Azalea: "Oh, my gosh. That is so scary. White Robe was in Velden's house?"

Hannah: "I was literally so terrified I couldn't move. And seeing Velden's body just laying there...I still get chills."

Hunter: "Ditto. That was the most horrifying day of my life—well, up until then, anyway."

Alejandro Roberto Gonzales-Santos:

The jangling ding of the hallway bell signaled the end of sixth period, Hunter standing immediately from his desk and beelining toward Hannah and Azalea as I followed his lead.

"Okay, guys," Hunter said as the four of us headed for the hallway. "Let's meet up later tonight." He shook his head. "This is so insane. I've got no idea how we're gonna figure this all out."

"Well, my place is free," Azalea offered. "We can camp out there. My dad said it's totally fine if you all sleep over. And actually, with all that's been happening, that would probably be best anyway. If we're all together, we can protect each other."

"Sounds good to me," I chimed in. "What time?"

"After school?" Azalea asked. "Hunter and I can drive straight to my house when our class at Stanford finishes, and you guys can come over right after seventh period. I'll make sure to text my dad so he can let you in if you make it there before us."

Hannah hesitated, eyes widening with trepidation. "Um, guys," she said sheepishly. "I...I just remembered. I told Stefan I'd meet up with him at three."

"Wait, you told him what?" I asked indignantly, whirling to face her.

Hannah lowered her head. "It's...for this English project we have to do on The Crucible. It shouldn't take more than like an hour, and I can come to Azalea's house right after."

"Hannah, I thought you were over that guy!" My fists instinctively balled with rage.

"Alex, chill out," Azalea spoke up. "It's just a project."

"Yeah, I'm sure that's all it is," I bit back, baring my teeth.

Hannah drew in a deep breath, shut her eyes. And when she opened them again, I saw all her hesitation evaporate. "You know what? It's really none of your business anyway, Alex. Forget The Crucible—I think I'll take Stefan on another date to Starbucks." She held out a single hand. "Why don't you give me your phone, and I'll plug in the address so you can stalk us again!"

I stepped back. Where is this coming from? I thought we were past this already. "Hannah—"

"Don't Hannah me!" she screamed, fuming. "You know, it's bad enough that you never even had the decency to apologize for what you did, but did you really expect me to ask your permission to talk to someone, especially after you waltzed into that hospital and told your dad that you had 'patched things up' with me?"

What? How the heck did she know—?

"You know what—never mind, Azalea. I don't think I'll be able to make it to your house tonight." She turned to me. "I honestly don't think I could stand being around you for another second." She looped her purse over her shoulder and turned to walk away.

"Hannah!" I called. "Hannah, wait!" I ran after her as she strode through the double-door frames bisecting the hallway, but she twisted and slammed the wood in my face, knocking me backwards to collide with the ceramic flooring as Hunter and Azalea rushed over to help me up.

"Alex, a-are you okay...?" Azalea tried.

"I'm fine," I grunted, brushing her and Hunter off.

"Hey, man," Hunter began, "just give her some space. I'm sure she'll..."

"Just shove it, Hunter!" I screamed. "I'm over her! She's the single most bipolar human being I've ever met in my entire life! I can't—I won't—deal with her crap anymore. I'm done." I shoved past both of them as I stood to my feet, letting out a growl as I shuffled away.

****

Thankfully, seventh period passed by quickly. I was so ready to get the heck out of Gallensley when that last bell rang.

Screw Hannah, I thought to myself as I unchained my bike and pedaled off.

The sunshine fired down rays of heat from above, and the passing trees wisped with branches shivering in the wind. I wore an angry scowl as I rode into the woods, felt my phone buzz inside my pocket.

I pulled one hand from the handlebars, grabbed the phone, read the joyful news from Alma that my mom was about to be released from the hospital and that my dad was finally conscious and doing much better.

Letting out a single sigh, I sent a text to Azalea letting her know I'd be a little late to her house, then turned my bike around and headed for the hospital.

I locked my bike against the rack when I arrived, then I jumped from my bike and beelined for the entrance.

As I pressed through the double doors, Alma was just exiting the patient hallway.

"Alex!" she greeted me. "I'm so glad you're here. Your mother is completely clear—she's free to go. And your dad is right this way."

I smiled as genuinely as I could, then followed her back through the doors separating the lobby from the medical corridor.

"We moved him to a different room," she explained. "One that's a little closer to the security cameras, just in case."

I nodded at Alma's words as we arrived at my dad's door, reached out to grab the knob when—

"Alma, Alex, wait!"

My head jerked upright, turning to see Sara hurrying down the hallway to catch up with us. "Don't go in your dad's room yet," she ordered. "Some of the doctors are doing tests, and they asked for no visitors until after 3:30."

"Oh, okay," I said, then paused. "Hey, Sara, can I ask you something?"

Her face grew dark, as if she already knew what I was thinking. "Um, sure, Alex," she finally answered.

I hesitated, then turned to Alma. "Alma, would you mind giving us a minute? Me and Sara really need to talk."

"Oh, of course," she said, smiling. "I'll be at the front desk if you need me, dears." She scurried away daintily, exiting the patient corridor to retake her desk seat at the hospital's entrance.

I turned back to Sara. "It's about Hannah," I said, straight to the point.

"I figured." She sighed. "She's not still mad, is she? I swear I thought you two were dating, and I just wanted to give you back your notebook. I really wasn't trying to make waves."

I chuckled lightly. "Don't worry about it. Me and Hannah are history anyway. She's a total screwball for coming after you about that."

Sara was silent, as though saying anything might invoke my wrath.

"Seriously, Sara, it's no big deal."

She stayed quiet, and her eyes fell to the floor.

"Hey, by the way," I added. "Thanks for all your help with my dad. I know you've had to deal with a ton of crap since everything that happened, and it really means a lot that you're so serious about taking care of him."

She looked up, and I met her uncertain glance with a smile.

"Really," I said. "Thank you."

She blushed beet red. "Y—you're welcome, Alex," she finally replied. "I'm really glad I could help. You and your family are some of the sweetest people I've ever met." She blushed again.

For a moment, Sara and I just stood there, gazing into each other's eyes. Hers were a beautiful orange-brown, and they stared at me earnestly—it was almost as if she were looking into my soul...and she liked what she saw.

"Sara!" called one of the doctors from down the hallway. "Can you come file this report with the rest of Roberto's records?" In his hand, he held an off-white folder filled with thin pink and yellow pages.

"I'll be right there, Dr. Parham," Sara answered him, then turned back to me. "Duty calls, I guess," she sighed. "It was really nice getting to talk to you, Alex." She nodded once at me, then headed down the hall toward the waiting doctor.

I kept watching her as she sauntered off with that simple yet confident stride. I guess you could say she looked strong, independent. She was dedicated to her job, yet still so capable of compassion and care.

Wow, I thought to myself, she really is something else. I bet she doesn't have nearly as many mood swings as Hannah does. And she's pretty cute too.

As Sara made it to the end of the hallway and turned the corner, following Dr. Parham out of sight, I gave a heavy sigh.

Just as I stuffed my hands in my pockets, staring through space and tracing the edges of the florally decorated walls with my eyes, I faintly registered a pattering above the building's ever-whistling chill. The steady draft of air-conditioned wind blowing rhythmically throughout the hospital seemed all of a sudden to be growing louder and louder, and—What? Are those...footsteps?

BAM!

Sharp pain struck the back of my head, toppling me to the ground in an instant. A foot stomped my back and forced me downward. I coughed violently, spastic breath spewing from my mouth as I tried to lift myself with both hands flat against the floor, but the foot pressed me even harder to the tiles beneath me, crushing the air from my lungs in scraggly waves.

I felt my assailant kneel down and slam me in the back of the head again. My face rammed into the floor's rugged tiles, blood pooling in my mouth. A ragged hand grasped my shoulder to hold me in place as a syringe stabbed through my lower neck.

I coughed blood onto the floor, and the room began to spin above my head. Dull and crimson red wavered before my eyes, then a haze of unforgiving gray. My body squirmed, muscles throbbing and writhing in spasm—and everything around me faded numbly to black.

****

The moment I jolted awake, I screamed.

I was tied hand and foot against a steel chair nailed to the floor. Scrawled in dark-red blood, the words I Warned You trickled vertically down the dingy wall to my far right.

Before me stood the most frightening figure I had ever seen, dressed in a silky white robe whose tail dragged the ground. The robe's sleeves were long, hanging over the owner's hands and sagging down like drooping flesh. A jagged, asymmetrically curved white hood sat atop the robe, covering the entirety of the face, save for the backlit shadows of what appeared to be shining, sunken eyes.

Crap! It's White Robe!

"Wh—what do you want from me?"

"You were warned," came a dull, raspy voice. "You were warned, and you continued to search. Now you shall search no more." From within the robe's left sleeve, the figure pulled a silver butcher knife, its blade curved upward like the edge of a sick and twisted grin.

"Why are you doing this?" I spat, even as my eyes grew wide at the serrated metal. "What did my dad or my mom or anyone ever do to you?"

"It is not what your father has done, but what could be so easily undone."

"What are you talking about!?" I screeched. "My dad doesn't even know you! He's never seen you before!"

White Robe paused. "Why, that's not entirely true, now is it? Your father has both seen and conversed with me multiple times."

I shook my head violently. "I know you're lying, you psycho! You're just playing stupid games!"

"Game? Dear Alex, this is not a game."

"...Then why? If you're so mad at my dad, why not just kill him when you had the ch—!?"

"His death was not necessary to my plan, so long as he remained silent." The robe shuffled closer to me. "And judging by your ignorance regarding the true nature of things, I assume that he has kept his end of the bargain."

Bargain? "What the heck are you talking about? My dad would never cut a deal with some scumbag like you!"

That raspy voice began to chuckle. "His life hung in the balance. And so did yours. All it took was a single bullet and that little anesthesia scare at the hospital to keep him quiet." A pause. "Anything to ensure that his family was safe."

"So I'm guessing you're the one Ashley's so afraid of," I grunted. "Why're you even after her?"

More chuckling. "It's almost a shame to kill someone so pitifully uninformed."

"Oh, will you SHUT UP!" I yelled. "You attacked my parents, tried to murder my friends, and kidnapped me in the middle of a hospital—WHO THE HECK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!?"

"SILENCE!" snapped the cruel voice. "It was your choice to interfere, and now you will face the consequences."

The figure shuffled forward again, this time drawing even closer, butcher knife in hand as I struggled against the braided knots strapped around my hands and feet.

"Help!" I screamed. "HELP!"

"No one can hear you," White Robe whispered. "No one can save you."

"HELP!" I screamed again.

"How poetic," that freak rasped, "that your final breath will be here, in the abandoned basement of a Californian police station. I wonder how interested the police would be to discover exactly how you came to be an American citizen..."

"Shut up!" I yelled, struggling against the ropes with all my strength.

"Was it by chance, Alex," the raspy voice scratched out, "that your father and mother moved to upper California almost twelve years ago—during the same month as that brutal police search of a poor Latino family's home in Alabama? Come to find out, it wasn't their home, and the only legal citizen residing in that house was their five-year-old son."

"SHUT UP!"

"Oh, Alex, you know how the story goes. A prominent policewoman intervenes, for some unknown reason, and the arrest is delayed...just long enough for that little brown boy and his family to flee the state. They were never heard from again, nor did the police ever resume their search. Was it happenstance that the case was dropped and that, only weeks later, the same policewoman who had been so dearly kind to that boy's family decided to move to California as well?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said through my teeth.

"No, of course not. You couldn't possibly remember what your parents did—what your uncle did..."

White Robe lunged forward and gripped my neck between bony fingers, tilting my head upward to expose my throat.

"How terrible it is," rasped that awful voice, "to know but not understand—to be aware, but to lack the precious insight you so desire."

My head was cocked backwards as the shadow of the knife rose up on the wall, White Robe's scraggly voice erupting with scratchy, frothy laughter. I closed my eyes and braced myself for the unforgiving blade of steel that would split my neck in two.

Just as the knife's shadow began to descend on the wall, a second shadow appeared, a thin and virile penumbra, catching White Robe's arm and jostling the knife away.

"You!" he screamed. "I had hoped I wouldn't have to kill you!"

I leaned forward and opened my eyes, unable to believe what I saw. Before me, wrestling tenaciously against White Robe, was none other than Sara Reyes-Jiménez.

White Robe retrieved a second knife, smaller yet just as terrifyingly sharp, from his right sleeve.

He aimed the blade for Sara's neck, but she dodged his strike swiftly and swung a heavy kick into his wrist.

The knife flew from his hand as Sara followed up with her right palm to smash White Robe in the head, sent him crashing to the floor with a raspy scream.

As he lay squirming on the floor, unable to rise, Sara spun and darted toward me, ripping frantically at the ropes restraining my hands until she'd pulled them loose.

"Alex," she asked through tenuous breaths, "are you okay?"

"Y-yeah," I sputtered, "I—I'm fine."

She sprang to the floor, grabbed White Robe's fallen knife to slash the ropes that bound my feet. "Come on," she urged as she sliced the last braid. "Let's get out of here."

"You're going nowhere!"

Sara twisted around as my eyes grew wide, White Robe staggering back to his feet before lifting his cloth-flanked right hand to point a gun in our direction.

Sara leapt back to her full height in an instant, hurling the knife before White Robe could say another word and tackling me to the floor in under a second. The first bullet skewed through the air, sailing past the both of us as the knife Sara had thrown impaled White Robe's lower wrist, causing him to let out another raspy screech of pain.

He dropped the gun, and no sooner than he had, the clamoring rumble of footsteps echoed out against the stairwell above us.

The cops!?

"Alex, come on!" Sara screamed. "We've gotta run." She pulled a key from her pocket and jammed it into a hole situated within the wall closest to her.

What the—how'd she even know that was there?

She twisted the key and gripped a rusted knob barely visible in the dim lighting.

I glanced once to my left, where White Robe squirmed and cradled his wrist, felt fear and uncertainty bubbling through my blood. But with the rock-hard pounding of police boots thudding ever more loudly overhead, I finally steeled myself and followed Sara inside the shadowy entrance.

"Alright, it's not that far from here, Alex. We've just gotta—"

"Sara, wait," I said, practically begging. "I just...what was that back there?"

She shook her head. "Alex, we don't have time to talk. If we stay here, we'll be sitting ducks. We have to move."

I shut my eyes, nodded reluctantly. "O-okay," I said, steeling myself again.

Sara turned on her heel, and I followed her lead. We ran through the tunnel for at least a quarter of a mile before we got to a forked pathway.

"To the right," Sara ordered.

I trailed behind her, breathing heavily with every feverish moment, trying to no avail to take in my surroundings, to decipher some meaning or location from the passing rocks lining the underground bricking.

"Sara, this doesn't make any sense," I finally screamed ahead. "What the heck is even happening right now!?"

She hesitated as she ran. "I was hoping you could explain that to me, Alex. One minute, I was putting away your dad's patient files in the back of the hospital, and the next, I happen to look up at the security-camera monitors and see you getting kidnapped by some guy in a nightgown."

"Look," I breathed heavily, trying to keep pace with her, "I don't know much, but I'm pretty sure that the guy in the robe is the same person who tried to kill two of my friends earlier today...and my dad. I'm not even sure how he's managed to do all this."

We arrived at a doorway, which Sara quickly opened with the same key she'd used moments earlier. Outside the door was a ladder, and we both climbed, crawling quickly into the retreating sunlight shining above ground.

"I don't understand," Sara said. "Why would this freak want to target you guys?"

"I have no idea," I replied evenly. "I'd never even seen this guy before he attacked my dad on Saturday." I shut my eyes, shook my head. "I...I don't know what to do, and we can't even go to the police," I sighed. "I'm pretty sure they're the reason Velden's dead, and they're probably helping White Robe make his getaway as we speak."

"Wait, who's Velden?"

I sighed again. "It's a really long story, and I don't have time to tell it. But right now, I have to get to my friend Azalea's house." I clenched my fists, remembering my bike was still back at the hospital, and readied myself to run. But before I could, something dawned on me:

"Thank you, Sara," my voice lightened. "I should have said that the moment you untied me. Thank you. I owe you my life. If you hadn't been there, I'd be bleeding out in that basement right now."

She blushed. "It...Alex, it was nothing."

"No, Sara. It was the bravest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. Where'd you learn to fight like that?"

Her eyes darkened slightly. "Growing up where I did, you learn fast."

"Well," I responded, "you're definitely one of the toughest girls I've ever met."

She smiled and blushed again.

"Anyway," I swallowed hard, sighing, "we should probably get out of here. I just..." I paused, glanced away.

"Alex...what is it?"

I hesitated. "H—How did you know about that secret passageway in the basement?" I returned my eyes to meet hers. "...And where did you get that key from, the one you used to unlock the door?"

Her blushing, beaming face suddenly grew reserved. "I—I'd rather not say," she answered lowly.

"Come on, Sara," I begged, moving closer and wrapping her hands in mine. "You can trust me. I promise."

She remained silent.

"Sara, please. Someone was murdered today, and there's a good chance the cops are probably just gonna cover it all up. I don't know why there's a secret tunnel in their basement or why you have the key to it, and I'm not accusing you of anything—I promise. But if you know something, you need to tell me." I leaned my face in closer to hers, looking her straight in the eyes.

"Fine," she said after a moment's uncertainty. "I'll tell you. But not here."

I took a step back, narrowing my eyes. "If not here, then where?"

"Your friend's house," she replied, staring warily back at me. "Take me there."

"Why does it make a difference if—?"

"Because I was told to guard this key with my life. And even though we managed to escape White Robe, I have no idea who might be watching us right now." She turned from left to right, surveying cautiously.

I was stunned. For a moment, I just stood there staring at her in disbelief.

"Alex...please don't look at me that way."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I just...wow."

Her eyes fell dejectedly. "Alex, please, take me to your friend's house. Your dad's safe at the hospital with Alma, and White Robe probably doesn't have the nerve to come after us again, but I still don't feel safe going back to my apartment."

I sighed.

"Alex," she continued, "you just asked me to trust you. Now I need you to trust me. This key is really important. It's the only thing that saved me when I came to this country, and I need you to keep it a secret." She stared at me longingly, those sweet eyes of brown begging me to believe her.

"Alright," I finally said. "But we'll have to take your car. My bike's still at the hospital."

"Of course," she said, relieved at my answer. She retrieved a key fob from her pocket and pressed a button, making the lights flash on a blue minivan parked only a few feet away from the tunnel we'd just exited.

Why'd she park so far from the hospital?

"That's my car," she said, snapping me out of my thoughts as she motioned to it. "Let's go."

****

The ride to Azalea's house was mostly silent. The reality of everything that had just happened was finally catching up to me, and I was freaking out. Sara stayed calm the entire drive. It was almost eerie how collected she was despite all of this.

From the time I met her, I'd thought she was a bit mysterious, but now it was different. It was almost like she was two different people—she was nice and bubbly and down to earth, but there was also a darker side, a mystique and ferocity hidden furtively beneath an unassuming veil—it was a side that both enraptured and terrified me.

"Alright," I said the moment she pulled into Azalea's driveway, "let's do this."

Hunter came out to greet us. "Alex, dude, what took you so long?" he called as Sara and I exited her vehicle. "Me and Azalea were starting to get worried."

"Well, don't stop the worry train just yet," I answered grimly. "You won't believe what just happened to the two of us."

Right as I spoke, I heard another car driving up next to Azalea's house, a car that I recognized immediately.

What's she doing here?

Hannah stepped out of the automobile and into the mild evening air, walking up to the front porch after shutting her door.

"Hunter," she said in a worried tone, keeping her gaze fixed straight ahead at him. "Look, I know this sounds crazy, but...we need to go to Cade Senderson. Like, now. Someone just tried to kill me...and I think Stefan's next."