The streets were empty-no-the entire city was empty. Devoid of human life and activity. The houses nearby were shadowed by the scattered clouds that choked the moon’s light shining down from above. It was as if a mist of darkness had descended onto the town, covering everything and anything that was in the night air. The single lasting fluorescent light that was still working was the street lamp next to the pumping stations. It flickered as Sean stood, casting a shuddering shadow of him across the empty black top. He regained his balance, and called out.
    “Aubrey?” No answer.
“Hello?” Nothing.
    “Anyone?”
    No response. Sean squinted through the veil of black that clouded his vision. It was more annoying than terrifying. Sean wasn’t a stranger to danger.
    Sean scratched at his temple, feeling pain, and drew his fingers away to reveal blood. He felt it trickle down his face.
    “Aubrey?” Sean repeated in hoarse whisper. He couldn’t see the girl anywhere. In fact, it was hard enough to make out the squat, rectangular forms of the pumping stations that were only about fifty feet away behind him. Putting a hand to his head, looking at the broken glass covering the walk in front of the store, Sean turned around and hoped to find Aubrey. He knew she didn’t have any reason to go back inside the store, even if it wasn’t cold in there anymore. So Sean started walking in the opposite direction, toward gas pumps. There were four in total, stacked up next to the four pillars that held up the overhead ceiling. Two sets of large green dumpsters were set off to the side of a small building located a little ways off next to the station pumps. No lights were on. As Sean walked past the building, he noticed the sign on the door. It was labeled in fat, red lettering.

CLEAN-UP STORE ROOM
   
    Sean jerked the handle. Nothing. Of course it was locked, Sean thought to himself, shaking his head. He wandered and half staggered to the first pump, putting his hand on it. His head felt like someone had squeezed into his mind, using with a cotton rag and scrubbed every inch of his brain. The only thought that made sense to him was finding Aubrey. Her sudden absence either meant two things: 1) She had run away, hopefully to the nearest phone to call the police or 2) She was dead. The latter seemed more and more plausible to Sean as he slalomed between each gas pump. If the same thing or person that had caused the room temperature inside of the station’s store to drop to sub-zero, Sean guessed that same person was after the people inside. But why? The people inside were just Aubrey, her boss, and Sean. What good would someone get from killing three people in a convenience store? Sean was debating the thought when he tripped over Aubrey’s arm. She was behind gas pump number four, her outstretched hand the object that Sean had tripped over. She was face down, and in the darkness he could see a dark splotch growing beneath her body. Or what was left of her body. Sean thought he was imagining it, hoping what he was seeing wasn’t real. But it was. Half of Aubrey’s side was gone. Blown apart, as if a shark had bitten away a giant piece of the left side of her midsection. Sean stared down at her body, not knowing what to do. Even in the darkness he saw small, tiny chunks that were splattered across the white concrete pavement.
    Sean tried swallowing, but it only made it worse. He choked on his saliva, the choke into a racking cough, the cough into a sudden churn inside his stomach. He threw up the remains of his slushie next to Aubrey’s body. His vomit mixed in with the black pool that mingled around Aubrey’s lifeless form. Sean couldn’t stop staring at her body. Both of his hands were around his sides, clutching his ribs; afraid as if he were about to fall apart, to lay motionless next to Aubrey.
He first felt the presence before he saw it. He was kneeling over Aubrey’s body, shocked at the girl’s state. There was a pulsating burst of a slight breeze tha murmured in the air. Then there was a shimmer that rippled in the air in front him. His eyes quickly fluttered upward to the movement in the air in front of him. It was as if someone had skipped a tiny pebble across a still pond, the ripples taking the form of a head, then shoulders, and then the whole human body materialized. The figure was crouching over the body, much like Sean, in examination of Aubrey. Sean stared at the apparition in astonishment, his arms unclenching from his body. The shimmering head that was attached to the shimmering body tilted up, and Sean thought he could see the faintest outline of a human face peeking through a silhouette of a circle.
    Sean knew the figure was watching him. The figure, cloaked in darkness and shadow, blended easily into the night, its form mixing into the background. Sean had trouble focusing on the figure, it was so hard to pinpoint the figure in the night. Moving an opaque hand over the body of Aubrey, the stranger cloaked in night floated to Sean’s side, getting right up to his face. The stranger was close enough for Sean to see two, indistinct eyes of green staring back at him.
    “Don’t react.”
Sean tried his best not to.
The voice was that of a young woman, possibly in her teen years, possibly in the age range of Sean. The stranger’s voice had a commanding, yet rushed tone. As juvenile as her voice sounded, her eyes were wide, grasping for Sean’s attention. Sean felt invisible fingers pressing themselves into his shoulders. The stranger shifted in her crouched position.
“This is going to hurt me more than you, so you’d better not die.”
Before Sean could reply, he had his breath sucked out of him, as if he had just stuck his mouth into an industrial licensed vacuum.
Then the world fell out from underneath Sean’s feet. It was like he was thrust into a rollercoaster’s seat as it dropped down in its rapid descent. The only thing was that Sean didn’t have a seat to hold on to. He was the one being held, the stranger’s fingers and palms clenching hard, digging themselves into Sean’s shoulders as he and the cloaked figure fell into what seemed to be an abyss of light and darkness. What Sean felt, he could be certain of; he would never forget that feeling. But in that moment of free-falling, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. At first, it seemed like he were falling through water, sinking faster than a lead weight being dropped at sea. Flecks of color flashed in and out of his vision, a continuous strobe of earth tone colors giving the illusion that he was falling up, instead of down. Even though all four senses were telling him that he was indeed descending rapidly, his sight was fooled into thinking that he was being lifted into the sky.
    The strobes of blacks, browns, and grays soon gave way to brilliant yellow flashes whirling around Sean’s head, as if ten thousand roman candles were being spun in a candelabrum and he was right in the middle. What made everything in that moment the most surreal was the fact that there was no sound. Not a single crack, not a single whistle of air as Sean fell, no sound that reflected any hint to the flashing and spraying of golden light at the end. It was like they had fallen through a vacuum, and then at the end of the tunnel, everything stopped. The golden flecks of light disappeared inside a silent tornado that sucked itself into nonexistence, then the feeling of free-falling ended. A little too abruptly, in Sean’s opinion.
    He had been twisted, whirled around, dropped from the sky, and then dumped onto a wooden paneled floor. He could see it up close in extreme detail, the cartilage of his nose being pushed hard into the floor. Even though Sean’s stomach had just been emptied only minutes ago, he could feel another wave of overpowering nausea coming. The floor wouldn’t stop spinning; it kept teetering back and forth in a repetitive, jerking motion that made Sean close his eyes and hold back the rising bile in his throat. He stayed down, both hands planted to the wooden floorboards. If he got up now, he was sure that he was going to throw up a lung.
    “Mary, Martha, and Joseph. . .”
    Sean could see the stranger crouching in his peripheral vision as he was making out with the floor. He saw that she was no longer a shimmering figure blending with the background, but wore a forest green and brown cloak that covered head with a large, deep hood that shadowed most of her face. The rest of her body was enveloped by the heavy fabric, it covered her knees and splayed out onto the floorboards. It was parted in the middle like any cloak, with a solitary black strap that held the two flaps together. Sean saw that she was wearing a pullover sweater that matched the design of her hooded cloak. If Sean wasn’t close to throwing up at that moment, he would’ve laughed at that sight of her.
    He must have chuckled, because the girl said,
    “What are you giggling about?”
    She was defensive and derisive, but Sean couldn’t help but to grin. He managed to hold his head up and look the girl in the eyes, to really see her for the second time.
    “Nothing.” He said, shaking his head, and then stopping, feeling and hearing a gurgle make it’s way up his esophagus. It came out as a rancid burp. The girl didn’t flinch. Sean could see on her face that she wasn’t impressed with the person that knelt before her, and Sean couldn’t blame her. He was probably dirty all over, with dust covering the most parts of his chest, hands, and face. And with blood streaming down his right temple, Sean knew he wasn’t in any position to criticize as this girl’s appearance. But he still thought it ridiculous, nonetheless.
    Sean looked around him, and was unsettled to notice that he realized he was in a similar kitchen space to Harry’s apartment. His eyes grew wide as he thrust himself up to his feet by grabbing onto the nearby island as he scanned the room. He inhaled sharply. It was the same apartment. Not the exact same room of Harry’s, but it was similar. The room had the same plush ottoman folding couch, the same vanilla drapes that covered the paned glass the overlooked the town, the same nature paintings covering sky blue walls, right down to the kitchen layout and furniture. Everything looked the same; but different and in its own style.
    “Where are we?” Sean asked, but realized how stupid it sounded. He cut off the girl’s response and answered his own question. “Wait-no, don’t tell me.” He whirled around, staring at the girl in the forest cloak, who was now standing. She was shorter than Sean, at least by two inches, but she stood straight and tall as if he was the short one. Sean put out a hand to steady himself against the edge of the small island and said, “We’re in Forsythe Heights, aren’t we?” Sean felt his saliva mincing his words and swallowed hard, just staring at the girl.
    She stared back at him. She didn’t say anything for a three-count, and then shrugged, and nodded.
    “The name doesn’t really make sense, when you translate it from its original meaning,” She began, her voice smooth and crisp, unaccented, but straying from a traditional American tone. Sean could sense a foreign lilt in her words, but he didn’t know what it was. “But that’s nothing compared to what you’ve just experienced in the past ten minutes, right?”
    She threw back the cowl that shadowed her eyes, revealing very dark dun colored hair that shifted from dark brown to black underneath the yellow ceiling lights above. It was clamped and tied into a ponytail behind her head. Her face was pale, with the slightest tinge of pink coating the sides of his cheeks. There was a fine, white scar on her face that started at the top of her right eyebrow and trickled down and back to her earlobe. Sean pried his eyes away from the scar and back into the tactful green gaze of the girl.
    “Um. . . what?” Sean asked, his mind feeling blank, full, and tired all at the same time. He had trouble focusing, and the movement of the girl’s tilting head brought her back into Sean’s vision. The girl said, “Since we skipped introductions earlier-” She thrust out her hand that seemed to magically sprout out of her cloak and hover in mid air between them. “I’m Elise.” She didn’t grin, but kept her same blank, thin lipped expression.
    Sean shook her outstretched hand, giving a short nod. “Hi, I’m-”
    “Sean Knite?” Elise interrupted, and Sean could see the faintest hint of a smile crack her straight lips as she pulled away her hand. “Yeah, I know.”
    Sean sighed. “Of course you do, you’re my stalker.”
    Elise’s lips straightened themselves out again, her expression a genuine look of concern. She stared at Sean, then said, “Oh. You knew?”
    “Yes, I knew!” Sean scoffed, nodding. “That night when I was outside of my garage, I saw you trying to hide! The only reason why I saw you was because of that ridiculous trench cloak you’re wearing.” He gestured at her with both hands.
    Elise’s eyelids squinted together, creating slits of green shooting back at him. She tilted her head, producing a dry, but false grin. “It’s just a cloak, no trench. And you couldn’t have have seen me.” Her eyes were now flicking back and forth, catching both of Sean’s eyes in the same stare.
    “I’m pretty sure I did.” Sean said.
    She shook her head. “That’s impossible.”
    Sean shrugged, nodding at her forest cloak again. “Patchy, thick. Colored like a forest. I saw you that night. Or-” He added. “Maybe you’re too proud to admit that you’re a bad stalker.”
    Elise tilted her head, moving around the counter and out of the single ceiling light that was on. “I’m excellent at what I do, and much better at anything than you.” She put both hands on the island, as if ready to prevent him from escaping. “So tell me the truth, how did you see me?”
    Sean frowned. “Really? Come on, you were right there across the street! Why were you spying on me?”
    Elise stared at Sean, her brilliant green eyes taking on a dull sheen. Sean chuckled, wiping a hand over his brow and smearing his now thickening blood across his temple and forehead.
    “Okay, I get it.” He said. “You can’t tell me because it’s so top secret, right? But can you tell me what’s going on? And where’s Aubrey? She is working with you . . . right?”
    The edges of Elise’s lips curved down a millimeter. She relaxed in her position, shoulder slumping.
    “That girl you were looking at, tell me what you saw.”
    Sean rubbed his eyes, moving to his right and back, his behind resting against the stove. “Well, you saw too, why-”
    “Just say it.” Elise said.
    Sean gulped, shaking his head. “I’ll have to say, it was pretty gruesome. Whoever you’re working for does a great job at prosthetics-”
    Elise’s eyes intensified. “What did you see?”
    Sighing, Sean moved his tongue around his dry mouth and put his hands in his pockets, one of his fingers finding a new hole in his right pocket. He shrugged, “I saw the girl Aubrey-who was clearly working for whoever you’re working for. . .”
    He hesitated, and Elise gestured with two fingers, urging him to continue. Sean let out a short exhalation of pent of breath. “She was-I mean, uh, I saw her lying on the ground, face down and- and she. . .”
    Sean wondered why he couldn’t finish his sentence. He knew what he had seen, he had stepped in her blood, smelled the gore. Why couldn’t he say it? Why was this Elise girl staring at him so much? Why couldn’t he stop his hands from shaking?
    Sean continued, but this time in a low and unsure voice.
    “She. . .she had her side torn open. There was . . .everywhere, it covered the ground.”
    “What was?” Elise prompted, her eyes drilling into his. “What covered the ground?”
Sean found it hard to look into Elise’s eyes and he turned his head down, inspecting the bottom part of his torn and shredded shirt.His hands turned into fists inside his pockets, and he tried to stop his jaw from trembling.
    “Her. She was. . . all over the place.” Sean felt his throat close up, his heart fall back into his lungs. And he fell with it, his back sliding down against the cool side of the oven. His hands came out of his pockets and drifted up to his head as he began to catch his head from falling into his lap. He saw Elise coming around the island and kneeling next to him in the corner of his eye, but he stared ahead, his mind now processing what he had just. Sean didn’t cry often, but when he did, he never cried in public, he didn’t even cry in front of his mom. But now, it was impossible not to. It was like trying to keep a flood at bay with a dam constructed by toothpicks. He just couldn’t help it.

    “You passed out.”
    Sean opened his eyes, his heart jumping out of his chest and his five sense following close behind. He lifted his head, his nostrils flexing and his eyes dilating. Sean took in his surroundings. He was still in the same apartment room, except now he was on the folding ottoman in the living quarters. The window was open a crack, allowing a midnight breeze to cascade throughout the room and cause gooseflesh to break out on Sean’s skin. His hand fled up to his chest and center, where his father’s gift was still hanging around his neck, underneath his dress shirt. It was still there, the big, custom round; shell casing and all.
He looked around, and his eyes landed on Elise, the girl with the forest cloak. She was sitting cross legged on the floor, her cloak covering her lowered head, her entire form swallowed up underneath her clothing. Her hood flinched upwards and Sean could make out a golden glow peeking out from the single crack in the cloak as it parted open a bit. It was the same sunlit glow that he had seen that gave her away the first night she had seen her on his street. It faded once Elise stood and came over to stand over him. Sean licked his lips, his throat tasting and feeling like a dusty shoe.
    “What? Oh. . .” Sean said, remembering. He had been crying on the floor, and then he guessed he had passed out from stress, or something. He was expecting a snide remark about his frailty of mind from the girl at any moment, but instead Elise just said, “Don’t drown yourself. Take small sips, and then gulps. Not the other way around.”
    Her voice sounded like official and more casual, but still lacking in complete emotional elocution and levity. An unmarked plastic water bottle was produced out from the folds of Elise’s cloak and was handed to Sean. He took it, eyes first on Elise and then on the water that was now flowing down his esophagus.
    “Slow down, or you will pass out again.” Elise said. “I can’t have you groggy when I’m giving you an info dump.”
    After a few careful sips and some glaring from Elise, Sean set down the empty bottle on the little round table next to the couch and swallowed his last drops of refreshing drink. Then he inhaled, a slow and even breath, and then exhaled slowly.
    “Good.” Elise commented, coming around to face Sean head on. She was pulling behind her a chair and set the back of the chair in front of her, so that when she sat down, her arms were crossed in a comfortable position on top of the head of the chair’s back. She pulled off her hood dramatically and stared at Sean for a good ten-count, and then said, “Consider all that has happened, from up until the grocery outlet to now. What do you think has happened?”
    Sean had guessed he was going to have this talk, sooner or later. Best time would be now, he thought.
    “Well,” He said, clasping his hands, fingers interlaced. He pursed his lips and stared across at Elise. “I think that something very unusual has just happened.”
    Elise closed her eyes, a definitive frown clouding her pale features. “Yes. That has been established.” Then she positioned her upper lip over her bottom lip, so that she took on a contemplative look. “Summarize this evening in a sentence.”
    Sean’s eyebrows shot up. “What are you, my therapist?”
    “Just do it.” Elise snapped.
    “Okay.” Sean put his hands on his knees, half shrugging. “Okay. I just got off work and was getting a drink at a 7 Eleven when it suddenly got cold for some reason and I got out. After that, I walked around a bit and found Aubrey on. . .” Sean stopped.
    “Okay, that’s good.” Elise said with wave of her hand. “That’s more than sentence, but that’ll do.”
    Sean could hear Elise saying something else, but his mind was clinging to the back of his brain. He felt mental doors shutting, hearing the soft, low thudding of the gates to his brain closing shut. And then, the crispy metallic rasp of the key sliding into position, preparing to lock him in. One twist was all it needed.
    “Hey, listen up!”
    Sean’s head nodded, and then tilted upwards to the angry face of Elise. Her thin brows were low and brooding, like a disappointed parent glaring at mischievous child. Sean blinked, then straightened, a flash of sense coming over him. Who was this girl, to be ordering him around, expecting to be waited on like a drill sergeant; as if he were the one lower in command. Sean bet his entire yearly allowance that this girl was in fact younger than she looked, which meant for older people to take proper control.
    “Who are you?” Sean said, catching Elise in the middle of her sentence that he wasn’t listening to.
    “Excuse me?”
    “No thanks.” Sean rebutted. “I asked you a question and I fully expect you to answer it.”
    Elise blew a stray lock of hair that had managed to escape from her tight ponytail. Sean knew she was trying to remain cool, unemotional, but he knew by the slight twitch at the corner of her mouth he had struck a cord.
    “I told you, I’m Elise.”
    “No,” Sean said. “That’s what you call yourself. ‘Who are you?’, not what’s your name.”
    Elise squinted at Sean, an impudent scowl turning into a shadowy smirk. She was going to try and be smart now, Sean thought as Elise replied.
    “Are you sure you want to know. Now?”
    “Why not? Better now than never. And after that, how about you explain to me everything else?”
    Elise’s hand came up to scratch the back of her neck, and in that motion, Sean could see a thin leather thong around her neck.
    “Okay, boss.” She began, a wisp of air escaping through gritted teeth. “Here’s what you need to know-”
    “Wrong.” Sean interjected. “I want to know every single darn reason why and what happened and, heck, who’s involved.” And then Sean cocked his head, replicating Elise’s smirk. “Can you summarize all that in a sentence?”
    Sean saw Elise’s eyes light up like a newspaper on fire; her emerald eyes blazing wild with heat. She had to look off to the side for a second, her mouth half open about to mutter a curse, but she only got as far as the ‘F’ sound. She whipped her head back to Sean, tipping forward an inch towards Sean, her arms uncrossing and her hands resting on the corners of the chair’s back. Her mouth opened and closed twice before she could speak again.
    “Listen,” She began, and Sean could see that her fingers were as white as sheet paper as they clutched at the chair’s back. “I know you’re confused, you’re dazed, and you probably  want to be back in your safe house with your mommy and daddy. But guess what? You’re here now. And I’m guessing you know you can’t step outside these walls without the fear of ending up like an Aubrey. So how about we get one thing straight-”
    Elise tipped forward some more, the front legs of the chair angled so high that her face came only a breath’s width from Sean’s nose. Her voice become low as a bass string and tense as a stretched wire.
    “I’m your only hope of staying alive in a world that’s about to change drastically all around you, and I’ve lived in it way longer than you have. So with my experience and with what you know now, that follows a chain of command.” She jabbed a thumb at herself. “I’m commanding.” Then she thrust a thin index finger at Sean, almost hitting him on his lower cheek. “You’re following. Understood?”
    Sean just stared at Elise, mimicking her stone faced expression.
    “Understood?”
    Sean gave her a dry grin, and said. “Understood.”
    A rapid succession of knocking cut in between Sean and Elise’s tension. Three taps, and then two low ones. Elise’s eyes flicked up and behind Sean’s head to where the entrance was.
    “Come in.” She growled, and Sean could hear the sound of a key fitting inside a lock. A twist. And then the guest was inside; Sean could hear footsteps as the stranger walked through the nook, onto the wooden panelling of the kitchen, and then his shoes meeting soft carpet.
    Elise leaned back and away a comfortable distance from Sean and got off her chair, her gaze riveted on the person standing behind Sean. He got up, expecting some kind of government looking official, with full black trench coat that reached to his knees, or in a Washington issued blue three piece suit, including dark sunglasses that the person was required to wear at night and inside buildings. Sean expected something of the sort, in the whole get-up. Sean was disappointed with the comical and stereotypical picture and was greeted by Harry instead.
    He had his hand out, ready for Sean to shake.
    “Harry?” Sean said, blinking rapidly, his eyes widening.
    Harry was just as surprised.
“Oh.” He said, his voice flat and tense, his words slipped out slowly like a lazy river. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
Elise looked in between the two wide eyed young men.
    “Sean,” She began, an open hand gesturing to an open mouthed Harry. She had a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.
“Meet Harold Deuce, also known as ‘not-your-cousin’.”