else," she told Allen again. But even though she said that, Allen didn't seem to want to listen to her. He continued urging her to tell them everything she knew because there was a chance that it might be important information. This was precisely the opposite of what she wanted to hear.

After talking back and forth for about three minutes, one of their classmates interrupted the two and told Allen to stop. "If she says that she doesn't know anything else, then she probably doesn't know anything else. What point is there in continuing to ask her about it? If she doesn't know anything else when you asked her before, what makes you think she will suddenly know something new when you ask her now for the tenth time? Can't you see her face?"

Allen looked carefully at Jean who looked like she was extremely uncomfortable with him pressuring her, which she was. "Oh... I'm sorry," Allen embarrassingly apologized to Jean. "I didn't notice that I was making you uncomfortable." He sounded really sincere with his apology and Jean forgave him. She told him that it was okay and Allen went back to his seat and sat down.

Jean glanced over at the person who helped her out and gave her a thankful smile. She winked back at her. Jean could almost hear her saying, 'No problem, but you owe me one.'

A few minutes went by with nothing happening and the teacher arrived. He lazily greeted the class while putting his belongings on the table. There were still a few minutes before the class started and after he finished dropping off everything, he walked out of the classroom.

Samantha and Zack arrived just as he left and entered the classroom together. Like always, Zack had bags under his eyes and looked like he might just fall over at any moment. Samantha on the other hand looked the exact opposite of him. She was filled with energy and strode over to Jean and put her hand on her shoulder, stating her since Jean was too lost in her phone to notice that they had arrived.

"What are ya looking at?" Samantha asked while tilting her head to try to get a better look at her phone. But due to the screen being small along with everything being upside-down, it was difficult for her to figure out what she was looking at. "Are you reading the news or something?" Samantha saw a small picture and even though it was upside-down, she immediately recognized it. It was a photo of the building on fire.

"Yeah." Jean flipped the phone around for Samantha to see but she pushed it away. "I don't need to see it again. I mean, why would I when we experience that first hand," she said in a chilled tone, all the energy in her voice going away. "I'm surprised you could look at that without any trauma."

"Not without any trauma," Jean corrected her. She was still a little shook about it, but it wasn't to the point where she didn't dare want to talk about it since it would be uncomfortable. "And also, lower your voice," Jean notified her. Some of their classmates heard what Samantha said about them "experiencing it first hand," and was whispering to each other about it.

"Oh, oops." Samantha walked over to her seat and sat down. She then turned to Jean and said in a quiet voice, "Let's talk more during lunch," since the class was starting soon and they didn't want to attract any more attention with their conversation. Samantha then shouted at Zack to hurry up and sit down.

The teacher came back just as the bell rang, signaling the start of their class, with a cup of what Jean could only assume was either coffee or some other kind of caffeinated beverage. He took a long sip of it before slamming the cup on his table, spilling a bit of it on the papers, and bent over coughing.

One of the students near the front got up from his chair and went over to help the teacher but he waved him off. *Cough* "L-lungs-" *Cough* Some of the drink went down the wrong pipe and was in his lungs. It took a few seconds for the teacher to recover enough to properly speak. "Anyway, let's-" *Cough* "Ugh... Start class."

He slid the cup to the corner of the table and picked up the papers and shook them a little to get rid of some of the drink that had gotten on it before separating them into five equal piles and handing them down the row. "You know the drill-" *Cough.* "Take one and pass it down."

Jean sat near the back of the classroom, so the papers made it to her, only the wet ones remained. The students in front of her had all picked the ones from the bottom which were dry. Just her luck. She took a sheet from the bottom which was the dryest one and handed the rest back to the student behind her. On the bright side, she wasn't the unluckiest one. At the very least, she didn't really mind the coffee smell of the paper, though she didn't like how it stained nearly half of the paper.

What was this about anyway? They rarely ever received anything in paper as it was very expensive to produce considering how hard it was to grow trees and plants in general in a world such as this. Everything was done on computer or tablet now. Whenever they did get something on paper, it was usually something very important. Jean blew on the paper until it dried enough so that the paper wasn't all floppy before starting to read it.

Before she could start, the teacher called everyone's attention and said, "By now, everyone should have received one. After you have the chance to read this, please put it safely away as you are to give this to your parents or guardians."

Jean looked back down at the sheet of paper which was still a little floppy from the spilled coffee and started reading from the top. The entire thing looked like it was handwritten and there were some sloppy portions where the coffee had spilled and pushed the ink away.

Jean skimmed through the words, raising an eyebrow as she did. She finished reading it in just under a minute and gotten the gist of what it was about. The contents were both surprising and disturbing. Apparently, from the clues and information that I.C.E. has gathered, they have reason to believe that some of the people involved in the recent attacks on them were students.

Upon reading that, the first person that came into her mind was Josh, but she wasn't sure if he was really a terrorist or not. Even though he had shown her that access card, she still suspected his identity. The second person was Jackson. He claimed that it wasn't his group that did all those things and that they were only investigating I.C.E.

The second half of the paper read something along the lines of there being more security guards patrolling the schools for the reason mentioned above. It specifically said that the security guards will respect the students and will not do anything to violate their privacy and that they will not go through belongings and the such without good reason. However, Jean had a bad feeling about this. The wording on what the security guards were allowed to do sounded very loose and it seemed like that they could basically search anyone they wanted as long as they have even the slightest suspicion about them.

Jean waited for the sheet of paper to dry out a little more before folding it and putting it in her bag. By then, the class was almost already over and more than half of it had been spent by the teacher explaining how the new rules were going to work. Everything was mostly the same. There were just going to be people walking around the building.

Other than that, the only additional change was that students were not allowed to be in groups bigger than three. It was a very strange rule but it didn't affect her as the only people she ever hung out with were Samantha and Zack. Plus herself, they were exactly three which was permitted by the rules so she was fine with this change. She wondered how other people, specifically the ones who are a part of a large group are going to handle this.

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