Huzzah for an update! ^-^ Now the real story begins! I recommend that you read the first story, at least most of the stuff in/after chapter 7, but that's completely optional and up to you. X)

Disclaimer: The apartment layout, the storyline, the guy who shows Rayn the room, and the (almost) random voice behind Rayn are mine; the game show and microwave are too general of a type of show (like Wheel of Fortune or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire or something, neither of those shows belong to me, though... XD)/brand of microwave to put a disclaimer on; and the rest belongs to Naughty Dog.

R&R's and other things are love! =D

Enjoy!

Rayn stood at the counter of the small apartment complex, her bags sitting at her feet as she waited for the landlord or someone else who worked there to come and serve her. She had entered herself in a combat racing tournament that was going to be held here in Haven City; she felt fortunate that she was able to find an apartment this close to the racetracks in such short time with a price as low as it was.

When she had talked to the landlord last week, she had been told that its previous owners left in a hurry without much of an explanation why, and nobody had decided to look into renting it because of a few rumors floating around. Figuring that the rumors were false like most of the other rumors she had heard, she took the apartment anyway. Besides, she'd only be there for a few weeks at the most while she raced in the tournament to help her team win the antidote for the poison from her father's wine.

A young man with short, brown hair and average city clothes suddenly appeared from a back room and up to the counter to greet her. He kept an expression on his face that gave Rayn the impression that he was constantly nervous and very jittery; the way he kept fiddling with his hands further proved her theory.

"Ah, you must be the lady from Kras who wanted the vacant apartment. Rayn, was it?" the man asked, his voice shaking somewhat with a sense of fear.

"Yes, the landlord said she'd be here today to help me move in and take care of the money," Rayn replied, glancing once or twice to the back room the young man had come out of with hopes of finding the woman she had spoken to last week.

The man paused and stared at her for a few seconds, looking as if he had no idea what she had just said.

"Oh, the landlord! She's... on vacation! She didn't tell me exactly when she'd return, but she left me to take care of the apartments for her in her absence," the man said, becoming jitterier than ever. He paused for a moment before continuing, "Shall I escort you to the apartment?"

"Of course! That would be wonderful!" Rayn said, picking up her bags.

---

It had taken her all afternoon after Rayn had been given a short tour of the apartment to get her belongings unpacked. She was somewhat surprised at how much was already in the apartment. The cupboards and refrigerator were already full of food that was still good, even the gallon of milk in the back of the fridge. There were still some clothes left in all three of the dressers in the two bedrooms, and the closet next to the bathroom was filled with towels. Shampoo and conditioner bottles, as well as other toiletries, were piled on the two glass shelves next to the shower.

She felt that was lucky that there was enough room left for her clothes in the white dresser in the bedroom she had decided to sleep in. All else fails, she would have shoved some of her clothes in the closet across from the single double-sized bed in the room. However, she had a bad feeling about the closet and decided to try and shove what she could in the dresser.

She sat on the chair in what she considered to be the family room, made mostly of white leather and had a red cloth seat and back. She quickly flipped through the channels on the television screen tentatively, figuring out which stations belonged to which channel number for future reference.

The left the volume on the television low so she could hear her own thoughts amidst the small noises coming through the thin walls from the adjacent apartments. Unfortunately for her, most of her surrounding neighbors were elderly people who were not able to hear well, so she could hear everything that was coming out of their televisions. From what she could vaguely hear through the thin walls, the neighbors on her left side were watching a game show on a channel she passed a few seconds ago; the other neighbors were either had their television sets too far away from the walls or had their volume down low enough to keep her from hearing them.

At some point during the evening, her mind had become so focused on channel-flipping that she almost did not notice the sudden silence that had enveloped the apartment. She changed to the station she remembered seeing the game show on, and noticed that it had not ended yet. She looked at the clock on the microwave and noticed that it was ten minutes to eight. She glanced down at her watch, which also read ten minutes to eight at the moment. From what she knew of old people's general sleeping habits, there was no way her neighbors had turned in for the night so early, especially when they were in the middle of watching one of their favorite television programs.

She turned her attention back to her own television and found that it had been turned off. She clearly remembered not having her fingers anywhere near the power button on the remote since she had turned the television on. She pressed the power button and aimed the remote at the television, but the device refused to turn on.

"There must be something wrong with the power," she thought, then realized that the lamp next to her was still turned on and that the time of the microwave still glowed lime green. She glanced back over at it, and saw that the time had not changed since she had looked at it the first time. She stared at it for a few minutes as she glanced at her watch to figure out what time it was to see if it would do anything, but the time on the microwave never changed while her watch behaved normally.

A small rumble that sounded like thunder moved through the apartment, which was odd since there were no thunderclouds within a hundred miles of the city at the time. Just in case, though, Rayn got up and walked through the sliding glass door next to the couch onto the porch. She looked up into the dark sky and into the water of the canals below to search for any signs of rain, but found nothing of the sort. It was a perfectly clear evening; the stars in the sky glowing like fireflies in the spring and summer.

With a shrug, Rayn turned and walked back through the sliding glass door and into the apartment. Just as she began to close the door, she heard a sound like somebody shouting from the roof. Then, she saw a large, black figure drop towards the canals below from somewhere above the apartment and was followed by the sounds of a loud crack and a splash.

"Oh my god!" Rayn cried, sprinting back out to the railing on the porch and looking down into the canals below, hoping to find out what had just dropped from the roof.

However, she saw that nothing had changed from a few moments previously. The streets were completely devoid of people, the street lamps hummed softly as they illuminated the paths below them, and the waters showed no signs of any recent movement.

"How odd," she mumbled to herself, blinking hard a few times and attempting to make sense of what was going on.

"How odd indeed," said a masculine voice behind her.

Rayn quickly jumped and gasped at the sound of the voice, and turned to see who had spoken. She only found her apartment and the things inside it, completely untouched. The only person she saw anywhere inside of it was herself.

"I'm hearing things. I'm just tired, and I'm pretty sure that's what's causing me to do this. It's been a long day for me, is all," Rayn mumbled as she walked back into the apartment and turn herself in for the evening.