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“Call Matrix,” Ellie said through her earpiece. “Calling Matrix,” it said back to her and then Matrix’s voice came in.

“What’s wrong?”

“They know we’re here,” Ellie said, cursing herself.

“How!?” he barked.

“I know the waiter,” she said, her teeth bared.

“What? What do you mean you know him?”

Ellie flinched once Matrix started raising his voice. “I tried to eat him!” Ellie clarified, hanging up before he could say anything else.

“Ellie what the hell are you talking about!” Beta said once she was off the phone.

“We’ve got to move fast, he could’ve already told people by now.”

“Fine, but my God, can you tell me why you ate the guy?” Beta said, rushing after her as she went.

Ellie looked at him, overshadowing him with her height. “I didn’t eat him, I tried to. How do you think I was acting once I escaped the Syncs? Cheerful, full of light? I killed everyone Beta, or I tried to anyway. That was just one I didn’t get around to finishing.” She took a step back and pushed Beta forward, ushering him to cross the street with her as they rushed to find safety. They finally reached the hotel and brushed past the service desk and to the elevators. In the elevator, Beta spoke again. “But you don’t even look like you, not in that form. How would he know?”

“Because he can smell me, and I can smell him,” Ellie explained. The doors dinged and they rushed down their room’s hallway.

Once they got to their 640-numbered, maroon-colored door, she quickly took out the key card and opened the door. Ellie collapsed on her bed, taking deep breaths.

“Don’t breathe so hard, it’s embarrassing,” El had said before ripping the Sync apart.

Memories of that day haunted her to the point where opening her eyes and seeing Matrix was actually comforting.

“Do you need an inhaler or…?” Matrix said from the other bed, looking up from his computer.

Ellie glared at him and wiped the sweat from her forehead. “There are a bunch of Syncs out there and now they know where we are, do you really think sarcasm is a good idea right now?”

“Relax, we’ll find a way out of it, that’s not really the issue,” Beta said, standing in the middle of the room. “We’re definitely not going to that club, they’ll find us.”

“Whoa whoa whoa, what? So what we’re just gonna run away?” Matrix argued.

“They overpower us, so yes, we’re running,” Beta confirmed. “They probably only dragged us here to kill us anyway,” he added.

Matrix took the laptop off his lap and stood up. “I am not running,” he said, standing his ground. “We haven’t run so far, why should we now?”

Beta and Ellie gave him a defensive look.

Hershey continued to type on his laptop until he looked up. He did a double take and looked around at the three boys. His mouth dropped a bit and suddenly not nearly enough air was reaching his lungs. “G-guys?” he uttered.

“We can’t fight them! Not without an army!” Beta yelled back at Matrix.

“Guys.” Hershey’s voice cracked this time, and he started hyperventilating.

“No way! How long is that gonna take you think? To get a proper army of people who can kill these things? Years? Decades?! I’m not waiting Beta, not anymore!” the Stak argued back.

“Guys,” Hershey whispered, his eyes filling with liquid.

“Shut up!” Ellie screamed; the two boys stopped. “Hershey, what’s wrong?” she said, her voice like steel.

Hershey couldn’t even speak anymore, he could barely breath. He was the definition of complete and utter shock. “I-I…I see…” He couldn’t finish. He couldn’t even sit straight. Hershey shot up, knocking the laptop over and onto the floor.

They were all concerned now. Visions and memories sped through Hershey’s brain like a bullet train. Past memories, names, numbers, anything that had ever happened until the present time pierced his head like a terrorist’s bullet, not to mention it felt like one too. But that was the thing.

They weren’t his memories.

They were the ones of the people before him. It was overwhelming, all of them intertwining together like a tree being suffocated by vines.

They were the vines.

He was the tree.

It was worse than overwhelming, it was physically unbearable.

Hershey fell with a thud, his eyes beginning to bleed as the images were too harsh for him to see anymore.

“Oh my God,” Matrix stated as they all ran to him. “He’s still conscious. Someone go get him some ice,” Beta demanded.

“I’ll get it,” Ellie offered, speed walking over to the ice bucket then running out of the room and searching the halls for the ice machine.

Hershey groaned, his eyes slowly opening again. Matrix got up and went to the bathroom. He came back out with a damp towel and used them to wipe the blood from under Hershey’s eyelids.

“Hershey, are you okay?” Beta asked.

Hershey just groaned again, sitting up. Matrix continued to wipe his face. “What happened to you?” Matrix asked.

Hershey took a deep breath and started to explain. “I could see…everything. Past memories, emotions, events, anything that ever happened up to the fabric of a second. I don’t understand why…why did I see such…terrible things?” Hershey took a sharp breath in and Matrix willed him to calm back down.

“Maybe you just had a panic attack thinking about your past,” Beta suggested. “It happens.”

Hershey shook his head. “No…not me.”

“What do you mean?” his silver-eyes friend questioned, throwing the wet and bloody towel on the floor.

Hershey turned to him. “They weren’t my memories…” Hershey rubbed his sore eyes. “They were yours.”

Ellie searched the place top to bottom but couldn’t find an ice machine. Finally, she reached the bottom floor. She walked up to the front desk in the lobby and looked the woman in the eye. “I need ice.”

“And I need a college degree, but I guess we both won’t be getting what we want.” The woman smiled with sarcasm and went back to typing on the computer.

Ellie grabbed the top of the computer and tore it from its cords, forcing it to the ground. The woman gasped and jumped back, looking back at the angry customer. “Are you crazy?!” she screamed.

Ellie slammed the bucket on the counter, her eyes menacing. “Ice…now.” The lady nodded, fear in her expression as she shuffled into the back.

That’s when Ellie heard it: the screaming. She turned around, trying to sniff out the source. Then, flames appeared. She wasn’t used to seeing the searing light not burning her own body to a crisp.

Approaching from the staff room was a man on fire. He was flailing, trying to get the flames off but only making it worse. He screamed until he was hoarse. The half-burned body rolled on the floor which only set fire to it. Everyone in the lobby screamed and ran out. Finally, the man’s screams stopped and he lied still, his body slowly turning to ash. The fire was slowly inching towards a gallon of gasoline just sitting in the middle of the floor. It was in that moment that Ellie remembered the gasoline she had placed in the bathroom earlier.

“Just in case.”

She had walked with those gallons from the gas station across the street all the way to the hotel…in public, and alone.

Ellie’s eyes went wide and her head whipped toward the stairs, knowing who had set fire to that man. “Oh God.” The bucket clanked against the ugly patterned carpet as she ran toward the stairs.

“What do you mean they were mine?” Matrix asked Hershey.

Hershey’s heart rate picked up again. “Your past…your memories. I saw the car crash, I felt the agony you were in, I felt the anger after you emerged on Plato…the way you feel about us, especially how you feel about El. I saw, felt, and lived…everything.” Hershey turned to Beta. “Yours too. I saw how you ran away, how good it felt to get away from everything…and then I heard the screaming, when you were torn to bits, the anger and regret when you went to Plato…the growing confidence you have in us.” Hershey took a deep breath and let it out with a shudder. “…the hate you feel for El.”

“How?” Beta said, wanting to change the topic.

“I have no idea…I just looked at you and it came.” Hershey shrugged.

Beta looked up at Matrix, who looked on the verge of breaking down. “New power?” he suggested. Matrix didn’t even respond with words. He just nodded.

That’s when the commotion came. Only Beta stood up, the frantic shouts and blaring alarm bells interrupting all of their thoughts. He ran to the door and peered out. People were running from their rooms, down the stairs, and out of the emergency exits. Fire, Fire, Fire was chanted by the speaker systems installed in the hotel. Please exit immediately using the emergency exits, do not take the elevator followed. Then the ground began to rumble and shake. Outside the window they could see the world move.

“What’s happening?” Beta asked the others, even though he knew they were just as confused as he was. That’s when Ellie emerged from the staircase, fighting off the bodies pushing her backward.

“Run!” Ellie tried to say, but Beta couldn’t hear her over the screaming of the crowd, the aching building, and the alarm talking. When fire emerged from the stairs and the people still getting out were caught in it and burned alive, Beta started to understand.

That’s when Ellie began to change. Her body emerged in flames and for a minute Beta wasn’t sure where Ellie started and the fire ended. The Perna released his breath once he saw the El they knew all too well to appear running. His wings emerged, growing taller as he tried to avoid the violent blaze the stairs were giving off.

Matrix, finally too confused by Beta’s silence and the rest of the world’s uproar, left Hershey and went to the door. He looked over Beta’s shoulder to see what was happening. Once he saw El, his eyes lit up.

“Oh God…oh God oh God oh God,” Hershey whispered to himself, sitting cross legged in the room and holding his head.

El ran as fast as he could but the hallway was longer than any other hotel hallway he’d ever been in, or at least it seemed that way given the situation. Caught up in his own thoughts, part of the ground became weak with the flames under them and as he stepped on it his feet creaked and then fell through. The level beneath them was burning alive, and his feet were about to suffer.

That was when Matrix couldn’t take it. He pushed past Beta and ran to El, hoping he could help him in time. “No! Matrix!” Beta cried out, but it was too late.

El got up quickly, not needing Matrix’s assistance. In fact, when he saw him running toward him in the hallway, he sped up. Matrix stopped, backing up to the door’s frame where Beta stood as well. Matrix had common sense, he had all the common sense in the world. El reached the door, and as he did he could smell the fire growing stronger. The explosion occurred right when he was inside, shoving Matrix and Beta back into the room as the hallway lit up with flames.

The door and a lot of the wall were destroyed, but luckily, they were not. El went over to Hershey, helping him to his feet as he was huddled away from the explosion. That’s when they all remembered the four gallons of gasoline in the bathroom. But they weren’t there anymore.

There was just a small bomb with a timer counting down,

And it was right behind the doorframe.

Hershey ran to the window first, then Beta followed, then Matrix, and then El. El was pushing them all forward as the fire crawled toward them, like burning them alive was a pleasure.

Remaining visions of the memories skittered through Hershey’s brain and fear ran through him as he approached the small window. His foot hitched and resisted his brain, but it was useless.

Beta ran into him and forced him through the glass. They all shielded their faces as they crashed through the window in a heap of bodies.

As Hershey and Beta were free falling, the fire reached the bomb, causing a chain reaction, blasting Matrix and El a few feet higher and farther than the other two.

They were on the 6th floor.

They stayed in mid-air for a few seconds, gravity forgetting its job, before plunging back down to Earth. Going up was pretty awful, but going down was worse.

Except, not everyone went down.

El let his wings spread wide and the wind caught them. Somehow the light hue stayed intact in the midst of the suffocating smoke and dust, making them that much more magnificent in the morning sunlight. When they flapped, it was heard all around, mixing in with the flapping of the flames. He flew around in circles as it took him a few milliseconds to realize his companions were heading for the ground.

He swooped down, wings pressing together so they would let him fall. As Beta and Hershey fell, they had nothing to worry about. Strangely, but luckily, they were able to land in a truck full of flour sacks. El assumed it was a ploy, but at that moment he didn’t really care. They were aching, shocked, and relieved…but Matrix wasn’t so lucky.

He was unconscious and still falling. El fell like a comet towards him, but he couldn’t quite reach his destination. Half of Matrix’s face was burned slightly and he couldn’t find the will to open his eyes. His arms were stretched outwards and El tried to grab one of them, any limb he could reach, but he couldn’t find the will either.

You told me, El thought, a knot building in his exposed stomach as he saw this man before him so helpless and so blind but so out of reach that it made him want to scream. You told me you wanted to live.

His hand was so close, but being close wouldn’t change the outcome. So live dammit!

He stretched his wings as if they were elastic—which they weren’t—and they let him drop a centimeter to reach Matrix’s hand, clutching it like a lifeline. He opened his wings and let them catch wind.

El rose up, trying not to scream in pain from carrying the extra weight. He groaned as he flew over to the truck that was carrying Beta and Hershey away. The sound of the building slowly collapsing behind them seemed to fade in El’s ringing ears as he flew away from it all. He collapsed on the not-so-soft bags and dropped Matrix. El’s vision was rough and unstable.

Blood started to ooze from his mouth as he collapsed next to the other bodies, suddenly aware of injuries he didn’t know he had. He didn’t think the flour sacks were flour anymore…they were too mushy. He crawled toward the head of the truck, slowly, but efficiently. There was a bump in the road that caused El to throw up whatever scraps he had decided to eat that morning mixed with an unhealthy dose of blood.

After El had thrown up he began to crawl again, trying to get the driver to stop and currently too weak to shapeshift. But on his short journey, he came face to face…with a face. His eyes grew wide and his heart rate sped up. It was just the head of the person, but it was enough. It was a woman, about his age he presumed, maybe older. Her face was covered with dirt and dry blood. Her nose was leaking snot along with the edges of her mouth leaking saliva. Her hair was matted and it seemed like half of it was burned off. As for her eyes, it seemed like they’d been gouged out. Thankfully, El was able to hold in whatever he had left. But at that sight, he couldn’t go on.

He collapsed right next to it, anger showing on his face. All those people caught in the crossfire…I couldn’t save any of them, he thought.

He heard chuckling behind him and put on a strong face. He turned over so he lied on his back, staring up at the Sync above him. His bald head reflected the light to the point where seeing his face was difficult. El was mad that their skin was brown and not blue like a Sync’s should be. He felt like he had exposed himself letting his wings go like that, and the least the Sync could do was expose himself for the beast he truly was. He was even still wearing his pizzeria uniform.

“Go to hell,” El spat.

“Oh trust me, we’re already there.” The creature growled. “Don’t you get it? This was all a trick. We know better than to kill off things we need…resources. We need the human race to keep reproducing, we wouldn’t waste their lives on a petty little dispute with the Pernas and their entourage,” the man explained, clasping his hands behind his back.

“What’re you gonna…do to them?” El forced out, struggling with every word. Not only could he barely move, but his wings were torn and it hurt like hell lying on them.

The Sync shrugged. “Whatever we want.” He looked down at El and began to descend to his level. El tried to scramble away, but he knew it was useless.

The man wrinkled his eyebrows as he leaned closer. He stroked the area right under El’s left eye and he flinched. “You used to be one of us.” He said more to himself than to El. “You used to be so…beautiful.” His gentle smile faded with his words. “Now you’re a monster,” the creature said, his voice dripping with disgust.

This time, the man grabbed El’s chin and moved it so El was looking him straight in the eye. “It’s over Elias…this isn’t your fight.” The man’s eyes were cold, they were far from humane.

“This is between us and humanity.”

He took off into the morning light, leaving El scorched and torn and bleeding; leaving them all that way.

Leaving the human race with such chaos that they could set fire to the world, flood it with their blood, and then choke in it.