"What makes you think he might be a Servant of Elohim?" asked Sander, pushing his hands into his pockets. "For all we know, he can be anything, considering the fact thousands of worlds exist."

    Damien, Sander, Max, and Lyn were walking to the academic building that Monday morning, talking up on the things of yesterday afternoon. The sky above them was painted a light gray, clouds enshrouding the distant dream of summer azure, as in those days of late September—the gloom the quaint little town of Waltervere was known for. The air held a chill that nipped at their exposed skin, the kind that can lull someone to sleep, yet prick anyone awake when underdressed. Each of them wore another jacket over their Ravenwood Academy blazers—Damien in a white Adidas zip-up, Sander in a soft green plaid jacket, Max in a black All Time Low hoodie, Lyn in her overused black denim jacket. And, as autumn fell upon the town, some of the trees had begun to dress themselves, slowly and gradually, in shades of orange and gold, the warm hues a stark contrast against their verdant friends.

    "There seems to be no other option we know of," replied Lyn. She blew out a breath, watching steam unfurl past her lips. "If he's not Crystallian, he's probably from the Realm Beyond. Anyway," she said, "it's just a theory Mister Bato and I agree on. Nothing proven."

    Max's blue eyes lit up at a new theory, one drawn from a memory. "Okay, okay," he said, walking ahead and turning around. He then started walking backwards, slowly, his hands held out to his friends. "You remember the night my family and I were attacked by those bad guys, the night I told you about in The Raven's Nest after we met Mister Brighteyes for the first time?"

    Damien, Sander, and Lyn nodded, remembering.

    "Yeah, what about it?" asked Damien.

    "Okay, okay," said Max, excitedly. "He was shot. He took the bullet for my mom and sister, and he bled. He bled. And I saw it myself, the blood dripping from his hand to the asphalt, the stain he left on one of the bad guy's faces. He even showed me his scar the night we first met him."

    "Max," said Sander, running a hand down his face, "I still don't think he's a special kind of Crystallian. Mister Bato said no Crystallian can produce the simulation he did, nor can any of them teleport himself or anyone else to another world. It'll take too much out of a Crystallian that the overuse of his Essence will kill him."

"I know, I know. But," said Max, "what if Mister Brighteyes isn't entirely a Servant of Elohim? And what if he isn't purely Crystallian, either?"

Damien chuckled. "So you're saying—"

"I'm saying, what if Mister Brighteyes is half-Crystallian and half-Servant-of-Elohim?"

They all considered this. Max turned around, and walked alongside them again.

"Like the Nephilim?" said Lyn, after a while.

    "Yeah, like the—Hey, you know about the Nephilim!"

    Lyn shrugged. "Surface-level knowledge. Nothing much."

    "What's the Nephilim?" asked Sander.

    "The sons of God saw that mortal women were beautiful," Lyn recalled, her eyes gazing up at the elegiac expanse. "And the sons of God fell in love with the daughters of men, and they became their wives, and they had children with them—"

    "And the children were known as the Nephilim," said Max, with gusto.

    Damien's brows knitted in confusion. "What?"

    "Fallen angels came to earth, and fell in love with beautiful women, and had children with them," said Lyn.

    "So half-angel and half-human," said Sander.

    "Yes!" exclaimed Max. "And their children grew up huge. Goliath was one of them."

    The academic building now came to full view. Students filed in through the front doors, checked and patted down by security guards, then let in.

    Footsteps pounded behind them, against the concrete floor, growing louder as the source caught up to them. Then arms, muscular and tan, draped themselves over Damien and Max's shoulders.

"So what are we talking about?" said Jack, as they walked past the raven's statue.

Something smelled good, Damien noticed—cooked meat, and scrambled eggs, and mayonnaise, and tomatoes. He glanced to the right, and true enough there was a huge half-eaten sandwich in Jack's hand. Breakfast-on-the-go for the athlete with the busy morning schedule.

"Still figuring out what Mister Brighteyes really is," said Sander, walking up the steps to the front doors of the Ravenwood academic building.

"Anything new?" asked Jack, before each of them, one by one, had their bags checked and were patted down and were allowed in.

"Same theory as yesterday," said Lyn, the second Jack went through the front doors and into the hallway. Damien and Sander followed shortly after.

"But," said Max, resting a hand on Jack's shoulder. "I've got a new theory."

"And what's that?"

They were walking down the corridor, heading to their respective lockers to get some of their things before class starts at half past eight.

    "What if Mister Brighteyes is half-Crystallian and half-Servant-of-Elohim?" said Max, excitedly. "It's possible, don't you think?"

Jack thought for a moment, and nodded, and said, "Could be. Could be."

    "Ha! Told you," said Max, pointing a finger at Lyn, which in turn the raven-haired girl raised an eyebrow.

    "I didn't even contradict you," she said, pushing his hand down. "Don't accuse me of something I didn't do."

    "No, uh, what I was trying to say was—" A tinge of pink blossomed in Max's cheeks; his ears had turned red. "Look, what I meant was, I—"

    "Max, you're trying to prove your new theory to the wrong person." Lyn smiled a close-mouthed smile, and said, "I think your new theory makes sense."

    Max relaxed a bit, although his cheeks remained pink and his ears were still a noticeable scarlet. "Thanks, Lyn."

"Sure," she said, simply. Then, "Well, guess I'll see you all later at lunch." And with that, Lyn stepped away from them, and walked over to her locker.

Max turned to his other friends. "Sander, Damien, your opinion?"

"On what?" asked Damien.

Jack munched on his sandwich.

"The new theory. What do you guys think? What is thy verdict, my fine gentlemen?"

Sander shrugged, the corners of his lips quirking up in a small inadvertent smile. "Come to think of it, it is possible."

Damien nodded in agreement. He chuckled. "I might actually take you seriously on that one." He patted Max on the shoulder. "Nice thinking, bro."

Max opened his mouth to speak, only for him to close it again, his eyes growing wide, upon the realization that—

"Oh, shoot. I gotta go back. We just passed by my locker." And with that, Max sped off in the opposite direction. "See you later!" he called out to his friends, his voice loud enough for everyone within a seven-meter radius to hear.

Damien looked away from his tall friend running down the hall. He shook his head, chuckled to himself.

"Sometimes I wonder how much sugar that boy eats for breakfast," said Sander, shaking his head.

    Damien chuckled. "Same."

"Judging by how tall Max is, I'm gonna say hella a lot," Jack said, before taking another bite of his sandwich. "Think his mom buys a truckload from the grocery store just for him."

    "Sander!" a voice called out. A petite blonde girl was running toward them, many sheets of to-be-discarded-or-to-be-recycled campaign posters piled together in her arms.

    Damien and Jack noticed the smile that made its way to Sander's face—both boys exchanged knowing glances, eyebrows raised in mischief—"You know what I'm thinking?" "Bruh, it's no secret to the both of us."—yet said nothing of it. Not explicitly, anyway.

    "Talya, what's up?" said Sander, pausing in his tracks, as soon as Talya came up close.

    "Sander," said Talya, with a wide smile on her face, her blue eyes sparkling under the fluorescent lights, "I—"

    Popping noises, several of them, like gunshots reverberated in the air. A few screams echoed down the hall. There was the rhythm of footsteps moving away from something, and, after the momentary end of chaos, a peal of footfalls scurrying over to the source of the disturbance, voices speaking all at once, creating a new wave of noise.

    Damien, Jack, Sander, and Talya exchanged glances, then on some unspoken cue ran with the current of curious students flooding up the corridor.

A crowd had already formed around the scene, speaking in not-so-hushed voices, a cacophony of trepidation and curiosity and a sick kind of amusement.

Damien spotted it from a distance—the top of the once navy blue locker and the white wall behind it splattered in what appeared to be red paint. He hoped it was paint and just paint, red paint and nothing more than that, but he couldn't ignore the smell of metal filling his nostrils, the odor permeating the air around them. Worst of all, that particular locker seemed familiar, its specific location sparking a sort of recognition. Then he realized—

Damien knew whom that locker belonged to.

Jack cursed out loud and ran forward and pushed his way through the crowd. People said some unpleasant remarks, swore at him as he shoved them aside. But he didn't care. He wanted to know if his friend was okay—that's all that mattered.

    Jack stumbled to the front of the crowd. Damien, Sander, and Talya followed soon after. Here the iron smell was strongest, so putrid that they could taste it, and the very smell of it made them sick. The victim's locker had been left wide open, everything in and around it drenched a dark red.

    And there on the tainted tiled floor were two figures: one was a boy, a tall trembling form, bathed in what they realized now was animal blood; the other was a raven-haired girl on the brink of tears, holding on to the boy's shaking hands, anxiously muttering something almost incomprehensible.

    "Max, Max," they could hear Lyn say, as she massaged his hands, staining her own pale hands a deep red. "It's just a prank, a really bad prank. You'll be okay, Max. You'll be okay. You'll be okay . . . "

    Yet Max wouldn't stop trembling, and tears ran down his face, and his hands, finding feeling, held on tight to Lyn's.

    Jack walked over and crouched down to their level. Damien and Sander were beside him in no time.

    "What happened?" Jack asked Lyn.

    Lyn drew in sharp breaths, shook her head. "I don't know. I—"

    Max pulled a hand free from Lyn's grasp, lifted a finger in the direction of his locker. "Th-There was something . . . I-I thought—gunshots. Th-Then blood . . . blood everywhere."

Damien found his gaze wandering from one thing to another, searching for an answer to his own unspoken question—first at Max's trembling form and how tears streamed down his friend's stained boyish face, then to the locker and how everything in and around it was drenched red, and then the floor and how little torn fragments of something floated upon the scarlet flood.

Damien picked up a piece. Soft, wet, rubbery. A fragment of a balloon, he believed.

Lyn was right. It was a prank—a really, really bad prank—one to the level of sadistic cruelty.

A voice in his brain was telling him who could have done it. Too obvious, bro, he thought to himself. For one, they had no other enemies—

No other enemies their age. No other enemies with their stupid, miserable level of immaturity.

And that same voice, his own, cried out for vengeance.

    Something beside Lyn moved, she felt that. She felt him rise, momentarily casting a huge shadow upon their crouched figures. She sensed him leave, the dark shape that fell upon them slipping away, his footsteps splashing against the puddle of blood on the floor.

Lyn looked up. Damien was already walking away from them, the sea of onlookers parting for a clear path through.

    She saw a certain fear in them, the looks they were giving him, the words they muttered to one another. She didn't see his face, she didn't see the look in his eyes. But Lyn knew, from the way he strode past the crowd and down the hall, that this wasn't good.

    And Jack saw it, too.

"Lyn," he said, standing, "take Max to the school nurse. Sander"—Jack turned to the blond boy in glasses—"we've got to go, fast."

"I'll call a teacher," said Talya. "Lyn can't take Max's weight all the way to the clinic on her own."

Sander nodded in approval. And with that, Talya squeezed her way through the crowd and ran off in the direction of the closest faculty room.

    "Come on," Jack said, gesturing to Sander. Then to the crowd: "Move!"

The audience shuffled over to the sides, pressing themselves against the lockers and against each other. And with that, Jack and Sander crossed the sea of spectators. They darted down corridors, turned corners, curious eyes trailing after them. Their own eyes and ears, however, kept peeled for a certain stocky brown boy of a friend.

Damien was pissed, if that wasn't obvious enough. And the challenge, for both Jack and Sander, was finding him before he did anything reckless and stupid.

And that meant the possibility of having to find them before he did.

Damien could see them now, gathered by the window facing the grounds behind the building. Pale sunlight spilt in like a subtle spotlight upon them. They were talking, laughing about something, he was sure of that. Some sort of joke passing around them, a goblet of rich wine they all shared, relishing its taste as they took their sips. For power, for glory, for victory. Sick, sick victory.

Damien strode forward. His hands stretched open and folded closed, again and again and again, ready to choke the laughter out of their throats.

So what if he got in trouble? he thought to himself. They messed with Max in the worst way. Messed him up real bad. Triggered something deep within their sunshine of a friend, something beneath the layer of smiles and laughter and goofy quips. A darkness borne from one of the most traumatic nights anyone could ever experience.

Not cool, bro, he thought, taking quick, determined steps toward Ronny and his circle of posses. Not freakin' cool.

"Bowers!"

The voice startled them at first, evident in the sudden jolt in their postures. Then Ronny and his friends turned their attention to Damien's approaching figure.

"Ronny, you—"

"Bautista—"

Damien lunged himself forward, reached his hands out. Someone called out to him from behind; he ignored that. He was close, so close, their necks and faces mere inches away from his grasp. But arms, a pair on each side, held on to him tight and drew Damien back from inflicting any damage. Jack, on his right, managed to hold him in place. Sander, on his left, skidded and stumbled a couple steps forward, unable to restrain Damien's strength at first. Then with a heave, pushing all his weight back and away from the group standing before them, Sander pulled Damien's left arm to a shaky still.

"Bautista, what the hell—"

"You did it," said Damien, through clenched teeth. "You put the balloons with all that blood in Max's locker. I'm sure you did. You and your posses. You're sick, Bowers, you know that? Sick in the head, like your fa—"

"Don't you dare," said Ronny, taking a step forward, jabbing a finger toward Damien. His friends were holding him back now, just as Jack and Sander were doing to Damien. A fire blazed in his dark eyes. "Don't you dare mention that monster to me. I'm nothing like him, Bautista—"

Damien laughed darkly. "You sure about that, Bowers? 'Cause seems to me I'm looking at a mirror of a mugshot from thirteen years ago."

"Shut up, Bautista—"

"What's going on here?"

Then all was quiet. All eyes turned to a lanky, bespectacled, ginger man. Mr. Stepanek, the CommTech teacher, stood not far from them, arms crossed over his chest, the expression on his face austere for the usually lenient teacher Ravenwood students knew.

    "Mister Bowers and Mister Bautista," he said, "do you seriously intend to start a fight within school premises?"

    Jack and Sander felt Damien stiffen in their grasp, no longer struggling against their hold on him.

    "I'll be nice for now," said Mr. Stepanek, yet the tone in his voice did not waver from its severity. "I won't report this to Mister Grisham. However, this will be your first and last warning. Next time you start a fight—whether it be the second I leave for my class, or be it next week, or next month, or next semester—I'll send you all eight to the deputy head teacher's office. No explanations, no excuses from any of you. Do I make myself clear?"

    Silence again. The kind where you can hear a pin drop.

    In a voice louder and sterner than the last, Mr. Stepanek repeated, "Do I make myself clear?"

    "Yes, Mister Stepanek," came the collective, uniform response.

"Good," said Mr. Stepanek, nodding more to himself. "Good."

A long pause, another few beats of silence, then he glanced over to the right, catching sight of a group of freshman girls standing next to each other, having watched most of the commotion.

And it was only then he realized the presence of other students standing along the corridor, eyeing him with quiet anticipation.

"Show's over," said Mr. Stepanek quickly, waving his hand as if shooing away the present onlookers. "Off to your respective classrooms. Go on now. Go on."

And with that, the hallway buzzed awkwardly back to life, students either sauntering or running to their classrooms, lockers opening and closing with a clang.

After giving Damien, Jack, Sander, and Ronny and his friends one last look, Mr. Stepanek strode off to his first class on his Monday morning schedule.

    Damien glanced at his friends, and then said, "You can let go of me now."

    Jack and Sander hesitated, exchanged nervous looks. Damien rolled his eyes, and allowed his arms to hang limp in their hold.

    "There. Not going to do anything stupid, promise."

    And with that, they loosened their grip on his arms. Damien straightened up and, without a beat passed, said, "You crossed the line, Bowers."

    Ronny shrugged, his friends no longer holding him back.

    "Tell me," said Damien, "how much do I have to pay you this time to stay away from my friends?" He reached into his pants pocket.

    "I'm not accepting offers," said Ronny.

    Damien pulled his hand out. The pads of his pointer fingers had only brushed against his wallet's leather surface.

    "Was a mistake," explained Ronny. "All we thought of was the money. We should've known better than to put our reputation on the line. You embarrassed us, Bautista. Not gonna let that happen again."

Ronny smirked.

"And, Bautista," he went on, "don't you think you're barking at the wrong tree?"

Damien, Jack, and Sander said nothing, their eyes fixed on Ronny and his gang.

"Yo, tell me, what's your proof? Did you find any traces of us? Any clues that point to us as suspects to whatever crime you're accusing us of?"

"I found traces of balloons in the blood," said Damien. "Who else would've done it but you."

"You sound so confident." Ronny smiled. But his smile faded in a fraction of a second. "But I'll tell you this, Bautista, we've no idea what you're talking about. Blood? Balloons? What's this? That horror movie with the clown? Next time you accuse us of something we didn't do, better get your facts straight and your evidence ready. Got it?"

And with that, Ronny spun on his heel, and walked down the hall in the opposite direction. His friends quickly followed suit.

Sander heaved a sigh. "Come on," he said, after a quick glance at his watch. "First period starts in about ten minutes, and I've still got to pick some stuff up from my locker."

"Yeah," said Jack, watching Ronny and his posses shrink into the distance and disappear round a corner. "Let's go."

"I'm okay, Dad," said Max, sitting at the edge of a bed. "Just a little shaken up, is all."

"But you still have to clean up before you go to class," said Mr. Gascarth, sitting across from him on a bed next to where his son sat. "You can't go to class like that," he added, gesturing to Max's heavily blood-stained clothes.

    Max laughed. "I can just tell them Halloween came early. It's only a month away."

    Mr. Gascarth shook his head, yet he couldn't help the smile that crept to his lips. He chuckled, and rested a hand on his son's shoulder. "I hope you're not serious about that."

    "I'm not," Max assured him.

    When Talya went off to find a teacher, she did find one almost immediately. Mr. Gascarth was walking down the corridor, headed to the classroom of his first class on a Monday morning, his teaching materials ready in his arms. And that's when Talya found him, and told him about a student pranked so badly that he was shaking in a pool of blood.

    Little did she know that the student was the teacher's own son.

    So Mr. Gascarth ran down the hallways with Talya leading him. And when they came to the scene of the crime, he recognized his son in an instant, dropped his supplies to the floor, and heaved Max up to stand and guided him to the school clinic.

Lyn trailed behind them out of concern for her friend's well-being.

Talya returned to her student council campaign team, who had called her up, saying they'd been looking for her everywhere.

"Go," Lyn had assured Talya, when she hesitated to leave. "They need you now. And Mister Gascarth's here. It'll be okay."

"Yeah," Talya had said, a little more to herself. She held up Mr. Gascarth's things, which she had picked up along the way, layered atop the campaign posters that had served their use and were to be recycled as scrap for the school offices. "I'll put these in his classroom first. He teaches in the classroom next to ours during first period."

    After a quick exchange of "See you later in class", they parted ways—Lyn darting down the corridor to follow Max and Mr. Gascarth to the school clinic; Talya running in the opposite direction, heading over to Mr. Gascarth's classroom, phone pressed to her ear as she assured the student council campaign team that she'll be there in a minute.

    At present, Lyn stood leaning against a plain white wall in the school clinic, next to the only two beds in the room both occupied by father and son. She said no word, and listened in on their conversation.

    Then Lyn smiled to herself at a sudden strange thought—friends. She never expected to make any on the first day, save Damien, who, if she were being completely honest, she had drifted apart from in middle school.

    She didn't expect anyone to like her. She didn't expect anyone would want to make friends with a freak like her. (That's what the girls in Immaculate Heart had called her, among other labels. And they made sure she believed that.)

As she stood there, with less than five minutes to run before the bell rings for first period, Lyn found it quite a surprise to find herself still here at the risk of being late for class, and just wanting to see if her friend Max was doing all right.

    "Miss Taraschi? Miss Taraschi?"

    "Lyn?"

Lyn stirred, waking from her stream of thoughts. She looked over to Max, most of the muck now washed off his face to reveal the boyish features she recognized so well, then to Mr. Gascarth glancing down at his watch.

The teacher looked up, and said to Lyn, "We only have two minutes until the bell rings. You'll be late for your first class. We should get going."

Lyn nodded. "You'll be okay?" she asked Max.

"Yeah," said Max, with a reassuring smile. "Just gonna head back to my dorm room to change out of my male-version-of-Carrie costume."

"Well," said Lyn, hitching the strap of her backpack up her shoulder, "guess I'll see you later, then."

"Miss Taraschi?"

Lyn turned to Mr. Gascarth, who already stood by the door.

"Let's go."

It was 8:29 A.M., and the halls were near empty now, save for a few students rushing to get their things out of their lockers, stuffing said things in their bags, and quickly shutting their lockers closed, and making a run for it down the corridor to their respective classrooms. Mr. Grisham was making his final rounds through the school, scolding students who were still out along the hallways at this time (as if that would make them any earlier for class). Then he opened a specific door, and, after one final glance around, pulled it closed to attend to his own first class that morning.

     And at 8:29 A.M., Mr. Gascarth and Lyn were walking briskly down the white-tiled, white-fluorescent-lit path and up a flight of stairs.

Mr. Gascarth gave his student a quick sideways glance, and said, chuckling, "Seems like we're going in the same direction."

Lyn could only nod. She kept her mouth closed, breathed through her nose—a technique she learned from Mr. Bato and Jack during their weekend runs before actual training began—as she and the Math teacher turned a corner and ran up another flight of steps.

    "Talya said our classroom for first period is right next to yours," she explained, her eyes scanning the digits painted on small wooden slabs fixed at the top of the doors. She was looking for Room 221.

    "Guess she's right about that," said Mr. Gascarth, coming to a halt by the door of a classroom, pointing up at the little wooden slab atop that read "Room 223."

    "Yeah," Lyn breathed out. "I guess she is, Mister Gascarth."

The shrill ring of the bell pierced the air, and moved Lyn to suddenly sprint over to the classroom close by, saying in a rush of words, "I'll see you in Math, Mister Gascarth."

"Miss Taraschi, wait."

Lyn's hand was already on the doorknob. She turned her glance over to Mr. Gascarth, never failing to notice the huge bloodstain on his shoulder, a dark brownish shape against the navy blue fabric of his jacket.

"Thank you," he said, "for being there for Max."

Lyn nodded, and said, "He's my friend. He would've done the same for me."

A stream of thoughts flooded her headspace, then—the memory of their first conversation, of Max and her sitting on the curb with an earphone plugged to an ear each; the memory of her catching sight of him checking on her wrist on several occasions to see if she was all right; the conversations they had alone about it; the thought that he still kept her secret and never told a soul that sometimes his friend wasn't as okay or as strong as she made herself out to be.

Lyn turned the doorknob.

"And Miss Taraschi?"

Lyn turned again to Mr. Gascarth.

"I would advise you and Max and Mister Alexander to choose the right kind of friends."

Lyn nodded, forced a smile, and, with that, pushed open the door. She quickly greeted Mrs. Chase, and walked down the aisle, past classmates and their curious eyes, past Damien who mouthed, "Is Max okay?" which Lyn responded with a nod and a small, assuring smile.

The soft thump of her backpack on the floor. The slight squeak of her chair as she slid into her seat. Mrs. Chase's voice enumerating names. The replies of "Present" echoing one after another.

And Lyn kept her silence, feeling her heart break over Mr. Gascarth's words.

Small wheels squeaked as they rolled against the tiled floor. With each step, footfalls of large old sneakers beat next to the sound, creating an awkward kind of melody that echoed through the vacant hallways.

The janitor came to a halt before the scene of the crime, and he heaved out a sigh.

Everything was red—the floor, the poor kid's locker . . . even the walls were splattered an ugly deep red. And the strong iron smell—Phewee! Don't get me started on that.

He scrunched his nose at the stench. "First the auditorium, now this?" he muttered to himself, his full gray mustache twitching with each word.

He pushed the mop into the spinner, soaking the head in water, and pulled it out by the shaft. Then he took a step forward . . .

. . . and felt something beneath his right shoe, something soft and mushy.

With another sigh, the man lifted his foot and stepped back, revealing a blood-soaked, half-eaten sandwich laying on the stained tiled floor.

"Kids these days," he grunted, picking up the flattened sandwich with a gloved hand. He dropped it into the closest garbage bin, and began to work, and said, as he pushed the mop to and fro, "Stupid millennials not knowing the value of food. Waste of a good ol' sandwich. Blessed with all this technology and the internet, but they care 'bout nothing but themselves and their darn cell phones. Back in my day . . ."