The room was vacant save for a few unsettled-looking youngsters timidly holding their instruments. They had been slowly filtering in and sitting down in preparation. The room was long and wide, with a flat ceiling and pervasive yellowish light. Jack walked in and started unpacking his violin near the front of the room; as one of the elder players in the group, he felt it fell to him to start playing and break the ice. He sat down on one of small chairs and started to play slowly, quietly at first, but then louder as others began warming up.
After a time, he played an ascending, arpeggiated string-crossing passage from a piece he had once performed, eliciting the excited attention of one of the other students.
"Hey, that was cool!" said the student.
"Heh, yeah," replied Jack. "That's from a Shoobeart fantasy. I kind of vowed to learn it so that I could pull it out during solos and stuff." To illustrate his point, he played a lame blues lick followed by a clumsy rendition of the aforementioned passage. The group was delighted, despite the poor performance.
Once the full group had assembled, Narin entered and began handing out massive collections of colored file folders to each player.
"Welcome!" she said. "These are the training schedules and other information." As she made her presentation, Jack looked confusedly at his files. There were hundreds of papers strewn about the floor all around him. As he scrambled to figure things out, he wondered briefly at how long it had taken Narin to photocopy everything. On one paper he saw his name grouped with two novice girls in the group. This, at least, made sense; it seemed Narin had assigned the senior players to help acclimate the newer ones. He hoped it wasn't beyond his capacities. Probably just ear training.
With his attempt to understand, Jack was quickly and unintentionally making a mess of his papers. While scrambling to reorganize them in the proper order, he noticed a sudden silence in the room. Everyone was looking at him.
Once Narin finished talking, Jack and his two wards left to find the training room. It was on an upper floor, and ominously dark, lit only by a large window on the wall opposite the door. Jack walked slowly over to the window and looked outside. The landscape was flat and washed-out, a pale grassy field that extended towards and met up indeterminately with an equally uninspired sky.
Without warning, several dark characters appeared from the grass and Jack heard the familiar whizz and pang of bullets echoing within their dark room. He pulled out his black pistol and fired several return shots before retreating, pulling the girls with him. This wasn't right; somehow they had been betrayed, and he needed to spread the word before it was too late. He and the girls rushed downstairs, back to the rehearsal room. Their director, Mr. Shafer, would need to hear of this.
Jack entered the yellowed room calmly, not wanting to arouse alarm, and walked briskly towards Mr. Shafer.
"I need to talk to you. Something has happened," said Jack, signaling for the bearded man to follow him out. Mr. Shafer nodded solemnly, and together they left the rehearsal space for a small room just outside the door.
Jack entered first and began fiddling with his pistol, which he'd tucked into the back waistline of his pants. He felt that the safety should probably be on, just in case. The previously black pistol was now bright green and plasticine, like a toy. He twisted a nob near the firing pin several times, hoping it was the safety, before his attention was drawn to Mr. Shafer, who had just entered the room.
"Mr. Shafer, we went up to the training room, but it was an ambush, there were men outside. They fired shots, we just barely got away!"
Mr. Shafer stared silently at Jack, smiling slightly. To his horror, Jack saw Mr. Shafer pull out a pistol and aim it at squarely at his chest. There was a loud bang.
Jack's shocked face was mirrored in the features of Mr. Shafer. For a moment, the two figures stared, wide-eyed, at each other. Mr. Shafer fell to the floor, and Jack looked down at his hands to see himself holding firmly his own green pistol, now smoking from the round he had instinctively unloaded into his director.
Jack walked over the dying form of the man back into the rehearsal space.
"Everyone, listen, please," he said, his voice shaking with grief and adrenaline. He had loved Mr. Shafer, and he knew the whole group felt the same. "Everyone, I have an announcement. Mr. Shafer, he's..." Jack, on the verge of tears, struggled to keep his voice from shaking. "Umm, Mr. Shafer, is...he's...he's dead!"
Jack tried his best to explain the circumstances to the horrified orchestra. "Yes, it was Narin's training program, that was her idea, but she didn't pick the room! Mr. Shafer picked the room! It was his plot, Narin had nothing to do with it."
The paramedics wheeled Mr. Shafer's body into the room. The orchestra was leaving, was gone, the paramedics took the body away. Jack lingered, talking with a small group. Then he too left, leaving only the janitor to clean the room, her bass in hand.
