Xavier Nero wasn't entirely aware of the situation. What he was aware of, though, was that one second, he was soaring down the sidewalk on his skateboard, and the next, his body was pain.

He fell on his chest, writhing in pain. It took him what felt like hours to finally get up. When he got up, he held his head, wincing in pain. "Ow."

He turned to look at where he had come from, and came face to face with a pearly white barrier. Xavier cocked his head to the side, confused. "The hell?" He muttered, questioning the barrier, something he knew couldn't answer, and could not answer his question.

Xavier had no idea what this was, or what purpose it served. So, as a base human instinct, he touched it, and instantly recoiled in pain, that disappeared in seconds.

"I'm gonna ask again. The hell?"

He stood up, looking around. "Now, where is my… skateboard?" He spotted it a few feet away, the front tip chopped off. "Well. That's… disappointing. I liked that board," Xavier muttered sadly.

He looked around, still not quite aware of the situation. He seemed in shock, but nothing was exactly… shocking. He felt like…

"Oh, shit. Sis is gonna kill me if I'm late!" He shouted, sprinting down the street in the direction of his school. He soon heard a groaning coming from the side of the road, and slowed down, moving towards the noise.

"H- heelp… Help me…" The voice said through groans.

Xavier's eyes widened, seeing the body of the voice.

What used to be a boy was mangled, blood dripping across his face, the self-same blood dripping onto the ground from several wounds covering his body. His white dress shirt was soaked in blood, and his right leg was several feet away from his torso, his left nowhere to be seen. His left arm was spiked with a shard of metal that had come free from the car.

"Please… Help me…" The boy coughed, blood dripping from his mouth.

Xavier forced himself to look up, away from the body of the boy. He saw a car crumpled, slammed into a lamp post. He covered his mouth in horror.

The passenger door was splattered with blood. The light flickered. Xavier saw the boy's left leg. It was hanging in the window of the door, and where the rest of the body should've been was nothing, blood pouring from it.

"God… God, no… What… What is this? What's happening?!" He shouted, screaming at the sky.

"Hey… You, over there… I can't be saved…" The boy coughed up some more blood.

"No. No, I can't let you die!"

"You don't even know me…" The boy smiled lightly, before gasping in pain. "Please, you have to… Kill me…"

Xavier began crying. "No! I won't!"

"You gotta do it… For me…" The boy looked to the sky. "Well, mom, I broke that promise. I'm sorry… I'm joining you…"

Xavier looked around, tears blurring his vision. He walked over to a shard of glass, picking it up.

He walked back over to the boy, and fell on his knees. "I'm sorry… I'm so sorry I couldn't help."

"Vye."

"What?" Xavier asked, looking the boy over.

"My name is Vye." The boy grabbed Xavier's shirt collar. "When you tell someone that I died, tell them my name was Vye! You got that?" He shouted, a fierce look in his eyes.

Xavier nodded his head, traumatized.

Vye let go. "Alright, go for it…"

Xavier squeezed the shard of glass, bringing it above his head. "I'm sorry…" He swung it down, screaming.

Zylia Nero was disappointed in her brother. Even though she had woken him up, he had waved her off. She went to school without him, walking her normal route, picking up Matthew Brooks and Nicole Romero on her way to school. They arrived at the normal time, 7:40, and walked into the normal doors, walking down the normal hallway to get to their normal first period class.

"Psst. Hey!" Nicole whispered to Zylia, tapping Zylia's seat with her foot.

Zylia didn't turn around. "What?"

"Where's Xavier?"

"He's still in bed."

"Pfft. Lazy-ass."

"Eh." Zylia shrugged.

"He should be here. He's gonna miss this lesson. It seems pretty important…" Nikki said, writing something down in her notes.

Zylia sighed, leaning back in her chair. "Yeah, I'll just give him the notes."

"You baby him too much!"

"Yeah, I probably do…" Zylia replied, closing her eyes. "But you baby Matt too much."

"Hey! Not fair!" Nikki replied, laughing quietly.

"You do think he's cute, though, right?"

Nikki sighed. "Yeah, I do…"

Nicole Romero was one of the hottest girls in the entire school, which was a combo of middle and high school, so that was saying something, considering she was just fourteen. And it was saying something, since she hanging out with Zylia Nero, one of the nerdiest girls in the school.

Nikki had confessed to Zylia before that Matt irritated her. He wasn't really affected by her beauty, charm, or hotness. He bugged Nicole.

"Hey! Matt!" Nikki whispered, kicking Matthew's chair.

"Huh? What! I'm awake, I'm awake!" Matt exclaimed.

"Oh, Mr. Brooks. You were asleep, were you?" The teacher questioned.

"… No…"

"So it seems that Mr. Brooks would like to teach the class! Well, let's not disappoint him. Matthew, would you so kindly come up here?"

"Okay, fine…"

Matt stood, stretching his arms out to the side.

And his right arm disappeared.

Xavier stopped an inch from Zye's heart. His eyes were on the boy's legs… Or rather, where his legs used to be. His arm began healing, in much the same fashion as his legs.

"Hey, why didn't you…? AGGGHHHHHH!" Zye screamed, his eyes widened in pain.

Xavier's eyes were glued to Zye's… legs. Not leg. Legs.

Where nothing used to be a second before, muscle was reforming and whipping together, covering bone.

"What… What the fuck?!" Xavier shouted, falling back, dropping the glass.

Finally, skin covered the muscle, and there was a new leg. Zye looked at Xavier. "Hey… So I guess you wont have to kill me…" And he began laughing, happy that he was alive.

Xavier's eyes were wide for a few more seconds, before he began laughing as well, crying, Zye was guessing that he was happy that he didn't have to kill anybody.

He wasn't all too surprised by the situation, though. Considering that his family had just disappeared, and he had gotten in a car crash, he was less worried about his new-found ability, and was more happy just to be alive.

"That… only raises more questions, though…"

"What do you mean?" Zye questioned, sitting back up.

"What happened before your car crashed?"

"Well, I guess… we were just going to school, all normal, and then…"

"Then what?"

"My parents disappeared. My sister disappeared… And I didn't have the chance to get to the steering wheel, and, well…" Zye gestured around with his hands at the remains of the car.

"Well, that sucks."

"Yeah, big time."

"Hey, I gotta go find my sister, and she's probably up by the school, sooo…" Xavier said, obviously still not quite taking in what had just happened.

"I'm gonna go back home and gather what I can. Judging by the fact that there aren't really other cars here yet, then what happened to my family happened to other people too. So we might as well try to get to Perdido Beach." Zye stood, dusting himself off.

"Perdido Beach? What's there?"

"Well, most importantly, there's a grocery store. Secondly, there are probably more people there." Zye's eyes widened. "How old are you?"

"Fourteen. Why?"

"I'm fourteen… my sister was fifteen… So, at this point, we're the only kids who happened to not be at school when this happened..." Zye began jogging in the direction of his house.

"Where are you going?!" Xavier shouted.

"To my house, like I said!" Zye shouted back. His eyes became shadowed in determination. "I gotta see something for myself," He muttered to himself.

Pain. That was Matt's first feeling. And then the realization that his arm wasn't there. And then falling. The sensation of falling was strong. It could scare a grown man, or it could excite a little kid.

At this point, it was doing neither. It was just… falling.

"What the hell happened?!" He heard Nikki shout.

He looked over at Zylia, and she couldn't even get any words out of her mouth. Matt looked around at the rest of the class, but he couldn't see much more than two inches in front of his face, besides what looked like it was pearly gray.

"What the hell happened to everyone?!" A girl's voice shouted, which Matt recognized as Nicole's again.

"My… My arm…" Matt murmured.

Zylia stood, looking down at Matt, and then she screamed, looking at the stump where his arm used to be. Blood was seeping out, and he could feel his life essence falling out with the blood.

Matt snapped out of his dream-like state, and then the pain hit him. "OOOOHHHH AGGHHH GOOOOD!" He screamed, writhing on the floor.

Nikki looked down at Matt, and a determined glint flashed through her eyes. She knelt beside him, ripping off a bit of her under-shirt, wrapping it around his arm, or rather stump. Most of his arm was missing, but not all of it. Only the part under the elbow was missing.

Nikki pointed to Zylia. "Looking at that, it probably cuts off the rest of the school. The only way out of here is through the windows! Find us a way down!"

Zylia's eyes flared, happy that she had something to do. She nodded and moved towards the window.

Matt remembered where they were. They were on the second story of a two story school building. "Vines… There are vines… outside…" Matt muttered, pointing with his good hand.

"Sh, baby, it'll be alright," Nicole said, brushing back Matt's hair, holding the piece of cloth to Matt's stump. "He says there are vines!" Nikki shouted over at Zylia.

"He's right, there are!" Zylia shouted back.

"Well, sweet, there's our exit."

Emma wasn't all too strong.

She was normally considered the weakling of her family, the black sheep. She didn't resent her family for it, she knew that they would not, could not love her.

When she was younger, a few boys had decided to mess with her. Their first mistake was messing with her. Their second was doing it with their phones in their pockets. Their final mistake was not running.

Emma Auburn didn't know what she had done. All that she knew was that she wanted the boys to stop. And the next thing she knew, the had stopped. The only problem was, though, was that… They were dead.

All of them had different parts of a phone stuck inside their head. When the coroners inspected the bodies, they figured that the phone used to be one of the boy's, who's nickname was Chevy. Nobody quite knew who he was. All that they knew was that he was there the day of the event, but they never found the body.

Emma had wanted the bullies to stop. So she reacted. Something inside of her… reacted.

Nobody could prove it was her that murdered the boys, but everyone figured it was her. Even she thought it was her. But nobody could convict her without evidence, so she stayed free.

Every once in a while, she thought she saw a boy looking at her from a distance, but every time she got close, he vanished. It was strange, though. It only ever seemed to happen around electronics, and what was stranger still was that the boy looked familiar.

Every time that the boy showed up, he would wait until Emma saw him to disappear. Every time she saw him, it killed her because she just couldn't remember who he was. More recently, she had been getting strange e-mails on her computer, most just filled with the simple words of 'I know', or 'I'm on your side'. They were all from the same person, and the name seemed familiar, but she just couldn't put her finger on it.

And then it happened.

Her whole existence came crashing down around her. Her pitiful, little, inconsequential existence.

But she never felt more free once it did.

Xavier began jogging to his school, looking around warily at every street crossing. He stuck to the sidewalks, just in case a crazy person came barreling around the corner.

"Oh, who am I kidding? There aren't anymore adults…"

But even after he said that to himself, he couldn't bring himself to walk in the streets. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't. Maybe it was force of habit, maybe it was his subconscious telling him that it was wrong, he couldn't be sure. Nobody else was wandering around in the streets, so he assumed that most of the kids who were under fifteen were at the school.

"So, now it's even more obvious what I need to do. I need to go to the school," He said out-loud, to no one in particular. He was already moving towards the school, so he didn't know why he said it.

Eventually, he came across a bike, abandoned on the sidewalk. "At least it looks good for an older person…" He muttered to himself, picking it up and sitting on top of it. He pushed off and began pedalling, riding to his school.

Emma usually sat in the back of the class, and the three desks around her were always empty. She would get routinely bombarded by spitballs and paper balls and basket balls, etc. The teacher paid her no mind. The teacher thought that she had done it. But she hadn't. It wasn't her. How could it have been?

The teacher was sitting down, doing nothing, waiting for all of his students to finish their math assignment. Emma had finished earlier than the rest of the class, and was drawing in her notebook.

The teacher stood up, and slowly made his way to Emma, waddling through the rows and columns of the desks to Emma's spot in the class.

"What are you doing?"

Emma opted for silence. She had figured out awhile ago that in these situations, it was just best to remain quiet. If she said anything, it usually got crazy. And then she was in trouble.

"I asked you a question. Aren't you going to answer it?"

"Fuck off!" She wanted to shout in his face. But she didn't. That would mean danger. If she did that, she would get hit. She didn't like getting hit. It wasn't fun.

"Oh, class, this little thing thinks she's too good to answer my question! Would you look at that?" He said to the rest of the class, giving rise to kids laughing. Annoyances. She didn't want this to happen, but it had to, if she was going to survive.

"Do you know what we do to things that don't answer our questions?!" He asked of the rest of the class, putting emphasis on the word things again.

"Hit them!" The kids shouted back.

"Damn straight!" The teacher balled his meaty fist, and pulled it back, ready to punch Emma in the head.

She readied herself for the blow, wincing in preparation, closing her eyes.

But the hit never came. Instead, she opened her eyes, and saw gray. She looked around, and saw that most of the room had been cut in half by a strange barrier. It was mere feet from her right side, and she stood up, moving towards it. She reached out and touched it, before recoiling in pain.

"Whoa." She looked around again, seeing the window. She saw a few people who looked like her age, climbing down from the second floor.

She moved towards the window and knocked on it. "HELLO!" She shouted, shrugging off her coat of shyness for a few seconds.

Zylia hit the ground, and began looking around. "It's cool down here!" She shouted up at Nikki, who was looking out from the window.

Matt grimaced in pain.

"Hey, listen, we get down there, we can get you stuff for your pain. But we more need antibiotics."

Matt smiled at Nikki, mostly in pain. "Hey, I've got this." He put his leg through the window, grimacing. "Well, now or never, right?" Zylia heard him say, as he began his descent.

He made it to the bottom of the second floor, before he lost his footing. His legs scrambled in air, and he shouted incomprehensibly, but his hand stayed where he needed it to be.

Zylia had already ran to be under Matt, ready to catch him. "Heh… Thank God I work out!" Matt said down towards Zylia. He pulled himself back up, and began lowering himself down. "Oooh. That was… lucky." He touched the ground and shook himself off, then stopped, looking at where his arm used to be. "It's weird… I still feel like it's there…"

Zylia patted him on the shoulder, and he jumped. "Whoa! Hey, dude, chill." She looked up at Nikki. "Come on down!"

Nicole nodded down and began climbing, putting her leg out the window, grabbing on to the vines on the side of the building. She reached the ground without incident, and nodded forward, gesturing to her friends to begin moving.

They started walking, but were stopped by a shout.

"HELLO!"