[Fall] Chapter 1: Re-Placement

The seven of them sat in the waiting room of the counselling centre. Joe, Jonathan, Kyle, Minsoo, Myra, Torrance and Wren had been summoned for an appointment with the school counsellor, Dr Veritas. The second day of school had been uneventful thus far, with the seniors finally reporting to their homerooms in the morning, followed by the start of timetabled classes for them. Alex was absent again. No one spoke about the events of the previous day, at least not during class. But the unspoken hung in the atmosphere, like dry static in the air, almost enough to make the hair on one's skin stand on edge. The first few lessons felt equally dry, as if they were simply going to the motions of the introductory chapter of their textbooks, rote questions were asked, standard answers were provided. Things felt grey in the light of what happened yesterday.

Then the lunch bell rang, and finally the various cliques could catch up with each other. As luck would have had it, or was it sheer coincidence (if ever there was such a thing), the seven of them happened to have a common free period just before that, and Ms Alwood, whom they were happy to inherit again as their form teacher, told them in no uncertain terms to report to the counselling office, at the first level of the Redevelopment Wing.

The waiting room smelled faintly of lemon-scented disinfectant and a slight whiff of old sneakers, its walls a shade of serene sage, slightly sickly under the fluorescent lights. Various posters adorned them, a particular motivational one featuring a kitten dangling from a branch with the words "Hang in There!". On a low table sat a stack of National Geographic magazines neatly fanned out. It is a space designed to feel like a living room, but with bolted down chairs and the heavy, rhythmic ticking of the wall clock that was just a bit too loud for the room.

Every few minutes, the forced cheer of Ms Gracie Young, the receptionist and administrative assistant, answered "Care and Guidance Centre, how can we help you thrive today?" Her greeting was accurate, as the first floor premises housed both the care and counselling services, as well as the education and career guidance services. Veritas, head of department for Chemistry, was also Lead Care Counsellor. Necht and Nixon, as the students were introduced to yesterday, were the newly-posted guidance counsellors.

Leading away from the waiting room were the offices of said personnel, as well as meeting / counselling rooms further down the hall. It was to be expected that the seven of them were to be spoken to, in turn, but no one present yet knew what they had in common, except for hints of what they shared on their class chat app yesterday.

What do you do while waiting?

Torrance is going to talk quietly so they can't be overheard. "So, What do you think happened yesterday?"

Minsoo drummed her fingers on her own knee, as she sat cross legged in the long line of students awaiting Day 2 counseling sessions. It just so happened that the students assembled were also her friends…

"These newbs are really trying to hit the ground running, huh? Day two and half the grade is in here." she says, with a sigh that said she’d rather be outside doing something else.

"What do I think happened?" she asks, snd then hunches over conspiratorially towards the others!

"I think there’s something beneath the school. Something… weird. I think it might be weird enough to cause a black out."

She’d spent last night mulling it over. She’d even spoken to her parents, but only to figure out all the mundane explanations so that she could do away with them!

Kyle glances around, not quite trusting the school to be just a place of learning anymore, and joins the conversation with his own observations. "I have no idea what happened. And how come some people don't seem to even realize or remember what happened? Plus i know that others that aren't here also noticed things."

"Well I overheard the VP talking to professor Strom about some sort of 'mass awakeing'. In context it seemed to be related to what we expierenced. Strom seemed to want to enact a quarantine... of us seemingly. Though The VP seemed to be trying to hide the awakening...

>>>No stranger to the Guidance Office, Jonathan sat on the industrially designed, neutrally colored sofa like a dark cloud on a sunny day. He was distant, quiet, distracted...all the things people generally assume him to be on a good day. Neither yesterday nor today were 'good days'. The glass walls of the lounge made him feel trapped in a fish tank, on display like some sort of exotic fish in an aquarium...unable to see those observing them.
>>>"Usually when authority figures are talking about being 'woke', it's not meant in a good way..." he piped up leaning forward to let his arms fold up in a serious manner. "I dunno what happened yesterday but I think we've all got pieces of the bigger picture but nobody sees it all just yet. Makes me wonder if they're putting us all together to see what we all know individually before we start piecing it together ourselves."
>>>He looked at the others assembled in the lounge. Most of them had been in on the class group chat asking questions while everyone else was posting memes and goofing around. "In the interests of honesty and clarity, I think we need to put all our cards on the table and see what we've got. Mac and Torrence, you guys offered yours, here's mine." Jonathan fished around in his black backpack to produce a canvass and laid it on the table between them, sweeping off the National Geographics to make room. It wasn't the regular side of the canvas that drew attention but the back side that held rough sketches of a pigtailed girl. "Is this the 'Emily Walsh' you guys saw? This is the one Kyle and I saw around the Art Club tables."

Joe peers at the artwork."Good likeness. That’s the same girl who showed up at the running club stall just before the power cut. She had three friends with her who didn’t turn a hair when the lights came back on and she wasn’t there."

Later the other day, Wren finally got to reply to the class chat.
Wren: Emily was at the music booth. Sat next to me at the piano right before the blackout. Talk in person.

The waiting room smelled of disinfectant. Wren took the last empty chair and let herself settle for a moment, listening — not to the conversation already underway, but underneath it. The seven of them, whatever they were becoming, sitting in a row under fluorescent lights.

She looked at Jonathan's sketch when it came around. Nodded once. "Same girl. She sat next to me at the piano right before it happened."

She let that land, then moved on. "I overheard Veritas yesterday. She was asking someone who else knew about 'the Vance boy'." A pause. "Make of that what you will. I have my suspicions about whose side she's on."

She glanced around at the others. "And we seem to be somewhat special in some way. All of us in this room."

Myra seemed fareaway, untill Jonathan started to talk about Emily Walsh. Wait, what? That is not right. I was talking with her and her two friends when the power went out.
How many Emilies were there? Or did we see the same girl in different locations at the same time?

And ehm... when the power went out, I saw symbols on the walls. And I'm pretty sure that Vice-Principal Marston could see them too.
She leavs through her notebook, and slows down when she gets to a page with symbols. The first page bears signs of being drawn quickly, and on the second page the symbols are drawn with more care, as if she was copying them from somewhere else (OOC:The golden symbols)
There are two symbols that havent been redrawn (OOC:The black symbols)

Glancing over at the sketches Kyle shares a bit more info "I'm pretty sure Zane also know more about what happened, though I'm not sure what."

Kyle is getting a bit nervous about the entire situation. Getting pets is cool and all bit if there are others or there, and it seems like there are, and they already know that much more about things and have no issue making kids diaper then it's also critical to lean as much as possible, as quick as possible.

As they chat Kyle idly looks around to ensure none of the adults can overhead and checks his phone for any posts by other students.

"Look, I don't know why we're all gathered here, but I don't think it's a coincidence. And I think we are all on the same page that we want more info?
Regardless of what all of them" Torrance gestures vaguely around with his head "may want?"

>>>"So we all saw the same girl at the same time, talked to her, and then she was just gone. Nobody but us seems to remember her." Jonathan restated, just to be clear in the matter. "And that's on top of other weird stuff happening to us individually from what you all said and overheard. Me included."
>>> He looked at the symbols sketched in Myra's notebook and scratched his head. Some of the symbols he recognized as being similar to things he'd seen in occult artworks every good Goth has seen at some point bust as for what they meant he was at a loss. "A lot of those look like leit motifs or other imagery in some occult works I've seen...and in weird graffiti I've seen online...but what do they mean? Where are they from?" He tried committing the symbols to his memory before putting the notebook back on the table for other to look at.
>>>"'The Vance boy' that you said Veritas mentioned. That's probably Alex Vance...he was absent from school yesterday and today. I think something has happened to him. Something bad..." he thought back to his vision from yesterday and the fact that he himself was the only one of the three with yesterday's date who was still around. "We should check that out after school. Just to be sure."

Comparing accounts of what happened yesterday did one important thing. It made the seven of them realise they were not alone in their weird experience of yesterday's incident. They struggled to find an explanation of the matter, with such inconsistency in the differing accounts.
What was niggling in their minds was why they were told to report here. Was it routine, in that the school was simply going through all the students in turn? Or was it something they did that singled them out? Was it … that they did or saw something which could only be described as out of the ordinary? They were beginning to conclude that there was no such thing as coincidence.

Perhaps the next part of the answer lay behind that door, to the counselling room, even as the first name was about to be called.

"Myra saw her with two friends. Joe and I saw her with three." Minsoo muses, wondering if there was something there! The girls hadn’t seemed that phased about Emily disappearing, so maybe they were a part of the mystery; an indication of how many times the girl had replicated herself.

It was crazy for Minsoo to even consider such a thing, but then again… she had spent all night wondering about the thing in the basement.

Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night…

Through the night… Minsoo had put a hundred names and faces to the thing. She scrunched up her face then:

"An awakening. Maybe whatever this is, it’s meant to wake up whatever is in the basement? And the symbols…" she says, but comes up short.

"Empowers it? Keeps it locked up?"

Who could say?…

Kyle took in the layout of the room as they talked with each other. The lobby they had entered led past the receptionist's desk counter, right to the waiting area. Two doors on the far side looked to be the counsellor's offices. Wren knew the first room because that was the door she eavesdropped yesterday, with Dr Isabella Veritas on the nameplate, and the word Wellness below. The adjacent door had a blank nameplate, and said Support below it. A corridor past those two doors led to the counselling rooms. Joe and Jonathan, and whomever else had had to pay a visit here before, would be familiar with what those rooms were used for. It would be one of those rooms they were lined up to meet Veritas.

In the opposite direction of the admin assistant's desk was another corridor. Torrance had stood up, presumably to stretch his legs, but he eyed the computer Young was working on. Was he tempted to try to gain access to it, in order to look up the counselling records on Alex Vance? The washrooms were near the end of that corridor, beyond which was a barred door that looked like it led to the building's staircase. Along the corridor were doors labeled Archive and a more worn out door with an older looking frame that said Maintenance, likely a supply closet.

Kyle was pretty sure that Young paid them no heed; the admin assistant was used to the coming and going of students on an hourly basis, who surely mastered the art of tuning them out unless they did something that called attention to them. He spotted the security cam in the ceiling corner, a regular feature of the various locations of school campus.

They now had shared much information with each other, but sorting it all out to make sense was still a mystery. Minsoo decided to see if she could add to the collective knowledge, especially since Torrance had mentioned overhearing the term 'awakening', a word that Joe seemed to have some insight on judging by his frown. Minsoo started to sing aloud, her tune allowing her to feel more of her environment and beyond. But this time things felt more garbled. The clarity she had yesterday in vibing with the campus wasn't present today. Was it because yesterday's vision opened a connection she could latch on to, whereas today she needed to figure it out all by herself? Nonetheless, she still had the vague sense that she was closer to the dark sensation today than she was yesterday.

Wren as always attuned to herself, it was instinct for her. She could sense the trust from the others as they freely shared what they had learnt, but all the same she felt better if she could relate to their auras. To her, Joe and Jonathan, like yesterday, lit up the room the most; Torrance felt like he was half a moment behind, observing things; Wren felt her own manifest as a half note, more of a B flat today. From the admin assistant Wren didn't get any pariular vibe.

Kyle's quick check on the class chat did reveal that there were others scheduled to meet the counsellor as well. Sabrina was indignant about it, and Raven had added a quiet Me too in reply.

Joe leans forward, his voice soft but intense. "So correct me if I’m missing anything, but we’ve got one student who never turned up at all yesterday, another who did a bunk in front of us, but most people didn’t notice, the staff responded by clearing the school but not calling the police. I don’t expect everything here works like on TV, but police aren’t usually subtle, are they? Yet we didn’t see a thing. That tells me the staff wanted to take care of it themselves, whatever ‘it’ is."

With a swift confident movement of someone who is used to moving anywhere as if they shoild be there Torrance breezes by the receptionist (?) without bekng noticed and theit hand lands on the doork ob of the Archives as they gently turn to check if it is locked.

He had laid it out precisely. No police, staff handling it themselves - same conclusion Wren had reached yesterday, there was something considerably wrong.

She watched Joe for a moment. The singing bowl note was right there, steady and unhurried, the kind that didn't ask whether you were ready for it. Close up she could hear what she'd only half-caught yesterday, harmonics underneath the fundamental note that didn't belong to now, older layers, other registers. She didn't quite know what to do with that.

Jonathan hit her almost simultaneously, equal in intensity but opposite in character. A gong's edge - the initial strike full and immediate - and then the sustain collapsing faster than it should, bleeding into shimmer before the note could resolve.

Myra resonated like a pipe organ's lowest register, formal and structural, the kind of tone that lived in old stone and didn't shift.

Minsoo was a voice held open, broader than made sense for the size of the room, radiating outward rather than staying contained. Warm in a way that made the space easier to be in.

Kyle was something digital and staccato, a signal in short precise bursts that kept almost resolving into something recognisable and then didn't. Less like music than like the idea of music, arriving in fragments that never quite assembled.

Torrance she caught in fragments - a precise, clean tone that arrived slightly ahead of where she expected it, or perhaps behind, she couldn't settle on which. Every time she turned her attention toward it directly it had already moved on.

She checked the admin desk. Ms Young.
Nothing. Not quiet - absent. Wren sat with that a moment longer than the others.

She looked at Joe.
"You're not surprised," she said quietly. "About the awakening part."

The girl shakes her head, as if she had abandoned thinking intently on something without saying.

"Which means we keep our lips zipped." when the idea of staff being implicated in the weirdness is raised!

Myra lifts her head when Mac mentions Awakening.
I read that yesterday. A thesis about these symbols, and how these traditions view the world, changes their minds to change the world. Once they have figured that out, they are called awakening. Or something to that effect.

What is with the basement, Mac? Isn't it just where they keep the archive, the stacks, and ehm... Here Myra blushes. Potentially offending literature?

Sitting just next to Wren when she reads aura, Myra feels something. Nothing she can pinpoint, but more like a shift in the summer breeze. A swirl or eddy, indistinct and without source, but a change.

So what do we actually know? Myra picks up on Jonathans resume.

• Time felt strange in the morning. We were almost late, but in 2 minutes we were in the door, and seated in the auditorium at 9 AM
• Joe fainted, and we each experienced something.
• Then we got the new guidance counsellors, the grey twins.
• At 3 PM, 6 hours later, Emily Walsh interacted with each of us, and disappeared.
• Alex Vance is missing
• Some of the school staff know something. Vice-Principal Marston and Professor Strom, for sure. Also Dr. Veritas. And while this could just have been a power outage and a kid that didn't show up for class, there is the smell of a cover-up.

Did I miss anything? Oh yes, we are all sitting here now, called in for "counselling". Myra makes quotation marks in the air with her fingers. I have a feeling that the staff does not have our best interest in mind - not with this... She is looking for a word, but eventually gives up and goes with. ...Spooky stuff

>>>"Individually, we only have pieces of the puzzle but maybe together we can put enough in place to see the bigger picture." Jonathan nodded at Myra's summation of yesterday. "Number one thing is to not lose sight of the fact that someone is trying to keep all this hidden. Maybe the school faculty, maybe others, I couldn't tell you but we suspect the faculty is at least IN on the cover-up so they can't be entirely trusted. Like Mac said, we need to keep a lid on this until we know more."
>>>He understood that some of the others didn't have as laissez-faire guardians as he did and pushing things might stir up more trouble for them than necessary. "We're going to have to do some poking around on our own but no one needs to be alone doing so. Emily Walsh disappeared and maybe Alex Vance too so we need to be careful. If they were luckier they might be here in this office and one of us might be in their situation instead." He let the implications of that settle for a moment. "We've got enough to look into to keep us busy for a while so we should group up to tackle them. We'll also need some way to communicate that won't be easy to find if someone is looking for it."

"What’s in the basement?" Minsoo repeats, puffing air up into her fringe to get it out of her eyes.

She sighs and rubs the toe of her shoe into the floor awkwardly from where she sat. She waits until it squeaks before speaking:

"I’m not sure. It could be a thing…" she says, putting her hands out to grab something invisibly there. "Something alive. Or… or it could just be a feeling." she says, sighing heavily again and trying to make sense of her explanation.

"Like smoke or air. Something we can’t see." she says finally with a shrug.

Myra the librarian, ever the cataloguer, decided to sort aloud the facts as they knew them. It seemed important that they shared the information, not just because each of them knew only certain things, but because they had been brought together. Not by the counselling summons, but by the shared experience, a resonance Wren could strongly affirm as she felt her way through each of them in turn, like different instruments all about to play together.

Minsoo's focus on the basement jogged Myra's attention. Kyle had noted the layout of the first floor: lobby, reception, waiting area in the middle, the offices and counselling rooms to their right, archive, maintenance, toilet, staircase off to the left, but it was Myra who noticed how the design of the layout wasn't simply because the building's architecture determined it to be so. It seemed to her that the rooms were like partitions, dividing up what would have been larger spaces. They all knew this building had undergone (and continues to undergo) renovation. To her, the partitions seemed to have some possibly arcane purpose, to diffuse aggregated emotions? Relevant, for a place such as a counselling centre, but inexplicable if the renovations done were of the mundane sort.

Myra's thoughts about the layout seemed to coincidentally prompt Minsoo's confidence. Minsoo was now surer that there was a basement to this Redevelopment Wing, a place that occluded her, but her inability to perceive the specifics almost guaranteed it existed. For the briefest moment she thought she smelled the slightest whiff of smoke.

Kyle's method to read the room was different from Myra's. Once again he relied on his understanding of networks. The strong wifi SSID signal, ASHS_ECG, he picked up yesterday even though they were at Founder's Hall, a wholly different building, was coming from this building's server! (ECG must be the abbreviation for education and career guidance?) But no sooner did he use his newfound senses via his own phone when the device began to blink. He lost the piggyback, then the connection, then the signal reading altogether. And the phone was getting very very warm! Was it time for a restart, before things got worse?

Amidst this, and ironically while Jonathan was talking aloud about not snooping about alone, Torrance nonchalantly walked toward the left corridor. Ms Young, the admin receptionist, paid him no heed. The toilets were down that corridor after all. But Torrance did not walk all the way to the washrooms. He stopped at the door labeled Archive, and gave the handle a twist. It wasn't locked! Looking in he could see a small desk immediately next to the door, and beyond which rows of metal shelves, the near ones with neat upright files, the farther ones with dossier boxes. More filing cabinets sat right at the end. Was Torrance thinking of entering in full view? There was a chance he could find hardcopy information about the student population, although arguably new information was more likely to be computerised. At this point he could still pretend he opened the door by mistake, thinking it was the toilet.

Torrance's ducking off was ironically something more up Jonathan's alley, given his track record of disciplinary issues. But that made Jonathan right about a couple of things. One was the need to continue to talk discreetly. Perhaps Kyle could engineer a secure chat somehow (if his phone wasn't currently on the fritz). They had to be careful, what had happened to Alex, if indeed something happened to Alex, could have happened to any one of them, if they were all of the same predicament. Would this place know about what ailed Alex? According to Daniela, Alex's absence wasn't just a regular absence from school. Wren said Daniela saw it as some sort of darkness he disappeared to, and had heard Veritas talking about a girlfriend and a sanatorium. Would the name Alex Vance ring familiar to Young, who after all was the first person any student would meet if they came to the centre.

Torrance will quickly look through the records, specifically for the aformentioned students, taking scans of pages to reference later. Using his skills in many hours of research he will try to quickly sort through the records.
If that happens quickly he will look up his records and the other player's records. He will only stay in the room 2 minutes tops.

Is there is some odd Feng shui going on with this layout?
Myra has been looking at the map of the room, showing the evacuation/fire exits. She doesn't have the chance to get more into it as her name is called and she goes into her session.

Something, a faint scent or a passing brush or air, made Minsoo think that whatever was in the basement was indeed more of an incorporeal entity. She doubted they find a monster, or a three headed dog guarding a door. But they’d feel something; know something was there with them.

"Hmmm…?" she says to Myra, and realizes she had been drawn into her own thoughts. But the girl was already up and heading for the door after her name was called.

Archive Room

Torrance knew that he shouldn't be in the archive, given the confidentiality of the records stored there, and gave himself a time limit to how long he ought to stay before he aroused suspicion.

There was too much to search through in that time. He could tell the newer records were in the files in front, and looked for Alex's file accord to their cohort. If the thought crossed his mind that he shouldn't be looking into his classmate's private and personal details, he didn't let that weigh on his mind.

He intuitively found his own file first, which noted the instances where he had had to see the counsellor himself. The rest of the class was in the same large folder. From there he pulled out Alex's file. A quick glance at family background also mentioned some difficult circumstances at home, but he flipped past that to see that Alex had seen Veritas six times last year, a dramatic increase compared to zero requested consultations in his first two years. The last occasion had been just a week before school reopened. Veritas' own case notes was presumably not filed here in open shelves in an unsecured room.

Torrance couldn't help to think that there was more to sift through in the older archives, even though he had no basis for thinking that. Especially not in relation to Emily Walsh, who was barely a one day old new student.

Wren’s acuity draws a raised eyebrow of surprise from Joe. "Nothing seems to be going according to anyone’s plan. The staff seem pretty keen to examine us in particular. How hard d’you think we can make them work, and can we get further insights from them doing so?"

Waiting Room
They were called in turn. Myra, then Minsoo, then Wren were the first. Those outside had prepared themselves for a long wait, but none of them minded for it gave them a chance to compare notes about yesterday's incident, resulting in a fuller picture of what had happened especially when the facts of the matter were largely consistent save for the one confusing mystery: how could they have individually met the girl Emily at roughly the same time as each other, while being at different places and doing different things. They came no closer to answers, not without digging around more, and this was enough to drive Torrance to get up from his seat to go to the toilet. (They would find out later that that was his pretext to begin snooping around.)

The other thing that brought them to the beginnings of a closer understanding of each other, for they were teens after all, was something Wren instinctively did, but somehow the rest kind of intuitively reasoned as well, that something had happened to them that brought them together. Whatever the term 'awakening' meant, it seemed to resonate. What they were meant to do with this awareness they still had no idea, but perhaps they had to figure it out soon before it was 'figured out' for them by others who seemed to have a different, possibly more sinister agenda.

Their collective awareness, being seated in the waiting room, also gave them a greater sensitivity to the place. Minsoo still had her misgivings about the darkness beneath them and what she smelled, Kyle was mystified about the network strength (and he suspected that had something to do with his phone shorting out), Myra struggled to make sense of why she thought the building itself was laid out wrongly, and Torrance unearthed a bunch of confidential guidance files belonging to them, with their classmate Alex's standing out. There were beginning to think Alex's absence was somehow connected, thanks to Daniela's vision shared with Wren.

The Redevelopment Wing certainly demanded some investigation, but how could they do so while its staff was still around, and while they still had classes to attend later?

Archive Room
Torrance still had a couple more moments before his 'toilet break' would seem too long. There was no way to look through everything. Even as he bent his will towards trying to locate what he considered important, he found himself trying to use the powers of his mind to connect with ink and paper, a fruitless endeavour. Somehow he could tell how old the notes were, which year each file was printed; some of them further back were more than half a century old! With his best lead being Alex's case notes, perhaps it was time to find out where Alex might be, if not in school.

Reception Desk
Ms Young, admin assistant in charge of the counselling schedule, saw to it that the appointments were moving smoothly, making sure each student knew when their turn was. Her professionalism and discretion meant she generally ignored the students until she was needed to signal them to enter the room, and she wasn't particularly surprised when those who finished chose to hang around; her slight smile hinted at the assumption that she thought they were in no hurry to return to class. She did remark after a while though, "Mr Drakesmith's slot is coming up. It's almost lunch." as if she was hopeful for someone to go get Torrance, for she wasn't about to barge into the male washroom herself, and glanced at the wall clock to keep everyone on schedule.

Myra returns to the group after her "session"

That was utter bullshit She mutters quiretly for the other to hear.

Who is in now? Should we get some lunch after? Myra is passing the time with some smalltalk and trying to sort out her emotions after all this. Dr.Veritas might have been right that something has happened and she will have to figure it out, but she sure as hell won't take help from the grey twins.

"Lunch would be good." Minsoo says, putting two hands to her stomach. She was a lithe girl; a fast runner but she ate like nothing else. Her father often said she’d have just as well been a quarter back as a track runner.

"Does the school have security all night?" she wondered to the others. She’d often been at school late for running, but even that was supervised by instructors and interested staff members. She was talking about later than that!

Wren came back into the waiting room, backpack over one shoulder. Myra's "utter bullshit" landed before she'd fully registered who was still there.

"Creepy bullshit," she said quietly.

She glanced at all the others. "Lunch together sounds good."

After Myra, Minsoo and Wren, Jonathan was next, then Kyle and Joe. Torrance had wandered off, and nearly raised suspicion by coming back just as his turn was about to be called.

Myra's scepticism was warranted. The counselling session seemed pointless from her perspective. While Myra, Minsoo and Wren didn't glean anything from Veritas so far, neither did it seem that the Veritas nor Nixon got them to change their minds either. Unless they were to suspect some other agenda, for they all felt Nixon's unwavering eyes focussed on all of them. Was the new guidance counsellor trying to get something out of them that needed their attendance? The seven of them already began to conclude how they were different, even if they did not fully admit to each other the incompleteness of their understanding of their newfound abilities.

Lunch might be a good time to make further plans, away from the prying of this venue. Minsoo was now much more certain that the place needed investigating (with Torrance already off doing that). She knew in general that the school premises were open from 6am to 6pm, supervised by the caretaker Mordecai and his small team. Some of the offices were locked earlier than that, once work ended in those places. Sometimes hours were extended, especially if the school were hosting certain large events or planning for something at scale. Students and teachers recently staying back late to prepare the school for orientation was a prime example of that.

There were places one could hide to hang back after school hours, if one knew where to stash oneself. The gates could be scaled, and so could the token walls that kept the enclosure from the surrounding landscape. Security was focussed on the buildings rather than places like the fields or carparks or outside areas; classrooms were generally locked in a standard manner; offices were necessarily the most secure.

As the group lingered in the waiting room just a little longer, they could see another batch of students enter the main door to report to Young. Clearly there were more of them lined up for this 'counselling'.

Wren took her seat again, as they had to wait for the others.

Seeing more students arriving at the front desk, Wren realized that they might be checking more broadly. Daniela. I should make sure she tells Veritas the same.

She took out her phone.


hey, you doing okay? 💙

was worried after yesterday. told Dr Veritas you seemed better by the time we left — hope that's alright, didn't want her stressing about you more than necessary.

free this afternoon?


She read it once. Sent it. Hopefully Daniela would know what to do.

Torrance made it back from 'the toilet' on time for his session; the other six were done, and their free period was quickly coming to an end. The session made all of them feel more unsettled than assured. Teenagers intuitively understood adult cover-ups: the more compliant would believe that adults did so for their own good, the more cynical were convinced that adults lied all the time.

But it was undeniable that all of them left the session unreconciled. They knew what they saw yesterday, and even if they questioned themselves as to whether they saw what they saw correctly, and even though they only had a fraction of the picture, they knew it was inconsistent with whatever the official stance was.

And yet most of them chose the less confrontational option when interviewed, preferring to say what they thought the authorities wanted to hear rather than the actual truth. Somehow that felt inconsistent, as if they had betrayed the truth. And reality did not like how they were unable to reconcile things.

For those who did push back, they found themselves powerless at this point to change or affect the narrative. They had the sense that their newfound abilities ought to let them influence things, but it was not so easy, nor were things so simple. They needed to understand themselves more first.

Collectively, after comparing notes, they felt that this place held some answers, or at least would provide some clues or enlighten them further. Enough for them to consider exploring it more, at extreme risk of seriously breaking school rules! This would have to be done in the most covert way possible. Lunch break was considered and dismissively ruled out. That meant they'd have to cook up some reason to stay back after school to hang around, and then find a way to gain access to this Redevelopment Wing.

The new arrivals at the foyer were familiar faces. Sabrina was one of them, smiling at the rest knowingly as if she understood perfectly what this was all about, phone recording pointing at everyone as she walked in for her to post on her socials later. "You'll have to put that away Ms Collins," came the disapproving tut-tut from Young, "This place is a safe and private space for everyone. Hmm, I don't see Ms Flores." That was Wren's cue to perk up; Daniela hadn't replied her message yet, even though she was in class with the rest of them earlier. Did Daniela choose to absent herself from this appointment? They were all sent here, there was no option to opt out. Maybe Wren really ought to check up on her, or ask some of the newly-arrived if they knew why Daniela didn't come.

"Coach wants to see you," Kirk was there too, and brushed up against Jonathan to pass the message quietly. What did coach Corbin want? Jonathan had expressed very little interest in matters of sport. Jonathan did catch Corbin's attention yesteday though, for his quick thinking when he helped Joe. And it was the way Kirk conveyed the message, with a private tone.

Zane was present, scowling at Kyle as they walked past each other, "Not cool, dude," he seemed to still be harbouring his grudge from yesterday. Did he think that somehow Kyle snitched on him, thereby getting him here for counselling? They were all long-time classmates, perhaps Kyle ought to try to resolve the matter somehow. Besides, Kyle knew that Zane saw something too.

Just outside the door, Myra heard the familiar voice of Cass, who didn't seem to be one of those scheduled for this appointment. Perhaps the student council president was simply escorting this group here, or came to check on something. But it would be very interesting if somehow Cass was exempted from this. Myra knew that Cass knew something, understanding the situation more than Myra herself did. Cass had opened an opportunity for Myra to approach her, but it was also something Cass couldn't do overtly.

And Torrance now had a bunch of information on all his classmates, who would be very upset if they found out. But foremost on his list was Alex; perhaps he needed to talk to others about his long-time classmate, now absent.

Joe on the other hand now had a chance to follow up on the route he memorised yesterday, where Emily Walsh last appeared. Did such aura residues grow cold over time?

>>>He was surprised at Kirk's sorta-subtle shoulder bump as the wrestler passed by Jonathan as he stood by the door and was equally surprised by the message to go see the Coach... "Yeah. I'll get right to that." was Jonathan's flat toned response. Whether he really meant it or it was just sarcasm remained a mystery.
>>>The big goth shrugged noncommittally at Kirk as the new batch of students filtered in and his filtered out. "Somebody say something about lunch period?" he asked, the implication that they all gather together for an impromptu debrief left unsaid. "Anybody else hungry?"

The receptionist's words landed before Wren had fully put her phone away.
"I don't see Ms Flores."

She didn't come.

Wren glanced at her phone again. Still nothing. Daniela had been in class with them this morning — she knew about the appointment, she had to. Which meant she'd chosen not to be here, or couldn't be. Either way Wren didn't like it.

She stood when Jonathan suggested lunch, bag over one shoulder, skateboard in hand.

"Yeah. Let's go."

She walked past Ms. Young and through the door, breathing in the fresh air. She'd kept herself together in there, said the right amount of nothing, and walked out. But this shouldn't have worked. There was quite an amount of something that she didn't say and got away with. She didn't know what to call it yet, only that it hadn't been nothing, and that it had probably cost something. Did Nixon notice?

With the group outside, leaving the Redevelopment Wing behind them, she brushed it off and fell in with the group, kept her voice low.

"Daniela wasn't in there."
"She saw what happened yesterday and she's also different - I think. I'm worried about how she'd do in front of Veritas and Nixon — but I'm even more worried about why she didn't show."

She turned slightly and dialed.

Pick up.

Even though the seven of them managed to talk with some privacy in the waiting room of the guidance and counselling centre, (which could be a strange phenomenon on hindsight, given that the rest of the building felt odd and unsafe to them), they were glad for the comparative comfort of the noisy canteen, with its crowded tables and energetic cacophony. They were a little late to the queues, but had decided to sit together rather than with their usual cliques, for those who had cliques. Sure there was a chance that they might be overheard, but nothing could beat the sensation of Nixon's stare as if she had been reading their minds. (Or perhaps she was. Now that their eyes were open to a larger vista they could not rule out the possibility. Torrance might even have an inkling of it.)

There was time now to decide if they wanted to work together or separately, especially since they were pulled in too many directions for sixteen year olds to wisely choose from. They needed the time to talk and compare notes again. More importantly, even though most of them knew each other for years, could they trust each other enough to keep this secret?

The Burned Wing compelled them, that much was certain. Kyle, Minsoo and Myra individually picked up on the fact that there was more than meets the eye. Breaking in though would constitute a serious contravention of school rules, something that Torrance had done already. Torrance himself also wanted help to dig out more information from the archives. Joe had another lead, he wanted to trace Emily's last known path, for that could reveal where she came from or left to go to; no one could simply vanish from existence just like that. But he wasn't sure the others would want to follow this lead. Wren had an inkling of a different path which she was trying to establish: Daniela wasn't picking up her phone either, and Wren, scanning the canteen, saw the rest of her classmates but not her. First Alex, and now Daniela?

Class would be resuming in an hour. And lessons generally wrapped up today around 3 to 4 for most of them, depending on what subjects they offered. What did they intend, and how much time did they have today to accomplish it?

Over lunch Kyle shares a bit with the others, a big excited and nervous about the new world opening up to them
"I think Zane is awake as well. But I got off on the wrong foot with him so someone else who is familiar with him may want to keep an eye on him. I'll try and patch things up but I'm not sure how much to share and kind of suck as talking...."

Kyle definitely want to work with that others and sharing information may be key to getting a good grasp on things

Joe eats hesitantly, something clearly on his mind. Eventually, he lifts his head. "Guys, I need to tell you; just after the lights came back on yesterday, in the gym, I stepped onto the spot where Emily - well one of her - was standing right before the blackout; it was an impulse, I wondered if I’d imagined her ever being there. Well, I don’t understand exactly how, but... I. Could. Feel. Her. Life. I’m totally convinced she was - or had been - really there, but I have no idea what to do about it. I carefully memorised the exact position- marks on the floor, lines of sight, - as best I could. Maybe if I could get back there, with a bit more time and quiet, I could sense something more? Maybe someone else could notice something I didn’t? I suppose I’m asking for help, if anyone’s got an idea how to do that."

Kyle ponders what he knows if the school schedule and the best time to get Joe back to that for for some uninterrupted investigation.

Tracks, traces and trails?
Myra have been doodling in her book.
I'll go with you Jove - I also want to check out the walls where I saw the symbol again.

Symbology was starting to take up a lot of her mind. She used a lot of symbols in math. They had meaning and uses to hold complex idear, and tying them up in a simple way for her brain to handle.She looked down at her doodle, seeing a snake biting its tail with a compass in the middle. Snakes that connected, compasses that showed the way... was she discovering a way to track Emily?
I might have an idear...

Wren tried to reach Daniela, once, twice and a third time. By the time they reached the cantine, she gave up and pocketed the phone. She briefly scanned the canteen, no Daniela there either.

"She's not here either."

She sat with that for a moment, picking at her food and listening to the plans of her peers.

"Alex is gone. Daniela saw what happened to him and now she's not showing up." She kept her voice low. "I guess I will be trying to find her."

Wren looks on her watch - Not much time until classes resume - and starts eyeing the exit while still not having finished either lunch or the plan.

"Joe — if you're going back after school, I might join you. Maybe I can sense Emily's, ..., 'resonance'." Wren struggled a bit before she settled with "resonance" - not really knowing yet what she should call this.

Had orientation run without a hitch yesterday, the seniors would have responsibly stayed back after everything was over to close the stalls and booths. Their sports equipment, musical instruments, art supplies, laboratory demos, would have been carted back to their respective departments and properly put away. Today after school, in lieu of their regularly scheduled co-curricular activities, they would resume the clean up to strike and dismantle the booths. Only after that would the caretaking crew from admin office do their scheduled cleaning.

But all that didn't happen, because the hall and gym were closed abruptly. This meant that everything would still be left as it was from yesterday, assuming that no one had done anything with the two venues. This also meant that today, as part of their responsibilty to their clubs and teams, the seniors would be required to do what they didn't manage to start on yesterday, which was to pack up their things. Those who ended lessons earlier could get a headstart; the majority of whom would finish by either 3 or 4pm, leaving two hours to do the needful before the school premises generally began to wind down at 6pm.

They could avail themselves to pick up the trail after all, under the cover of fulfilling their duties!

"Something is going on with Alex. They saw Veritas six times this last year, and the last one was a week ago.
I think there is more to find out, so if we're staying after I think there are plenty of answers to find."
We can snoop around some right after tear down, but there will still be some staff around. Maybe we want to try in the evening?"

Minsoo scoots into the end seat at the lunch table, as she flicks away the last drops of water off of her hands.

"Sorry, guys! Needed a…"

… whizz…

"… the little girl’s room." she says, face reddening and then covered by a cough. Moving on…

She had just heard the tail end of the conversation, and adds:

"We can totally get into the gym! I’ve to pack away the track stuff from yesterday. I don’t mind hanging around to see if something turns up." she says, talking more than she had done previously to cover her absence.

"We won’t get a second look being there after school. Unless things take too long." she says, and knows in her heart that it’s a distinct possibility.

>>>"Might as well use the opportunity to see if what Joe sensed is real...or not." Jonathan poked at the the remains of the school lunch in the tray before him. "We've got to clean up the gym and pack stuff away so some of us could run cover while Joe and anyone else that can be discreet can help him. I don't mind running cover." He had a bone to pick with the Robotics Club and their drone antics, regardless of Emily's disappearance, and that might make a good cover to distract attention away from Joe while he does... whatever.
>>>"While we're making confessions about what happened during the Blackout..." the capital letter stood out the way Jonathan placed emphasis on it. "...I had a kind of vision or sensation or glimpse of something while the lights were out. It's hard to explain exactly what it was but it was like a countdown clock for everyone in the student body. There were three that were at Zero... Emily's, Alex's and mine."

"I also had an... I don't think it was a vision. I had an expierence. As if I could feel that moment stretching on forever, the school locked into an ever preserved slice of time as all else passed us by." Torrance paused a moment.
"I'm used to being able to put together information in a way that makes sense, but I feel like the rules changed and noone let me know."

Myra has a note card will all the information they had on Emily. With this note card in the middle of her compas drawing, incircled by a snake, she tries to recreate the sensation she had in the library.
She wanted to see the connections, the correspondence, between Emily and the hall.
And to flip the problem on its head, she would also look for something that could have hidden Emily's tracks.

"A countdown clock?" Minsoo says, her eyes widening considerably. It was like being faced with your own mortality for a moment. She swallows the temptation to ask what he thinks hers might have said. Worse yet:

"Yours was at zero?"

But wouldn’t that mean?… but Torrance suggested then that they were locked in some slice of time. Maybe that’s why zero didn’t mean… Game Over.

"What do you think…?" she asks, letting the boy answer whatever question he thought might come next.

Joe, who was looking gratefully at first Myra, then the others who’d offered to help, looks urgently at Jonathan. "That’s hard to interpret as anything but ominous, but since you’re still sucking in air today, you apparently didn’t die yesterday. And Emily didn’t feel anything but alive to me. Maybe it’s an allocation of time that’s run down; something happened to Alex, then Emily, and… crap, that would suggest you’re maybe next in line for something. It also suggests you won’t be the last, if everyone had such a clock and they were all counting down. I think we just graduated to being under some kind of existential threat, or a very good impression of one? Please tell me I’m wrong." He looks worried.
"I told you about just after the blackout. During it I had a momentary sense of every other mind in the gym thinking a single thought - except me. I couldn’t think that thought, couldn’t see what it was. Not very useful, I’m afraid."

At Joe's words, Wren looks up.

"During the blackout - the room felt like thousands, not five hundred. All of it pressing in at once."

She pauses.

"I don't know what to make of it either."

Minsoo eyes linger on Jonathan. The boy had gone quiet, and she wanted to know if he was afraid of dying… or, or… if he had some explanation to the clocks. Still, that selfish part of her wondered what hers read!

Torrance thrums his fingers on the table."There's this silly game I used to play with a microwave.... " He pauses just a moment, looking into the middle distance "You could stop it at 0 without it beeping.
Maybe that's Johnathan." His eyes focus back on the group. "That is, of course, assumung the timer had anything to do with the dissapearing. As far as I can tell we were all released from whatever expierence we had."

>>> "I don't understand it any more than you guys do..." Jonathan had to confess. "I thought maybe it was like a 'death clock' since it included Alex and Emily but I simply don't know. I'm not convinced the vision, premonition, or whatever it was, has passed or changed. I went for a walk after school yesterday to think about it since I kinda thought it was just me then. Didn't know you guys had weird experiences too." He looked at the others gathered at the table, glad he wasn't alone in the experience. "I got lost, tho, and had to ask for directions back towards home. IDK but the lady I asked directions from gave me the same fuzzy feeling in my head that Nixon gives me... Like we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg where they're concerned." He shrugged noncommittally, "I don't like that feeling."

>>>"Sounds like it wasn't just me that had some kind of psychic something-or-other happen to us. Maybe we can put them all together and get a clearer picture . Either that or a get a group discount on therapy..."

She'd said it out loud before she'd really understood it - thousands, not five hundred.

Jonathan mentioning the clocks once more made it click.

"The thousands." She looked up. "During the blackout. What if they were resonances of students whose clocks went zero. Long before us."

The words landed and she couldn't unthink them. Alex was gone. Emily vanished. Daniela wasn't picking up. And whatever had happened to them - whatever was happening - the clocks were apparently still running.

"Nixon." She said it quietly, and felt the goosebumps coming back. "That feeling you described - she gives me that too."

She glanced around the canteen, then back at the table. "Let me try something." It came out almost like an apology.

Her hands moved to her headphones, pulling them up over her ears - not to shut the canteen out, but to listen.

If their main takeaway from the counselling session was that a narrative was being imposed on them, finally sitting down in what felt like a safer space in the canteen rather than the waiting room with its off-kilter vibes allowed them to recompose themselves from the implicit threat they felt sitting in the room with Veritas and Nixon. And this was despite the fact that there were three hundred or so students coming and going and milling about, getting their food, catching up in their cliques.

More importantly, talking among themselves felt right, in a way that being grilled earlier felt wrong. The wrongness was not so much that their version of what they knew did not match with the official narrative. It was rather than they could feel that something shifted depending on whether they chose to espouse a public version that wasn't consistent with their version, or whether they would dig their heels in to stick to their own versions. Maintaining a facade guaranteed their safety from prying questions or worse, censure, but those who parroted a cover version felt somehow that reality shifted to integrate their version into the official one, making the official one stronger. Whereas those who held fast seemed to feel some push back, a push back that could be felt psychologically, even physically.

They would in time to come realise that was what the Awakening was all about, competing versions of realities and which side of the boundary they would choose to inhabit. Sitting in the canteen, they picked up on the conversations around them, for yesterday's incident was still abuzz in everyone's mind. "It's just a wiring issue." "I didn't even feel it, it was over so quickly." "My uncle works here, it wasn't a big deal." Students were repeating the official explanation. Kyle's phone, which had resumed proper service, showed that of the students who posted on their social accounts, the pictures were largely blurry, or flagged for misinformation, or deleted.

Truth was being overwritten, for now. Yet, the fact that the seven of them were finally sharing their visions and what it meant showed that there was another version, their version. Had they kept it to themselves, as lone voices it would have been gradually rewritten, a casualty of consensus. But if they were able to connect the dots to unify what they had experienced, then the real truth could emerge.

This much they experienced from their visions which they tried their best to convey to the others:

They had some ability which differentiated them from most others, and Myra explained further their awareness was akin to an awakening and they could learn more by understanding certain traditions which explained how these abilities worked. This resonated with some of what Joe knew about magic which he had learned previously. Also his vision made him feel like he was an exception in the midst of a unified mass of other minds. Now he knew he wasn't the only exception.

Wren and Torrance both felt their context. Wren's vision of thousands of beings must surely refer to everyone who had existed in their school, and combined this with Torrance's understanding was that time was less relevant when viewing these beings. They could potentially all continue to exist simultaneously in the past, or now, or in the future. This resonated with Minsoo's idea that space was also something that could be perceived simultaneously, all places are essentially the same location.

Minsoo and Kyle though had a darker element to what they saw, an existence of something that had eyes on everything in school, and also fed off all sources of energy. Perhaps this was how all energy disappeared for a moment yesterday, time and space were made to stand still when the event happened. Multiple Emilys, directly connected to this.

For Jonathan could confirm it. Emily's 'clock' was at zero. She wasn't part of the count. She didn't 'exist', or she 'existed' as multiple versions across time and space, whatever that meant. The disturbing thing was to find out why Alex and Jonathan were also null and void in this manner.

They made plans thusly. Going back to the hall and gym to ferret for more clues was a very viable option, something they could do in two hours time, after their lessons. Breaking into the counselling centre after hours was needful, but more iffy. That required more careful planning, and whether they were going to do it tonight, or find a better night to do so.

The conversation the seven of them had went some way to assure them that they weren't alone, and that having an alternative view was safe within their group. They still had an uphill task of figuring out who to trust and who not to, but at this point they were all they had. As lunch time ran out, the prospect of returning to class was an exercise in patience; they couldn't wait to get back to the multiple-purpose hall and the gymnasium to verify their speculations.

As Wren left the canteen, with her headphones on she could once again isolate herself from all the noise which now seemed to be louder and louder to her. What was left was a buzz, sometimes louder, sometimes softer, but still all around her. If that was the sound of the essence of magic to her, everything was magic. She needed to learn to listen out more specifically, and began to wonder if the buzz was associated with some people more than others, such as the other six at the table. Her eyes then settled on the three girls they saw yesterday whom they all knew were Emily's friends; the freshies were streaming in for their lunch time as the seniors were filing out gradually.

Back in class, Alex's seat was now starkly empty, made more foreboding by what they little they knew about his disappearance. Daniela's seat was also vacant this afternoon, even though she was in in the morning, and they could see Mrs Lee, their form teacher this year, cast a longer glance or two at where Daniela would be. Did she know where Daniela was?

No sooner than the bell rang than the seven of them made their way to yesterday's scene. The indoor gymnasium and the multi-purpose hall were the same building, the hall one storey above the gym. Some of the other senior students were already there at their respective booths, packing up, carting things back to where they ought to be, after which all of them would have to stack the tables and chairs and trolley them off to the storerooms at the back. Everything looked pretty much intact, nothing seemed too out of place from where things were yesterday. If the venues were locked down for some arcane purpose, the lock down didn't seem to care about the physical furniture and the booth materials. All was in order, or disorder since everyone was ordered to leave hurriedly.

Minsoo heads back to her Track booth in the gym. She makes big work of organizing and reorganizing the stall, shuffling chairs this way and that. Trying to look inconspicuous, she keeps her eyes out for anyone not looking inconspicuous; besides her co-conspirators.

>>>The time passed quickly for Jonathan between lunch period and teardown duty. He'd been surreptitiously working on his art project and had finished his part. Now, he had to enlist some help...but first, he had teardown duty to help finish what should've been done yesterday had nothing gone sideways.
>>>He wandered by the Others as he saw them, giving them a knowing nod before seeking out Kyle on the way towards the Art Club. Kyle might have the know-how for the next step in Jonathan's plan, plus he should be nearby the Art Club table since he'd brought Emily's group over from the nearby Robotic Team table.

They arrived early enough that the clean up had just started not long before, for most of the setups were still largely intact. There were one or two teachers around to supervise, Ms Mendes, PE teacher and track coach, whom Minsoo knew well, was there in the gym, always with an eye out for student safety, for you'd never know when someone might accidentally swing an armful of baseball bat the wrong way. In the hall, Kyle saw the familiar figure of Mr Chase, the robotics team adviser; yesterday's robotics booth included one of those mazes to trial puzzle-solving robots on wheels. The students were in the midst of dismantling the strips of wooden board.

But they had the impression that there are more teachers earlier who came to issue instructions on what to do, before generally leaving the actual striking to the senior student body, who by and large were conscientious in their task. Once in a while someone from the school's caretaker team would pop in to direct students to where to throw the trash and recyclables. It looked like everyone just wanted to get it done with as little fuss as possible, given yesterday's interruption. Minsoo could pick up on some gossipy mutterings while her schoolmates were going about their clearing. Perhaps she could dig further if she joined in.

They arrived at the building together. Wren caught Joe before the group split between floors.

"I'll be in the hall. Text me when you're checking your spot."

She headed upstairs.

The hall looked the same as yesterday — booths still set up, chairs where they'd left them, everything frozen mid-orientation. Other seniors were already working, carting supplies back to where they belonged. Wren made her way toward the stage end. On the way she passed the Editorial Wing booth. Yesterday, Daniela had been right there, crying, barely holding it together. Today the booth was half-dismantled by someone else.

Wren slowed. Picked up her phone. Still nothing. She stopped and approached the editorial booth.

"Have you seen Daniela this afternoon? She was in this morning but wasn't in class after lunch."

Minsoo works this way and that, trying to catch a little gossip or talk that seemed to be floating around. Unsuccessful, she thought she’d have to mix it up if she wanted to learn anything.

She feigns a table being a little too heavy to lift. She makes a second feeble attempt, before wandering over to one of the small groups chatting. She gets as close as she can without being weird. Listening for a moment before she says:

"Hi! Omg, so sorry! Could you guys help me with this table? I’m on my own today!"

Torrance will make sure he is seen getting some work done, tearing down things, and then slip out before things really get locked up.
As he moves out he will get to the office and if noone is inside and looking he will duct tape the latch bolt back, stopping the future door locking from keeping him out.
He will then slip to whatever exterior door automatically locks and repeat the process and get back to the tear down.

Myra brings her compass symbols to the spot where she saw Emily yesterday. From there she wants to follow correspondence threads if she can find any.
To give her some plausible reason to leave her booth, she tips over the marble machine. It's a desktop perpetual engine, and an icebreaker to talk about science, math and that kind of thing. And now, the balls were all over the multihall room, rolling all over. (Actually, as she has pocketed the rest, no need to throw away a perfectly fine machine for a distraction. )



Chasing her metal balls will take her close to the spot where she saw the unknown symbol, the one that glowed most intently of them all.

Gym
It was a subdued vibe that Minsoo picked up on as she attempted to take in the sense of the others. There were little of the enthusiastic energy of yesterday, when the seniors were seriously trying to pitch their co-curricular interests to their juniors. Today was the boring clean-up, to be completed as efficiently as they could.

"The track team all ran off eh?" cracked Josh. Minsoo knew Josh Bradlee and Matt Stonemayer, both way more comfortable on the football field than in a classroom, who leapt at the chance to help Minsoo hump the rest of the tables. It was gossip that Matt fancied Della, one of the athletes in Minsoo's team. "Where is everyone else?" Was that Matt's slightly prying question? Having offloaded some of the work, Minsoo now had some chance to observe others to see if anyone was behaving oddly. On the other hand, if she could avoid the distraction coming from Matt, she might have the opportunity to use the senses that worked for her yesterday which allowed her to see connections between where Emily was and where she might have been or might have gone. With a bit of bustling, Joe ultimately made a beeline for where he last met Emily; he knew he wanted to get the exact location that would give him the most accuracy to do what he wanted to do next, which was to extend his awareness in various dimensions. The Lady had explained that to Joe before, the idea that one could perceive and thus operate in various simultaneous perspectives at the same time. Joe wasn't sure he understood all of it, but his sensitivities had developed more to comprehend that the physical, mental, spiritual, and metaphyiscal could all be perceived holistically. To the onlooker, it looked as if Joe was standing at a spot in the gym with his phone out, doing a breathing or meditation exercise. It wasn't the strangest behaviour that teens expected of other teens if they bothered to observe him, the only odd thought they might have had is why Joe would pause in the midst of their chores in this fashion.

In the created stillness of the moment, Joe had his insight: Emily is real as a real person is real, with a mind of her own, and is suffused with magic, and is also somehow enhanced by something in the spirit realm that allows multiple perceptions of her.Hall
Upstairs in the multi-purpose hall, Torrance contributed what he could with his fellow club members, but what he really wanted to do was slip away from the Gymnasium Block to return to the Burned Wing in order to tinker with the building's doors. No one was really policing or forcing the seniors to help with the clean up; it was simply them fulfilling their responsibilities to school. So Torrance could certainly do the irresponsible thing and skip out altogether. However, if he wanted to give the impression that he was responsibly helping out, (and also to provide an alibi for his whereabouts, assuming his mind worked this way), he could try to give the impression that he was present in the hall, while seizing an opportunity to go sabotage the Burned Wing doors, and then come back to pretend nothing had happened.Myra returned prepared with her carefully inscribed notes. She wanted to cover the area of the hall with her readings, and needed a distraction for it to happen. Her club mates were placing some of the gadgets they had displayed yesterday into boxes to carry back to where they belonged, and Myra did pick the least breakable one to 'accidentally' tip over. Metal marbles clattered and scattered all over the hall floor, and a few heads turned around. Straightaway and separately, Todd and then Junice bent over to pick up the stray ones near them. This meant that Myra could also lean over like them to 'chase' marbles.

What she was actually 'chasing', or tracing, was Emily's 'footprint' when she focussed on her. Myra could see on the floor the route that Emily took yesterday in the hall. It was like a web of lines: Emily walked from one booth to another, not necessarily visiting them in order judging by the crisscrossing. Following the lines backwards Myra could see where Emily entered. What was interesting to Myra was that their contradictory observations about Emily being in multiple locations were true. The lines sometimes branched into separate locations to be at different spots. And now Myra had proof that Emily didn't just vanish. The lines showed that she exited; it was a separate line leading out of the hall entrance from the line coming in. Stella Winthrope, or 'Stel' as she called herself in her slight British accent, saw Wren come over to the editorial booth as she was stacking up copies of their latest poetry compilation. The editorial club had two wings: most of their journalist endeavours were online, Daniela being one of those whose photography was always used in their feature articles and social media posts. The other wing was the creative writing wing, of which Stel was president. She seemed to intuitively know why Wren was crossing over. "You don't know where Daniela is either?" She frowned. "I thought you might know since you're in her class. I didn't see her in the canteen earlier. Last message I got from her was last night, strangely, about Alex. Do you know what's going on with that?" Her questions were concerned, serious; Stel did not simply dismiss Daniela's absence, her eyes landed on one of the posters they had made for the displays, an article about last year's sustainability project with one of Daniela's photos of the project as the centerpiece of the poster.

Torrance for sure does help some, and his leaving to secure the locks is as short as possible to do just that and come back to help

"Everyone else, or just someone else, Matt? I haven’t seen her all day." she says with a knowing smile. Girls talked, and Della had had enough to say about Matt for her own part, too. Minsoo would be lying if she said she didn’t get it. She did…

Did I see her yesterday, either?… she tries to remember.

She looks around the room then, not so much focused on the supernatural whereabouts of Emily, but instead focusing on the here and now.

Was Matt hitting on something Minsoo had overlooked?…

Never afraid of a bit of work Kyle pitched in with the robotic team, hoping the summer cooled off some of the heat from last year. With deft experienced hands he joins in on booth and drone obstacle course removal while trying to improve his image with the fellow students and faculty. With things changing all around he has decided that keeping in good with as many as possible and reinforcing a possessive image with leadership will help keep him from too much trouble. He focuses on doing good work to help clean up as fast as possible with the intent to go help out with any others nearby.

Kyle tries to keep an eye on the other from the group but not totally clear on any set plan. It seems a bit chaotic to him and he has never been great at starting projects. Meanwhile Glitch seem to be unusually active and gotten out of his transport case, which Kyle keeps in his pack with his school tablet and notebooks. The drone is thankfully staying close to Kyle, for now, but keeps zipping off to fly over the other students Kyle has been talking with about recent events.

Any time Kyle has a moment to rest as he moves between the booth site and the club storage back in the robotics lab he expands his newer senses. Trying his best to keep a low profile to this new set of senses he tries to analyze the sense of something watching and feeding of the school. Was it just the school or was it affecting a wider area. He had checked out his uncles home last night and was using today to get a better reading on the school. Paying attention to any changes across the campus, and writing short notes in a small notebook he keeps in his pocket, Kyle has been building a map of the campus and strange events then trying to correlate any odd impressions he gathers and noting Glitch's behavior as well when he checks them out.

"So you don't know either." Wren said, more statement than question. Then she tried to give Stel what she had. "She was in class this morning, but not after lunch."
"I was with her after the lights went back on. She was pretty shaken at first but seemed better when we parted. I thought she was ok."

When Stel's gaze drifted to the poster Wren followed it. Daniela's photo at the centre. The composition, the light caught just so.
"She's good," Wren said quietly. "Really good."

"What did she text you?"

Intuition told her that the poster might have significance, but that one she wouldn't be able to take unseen. So she looked around if there was anything else - something that would less likely be missed.

>>>Using the time he spent breaking down and packing the Art Club exhibits to observe the other students going about their tasks, Jonathan's eyes followed the drone buzzing about above the gym floor. The machine flitting to and fro in a curious cycle led him to finally find Kyle over near the robotics club table. He seemed occupied by disassembling the table and moving boxes off into the STEM classrooms where the robotics team presumably met for projects and classes.
>>> Transporting a stack of canvases back towards the Art Building, Jonathan engineered a meeting between himself and Kyle. "I got something I need your help with...if you're interested." he said as he momentarily stopped by Kyle. "Might stir up trouble, so I get it if you don't want in..."

Kyle chuckles as he replies "I'm in. So long as no one gets hurt I'm up for just about anything to figure out what really is going on. and quickly gets his still to a stopping point for others to pickup.

Gym
Emily's presence seemed to resonate with Joe precisely because he managed to ground himself at the exact same spot. It wasn't a connection to the past, neither was a sense of where Emily might be, for Joe's awareness did not yet extend across time and space. It was more like Emily had left behind some 'residual energy' that Joe could detect. One thing though that might have added to his ability to sense her: Joe had tried to look through the Way, or at least that how the Lady explained it to him when speaking of the spiritual realm. He had once asked her how many spirits were there, and she had said Ten thousand. And when Joe wondered aloud why the number was so small, she continued, Named ones. That peek gave him the confirmation of Emily's existence.Matt's ribbing hardly bothered Minsoo. Sarah, her team mate, wasn't present again. But perhaps that was Minsoo simply overreacting. She looked at track booth. The set of six hurdles they carried up to use to define the booth space was still there, no one had taken them back down to the sports equipment store. Trophies and medals from past competitions were still displayed on the table. The tee shirts and tracksuits, and other sports gear such as the relay batons were gone though. That must mean that they were already moved. Not everyone was a slacker after all!

Then something struck Minsoo that did bother her. The equipment that had been moved included a trio of javelins. But not the shot putts next to them, which made no sense as they would all be stored in the same place. For some reason Minsoo had an uncomfortable premonition about this, and she couldn't shake the sense of darkness that felt like it wrapped a tendril around these javelins. Ought she check on who had helped to take them out?Hall
Kyle, Jonathan and Torrance saw the opportunity before them in degrees of affordance.

For Kyle, it was circumspection, and Glitch behaved in a like-minded fashion according to its creator's wishes, surveying and watching. No one seemed to mind very much that Kyle's drone was in the air somewhere. He was a tad bolder in testing his senses further, by putting more of his focus into them. Here was his revelation to himself: it dawn on him that if he tried, he could recreate the blackout! Somehow in his awareness he could understand the raw nature of the electric currents that supplied the hall. By that it didn't just mean that he could see the wiring and ducting and central switches and where the circuit breaker box was. He understood that he could employ the right energy to turn the power on or off, or draw from it somehow. If something was feeding off the grid, he could try to locate it. Or if Emily was somehow associated with the blackout, he had a starting point to investigate.Jonathan saw the urgent need to wrest control of the narrative. He was quick to sketch Emily, guessing that somehow keeping a record of the 'evidence' was necessary in case things changed to the extent that everyone questioned whether things did happen the way it happened. Already the narrative erasure was evident in the cover up. He wanted to offer a counter narrative. Knowing that Kyle was the tech whiz, perhaps they could create something viral. There were others that came to mind: the Editorial Wing was key to both the journalistic endeavours in school and also managed the official social media channels. No coincidence that the person Wren was concerned about the most, Daniela, was somehow missing the entire afternoon. The gossip vine was another avenue. Nothing spread faster than if Sabrina got hear of it, and the 'Mean Girls' clique in class 4B was influential in a like manner.

Walking out of the hall as they went about their chores was a perfect time for Jonathan to see how Kyle could help. It had to be clever, it had to catch everyone offguard, and it had to have enough impact to shake whomever was doing the cover up.Torrance had also walked out of the hall with the other two, carrying an armful of whatever it was that he was asked to bring back to the Maths clubroom. It provided him the pretext of heading back to the counselling centre once he dispensed with the box of leftover materials. He was singularly focussed on what the group said they were planning to do next, which was to break into the Burned Wing, rather than what they could achieve now in the hall.

He reached the entrance of the building, watching the time to decide when was the best moment to do what he wanted to do, which was to sabotage the door locks so that they could gain access later. There was a need to think ahead: presumably he needed to know when all the people present would have left for the day before he could carry out his plan. Minimally there was the admin receptionist, Young. There was Veritas, whose actual office as a Chemistry teacher was in the STEM building. And even though he met only Nixon, he had to assume Necht was working in the building as well. What he also didn't know was exactly what time the caretaker would lock up the premises, and how the security system worked, although it wouldn't be wrong to assume that there would be some sort of campus security controls for its buildings.The first part of what Stel told Wren was something Wren knew already. Daniela had exchanged chat messages late into the night with Stel when she was home, after Wren and her parted, babbling on how she was worried about Alex. It was evident Stel and Daniela were good friends since Daniela shared her worries with Stel. From how Stel told it, Wren had the impression that Daniela likely did not talk about the more otherworldly aspects of her vision of Alex; either that, or Stel did not repeat it to Wren.

"She said she thought she knew where he was." This was new, Daniela must've deduced this way after Wren met her. "I asked her what she meant when she said she knew and her reply was 'I just know'. Her last message was: Blackwood Sanatorium. And then we didn't chat further after that." Anticipating Wren's next comment, "I googled, I don't think there's such a place."

While they were conversing, Wren considred holding on to the poster Daniela had contributed to. For some reason she figured that she could perhaps get a reading off it. It wouldn't be too difficult; things were being packed up, said posters would be rolled up to be chucked in a box to bring to the clubroom. If Wren offered to help carry the boxes, she could conveniently slip it away.

Hall
Having a fix on Emily'es exit, Myra picks up the last metal ball. She has been crouching to find it so she streaches her back, and is just in front of the spot where she saw the unknown symbol.

Its just a flat wall, but she knew what she saw and tries to feel whatever remenaint there could be. She has a silly flash of a Jedi master feeling the force, but is actually surprised when she does feel something. There is power here, or at least traces of Etheric energy. She touches her mother's pendant and the sensation stabilises, becomes clear as if a lens had been focused.

Gym - Joe
Joe could tell he wasn't likely to hold on to the impression of Emily for long. He was fortunate that he could still imprint her residual energy, for it crossed his mind, thanks to Jonathan's brainwave in taking the precaution of recording Emily's likeness, that whomever locked down the place yesterday might have intended to wipe all trace of the missing girl, or perhaps Emily herself intended to leave no trace with her sudden disappearance. Joe would learn later that Myra upstairs had also mapped Emily's fast fading route.Hall - Myra
With Emily's route determined, there was still no time yet to figure out how Emily could be able to walk multiple paths. Myra had to answer for herself one more question. She concealed the wave of her hand on the pretext of picking up the ball, and stared at the wall. At first, nothing. Then she touched her mother's pendant, and ... there was no better way for Myra to describe it than that she now saw the flash of a black room. Black was the colour of the floor and walls and ceiling, but it wasn't as if she felt negativity or darkness coming from it. The room was circularly shaped, and the symbol seemed to be inscribed on its floor, lightly glowing in the same hue as Myra's pendant appeared to pulse. Myra was certain the room was on campus. Even more certain, Myra felt the room had something to do with her mother.Outside the Burned Wing - Torrance
Torrance had nipped out so that he could make getting back into the Burned Wing more convenient for the rest of them later. His calculative mind worked out the various permutations so that he could decide what was most optimal based on the facts:
- He knew that the Counselling Centre would close at 5pm. That was when Ms Young would leave.
- He didn't know when Veritas, or Necht or Nixon would stay until. Staff sometimes left earlier, sometimes later.
- The caretaker crew typically locked up most of the school premises at 6pm, but that depended on who was staying back for what activities, so sometimes they would lock certain buildings later.
- The school, like most schools, would have a security system where some locations, such as offices, would be alarm wired.
Torrance had to decide what time he wanted to rig the doors. Too early, and the tampering might get discovered. Too late, and the doors would be locked already. Of course, there were other ways to tamper with doors, although his friends were only just beginning to learn how to do so.

Hall
This was not what Myra had imagined. Then again, she hadn't expected touching her mother's necklace, a geometric golden cage with a hanging stone, to help her focus.

With an effort of will, she returns to Emely's trail. She would have loved to chase down this circular room, but she already had a feeling that its in the basement.

She packs up the last bit of the mashine, and takes it out the door, where she left Emely's trail.

"Hey, Matt." she says then, her voice softer and more conciliatory than before. Her face is scrunched up as if she can’t quite figure something out.

"Did you see who took my javelins?" she asks, casting herself as representative of the track team as a whole.

"I’ll go check the storage room. If you see someone over here, can you let me know? And I don’t just mean Sarah, alright?

Owe you one!" she says, as she heads off to the storage room to see if she can rustle up those javelins.

Wren listened to what Stel had to say. When she mentioned the sanatorium, Wren had to control herself to not give away her realization. No one calls it a sanatorium anymore. Veritas's voice through the office door yesterday. That was a clue she could research later, but Stel likely had nothing more to give.

"If she messages you again, please tell me right away. Even if it doesn't make sense - especially then." Wren held her gaze. "And if you think of anywhere else she might be, anyone she might've gone to. Tell me that too."

"Now I can help carry a box, if it's useful. Then I should get back to mine." Wren said glancing at the half-packed booth.

She rolled the posters one by one and slid them into a cardboard tube. The one with Daniela's photograph at its centre went under the stack of sheet music she'd left on the booth edge.

Walking away, she realized what she just had done. Talking to a girl she barely knew, getting something out of Stel without giving away anything herself, snagging a poster. What shocked her the most was the ease with which she did it. And now she realized that the other fellow seniors might have meaningful information as well. She put her headphones on the way to the music booth and, recalling what she did at Dr. Veritas's door, she tried to repeat - concentrating on the entire hall this time.

Enroute to the Track - Minsoo
The sports equipment store was a series of sheds next to the bleachers of the football field and the running track. Minsoo exited the gymnasium, pretty certain that she would catch up with some of the track team moving things to the store. Sure enough, once she was headed in the general direction, she could see a scattering of students, not just those from track but from other sports as well, humping boxes and equipment towards the expanse of the field and the sheds next to them.

And there they were; she could clearly make out the javelins, it was not hard to see who might be carrying three long upright poles. It was ... Sarah? She was the only one not present in the gym yesterday when the blackout happened. And wait, she was only carrying two of them upright, the third was in her dominant hand, and she looked like she fell behind some distance from the others. She was now arching back, arm coiled back, javelin in her grip, wait a minute, was she about to throw it at the other students oblivious in front of her? Hall - Wren
Wren considered whether she could tune in differently. She had largely listened for the auras of those around, and thus far she could see a spectrum of things when she tried. It was most effective when she could do so undistracted and in a regulated environment. Sitting with the other six earlier in the day, conversing about their shared experience, enabled her to get a read on how they were like and who they were. In contrast, now Wren was trying something different. She reached out to sense the physical forces of the room: light spectrums, sound waves, the momentum and inertia of the fellow students around her. Her effort was still very tentative though; she might have picked up some things, but wasn't sure what to make of them.

As they continue working Kyle asks Johnathan "So . . . What do you need me to do? I think I might be able to do something with the lights and other electrical systems. But whatever is feeding off the students might notice. I have no idea who or what it might be but it seemed to be a pretty massive presence"

>>>"Nothing as dramatic as all that..." he replied hastily, more animated than his usual deadpan demeanor. "Wait... You can DO that?? Woah..." Jonathan looked truly impressed, filing away that tidbit of knowledge for a later date. "I just need to tap into your computer expertise to erase the source point and metadata from this file so we...I ... don't get caught." he pressed a thumb drive into Kyle's palm. "Might also need to discretely drop the scrubbed file into a few places so it'll get picked up and spread organically. Sabrina Collins' socials might be a good place to start but it'll need traction in a lot of places to really spread."
>>>"It's nothing harmful, not a virus or anything. I know my way around computers but not like that... It's an art piece to stop the cover-up of Emily's disappearance. Can you scrub it and get it out to the other students?"

Kyle ponders a minute then replies "That should be doable. I know a couple of the apps that are used to share videos and social content. I think I should be able to temporarily post teaser posts with the content. I might even be able to get Glitch " and he waves overhead to the idling drone " to act as a secondary source to share content locally for other to pick up. I can make a trip back to the computer or robotics labs to do some research and set it up. Just send me the fine before lunch or the end of school at the latest. You know lunch and end of school are when alot of people check updates and we would want it out close to to the beginning of either of those times."

>>>"The files are on the thumb drive I handed you." Jonathan shrugged. "I didn't want it going out over the school network until you'd had your chance to scrub it clean... Also, I figured a night release might be a better option. Give it a chance to stir around student socials while the faculty are at home and hopefully in bed. Time to build up and cause an overnight stir that people would be talking about tomorrow morning. Harder to kill it that way, I hope."
>>>"Do what you can with it." Jonathan clapped Kyle on the shoulder. "I've got to run. Coach summoned me for whatever reason. I don't think he's involved in all of this but just in case something weird happens you'll know the last person I talked to was Coach..." With that ominous warning, Jonathan nodded and headed out to find the Coach.

Myra was spoiled for choice.
Tracking Emily would prove her groups sanity.
Finding the hidden champer, could answer questions about her mothers disappearance - she still refused to think of her parents as dead.
But Cass was here and now, a real person.

Returning to what left of the math/library booth, she picked up a bag of pamphlets stickers and other merchandise that Cass had forgotten. With the aliby secure, she sought out her classmate to return the bag, and get a moment of 1-on-1 time with the girl.

Hey Cass, I found this bag down in the great hall. Its your stuff right? Myra says with a clear carrying voice
Much lower and discrete she adds. You wanted to tell me something?

"What the…?" Minsoo says, her mind working overtime to try make sense of what she was witnessing.

She begins to run; breaking into a sprint instantly. She’d have to rely on her speed to cross the distance. She sees the javelin go up; Sarah’s strong arm tensing as she gets ready to… toss it?

Minsoo imagines herself crossing the distance in a moment, and grabbing the arm. Sweat begins to gather on her forehead. She hadn’t stretched for a run. Her legs start to protest, and she feels her heart hammering in her chest.

She focuses on that sound, and on Sarah’s arm. If she could only just… stop her!

Enroute to the Track - Jonathan, Minsoo
It was a strange thought, to be able to imagine reaching Sarah's throwing arm even before Minsoo was able to close the distance between the two of them. For a moment she thought she managed to channel it, visualising herself knocking the trajectory of the javelin away from the oblivious teammates. But she misjudged the angle, and nudged the javelin to be now more likely to hit her friends! Unless ...Jonathan headed out of the hall, still wondering what coach Corbin wanted with him. He went down a flight of stairs to pass by the gym, but the sports students there said that Coach had popped in at the start to supervise the gym cleanup, and then left in the direction of the football field, so Jonathan dutifully went that way.

From a distance he could see Minsoo in front, and beyond her a bunch of the track athletes moving things, presumably back to the storage sheds under the bleachers. But Minsoo's subsequent body language seemed wrong; his classmate began to run forward towards the group of students, as if urgently needing to reach them.

Hall / Outside : Kyle
Figuring he has helped enough at this point Kyle makes sure he has Johnathan contact info then finds a quiet spot where he hopefully wont get called back to work but can still see others moving around the campus.

Calling Glitch down he connects the charger, though the drone no longer seems to need it as often or possibly at all, and connects the debug cable to backup Glitches video and diagnostics logs. He quickly checks Johnathan's usb with AV and malware programs before finding and copping the file in question. He translates the file through a couple file formats and programs to clear any metadata before pushing it to a remote file server over a VPN and off the campus network. He will then do a bit of research and ensure he has the necessary apps or API to publish the files to some of the more commonly used social media platforms used by the students. He roughs out some basic bots to do the intended push.

Wren had expected to hear like she had at Dr. Veritas's door, but no - not this time - just the silence the noise cancelling was supposed to deliver.

That was when she realized that she was relying far too much on some inexplicable new talents she had gained. I don't need this to hear she thought, putting the headphones around her neck again and taking in the chatter of the room raw.

Nothing new, nothing useful she thought after a while of hearing about electricity and blackouts. So she headed to the music booth to get some of the things done she was supposed to. While walking, she glanced at her phone. Joe had messaged her, and she'd missed it.

Sorry Joe, I was in a conversation. I didn't hear anything - did you?

Hall/Gym - Myra, Wren, Joe
"Thanks Myra, was wondering where I left that! Cass also replied in a too loud voice,"and I was just looking for you, need your help with something ..." The council president grabbed a bunch of taken down posters as if she were busy with them, for she clearly also understood how to keep up appearances. Wren, who was so hypertuned as to miss nothing once she was in the zone, saw Cass and Myra casually head to the rear of the elevated stage of the multi-purpose hall which led out to the back entrance staircase. That felt like more than simply a casual conversation about to happen. Joe was downstairs in the gym, still churning his discoveries of Emily in his mind and contemplating what to do next.

"Don't worry I'm on your side. I know you know. Yes, something happened that shouldn’t have happened. " Cass was quick, sharp and to the point. She had the advantage over Myra because she comprehended, or seemed to comprehend, what was going on. "Took you long enough to awaken. You’re a Lockwood."Enroute to the Track - Minsoo, Jonathan
Did Minsoo have the time to undo her angular misjudgement? She found herself suddenly moving even faster than she thought herself possible, enough to flick Sarah's elbow another couple of millimeters or so. The javelin launched, and arced towards track team as Minsoo stumbled to the ground awkwardly from trying to reach too far at such an extreme angle. Good job hurting yourself, came the voice in her head again; was that a hint of sarcasm? She craned her head up to look at the trajectory: the javelin arced higher and higher, too high, and came spearing down again a foot or so behind her teammates. Minsoo could hear some onlookers gasp and cry out in surprise.

Sarah herself screamed, hands over her mouth, her face aghast at what she had done as she looked at the team, and then down at Minsoo sprawled at her feet.

Jonathan witnessed all this in front of him as he drew near, the scene drawing attention from whomever else was present around the field. A couple of students looked like they were dashing off to fetch a teacher. Just Outside the Hall - Kyle
Kyle got to work on Jonathan’s request after his friend left to go find coach Corbin. Scrubbing the files of metadata wasn’t difficult, he could do it on his own laptop. Sending out files though, as far as his expert knowledge knew, will always be traceable even with the best of efforts. Regardless of the number of steps he took or the multiplying of remote server redirects, someone with better equipment and sufficient time, and of course better hacking skills, could always reverse trace. The question was who would go to such lengths to snuff their campaign, were they the same people who caused all social media posts of the event to be fuzzy or blanked out?

For maximum untraceability, Kyle knew he needed to use a computer that wasn’t his.That way the worst case would be that a trace would lead back to that computer alone. The computer labs, or even the robotics labs, would be a possibility, Kyle was heading there anyway as part of helping to pack up. He might not have sufficient time to prep though, seeing as the school day would be ending soon. Writing out his plan and building his bots first would take a decent part of the evening, in time for launch tomorrow.Outside the Burned Wing - Torrance
Torrance weighed his options further. The school day was winding down. He would have to summon the others soon to get ready to break into the Burned Wing together. The question was whether he wanted to prep the breaking in first so that it'd be easier for all of them to get in, or wait for the others, for they might also have their own ways to do so. What he was weighing was what they hoped to find inside, whether that was worth the risk and effort of breaking in. He considered what Minsoo said about something in the basement, and what Myra mentioned about the strange layout. He himself managed to get some information; the question was what other information did they want to uncover.

Regarding information on Alex Vance, Torrance had read the current counselling file which contained his background and well-being records. In fact, Torrance had the opportunity to read all the files of his classmates that he cared to read about in the five minutes he spent in the archive room earlier. Torrance knew about Alex's visits and referrals. What Torrance did not see were the actual counselling notes: they would have been private and confidential, either under greater lock and key, or in the counsellor's computer files. There were tons of other files in the archive room; breaking in could mean that he could spend hours searching through them to find some clue, for he could not shake the intuitive feeling that somehow he would be able to find something about Emily Walsh, even though it was impossible as she was a brand new student. Or perhaps there were other secrets to uncover, whether in the files, or in the premises itself, that might make a break-in tempting.

Wren had been half-listening while she worked - stacking sheet music, coiling cables - waiting for something useful to surface from the chatter below. Nothing had. People were talking about electricity, the blackout, who saw what. Nothing she hadn't heard already.

Just when she was about to give up and stop listening she heard something that caught her attention, Myra's voice and Cass's and the word "awaken".

She didn't hesitate, grabbed a box of her own stuff and followed the two to the exit near her.

"Sorry to interrupt", she said when she joined at the door, "I couldn't help but overhear you talking about what really happened."

Looking at Cass and then Myra, she added: "I hope it is ok if I join you."

Hall/Gym - Myra, Wren, Joe
Myra talks quickly and quietly to Cass. I know I'm a Lockwood! What has that to do with awakening? We didn't know any of this stuff, so how should we know we were in a hurry?
What happened that shouldn't have? The blackout?Myra turns to Wren in surprise. What?! Oh hi, Wren
She returns her attention to Cass, accepting Wren's presence without a word. As one would a friend or a sister.
Well?
Its clear that Myra is expecting an answer.

Minsoo is heaving. Not just from the run, but from the fear and stress that had set her limbs shaking. Seeing that the javelin missed, and that Sarah was suddenly screaming, she takes a moment to catch her breath.

"What… the hell… Sarah? What… were you thinking?" she says, breathing hard as she turns over in her back and just lets the moment wash over her. To try and get upright would be a mistake!

Wren sorry to hear that. I noticed something new, not sure what to make of it yet. No obvious lead to follow. Joe.

Just Outside the Hall - Kyle With the preliminary idea worked out Kyle sets about doing the work while sending Glitch out to look for "fertile soil" (unsecured devices with open wifi/bluetooth) to plant the images along with some teaser text and questions designed to get reactions and promote questions or re-postings. Kyle plans to use as little magic on this as possible but knowing that all tech can be traced he absolutely will not be using his own devices or any device that can be traced to him. If he can plant the posts into students devices without having to tie into the service itself then hopefully the students will reply and forward the content. Figuring it would be increasingly difficult to monitor all student devices he wants to use them first since he has not idea how much the school network is monitored. He'll have to look into that.

Once things are ready he will wait till the last bell to enact the plan and start pushing the content with Gltiches help to act as a relay.

Back of Hall/Gym - Myra, Wren, Joe
For the same reason, Cass did not look surprised when Wren popped up unexpectedly, but something seemed to cross her mind, "Dad said something about the Thornes, why they're still around ..." But she quickly came back to the critical matter at hand which was Myra's concern too. "Your Lockwood legacy Myra, you have abilities, like your parents. Magic. A number of us do, even if some of us don't know it yet. There's a reason why we're all attending St Lazarus." It was interesting that Cass referred to Ashford by its original name.

"But yes, something happened yesterday, it's called a quake, a reality quake. I don't fully understand what that means, but what it does mean is that something or someone is trying to change the school or change us, in a harmful way. It's like an attack, the start of one. Dad says it'll get worse. Now that you're both awakened, I'm telling you now because we need to prepare for it."

As Joe slipped back to the awareness of his own surroundings after spending careful moments projecting on Emily's last seen position, he caught what looked like a thread? It was as if Emily's route was marked out very faintly. He was sure his own magic did not make this happen, the route marking came from ... Myra upstairs? Did she discover how Emily came and went?Enroute to the Track - Minsoo, Jonathan
There was only one conclusion Minsoo could draw from Sarah's dumbfounded meltdown, that her teammate was clueless as to why she nearly did such a thing. Which meant something caused her, or controlled her, to do such a thing. Was it someone in the vicinity? The rest of the track team had dropped their items and rushed over to Minsoo and Sarah. Was it one of the onlookers, but who? Minsoo couldn't shake the idea though that this was related to yesterday's incident, because she distinctly remembered Sarah oddly not being present in the gym when the blackout happened. Strange that she abandoned her post. Where was she, and would that explain her behaviour?

From the distance, Jonathan could see that some of the students had found the nearest teacher, coach Corbin, who hurried towards the track.Just Outside the Hall - Kyle
Still pretty easy work, was what Kyle thought to himself so far as he immersed himself into the task, fully enjoying the prepping of the files and how they could be inserted into other accounts without fuss as he wrote an insertion code just to handle that. In fact, Kyle was so absorbed in what he was doing that he lost track of how long he was taking. At one point he looked up to see his classmate and fellow robotics club member Chelsea Miles walking past and giving him the death stare for skivving instead helping out with the last bits of packing.

He sent Glitch to begin a simple scan to pick up whose phones have carelessly forgotten to secure their wifi sharing, careful not to target the school's wifi network. Something about the digital presence he sensed yesterday still weighed heavily in his mind, and he hadn't quite decided hwo he wanted to go about tackling it. But time was ticking this late afternoon, and it was looking like there would be little chance that he could finish prepping, much less begin to start hacking.

Back of Hall/Gym - Myra, Wren, Joe
Did they find an ally or an adversary in Cass? Myra is not sure, but she tries with an open question. She knows that the gray twins, Mr Necht and Ms Nixon are adversaries, so her answer will determine if Myra is going to trust Cass.

What is the story with Mr Necht and Ms Nixon? Where do they fit in in all this?

Joe pauses in mid-pretending-to-clear-up as he realises that he can sense something… he texts Wren…
Hold that; got a faint trail!! Following it…

>>>Distracted by a number of things swirling in his head, Jonathan didn't notice Sarah's odd and clearly homicidal behavior until he felt an odd pang that drew his attention. Minsoo crashed into the girl at that moment, ruining the deadly shot...but only just.
>>>Rushing to the scene as fast as his legs could carry him, Jonathan quickly ran up to the scene and checked out both girls. He offered a hand up to Minsoo, "You okay? What happened?" He looked over at Sarah, unsure if this was related to the weirdness going around or just a stupid, terrible accident. He had his suspicions which it was and didn't like the idea that something unseen and deadly stalked the senior students. He felt Death near.

Kyle saves the files and code he has worked up onto his phone and sends a copy to Glitch as well as a last instruction to finish the search for several good targets before stuffing his laptop back in his bag with a guilty look and rushes to help out. As Kyle rejoins the club in finishing up the last of the work he rationalizes that he did way more than most of the other kids for the first hour or so, not that they will give him credit for that if Chelsea decides to blast him. He does check his phone occasionally as Glitch sends face shots of any potential digital mules along with their current location. He plans to use a mixture of his scans and code along with his new ability to manipulate the wireless signals directly to pass off the content to any potential targets, hopefully by using glitch, who has one of the oddest digital signatures he has seen, Kyle can hopes this will eliminate any digital trail to him and kick off the proliferation of the content.

Joe bustles up, looking slightly distracted (divided perceptions), in time to hear Myra’s question. His eyes flick between the others; greeting Wren with a slightly questioning look; waiting for the answer to Myra’s question; wary of Cass, who he doesn’t know at all well, but sensing the intensity of Myra’s focus and not wanting to disrupt it, he waits for time to read the exchange; how much does Myra trust Cass?

"Something… is wrong with her." she says, though her eyes are heavy with meaning that she wouldn’t feel comfortable revealing here.

She gets to her feet finally, and finds her legs are that familiar jelly! Exhausted!

"I think something… is making her…" she starts the thought but doesn’t know how to finish it.

"I just thought that something might be forcing her." she continues, whispering to Jonathan so the others might not hear.

Back of the Hall - Joe, Myra, Wren, (Kyle?)
"I don't know," Cass replied impatiently, as if she was annoyed with herself for not having all the answers. She stopped when she saw Joe, caught offguard at having another person appear moments after Wren. She tapped on her iWatch in a odd sequence of swipes and then followed it up with pulling out her handphone as if taking a picture to point upwards at Kyle's drone, Glitch, which seemed to have been making a circuit of the multi-purpose hall. Interestingly, Joe, Myra and Wren now recognised her actions as part of magicking, even if Cass seemed to be subtle about it.

"You're okay Joe." She now smiled a little, her annoyance fading away as she came back to answering Myra's critical question. Joe had been observing Myra and Cass tussle in their conversation, both forthright teenagers sussing out how much they could trust each other. "They're not the cause of yesterday's incident I'm certain, because they're asking questions as well. We were all summoned," Cass glared at the rest, reminding them of their 'counselling' session. "I did overhear dad mutter something about them, I think he wanted me to know but didn't want to tell me directly. They're New World Order, he said." Cass didn't elaborate on that, wary that certain words and phrases could be overheard.

Kyle's drone scanned the multi-purpose hall, largely ignored by everyone. As part of its circuit, Glitch floated past where Cass was speaking with the others. Kyle was focussed on trying to use Glitch to evaluate whose phone might have failed to password protect their wifi sharing or their bluetooth airdrop, for those would be the ones he would use when he was ready to upload Jonathan's blitz campaign.

A notification popped up on his phone. Glitch was being momentarily blocked!Near the Track - Jonathan, Minsoo
Jonathan's intuition was spot on, and now aligned with Minsoo's sense of darkness, that death was near. But neither of them dared to use their extrasensory abilities, not when their schoolmates were gathered in concern. Someone handed Sarah a bottle of water from which she took big gulps, and one of the boys steadied her to bring her to the bleachers to sit down.

"Is everyone okay?" The figure of coach Corbin was immediately a calming presence. A teacher was here, and things would be taken care of. The first thing that he did was to attend to Sarah immediately. "How are you feeling right now Sarah?"

"That was quick thinking of you," Minsoo was on the receiving end of an encouraging smile. A quick phonecall ensued, "Heather, could you come down to the track please, I’ve got a girl here that needs attention. She’s okay, but can you have a look? And call her parents to come get her?"

"Good job everyone, you all kept your cool and responded immediately." That was Corbin’s cue to dismiss the crowd, now that he was managing the situation. He did have a word for Jonathan, "Also, quick thinking as well yesterday, Jonathan. He looked back at Minsoo, "Let’s have a chat, after I take care of Sarah." The invitation was to them both, even before Jonathan could mention that he had remembered he was supposed to look for Corbin.

Magic. Wren was still not used to calling it that, would have thought the notion too far fetched. In the end the shift had been gradual - had she not always heard strange things?
But hearing it said by Cass so non-controversially did make her lean into that, though.
Had her parents always prepared her for this? But why didn't they tell me?

Wren's eyebrows went up no matter what, and more when she heard about the twins and some underspecified New World Order. Somehow the term seemed fitting to the shivers Ms. Nixon sent down her spine.

When Joe came up beside her, she caught his questioning look and gave a small nod - they could talk later, when they were in private again.

Minsoo offers a quick: "Sarah, are you okay?" of her own. Something to blunt what must have been an accusatory course of action by Minsoo; intervening to stop her killing someone.

She didn’t mean to…

"It was nothing. I was just…" Minsoo says, gesticulating as if to communicate the rest of what she meant.

here…
magic…

>>>Far from being an isolated event, the Blackout yesterday seemed to be just a blip in a larger tapestry of weird events. Sarah's homicidal javelin throw being, presumably, the latest incident.

>>>""Just in the wrong place at the right time, I guess." Jonathan downplayed Corbin's praise. "I'll be here when you're done with Sarah and Nurse Heather. 'was coming to see you anyway..." He downplayed the seriousness of the situation with his typical deadpan demeanor and let the Coach tend to Sarah.
Letting a few moments, and some distance, pass between Coach and the two, Jonathan kept his tone low and unconcerned as he spoke to Minsoo. "What happened? What do ya mean forced ? Like mind control or possession?" he wondered aloud. The idea of his vision rose to mind. He had no idea if the 'Death Clocks' in his vision he saw were real or imagined but he knew that knowing when someone's 'Clock' was running low would be really handy to know about. The Blackout brought on that vision and he wondered if it was a fluke or if he could make the vision happen again.

Her eyes had been on Cass's wrist since the iWatch sequence.

When she finally spoke, she didn't look up immediately.
"What about the rest of the faculty, Cass? What order are they?"

Then she did, with a bit of a sarcastic smirk.
"Old order?"

Back of the Hall - Joe, Myra, Wren, Kyle
When Kyle picks up the resistance he is curious as Glitch was not 'pushing' on any services that would react like that. Systems that attack due so a simple service or port query are way above what any kid, or most civilians would even have access to. He doubts its legal either. He simply sends a short message to Glitch to log the MAC or SIM address that reacted like that and to avoid it any anything else that had a similar response. The idea was to collect data not attempt the hack. He'll have to go over the code later to see what his instructions were vs what Glitch did. Maybe it "improved' the operation again.

Having collected enough potential targets Kyle focuses on finishing up the club work before looking to rejoin the other awoken students.

Back of the Hall - Joe, Myra, Wren, (Kyle?)
Thank you, Cass.
There is a lot to take in, and we are not sure who to trust with all of this new stuff. But I think we can trust you.

Yesterday, we all met this freshman girl, Emily, in different places on campus at the same time. Then she disappeared during the blackout, as if she had never been there at all.
Emily has been the clue we have been chasing in the hope of figuring all this out.

I also saw some symbols during the blackout, symbols that I have linked to the traditions, and one I haven't figured out yet.
Here Myra raises an eyebrow to see if Cass recognises what she is talking about. When seeing that she does, she carries on and takes out her notebook.

I'm I right in assuming that this is the "old order"? She eyes WrenAnd this is the "new"?And what do you know about the Lockwood? You say that my parents were in on this stuff, but I don't know anything about that. Or the hidden room in the basement.

Joe listens intently, and with a developing sense of guarded relief; there is something going on behind the mundane facade and this little handful aren’t entirely alone. That doesn’t mean the whole situation is benign, far from it; but there may be less to hide from than it first seemed. Even so, a scurrilous part of him couldn’t help inwardly whispering "Yer a wizard, ‘Arry".
He fought to keep a straight face.

"She seem surprised that she had done it." Minsoo remarks. "Mind control, maybe." and yet she can’t shake the feeling that there is an entity somewhere below them. It could be capable of possession… possibly.

"She snapped right out of it as soon as she’d missed. Something must have let go of her once they’d gotten what they wanted.

Well, not exactly what they wanted. She missed." she says, and then shivers. Something on campus had murderous intent.

Back of the Hall - Joe, Kyle, Myra, Wren
"Wait, is Kyle trying to spy on us? Kyle was their classmate, they all recognised Glitch, the drone that accompanied Kyle whenever he went until Mr Chase the robotics teacher had to lay down some ground rules on appropriate drone use in school. Cass was council president after all, always accommodating to serve and lead her fellow students, but also authoritative enough to brook no nonsense when it came to abiding by proper school behaviour. She got up, ready to go find Kyle to give him a piece of her mind.

"The only other order I know more of is this one," she replied to Wren while pointing at Myra's notes. "You're right Myra, these are traditions of magic, this one's the Order of Hermes, yeah I know, uncool. I think of them as pointy hats. Joe's face looks like he knows what I'm talking about. I know you just joined us, I don't know anything about the Noakes." Joe could see Cass trying to puzzle out the gap in her knowledge.

Realising that she had been surname-dropping, Cass realised she needed to explain herself. "I don't know about faculty, Wren. Dad's professional enough never to discuss work in front me, although I try to pick up things. I do try to find out about us students, that's what I signed up for. Your mother Celeste Lockwood attended Ashford, she was a mage. Yours too, Wren, or was that your father? I'm- I'm sorry they haven't told you much." Cass seemed to realise that mention of family might have been a sensitive issue, and softened her words.

Cass came back to the other things she had no information about. "I don't know that symbol. I only heard the term New World Order yesterday, haven't had a chance to dig into it yet. And what's this about a hidden basement? In school? Is it significant? We can find it."

Next was to respond to Myra's raising of the Emily incident, but Cass had paused, expecting the three of them to also go see what Kyle was up to. Kyle was sending his adjusted instructions to Glitch, now manually flying his drone back to him rather than having it loop around the hall. Glitch didn't get hacked as far as he could tell, no malicious code attempted to assert control over the drone, that would have been pretty sophisticated for his peers; Kyle figured there were only a couple of others who could do what he was able to, and now with his newfound awareness he wondered if he would surpass them. But the signal he got back from Glitch was as if a physical force had pushed the drone away and off course. He looked up to see the figure of Cass stomping directly towards him.

Near the Track Stores - Jonathan, Minsoo
"Let's talk over at my office." Coach Corbin had dismissed the rest of the sports people back to their training or their packing duties. It was already past 5pm, and school was winding down to a close; no one had extra training so early in the term for it wasn't sports season yet. Nurse Heather had gently taken Sarah away; it seemed like she was busy two days in a row, yesterday with Joe's fainting spell, and now this more serious matter. Corbin did not attempt to explain what had happened to the students, but neither did he come across as dismissive of the fact that something did happen.

The 'office' that Corbin mentioned wasn't the staffroom in the main block, but a set of tables in the equipment store next to a wall of lockers, this was where students could sign out for sports equipment. Interestingly, they weren't alone; their classmate Kirk Kallum was there, sorting out a box of newly arrived weights. Corbin did not seem to mind nor explain his presence. "I wanted to see you both because your hearts' in the right place." Coach gave Jonathan and Minsoo his familiar encouraging smile. "You're first to step up when something goes wrong. You look out for others, and their well-being. We need more of that."

"And it looks like something's going on with you, personally. Easier to explain it if you experience it for yourself. Come, tell me what you see. What you really see." Corbin turned the both of them towards the track and pointed at exactly the spot where Minsoo tackled Sarah.

Back of the Hall - Joe, Kyle, Myra, Wren
While reacting to Glitches alert and directing a more passive approach he scanned the area to try an sense the entity or force driving Glitch away. A quick scan of the area revealed some traces leading back to a cluster of students, and he is slightly surprised to see some of his recent acquaintances (friends or allies?) talking with Cass. Having finished up the work he heads over to see whats new and whats up with them talking with Cass?

Coming from the Back of the Hall - Kyle, Joe, Myra, Wren
"Are you spying on me Kyle? If you got something you want to know, ask me directly." The retort from Cass sounded cross as she stomped up to Kyle, but belied what she was doing moments ago, which was to sensitively explain what she knew to Myra, Wren and Joe. This was Cass putting on her bossy public self again,

"Back to work, we're almost done everyone! Let's pack up so we can go home!" She hollered with the authority as student council president. The clock was showing just past 5:15pm, classes had all ended, the rest of school was winding down, and even here in the hall the seniors were largely done restoring the venue to its original state.

"I wanna hear more about that missing girl, let's find a time to talk." Cass did realise the seriousness of the matter, but perhaps hadn't comprehended the urgency that the others felt. And the fact that school was closing made her shorten their conversation. "Lily might know something about that symbol, she knows everything." She was talking about their classmate, Lillian Silverton, who always had a story about talking to things, and them talking back.

Coming from the Back of the Hall - Kyle, Joe, Myra, Wren
"Whoa, what? I'm not spying on anyone. I was just testing out some survey and analytics software and figured the school would be a good starting sample set. Any why would I spy on you? " Kyle is surprised and a bit offended. He's no Peeping Tom; "Honestly I wasn't trying to spy or anything like that. The AI code probably tried something it shouldn't have. Sheesh, sorry if it seemed that way." he finishes with a half apology, figuring it would be better to back off from Cass's attack then to try and stand up to her assault.

Minsoo & Jonathan
Minsoo puts on the very same act, if you could call it that, that she had pulled in the counselor’s office earlier that day. She nods her head in all the right places, listens intently and does her best to not give the teacher any reason to have this conversation go any further than these four walls…

And yet… her eyes narrow at the implication in the teacher’s words. Was he…?

She turns to look at Jonathan. That, in and of itself, was probably more of a tell than she should have shown. She resorts to playing dumb. That had always worked…

"What do you mean ‘really see’, Coach Corbin?" she asks, smiling inoffensively. All the while, her eyes search the man’s face…

Wren let the others drift a step ahead as Cass stomped across the hall toward Kyle, so that she could catch up with Joe. Just enough for a conversation.

"What did you find?", she asked him in a low voice - her face still working through what Cass had said. "I at least got a name for where Alex might be and where Daniela might be searching for him - the Blackwood Sanatorium."

"Ever heard this name before?"

Minsoo & Jonathan
>>>Not the first time Jonathan had been in the locker rooms but this was under decidedly different circumstances. He felt Minsoo's glance at him and cut his eyes towards here to let her know he felt the same trepidation at Corbin's odd behavior.
>>>"What we really see?" he asked flatly, echoing Minsoo. His glance shifted from Corbin out to the field where Sarah had nearly killed someone. He felt a pull towards the spot, like a ball settling into a groove, following it to where Corbin indicated. "Is this like one of those 'Magic Eye' images from the 90s?" he quipped, but his voice fell distant and flat, his attention was cast elsewhere .

Coming from the Back of the Hall - Kyle, Joe, Myra, Wren
I think I'm going to go home - To House Lockwood. Swing by if you want to talk some more.
Myra is struggling with some internal dissension, which she finally makes.
I'm going to look through my parents' rooms. Their study and such. Find the truth of what Cass is saying

Joe, grateful for Cass’ distraction, replies softly to Wren; Myra is probably close enough to hear… "I got several things; a brief sense of Emily’s Life itself, but also of Spirit power; something that was causing the multiple Emily’s to appear. Don’t ask me how that works, I don’t know. I also got a sense of magick; both Emily’s own, whatever it was, and Myra’s; that’s what led me straight here! From what I just heard, we’re not the only ones with magick here; but everyone else who has it seems to know about it already; they just didn’t tell us. Means we might be able to get some help and explanations so long as we can work out who to trust and what to ask… but at least it means that we’re probably not going crazy. Which is good."
He ponders. "Blackwood Sanatorium? Never heard of it; but then, I am new in town, so I might well have never heard of an old name for something here."
To Myra; "Thank you for the invitation. That sounds like a good idea, because this is changing fast, and I have a feeling we may not have time to spare."

Near the Track Stores - Jonathan, Minsoo
Minsoo's expression was a well-practiced one, teenagers were good at that. Unlike the morning's session with Veritas and Nixon in the counselling office though, this situation didn't make Minsoo feel cornered as if she were being interrogated. For one, Corbin wasn't gaslighting them about a particular 'version' of an incident. His tone sounded like the question was an open-ended one, and in fact he gave a small chuckle at Jonathan's wisecrack about Magic Eye images. Perhaps the truth was closer to home than both of them dared imagine.

Jonathan was ready to give it a go though, to use his second sight to see exactly what it was that Coach was hinting for him to see. Even Kirk in the background looked up, curious.

Coming from the Back of the Hall - Joe, Kyle, Myra, Wren
Cass might've been too defensive, judging by how she had responded to Kyle, not necessarily because Kyle had been intentionally intrusive. It was interesting for Joe, Myra and Wren to evaluate how Cass had instinctively jumped at surveillance. It was a dead giveaway as to how wary Cass might typically be regarding issues of magic; no wonder none of them suspected anything about the magical goings-on around them, at least not until now when their eyes were open. It might be worth taking a cue from her in terms of how to safeguard themselves.

Cass shrugged, not intending to make a big deal out of this, ever mindful to set a good example as council president. "You oughta be cautious..." was all she replied. "All of you." She did look troubled when she was told about Emily, an incident that she didn't pick up on despite its major significance and impact. "Talk again, let me know if you find out anything." She scooted off, back to her next responsibility, leaving the four to determine what to do next.

Myra had offered the other three a gathering place to talk and plan. Minsoo and Jonathan weren't around though, Jonathan had told Kyle he had headed out to see coach Corbin, and Minsoo was around somewhere helping her track teammates. Torrance was in and out of the hall, but hadn't left word with anyone where he went. He did seem singularly focussed on getting back into the counselling centre at the Burned Wing. It was something that they spoke about this morning, to stay back after school and break in. Although other things might now feel more urgent, with Daniela uncontactable so soon after she mentioned looking for Alex.

Wren reminded them of what she found out, a non-existent place called Blackwood Sanatorium. The question was how long it would take before it occurred to any one of them that it might or might not be a coincidence that their headmaster's surname was Blackwood, Nathaniel Blackwood!

Near the Track Stores - Jonathan, Minsoo
Jonathan had always considered his artistic expression to be arising from the creativity within him, the way he saw the world around him and interpreted it accordingly in his art. With Corbin's encouragement, he attempted to look with those eyes again, and saw through a veil to a different world. The first image in his mind was something that looked like a reflection of himself, as if he existed on another plane. He would learn eventually that that was his avatar, or soul, or spirit, for there were as many ways to describe it as there were cultures. Now, looking further at the spot where Sarah behaved irrationally, he could see what he could only understand as a road, or path, leading from the hall where she came, across the tracks, and fading out of campus into the Ashford woods. The path seemed to phase in and out, between the real world and the spiritual world. Jonathan felt that if he concentrated harder, he might just be able to break through to connect with something on the other side, but what held him back was the terrifying sense of death he had been perceiving yesterday and today.

And finally, even though he wasn't focussing on her, Jonathan inadvertently cast his senses at Minsoo and nearly jumped out of his skin, for tethered to Minsoo was a dominant presence, not in terms of size, but in power. Whatever it was seemed to glare back at Jonathan, but made no other action. Minsoo of course wondered why Jonathan was staring intently at her.

Corbin looked at Jonathan expectantly, a slight smile on his lips.

Wren was still perplexed by the thought of her parents being part of the world she had just been thrown into — and yet they had never spoken openly about it with her.

But slowly, she pushed that back. She'd get a chance to talk to them soon enough. She focused back on the present, and on her newfound "friends" - were they friends?

"Wait. Nathaniel Blackwood..." Wren said in a low voice, looking at the others. "How could I have missed that."

"Let's talk later, at Myra's - but I think I need to head home first and talk to my parents."

The hair in Minsoo’s arms stand on edge, and goosebumps begin to dot the athlete’s arms and legs. She rubs her palms onto her arms, as if suddenly very cold. She knew something was at work amongst the three people here in the space.

If the two new staff members were to avoided, perhaps the Coach was someone they could rely on. Perhaps he was locked in some struggle against the new comers. Or perhaps they were all one and the same and wielded forces so powerful and complex that no new Mage could hope to untangle or decipher them.

"Jonathan, are you alright?" she asks, looking between the young man and the teacher.

Near the Track Stores - Jonathan, Minsoo
This boy has seen the Presence. You shall eliminate him. Again, Minsoo heard the urging voice in her head, not just disdainful this time, but more commanding. Was Jonathan able to perceive the voice in her head, but in a different way? Were things about to escalate? And did Corbin know what was happening between the two of them?Leaving School - Joe, Myra, Kyle, Wren
Myra headed home, ready to do some deep research. There was still some deep secrets about her family she did not know about, and she was determined to find out. Joe tagged along, he needed some more concrete things first before returning to commune with his own mentor. Wren wanted to accompany Myra, but felt she needed to speak with her parents first, that couldn't wait. Kyle still needed to spend his night working on the code he wanted to use to insert into his classmates' socials, but Myra's invitation was open to him as well.Outside the Burned Wing - Torrance

Near the Track Stores - Jonathan, Minsoo

>>>"'Alright' is kind of a subjective term..." Jonathan muttered in a low tone, sounding as if he were far away. "There's shit out there. Hard to explain. Ways and Paths and...Things. I don't understand it, but yet I do." The big senior tried to reel his senses back into the mundane, swiping a few stray black hairs hanging in front of his eyes. "...woah..." The vision had definitely made an impression on the usually unflappable highschooler. He looked at Minsoo, or rather towards her, his gaze focused on something just behind her.

Kyle agrees to Wrens suggestion "Yeah, I need to check in with my uncle but we should definitely talk. I keep feeling like were being watched here" and glances around a bit nervously. He makes sure he know the time and location of any plans before heading off.

Kyle want to make sure he can pull off the upload with as little as possible to trace back to him or Glitch so decides he want to do some simulations and tests. He still has a bit of time so once he finishes checking out from club responsibilities he plant to head to his workshop (Larbratory) to try and work out how to blend coding, network hijacking, and using his new abilities, to the best effect for untracability.

Myra sends out a text, inviting everyone to the Lockhouse Estate
Myra: Swing by if you want to talk. Here is the address...

Minsoo shakes the words Eliminate Him from her head.

What the hell was that? she thinks, maybe communicating with the thing whose presence she had felt only this strongly at times.

He’s my friend. Chill out. she chides further. Perhaps the thing didn’t have a good read on human relationships…

She looks at Jonathan, and then back to the Coach. Was he content with what had just unfolded?

Near the Track - Jonathan, Minsoo, (Kyle?)
"Takes some getting used to. Like breaking in a new pair shoes." When Jonathan tried to explain what he saw, Corbin observed him intently, his expression a mix of concern and watchfulness, as if ready to anticipate and act if something untoward were to happen. "If you have questions I can answer them, to the best of my ability. Bear in mind I can't do whatever you just did." His tone was easy; they didn't call him 'Coach' for nothing. Corbin was great at bringing out the best in his athletes. "Always a straight line from start to finish," he'd say, "even if it curves. So long as you can see the end."

Corbin then turned to Minsoo, "Won't nudge you if you're not ready. But I'm here to say you're seen, and it's safe if you want to talk about it." No pressure from the coach it seemed, since Minsoo had not yet attempted what Corbin wanted of them. But it also seemed like Corbin was letting her get out of their meeting if she wasn't comfortable. And boy was Minsoo uncomfortable at that very moment, with what sounded like some angel of judgement resonating in her head. Was that something she wanted to tell Jonathan about, since it sounded like Jonathan could see the voice? Or was she ready to trust Corbin? If not, it felt that Minsoo was about to be left out of this conversation.

Preoccupied with this conversation, no one really noticed that Kyle was not leaving school via the main gates. Kyle knew to skirt round the buildings, but still needed to cross the large expanse of the school field in order to reach the boundaries of the school compound. The school was more significantly walled from the front, with its historic iron gates and necessary security post, but round the north and west sides it was merely lightly fenced, enough to keep the occasional stray out. For Ashford High sat on a low-rise, beyond which its surroundings sloped to a forested copse northwards, whereas the main campus driveway descended south-east towards the town. Kyle had, in his days of trying to find less urban areas to test his droves, ventured further afield, and discovered for himself a little nook away from school, and also from home, though a convenient hole in the fence, no doubt made by some previous generation of students.

Today though, as he approached his hideaway, Kyle had the sense that something had intruded on the privacy of his space.

Near the Track - Jonathan, Minsoo, (Kyle?)

>>>"Then how'd you know what I might see if you can't do it?" Jonathan focused back on the Coach. "How long have you known about any of this?!" He was a bit more intense than he probably meant to be but let the intensity persist. The emotion came from a sense of betrayal from an authority figure. Dr. Veritas would probably ascribe his outburst to a link with the death of his parents and subsequent obfuscation of the investigation details by 'official sources'. It was sufficient to chalk it up to late-teenage hormones, no doubt, in Corbin's mind.
After a beat to regain a bit more control and clarity, he had to find out more. "What IS it I saw? How...does that exist? Is it real or some kinda schizoid episode?"

Woods behind campus- Kyle
Kyle walked his bike from the rack by the visitor parking around Founders hall towards the tennis courts. He had gotten in the habit of taking this route after finding the trails used by the cross country team were much more extensive than the routes they took around the campus. Hopping on his bike once he hit the road he started moving down it while glancing casually around. Adjusting his speed to separate from the others he hopped his bike of the road and onto a dirt track heading back into the trees behind the tennis courts.

He had actually gotten lost a couple of times when he first tried out for the team last year. It was on one of these unplanned explorations that he found a section of fence that was not secured. Where two sections of the older fence overlapped a gap big enough to squeeze through could be pushed open. While figuring all of this out he had noticed a building further back in the woods. If not for the sun glinting of a window Kyle doubts he would ever have spotted it.

Curious he slipped through the gap and checked wandered off the faint trail that wound back towards one of the back side roads away from campus. Secluded in a thicket of young and older trees the building turned out to be a great find. A small, single story building with a basement, made of cemented stonework and a dark roof it almost blended into the surrounding when the shutters were all closed. The front door was locked but a quick check revealed a garage door which was easy enough to lift enough to slip inside. Though quite old the building had been retrofitted decades past then left unused, abandoned for at least a couple years. The great part was the place has power and running water.

Kyle had slowly begun cleaning up the place and using it as a personal retreat. The place was great but after Glitch started acting up it seemed to change, becoming even harder to spot, and no matter how often Kyle visited the way to it never seemed to grow easier to spot or navigate. And then Glitch somehow uncovered a small cavern attached to the basement. Maybe an old root cellar or some such but it had oddly glowing crystal which Glitch had taken to digging up, only there always seemed to be more. Now as Kyle approached he wondered if the places peculiarity had something to do with the event back at school, the new world opening up before Kyle and the others.

Near the Track - Jonathan, Minsoo
"Just because I don't play tennis doesn't mean I'm no good at football." It's true the Corbin was a former quarterback and a mean long-distance runner in his time, and also true that as the Phys Ed head no student ever seen him play tennis. But Jonathan knew he wasn't really talking about tennis nor football, and that he was speaking cryptically, perhaps for a reason. "Question is not how long I've known about this, but how long you have. I know it's all mighty confusing. You're not seeing things, not in the way folks mean when they say someone is seeing things. But it's real all the same. Someone walked that route, left a trace of their passing, which affected the next person walking on it. Like if you ploughed a field and then someone trips over the furrows you left. That's what you saw." He explained what had happened simply, in terms Jonathan and Minsoo could grasp, even though Jonathan had reacted strongly while Minsoo hadn't said a word yet.

Woods Behind Campus - Kyle
The old Kyle would have simply assumed some woodland animal was sniffing around the abandoned house. Sometimes they did, thinking there might be food to be found when the humans were out. The new Kyle realised he had more to be aware of, apart from animals. Something or someone was in school, or in its vicinity. Did it also seek refuge in the woods, for surely it didn't march up to the main gates to enter Ashford High? But Kyle wasn't particularly adept at traipsing about foliage in a quiet manner, certainly not with his bike, and he also didn't think he needed to be cautious. He slowed his step, not entering his hideaway just yet, and hoped no one was around.

Woods Behind Campus - Kyle
While hitting the trails on foot was no big deal, Kyle understood heading there on his bike might draw some attention, something he did not really want. As soon as he drew near the trail head he became extra alert be being observed.

As soon as he was out of the line of sight of any building, facilities, courts or fields Kyel decided to also begin working on his newly developed senses. As he nears the fence he will scan it with PRIME , curious is the school boundary has any other implications. After taking of his bikes front tire to force the bike through the gap (what a pain, he will have to work something better out) he will scan the area with FORCES before walking on the trail till he is out of sight from the fence. Pausing a moment again to listen and scan the area before making his way to the building.

It was hard to meet the Coach’s gaze at times. They were speaking openly and at length… with someone who claimed almost no magical ability. Or at least that’s what Minsoo thought he was saying. She was still distracted by the angel’s words, and the sense that someone was nearby…

"The clocks, Jonathan." she says, thinking back to the discussion around the lunch table.

"There’s lots of weird stuff going on, Coach. A lot of weird stuff. Do you know anything about clocks?" she asks, making a face at Jonathan that asked for forgiveness, if needed.

Near the Track - Jonathan, Minsoo

>>>"Oh. Oh, yeah." Jonathan quickly agreed, still unsure of how much he should trust Corbin...or Kirk Kallum lurking nearby. "Lots of weird stuff with time goin' on before the convocation yesterday morning." He looked at Minsoo, and behind her at whatever it was that had been hovering over her. "And then there was the 'Death Clock' thing I saw during the blackout..."

Woods Behind Campus - Kyle
There was still just a little more than an hour before sunset, but even with the well illuminating light of the setting sun, Kyle was no outdoorsman to be able to make much out of the trail around his building. He was at least assured that no one had trespassed into his hideout. And also that no one was currently physically present in the vicinity. Whomever had come close had already left. But he was beginning to respect his sixth sense. He reached out to get a feel of the boundary of the fence which defined where the school campus ended and where the woods began, and also did the same between the trail and his little building. Faintly, he now had the impression that school was 'more magical' than the trail, although that was simply a general sense; he would have to analyse the various parts of campus to figure out exactly where and what was giving out that aura.

As for the trail, he found he could amplify sounds so as to differentiate the ambient sounds of the woods from any non-nature sounds. But he heard nothing suspicious. He could definitely tell though, based on his perception of the physical trail, that someone had come this way before recently, as recently as yesterday.

Near the Track - Jonathan, Minsoo
"Only that we can judge a good clock by whether it runs on time." Corbin had an answer to Minsoo's question. "But I think you know more about running on time than I do Minsoo." Once again, the coach was alluding cryptically rather than directly answering. He took out a stopwatch from his pocket, one of those commonly used in sports practice, and held it up to Minsoo, thumb on the start button. "Why don't you take a lap, there and back again. You'll have your answer." What an odd way to reply to Minsoo; was Coach seriously suggesting for her to do a track run now, was this some sort of test? Maybe he wanted her to replicate again the speed in which she reached Sarah, not that he was around to witness it when it happened.
Corbin did purse his lips into a slight frown though when Jonathan mentioned the death clocks in his vision, a marked change in his expression from the coach-like demeanour he had adopted with the two teens thus far. He didn't dismiss the notion nor make light of it. They had established Jonathan was able to see the wake of someone passing through, someone with enough resonance to leave a trail that affected others. Corbin must be wondering if Jonathan also meant that he was able to see something else as well. "What do you mean by death clocks Jon? Do you mean you saw the time of someone's death?"

"Yeah. It was something like that." Jonathan agreed, still a little lost at his vision being taken seriously instead of just a hallucination or figment of his imagination. "I could see a countdown clock on everyone around me. Mine and a couple of others were at or near zero...and they're not here anymore. What am I supposed to do with that kind of information?"

"If you… say so…" she says, suddenly shy that two others were about to directly witness a display of her power. A demonstration, might be a better term. One that she would feel foolish to mess up.

Corbin chuckled when the stopwatch disappeared from his hand, and appeared in Minsoo's. "So that's how you nearly caught that javelin. Check out your time." Minsoo might not have felt she ran that fast. She knew she could average a mean 12+ seconds on a 100 metre lap. She looked at the stopwatch: it read 8.49 seconds. She just beat the women's world record holder by a full two seconds, impossible! Kirk was grinning broadly somewhere behind, impressed that Minsoo managed to catch Coach by surprise. "Not bad for a second attempt, but if you want to get better at it, you'll need a ... coach." Corbin's last attempt at humour was groan-worthy, but what he advised was consistent with the man's core beliefs. But was there such a thing as an arcane coach?
He didn't make a big deal at all about Minsoo's abilities, and as Jonathan reflected, he didn't bat an eyelid either when Jonathan told him, first about the track on the tracks he saw, and then about the disturbing death clocks. If anything, that gave a further affirmation to Jonathan that someone adult, not just his peers, believed him. "I don't know what to make of that either, although someone might..." he mulled, his voice trailing off as his mind thought about the person he was referring to, before switching back with a gentler gaze at Jonathan. "The symbolism's the easy part, everyone's got a clock, and time's running out for some. Thing is, it's your vision, what's that inner voice telling you to do about it?" But what would that inner voice say?

Minsoo knew that everyone had a clock. Not a literal clock, she had thought, but the idea was there. What she didn’t like the idea of was seeing the number on that clock. Hers, or anyone elses.

"Are you saying you can teach me… us… this stuff?" she asks, forgetting the nasty business of clocks counting down for a second…

>>>"And who would that be?" Jonathan asked Corbin flatly. "Who else can understand what I saw? I need to make it all make some kinda sense..." It was obvious that he was distressed, as distressed as Jonathan-the-Unbothered ever got anyway.

"I'm not the coach you're looking for, I'm just here looking out for everyone." Corbin had implied earlier that both Jonathan and Minsoo appeared to be capable of certain things he himself had no disposition in. "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." Corbin caught himself again spouting too much Mr Miyagi platitudes, "Well, the only other person I know positively radiating your vibes is Esme, that's Mdm Silverton to you." Every student knew their long-time librarian Esme Silverton, and both of them were also well acquainted with her grandaughter Lily, who was their classmate in 4A. Corbin seemed to have picked up on whatever aura Minsoo never realised she was giving, how interesting that the old librarian was someone similar. Did that mean she could run fast too? It was hard to imagine.
"I'm not about to speculate Jon, but it sounds like something's up and I need both of you to be able to keep a level head and look out for others. Kirk here will do the same. And no loose lips. People could get hurt. As for your vision, hmm, I can think of someone. But this isn't something to discuss in school, best to meet them outside. You know Bigger Bites? It's 88th off Main Street, just after that ice cream and boba joint you like to hang out after class." The place was not unfamiliar, a retro diner that had been around for decades. "I'll get them to meet you." It was curious why Corbin thought it less safe to talk about such matters in school. He had advised Minsoo and Jonathan to keep their wits about them and stay quiet. (Which was the opposite of what Jonathan had planned to do, through Kyle!)

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear…

Minsoo repeated the platitude back to herself. Platitude or no, Minsoo had a history of things bumping into her right when she needed them to. The entity that Jonathan seemed to sense, most of all.

When she gets a name, she nods and keeps quiet. All the talk of keeping their wits about them, and this from a teacher, spooked the girl.

Bigger Bites sounded like the kind of place that a bunch of teenagers could hang out inconspicuously.

>>>"Yeah. I know the place." Jonathan nodded as Corbin noted the meeting place. "The 'greasy spoon' that has the old bikers that eat there and classic car shows in the summer? Yeah." That may not have been the exact vibe of the place but it was what Jonathan remembered most about it. "I'm not really expected home anytime soon so if whoever you're talking about is down, I'm down."
'Uncle' Dudley, Jonathan's guardian, had always given him a long leash to lead his own life. Long enough to hang himself on enough occasions that Jonathan had learned personal responsibilities at a young age. While he still frequently tested the boundaries of that leash, as any teenager would, Jonathan maintained a degree of freedom that made most kids his age jealous.

As promised, Corbin sent a message to whomever it was that Jonathan ought to meet. That greasy spoon was certainly cool in its time, though no teenager would be caught dead there, not when there were more popular cafes and other franchises at the mall. Minsoo wondered if she could do the same. If she wanted to speak with Silverton this evening, it was getting near to 6pm and the school library would be closing. Otherwise she would have to look for her tomorrow. The alternative was to tag along with Jonathan out of curiosity. Another option was the open invitation to Myra's place; as exchanged in their chat, Myra and Joe had headed over, and Kyle had also just said he would join them. Only Wren had gone home first, which was something Minsoo could do as well.

The big thing that Jonathan and Minsoo had discovered was a pivotal one. For it had first seemed as if the school, the institution, the system was watching them, no thanks to the morning's counselling interviews. Thanks to their opening up to Corbin, a teacher, it now seemed as if not all adults were to be guarded against, even if they were meant to still keep their heads low, for Corbin had, without outrightly saying so, implied that it would be risky to be flashing their new abilities willy-nilly. They would hear from Wren later that such a secret had consequences when revealed to one's own parents, but this was something best told to them by Wren herself.

The other thing they learnt was that they needed guidance from others to understand their newfound abilities. Joe, Kyle and Myra would share later that they dug out a whole bunch of information from books and research, detailing the idea of magical traditions and spheres of power. But Jonathan and Minsoo were the ones to first process why learning magic began with seeking a mentor or guide. Could it be that Kirk, who had been hanging around all this while, was Corbin's disciple of sorts?

Outside of the Lockwood Estate - Joe, Kyle, Myra, Wren
Myra's place was a different kind of estate from the suburbia that Wren had left in a perturbed huff. Her skateboard took her further out from the well-manicured rows of family homes, right to the outskirts of Ashford where the old money settlers put down their roots in private landed property. The ivy-covered mansion sat a ways back from the road, partially hidden by the trees lining the way in. The heavy-curtained windows meant little light peeked out from the place. Kyle had made it here just before night fell, but by the time Wren arrived, the stars were already blinking faintly in the night sky, making the Lockwood Estate seem a lot more sombre than it actually was, the only sounds were the wheels of her skateboard rattling unevenly over the gravel driveway. She had already messaged to say she would be coming over, thoughts all awhirl, so Joe, Kyle and Myra were expecting her. Grandma Lockwood had reminded Myra that she would be retiring to her own room, so it was Myra who opened the door when Wren rang the doorbell.

It was too quiet outside.

Hey, Wren. Joe and Kyle are in the the libary and we are making some headway... Myra stops her gushing and actually looks at Wren

Are you okey?
Come inside.

Deciding he needed a short break before getting sucked back into research Kyle left glitch to continue cataloging and tagged along with Myra. Things were happening fast and he kept missing out on event due to focusing to much on his own activities and he was getting tired of learning everything second or third hand.

"No," she said. "Not really." She sighed. "Dad still denies that he knows at least something."

She nodded toward Kyle.

Her eyes moved past Myra into the hall, then back over it, slower.

Something was off.

"Hang on."

She didn't say what for.

Myra is standing in the door, welcoming her inside.

Myra had never felt unsafe on the grounds of Lockwood. This place was where she grew up, and while she wasn't the outdoorsy sort, the surrounding greenery marked a sense of home on the occasions where she would cut through the trees rather than come in through the main driveway. Hence she gave no thought to what the vibe was outside the house. This was the opposite of Wren, who had arrived, emotions all awhirl and alert, hpping that meeting her friends would give her an outlet.

She felt the aura of the mansion as she stood there, and sort of intuited that if she were to extend her senses magically, she would feel something tighten, as if to keep its occupants safe within its bounds. Wren could feel as if if she stepped over the threshhold and into the house, she would experience something different. (Joe and Kyle might've also felt it earlier, and in fact Kyle did get a strange reaction when he was demonstrating his powers to the other two earlier).

But that wasn't what bothered Wren. A presence, something vaguely magical, either because it was slight, or perhaps obscured, was behind her. How far away she couldn't tell, not without using her powers. It was already past sunset, neither Myra nor Kyle who were facing outwards saw anything beyond the shadows of the trees. The other not-unnatural sound that Wren heard was a soft fluttering, which didn't seem odd except for the fact that she distinctly heard it.

The fluttering caught her attention. Outside the threshold.

She turned, shoulders angling toward the trees. Her eyes narrowed.

What's that?

Curious Kyle glances at Wren then outside and at his phones monitoring software, which was still running. Was Wren reacting to the house, similar to Kyle when he was probing earlier in the library, or was there something outside?

Myra has stepped back to allow Wren to enter her home, and being a good host.

Now Kyle found (and there was no better explanation for it), that the house was reacting to him. It wasn't what Glitch was doing that was the problem; the drone was methodically 'reading' all the books they had pulled out with the zeal of a conscientious librarian cataloguing. It was Kyle's use of the primal sense, the one that attempted to scan for magic in its rawest form. He had some feedback on his phone earlier, one of the signs he was learning to read by now: a dropped signal, uneven wifi, processor lag, all meant something was interfering. Now he was trying to cast its sensors outside of the house to see what he could detect, and it wasn't working. He could feel as if it was the house telling him to perform his magic outside its boundaries.

Myra didn't know enough about how the house behaved either, how could she? She had barely learnt about the use of magic herself. At best she might have made an improbable inference about how they never seemed to have any permanent staff employed in the house. They came and went over the years, but otherwise it was just grandma Evelyn Lockwood and herself. But at this very moment she was busy distracted about what gave Wren pause at the doorway instead of simply stepping in when Myra welcomed her. It was night, looking through the well lit hall from the inside past Wren's figure standing there, all was black. A moth fluttered in, attracted by the warm light of the hall. Then another.

Wren couldn't help but hear the sound of the moths' wings as particularly loud. She was already hypertuned in her sense of magical essence, and the house felt suffused with it. Outside she could confirm further that she felt that something (or maybe someone) was also low-key present, but there was nothing she could visually see. Too quiet, except for now a third moth. A fourth.

Okey, please come in Wren, I don't want any more moths inside.

Myra focuses on the moths and lamppost outside. She knew that bugs were attracted to bug-zappers bluelight, and by emphasising that attraction and making the lamppost more blue, the could get the moths to fly out again. Right?

The row of lamp posts furthest out in the main road were too distant to be of any effect. But the nearest one to the front porch of the house began to glow more visibly brightly thanks to Myra tweaking of its wavelength. She manipulated the blue shift, enhancing the ultraviolet emitted as well, to make it more attractive to the moths than the warm glow coming from within the house.

It worked, but what was revealed in the brighter light wasn't just two or three moths fluttering erratically, but a whole whisper of them, flitting about above, and more of them would've flown inside had it not been for Myra's trick. Was it a random phenomenon that gathered so many of them and made them want to enter the house? And did the increased light now let Myra, Wren and Kyle see better if anything else was out there in the shrubbery?

The next thing that happened might suggest otherwise. The lights of the entrance hallway of the mansion now began to flicker and dim...

What the hells?
She ushers Wren inside, but if she is reluctant, then Myra will leave her outside. The door is closing now.

Wren is stepping inside.

Seeing what Myra was doing, and the result, Kyle called out to Glitch and glanced around somewhat nervously.

Joe is sufficiently engrossed in the Lockwood family library that although he notices Myra respond to the doorbell, he doesn’t really register the others leaving at first. By the time the unexpected quiet filters in through his focus, he finds himself alone in the library, and wandering off on his own through someone else’s home is not exactly polite. He’s just resigned himself to waiting in the library, and getting through this next interesting looking passage…
Then the lights flicker and dim.
Being stuck in someone else’s unfamiliar house in the dark is really not a good idea. Joe carefully puts down the book and goes to the door. Resolving not to compound the risk by actually getting lost, he concentrates on his memories of the walk in from the front door to this room; not just the passageway, but every nuance of the route; the turns, the doors unopened, every ornament and obstruction, every door frame and change of flooring… if the lights fail, he does not want to be stumbling into a wall, or something more breakable, let alone Myra’s grandmother if she should be abroad…

Lockwood Mansion Entrance - Kyle, Myra, Wren
The presence of the moths now took a more sinister implication than simply wild insects in the dark being pulled towards light. Were they trying to enter the house? And now that Myra had lured them back out, was the unseen perpetrator attempting something else, this time aimed at the inside of the mansion, by causing its front hallway lights to flicker?

The three of them still had no idea what or who was causing this, and why, apart from Wren's broader sense of magical energy somewhere in the proximity of the treeline where the driveway joins the main road.

Unsure what is going on Kyle suggests
Hey Myra, maybe you can get the house defenses to respond if you give it some guidance. It doesn't seem to like outside forces. At least it rejects me. If you can direct it then it may be able to be more effective in tracking and blocking outside forces?

In the meantime he decides to test his own abilities a bit and focusing on the moths he taps his phone and let's his intent interact with it's systems to scan through high frequency sounds in an attempt to drive off or disorient the bugs.

Houses defences? What are you talking about
Myra knows nothing about any defences on the house.

Somewhere inside Lockwood Manor - Joe
The dimming lights affected the main hallway the most, but parts of the house did also flicker in protest against some unknown perpetrator. Joe caught himself too absorbed in his research, and resolved to find his way to the others. The overall layout of the rooms wasn't too labyrinthine, he knew at least that he had to go down one floor, even if the irregular light threw him off a little. He used his inner sight to get his bearings, and found he saw more clearly and more sensibly as his proceed from the library towards what he thought was a famiilar direction. This led him to open a door to his right ...

... and as he entered, he felt a great sense of deja vu, as if he had been in this room before, even through he clearly hadn't. He paused, wondering whether to back out, but the sense grew stronger. He had been here before! No wait, someone he knew had been here before ... his ... mother?

Wren had quickly slipped into the Lockwood Manor - just in time for the door to be shut behind her by Myra.

She was still a bit rattled from the dispute with her dad, but now she was shrugging it off. She went to the next window that gave her view on the treeline and concentrated, fading out the nearby voices to make room to hear the more distant ones.

Lockwood Manor Entrance - Kyle, Myra, Wren
Kyle's efforts complemented Myra's. Whereas Myra's manipulation of light was directed at drawing the moths out, Kyle's was intended to drive them away. His phone's speaker wasn't built for this, but the slightly larger one installed in Glitch enabled his drone to fly in a sweeping manner at the level where the moths were in the hallway while emitting an ultrasonic frequency. This hastened their departure, so that Wren could quickly duck into the house such that Myra could close the door before more of them could enter. It wouldn't do to have any remaining insects trapped inside if the intention behind them was suspect.

The porch light flickered out, leaving the front door as equally dark as the rest of the driveway. The hallway light inside continued to dim, and while Myra pushed the door shut, she found she could not easily close it; something pushed back, like the wind, but very specifically focussed on the door. The bushes nearby weren't affected; their leaves barely rustled much. But Myra could feel the gust blowing into the gap as she pushed.

Wren quickly went to the nearest window to see if she could sense better who was out there; it was totally accurate by now to conclude that there was someone actively interfering with them. The person did not show their presence, and it could be inferred that their actions were not (or not yet) immediately applied to causing them direct physical harm. Nonetheless the attacks were significantly intrusive. Someone was 'invading' the house.

Myra hadn't had time to think about the strange observation that Kyle made, about the house's defences. As far as she thought, even though she had always felt this house was strange and special, that that was the way things were. But tonight she discovered a library of hidden ideas, and now she was about to further discover the house itself had ways of taking care of its occupants. It took Kyle to discover it first, and somewhere upstairs Joe was learning something else as well. It did cost Kyle something though, something to do with the after effects of magic. This was something he would learn more about soon enough.

Seeing as Myra seemed unfamiliar with the house, likely because she belonged to it so it never pushed back on her actions, Kyle decided to try and bolster it. Moving over to a wall socket he extended his senses into and along the wiring, spreading out to encompass the houses power system. Careful not to push against the houses magic he instead used the wires as conduits to guide and regulate power, as they are designed to do, while he directed his energies to isolating and reducing external influence, like a filter circuit blocking unwanted frequencies and preventing power spikes.