Fingers twitched even within her interlaced hands that she clenched in an effort to hide the shivers this girl gave her. The unnerving pink eyes had yet to come up from the phone they were glued to since entering the room and sitting down. High pigtails were braided into long white tails that swung with each draft of air from the dingy air conditioner. It was like she had been pulled from a video game or an anime. Yet those waves of power that shook Rene to her core screamed this was a predator not an innocent child.

What is she?

Static tingled her scalp. Something was still wrong with her connection with Kai and Karo. She had a sneaking suspicious this was something the Two-Faced Queen had done, particularly the more she thought about it. It was obvious the woman had been spying on them for quite some time and could reach into minds regardless of how close she was. The feeling had been to familiar to be coincidence between the powerful back up Kara received and the Queen's more direct attack when she summoned them.

It irked Rene and, more overwhelming, it terrified her. She had fought years to keep people from prying and rearranging her head with the twisted psychology practiced by the Asylum mixed with heavy drugs. The fact someone could do so that easily from anywhere at any time left her constantly doubting every thought that drifted through her head.

Through the crawling waves like an itch she couldn't scratch in her brain, she got a broken far off answer.

Dangerous.

"I could've told you that."

Danny glanced over, pulling his own fascinated eyes away from the girl's phone. He was sitting far too close to her for Rene's comfort. "Karo and Kai finally answer you."

"Kinda." Rene got up from the other bed to stand beside Michael who was leaning against the window sill, one eye on the room and the other scanning outside. "You seem on edge."

"Like I said, we didn't exactly get permission to be doing this little gallivant of ours." He dropped the blind he had been fidgeting with. "You really don't know where the Stick is?"

She rolled her eyes. Declan wasn't even here and he still insisted on the demeaning code names. She had already explained to him what had happened since they woke up from the Queen to make their way to town. He on the other had had been dodgy at best with his tale. Unlike the rambler to be so quiet, it was likely he hadn't had time to rehearse the story. The more time they spent outside the Asylum the more she saw behind the performer's mask. It was yet to been seen if that would be their undoing or not. For now she tried to focus on what he had done to prove himself. Not like she didn't have secrets and an icy exterior hiding things, even if that didn't hold up as much anymore. Again, something she wasn't sure if it was good or not.

"We can't wait for him forever." Despite their fighting, Michael's response was heavy-hearted.

Cassie looked over from where she was reading a magazine, having taken a seat as far from the girl as she could. "We can't just give up on him. Declan is our friend. You know the dream team or whatever you called us."

"I believe I proposed Team Awesome, but I would also accept Michael and his daring knights or you know something along those lines."

The joke was half-inflated at best, a throw-out because it was expected. Rene was getting worried about him.

"Well if you all would shut up, I could focus more to find him. I found you idiots didn't I?" The girl glared at Rene, the first time she had spoken since entering the room.

"Little demon." Rene hissed under her breath.

Michael twitched, but didn't actually smile, darkness in his eyes. "Don't let her hear you say that."

Rene picked at her nail beds, trying to appear unfazed. Inside though her stomach curled and a chill slithered across her skin giving her goose-bumps. What the hell was she?

"So you aren't a demon?" Danny questioned.

Michael waved his hands making the cut-it-out single, mouthing frantically to shut up. Danny either didn't see it, which how could he not, or ignored it. How he didn't feel afraid with death seemingly sitting beside him was beyond her. Because of instead of backing down, he continued.

"Because isn't Lilith the name of the like the first demons or something? I think some myths even have her as having been Adam's first wife and the first female demon. Been a while since I had my theology-phase, but pretty sure I'm in the ball park. Plus you obviously aren't human, so it seemed like an okay guess."

The dainty fingers stopped their flitting across the screen. All Rene could think is there is no way those tiny things could wrap around Danny's throat to choke him, not that crazy fantasy beings usually just choke a person to death like a normal.

"I'm not sure what's worse, being plain animal stupid like your friends or the intelligent idiocy you seem to exhibit."

After a second, Danny pointed at her phone. "You made a mistake in your code."

A wrenched giggle rippled and emerged from the sweet-looking mouth giving extreme horror movie vibes. "How daft can you be? The mere thought I could not only make a mistake but a human would notice it is beyond ludicrous and indignant. The odds of that happening are,"

"No really it's right there." He rambled off what it was compared to what it should be in an language that seemed to make Rene's ears burn and was incomprehensible.

Lilith examined her phone before turning even whiter. She pulled it closer to her face, before letting loose a string of what Rene assumed was curse words that again made her ears feel like they were bleeding.

"How did you read that let alone see it!" She demanded jumping up to her feet on the bed, like a child throwing a tantrum.

Danny shrugged. "Don't know, the more I stared at it the more it just kinda made sense."

Rene shuttered. Something about his words brought back images of Kristy and all the screaming children in the Asylum. What if the place had done something to him and that was why he could read it? It was obvious they were experimenting from Kristy and the findings Lora had alluded to when she raided the Asylum for information. Without realizing it, Rene had begun to chew her lip to the point of bleeding again. The warm trickle shocking her to stop. Excusing herself to the bathroom, Rene slammed the door. Her composure only lasted a second though before she was throwing up into the toilet.

A small knock was barely audible over the retching. A moment later Cass entered and smoothed what strands of hair that had wriggled free of her ponytail back from her now cold, sweaty face.

"It's not your fault."

A sob racked Rene. "I should've know. I should've got us out sooner. Why didn't you tell me? Did they do something to you too?"

Cassie became quiet a moment, her eyes larger than normal as tears rimmed them. "I'm not sure. Danny and I had been talking about it since we left. I mean we had our suspicions after everything but weren't sure. We were missing large chunks of time where we remember being taken out of our rooms down a hallway, but then nothing til we woke back up in our beds. Danny asked Lora to look into it more for us. Apparently she found out many of the others had similar stories of missing parts of their lives."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Rene cried, unable to hold herself up any  more she buried her hands in Cassie's shirts clinging for a lifeline.

"Because we weren't sure yet and you've made it pretty obvious you don't want to look back, but Danny and I...we needed to. Not everyone was able to dance on the ashes and move on. Neither of us hold it against you, Rene. I wanted to tell you...I just wasn't sure if you could you know handle  it. Besides, like you said before stuff like this is one of those big signs of crazy. We were afraid to even bring it up. We saw what they did to you when they thought you were losing time when tattoos showed. Neither of us had even told each other until after we had gotten out." Cassie hugged her tight, her shoulders shaking. "Rene we were scared kids all just living a nightmare without hope for help."

Rene shook, breaking apart again. The pieces falling to the floor only to shatter more. Her friends, her family had been suffering for so long. How many kids had the Asylum torn apart and put back together into god knows what? They had suffered in silence out of terror and stigma for years, only to be released and hold it in because of her. They had stayed quiet because she had selfish run from things like she always did. For months, she had been telling herself she was getting better and getting stronger. She had convinced herself she had become a fighter with each training exercise and increase in control of her tattoo wielding, but with this revelation, it became obvious she had just turned her back and run toward something else instead of outright fleeing. 

The bathroom door creaked open to reveal Danny. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but you need to see this."

Using each other as leverage, the two pulled themselves from the puddle of emotions they had become on the ground. Rene leaned against the doorway, exhausted and trying to push herself forward when she froze. Declan stood inside the room, sunlight radiating down from behind him to make him glow.

"Hey guys."

Cassie was the first to move to try and go hug him. Her cries of pain becomes joyous as it bubbled out, but Rene re-firmed her grip to stop her. Cassie's wide eyes questioned her, but the lack of movement from everyone else backed her decision. This was much to good to be true.

Smoke began rising in the air as Michael stepped forward. "Hey Stick. Where you been?"

Declan stepped in enough to shut the door. His dark frame once a comfort of normalcy and security now seemed unnatural. His clothing was ripped and fraying, the same ones he had been wearing in the clearing. It had been almost a week since that day and yet here he was, like not a minute had passed. Blood even still dripped from the wounds and bruises painted ugly yellow, black abstracts. He put up his hands in surrender.

"What's going on? Why are you threatening me? And who is that?" His eyes darted to Lilith who had her phone up in front of her, the camera on and glued to Declan.

Air caught in her throat. "Answer the question Dec."

The dark blue eyes that once held hope for a girl gasping for breath on the floor where she thought she was going to die, held confusion and sadness. Was she wrong? Were they overreacting? Could they really be this lucky?

A bright flash interrupted his answer. He raised a weak, shaking hand to cover his eyes as more of an afterthought reaction.

"Lilith?" Michael questioned.

The air got thicker with smoke, causing Danny and Cassie to cough. Her throat choked with it and her lungs burned, but she feared asking him to stop just in case she was right. Michael wouldn't let it kill them, she knew that. She had seen his precision in directing it, when he was focused. At the moment he appeared to be worried more about having it ready. The oxygen deprivation would also make it hard to think for a human, making it harder to lie.

The girl crawled down from the bed. Her eyes glowing and unwavering from their target. She slowly circled him, scanning up and down with her phone.

"I don't know what he is. But he sure as hell ain't human, at least not all of him." She turned the screen to show a playback with Declan glowing and glitching in what could only be described as a supernatural way.

Ice flashed as Rene drew her sword and drove it into the ground. Ice crawling and creeping across the floor to encase Declan's legs. He screamed in pain from the cold.

"Rene! Rene, stop it's me!"

Smoke gathered in a dense cloud to surround his head. Declan began coughing uncontrollably.

Cassie shrieked and cried to push in front of them, blocking Declan with big arms. "Are you two crazy! How can we be sure they didn't do something to him like they did to us? Or maybe Lilith got it wrong, I mean can we even trust her?"

Rene's eyes darted to look at Michael, fear reflected back at her.

Kai! Karo! Please! What do we do?

No answer.

They didn't know what to do. Like Cass had said, they were just kids living in a nightmare and they were all terrified of the next nightmare.