Chapter 6

Sarah knocked on the door on the sixth floor. They all entered what looked like a conference room. A man who they all assumed to be Tom, sat in from of them, a screen behind him but it was switched off.

“Hello, everyone,” the man spoke not moving from his chair. “Please, sit down.”

He motioned to the chairs around the oval table. Everyone except Sarah sat down at the sides. The woman went forward and sat next Tom. She smiled at him. Tom nodded having read ‘they are ready’ and faced the group.

“My name is Tom. I am the head of C.A.T. Sarah is my right hand woman. I take it she has explained you the story behind all this and you want to join,” it wasn’t a question; of course he heard everything what the woman had said to each of them. And by saying that he made it clear to the quintet that he knew everything. “Now we would like to let you know what is going to happen onwards.”

Tom looked around to see everyone’s reactions. They looked… interested and expectant. It was strange. The man didn’t expect that.

“You will have to sign the agreement. By doing so you agree to stay here until at least the end of May when you will be sorted into the squads and start working as real agents. That will be your first and last chance to quit. Until the sorting you will earn and lose points. But you will never know how many points you have, what you earn or lose them for, or who gives and takes points. You will see a lot of rules written in the agreement and I suggest you read them very carefully and memorize all of them. But just so you know, it’s not only rules that set the way points are given or taken. Does anyone have any questions so far?”

They all looked at each other, quite a few questions in their heads but waiting for someone else to speak first.

He should give us all the information so that there would be no need of asking questions, Tina looked at Sebastian who spoke after meeting her eyes.

“I do. We noticed different t-shirts. This one guy told us that those wearing yellow are, quote, the lamest. What does that mean?”

“As I’ve already told you, according to the amount of points you have at the end of the probationary period you will be sorted into squads. Obviously it means that squads are different. There used to be numerical names but it only sharpened disagreements among the members of different squads. The board figured colours would mean less damage.”

“So the Yellow Squad is the lowest, isn’t it?” Wes asked.

“Yes. It goes like this: Yellow, Orange, Red, Blue, Green, and Purple. You will be the White Squad for a year. This means you will wear white t-shirts every day. Of course they can be different designs but they must be plain white.”

Kurt frowned at the thought but it wasn’t what he was bothered about. “I don’t get it. There are a lot of people here. Are you telling us you take more or less five new members a year? I’m not buying it.”

There were some nods.

Well, that is just dumb to assume, Tina nodded as well.

“No,” Tom said, “there are more new members. We recruit policemen, bodyguards, hackers… Different people with different tale–”

“When why do you need us?” Santana raised a brow.

“Well, we only need those people for the talents they have. As for you, we want to make universal agents out of you. You all have what it takes to be an agent inside; with a little bit of training you will be as good as the others here. In June, when you look back at this day, you won’t recognize yourself.”

Silence met his words. Nobody asked anything; they simply nodded. They did that way too often since waking up.

“Shall I continue? Good. So every Sunday during dinner you will be given the timetables of the following week. You will have to go to all classes. In the agreement you will find all the details about it so I won’t go into detail now.

Next, I must tell you, you’re no longer in the states–”

“And there is five hours difference; we know,” Sebastian said impatiently. “I’m more interested in what is going to happen with our lives back home.”

“That’s the simple bit. You, Sebastian, and Kurt are students so you will tell everyone you took the year abroad offer from your universities. We will take care of everything; all you need is to be convincing while talking to your families and friends. Tina always wanted to travel; she can tell everyone she has decided to explore Europe in order to decide what to do with her life. Same with Wes and Santana.  All in all, Sebastian and Kurt are going to Europe to study; Tina, Wes and Santana are going to travel. Simple as that.”

That should be easy, Tina thought.

“Okay, that sounds good. But where are we going to live?” Kurt asked a bit out of the topic.

“In the dorms. Everything is in this building, that’s why there is no need to leave. Of course sometimes there are situations when you can leave but you will need permission. Once again, it’s all in the agreement. So maybe I should just let you read it,” Tom said and the next second Sarah was handing everyone papers and pens. “Read it carefully and sign.”

<~*~>

It was interesting for Jeff to meet new kids. He knew he would scare them but it was the way this boy was. Not being a part of any squad made him want to be friends with everyone. Of course he used to be a friendly talkative machine of fluffiness since anyone could remember. And he had many friends because of that. He had a big heart and every year he used to go and introduce himself to new members to show them that they were welcome. Sure, at first they all looked at him like he was some kind of an alien but they got used to him.

This year was no different. He saw all of them talking to Sarah the moment they got up. They were nothing like people from the last year or two years ago. In fact, they reminded him the newbies from five years ago. It was refreshing.

That’s why Jeff didn’t wait long until introducing himself. He already liked them. And after their talk he hoped they liked him as well.

Lost in his thoughts he reached one of the music rooms where his guitar lesson had to be taken place in. He opened the door carefully to find it empty. Once he sat down with a guitar in his hands planning to try something out while waiting for the others and their teacher, the doors opened. He had his lessons with various squads. Being good at music he had the guitar lesson with the Purple Squad.

Two guys went in chatting and shut the doors. Only then they noticed Jeff.

“Hey, Jeff,” one of them said as they approached them.

“Noah, Dave,” Jeff nodded in greeting.

“How are you doing?” Dave asked picking a guitar.

“Fine. Having a very busy day–”

“Oh yeah, the newbies came today, right?” Noah pretended to not know for sure. “I think I saw some white colour today.”

“You’re right, Puck,” Dave told him. “I heard one was Burt or something…”

“Kurt,” Jeff corrected him. “Seems to be a nice guy. They all are nice. Well, not that I know them well… But I think they are nicer than the jerks from the last year. Though you are probably friends with some of them and I shouldn’t have said that. But oh well, you know me. Now I’m going to shut up.”

“Yes, we do know you,” Dave laughed. “We won’t tell them, don’t worry. But there is one thing that’s worrying me…”

“What is that, Dave?” Puck asked eyeing his friend.

“That Kurt guy… There is something about him. I don’t know. I would like to know more. Do you know anything interesting, Jeff?”

“Not really. But you know me – I can find out anything about anyone,” Jeff laughed proud of himself.

“I wish I was good with computers,” Noah said trying to flatter the boy.

“You are good. I’m just better. So, about Kurt… If you want I can do a little research and give you a nice little back story of that boy.”

“Sounds cool, dude,” Noah nodded and they fell silent as everyone else started to come in.

Jeff decided to spend his lunch hour doing that little project on Kurt. So he grabbed an apple from the cafeteria and headed to the room with computers. That was boy’s favourite room.

He sat down and started as everyone else – google. Not like the others in C.A.T., he knew everybody’s lasts names. Kurt’s wasn’t an exception. So he googled “Kurt Hummel” and gaped at the amount of pages where Kurt’s name was mentioned. He went to the first one which was a blog of Jacob Ben Israel, set for the news of William McKinley High School. Jeff went to the tag ‘kurt hummel’ and looked through the posts.

Nothing interesting today: Mr. Schuester let the glee club make fools of themselves again, Kurt Fagmel (I have no idea why he hasn’t changed his last name legally; this suits him better) got slushied twice – raspberry in the morning and strawberry after the third period, a Cheerio Ruth broke up with her boyfriend, does anyone keep the count?

He scrolled down to an older post.

This must be a good day for those who made a bet on Kurt Fagmel’s and his ‘boyfriend’s’ Kyle’s so called relationship saying that the little fag would take 40-50 days to break the L word. After Kyle sang an emotional song to Fagmel in the auditorium, the latter came running to him and finally said it: “I love you”. Kyle won $100 for his disgusting work, and four others won the bet. Fucking Fagmel, three more days and I would have won…

The earlier post was a video. Jeff pressed play and watched it. The video appeared to be very short. The boy, Kurt, was standing by his opened locker; his back pressed tightly to the one next to his. Ten boys with red jackets lined up with slushies in their hands. One by one they went to the boy, threw a slushy to his face and shouted ‘fag’. The liquid went to the boy’s hair, face, clothes, locker… When the last guy threw his slushy the whole corridor started to chant ‘fag’. The video ended with that.

There was shock and disgust in Jeff's face.

"So Kurt is gay..."