The first thing I see when I make it to the second floor is a pool.  Or at least, a hallway leading to a door labeled "POOL".  I'm not a fan of water, or swimming, so I decide to proceed no further down that way.  It reminds me of when Stolas grabbed me and Iris at the beach and dumped us in the water.  It sucked, but it's funny to think about now.  In fact, I'm starting to realize what I'd give to relive that beach day just one more time.  I take a deep breath and turn to continue down the hallway to my right instead.  There seems to be a common area off to one side, and I find myself standing in front of a door labeled "LIBRARY" after a few moments.  Hm, I think this might be a library.  I pull the handle and open the door, slipping inside.

The walls are lined with completely-filled bookshelves, and Dana is sitting at a desk, reading something.

"What're you looking at?" I ask her.

She holds up an envelope. "Some letter regarding something about the school closing for purposes that are way too vague.  Weird, though- if it closed, why didn't we hear about it before the first day?"

"Maybe it's an old letter or something."

Dana shrugs. "Yeah, must be."

She tucks the letter back into the envelope and gets up from her chair. "This is all so strange.  Why on earth would any of this be here?  What's the purpose of all this?"

"I don't know, but there's no one else here, that's for sure," I say, then add, "Want to explore together?"

"Yeah, sure." We exit the library together and make out way down the rest of the second floor hallway.  Unfortunately, there isn't anything else interesting, so we end up walking back pretty quickly.

"I came right up here, was there anything interesting down the hallway on the first floor?" she asks me.

"Dorms, dining hall, bathhouse..." I pause, trying to recall what else. "And the trash room plus some bathrooms."

"Oh, so a lot."

"...yeah."

"Well, I'll check it out later.  How's about we go to the third floor?" Dana motions to another stairwell leading up to the next floor.

"Sounds good," I agree, following her as we ascend the staircase.

The third floor consists of an art room, a laboratory, and several classrooms.  The fourth floor is a bit more interesting, with another lab and an auditorium of sorts in addition to a few classrooms.  That plus a small, strange room with a wall lined with screens, a locked door filling the far wall.  The lab is the most unsettling part, and neither of us says a word as we stare inside at the trashed room, and the bloodstains on the floor and a nearby table.  Glass is scattered everywhere, from both a broken cabinet window and from a pair of smash glasses on the floor.  The scene is oddly familiar, but I can't quite put my finger on it.  So we just stand there, staring until we force ourselves to leave.

"Wait, I think we missed this," Dana calls to me as we're about to head to the next stairwell.

I walk over to her and peer with her down a hallway I hadn't noticed.  There's a few doors, but one of them ends up being unlocked.  It's the one with a golden plaque that must've once read 'HEADMASTER' but is now sprayed over with bright red spray paint in the design of Monokumace's red eye.  I shudder involuntarily as I turn the doorknob and push open the door.

It's definitely an office for a headmaster, that's for sure.  Dana takes to fishing through the desk while I turn my attention to a box of tapes on a shelf.

"Hey, these are us," she suddenly speaks, holding up a stack of files before flipping one open. "Andrade, Rori.  Date of birth: August 10th.  Ultimate Talent: Ultimate Wilderness Survivalist.  ...Status: Dead."

She reads through a few more. "Fields, Cooper.  Goldberg, Spencer.  Jones, Willson... hey, here's yours, Azz... L'Olonnais, Azrael.  Status: Alive.  Hey, so your funky hair isn't just an island thing."

Dana hands me my file, and I recoil in sheer horror at the sight of me and my dark, fluffy hair in a loose blazer, dress shirt, and tie.  Ugh, junior year picture day.  The day I will always reflect on and wish I'd learned how to vomit on cue.  Looking through the yearbook would've been so much more bearable if I had.

I turn back to look at the box of video tapes and yelp in surprise as I turn one over.

"What is it?" Dana slams the stack of files back onto the desk and hurries to my side.

I show her what I've found- there, on the backside of a tape marked C77-010, is a message, scrawled in bright red letters.

GOTCHA.

Dana's eyes widen. "Freaky.  Monokumace must be loving this."

I don't respond, just toss the tape back into the box and walk out of the room with her right behind me.

"This is so weird," Dana mutters as we scale the stairs up to the fifth floor. "I mean, this is Hope's Peak, right?  This is what we wanted?"

"I'm not sure," I admit. "I mean, yeah, it seems like Hope's Peak, but... I'm not sure if it's... y'know."

"Fair point.  This whole island's wonky enough as it is.  I don't know if anything can surprise me anymore."

As we emerge out onto the fifth and seemingly final floor, Dana adds, "If I'm being honest, seeing this place makes me feel lucky that we were stranded on a bunch of islands.  Can you imagine just being trapped in this one school with no way to get fresh air?  I'd literally die."

I shrug, and we continue to pass by a few classrooms, a dojo, and a really pretty-looking garden.  I can tell Evangeline's going to lose her sh*t over it once she makes her way up here.  Dana and I find ourselves in yet another lab, but it isn't the lab itself that really catches our attention.  It's the door in the back that we immediately approach.  Dana pushes the door open, and we pass through the doorway only to get blasted with cold air.  Even my massive hoody can't keep me from shivering.

"Seems to be some sort of storage unit," Dana says as she wipes the condensation from a glass window on a cabinet and peers at the contents inside. "I dunno what any of this stuff means, but it's gotta be sciencey or something."

"These are weird," I mumble to myself as I approach a wall lined with weird storage compartments with keypads.  

My soul nearly leaves my body as I notice the bright red spray paint creating an arrow pointing towards one specific storage compartment.  Sprayed above the compartment are the words '007'.

With a gulp, I reach out and press the digits into the keypad next to the compartment, and watch as the door swings open.  My hands fly up to my mouth, but no scream would've made it out of my unwilling vocal chords anyways.  

Dana's incredible intuition seems to have returned, because I hear her turn around and ask, "What did you-" before screaming.

Inside is a white tarp stained slightly with blood.  It doesn't take much thinking to know that there's a body under there.

"...who is it?" Dana asks me, her voice wavering slightly.

I don't respond, just build up all my courage, reach out, and... 

I carefully lift up a corner of the tarp and pull it back to reveal a face.  It's a face I almost recognize but don't.  It's an unfamiliar young man, dried blood having previously oozed from an unseen wound beneath of his dirty-blonde hair.  As unfamiliar as he is, though, there's some things about him that look awfully close to...

"Ryn's brother," Dana whispers, finishing my train of thought. "They really do look pretty similar, huh."

"...yeah, they do." I replace the tarp back over Ryn's brother's face and go to close the storage unit when I see more red writing on the inside of the door.

AND NOW SHE'S GONE TOO.

"Christ, who's writing these?" Dana demands, her hands shaking. "This is messed up!" 

"Th... that's not all they did." I point to what I've been staring at while she's been losing her cool.

The tenth unit has been open, with a line of red spray paint mocking blood dripping out.  On the floor where the line stops is a third message.

WHAT DESPAIR! 

"We need to leave," Dana insists, grabbing me by the wrist and dragging me out of the room back out into the much warmer lab.

As we exit the room, we run into Evangeline and Iris.

"You two look quite shaken!  Is everything okay?" the brunette herbologist asks worriedly.

"There's a morgue in the back of the lab," Dana says without hesitation. "Ryn's brother is in there."

"What?" Evangeline gasps. 

"Let me guess, there was writing on the wall that clued you in," Iris says flatly.

"Yeah, how'd you guess?" I ask him.

He tilts his head, as if reminiscing. "Nurse's office had a big red 'X' on the floor.  Evangeline and I had to go through different locker rooms to get to the pool.  While passing through the boys' locker room, I saw a spray-painted line leading to a jump rope, and the words 'TWO TO GO' on the wall next to it.  Then, when Evangeline and I made it out to the pool, the bottom of the pool in the deep end had a big 'X' sprayed on it, too."

"Hey, has anyone seen Will?" Dana snaps her head up, looking around worriedly. 

"Not since the first floor," Evangeline responds. "He may still be in the front hallway."

"We should be staying together- let's go find him," I decide.

To my surprise, everyone follows me down four flights of stairs all the way to the first floor.  There's no sign of Will anywhere.  My heart sinks in my stomach.  Could he be dead?  Did whoever's been writing the spray-painted messages kill him?  

"Oh, he's over here!" Dana calls from down the hall.  

I peek out of the dining hall and rush to where she's standing next to the videographer in question.  He doesn't even seem to notice that we're there; I can see it in his distant amber eyes.

As Iris and Evangeline make their way back over to us, the loudspeakers crackle to life.  Right, there's loudspeakers here, too.  I close my eyes as a familiar voice rings out.

"Attention, students!  I invite you all to make your way to the mysterious red doors on the first floor.  That's just down the hallway from you kiddos!  Get over there, and I'll explain what's next."

We all exchange wary glances before slowly making our way down the hall until we stop in front of the set of red double-doors that Monokumace was talking about.  As soon as we do, the headmaster's voice cuts through the air once again.

"Very good!  Now, one of you kids needs to open the door, and you all need to go through them.  No questions."

"I'll do it," Dana offers as soon as the announcement is finished. "Look, if it's a trap, you all need to run, okay?"

"Dana-" I start, but she's already yanking one of the doors open.

Inside is a small room.  We all stare for a long moment before Dana enters first, stepping inside and taking a careful look around.

"It doesn't seem to be trapped," she announces. "You're all safe to get in."

Her words are a relief to me, and I enter the room after her, everyone else following thanks to Evangeline having been helping Will along.  As everyone packs in, I start to realize that this doesn't seem to be a room...

A gate suddenly slams shut, trapping us all inside.

"Now, just enjoy the ride down and think about how far you've come!" Monokumace says way too cheerfully from the loudspeakers. "Everything you've worked for has all come down to this.  So let me ask you kiddos..."

I get a nagging feeling I know what they're going to say.  I mean, the last few times we were in an elevator, it was for one reason...

As the thought echoes in my brain, Monokumace's voice echoes in my ears.

"Are you all ready for one last class trial?"

***

(2028 words)

Ooh I wonder what this is gonna be about-

Also because nobody's been paying attention to all the name dropping I did it one more time and if nobody says anything I'm just gonna remove it