-DISCLAIMER-

I do NOT own Teen Wolf

Comment, vote, fan, and let me know what you're thinking!

IMPORTANT:
Should season 3a&b just continue off of Chaos Theory??
Like, it'd probably be easier, but I want your opinion!

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"This is the one controlling him? This kid?" Derek asked, staring at Matt looking very unimpressed. Said boy was leaning over Derek, examining the werewolf.

Matt clicked his tongue, "Well, Derek, not everyone's lucky enough to be a big, bad werewolf."
My two friends and I looked at each other, slightly more worried than before. He knew more than we thought he did.

The boy stood up, chuckling to himself. "Oh, yeah, that's right. I've learned a few things lately. Werewolves, hunters, Kanimas. It's like a frickin' Halloween party every full moon."

He was definitely off the rails, you could see it in his eyes. Matt was already a bit iffy before, but this whole Kanima thing had really put him through the ringer.

Unfortunately, he interrupted my thoughts by continuing to talk.
"Except for you, Stiles. What do you turn into?" He smirked.

Stiles didn't even need a second to think of a response. "Abominable snowman. But, uh, it's more of, like, a wintertime thing, you know, seasonal."

Matt narrowed his eyes, gesturing something to Jackson. The half-Kanima-half-boy stepped forward and swiftly cut the back of Stiles' neck with one of his claws.

Scott shouted and stepped forward to aid his friend, only to be stopped by Jackson holding his hand up in the boy's face.

"You bitch," Stiles managed to get out as he fell to the ground.

"Get him off of me," Derek grumbled.

Matt laughed, "Oh, I don't know, Derek. I think you two make a pretty good pair."

I went to kneel down beside Stiles to help him, but before I could even get to the ground, Jackson had grabbed my jacket and pulled me back to my feet.

"And Riley," Matt laughed. "I'm sure Allison told you that I pay close attention, but I just cannot figure out what you are. I know your wrist was bleeding one day, and fine the next - that fake blood wasn't very good by the way. But, I don't think you're a werewolf. Your eyes don't flare on camera like the rest. So, what are you?"

My jaw clenched as I stared at the ground. I didn't respond, so Scott did for me. "She's not anything. She's human."

I'd forgotten that I had only told Stiles about the claw marks on my wrist healing before the night was through. I looked over to him, but he was face down on Derek, and was incapable of returning my gaze.

Matt scoffed. "I might not have known about this stuff as long as you, but don't treat me like I'm stupid. She's something."

Scott's brows pulled together, but he seemed to be the only one in the room out of the loop on the matter. It came as a surprise to me, however, that Derek didn't seem phased by this revelation Matt had thrown at Scott. I thought Stiles had been the only one who knew.

I mean, Scott knew I heard the conversation between the Argents at the funeral, but maybe it had slipped his mind.

"If you don't believe me, we can test my theory," he suggested, pointing the gun directly at me.

Scott jumped forward, stepping in front of me. "Don't! You'll kill her!"

He had noticed things over the past months. He had to have had. So why was he denying what seemed so obvious?

"Whatever, it doesn't really matter," Matt muttered as he lowered the gun, kneeling back down beside Derek. "It must kinda suck, though, to have all that power taken away from you with just a little cut to the back of the neck. I bet you're not used to feeling that helpless."

"Still got some teeth," Derek seethed. "Why don't you get down here a little closer, huh?"

"Yeah, bitch," Stiles mumbled.

We all heard another car approach the building, halting our conversation on power and such.

"Is that her?" Matt asked, seeming somewhat excited. "Do what I tell you to and I won't hurt her. I won't even let Jackson near her."

"Scott, don't trust him!" Stiles shouted.

Matt finally snapped, grabbing Stiles and rolling him onto his back so that he was able to press his foot on his neck and cut off his airflow.
"This work better for you?" He asked Scott.

Stiles' face was beginning to change colour, the veins on his forehead straining as he tried to reserve breath. I grabbed onto Scott's arm, silently begging him to do something.

"Hey, just stop! Stop!" Scott shouted.

He didn't remove his foot from Stiles' neck, "Then do what I tell you to."

"Okay. Alright," he agreed, but Matt still wasn't budging. "Stop!"

He finally took his foot away, his face frozen over in anger. Stiles coughed violently as he let the air back into his lungs.

I stepped forward, shoving Matt out of my way as I dropped besides Stiles. "Are you okay?" I asked quickly.

Stiles tried to say something, but choked on his breath.

"You, take him in there," Matt instructed the Kanima. "McCall, Winters, with me."

"No," I ground out between clenched teeth. Stiles looked at me wide-eyed. "I'm not leaving you here with the Kanima," I whispered, tears brimming.

I didn't have to look back to know that Matt most likely had the gun pointed at me at that moment. "I said. . . now," he growled, doing his best to remain calm.

"And I said. . . no. I'm so over this bullshit," I replied, mirroring his tone. I grabbed a hold of Stiles' hand, but all he did was remain wide-eyed.

Matt laughed, as if any of it were funny. "You know what? I've changed my mind - let's test that theory."

Before I had the chance to figure out what he meant, I heard a loud bang erupt from behind me. I cried in pain as a bullet tore its way into my right shoulder and then flew out and dug a hole in the ground. My whole body buckled as I collapsed to the floor, my vision starting to blur in and out.

Scott tried to come to my aid, but Jackson wouldn't allow it. "What have you done? Look at her! She's not like us."

"Maybe," Matt shrugged nonchalantly. "We'll see. Follow me, McCall."

Hot tears trailed down my cheeks as I gripped my shoulder trying to keep pressure on it.

"Mum, just do what he says. He promised he wouldn't hurt you." I managed to hear from the next room.

"He's right," I heard Matt say, right before another gun shot echoed through the station. I could hear Melissa screaming and the Sheriff yelling. Scott would heal, but that didn't mean he was okay. "But I didn't say I wouldn't hurt you."

My breathing became laboured as I attempted to stand, my vision blacking out here and there. The pain was unimaginable.

"You're not going to be any help like that," Derek said.

Stiles finally had his voice back, "Please don't go out there, Riley. He might not aim for your shoulder next time."

I was going to fight against them, but the pain won out. I stumbled over to the couch and collapsed onto it, laying on my left shoulder. Closing my eyes, I began to do breathing exercises to try and calm myself and my body.

My body felt cold as a breeze flowed into the room, cooling my skin and chilling my veins. The pain began to dull, feeling less intense as I breathed in the night air.

"Riley, you okay?" I heard Stiles ask me.

"I've been better," I mumbled, pressing onto the wound.

Suddenly, Scott and Matt were back.
"The evidence is gone," the wolf told the boy, his hand on his stomach at the spot where he had been shot. "Why don't you just go?"

"You think the evidence mattered that much, huh?" Matt asked.
If not the evidence, then what?

"No, no, I want the book."
Oh.

Scott shook his head, "What? What book?"

Did he really not take in anything? The book that we had been searching weeks for, Scott. That book.

"The bestiary," Matt spat. "Not just a few pages, I want the entire thing."

"I don't have it," Scott shrugged. "It's Gerard's. What do you want it for, anyway?"

"I need answers."

"Answers to what?"

"To this," Matt said as he lift up the side of his shirt. Instead of normal skin, we all saw that his flesh was beginning to convert to that of a Kanima. What the hell was happening to him?

That's probably what he wanted to know.
"I think you need a doctor," I chuckled as I pushed some hair away from my face.

Matt ignored me as he lead Scott back out of the room.

Once they were gone, Stiles began to whisper to Derek. "Hey. You know what's happening to Matt?"

"You know," Derek began, "The book's not gonna help him. You can't just break the rules, not like this."

"What do you mean?"

Derek couldn't move his head, so he just peered at Stiles out of the corner of his eye. "Universe balances things out. Always does."

"Is it because he's using Jackson to kill people who don't deserve it?"

"Killing people himself."

"So if Matt breaks the rules of the Kanima, he becomes the Kanima?"

"Balance," Derek says, completing the train of thought.

Stiles grunted in frustration, "Will he believe us if we tell him that?"

I scoffed, wincing in pain as I did so. "We could tell him the Earth is round and he wouldn't believe us."

"Okay, he's gonna kill all of us when he gets that book, isn't he?"

"Yep," Derek replied curtly.

The boy sighed, "All right, so what do we do? Do we just sit here and wait to die?"

"Unless I can figure out a way to push the toxin out of my body faster. Like triggering the healing process."

"What?" Stiles asked. "Oh, what are you doing? Oh, gross."

At the sound of squelching, I sat up a little to look over. Derek was digging his claws into his leg in an attempt to trigger his healing. I wasn't exactly sure it was working, but better that than not trying at all, I guess.

"Lahey!" I heard someone shout from the next room. Matt. It was Matt.

Why was he talking about Lahey? And which one?
I needed to know what he was saying. Moving would be no use. Plus, Jackson was watching us.

There was only one option.
I took a few deep breaths and concentrated, praying that my hearing would do the weird thing it had been doing lately.

"He shouldn't have let them drink," Matt said. They were talking at a normal volume now, so someone like Stiles wouldn't be able to hear them. Someone like Stiles.

"What? Who was drinking?" Scott asked the boy.

"The swim team, you idiot!"

I felt myself let out a sigh of relief, realising he was talking about Mr Lahey and not Isaac.

"I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know they had just won state, and Lahey, he's letting his favourites come over and have a couple of drinks to celebrate. Who cares if they're seventeen, right?"

He was telling Scott about what had happened to him. Why he was killing the people he was killing.

"Were you at Isaac's?" Scott asked softly, trying not to rile Matt any further.

"He had this first edition Spider-Man, or was it Batman? And we were gonna make a trade. But then I'm over there and I hear music. And everyone's having a good time, and I see Sean. He throws Jessica in the pool. And then Bennett goes in and. . ."

"Bennett?" Scott interrupted. "What, the hunter?"

Matt took a moment, probably reliving the whole thing in his head. He didn't answer Scott's question verbally, so I assumed he just nodded or something. "And then Camden. Isaac's jarhead brother, he grabs me. He thinks it's funny."

"They threw you in," The beta said, putting the pieces together on his own.

"I yelled that I can't swim, but nobody listens. I go under and I swallow water, and no one cares. And I see these bodies underwater. I see Jessica's got her hands down Sean's board shorts. Tucker's grabbing Kara. And I'm drowning. I'm dying, and they're laughing."

I felt a tear roll down my cheek. He was horrible, but he wasn't like that until that day. I could almost feel how scared he had been. How scared he was now.

"All of a sudden," He continued, "I was just. . . I'm lying by the pool. And Lahey is right there,right above me, and he says. . . He says, 'You tell no one! This, this is your fault! You don't know how to swim? What little bastard doesn't know how to swim? You say nothing! You tell no one! No one!' And I didn't. I didn't tell anyone. And I would see them at school, and they wouldn't even look at me. I'd wake up in the middle of the night. I'd gasp for breath. And my parents, they thought I was asthmatic. They even gave me an inhaler. They didn't know that every time I closed my eyes, I was drowning."

I covered my mouth with my hand, little sobs escaping. Partly because my shoulder was still burning, but also because of Matt's story. To have to go through that so young. To not be able to tell anyone.
No wonder he was so off the rails.

"Riley?" I heard Stiles ask. "Are you okay?"

But I didn't answer. I was afraid if I lost even the smallest bit of focus, I'd lost concentration and wouldn't be able to hear them anymore.

I could still hear the emotion in his voice as he continued. "You know about that little white light that they talk about, you see when you die? Well, I didn't see anything. Just darkness. Everything was dark." Suddenly, the tone of his voice changed, "But then. . . Then came the Argent's funeral, and everything changed. I was taking some photos. And then, purely by accident, Lahey gets in one of the photos. I look down at the screen on my camera, and I just have this unbelievable rage that fills up inside of me, and I just. . . I look at him, and I. . . I wanna see him dead. And then the next day, he actually was."

He had killed Isaac's dad. Isaac's only remaining family. The person who had locked him in a freezer for the majority of his life.
I had trouble feeling bad for such a despicable man.

I felt bad for Matt also. Don't get me wrong, what he was doing was horrible, but I understood where he was coming from.
Even though, something like that doesn't give him the right to go and kill all of those people.

Matt resumed talking, "You know, Einstein was right. Imagination is more important than knowledge. It was like something out of Greek mythology. Like. . . Like the furies coming down to punish Orestis. You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

Scott was never one to pay attention in history.
"Was he the guy who stabbed our his eyes?"

"God, that's Oedipus, you dumbass!" Matt yelled. "The furies are deities of vengeance. Their tears ran of blood, and they had snakes for hair. If there was a crime that had gone unpunished, the furies would do the punishing. Jackson is my fury. When I saw him the next night, it was like this bond had been cemented between the two of us. I knew he had killed Lahey for me, and I knew he would do it again. So I went to Tucker's garage. I even paid for an oil change. And guess what? He didn't even recognise me. So when he wasn't looking, I took a shot of him with my camera. And in a few hours, he was dead."

The garage. That was the murder that Stiles had been present at. It was all finally adding up.

"So I took more pictures. All I had to do was take their picture. And Jackson would take their life."

"Riley!" Someone hissed. I tried my hardest not to hear them. "Riley! Zone back in, I just wanna make sure you're alive and not dead with your eyes open."

All the talking threw me off, and I could feel myself lose focus. "I'm alive, Stiles. Don't worry."

"Where'd you go just then?"

I gulped, not sure as to how either of them would take what I was about to say. "I was listening to Matt and Scott's conversation. You know? That one happening in a completely different room."

Stiles' mouth was slightly agape as he lay there. "We're talking about this later," He told me simply. "Derek, is that hypothetical situation we talked about getting any less hypothetical?"

"I think so," Derek said. "I can move my toes."

The boy laying beside him sighed in disappointment. "Dude, I can move my toes."

Before Derek could give what was bound to be a smart ass reply, the lights in the station all shut off and an alarm began to sound.
"Stiles," I said quietly. "What does that mean?"

Stiles opened his mouth, but the only sound I heard was gunfire.

I sat up quickly, biting my lip to keep from crying out. I felt someone grab my arm, and prepared to sucker punch them. Luckily, they began to speak.
"Hey, it's just me!" I heard Scott say.

The room was really dark, so it was hard to make him out at first. I'm probably lucky it was him anyway; being right-handed and currently being unable to move that shoulder properly, I don't know how much damage I could do punching someone with my left. I managed to be very uncoordinated with that hand.
The
He helped me stand up, before he knelt down next to Stiles. Derek told him to take the other boy, and he did as he was told. Pulling Stiles to his feet, he threw the boy's arm over his shoulder and began to drag him through the station.

Holding onto my wounded shoulder, I followed close behind so as not to get lost in the dark.

Realising that Jackson was right behind us, Scott lead us into a room and shut the door behind us. We moved faster, disappointed by the fact that all Jackson had to do was kick the door back open.

Two rooms and two doors later, we slowed to a stop when Jackson didn't kick the door in.

Figuring we were safe for the time being, Scott slowly rested Stiles on the ground, tired from carrying him. "Don't move," he told the boy. Stiles gave him a look, and Scott sighed, "You know what I mean."

As Scott ran out, I stayed back with Stiles. Backing against the wall, I slid down its surface until I was beside Stiles.
"How are you? Can you move much?" I asked.

He took a breath, testing his movements. "A little bit. Not a lot though."

"That's better than nothing, at least."

"Riley?" Stiles said softly.

I gulped. I knew I wasn't going to like what he asked. "Yeah, Stiles?"

"The gunshot wound; is it healing?"

I looked at my shoulder, but couldn't really see anything. "I'm not sure, it's too dark to be able to tell."

Stiles nodded. "Do you think it's healing?"

Biting my lip, I took a moment. It wasn't hurting anymore, that was for sure. All I could feel was the air around me, cooling my skin and the wound as well. It didn't burn anymore either.

"Yeah, Stiles. I think it is."