Hidden stars and clouds the shade of a brewing storm--the dark sky carried a sense of comfort and unease with it. Comfort, because it was all so quiet and away from the bustling city streets. And unease, because the rainstorm was only getting harsher. The dark only ever started with the scariest of things and ended with the lowest of hopes.

Not like I had much hope to begin with after all that I'd heard Ryder tell me back at his penthouse. He had tried telling me something--something I wasn't able to listen to because I had stopped listening just after he confirmed the only one thing I'd been dreading the most. That Brooke was in danger in the worst way possible.

Brooke was in danger and the stranger from last night at that bar was somehow connected to it. I didn't know how or why. I didn't know how it was all connected, I didn't know why someone was after Brooke, and I didn't know why--I didn't know why she'd been begging me for forgiveness right before hanging up on me.

For good. She'd hung up for good.

I forgave her. I'd told her that I forgave her. I wasn't mad at her. But her last words to me--it sounded like she didn't believe me, couldn't believe me. She'd ended our phone call because she hadn't been listening to me. There had been that...that manic edge in her voice. She'd been shouting at me. Mad and desperate for something she thought I'd never give her.

But I had. I'd forgiven her, hadn't I?

I squeezed my eyes shut as if that would somehow banish all those thoughts from my head. As if that would somehow make this whole situation a little less scary.

I can't end up there again, I kept telling myself. Hoping, pleading, wishing. I can't see someone die again. Not Brooke. Please not Brooke.

She's going to kill herself, was what Ryder had told me. And I'd refused to listen to anything after that because I refused to even think along those lines. Brooke wouldn't do that. Brooke wouldn't ever do that, not the Brooke I knew--the one who was my roommate and my best friend and who shared morning coffees with me and who cared about her classes and always woke me up if I was ever late to my class and who would never, never do something that would ruin us. Our friendship.

But she's already done that, hasn't she? A nasty, hateful voice spat acid all inside me. She already ruined the friendship when she went behind your back just to hook up with your boyfriend.

I wasn't going to listen to that voice because I didn't even know where it was coming from. And it was hateful, awful because Brooke was in danger and I didn't hate her. She was my friend. She'd befriended me when I'd been all alone and afraid of everything new around me, when I'd been so full of paranoia and fear and dread that I just kept hiding and hiding. I didn't hate her and I'd already forgiven her.

"Alice." Ryder's voice snapped me out of my head and I blinked in surprise, a little taken aback when I noticed that I was in a car, his car, and we were going somewhere I didn't recognize. Or at first, I didn't, not until Ryder added, "Pay attention. This is where your friend's house is?"

I stared at the quiet row of suburban houses on one side of us, a few porch lights on. I didn't recognize them. I didn't because I've never been here. The rest was as dark as the choppy, slow-moving water of the silver lake. I thought I saw dark rusty railings of the street bridge but my focus once again drifted towards the houses.

"I...I think so." I tried swallowing the lump in my throat and looked down at the scrap of paper in my hand, the one that had Brooke's address scribbled on it. It wasn't very precise but that's all Soren had given me when I'd asked him over text (I didn't think I could've faced phoning him right then). Soren had sounded confused, especially since maybe he'd already expected me to have deleted his number by now.

I fisted my hand around the paper for a second, two--three, before looking back out at the rows of houses and absentmindedly smoothing out the paper.

I should know. I should've known where Brooke's house was. I should've but I didn't because she'd never told me. I'd never asked her. We always avoided talking about our homes. I didn't know where she lived with her parents, yet Soren did. What did that say about me and all the things I'd messed up in my life?

All so suddenly, I could hear Soren's voice in my head, reminding me, telling me with that hidden desperation that Brooke's life back at home wasn't good. Her relationship with her parents wasn't good. I hadn't known that. I hadn't ever asked her about it. And all she'd ever told me was her Mum's grieving health. Even that had been purely accidental.

Maybe it was bad, her life back at home was bad and not good and instead of anyone being there for Brooke, I'd let her be just because we--I--thought she was ill.

"B-43, you said?" Ryder was frowning, slowing down the car. It was a piercing stare, thinking, calculating every single detail of our surroundings. At least I didn't think he was pissed at me for not even knowing where my one and only friend, apart from Nico, lived.

I let my eyes run over the paper and nodded, afraid to speak.

He pulled the car to a stop along the corner of the street and I looked up at him. "That's not where she'd be though, would she? I don't think her parents would." I stopped because I didn't even know what I meant to say at this point. "She sounded like she was outside. The rain and the..." Sound of water.

"I know." He was still focused on the houses around us, eyes slowly moving from one to the other. He didn't move to get out of the car and neither did I. I couldn't help but notice that I was probably ruining the fine leather of the seat with my rain-drenched clothes.

"The bridge," Ryder spoke. Just that.

I glanced over at the bridge at some distance, the empty, abandoned bridge with all the world's darkness looming over it. Then I looked back down at the leather seats I was ruining. I'm ruining it, I wanted to say out loud. Can't you see? I'm ruining it.

"What about the bridge?" I asked in a small voice.

"We may find them there."

"How are you so sure there's someone else there with her?"

He moved his gaze away from one specific house a few blocks away from us and looked at me. Really looked at me without all the sharp calculation in his gaze.

"You and I both heard someone else besides your friend on that phone call."

"I didn't," I said. I had. But maybe I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure. "Why do you think he--that other person will make her do it?" Kill herself. Brooke wouldn't, I knew she wouldn't, but I couldn't say it. I wouldn't say it.

"Do what? Make her kill herself?" He replied bluntly. "Because I've seen it happen before."

I felt myself shrink away from him, even though I was already somewhat plastered to the door on my side.

"I have seen him say things, do things to the one he chooses," he added, gaze narrowing. "He drives them to insanity until it all ends."

It all ends.

I shook my head, slow and heavy. "But you don't know for sure. We're not sure that it's him. The person you're talking about, we're not sure it's him with Brooke."

He didn't say anything. Not for twelve seconds. I knew that because I was counting. "I do know it's him."

"No, you don't. That's someone--he's someone you've seen because that's how you live. That's...that's your life. People like those who kill like heartless monsters belong in your life, not mine! Brooke is my friend and the kindest person I know. She's never hurt a soul. No one would ever want to--"

"She's not kind." Ryder scowled. "You damn well know your friend's anything but kind."

I looked at him, startled. "She is."

"She lied to you and she did hurt you."

She ruined it and made you think it was all your fault. She made you think--believe--that you weren't ever good enough for Soren. She ruined it because she was selfish. She didn't care about you or your friendship because that had never mattered to her.

I shook my head, wide-eyed and frantic. "I've forgiven her. I have." Then I added just as quickly, "And how do you even know about that? I never said anything about that to you. I never...I never told you about Brooke and Soren."

Ryder stared at me for a moment too long, clenching his jaw until he looked away. A long beat of silence passed by and each second only managed to increase the horrifying sense of dread over me.

"What's happening?" I whispered slowly, pressing my back to the door and staring at Ryder because I wasn't going to look anywhere near that bridge.

He didn't answer me.

"Ryder?"

He shook his head, a small shake as if getting rid of something that didn't matter, not right then, as he reached for the door.

"Ryder." I tried grabbing his arm but ended up clutching his sleeve and I tugged just so he'd look at me. "You're not telling me something. What are you not telling me?"

He looked back at me and whatever he saw on my face, or whatever that he heard in my voice, made him furrow his brows. "I'll explain later."

I watched as he pulled away and I watched as he opened his door and got out in the rain. Curling my hands into fists just so they'd stop trembling, I got out as well and winced at the sudden cold, even though I was already cold and wet, and wished for one painful moment that I could go back inside the car, curl away from all the horrors that waited ahead and hide from the cold.

Ryder came to my side after a handful of seconds and passed me a jacket--a raincoat--and I watched him as he flipped the black pistol in his other hand, placing in the bullets one by one, head hung low with wet dark strands of his hair falling over his forehead.

A small sound left my lips and he glanced up, looking down at the jacket that I was clutching in my hands as if that would somehow shield me. "It's not mine." He said, frowned for some reason, and then schooled his features as he pocketed the gun. "But it'll do."

As we started walking towards the bridge and into the dead of the night, I stuffed my hands inside the jacket pockets when I couldn't stop fidgeting.

"Do you think I should tell her parents?" I looked at Ryder, at his back as he walked in front of me. "Should I call them?"

Ryder stopped and so I did too. Looking over his shoulder I noticed that we'd stopped just a few steps past the entrance of the abandoned bridge, which was like I'd said, abandoned in a way literal sense. It was falling apart.

The choppy waters below seemed like the calm before a storm, which was concerning since the sky was still somewhat pouring and I couldn't even look past a few feet ahead of me, let alone to the end of the bridge.

If Brooke happened to be here, it wouldn't be easy to spot her.

"No need for that." Ryder was looking somewhere past the giant boulders, or maybe they were abandoned construction equipment (on a street bridge?). "Try calling your friend again."

I did. Gripping my phone and trying to protect it from the onslaught of rain, both Ryder and I tensed when we heard a distant sound of a phone ringing from in front of us. It was faint and too far away, and the rain wasn't making it any easier.

"Stay behind me." Ryder gave me a short, precise, and pointed look before continuing ahead.

I nodded even though he wasn't looking at me anymore and only just missed a short pile of debris before I could stumble over it. Ryder's hand shot out to stop me and I complied easily as he gently pushed me behind him.

I didn't understand what he was doing, why he was doing it when we'd barely even made halfway through the bridge, so I asked him, sharp and anxious, "What?"

"I see your friend." He said, gaze still ahead, and I had to blink past the raindrops to squint at the darkness ahead, at one of the rusty railings in particular that were shadowed by something dark.

No, I realized belatedly with newfound horror. Not something. It was someone. Someone standing so dangerously close to the railing, still like a statue with dark hair bellowing past narrow shoulders.

The person had their back facing the rest of the bridge but it didn't take me long to recognize Brooke. Because it was her. That was Brooke, standing so horrifyingly close to the edge of the bridge, staring past the blur of the rain and down at the dark, deathly waves.

"Brooke." It was a whisper that left my lips, one swallowed by the wind, but Ryder was close enough to catch it and he did. He must've also heard the crack in my voice since he grabbed my jacket sleeve, my wrist, and held on.

That's when I noticed another looming shadow, one almost draped behind Brooke's figure. We weren't too close to make it out but for one gut-wrenching second, I caught a glimpse of a dirty old gas mask, and even that one second was enough.

All the breath in my lungs was sucked out of me so fast that it left me dizzy and afraid and godawfully terrified.

"Ryder." I felt my throat squeezing in a warning. "He's--I've seen him. I've seen him."

Ryder stiffened in a way that I felt more than saw, and then at an alarmingly fast rate, I was being pulled to the side, behind another load of debris that somewhat hid us from view. Not that I thought anyone was looking at us.

"What did you just say?" Ryder demanded, gaze dark and furious and alarmed.

"I..."

"You've seen him before." He said out the words like they were poison on his tongue, like he couldn't believe in the slightest that he was saying them. "That's what you said."

I nodded because my own tongue felt heavy and useless in my mouth and I was so cold.

Ryder's gaze darkened, almost matching the deadly waves below. His grip on my arm tightened just a fraction as he pulled me closer, eyes not moving even a little away from my own. "When did this happen?"

I blinked fast as rainwater dripped down my forehead and the few wet strands that escaped past my hood. "It was...I was going to tell you. But then you were mad at me and I didn't think you would care--"

There was a noise that cut me off, a noise that sounded like shrieking metal, and I jumped in fright. It sounded so close. Brooke. Fuckfuckfuck.

Ryder let me go but not before leaning close and whispering softly in my ear, "We are going to talk about this later. Every last detail, am I clear?"

I nodded, wide-eyed, and couldn't help but notice the anger and alarm making his voice curl over with the barest hint of an accent much like Rafael's. I nodded again for good measure and flinched audibly this time when the metal creaking happened once more. "Brooke." I blurted out. "We've got to help her. How do we help her? What if--"

"There's no we, Alice. You're staying here, and you won't make a single sound."

I was shaking my head way before he could've finished that sentence. "I can't. I won't."

Ryder swore under his breath and looked over the pile of debris and towards the spot where we'd seen Brooke standing. The rain was slowing down and I didn't know whether the stinging in my eyes was just that or was it the tears clogging my throat.

"Please, I can't just stay here," I told him, desperate and afraid. "Ryder--"

A tiny scared noise, a sob of protest echoed in the wind, one that I felt within my heart but one that didn't come from my lips. I recognized the voice past the obvious anguish in it and it was Brooke. It had come from Brooke's lips.

A cry. A warning. A desperate last plea.

Ryder was moving way before I could've and by the time I forced my legs to cooperate and move as well, I could see that it was too late. Oh God, too late. I stopped, pulled to an abrupt halt as I watched, breath knocking out of my lungs as I saw the man in the gas mask behind Brooke, closer than before, grabbing Brooke by the shoulders and hauling her towards the railing, towards the chunk of railing that was broken and smashed to pieces. It gave way to the choppy waters below and I felt the blood draining out of me.

I froze because I was near them but not enough and I wanted to make it stop, I wanted to run to Brooke and grab her and hold on to her, but I couldn't. Because the dread that snaked up my throat right then held me still, told me it was too late, told me I can't--couldn't--wouldn't save her just like Fraser. Just like Fraser.

"No. N-No. Please, please, please." Brooke screamed out a guttural sob, I felt my vision blackening around the edges, and the man in the gas mask gave her one final shove. A force so harsh that sent her careening over the edge, feet slipping off the end of the bridge, falling and falling and just about to fall, and then--

And then Ryder was there. He was right there because of course he was. A heavy, dreadful lurch near my heart when I saw him lunging over the edge and grabbing onto something. Something that made me stumble forward and run towards them, finally run towards them, towards Ryder, towards Brooke who was hanging on the edge, barely holding onto Ryder's hand.

And I would've, God, I would've. Helped or cried in relief or fear or dread or just even been there. I would've. But then there was someone suddenly right in front of me, a dark shadow and the petrifying gas mask that came along with it--him--reeking of death and darkness, and I barely had time to make a noise when a large hand clamped over my mouth and the other grabbing my throat, shoving me and dragging me back until something narrow and sharp pressed against my back, digging into the raincoat and my skin.

I couldn't breathe. I clawed at the hands touching me but he was strong and steadfast and mad. Pissed. Angry. His gloved fingers around my throat tightened and tightened until my lungs felt like they were seconds away from choking and collapsing into thin particles of dust.

Tears stung the edges of my eyes, and it wasn't the rain because they burned like claws being scraped over raw skin and I was desperate, breathless, and the grip on my throat wasn't loosening in the slightest.

"Made a mistake. You made a mistake." The gas mask was close, too close, pressing against the side of my face until I had no choice but to hear. Because I couldn't breathe or see, I was to hear. "Selfish, coward, a pathetic fool. Could've saved your friend but you didn't, did you? Could've saved your cousin, but you didn't do that either." I tried to gasp, scream, but there was blood. I think I was seeing blood. Dark, hideous alleyways and dead bodies and dried crusted blood.

"You deserve days and nights and months and years in that dungeon, that cellar, was it? An experiment. Got dragged into it because it was an experiment. You think you've forgotten what happened there, but you haven't, have you? You still see it. The white coats, them drugging you until you told them everything you knew, asking your name, name, name." Each last word was punctuated by pressing me more against the sharp railing behind me. "You deserved it, all of it, and you know it. I know it too because I know all about you, Alice. I've seen you. I watch you."

I watch you. I watch you. I watch you.

"I know what you did with your sister's fiance. Kisses, secret touches, you think they don't know, but they will. They'll know everything you did behind closed doors, not caring even if your sister was just one room away. Every one will know because you deserve it, because you ruined your sister's happiness, because you betrayed her trust. But you know all about ruining things, don't you?"

I tried shaking my head. I tried. "You do." Grabbing me by the hair, hood thrown off, he shoved my head back and I felt the hit, welcomed the sudden dizziness. "You do. You do. You do." Every hit to the back of my head was met with a force too strong, until I felt like a limp mess, until I couldn't struggle anymore. I couldn't--didn't want to--breathe. "I see you. I watch you. And I will come after you."

He let go of me so fast, or maybe he didn't but he just pushed me like he'd pushed Brooke. And I knew Brooke was out there, and Ryder too, and I knew I should be worried and scared and terrified, but I was also falling. There wasn't a hand over my mouth or one gripping my throat and digging into my throat anymore. There was air, cool air, and it felt like I was burning.

Something's wrong, I thought or whispered or screamed. I didn't know.

I fell and there weren't cool waves below me, around me, but cool metal beneath me. Not shoved off the bridge then, I thought but even that realization was too far away. I was on my knees, still on the bridge, and I tried to sit up but I couldn't. I couldn't and then I was falling again because I couldn't see.

"Hey, hey, querida, easy there. Look at me. You're all right. You're fine. Look at me." There were quick, urgent hands on my face, my neck, my waist. "Querida."

"I-I can't see." That was my voice, words coming out slurred and unfitting. I tried to lift my hands from the cool, wet metal beneath me, but everything felt so heavy and dizzy.

"Fuck, fuck." A soft whisper near me and I finally managed to touch something else other than the rusty metal, a fabric, a drenched sleeve. The hands on either side of my face were gentle, wiping off the water and tears from my eyes. "Okay. That's okay. You're going to be fine. Just keep listening to my voice. Keep talking to me? Keep talking to me, querida."

I tried to think, think, think, but I couldn't. All except for a, "Brooke?"

"Yeah. Yes, your friend is fine." His voice was like a safe, warm cocoon. A blanket draped over me on this cold, dark night. It was heady and reassuring and relieving. A deep, raspy voice, lilting with that strange warm accent, that was familiar and unfamiliar, engraved deep into my heart because he'd keep me safe. He'd kept me safe before. From the white coats and the drugs, my brain offered a little too late.

"And you'll be too. Everything will be fine." A soft brush against the side of my head. I leaned into the warmth. The hold on my waist tightened just a fraction. "Keep talking?" A soft, concerned request.

"I..." I blinked but everything was still too blurry. "I...couldn't breathe...there."

"You can now." Another gentle brush against my hair, not near the blinding pain at the back of my head, but on the sides. "Breathe for me."

I tried to nod but I was too gone. "Brooke is fine?" I slurred. I had a belated, dreadful thought that I could feel something cool and wet trickling down my neck. Not water, but stickier. It hurt.

"Yes. Yes." There was a flash of a phone and I flinched. "Fuck, sorry. The ambulance will be here in a second. Keep talking to me, querida. Don't close your eyes."

"The ambulance?" I whispered, swaying until I was caught once again.

"Your friend's fine. You're going to be fine too." But there was that worry again. Deep, terrified concern. I didn't understand.

I didn't understand because everything was fine. Better. Good than before. Brooke was...Brooke was fine. She wasn't--she'd fallen off the bridge but she was fine. Everything was fine. Ryder had said everything was fine and he didn't lie. Wouldn't lie to me.

And that was it, the only thing I kept thinking, the only words ringing in my battered, exhausted brain, as I clung to Ryder, let him hold onto me and touch me like everything was fine. Because everything was fine.

Even though something dark and insistent deep inside me told me that nothing really was.

------
so brooke didn't die. thoughts??