[UNEDITED]

I couldn't sleep that night. Adam's words kept coming back to me that how we were recruiting more and more people into our own team. Rank Three was literally divided into two halves now. I did not understand if it was a good thing or bad.

At around three in the morning, I decided to visit Uncle Benjamin's study once again. I tiptoed along the corner of the balcony, and found the house asleep. Good for me. I could investigate in peace.

As I stood in front of the colossal door of the study, I felt scared of what I might find inside. The study was unlocked as always, and I did not need to obtain any special key in order to enter. The room was just like before, except the files had been put away.

I went to the table and there were all the basic necessities present there, pens, writing pads and all. But there was nothing else that could pass for my investigation. I had no idea how to look for a healing serum here. So I decided to look for any written evidence. I rummaged through the files, and found that old EN-33 file again, but this time there was an entire folder that contained files, each of labeled 'Project EN-33'.

I carefully took one of them out, the file which dated back to about five years ago, and then I started looking at the contents. On the first page, there was a diagram of a weird looking creature that pretty much looked like a mosquito, and there were labels around the creature. I had no idea what this meant.

I turned the page. There were scribbling on pages after pages of chemical reactions and their molecular view, I could figure this much from the meager knowledge in Chemistry that I had, but the components were too complex for me to remember or even understand. There were no labels, and at some places, old diagrams were crossed out and new ones were made in the following pages.

I closed the file and picked up another one. This one had names, rows after rows of names that I did not understand anything about. None of the names seemed familiar to me. But then I found one name that brought some semblance of recognition to me.

Olivia Monroe.

She used to be our maid once, but then one day she disappeared. She was a Rank Three.

I went back to the list and read some of the names. None of them appeared familiar. So I became certain that they belonged to Rank Three people. Like Adam had said, they indeed had decided to become a part of the war and side with us. Great! But why did Olivia disappear all of a sudden?

I put away that file, skipped a few more and came to open another one that seemed more recent. The names seemed to have stopped there midway, and the count said 1,586 people. I nodded in appreciation. Not bad. But at the same time I felt sad for them. These names were probably the ones who would be killed first once the war broke out.

A few pages later there was another small scribbling.

"AnEN-146, Batch One, 1,590 produced, 1,586 to be administered."

I looked at the number 1,586 for a long time, and the words stared back at me. Then commonsense hit me, and I went back to the page where the names had stopped.

1,586 people.

1,586 to be administered.

Produced what? What was this tally talking about? Was it hinting towards any serum? As far as I could remember, Adam had told me that EN-33 was all about Rank Three joining us and then fighting against the rebels. But what did this scribbling mean?

I couldn't think anymore. I picked up the pad from the table, replicated the information on a page, and scribbled the name of Olivia Monroe in a corner. Then I put the files back into the folder, tore the page, and then quickly retreated to my room.

Whatever was going on, I felt that I needed to tell it to Dylan. There was no way I could understand this on my own, and maybe he would know some of the information as well? Who knew?

But then came the most troubling question. Where would I find Dylan?

***

I prepared for school a little early next morning.

Uncle Benjamin was slightly cold from yesterday's incident, and was giving me rather weird looks. I went to being totally normal with him just to make him believe that I did not actually look into his files, or even if he thought that I did, I did not understand any of it.

And the last bit was pretty true. There was nothing in those files last night that I could understand, but whatever that came into my grasp, I had jotted them down onto the piece of paper that was safely hidden inside my drawer. But then I did not even have to look at it anymore, because I had looked and read that piece of information for about a hundred times since last night, and had it committed to my memory already.

Now the only missing piece was Dylan. I had to find him somehow, and I had to tell him all about it. But how, I had no idea.

I had given the idea of loitering into the woods a couple of time, but then gave up against it. The path was tricky enough, and although I had tried my best to remember the path when Dylan and I had walked out, there was no guarantee that I would find it out.

Then I thought of going to school. If I would be away from this house, I would have plenty of time to think about it.

After a row that shook the roof of our house, mom finally agreed to let me go to school. I wasn't really intent to go to the classes or anything, but I simply wanted to go there.

School was boring as usual. My classmates pointed at me and whispered, and some of them were bold enough to ask me about what had happened when I was lost.

I ignored them all.

I avoided the cafeteria during lunch, and went to sit at a bench near the boundary of the school. No one used to come here. This place was officially named as the hideout for losers.

I was thinking hard about EN-33 and the serum that was produced, when a voice shook me hard.

"Playing truant, are we?"

I jumped up and looked back. It was Dylan.

Was I dreaming?

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