The smell of damp wood and ancient dust pressed against Damon's face as Savannah's words hung, raw and jagged, in the stale air.
"They already started."
Marcus looked like he might collapse right there. Jasmine still had her knife gripped tightly, knuckles whitening, but her hand wavered slightly now, trembling.
Damon's flashlight beam jittered across the ruined library walls, making broken shelves and fallen books loom like ghostly monuments.
Savannah stepped closer, dragging her right foot slightly, her hoodie torn at the shoulder and soaked through with something dark.
"How are you alive?" Damon's voice cracked with something that wasn't fear anymore. It was rage. Pure and simple.
Savannah's mouth pulled into something that might have been a smile once — before it was twisted by everything she'd endured.
"They didn't finish the job," she rasped. "I ran."
Marcus swallowed hard. "You faked your death?"
Savannah laughed, a low, broken sound that echoed off the crumbling walls. "No. I died. Just... not all the way."
The room fell into a heavy silence. Outside, the wind battered against the shattered windows like desperate fists.
---
She dropped into a chair that groaned under her weight and slung a battered backpack onto the dusty table.
The zippers were almost torn off. She wrestled it open and dumped its contents in a chaotic heap — papers, photos, flash drives, even a blood-stained notebook.
Evidence.
Jasmine finally lowered her knife, setting it carefully on the edge of the table. Her fingers hovered over the mess like she was scared it might bite.
Savannah lit a cigarette with a shaking hand. The flame of the lighter flickered wildly, as if afraid too.
She didn't inhale the smoke — just let it burn between her fingers like a fuse.
"You don't get it yet," she said, voice rough. "You think you're random? That all your bad luck, all the shit you've survived, was just... life being cruel?"
She shook her head, bitter.
"It was by design."
Damon's throat closed around the words he wanted to scream. Jasmine looked like she wanted to break something.
Savannah picked up a photo and shoved it across the table.
A hospital bed.
A boy — no older than fifteen — tubes shoved into his arms, his face pale as wax. His eyes were open, frozen in horror.
Marcus gagged.
"They're testing new triggers," Savannah said flatly. "Chemicals. Isolation. Fear. Pushing you to your limits, seeing who snaps... and who survives."
Jasmine's face was stone. "And if you survive?"
Savannah's cigarette trembled between her fingers.
"Then you're ready."
---
Damon felt the earth tilt under his feet.
Every beating he took at school. Every time the teachers turned a blind eye. Every whispered rumor that chased him through the halls.
It wasn't bad luck.
It was a program.
His hands clenched so tightly that blood welled from the half-moons his nails carved into his palms.
Jasmine picked up a worn map from the pile. Red circles were drawn across the town, bleeding into each other.
"These are the testing zones," Savannah said. "Neighborhoods where the experiments are heavier. Places they pump chemicals into the water. Play frequencies only some of us can hear. Set up accidents."
Marcus traced a trembling finger along one circle.
"My street."
Savannah just nodded, smoke curling from her cigarette in thin, accusing ribbons.
"Midnight High was ground zero," she said. "But it's not just here. This town's just the first successful one."
Marcus sat down hard on the floor, head in his hands. "We're rats in a maze," he mumbled.
"No," Savannah said sharply. "We're the weapons."
Damon's heart hammered so loud he could barely hear.
---
He remembered the boy down the street — the one who used to smile at him even when no one else would — suddenly dead from "heart failure" at seventeen.
He remembered his mother, losing her mind piece by piece.
He remembered every time he cried himself sick, wondering why nothing good ever lasted.
Now he knew.
They had sculpted his pain.
Crafted it like an artist sculpts a masterpiece — only this masterpiece bled.
Savannah let the cigarette burn down to the filter and crushed it against the table.
"They'll come for me again," she said. "And now they'll come for you too."
Marcus looked up, stricken. "Can we just... run?"
Savannah shook her head slowly. "You can't outrun something inside you."
---
For a moment, none of them spoke.
The library creaked and sighed around them, the building's old bones groaning under the weight of too many secrets.
Savannah's eyes found Damon's.
There was no pity there.
Only truth.
"You survive," she said. "That's the first rule. No matter what they throw at you — survive."
"And second?" Damon's voice was a blade.
Savannah smiled grimly.
"You find their nests. You burn them down."
---
It wasn't a metaphor.
The next morning, the fire alarms screamed through Midnight High.
Smoke billowed out of the ancient library wing — thick, choking black clouds that stained the cold morning sky.
Students poured into the parking lot, coughing, shouting, looking back with wide, terrified eyes.
Teachers sprinted back and forth uselessly, yelling orders no one heard.
Fire trucks wailed in the distance.
But Damon stood far beyond the crowd, on the crest of a grassy hill that overlooked the chaos, the others flanking him.
Jasmine sat in the grass, arms wrapped around her knees, watching the school burn with quiet satisfaction.
Marcus clutched a stolen file to his chest like a shield.
Savannah stood apart, smoke curling in the air around her, almost like she commanded it.
Damon didn't feel fear anymore.
He felt clarity.
---
The fire was a message.
A war cry.
We know.
We're not your victims anymore.
---
As the fire consumed the library, Damon felt a strange, painful kind of joy bloom in his chest.
Not happiness — not really.
It was something rawer. Angrier.
Freedom tasted like smoke and ashes and bitter resolve.
---
The others gathered around him as the sun dipped lower, bleeding orange across the hills.
"What now?" Marcus asked hoarsely.
Jasmine's gaze was steady. "We find the others. The ones like us."
Savannah nodded, fishing another cigarette from her pocket.
Damon looked down at the burning building. The memories it held — both good and twisted — curling into nothingness.
"We find them," he said. "We wake them up."
"And then?" Jasmine asked.
Damon's jaw tightened.
"And then we destroy everything they built."
---
Night settled like a bruise across the sky.
The fire department fought the blaze, but it didn't matter.
The damage was done.
Damon stared into the dark horizon, feeling a hollow ache spread through his chest.
He wasn't the boy he had been a week ago.
He wasn't anything close.
The boy who dreamed of being normal was gone — burned away with the lies and the shame and the silence.
All that was left was something stronger. Harder.
The kind of thing nightmares are afraid of.
---
They walked away from the hilltop together, their shadows stretching long and thin under the stars.
Behind them, Midnight High burned.
Ahead of them, the world waited — dark and wide and full of enemies they hadn't even met yet.
Damon didn't look back.
He didn't have to.
He would carry the fire with him now.
Always.
---