— a.h.a. headquaters of the oregon state, portland, oregon, september 2022

  To him it was clear that Hayden seemed to have struck a nerve. But how did it all come together?

  "You really needed to ask a Hunter from another country? Don't we have enough Hunters here?"

  Now it was Isaac's time to explain. "Didn't you say it yourself? Making it public would have made them look bad. People would start avoiding the district again."

  It was ultimately better to take care of everything fast and without anyone catching wind of it – the business with the Vampires and Werewolves was what he obviously meant, but he knew that there was a reason why they had to keep that from the public, so he happily played along.

  Hunter Choi was going to visit the country on a political mission anyway, so they simply had to beg him to come earlier and take care of their problem covertly. But now they had an entirely different problem on their hands.

  The woman, whose name they did not know, was visibly on edge and it wasn't because a bunch of children had acted wisely with her for a bit.

  "So I guess there was a Gate so dangerous you had to get Choi In-Sung to take care of it, so you don't have to get Dryer from Canada all the way over here," he mused, "and I think that there's a second Gate that broke as well. At least 'someone' said it did." Hayden especially emphasized the "someone" as he looked at her.

  He didn't quite believe it was that simple, though he figured Isaac really hated complicated things. It was odd to him, how he made his own life more complicated in order to evade complications.

  No comments were made, though the same could not be said about their facial expressions turning sour, telling them all they needed to know.

  At this point, the third high schooler in the room, who hadn't yet made so much as a peep, was getting irritated.

  "What does he mean 'someone said it did'? So are there two Breaks happening out there right now, or what?" Again, the woman did not answer, but the look she gave them was enough to make them understand.

  The third guard – who hadn't said anything until now just like Rue hadn't – cleared his throat. "What should we do? Evacuate the adjacent areas?" He had a Spanish accent.

  "That would only cause a panic. Did anything escape?" Ron countered.

  The woman put a hand on her chin and started scratching away at it. "That seems not to be the case, we got it covered."

  "Wouldn't that mean it's over soon?" The guy they had only heard once in the storage room, made that decision without thinking twice.

  "It's still a Gate, Lane. And even S-Class-Skills have a cooldown."

  They all thought back to how he had unexpectedly thought in a fight between two of the higher races, right before being sent into an actual Gate that was apparently at breaking point already. Now everyone directed their attention back at the three kids, which had initially been her in order to them to be told to keep quiet about the incident and discern what they had understood about what had transpired at the abandoned district.

  "I know nothing," was the scrawny boy's instantaneous response, seeing how they were all looking at them expectantly.

  "Where am I?" Rue added, as nobody had answered her before and she didn't feel like helping them either.

  "Who am I again?" Even Hayden played along.

  "Well, we will find out who they are sooner or later." Ron Kilmer was generally a patient man, but even he didn't have the energy left to bother with them anymore.

  Not after the recent news had dropped on them like a bombshell. To him, they were nothing but distractions and in the worst case, something might have just happened while they were busy collecting them.

  Isaac could tell. His mind must have been a mess, just like everyone else's. In fact, Hayden was too calm, he should have been like the Agents or rather worse. His composure was not a good sign, in fact, but a harbinger of trouble to him.

  Still, first things first, he hadn't come empty handed after all. He clenched and unclenched his fists while sitting on the hard chair and repeatedly blinked.

  Despite the fact that he had originally resolved himself to not use this technique again, he had no choice but to do so anyway. It was mentally draining, but his mind wasn't so weak as to cave in just from that, so he didn't have a real reason to argue about it.

  He eased into the sensation that he had found to be more and more familiar to him, even sweat started to drench his shirt. He felt that, if he did this another two or three times, it might feel as though he was greeting an old friend.

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  His breath hitched for a moment and suddenly, the scratching and mild burning he had felt so far started to melt into one. From then on, sadly, it only got worse.

  Finally, the pain came back like a tidal wave, hitting him as if he had momentarily caught on fire after being struck by lightning. A prickling, burning, stinging type of heat surged through him and energy shaped like invisible, scorching hot needles pierced his skin over and over again. He swallowed hard and focused on suppressing a tremor in his body, trying to keep the notable signs of his agony to a minimum.

  It wasn't that he had never felt sharp pain such as this before. He simply hadn't thought of having to endure it right at this moment and in this situation. When he had to draw a sharp breath, Hayden peeked at him from the side, noticing something strange right away, yet keeping his observation to himself, seeing as nobody else reacted.

  He wouldn't be able to know what Isaac was thinking, but it seemed like he tried to keep his composure somehow. His skin shook ever so slightly and even he had barely caught it, despite sitting right next to him.

  'Can't hurt if he owes me a favor later,' the kid with darker hair thought.

  Meanwhile, Isaac could swear his skin was melting off of his body. It wasn't, obviously, because if it did, he would have probably heard someone scream at this point. Nonetheless, it was getting harder keeping himself together, even for him.

  As Elijah, Isaac had been someone who had, at one point, grown very accustomed to a variety of sensory pain. It wasn't like him to bend the knee so easily, that's why he had to persevere. His pride was something he rarely swallowed. In this case, he had a face to save, even for just himself as the audience.

  All he had tried to do was give his kin one last mission for this day. And that mission he conveyed as fast and as clear as he could. In that moment, a crash was to be heard, shattering accompanied by deafening cries.

  They might have heard it slightly muffled by the doors and walls separating them from the ruckus, but there was no way the now four guards hadn't realized the extent of it anyway.

  'Fly, cry, make it as loud as you can', Isaac recalled whatever he was able to belch out through their mental connection. They did as told and it was pure chaos.

  All four of the supposed security ran out of the room, their guns drawn and ready to act. When even Hayden showed intent of getting up and running after them, Isaac could only put a reassuring hand on his knee for a second, to keep him in his seat. He also shot a glance at Rue, who suddenly went pale and rigid in her chair, not moving an inch, despite seemingly ready to bolt at the slightest opportunity.

  She hadn't been this nervous running from a fight between two monsters earlier; she had even come into Hayden and Isaac's hideout to wait for the creatures to duke it out at the abandoned district.

  He would have said something, if he had been able to. 'My entire body feels like it has been put through the wringer,' he thought in regret, 'this wasn't a good idea. I can hardly move.'

  "We wait a moment before we run. Understood?" Isaac's voice sounded coarse and broke gradually throughout the few words he had spoken. Thankfully, it didn't seem like a permanent condition, as the numb feeling in his fingertips already subsided. 'I might regain control of myself before the four musketeers return.'

  They didn't get their identity yet and sure, they can try to find them later on, but it would require them to make a bigger case out of it. And the least of the things they will want to do now is to get more eyes on this matter. If they run now, they could get out of this, without their names ending up on some sort of file.

  'Probably,' he concluded in his mind, 'Well, it's the best I can do now.'

  With that, Hayden did get up as told, as soon as their guards had run far enough down the corridor. His Skill had already deactivated by that point, leaving them to guess if they were now in the green or not.

  "Do you want to get up?"

  It was easier said than done. "I'm trying, give me a minute."

  "I thought I wouldn't ask, but seriously, what is wrong with you?" Slightly wary, Rue asked instead of Hayden, who had resolved himself to keep quiet about the brown-haired's condition.

  "Whatever could you mean by that?" Isaac couldn't rebuke him, so he pretended to be oblivious.

  The scrawny boy finally managed to peel his behind from the metal chair he had started to adhere to, before standing wobbly on his two legs. His feet still felt as if they were asleep, yet he could at least numbly move and put pressure on them now.

  "You look like some geriatric motherfucker, about die of old age," Hayden commented after doing a double take on Isaac's posture. "Seriously, it's weird that all this ruckus started right and you don't seem surprised at all. Remember that shitty bird flying into the camera fixture?"

  He looked at the high schooler next to him, contemplating how to answer. "I didn't do much."

  "Are you an Awakened? But you're not registered."

  "I'm not an Awakened," he firmly stated, 'Would he believe me if I told him I was a magician instead?'

  Rue listened to them, blinking. The expression on her face was somewhere between relief and suspicion – directed at her scrawny classmate.

  But they didn't have the time for this right now, since they could only move while their watchmen were away. So he stepped forward and left the room, cautiously, trying not to alert whoever might have been left behind.

  In a room on the other side of the corridor, the guards were busy checking every corner and trying to understand why a group of crows would dare crash into any window and camera they could find, but they couldn't find an Awakened responsible for it. They didn't even spare a thought about the three teenagers they had brought into the building before, because even if they likely had someone with Skills among them, this would be a ranged attack, far out of reach for an untrained kid to do.

  Rue, which still had her doubts, couldn't stay behind alone and do nothing, so she followed the light brown head in front of her, slyly evading the few cameras inside of this floor, pressing the button of the elevator which hadn't moved since they arrived, and got in to send it downstairs.

  Within the elevator, Isaac pointed upwards. "The other floors will likely not be as empty, we can't just walk out. Help me up so I can open the hatch."

  "What?" He complained while complying with the order anyway.

  It was messy work at best, but after the strong and agile Awakened made it onto the elevator's roof, the other two held onto his sleeved arm to pull themselves up as well, one after the other. After closing the maintenance hatch, they sighed in unison.

  "What are you sighing about?" the older asked, appalled, as they had done exactly as the younger one had wanted, so he was the last one to have a reason to lament this situation.

  "This wasn't how it was supposed to go," Isaac bemoaned, shockingly realizing only now, in the darkness of an elevator shaft, that they had gone as wrong as they could have gone.

  After that, the shaft remained silent for a short while.