"Good evening Mrs White." Cole said to my mother after we were allowed entry into her hospital room.

Mum smiled at us, sitting up in the bed and beckoning us to come over. I stubbornly remained planted to the place behind the door, gluing my eyes to the floor. Cole went to her side and made enquiries about her health.

I was ashamed of looking up at my mother after abandoning her here for a day or too.

And Winter just chose that moment to open the door and it hit me hard on the back of my head.

"Ow! What the hell?" I glowered at Winter. Mum and Cole smirked at me.

Winter shrugged, entering with three cups of hot coffee and my bag slung on his shoulder. "I didn't ask you to stand behind the door."

I reached out to smack his forehead but he ducked under my hand and walked further into the room. "So you aren't going to apologize?" I watched him place the cups on a table under the television on the wall on the opposite side of mum's bed.

"Why should he? Come here you silly girl." Mum said sharply, smiling as I shuffled reluctantly to her bedside. She pulled me into a hug and I felt myself relax as I breathed in her fruity body spray.

Cole discretely stomped on my foot, reminding me of my promise to apologize to her.

I winced. "I'm extremely sorry mum."

She smiled, allowing me to sit on her bed and taking my left hand in her warm one.

"I understand your pain, baby." Cole and Winter snickered. "She'll always be my baby, it doesn't matter how tall she grows." Mom said, poking at my forehead.

Rolling my eyes, I let her talk about my height and how shorter Cole looks. I was overjoyed when the grin on his face slipped off.

Mum smiled at Winter who was enjoying our misery. "And you young man, you're all grown up, having a beautiful girlfriend. I've always imagined you with Aurora, you know?"

I choked at the same time Winter did. Now it was time for Cole to grin like a Cheshire cat.

"Ma." I mumbled.

She squeezed my hand. "I only jest. I've been in here too long breathing in the smell of harsh antiseptics and it's driving me insane. When am I going home?"

I frowned upon remembering I had not discussed mum's discharge with the doctor. "I'll just go and talk about your discharge now, okay?" She nodded and I glanced warily at my friends. "Don't tell them anything they shouldn't know."

Winter rolled his eyes. "There's nothing about you we don't know."

Stickkng up the middle finger, at him, I strolled out into the corridor and tried to remember the way to Doctor Jerry's office. All the the corridors and doors in here were identical and it drove me insane. The nurses that passed never bothered to help me out and it's because I was too proud to ask for help.

After what seemed like minutes, I finally stopped in front of the door that had 'DOCTOR JERRY' engraved in gold at the top.

With a stiff face, I knocked on the door. Twice.

"Come in." A masculine voice said.

And I twisted the handle and let myself in. Doctor Jerry's office looked the same since the last time I was in here.

Few medical charts on the wall. A white floor to ceiling high cupboard was to my left. Underneath, the white tiles gleamed under the sole source of lightning from the florescent bulb.

Doctor Jerry smiled to at me from his chair. "We meet again, Miss White."

I scoffed. "Cut that shit out, Jerry. You don't like me, I don't like you. The only reason I'm here is to discuss my mother's condition. When will she be discharged?"

He flipped open a file. "From the records, she is cleared to go home. You just need to sign these papers."

A clipboard was slid to my side of the table and a pen. He remained silent as I scrawled my signature and name where they were required.

As soon as I was done, my feet had already pulled me to the door. The less time I spent with him, the better.

"Aurora."

I turned. "What?"

"I got paid to kill your mum with an insulin overdose but I didn't. You may not see me alive after this, but you should know that if I wanted to take out my anger on your mother for your rudeness, I would have and your mother would have been in the mortuary as we speak. Be careful, Aurora. There are many enemies. Remember 44321"

Meeting his gaze, I nodded and left.

44321?

If only I knew it was the last time I would ever see him again, I would have asked who paid to kill my mother but then, I already knew.

As I stepped back into the hallways, suddenly an alarm sounded, loud and clear. Meaning danger.

What the fuck?

Nurses were running here and there and a few patients, those well enough, broke out of their rooms. I stood frozen.

This has got to be a dream. A dream. The vision.

When the first gunshot sounded, I raced all the way to mum's room. In my mind, calculations were being made on how to get my mother and friends to safety.

Inside mum's hospital room, quickly adjusting to the darkness, I swiftly barricaded the door. Cole, mum and Winter were crouched low on the floor, the curtains over the window were drawn, only letting in flickers of lights from the outside.

"What's happening?" Cole asked.

I glanced at my mother. She understood. Sven had sent men for her.

"We need to get out of here, all of us."

Winter crawled to the window and stared outside. "There are black vans at the entrance."

I quickly gathered mum's clothes into a bag and tossed it to Cole. "We have to search for the back exit. There's an elevator just at the corner."

While Cole tried to make mum relax a little,  I joined Winter at the window, crouched low too to ascertain the number of vans, five.

The gunshots in the hall intensified. Winter grabbed my hand. "Come on, let's get out of here. Anna, are you ready?"

Mom nodded. "I am."

And we cautiosly stole into the corridor. We heard gunshots, screams and feet running from the other end and automatically, we steered in the opposite direction.

Cole pressed a button in the first elevator we got to and when it opened, we quickly filled in. Some other lady was trying to get in, but Cole quickly blocked her way and pressed the button for us to go down.

"Oops!" He waved at her before the  doors shut.

"What's next?" Mom asked, hugging herself. Winter was still carrying the load of all our bags so I snatched mine and hung it over my back.

"We're going down-"

Cole slapped his hand over my mouth. "-you make everything worse by saying that."

I sighed, pulling his hand down. "Fine. There's a bottom exit we need to get to. Once we're out through there, everything will be fine-"

"-hopefully." Winter completed.

I nodded. Each of us were seriously tensed. And I only hoped Doctor Jerry wasn't leading us to a dead end.

When the elevator stopped and opened, we walked cautiously into a sort of storage room with boxes filled with different objects that were non-hospital related.

Cole grabbed a spanner. "For defence."

We tiptoed to the other end while my eyes were in all the possible places anyone could hide in.

Winter tugged on the door. "It's locked."

Cole pointed at a set of numbers there. "I think we'll be needing the password. Aura? Or do we start permutation and combination tests right now?"

I rolled my eyes and quickly typed in '44321' and the numbers flashed green before the door opened smoothly.

"Holy shit, Aura, you're like those badass ladies in movies." Cole gushed.

Only him would be talking about something so unrelated to our safety.

Mum slapped him upside his head. "Language." She warned.

Suddenly the gunshots started getting closer. Winter pushed us all into the dark room and slammed the door shut.

"I can't see a fuc- ow!" Cole whisper yelled. I figured mum had  hit him again.

Winter turned on his flashlight and I saw we were in a parking lot empty save for an old Mercedes Benz car.

"That's our way out, I guess." Mom said.

We were moving towards it when I held all three back. "I don't trust that car."

"But you led us here." Cole replied.

"I could just lead you back up you know and leave you-" Winter touched my arm. Sighing, I reverted my focus to our current predicament.

"Let's just try an alternate exit then." Winter suggested.

Something banged against the door we came in from. Adrenaline pumped in through our veins again and we ran to the only door in sight and Cole dragged it open, ushering us into the fresh air outside in the unknown street.

"Parkour street." Winter announced. I wondered how he could see so well. Even with my glasses on, the most I could identify were outlines of sky high buildings.

"Why's the power supply cut?" Cole asked.

"We're not going to wait to find out. Let's get back to my house. It's safer there." Mum replied. My grip on her hand tightened and together, all four of us marched into the darkness.

⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜

Once we were safely in our house, the tension hanging around me, my friends and mother immediately scattered into the air.

Relieved I could breathe more freely again, I collapsed into a sofa. Winter and Cole took the floor but mum kept standing. Cole, breathing haphazardly was grateful Winter tossed him his inhaler and he sucked deep breaths in until his breathing had evened out.

"So much for a Saturday night. I should have been-"

"No one cares about what you should have been doing, Cole-"

"-I do." I interrupted the eminent swear words from Winter's mouth. His eyes narrowed at me and I carefully dodged his glare and flashing a sympathetic smile for Cole who seemed stunned out of any comeback.

Winter rarely lost his shit and I understood it was the events of this night that sent his emotions crashing.

The one thing I needed was just some form of reassurance that this night wasn't going to spiral further into more disturbing events.

I turned to mum instead. She was speaking to someone on her phone and I waited for her to end the call.

"I've arranged for extra security around the house and you won't be allowed to roam about freely." Mum spoke directly directly to me.

Cole snorted. "Only rich people can relate."

The dirty look I send him is enough to restrain his mouth.

"What about school? And what about my friends? Aren't they going to be targets too?" I asked, eyes straying to Winter who had his head leaned back on the sofa, gazing upwards at the high off-white ceiling.

"You're the main target, Aurora. Believe me." Mum said.

"Of course." I mumble.

"Why would anyone want to harm an innocent, frail teenager?" Cole asked.

It took all the effort in me to not hurl a glass side-stool at his head. I settled for a low protesting noise that sounded like a horse's neigh.

"Sven sent those men against you because he knows you're the only hope if our case against him is to succeed." Mum replied, shrugging off her jacket, exposing her white turtle-neck long sleeved shirt.

"What case?"

"I filed a case against Sven."

Like a robot, I rose and walked up to my room and entered, slamming the door after I did. There's so much to take in in one night.

⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜

The next morning, Crystal and Winter were watching a movie in my room while Cole and I were fixing my window which got stuck this morning.

I sent a message to Summer last night but she said her family would be visiting some of their close friends as was their custom.

"You know this doesn't change anything right?" Cole said, twisting and turning a few loose bolts with a spanner.

"What?" I asked, half-distracted at the sight of Winter and Crystal kissing briefly on my bed.

Ew.

Cole sighed and threw a random object at them. "We don't need a first-rated pornography scene, you two!"

Embarassed, Crystal buried her face in her blonde hair while Winter just stuck up his middle finger at us. I responded with my two middle ones, satisfied when he rolled his eyes.

"I hope Sven gets to rot in prison." Cole spoke up again.

"Me too, Old Cole, me too." I said, imagining all possible ways Sven could get punished in his cell.

Cole snorted and a finger flicked my forehead. "Don't call me that."

I grinned. "Says the person that called me an innocent, frail teenager. Consider this payback."

He kissed his teeth. "Whatever."

And we fell into a discussion about all that was happening in our lives. His plan for basketball and all that. The short term plans for my life was to graduate high-school, and long-term was maybe to go into full-time writing not minding mum's wishfor me to go into medical school. After all, my slogan was "Just Do It", I will always choose what I'm passionate about and not what society says.

"Where's your celebrity boyfriend?" Cole asked again.

I raised a brow. "Who?"

Cole shot me a strange look. "Anfield, Trent, remember?"

Swearing internally at my fickle memory, I caught the mischief on Cole's face. "I totally forgot his party coming up this week Wednesday."

Cole smirked. "Of course. Do you even remember where you kept our invitation cards?"

I smiled nervously. "Y-yes."

"Uh-huh." Cole grinned and screwed in the last bolt. "There, your window's all fixed." He swung the window pane back and forth for emphasis.

"Thank you, darling." I said, laughing at the horrified expression my friend showed.

"Ew! Don't say that, never ever."

I squeezed his cheeks between my hands. "Aww. Don't you look so cute with that face of yours?"

Cole swatted my hands away. "You sound like a girl and it's annoying."

"I'm a girl in case you're forgetting."  I sat on the window sill and Cole did the same.

"Says the girl who never goes out in anything but sweatpants and over-sized T-shirts." He gestured at my current outfit. White Ice-Age T-shirt over Grey sweatpants. The T-shirt wasn't even mine but Cole was right.

"Yeah whatever. But it changes nothing."

Cole smirked, leaning closer. "Prove it?"

I seized the nearest book and aimed it at his head but he avoided it in time and my Chemistry textbook fell out through the window, landing on the somebody's head.

"Ow!"

I fell off the window sill taking Cole down with me to the soft rugged floor.

"That was crazy." I chuckled.

Cole laughed. "You're not getting back that book, you know that?"

Annoyed at the loss of my precious book, I glared at him.

"You can get a hundred more if you want. Why are you so-ow!"

"That was a limited edition, you f*ck head."

"You ass."

"Donkey."

Cole stuck out a tongue. "It's the same thing." His smile quickly fell away. "So, you and Trent have been 'great friends' for a long time and I wasn't aware."

Sighing, I narrated my experience with Alexander, avoiding the details of my attempted suicide. One way or the other, if a word about that gets out, I'm in trouble, with my mother, my friends... None of them will be pleased.

I'm totally certain.