Ariel
Ariel listened to her hollow footsteps echo in the empty hallway of her middle school as she made her way to the front office. She had been called down in the middle of a science lecture about the process of the urinary system, so she was more than happy to take her time to the office and examine the posters and signs hung along the little blue walls. Ariel’s light blonde hair bobbed back and forth in her ponytail as she began to skip across the hall, and as she reached the big windows looking into the office she opened the door and slid inside.
The front office was large and very quiet minus the constant tapping of secretary’s finger tips into their keyboards. One secretary looked up as Ariel walked in and stopped tapping.  She had short black hair pinned back into an obscure bun at the top of her head and pale green eyes hidden behind long rectangular glasses.
“Ms. White, you have a note from your mother about her picking you up, she will be here in about 10 minutes for your dentist appointment. Go get your things and return back quickly please.” The secretary said in a very monotone voice. She barely looked up at Ariel as she spoke to her and when she was finished she ushered her hand in a wave and began beating on her keyboard again. Ariel walks out of the office and happily walked to her locker. Her locker was a good distance from the office so she quickly dashed through the halls and after a few good kicks to her locker grabs the small amount of homework she had and slung her backpack over her shoulder.
When Ariel reached the windows again something was wrong in the office. Ariel stopped and peered in through the windows. All the secretaries were over in the corner of the office huddled together. In front of them are three men in black suits with their backs turned to Ariel. She was about to turn away when the lady from the desk looks over and meets Ariel’s light blue eyes. Seeing the reaction one of the men turned around and looked over at Ariel. Then she spotted why they are so afraid, the men including the one now looking at her were holding guns.
Ariel screamed and ran for the front doors not knowing where to go. The man ran out of the office and met her at incredible speed. He grabbed her wrist tightly and spun her around. She screamed again and he slapped her hard with the barrel of the gun. Ariel’s vision blurred and then blacked out.
Oliver
Sleep threatened to drag Oliver into darkness as he listened to Mr. Mercer blab on about the systems of the human body. Oliver had tuned out around the same time his friend Ariel had been called to the office. When she walked out Oliver had mouthed to her to take him with her, but before long Oliver realized she probably wasn’t coming back to save him and he continued doodling on his science notes. Oliver had thick brown hair that hung slightly down his forehead and over his ears. He had light olive skin and emerald green eyes.
As time ticked by slowly Oliver blinked his eyes over and over again to try and keep himself awake, but as he felt his head roll from his hand he closed his eyes and felt the cold lab table underneath his cheek. Oliver didn’t hear Mr. Mercer call his name the first time, or the second time, but he did hear an alarm screech over the speakers in the ceiling. He sat up straight thinking the noise was from his dream, but as the alarms blared on and on he felt his mind go into a panic and look towards his teacher.
“Mr. Mercer, what’s going on,” asked Oliver. The teacher only shook his head. He headed for the door of the classroom and snapped the huge lock on the door handle shut and then did the same to the lab door on the right side of the room.  When he finished the doors he rolled the blinds down on the three windows in the room and turned around to his class.
“Everyone hide somewhere, don’t get anywhere near the doors or the windows. I think this is just a drill, but just in case be prepared. We are currently under lock down.”
Oliver didn’t argue and went and hid under one of the lab desks on the far end of the room. He went behind the medicine cabinet under the desk and practically became invisible to any threat nearby. Mr. Mercer turned the light off and stood at the front entrance door of the classroom. Whispers traveled around the room and to Oliver, but he remained silent. The whole room stayed like that for 5 minutes. And then 10. And then 20. Oliver was beginning to wonder if it was some sort of prank done by some pesky 6th graders when the intercom rang on.
“Dear 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students and faculty of Pipers Middle School, “boomed a deep voice, “You are now under the control of me and my fellow men. Prepare to die.”
Cole
Never in Cole’s life had he been more terrified then he was when the deep voice over the intercom said prepare to die.  Almost all the 6th graders in Mrs. Kinley’s class screamed or ran around in a mad panic as the intercom turned off. Mrs. Kinley tried to quiet everyone down by whispering soft words of encouragement but no one seemed to be listening to reason at the moment so she did something kind of out of herself.
“EVERYONE SIT DOWN RIGHT NOW!” She screamed. All her students, including Cole froze and then without another word returned to their table islands. As Cole shivered in his chair a small girl next to him cried softly and he tried to comfort her by patting her back. She looked up at him and met his brown eyes and gave him a light weary smile. He smiled back and turned to his teacher.
“Okay,” Mrs. Kinley said quietly, “I know that that was scary, but we are going to be okay. I won’t let anyone hurt you guys alright?” Everyone nodded. “Good, now everyone go and hide somewhere away from a door. If someone were to walk in through that door they shouldn’t be able to see you.”
Cole moved quickly and bundled himself under the teacher’s desk. He shared the small enclosed space with two other boys and waited for something to happen.  Mrs. Kinley helped students hide as Cole waited and as everyone was settled Mrs. Kinley stood in front of the door and positioned herself in a defensive pose.  Cole peaked out through a tiny hole in the desk and looked around the room. All the kids he had grown up with were crammed under desks and in empty bookshelves. Some were stowing behind the tall reading tree that sat in the opposite corner of the room and some, very few, were hiding in the dark corners and crevices of the room.
The room was silent as no one spoke and for a while that’s all there was. Then from outside the hallway came the noise that everyone was begging not to hear, a gunshot. Cole had to cover his mouth to avoid screaming like everyone else in the room. Something hit the floor outside the room and then someone began repeatedly beating on the door. Everyone went silent again but it was too late. A man shouted furiously from outside the room and threatened to shoot through the door. Mrs. Kinley stepped behind a wall slightly away from the door to protect herself and then made sure everyone was out of shooting range. Then the pounding stopped. Cole was tense underneath the desk as he waited for something to happen. He heard the boy next to him gulp and heard an almost silent clicking sound. It was the sound of the lock on the door opening.
Bethany
Bethany had been in the worst place when the shooters began searching the halls. It had been an average day for Bethany; math, science, and then P.E., were her first three classes of the day, and she had been playing dodge ball when the alarms went off. At first no one in her 7th grade class had moved, then as reality struck them like a hard rubber ball, they all sprinted for the locker rooms, being the only place they could think of to go.
“Bethany, what’s going on? Why is the lock down alarm going off,” asked her best friend Lola as they ran into the locker rooms. Bethany only shrugged her shoulders and went and hid in one of the bathroom showers with a few other girls. She wasn’t afraid until she heard a gunshot explode inside the gym, and the 30 screams that came from the girls around her. She had just thought that it was a drill, but no drill she could remember had a gunshots fired.
There were no intercoms in the locker room so Bethany could only hear the faint whisper of a deep voice through the walls. Girls around began to cry as they scotched closer to the tile walls. Bethany could only sit there and try to think of the ultimate possibilities of why the alarms were going off, but she didn’t have a lot of time to think.
Suddenly, the door to the girl’s locker room burst open and two pairs of pounding footsteps and deep voices entered the room. Bethany heard girls on the other side of the room scream as the men shouted at them to move. She begged and cried that they wouldn’t come this far, but it only took them a minute or so to appear and point a gun at their faces. All the girls instantly screamed as he shouted, “Everybody up, move, move, let’s go!”
Bethany quickly got up and followed the mob of girls being led out of the locker room. The two men screamed at them to move faster, but Bethany couldn’t seem to move around people quick enough before she felt a rough hand grab her arm, and yank her away from the safety of her other class mates. She could hear Lola scream her name, but everything went into slow motion as she got dragged down the opposite hallway as her friends, and smacked hard on the top of her head. The last thing she remembered was a high-pitched scream and a gunshot.
Luis
Never in his life had Luis been I a classroom so quiet. He was in 7th grade, and there had always been a whisper of voices, giggling and high fives, or at least an obnoxious hush from the teacher who was running the class. But not even the nervous breathing of his classmates were heard as the sound of gun shots and screams echoed through the wide halls of his middle school, reminding them why they needed to remain deathly silent.
Luis’s science classroom had a door leading outside that at this point was looking like a quick escape plan, but Mr. Marsh was persisting that the door only being used if all other plans are shot down, no pun intended. He had the blinds pulled down, both doors shut and locked. Two metal chairs in front of the escape route door, and two desks and Mr. Marsh with a baseball bat guarding the other door that led you in from the hallway. Mr. Marsh was sweating profusely as he stood staring at the door, trying not to flinch with every gun shot and scream that they could here. No teacher seminars had prepared him for this.
He didn’t really know what to do. He had his students hide in corners, under desks, just as out of site as possible, but what would that really do if they came knocking down the door? Luis was hiding under a table covered in art supplies for the project they had been doing before the alarm went off. He was sharing his hiding place with Erica. In normal circumstances he would have been thrilled to get to be so close to her in such tight conditions, but the possible death by shooting was slightly distracting him. Her golden blonde hair was tied tightly in a ponytail, her light green eyes were filled with fear, and her skin was as pale as a ghost. Beautiful but petrified, and Luis didn’t know how to feel. She was scrunched up in a ball, rocking back and forth, back and forth. She was shaking too, glancing around the room like she was looking for an answer from Mr. Marsh’s cheesy science posters.
Knowing that his possible doom might be coming, Luis did something he usually wouldn’t have done. He reached over and grabbed her hand, hoping to end her shaking. She stopped rocking and looked down at her hand now held in his. She seemed to study it first, but then met eyes with Luis and smiled. Luis overjoyed smiled back, proud of his accomplishments. Then without any warning shots were fired into the doors on both sides, causing students to scream and duck. Soon the windows were being shot at too. Broken glass rained down on the students as Mr. Marsh looked back and forth between both doors being shot at, not knowing which one to guard. Soon a bullet sailed through the door, and drove right into Mr. Marsh. He was dead before he hit the ground, a clean shot to the heart. Luis and Erica both shared a look of complete horror as they looked at their dead teacher. The shooting stopped only for a moment as men with guns stormed in from both doors. They grabbed students and pushed them into the halls, screaming for them to move faster.
When Luis and Erica were directed out of hiding, they tried to hold on to each. Holding on to their last string of hope, but then a shot was fired. Luis could only scream as Erica hit the ground.
Ryan
Ryan was shoved down into a kneeling position with the rest of his class that were all herded into the great hall. The only light of the great hall was the what sunlight came in through the high windows, but with the storm bringing dark clouds, it was hard to see much other than the things and people within five feet of you. All around Ryan people were crying, praying, and saying their last goodbyes. A girl being dragged out of a classroom was screaming her lungs off until one of the men in black threw her down hard on the ground and shot her in the head, kicking her body to the side like she was nothing. Some people started crying louder, some yelped as the unknown girl to Ryan was mercilessly murdered in front of them. Blood was staining the ground, some were already on people’s clothes.
Ryan couldn’t really process what was really happening. It wasn’t going through his mind right, because he couldn’t understand why it was them this was happening to. It was always another school, another county, another place far away enough that you really know only the amount of information the news gives you. You feel sympathetic, but in the way random strangers feel when things happen to other strangers. There usually wasn’t strings attached. But it was them. These were Ryan’s classmates being murdered before his very eyes. These were the people he had grown up with, this was his school in his hometown. How was this happening?
“Okay kids. We are gathered here today to discuss the need of the many. We don’t really want to do this, but we are going to shape the world because of this. You will all be in history for your crucial sacrifice in the beginning of this rebellion. Thank you for your time, and don’t take this personally.” One of the men in black stated as he stood in front of them. No one even had the chance to scream or object before gun fire and blood filled the great hall. Taking down student after student, including Ryan.
Ariel
Ariel woke up on the office floor, a horrid headache anchoring down her head as she tried to see past her blurry vision. Sirens of all sorts were ringing around her, causing her headache to worsen, giving her the feeling that she was going to throw up.
She was finally able to stand up after a few minutes of preparing herself, but a moment later wished she had stayed down until the paramedics had come in. Through the glass walls of the office you could the great wall, once Ariel’s favorite part of the school, and now something from a nightmare. Body after body of her fellow classmates were laid on each other, covered in blood that was also making a growing river on the dark gray tiles of the floor. No one was moving, no one seemed to be clinging to life at all as gurneys wheeled their bodies away, a white cloth pulled over their remains and taken outside.
Ariel could only cry. She knelt down on the floor, curled into a ball, and cried.