[Dante]

     The face of stress and lasitude addressed most of my classmates while they faced the final exam which consisted of at least a thousand questions. The relentless rain and bone-chilling cold outside seemed to seep into the room, but despite the discomfort, my classmates soldiered on, sweating through the daunting task before them. It was no small feat to tackle a thousand-question exam, especially when each student had to choose five subjects from the nine offered per branch, all to be examined at once. And to add more, each subject was further divided into three sections: Practical, Theory and Objective.

     From four o'clock in the morning we had been in school enduring the grueling exams, and by then, we had already conquered the practical aspect.

     In the midst of the tension, I stole a glance at my brother, Lucas, who was intensely focused on his exam, I really put efforts in helping him and Lander with their revision, so, I trusted both would do something.

    Since the time he had gone to the psychologist on Tuesday, his chilling screams at night which made me shudder abruptly were no longer pronounced. I still saw him frustrated and somewhat dull most of the time, but I found solace in the fact that his situation had improved since his arrival at Wellington.

     When Lucas crossed the threshold of our door the first time, he seemed to give off a negative aura, not cheerful at all, his face was pale and his eyes were red to explode, he seemed to have cried so much; no matter how much he tried to hide his hands behind his back, you could notice some extravagant bruises as if he were tied or something and not to mention his appearance in general. At first I had thought that he had suffered abuse, but my father, Thomas, had later told me that the aunt that took care of Lucas had informed him that Lucas suffered an attack by the so called Lethal Heptagon, so, he had no choice but to go for him.

     Our Father never told me the reason why he kept Lucas away from us, and it also looked strange to me that he had never told Lucas about us, it wasn't until he got home that he found out that he had two brothers.

     As I was going. Lucas stayed all day in his room and almost always spent his time breaking things and screaming, it seemed that he wanted to kill himself. I even came to think that he was crazy, and this was reinforced when one day out of nowhere I entered his room and realized that he wanted to commit suicide by jumping from his balcony.

     Apparently my recommendation to Thomas to look for a psychologist had really benefited him greatly in terms of his mental health.

     As the exam pressed on, my attention flickered between Lucas, thinking how our relationship was disastrous in the beginning, and the task at hand, until the supervisor's gaze snapped me back to reality. Hastily, I completed the remaining questions and exchanged a few answers with my peers before sinking back into my seat.

Thoughts of my ongoing investigation to uncover the truth about our mother filled my head. I was trying to figure out a way to track her. Until that moment, nothing I had done had served, neither my intensive interrogation to our house workers nor my rummage through the house or anything. Thomas had tried very well to hide it. But I was going to discover who our mother was.

After completing that long exam, the supervisor removed the prints and went on his way.

Lander got up after me. "For concluding the exams, party at my house!!" he shouted, positioning himself next to me.

The room, previously filled with faces etched with bitterness and sorrow, erupted into jubilant cheers at the promise of release from the exam's grip.

"Wow, the transformative power of a few drinks," I mused to myself, observing the sudden shift in mood.

I turned to Lander. "After a hard exam it's good to party a little but—"
"Don't be that scared weirdo. You know the duke is not in the castle and we can easily bribe the workers to keep shut."
"But—"
"Save your words and don't ruin it, for now, we can do everything that comes out of our sleeves." He went to talk to Boris on the plans of the feast that night. Party in which I wasn't going to attend even though Lander was right.

Sideways, I saw Lucas leave the room, it seemed strange to me since he usually always had his buttocks freshly perched on his seat. Curiosity piqued, so, as a kind of detective, I surreptitiously followed him. He was walking with his backpack on his back and It looked he was heading to the Library.

"The exam was good."Lucas stopped walking. "Thanks for the help, bro."
"No need to thank me," I said, leaving the drama I was making aside and heading to where Lucas was. "I am really proud to see where you are heading to."
"Yeah, I think today I'll check any of those damn five hundred leafed novels." Lucas remarked, a spark of sarcasm shining through his words.

[Lucas]

Dante was being heavy. With the last day of class upon us, I had no choice but to enter yes or yes. I couldn't simply tell him: "Stop following me, I am trying to assault the classified information that is hidden in the library of our institute and I don't want you to get in the way", because he would be curious and interrogate me. And I didn't wanted to open up to him yet despite the urge my psychologist placed on me on the previous session.

I swallowed saliva and opened the library door.

As we stepped inside, Dante immediately set off on a book hunt. I plopped down on a black leather couch in the gloomy and dimly lit library, silently praying that Dante would scram with his stack of books. But this one didn't seem to want to leave, he even plopped down beside me, offering me a book to read.

While I pretended to be reading that fucking love stuff novel, thoughts filled my head. It had been three days since that strange brown-haired man told me to remember him. In a way I kept my conscience calm since it was a man who went to the psychologist and probably suffered a delirium, but a nagging voice inside me kept probing. Who was Arthur Darwell, and why did he mistake me for someone else?

Although I had not given so much importance to my encounters with that man, it ate me from the inside and filled me with intrigue. He also made me wonder: What if he was a member of the Lethal Heptagon who began to attend to the same psychologist as me just to have me around? And confuse me with silly questions?

The mere thought sent shivers down my spine, but at the same time, it increased my reasons for knowing who that man was.

"Did you see that?" Dante's voice jolted me back to reality. "I swear I saw a woman at the window." Dante went to peer through the large crystal window on the place.
"I've told you a hundred times to lay off the fantasy stuff. It's messing with your head," I scoffed. "There's nothing there."
"And me for you to tell me what the sect had done to you," he chuckled, gathering his books. "By the way, I picked up a nonfiction mystery book."
"But you know that's a whole different ballgame and I ain't ready." I deflected.
"Don't worry I know, but I really saw someone there," he said. "If you're done we can leave."

I trailed behind Dante as we checked out our books at the self-service machine.

We got out of the library and walked for a while and once we got to the middle of the corridor I said that I had forgotten something. He told me that he could accompany me, but I insisted that he leave since he had a lot of books with him—the perfect excuse. Once alone in the library again, I retrieved my phone, dialed Marc's number, and listened intently to his instructions.

Marc gave me the necessary instructions required to access the hidden information. I hung up my cell phone after having heard everything.

"Okay, I can do this," I muttered, clutching a pen drive I had stashed in my pocket.

I went to the oldest section of the place, and began to check the huge shelf. Marc had said that I should look for the largest book and grab it, but in that section they existed a dozen of thousands of books. I relied on my supernatural ability to spot the hefty volumes I'd never crack open, and finally, I laid eyes on a massive book perched on the top shelf. I hurried up the stairs, snatched it, and as I descended, a panel silently slid open.

I was taken aback when I saw that door emerging from what was once a solid wall, but I kept my amazement for later since there was no time to waste, the last three days I was on study monk mode to pass the exam and didn't investigate anything. But now that the exam was over, I didn't had a millisecond to waste.

I stepped into the room, a secret base of considerable size. Ignoring the arsenal of weapons that were kept on crystal boxes on shelves and state-of-the-art cars on display, I made a beeline for a desk topped with a powerful computer. Following Marc's instructions, I swiftly inserted my USB and pilfered all the information I sought from a folder labeled "Lethal Heptagon".

"What are you looking for?" A very familiar voice caught my attention.

"Um, teacher, well, I was just looking for something when this place suddenly opened up, and I got curious," I stammered, my heart racing as I edged toward the exit, concealing the pen drive.
"Where do you think you're going? You won't expect me to believe that, will you?" he said. " Who told you of this place?"

"I'm sorry, Professor Harry, it won't happen again," I evaded his questions.

"Be very careful, Lucas," he warned with a sinister edge. "And don't you dare breathe a word about this place, you hear me? You mad kid."

Without turning around, I left the place immediately. What was my teacher supposed to be doing in that place? Wasn't it secret? These are some of the things that I questioned when I was safe outside, but all that mattered to me was that I had obtained the information I had been searching for.

I sauntered towards the exit, not far away. But before I could make my grand exit, a hand clutched my neck.

     Without skipping a beat, I delivered a swift blow to the person's ribs with my elbow, loosening their grip. I wriggled free and took a defensive stance I had learned in The Karate Center in Claudial, eying the figure before me. It was a burly woman, her face concealed by a balaclava and her body adorned with tattoos. I free off my defensive position seeing her pant for the impact, and when I tried to approach her she agilely brandished two daggers and lunged at me, but I dodged both, landing a solid punch to her gut, causing her to keel over and the daggers to fall.

I grabbed them and approached were she was, pointing her with one dagger. "Who are you?"

She didn't even raised her bowed head and as I tried to remove the balaclava from her, she swept my legs out from under making me fall and swiftly placed a cloth over my nose. I lost consciousness instantly.

"Hey, hey, what are you still doing here at this time?" A person hit me on my back.

I sprang up from the ground and stood with my forearms at the height of my eyes and well-formed fists only to realize that it was the literature teacher.

"I'm sorry," I lowered my hands, rubbed my eyes to think with some clarity and then I shook my clothes which were full of dust.

"Is it the exam that made you so tired to sleep on the library's floor or where you engrossed in a book?" he inquired.
I chuckled. "No, sir, I got distracted."
"And a lot, it's already a quarter to seven," he said.

"What?" I took up my backpack which had fallen off during the attack and immediately left the library. "Why hadn't Dante call me?" I asked myself internally as I increased my pace to get out of the institute.

When I was already out, I checked that I still had the pendrive feeling my pockets and I confirmed that it was like that. But I also felt a piece of paper, it looked like a ticket. I snatched it up and realized it was a note from my aggressor. The contents confirmed my suspicion.

"She might even be the woman Dante had seen before at the window," I thought. "It seems he was definitely not hallucinating."

The note read: "Lucas Darwell, what happened to you today is just nothing. You're gonna pay for what you did, Mother Fucker."

I trudged through the sidewalks on that cold day realizing that obstacles seemed to crop up daily. My aggressor was agile and could take my neck at anytime as she had done before, and even though I knew that the punch I gave her would keep her occupied I was still vulnerable since she had the advantage of knowing who I was.

"Lucas, it ain't going to be easy." I muttered to myself.

I hopped into a taxi, heading home, just assuming that for that moment, the mystery man and the mystery woman were just that—a mystery to me.

Author's Note

Hope y'all are digging the book. If so, don't forget to leave your precious votes and comments. I really appreciate it. Thanks for reading this far. Stay tuned. Peace out. 🤙🏿