CHAPTER TEN: PERFECT ILLUSIONS.

Mila made everyone set things up for Alex's birthday. She and Sebastian asked Mr Alan to get them the ingredients for a cake, so they could bake Alex's cake. Mila gathered all the students, except Alex and Greta; who was still in the reflection room. She took them to the common room to divide the labour.

"So, there are 13 of us. Well, 11." Mila said. She noticed Arthur and Auriela were missing,

"Where the hell is Arthur and Auriela!" Mila demanded.

Shortly, Arthur and Auriela came to the common room, and they both chorused,

"We're here."

Mila began to group them, she grouped Ophelia, Iris and Sebastian, Apollo, Hamilton and Gia in the same group, Auriela, Arthur and Jason in the same group, and lastly, she paired herself and Julius together.

"Iris, you're the leader of your group. Your group is in charge of the decorations. In that box beside you, you would see everything needed to decorate this room and the pool out back." Mila said.

"We're decorating the pool too? Why is that even a location!" Iris stressed.

"Because, Iris, we would be holding a game there," Mila said.

"Aye-aye captain," Iris said as she salutes Mila.

"Hamilton, you're the leader of your group. Your group is in charge of the food during this event. I asked Mr Alan to let us cook this time around. So you guys would be doing that." Mila said.

"Cook?! How do you make decisions Mila?" Apollo wailed.

"No objections people, can we just do as I say?" Mila begged. She continued, "Jason, you're the leader of your group. Your group is in charge of the game that we would be playing by the poolside."

"And what game is that?" Jason asked.

"Devil's Basket." She smirked as she said this. She told them that they shouldn't go against the rules of the Academy when they are constructing the questions that would be asked during the game.

Auriela was already liking her group's task. Mila continued, "the last group is me and Julius. Julius's job is to supervise, while I bake the birthday cake." Mila said with a cheerful smile. Mila dismissed all of them from the meeting so they could start their task before 7 pm.

THE KITCHEN

Apollo, Hamilton and Gia were in the kitchen. They did not know where to begin, so they sat around the kitchen talking,

"I don't know how to cook," Apollo said folding his arms.

"All these ingredients and food stuffs on the table, and we're the ones to turn them into good food," Hamilton said disappointedly.

"Gia, you're a woman, you should prepare the food," Apollo suggested.

Gia was irritated by what Apollo said, "never, say that again. Women shouldn't be the only ones that cook. We both have hands, use them." Gia said.

"What he meant to say was that you cook better than us, probably," Hamilton said in Apollo's defence.

"Whatever, so! What do we have here? Meat, carrots, onions, etc. We could make one hell of a something. I'll tell you guys what to do with the ingredients while I prepare the food" Gia suggested.

"Mila should've made you the leader," Hamilton said.

COMMON ROOM

Sebastian, Iris and Ophelia removed the decorations materials from the carton boxes one by one.

"So, the cherry balloon Garland goes on the walls of this room and around the walls leading to the poolside," Iris said.

"What about all the Confettis? What do we do with them" Ophelia asked.

"We could make a confetti wall, or we could add them to some of the plain balloons, and tie them to the table stands," Iris suggested.

"The zig-zag streamers could be placed on the walls too," Sebastian said.

Ophelia raise the pink tissue paper and said, "we could make tissue paper pom poms. We use to do this all the time in my-" she was cut short by Iris and Sebastian,

"Ssssshhhhh!!!" They both chorused.

Ophelia was stunned, so she kept quiet.

"We could make the pom poms," Iris said with a sigh of relief.

"We need to write something that says, Happy Birthday Alex!" Sebastian suggested.

"We have this," Iris said. Iris showed them the sequined letters. "We just have to arrange the letters to spell happy birthday Alex."

"The last decorations are the coloured lights," Ophelia said.

"We could put some here in the common room, and the rest by the poolside," Iris said.

After this, they started arranging the decorations accordingly.

DINING ROOM

Auriela, Jason and Arthur were all seated at the dining table. They were constructing questions that they would use during the truth or dare game,

"This is the best task I've received in my entire life," Jason said as he laughed dubiously. He was ready to cause mishaps amongst the students.

"There are 12 of us. How about we construct 24 questions, so the game could have 2 rounds." Jason said.

"Good idea," Arthur said. Jason began to cut the pieces of paper craftily until he cut 24 pieces. He shared the papers, each of them had eight, and then he told each of them to write whatever they wanted on their papers.

Auriela smiled dubiously as she began to write. Arthur couldn't care less but he wrote, while Jason on the other hand was in for some drama.

REFLECTION ROOM.

Greta remained with the snake-like creature. Greta was sitting on a chair while the snake-like creature persuaded her to find her turning point.

"Look I don't know, okay! I don't know." Greta wailed.

Soon the room began to tremble. It was shaking like an earthquake was about to occur. Greta was scared, she asked the snake-like creature what was happening,

"It is-ss time," It said. Greta tried to hold on to something to support herself from falling to the ground. The whole place was noisy, Greta couldn't hear herself but she yelled either way,

"Time for what?!"

"You've s-s-s-sspent too much time in one door, you need to leave this-s-s-ss plac-c-cce!" It said.

"You said there are worse creatures like you in other doors, how can I leave this place!" Greta cried out.

The snake-like creature looked at Greta with pity, before it curled up its tail around her and glided through the rumbles of the room, it told her goodbye and then threw her out the door. Greta screamed throughout. When she was out she cried, she did not know what to do. She started thinking of her turning point, she thought to herself, when have I made that life-changing decision. She thought deeply then she realized it was when she decided to take the tonic. She began to open random doors fearlessly, she explored them and was ready to fight any creature of my mind that gets in her way. She fought all the creatures that came against her until she entered the next door, she saw Alex, she was so happy to see a face she recognizes. Even more happier to see that it was a human being. She called his name, and then he turned. But Alex did not turn to her, he turned to reply to an illusioned version of Greta; the old Greta before the tonic,

"Something like that" Alex replied to the illusioned version of Greta.

Greta realized that Alex was not real, so was her second self. She realized she was seeing what had happened when she decided to take the tonic,

Alex and the illusioned Greta were about to introduce themselves to each other when a dart-like object was fired at their necks and they fell to the ground.

The real Greta screamed, she was shocked to see everything that was happening. She was about to leave the room when she saw in the illusion, that a huge man came out from the dark and lifted Alex and the illusioned Greta into the car where Auriela was as well. He entered the car and then drove off.

Greta couldn't understand what she saw, she cried out, "why are you showing me this!" The room was filled with only echoes of her voice.