They arrive simultaneously. The three horses pull up as Hope sprints on to the grass. She is so preoccupied with the sight that she doesn't notice Erik and June walking, hand in hand, to the park.

Cara climbs off the horse. She waits on the ground for the other two to come help her with Eden. Though it is shallow, she can hear him breathing. Cara intentionally tries to breathe in-sync with him, as if somehow she can give him her oxygen.

"What happened?" Hope asks, offering Jamie a hand to help him down.

The boy takes it. Hope isn't strong but her hands help sturdy him, even if only slightly. His voice is quiet so that neither Cara nor Wesley can hear him. "He fell off the Ferris wheel."

Hope nods but doesn't offer anything except a glance to Eden before she tears off towards the pull she feels. The darkest girl sits in the shadow of a tree, only barely visible to Hope. Somehow, she can feel Percy calling to her, even if Percy doesn't know it.

Jamie tries his best to both trail after Hope and wait for Wesley and Cara. They are moving slowly under Eden's weight. Jamie spots, behind them, Erik and June walking in as well. With every step they take closer, Hope can feel the crackle of electricity in the air. Her hair begins to stand on end, and her nose tingles.

One final step and everyone is together.

The hear the pop of lightbulbs cracking above them. Glass shatters, raining down on the group. Just on the road, the streetlights ignite. Through the break in the trees, the rest of Hamilton is visible. The Ferris wheel up in the distance turns once more.

The park remains dark.

Eden grumbles something. His eyes can flicker open and shut, but he can't keep himself awake. He is sore, his head is pounding so hard that it feels like it has split open, and he is too dizzy to keep himself upright. He leans into Wesley for support, his feet slipping beneath him.

Lee, however, is not.

When she is sure that Wesley has Eden, Cara takes a step forward. Her foot crunches against the dirt. Jamie reaches for Cara, to grab her and pull her back too.

"Jamie," she whispers into him as he clings on to her from behind.

He shakes his head, unable to look. His voice is the quietest it has ever been. "Don't step closer. We... we don't know what's wrong with her. It might be contagious, or something. If we don't look, then we don't ever know. It's Schrodinger's Cat."

"Exactly," Cara answers. She roughly yanks herself out of Jamie and kneels before Lee.

The girl lies, her eyes wide open, staring up above her. Her veins are visible beneath her skin, leaving a dark black spiderweb across her arms, neck, and face. Cara swallows the gurgle of vomit in her as she stares Lee down.

"What's going on?" Wesley can't help himself. There are three bodies on the ground and Percy is hyperventilating.

Percy looks up at them. She spots Erik, her eyes narrowing.

Hope follows her gaze. "Are you covered in blood?"

The rest turn to him. Though it's difficult to see in the lighting, Erik's clothing is drenched in his father. He watches the others in his branch to shrink away from him. June grips his hand tighter. If they had had any time to think, which they hadn't, Erik might have considered changing his clothing.

"I killed my Dad," Erik tells the group. Though they wait for an explanation, Erik doesn't offer any.

Wesley can feel tries to ease the tension, and job which he normally lets Eden take. "Well, good for you. That... uh... that guy sucked. Like, he sucked real hard. Um, anyway, now, back to Percy."

Rather than say anything, Percy looks over at Lee. She feels energized, far too energized for her liking. Tragedy is nothing new for Percy, especially not after Hades. Consequently, she forces herself to stand. Hope sits on the ground looking up at Percy.

Thankfully. Percy needs to stand on her own.

"That guy..." Percy pauses. His skull is intact again, so she grabs the guitar case a smashes it into the guy's head again. Percy watches a small new trickle of blood, and so she hits him again.

Cara simply closes her eyes and turns her head. Her hands begin to shake, so she tries to shove them in her pockets. She can smell his piss, which is not atypical of a dead body. Tears brim in her eyes. It's too similar to the sound of Eden's body hitting the ground.

Unlike her, Jamie can't bear the sound of the guitar case banging into the guy's head. He kneels on the ground and throws up the three hotdogs and cotton candy of the festival. At the time, he had tried to convince himself that eating would make him feel better. It is more apparent than ever, that it does not.

Wesley wants to move to help Jamie, but he can't with Eden on him. So, he sits the pair of them down on the ground. From there, he is able to at least touch his foot against Jamie's leg. Maybe not perfect, but damn close.

June's pale face watches on. Erik pulls her head over to him. It rests on his chest as he pulls him into her, one of her hands still tucked in his.

Hope is the one to stop Percy. She slowly raises her hands to the guitar case and lowers it to the ground. Percy lets Hope take it. She spits on the dude's body.

"Do we have time for the long story before the police come?" Wesley asks, looking up at Percy as the girl wipes the sweat off her forehead. "Not that I... not that I don't think it's important, but the last thing we need is getting caught in this park with three bodies."

"My place," Eden raises a hand, though he tips into Wesley. God, it feels like he is wasted and hungover at the same time. Then, Eden shakes his head. "Nope. The police will probably be staking it out."

June nudges Erik. The youngest of the group rolls his eyes. He runs a hand through his hair, messing it up into crazy blonde spikes. There is no way he is inviting them over to his place when there is a dead body on the ground.

"Umm, we can go to my place," Jamie offers, since his place is not that far away. "I... uh... I'm not sure that nobody will notice us carrying in two mostly unconscious people, with the uh... the blood on Erik and June. We just need to make this quick, right? I'm sure the FBI is already on their way here to investigate the power outage stuff, so we need to go somewhere. If somebody notices us and calls the police, well, hopefully, the police are going to be busy dealing with the Autumn festival and all that stuff."

"We don't have fucking time to move," Percy explains. Her voice is heavy. The more she speaks, the louder and quicker she talks. "Whoever these guys are, there are more of them. They found us once, they'll find us again. I don't know what happened, but I think the dude drained Lee of whatever fucking magic is inside us. They fucking killed her."

The others don't say anything. Cara begins to feel Lee, running her hands in front of her lips. "She's breathing."

"Well, she doesn't have a pulse," Percy notices.

Cara glances up at her. Despite her shaking fingers, Cara puts her hands against Lee. She waits for a few seconds. It's difficult to feel anything, so she puts her other hand against her first to hold herself steady.

"She's right."

Jamie didn't think he could throw up again, but he does.

"My resting heart rate is one beat per minute," Hope tells the others. "The doctors told my Dad."

Nobody speaks. If Wesley weren't holding Eden, he would check his own heartbeat. Instead, he watches Cara raise two fingers to her own neck. He stares at her, waiting. A twitch of her face betrays her. When Cara goes pale, so does Wesley. "I don't understand. I've felt my heart racing since the explosion. Is it just not circulating blood?"

"Doesn't make sense," Cara mumbles. The sound of a heartbeat is the sound of the chambers opening and closing. Pulses, however, are from moving blood. Maybe, somehow her heart isn't moving blood, even though she is definitely capable of bleeding. Cara presses her hand against her chest as hard as she can. She tries to feel it. She waits and waits and waits.

"Well, it doesn't have to make sense, we just have to accept it," Erik counters. He looks over at Percy, still holding June tucked against him. Her body is burning, but he can feel her shivering. "How did it happen?"

Percy closes her eyes and blows out air. It looks like she has to talk. "I can't explain it. It's almost like a pressure point." When Wesley turns to stare at her, she knows she must go on. "I saw the woman's memories. Like, when their explosion happened, and when Hope touched her in the bar. These guys are business. That might be how they are staying young, but I don't fucking know. Lee said the most recent branch was from, like, the 1800s in France or something. These guys are ancient, and they've killed dozens of people like us."

1881.

Percy looks over at Lee, expecting her to be speaking, but she hasn't moved. The words are echoing in Percy's head. That was Lee's voice, no doubt about it. Only June notices Percy's movement, but neither says anything.

June doubts that she is capable of speech.

"So, they are just going to keep coming after us?" Jamie asks, spinning around. He looks to see someone else as panicked as he is, but everyone else seems too calm. "The FBI is trying to arrest us for causing power outages, the police want us for murdering Thea, Erik just murdered his Dad, and Hope is in a hospital gown! We need to get out of here!"

"Well, where will we go?" Percy snaps back. "Are we just going to hide out in your apartment until everybody just forgets about us? We'll starve to death."

Jamie lifts his hands up in exasperation. He wrings his hands together, and then taps his foot anxiously, and then runs his hands through his hair, and does every nervous tick anyone in their branch has ever done. This is it. This is the destruction which he had been anticipating.

"Ivve gotta truck," Eden manages. "June's gotta car. We run."

Wesley thinks about the bag on his backpack, and then looks over to see the bag on Erik's. They can run. If they wanted to, they could run right now. Escaping the police is no easy feat however, and Jamie is more than sure that the police will be setting up checkpoints soon to look for Eden.

"If we need to leave, we leave tonight," Wesley tells the group. He hopes he doesn't need to bring up his juvie record to get support. "We need to get out of the state."

"I've got a cottage in northern-Michigan," June only speaks because she has to. She feels small, as small as she felt when August was stolen. "It'll take us 16 hours to drive there if we avoid the border."

Cara, finally, hears her heartbeat. She stands up, looking at their group. Erik and June are splattered and bloodied. Though Erik looks confident, June seems to be shrinking beneath him. Even though she has shoved her fist in her pocket, Percy's hands continue to holt up and down. Hope looks thin after days of eating from a tube, and her hair is greasy. Jamie looks up at Cara expectantly. Wesley struggles to keep Eden upright. Though Eden's brown eyes can only blink at her, Cara can see them, and the relief is nice enough.

Lee lies on the ground before them, breathing, but perhaps dead.

"We all need to go home and pack a bag," Cara tells them. "Except Eden and I, because there are without a doubt cops at the house. He and I are going to go hide out at Jamie's. Percy should probably come with us too, just to avoid the cops. We'll take Lee. Erik, can you drive?"

She waits for a response from the blonde boy, as if the answer isn't yes. Since nothing is in walking distance, everyone starting as young as 14 knows how to race around the town. When Erik nods, she continues.

"Go get June's car and drive Wesley to get Eden's car." She can't explain how she knows that June's car is at Erik, so she tries to forget the question is on her mind. "If you have clothes in that bag, put on something that isn't covered in blood. It might not be our best plan because they'll be on the lookout for Wesley, but at least neither of you are connected to Thea. Besides, your both white, so you don't stick out like a sore thumb here.

"June and Hope need to go pack bags. I don't know how the fuck you two are planning on not getting caught, but don't. Percy, Eden, and I will figure out our clothes some other time. Sound good?"

No one questions Cara. With a nod of their heads, they roll out.

~~~

Is this better or worse? We will find out! 5 official chapters left! Are y'all excited? I know that I am.