28

He played the baby wing in the solarium of the lake house. He had just finished Rachmaninov’s Prelude in G minor op. 23 no. 5. A short, but spectacularly complicated composition. He performed it in the most articulated, measured manner. A layman would call it slow. Any classically trained person would know it’s not all about speed. Emotions carry their own weight on the piano.

He followed it up with Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2. to practice his magical fingering. Those Mages weren’t the only ones capable of channelling the Web for extraordinary achievements. He needed limb, flexible fingers to flawlessly execute the plans he had laid out for the rest of the evening.

When he was done he kept his composed and tranquil state of mind. He closed the piano and calmly wandered outside in his sweatpants and t-shirt.

He walked over to the edge of the jetty and tipped his lifeless toes into the freezing water. He had carried the laptop he had recently purchased with him. It had been waiting for him on the dinner table, fully charged.

A lot of time and effort had gone into this. He didn’t consider it a finished product, but it would have to suffice. Those Pupils had thrown sand in his gears sooner than anticipated. Even if his algorithm wasn’t perfect and his plan didn’t work out exactly the way he intended the revenge would still be worth it.

Tonight he would avenge Harold.

It made him feel better after what they had done to his anchor. He was leaking spirit and he would need life support soon. For now, division and misery would do the trick.

The Kid was a big fan of mental disturbance and destruction. Actually, he was a great advocate of total ruination in general, but he had learned that all sorts of destruction started with mental demolition, so that was the initial path he had always chosen.

Tonight he would be performing some next level deviousness, the inception of something completely new. Well, not entirely, he had already tested it on one unfortunate individual. It was the group aspect of what he was about to pull that made it so ambitious.

Samuel had taken place on the jetty in front of the lake house of the Merryfield family. If he couldn’t spread his influence through the Web without getting noticed by those self-righteous do-gooders he figured he could just hack it.

He might not have the force of a Mage by his side, but modern technology wouldn’t fail him. It was deceivingly simple actually. These under-evolved idiots believed in synchronicity. Well, it just so happened to be that synchronicity possessed an eerie resemblance to modern day computer algorithms.

He had taught himself how to make things click, how to make sure events fell into place the way he wanted them to.

Messing with other people’s autonomy had always been his core business and now he had the tools to do so, even after his awakening. He had adapted to this world faster than a chameleon could have done to a branch in the rainforest.

His fingers danced over the keyboard, his mind merged with the code.

His face was illuminated by the screen of the laptop that rested on his legs. From afar it must have looked like a floating, pale head. It would have been a spooky sight, if there would have been someone present to witness it.

Night was falling and darkness spread like wildfire in the remote community. He was taking it upon himself to exploit some unspoiled teenagers and homeless young adults for his parasitic existence.

Sweet Lake’s future got introduced to the cold, hollow draught of the Kid’s control. His ego hovered over town like an ominous blanket. Mist came rolling over the mountains as the immortal plague spun a web of lies for their subconscious to act upon.

He was in full control of these plebeians now. This was how it was supposed to be. These poorly functioning half-wits were a means to an end, nothing more. The Pupils had been running amok for too long. They should be under his command. Now he taught them what happens when they resist him.

He had no remorse doing so. He was old, he had suffered and he deserved this. It was his right to take away the future of the Web and its consciousness for his own gains.

When he was done he placed the laptop next to him on the wooden planking of the jetty and eagerly awaited the results.

They were glorious.

Nobody should have to feel this way, yet here she was. Empty and alone, experiencing the hollowness of life, while fighting the losing battle that was the Kid. All energy had left her body, flowing from her core to her arms and fingertips into the rocks on the shore, sucked out of her by the cursed water that was sloshing mere inches before her eyes.

Marith felt depleted of all the progress she had made since her Rebirth. She was leaking disappointment and resentment. She laid outside on the unforgiving shoreline, her mind frozen in agony. The strength to move had escaped her.

Her existence still vibrated in the Web, though weakly.

Could someone die from misery? Is there a level of misery that is actually lethal? Can a situation be so hopeless, so depressing that you just stop existing as a human being? Marith guessed not, otherwise a lot of people would have evaporated by now.

She wasn’t the only one. She knew that, but that fact somehow failed to make her feel better.

She had returned to the familiar cascades of miserable feelings, that hadn’t plagued her in a while. Bitter, unsettled and numb from carrying the weight of the world. The strangest thing was that it wasn’t entirely her hell this time. She had been drinking other people’s angst as well.

The previous night started to come back to Marith in heaps and images. In the void of a nightmare she had staggered to the lake, completely aware of what was happening, but unable to help herself. She had felt him in her head. It had been deeply unsettling and strangely familiar to passively undergo what felt like a preordained fate.

Until she had reached the lake, which is where the internal monologue, the struggle had taken place. She had managed to resist the Kid. At least a part of her should be proud of that, but she wasn’t capable of positive emotions that morning.

Her face and hands felt numb, as if they were moulded from clay. She slowly became awfully aware of the rocks she had spent the night on. They prodded her joints, hurt her skin and moistened her clothes.

Her eyes met with the hollow, empty ones of a familiar face, floating, only a few yards away from where she had found herself.

She managed to move at that sight. She perked herself up, painfully and laboriously, and looked down at her numb body. Her legs lay sprawled underneath her. Her feet were bare. To her own shock she was only wearing a pyjama.

She couldn’t dwell on those findings. She had to get up. She had to pull Dorian out of the water.

She glanced along the shoreline. There wasn’t much to see, except mist and greyness that was turning into a slate blue, now that dawn was breaking. She could make out some bodies, both on land and washed up, still sloshing in the black water, but as far as she could hear or see there weren’t any medics or other emergency services present.

An eerie stillness hung over her surroundings. She tried to deploy the strings in her mind to learn more about what had happened, but they remained shell-shocked in their envelope.

With all her might she managed to get up and stumble to the waterline. The rocks and pebbles felt like blocks of Lego under the soles of her feet. She tried not to cry, but failed miserably at that attempt.

Her tears froze on her cheeks as she entered the black sea and waded towards the music teacher with zombie-like movements.

The water reached to her knees when she reached his torso. She clenched his left arm. It was soaked, frozen… and lifeless.

No, no, no.

She smothered a scream and tugged her recital partner with her, dragging him, until they were on dry land again.

Marith kneeled next to him, ignoring the pain as the rocks crunched against her kneecaps. She took both his wrists between her cold, wet fingertips.

She searched for a connection, a heartbeat to stabilize, a blood flow to control, but she couldn’t do for him what she had done for Jonathan… or the deer.

It was too late. His soul was long gone.

She stroked his golden hair, sticking to his forehead, away from his face and closed his eyes. Something she had never done before. It felt like the right thing to do, even if she didn’t want to do it.

Her life seemed full of such instances lately.

Marith was not aware of the scantily clad, impossibly tall, androgynous woman who stood behind her, inspecting the helpless Mage. A slimy film covered the blueish, frozen skin of her almost naked body. Her wet, dark hair clung to her back and shoulders.

After making several assessments about her environment and the kneeling woman she trotted towards the sea of trees through an ocean of mist with the kind of grace only creatures from outer space and Greek mythology possessed.

Disillusioned and lost two other beautiful, wet and impossibly tall women walked out of the water on opposite shores.

The three pale nightmares of nature slithered into the forests of the tri-lake area to congregate. They loomed there until they had decided upon their revenge.

Dorian had been wearing a red and white boxer short and a white shirt without sleeves. His corpse looked very undignified, half-naked on the shore. Marith had nothing to cover him up. She would have to wait for the people with the appropriate covers to arrive.

Sirens wailed and engines roared in the distance. She could hear them arrive over the road around Sweet Lake. The emergency services appeared to have been alerted.

Within half an hour Marith sat trembling on a tree trunk - since all the stretchers and field beds were taken - while various rescue teams separated the drifting bodies from the dark clutches of the water. It was treacherously calm given the fact that half the town had drowned in it.

The encroaching forest stood balefully behind her, like a massive green wall, that hadn’t been able to stop the young inhabitants of Sweet Lake to wander into the lake. Marith shivered at the silent mist around her and the evil that last night had carried.

Shame overpowered her and she began to sob. She had been holed up in her father’s apartment in the Netherlands for years, too ashamed to talk about her mental problems with anyone, too tired to meet new people and having to explain herself again. She carried the shame of her lack of a degree, shame for her lack of a career and a lack of a steady job or income arising from that.

She had missed important milestones in life, shielding herself from the fast and high performing outside world, and was now unable to perform basic tasks without anxiety. Things had been better after her Rebirth and her improvements had made leaps after being paired up with Nate, but watching other members of her generation being dragged out of that lake shame came crushing in on her again, like tidal waves against a cliff. She hadn’t been able to rescue anyone the previous night and had failed to be of any help. She had barely been able to prevent herself from wandering into the water.

The blood had returned to the limbs of Juliette, Amber and Vanessa and they joined her. The three women sat quietly trembling on the tree trunk.

The police and local fire department had handed out Mylar blankets, the same ones Lieke had been under when an equal fate had befallen her. The girls looked like contemporary art statues as they were glistening, golden rocks amongst the grey pebbles on the shoreline. Their hands and feet were as cold and death as the lake.

Juliette, Amber and Vanessa had been under the same spell. The same mind-control had reached them and taken over the night before. Lisa had been out of town, just like Nate, to pick up more clear signals from the stream of the Web. Luckily William had been with her.

The woods behind them seemed deserted. Since the Birdman was gone life had returned to that part of nature, but the returned birds did not singing to welcome the day that morning.

Samuel had just had the best sleep in his life and that included his time spend in the tomb under the lake. His plan had an impact so successful it reached even beyond his wildest dreams.

Now he stood behind the glass fronts of the red lake house with a cup of steaming coffee. He beheld the workings of his code, of the virus he had created to influence the younglings of the area, including those dreadful Pupils. He hoped they would finally rub some of their brain cells together and realize they were no match for his wretchedness and the tribulations he imparted.

He was merry about the results, almost smug. The concentration of evil that this misery carried made the hairs on his arms and in his neck stand up. He was thrilled and energized.

He saw every horrendous detail of it – the corpses, the not-quite-death women, the defeat, the failure to comprehend, the emergency services in action – even through the mist. It was his mist, after all. He had created that too. It had been part of the program he had written. He controlled it and he could see everything unfolding inside it, as if he was a medical specialist looking at x-ray pictures.

A strange idea washed over him, between the sips he took from his coffee. He stepped closer to the glass sliding doors and stuck his tongue out. The lake house was an old house. Overnight the insides turned dank and humid. A modest layer of condense streamed down the glass. He licked some of it off, imagining they were the female tears that flowed so abundantly that morning.

Yes, that was the stuff.

The Kid was now ready to return to Facebook and write posts about the benefits of homeopathy, the dangers of vaccinations and how stay-at-home-mothers and housewives are the backbone of society, the unsung heroes of current times and indispensable martyrs.

Dorian’s body had been taken by the police, the fire department or maybe by ambulance personnel. Marith couldn’t recall. The pebbled beach was crowded with the flashy lights and neon colours of every emergency service in the area now, casting strange shapes and unnatural colours in the mist.

Although most victims appeared to have deceased close to the shore and due to asphyxiation several boats with divers and rescue teams were deployed. Each boat was equipped with a sonar towfish to detect possible corpses on the bottom of the lake.

A lot of people from the village had left their houses as well. To see what had happened at the lake or to look for their missing children.

Marith felt disconnected to it all.

A police uniform around a familiar silhouette appeared from the mist. She focused on that, until he reached them. Her mind had difficulty doing just that.

Brad immediately informed them he couldn’t stay long, since he was in uniform. He had been on duty that night and had woken up on the shoreline, like every other Pupil in town. Now he was expected to assist the current shift with this inexplicable chaos.

“What do we know so far… about this?” Vanessa inquired, teeth chattering, letting only one hand out from under the Mylar blanket to gesture at the lake. Her hair stuck unflatteringly to her face and she looked pale and drawn.

“It seems that the men have drowned. None of them survived,” Brad shared curtly.

Marith gasped.

“Why?”

“If only we knew.”

“And the women?”

“Most are suffering from severe hypothermia, but apart from that… they seem fine.” He shrugged and shook his head. It was incomprehensible.

“This was the Kid.”

“Seems likely,” he said, staring into the banks of mist drifting towards them over the water.

“No, I felt him… in my head... last night, but it doesn’t make sense at all.” Marith shook her head and forced some tears out of her eyes by closing them violently.

“Why not?”

“The first time I met you guys in the forest I was told that the Kid doesn’t attack humans, because he needs them later. He only targeted potential new members for the Chain to stop us from finishing it… and now he does this.”

It isn’t in his nature to kill them, but to control them.

Juliette nodded and seemed to remember something. “Do you think this has something to do with the new flow of energy he needs to stay alive in this dimension? What the Pupils from the other continents warned us about?”

“Maybe he gets energy from these deaths…” Vanessa’s voice immediately wandered off as she said it, “but why did only the men die then?”

“And only young people too.” Marith sighed.

Everybody had surmised as much, but nobody was able to put it into appropriate coherent sentences or to come up with alleviating words.

After Brad returned to aid his co-workers Kyle came by to relieve him and keep the four women company. He brought them harrowing news about his sister Charlotte. She went to the same high school as Amber, Lieke and himself, just a few years behind them, and she had been among the women that had wandered into the lake.

Of course he had been drawn to the water as well, but, just like his fellow Pupils, he had been able to resist the urge to enter it. In the throngs of teenagers and twenty- and thirty-somethings he hadn’t noticed his own sister, struggling and eventually succumbing.

He sounded just as ashamed as Marith felt. She nodded while he described how he had perceived the previous night.

Charlotte was undercooled, but on her way to a nearby hospital like the other women. She would be fine eventually, Kyle assured himself.

Sweet Lake’s hospital was filled to the brim. Therefore, the milder cases, that Charlotte had apparently been estimated to be, were brought to other clinics and hospitals outside the area.

Kyle interrupted his own story and gave the grey mistst a look that informed the women, listening on the tree trunk, that Oracle was contacting him.

He sighed when she released his mind of the connection, ending her message. “Jonathan is about to stop by,” she said with a bearing undertone.

When Jonathan arrived, within five minutes of Oracle’s notice, Marith learned that she couldn’t leave that appalling morning behind her as fast as she wanted to.

He had been running to Nate again. Once more, his visions hadn’t been confirmed by Oracle yet, but they had been powerful enough for Watchmaker to send Jonathan to him.

The Prophet had shown the Runner eerie things that were about to be set in motion in Sweet Lake. Intuitively, Nate had felt it was connected to the Kid, but all he received was water, zombielike humans and corpses. He had also seen faces, such as Gene, Nick, old friends and fellow Pupils.

Nate had seen Gene, Nick and Jonathan’s parents trying to drown themselves. He couldn’t see the Kid’s moves, but he could see the inhabitants of Sweet Lake in the ice cold water. He had known that couldn’t be interpreted as a casual swim, especially since it was wintertime.

“You weren’t able to save any more?” Kyle asked doubtfully after Jonathan was finished.

Jonathan eyed him incredulous with his mouth slightly opened. “You Prophets are a-mazing, you know that? And no, that is NOT a compliment. I am being send around like a ping pong ball. You just put your ambiguous visions and vague ideas in our hands, literally, and then you expect us to solve everything?”

“Well,” Kyle started, knowing Jonathan was mostly right. “No, but you and Nate were the only ones that knew, so…”

“Exactly!” Jonathan thundered on. “And I saved as much people as possible, together with Anton. I prevented Gene from drowning himself, then my own goddamn parents…”

Kyle’s face flinched as he heard that. He opened his mouth to apologize, but couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

“Then some medical staff, before dr. Sybling and Pavan arrived. After that I ran around the lake,” Jonathan informed, indicating his running path with frustrated hand movements, “where I tried to stop as many people as possible, which, trust me, was impossible. There was no beginning and no end to the amounts of people fighting each other, to get into the water, wanting to freeze to death. So then I called Brad to come.”

“Yeah, that was not a good move,” Vanessa interrupted him.

“I know that… now,” Jonathan told her, before continuing his epistle. “Then I ran to the Pine mansion. Where I didn’t find Marith, but…”

“W-what about Lieke and Nick?” Marith suddenly stuttered, eyes wide open now.

She had been listening breathlessly to Jonathan’s tale. Her mind had been so frozen and inept she hadn’t even wondered why they weren’t floating by on the surface of the lake.

“Lieke was fast asleep and Nick was trying to get out, so I locked him in. Then I…”

“Wait, you were in the house?” Marith frowned.

“Yeah, how else was I supposed to get the message across in the dead of night?”

“How? That house has better security than most military forts.”

“Duchess,” he started wisely, with his hands on his hips, “I am far too fast for any of those camera’s to film or for alarms to go off. I jumped onto the roof of the library and then I could easily climb onto your balcony and into your bedroom.” He winked at Marith, who listened in awe. “But you weren’t there, which was not a good sign. Then I went to look for your sister and Nick. So my hands were kinda full, if you don’t mind,” he said to Kyle in particular. “I also went past all your houses and my grandmother's place. None of you were where you were supposed to be. My grandmother was awake, but safe. At last, I returned to the lake, to help. What have you guys been doing?” He finally asked with an arrogant nod of his head.

“Surviving,” muttered Amber.

“What about the children in the clinic?” Marith asked horrified.

If Etienne had drowned himself… She didn’t want to finish that thought.

“Locked the little idiots in their rooms,” Jonathan shared proudly. “Kids are stupid.” He flashed a smug grin. “But they weren’t that inclined to get into the lake. It’s mostly the older kids.” He frowned, looking around him at the last victims that were hauled off the shore.

“Why did Gene and your parents try to go into the lake?” Vanessa wondered. “They aren’t young anymore… I mean, the people drowning on this side of the lake are mostly under forty.” She looked up at the Runner.

Jonathan shrugged. “I have no clue. Maybe it’s because they were already weakened by the Kid. Everybody in that clinic had a particular sensitivity to his presence. Maybe it was easier for him to take them down as well.” He shrugged, indicating that he was just throwing out random thoughts and ideas.

“Where are the other Runners?” Juliette asked with a dry mouth.

“Anton was running the night shift around the clinic,” Jonathan started. “I was surprised at how little hold the Kid got on him. I could easily slap it out of him. Maybe because we had both been awake when the Kid started his fuckery,” he said, staring at his shoes, thinking about why they had both been relatively sharp the previous night, before he went on. “And James was God knows where. Probably trying to get into Theresa’s pants.” He sighed. “All I know is that he wasn’t in town, otherwise he would have been drawn to the lake as well.”

“Speaking of our new friends…” Marith started. She had noticed new silhouettes wandering through the mist across an almost empty shoreline, behind Jonathan.

The last victims were either being zipped into body bags, driven to hospitals outside the area or simply send home. The flashy vehicles with their headache inducing lights had drawn back.

She attempted to deploy the chords one more time. Now that the initial shock had worn off they might just be ready to search and vibrate again. She had a warmer body and an awakened mind now.

They slid past the rocks, the pebbles and the driftwood. She kept them away from the water in that miserable lake.

“Yes,” she mumbled, with five sets of eyes on her, “it’s the new Pupils… minus Joshua, plus James.”

Marith shivered a painful ague. She was fabulously done with the cold and the snow. She couldn’t wait until her surroundings would turn fresh and green again, until musky, woody smells and the sounds of birds would wake her in the morning, being carried into her bedroom through the opened doors that led to the balcony.

Marith was uninterested about whether or not Jonathan had been right about James’s intentions and the reason why the flamboyant Runner was currently in the presence of their recent allies. The new Pupils had joined them for exactly this reason. Everybody knew the Kid would strike back. What did their Mages have to offer now that disaster had indeed found them?

“You guys looks like burrito’s,” James joked.

Nobody laughed. They did coldly stare.

“Angry burrito’s,” he corrected himself and scraped his throat.

“The Kid is metastasizing,” Vanessa started, from inside her isolating wrappings.

“I think it’s revenge. Our men for his Birdman,” Amber shared decidedly. It was one of the first things she had said that morning. Her eyes weren’t even fully opened yet.

“What now? How are we ever going to beat this monster?” Marith wondered, with a migraine starting behind her numbed facial expressions.

She had picked up a peddle from in between her bare feet. It was as cold and death as the Pupils felt. She tossed it half-heartedly towards the lake.

“We possess the necessary talents,” Theresa told them kindly. “The Well made sure of that. Otherwise, what is the point?”

“Speaking of which,” An said with a telling grin, shaking his hands mysteriously through the air, “I’ll be over at the waterfront.”

“Why?”

“Remember how we discussed our talents the first time we met?”

Marith remembered. Pedro could take away senses, all sorts of them, and re-distribute them, or at least, the first five. An was in control of the elements and could manipulate the forces of nature. How exactly that talent was currently of relevance went past her.

“Right,” Kyle, who had been filled in later, said uncertainly. “What’s he going to do? Set the lake on fire until it boils dry?”

An had already left, leaving his fellow newcomers to explain the plan that had been discussed earlier when disturbing messages from Oracle had come to Theresa and Meriyem.

“Well, good luck with that,” Juliette murmured. “Sweet Lake has not frozen over, since before I was born. It’s too deep.” She shook her head, peering in between the legs of the Pupils standing around the tree trunk.

“The lake will be frozen from the outsides to the inside. It might take a while, but won’t it be worth it?” Pedro wondered.

Marith followed Juliette’s gaze. An sat squatting at the waterfront and had stuck his hands in the icy water. He wouldn’t be done, until Marith was sharing a mattress with Nate, which would give any sunken bodies enough time to re-emerge.

Anton had found Brad outside the police station after he couldn’t make himself useful over at the clinic’s side of the lake anymore. The Australian Runner was now running his first shift.

The young police officer had been released from his duties for the day. He had worked one shift and a half and was send home. He had felt the group was still at the lake. They were even accompanied by other Pupils.

Together the Mage and the Runner had proceeded to the lake for a second time that morning. The group waited until they had reached their crescent shaped gathering around the log that laid against the treeline. The four women were still seated on the dead tree.

Brad and Anton quietly joined the group. Anton immediately stood by Alexander’s side, but they didn’t kiss or hug. The circumstances didn’t allow public displays of affection.

Only Nate, Lisa and William were missing. Fifteen Pupils solemnly and timidly scrutinized the situation and contemplated on how to proceed.

“If I am not mistaken you have deployed the Perpetual Arrow to fight the anchor,” Meriyem started. “This arrow symbolised the fact that the Kid will be here in one way or another as long as humanity exists.” She looked purposeful around the group. “Are you aware that there used to be another arrow?”

The four women shifted to the edge of the tree trunk and listened closely. The men alternated their body weight from one leg to the other, eyeing the Prophet intrigued, slightly crunching the pebbles under their feet against each other.

“This, of course, happened thousands of years ago and could all be folklore, but this is the story our Elders told us,” Meriyem went on. “As far as we know the other arrow was called Time’s Arrow and it symbolized the entropy of the Web.”

“The what of the Web?” Jonathan asked.

“Simply put, time moves from order to disorder and creates randomness. Entropy is the inevitable and steady deterioration we see all around us,” Meriyem explained patiently, before continuing. “Time’s Arrow was wielded by a Runner in China to kill the Kid’s physical body. All we know is that two Mages finished the job. Nobody is entirely sure on the workings of their talents back then. Their gifts were a reflection of their time and their struggles, but we do know that they were successful. We assume that one of them captured his soul and the other one send it off. The body was later moved to the tomb under Sweet Lake. The rest is history.”

Well, I am glad we got that cleared up, Marith grumbled internally at the nugatory disquisition.

“This means that we probably need the talents of three Mages this round,” Pedro brought in. “One to kill his physical body, one to capture his soul and one to send it off…” His voice died away as anyone realized that nobody really knew who those three Mages were going to be.

They could make some educated guesses, but they couldn’t determine how any of their talents would develop in the near future or how their battle with darkness would be unfolding.

“Why can a Runner not kill his physical body?” Jonathan inquired.

“Let’s not forget this is the First Runner we are up against and you might not want to get too close to him, let alone end up in a physical fight with the lad. It might be the last thing you do on God’s green Earth,” James stated.

“I’ve done crazier stuff lately,” Jonathan said, grinning at Marith.

She managed a little smile. It was true that she had likely saved his live, and that power gave them a great advantage, but that morning had proven to her that she couldn’t bring back anyone who had been dead for a while already. If the Kid would kill the Runner in question in one tragic blow the Chain would be broken and there would be nothing she could do.

“A Mage could do it from a safer distance,” Vanessa said, ending that particular discussion.

“What about his anchor back then?” Amber wondered, with a glassy glaze over her eyes. She was still a little out of it.

“He didn’t have one,” Kyle answered her question. “He had never been killed or banished from this dimension before.”

“Of course,” Amber answered, frowning and shaking her head, frustrated with herself.

“Wait,” she said, suddenly looking up, after brief contemplations. “Where did Time’s Arrow come from? The Perpetual Arrow comes from Armsmaker and she was alive in, like, the eighth or ninth century in Europe…”

“There have been several Armsmakers. Depending on the need new Armsmakers, Keymakers and Potionmakers occasionally rise up,” Brad informed.

“Of course,” Amber said again. “I really need to go to bed,” she groaned at last.

An arched his neck at the waterfront and nodded at Brad. He illuminated the question further. “The Asian Chain had its own Armsmaker back then. As previously stated, the Well provided them with everything that was needed.”

“Why was he caught in China the first time?” Marith wondered, momentarily struck by some kind of clarity.

“Because he had heard the Chinese had a weapon that could finish him for real,” An spoke with a smirk.

“And he thought it would be a good idea to go check it out?” Kyle asked surprised.

“Yeah, the communications between Pupils weren’t as closed as they are now, so he had picked up rumours in Europe. Unfortunately for him he didn’t have a private army like most supervillains in movies nowadays, so he had to physically ran over there himself,” Meriyem said.

“His plan counted on pretending to be a Pupil from the European Chain and to be accepted as one of their own. He probably figured that way he could get access to the arrow and destroy it. Then a Runner from the Asian Chain decided to run back to verify and that is how his lies ended,” Pedro continued.

“Why did that Runner ran to Europe to investigate his background?” Juliette asked.

“Well,” Pedro said, shrugging, with his hands in his pockets, “he didn’t exactly fit in, so they got suspicious, I guess.”

“How do you guys know all this?” Juliette wondered.

“The Elders found as such in the parchment rolls and I read about it in my ancestors diary,” Pedro informed curtly, as not to distress Marith again about the lies she had been fed growing up.

“If that’s the strategic genius we are up against I feel instantly relieved,” Jonathan said, still thinking about the actions of the Kid.

“Don’t forget he did outsmart us just this morning,” Vanessa reminded him with a warning undertone.

Everybody was quiet for a few moments and so were their surroundings. They all glanced at An sitting hunched in front of the lake, occasionally mumbling profanities at the cold.

“So, paraphrasing,” Juliette started, shedding off her Mylar blanket, “we need to find a way to separate the Kid’s mind from his body, to force the soul out of his physical being and then prevent it from going to the Otherside and returning to the Well, so that we don’t destroy ourselves?” She asked for confirmation.

Of all the women she had been least affected by the happenings of that morning, just like her male Runners. Her mind had cleared and was now running at its normal capacity. She wasn’t cold anymore and her legs were starting to get restless. She had been sitting still for too long.

“Exactly.”

“It doesn’t have to be perfect, but we will have to get it right,” An said, over his shoulder. “It is our plight to keep the First Runner out of our section of the Web.”

“It’s going to be an exorcism,” Meriyem shared ominously.

“Why didn’t our Elders tell us any of this?” Amber squeaked.

“Probably because it wasn’t necessary information yet,” Jonathan defended Lucille.

“Or,” Marith swallowed, “they genuinely didn’t know. Think about it. My grand-father… ancestor, whatever, died before he could explain anything to me and yours left ambiguous diaries.” She gestured at Pedro. “ Lucille and Pavan didn’t even live in the area back then and they may have been groping around in the dark ever since they returned. It’s likely that they didn’t communicate, share every detail, like we do now.”

“Also,” Meriyem started, “every Chain has different talents. There is no way for them to know if it will go down the same way. Not even for Cecile or Sybil. His soul belongs in the Empty, his body in the tomb. So much is clear, but it is up to us how we get him there this time,” she finished.

A wave of nods and agreement washed over the group. It is our job to figure it out, they decided.

The group peered glumly into the mist that still lingered over the body of water. Maybe the mist was for the best. This way nobody would notice how the lake was strangely and suddenly being frozen into a harsh, unforgiving mirror.

Marith looked at Vanessa. Vanessa looked at Marith. The things Vanessa had recently seen and done in the past slowly started to make sense. They now knew the what. The how was going to be another issue. They couldn’t practice this on a human being. That would encompass murder. The deal with the deer had been on the line. For Marith it had been over the line. That was as far as they could go.

The searchlights of the boats still shone around the water, dashing through the mists from time to time, searching for the victims that had drowned and disappeared.

They left An to his task of freezing the entire lake, so that nothing even remotely similar to that morning could be repeated anytime soon, and pottered away from the shore.

An had estimated the freezing process could take him over three days if they wanted thick ice, which they wanted, so there would be enough time for any of the sunken bodies that the boats wouldn’t locate to come up to the surface.

James and Theresa volunteered to stay behind with him. They claimed it was for safety reasons. Anton and Alexander would run to the nearest supermarket, that was just about to open, to provide the ‘lake crew’ with breakfast.

“How can we possibly hide this?” Marith wondered exhausted when they wandered away from the tree trunk. “People will surely start to ask questions now…”

“We have two new triangles. They can dissolve Mountain Dew in the local water purification system,” Brad suggested.

“How will they get in?”

“With a school trip. They do tours there,” Kyle informed. He had personally been on one, last spring, together with Amber.

“No, that is what Keymaker is for,” Vanessa shared fatigued.

“Slowly everybody will stop talking about what they have seen or what they thought they have witnessed,” Juliette said.

“Well, get the Mountain Dew,” Kyle told Brad conspirationally.

“You really like saying that. Don’t you?” Brad grinned, with some effort.

Kyle smiled. Everybody was, very inertly, starting to feel slightly better. The Kid had brought a blow to their world, their home, but their system worked like a well-oiled machine. If everyone played their part, things could still work out.

“How well does the Dew even work?” Marith inquired, somewhat sceptic. “I’ve found its effects on Nick have been limited.”

“The Dew works fine. Nick has gathered too much information apart from the Dew. In his case it is understandable that he knows more than most people,” Vanessa said.

The new members of the Chain sauntered quietly along. Jonathan walked beside them on top of another fallen tree.

“Potionmaker’s drinks are even served in local bars to make people forget peculiar things they’ve seen or heard in or around Sweet Lake. That is why the Drunken Den is so popular,” Juliette shared ominously. “You can literally forget your misery there.”

“What if they leave town or don’t finish the drink?” Amber, who wasn’t allowed into bars yet, wondered.

“Well, I admit it isn’t fool proof, but it has worked decently so far.”

Shortly after returning to the mansion Marith found Nick locked in the garage, confused and alone. He didn’t ask too many questions. He knew it was all related to what Marith and Nate and Vanessa and Brad were doing. On top of which he was slightly ashamed of his earlier behaviour towards the college kid that was running his parent’s convenience store in town. Nick also felt, deep down inside, all that was happening around him was somehow related to the massive poverty issues in the area, even though he still mostly blamed himself for that.

Lieke had remained fast asleep in her bedroom, decorated in green, on the first floor of the mansion. This was an indication to Marith. Lieke had already been through this and the Kid hadn’t called her back. Apparently, this was an occurrence that only needed to happen once to each young adult in the area.

A defeated silence washed over the area, that would last for weeks, despite any Mountain Dew. The Kid’s influence was spreading, deeper into the hearts and minds of the locals and farther into the periphery of the tri-lake area. The hovering clouds above their clockworks had become paler and even more tardy. Everything had become flammable. They were just waiting for a spark.