[UNEDITED]

My head reeled. Amaya was in there. Nicole was in there. Adam's mother was in there.

I had been in there. Had Dylan and Daniel not showed up at the party tonight, I would have been in there, eating strawberry panna cotta and wondering about life. And then I would have been taken hostage, like the hundred-something other people inside.

"There have been noises and cries from inside, gunshots even," the man went on, "We are not sure how that happened."

"What do you mean you are not sure?" Dylan barked, "Weren't you supposed to guard the place?"

"We were guarding the place!" the man said, "We have no idea what happened. One minute there was nothing in there and the next moment they were slitting the throats of the regulators. It felt as if they appeared out of this air!"

"Bullshit!" Daniel spat.

"They definitely did not show any mercy when they arrived. They simply shot and stabbed every guard dead and made their way inside! There was nothing we could do. By the time resources had arrived, they had bombed the entrance and sent out a dead body of a young girl. It was a warning for us so that we did not take any action. There was nothing we could do. We had to stop!" the peacekeeper went on in a breath.

I understood the strain in the regulator's voice. He couldn't afford to be rash about it. Half of Rank One was inside that house. From what it seemed, the rebels would not stop until they had gained what they had come here for, but if we did not play along, we could lose the core of this island: the ruling people.

"Who did they kill?" Daniel spoke, and I noticed a stress in his voice. He appeared tired, defeated.

The guard stood there, staring at his face, pondering on the words he had thrown at him mere a minute ago.

"Come this way," he finally said.

Dylan and Daniel looked at each other, and an indescribable fear crossed both of their eyes. My heart leapt up in my throat. What if it was Nicole who had been killed?

We slowly walked past the crying and shouting mob outside the house, and the guard led us to the outskirts of the road. There was a body lying on a stretcher, cloaked with a white fabric. I saw some people around it, having heated arguments. Some were nodding, and some were bending down to check on the body. My legs started to wobble.

The next few minutes blurred past me. One moment I was standing in front of the body, and the next moment the guard was lifting the veil.

I heaved a sigh of relief. It was not Nicole or Amaya. It was someone else.

I felt cheap inside. How could I be so relieved by someone's death? As I looked at the blood-stricken face of the poor, innocent girl, I thought about her family. What would her parents do now? Which grade was she in? Sixth? Seventh? Did she have a lot of friends at school? Would her friends mourn her?

Did she have a boyfriend?

I looked at Dylan's face. He looked agitated, but relieved nonetheless. I tried putting myself in his shoes. If I had come here finding that Dylan was dead, how would I react?

Something snapped inside of me, and I earnestly started to cry.

Dylan's head snapped up at me, and he rushed to my side.

"Hey," he put his arm around my shoulder and started to steer me away from the scene, "It's okay! You're fine. It's not Nicole! She's fine."

There was another gunfire, and the people standing outside let out a collective gasp.

"What do they want?" I couldn't stop the tears from flowing, "Why are they doing this?"

"I'll talk to a guard," Dylan said, tightening his grip on my shoulder, "You need to get out of here. You need to go home."

"No," I started to wiggle out of his arm, "I can't leave, not now."

"Look around you," Dylan faced me and held both my shoulders, "You cannot stay here. Things could get worse, they could become deadlier! I cannot let anything happen to you."

"I am not leaving," I argued. For some reason, it was hurting my ego to say that I did not want to leave him alone here in the face of the danger.

Dylan moved forward and took my face in his hands, "If anything happens to you, I won't be able to live with that. I will never be able to forgive myself."

I looked up at his face with tears pooling my eyes.

"Why do you care?" I said, my voice almost a whisper, "I thought I was only a mistake of your life."

Dylan's fingers pressed lightly on my face as he struggled with himself. I saw the rage and yearning fighting with each other in his eyes. His lips formed a string of words that he never threw at me.

"Dylan..." I whispered again.

There was a loud bang from inside the house, and all of us jumped. There was a shrill noise in the air, and then a noise followed as if someone was setting up a mike.

"Ehem, ehem," a female voice spoke in the microphone, "That sounds about right. Thanks, Milan."

Dylan and I exchanged a quick glance, and Daniel came to stand with us. There was suddenly pin-drop silence around us. The only sound was the prickling of the fire burning off the side of the house, and the rustling air.

"Hello, people of Aneida!" the woman spoke into the air. She seemed to be enjoying a lot. Her voice was girlish, mocking, but there was a hidden maturity in it that said that she had had enough experience in her life.

"I hope you understand the fact that we are not here to play games with you," she went on, "My demands are clear. I want to talk to Benjamin Wilkins, right now."

I saw a guard approach with a handmike. There was a huge badge on his chest, which implied that he was in a higher rank among the regulators.

"Please, do not harm any of the people inside," the Chief Regulator pleaded, "Please, we are ready to negotiate."

There were no words from them for a long time. After a few minutes, we heard someone breathing on the microphone.

"Like I said, I am not here to play games with you all. Bring out that coward. I am just here to talk," the woman repeated once again, "Else..."

There was a rustle, and then she grabbed someone in front of the mike. We heard a girl scream.

"Please let me go...please...HELP ME...please...please..."

"Tell Benjamin Wilkins we sent a message to him," the woman said coldly, and her voice did not sound all that girly anymore, "Either get his ass here, or watch everyone die."

There was a gunshot, and the sound was amplified ten times through the mike. Everyone screamed, and some sat down on the ground, their hands covering their ears.

The pleading voice of the girl was wiped off the earth.

"Aneida 0, Rebels 2", the woman spat, and then the mike died.

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