So, it turns out that apparently you can't get into a fight that catches the attention of every single student in the entire school without also attracting the one of the principal. The news of the whole Mathéo and Aloïs 'dispute' reaches the ears of the mean lady at the top and the two are invited to her office by the end of school. Unlike most principals of nowadays, Mrs Typh is somewhat rational, and considering that Aloïs is the only one that actually damaged school property, Mathéo gets off with only a warning while the idiot jock gets a two-week suspension.

As Mathéo walks out of the office, he's surprised to find the pretty new girl from earlier waiting for him at the reception bench.

"How did it go?" Laura asks him anxiously as she quickly rises from the seat. It's obvious she fears something bad may have happened, maybe an expulsion.

"Awn. You were worried about me," Mathéo teases the brunette, causing her face to redden in shyness. "Thanks, but you didn't have to wait out here for so long. It was just a warning." The boy's phone vibrates all of a sudden as he receives a text from Sara

'Are you still planning on catching a ride with Aaron and me?'

"I didn't mean it like that," Laura tries to clarify her intentions to the brown skinned boy, pulling his attention away from his friend's message. "I also wanted to ask you if you happen to have a car I could follow."

Upon hearing this, Mathéo starts contemplating on who to follow (Lyam is out of the picture since he'll be too busy hanging out with Kate). The only option seemed to be following his friend's ride and bringing Laura along, but there's a certain issue concerning that. He's fully aware that Aaron is still angry about the whole 'rescuing him from a fight' thing and will surely make everything awkward and uncomfortable if he goes with them. After about a minute of weighing the pros and cons, Mathéo comes up with a different idea.

"I don't have my own car, but do you want to take the bus?"

"The school bus?"

"No, the local one," he clarifies. "There's a bus stop not too far from the school, and the bus goes to almost every neighborhood. It leaves in a few minutes, and I can accompany you to help you get the hang of it. What do you say?"

"Um..." Laura thinks about it a little before accepting the offer. "Sure, why not?"

"Great!" Mathéo responds with a smile as he takes out his phone and replies to Sara, telling her that he already has another ride. "All right, let's go," he tells Laura as he leads the way to the stop.

It doesn't take long for the two to arrive at the bus stop, and the main vehicle soon after. Mathéo pays for both their tickets before they proceed inside the bus where they continue their friendly conversation from earlier (when they were in the nurse's office). About an hour later, the bus stops at Etterbeek, Laura's neighborhood, and they both get off. Mathéo accompanies her to her front door 'cause she's still having a hard time distinguishing the other streets from hers, and when the two finally get there, he discovers the girl's house looks very different from what he was imagining. Its collosal. A bit smaller than Sara's, but still impressively large.

The brunette takes her key out of her bag and opens the door, but before she goes in, she stops to ask Mathéo an unexpected question.

"Do you want to..." she pauses for a moment, "come in?"

"Wow! We're skipping to that stage already, huh? I wasn't expecting that," he jokes before accepting. "Yeah, why not? It's not like I've got anything better to do for the rest of the day."

"I wasn't trying to... um... I meant..." Laura fumbles her words as she realizes what Mathéo was implying with his statement, but he comes in anyway without paying attention to her clumsy attempt of an explanation.

The interior of the house is just as elegant as the exterior, and shockingly, there aren't any helps working here. You would normally expect a home as gigantic as this to have a plethora of workers maintaining it, but apparently, Laura's guardian/ big brother-Nathaniel-isn't fond of the idea of paying strangers to take care of the building when it's empty for most of the day. Mathéo and Laura lose track of time and end up spending the day in the home cinema watching movies and chatting. I know what your dirty mind is expecting them to do during all this alone time together in such a massive place, and no, they don't make out. The brunette girl is just happy to finally have a friend that she can hang out with for once and feel like every other teenager.

Sometime in the evening, around 8 or 9, Laura suddenly remembers that she forgot to buy the supplies Nathaniel asked her to get. Mathéo offers to help by taking her to a mini mart not too far from here and they rush over.

"Do you mind if I ask you a question?" Mathéo asks Laura as they wander through the isles at the store.

"Yeah, of course. You can ask me anything."

"I don't mean to pry or anything, I was just wondering why you live alone with your brother and not with your parents. You don't have to answer it though if you don't want to, I understand if it's something personal."

"Oh... that. It's a bit of a long story." Her mood falls a little bit before continuing, "my mum passed away when I was in primary school. She was a police officer and she died in service. My dad on the other hand, well, he isn't exactly fit to be a parent. You can't really raise a child when you're stuck in prison with a life sentence. So, my brother became my guardian, and since he started working as an international diplomat, we've been moving around a lot. I attend a new school in a different country almost every year at this point. I don't blame him though, I know he's just trying his best."

"I'm so sorry. I imagine all that must be really hard to deal with," Mathéo apologizes to her. After all, he can personally relate to not having the most stable family background.

"Thank you, but it's okay. Nathaniel is all the family I need."

Mathéo's attention is pulled for an instant when he receives a text and his phone vibrates. It's from his mom.

'Where are you? Aren't you coming home? Sara and Aaron said you decided not to follow them after school and they don't know where you are. Where did you go? We're all worried sick. Please come back, Mathéo.'

That's the moment it finally dawns on this teenager just how late it is right now. Now that he's opened his phone, he realizes this isn't the first time his family has tried to reach him. 8 missed calls from his father, 5 from Lyam, 4 each from Aaron and Sara and 9 from his mother all within the last four hours. Fuck! His parents are going to kill him for ghosting them. Luckily for him, his neighborhood is kind of close to the store they're currently in and it won't take him long to get there if he ran. He just has to help Laura out and then he can go.

As the two teens are about to head to the counter, they suddenly hear an awfully frightening sound. It sounds like someone's head is being bashed against a wall.

"Wait here," Mathéo whispers to Laura before stealthily approaching the origin of the noise to see the cause, and what he finds is scarring. The cashier is unconscious at the front desk and he's bleeding excessively from the back of his head. There are also blood-stained cracks on the wall behind him, which is most likely where his head was hit. It's hard to tell if he's already dead or not, but the latino isn't going to wait to find out.

Timorous, Mathéo immediately attempts to flee, but before he's even able to turn around, an unknown assailant comes from behind and squeezes his throat with both hands. The teen fights and struggles to the best of his ability to free himself, but it proves futile. The man's grip is too strong. He's about to be strangled to death, but then, Laura comes to save him. Using all the strength she can muster, she strikes the attacker's head with the store's fire extinguisher, knocking him to the floor.

Mathéo immediately takes in a huge breath of air as he regains his ability to breathe at last. He looks at the ground and notices the mysterious man is still very much conscious.

"Run!" the boy exclaims as Laura and him sprint swiftly towards the back door exit before the man can get up.

The door leads them out into the forest and the two highschoolers stop to consider the obvious risks involved in entering the woods in the middle of the night, but when they turn and see the person trying to kill them slowly getting back to his feet, they decide the danger is worth it and continue on. Mathéo and Laura run as far as possible as fast as possible until they eventually need to take a break to catch their breaths.

"Did we lose him?" Laura asks her companion worriedly while they both pant heavily due to exhaustion.

"I don't think so," a deep mysterious voice answers from behind. Laura and Mathéo turn around in shock to see a burly grown man standing there with no visible sign of fatigue, almost as if he teleported. He's wearing a hood over his head, plus how dark everywhere is, so it's impossible to see his face, but there is no doubt in their mind. That's the assailant. "What happened guys? Is the game of hide and seek already over?"

'How did he catch up so quickly?' the two wonder in confusion.

"I need you to run as quickly as you can and call for help. I'll stall him," Mathéo instructs his friend in a whisper and she nods in compliance, but as she's about to flee, he notices something odd about the creep's posture change all of a sudden and he pulls her by the hand. The man is going to unleash his zegen ability. "Wait, Laura."

She halts immediately as some sort of dome forms around the two of them, trapping them inside. They can see their reflections on the surfaces like a mirror. Is this his power, and if so, what is the full extent of its capabilities?

Some form of invisible blade out of nowhere stabs into the back of Mathéo's left thigh, causing him to fall to his knee in pain. How is that even possible? He doesn't see any weapon on the site of the injury and Laura is the only other person in this prison. The girl rushes to treat him, and as she approaches him, he takes notice of another weird occurrence. Her footsteps. They still sound like she's walking on grass even though the cupola is covering the soil.

'Could this all just be an illusion?' Mathéo asks himself.

While Laura heals the wound, he uses his hand to feel the ground and he touches an invisible object that resembles a broken wine bottle. His guess is right. As he tries to grab hold of it, an unseeable body grabs his friend's neck and she cries out in pain and hear.

"Help!" the brunette screams.

Without wasting a single moment, Mathéo picks up the bottle and plunges it into the void behind Laura, successfully penetrating one of the attacker's arms. He lets go of her and cusses in pain. It appears his ability must require total concentration as the whole façade fades away once he's hit and the teenagers find themselves back in the forest. With the man's guard down, Mathéo uses his strength to kick him to the ground.

"Run! Now!" Mathéo shouts to Laura.

"No. What of...?"

"Just go get help. I'll be fine." Laura eventually obeys and flees. The attacker tries to rise back up and pursue her, but the Hispanic teen punches him back down before he can. "Can't you stay put for once?"

To Mathéo's surprise, the man pulls out a pistol from his pocket and fires a bullet. The teen swiftly falls backwards to the ground, narrowly dodging the projectile, but that's what the assailant wants. Mathéo gets back on his feet, but the guy is gone. In fact, everything is gone. The trees, the stars, the moon, everything, all missing. He's just standing there alone in a seemingly endless black abyss.

"Oh shit!" the boy cusses aloud as he becomes aware the nefarious zegen has once again activated his power. He decides to solely rely on his ears instead of his vision to spot out his opponent, but unlike before, his surrounding is completely devoid of sound. "What do I do now?"

The boy's blood instantly goes cold the moment he feels a weapon pressed against his back. It's a gun, there's no doubt about it.

"Who's the one that should be staying put now?" Mathéo hears the sadistic man laugh maliciously.

Thoughts and ideas of how to take control of the situation go through the adolescent's mind, but before he's able to take action, the trigger is pulled. The bang echoes all through the woods as Mathéo drops to the earth. Blood spills endlessly out of the bullet wound while the shooter turns and walks away from the dying body.

"Well, that took longer than I expected. Time for victim number two."

* * * *

Laura keeps on running without looking back. She doesn't dare to stop for even a second despite how sore all her muscles feel out of fear that the hooded man will once again magically appear behind her. She pulls out her phone from her pocket and dials 100. The call rings for a few seconds before a lady finally picks up.

"Hello. You've reached Brussels emergency services. Please state your name and purpose for calling."

As Laura's about to answer, she hears a loud gunshot from the direction she's coming from and accidentally drops the device in shock.

"No no no," she laments as she searches the soil for her gadget but to no avail. Before she realizes, the forest around her, for as wide as her eyes can see, is set in flames.

The girl's heart begins to beat more and more quickly 'cause she knows the cause of this strange occurrence. It's the attacker. She starts to frantically turn from left to right in order to see where he's hiding, but no one is there. Then, a large hand suddenly grabs her neck from the front and lifts her up. She screams and struggles until she manages to kick him in the groin, forcing him to drop her. The brunette rushes to her feet and attempts to escape, but she doesn't know where to pass through. Everywhere is burning.

"You sly bitch! Where do you think you're going?!" The assailant shouts furiously as he forcefully takes hold of the back of Laura's head.

"Help! Help!" the teenage girl begs as tears flow from her eyes like a fountain, but there's no one out there to rescue her. The grown man mercilessly pounds her head against a nearby tree until she eventually loses consciousness. He abandons her body on the ground, blood spewing from her temple, and exits the crime scene. His job is now done.