"Atarashi asa ga kita," the ball sang. "Kibou no asa ga. Yorokobi ni mune wo hiroge. Aosora aoge."

"What the–?" Harrison asked, examining the ball, covering his ears with his hands because the music was so loud.

"What the hell's this?" asked the redhead.

"Rajio no koe ni. Sugoyaka na mune wo. Kono kaoru kaze ni kirakeyo. Sore: ichi, ni, san!"

At the finish of the song, the surface of the ball suddenly changed. The onlookers all stared at it as a block of text appeared.

Your lives have ended.

How you use your new lives is entirely up to me.

That's the theory, anyway.

"How you use your new lives is entirely up to me?" the Goth inquired. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"This is creepy," muttered the cheerleader.

Then, the screen changed again. Now it read. "You will now go kill this thing."

"K-kill?" David stuttered.

The rest of the writing on the surface of the sphere read:

Feral Alien

Characteristics: Hairy, Violent

Likes: Raw Meat

Dislikes: Hunger, People

Favorite Phrases: N/A

Beside all of this useless information was a picture. It showed the face of something that roughly resembled a black dog, except it didn't have any eyes or ears.

Suddenly, a metallic clicking noise came from the ball and the sides of it sprung open, knocking some of the surrounding spectators back several feet.

"Whoa!" the redheaded boy exclaimed, examining the sides that had popped out of the ball. They were lined with racks of weird, science-fiction-looking guns. Some of them were handguns, others were longer, like rifles, and some others had bizarre Y-shaped protrusions on their ends. They all had small screens on the ends opposite the barrel.

"This thing looks like a toy," the redhead mocked, picking up one of the handguns and pointing it around at everyone and pretending to fire.

"Put that thing down!" David screamed instinctively. He had already been shot once that day, so he was a little edgy when it came to pointing guns around, even if they were toys.

"Fine, buzz kill. If you want it, take it," the kid replied, tossing the gun to David, who was caught off guard and had to juggle it between his hands for a second before grasping hold of it.

Letting his gun hand fall loosely to his side, David walked around behind the ball and saw that there was a stack of suitcases. He saw the top one and froze in place.

On it was written "David Kepler."

What the hell? he thought, totally dumbfounded. How is this possible?

He lifted up the case and saw that the next one read "Jack Reilly." The one under that was "Joseph Lincoln". He continued reading the names on the rest of the cases. Ryan Harrison, James Gregory, John Allen, Alex Summer, Stephanie Wayne. There were eight total. One for everyone, he supposed.

"These cases," David called out to the others, still in disbelief himself. "They have all of our names on them!"

"What the hell are you talking about?" asked Harrison, walking over. He went to the stack and found the one that read his own name. "What the…?"

Everybody came and found the case for them.

How is this thing supposed to open? David thought as he tried and failed to pry open the case. Finally, when he pushed down on two points on top of the case, it suddenly sprung open, startling him. The contents of the case were a strange sight. It appeared to be a black spandex suit, covered with little gelatinous caps. He lifted it from the case and examined it.

"What? Are we supposed to wear these things?" asked the red-haired kid, lifting his own suit out of the case, having gotten it open as well.

The cheerleader merely laughed. "I don't care what's going on, there's no way in hell I'm putting that thing on."

"Yeah, seriously," the spiky-haired Goth agreed.

As everybody else put their suits back down into their cases and left them on the ground, David, to the surprise of everyone present, picked up his case and started to walk towards the door.

"Where the hell are you going?" Harrison asked.

"Into the other room to change," David explained.

"You're not seriously going to wear that thing are you?" Jack asked with a laugh.

"Jack, we died, remember? And then all of the sudden we show up here!" David declared to his friend.

"Yeah, so?" Jack replied. "How does that have anything to do with spandex suits?"

"Because, it means that whatever's happening to us is real, and we should start taking it more seriously. If this black ball thing had these suits for us, then I'm sure as hell not gonna ignore it. It must have some significance."

"Dude, it's a suit. What significance could it possibly have?"

"We were brought back from the dead. There's some kind of force keeping us from leaving, and whoever's orchestrating all of this knows every one of us by name. At this point, anything's possible," David pointed out.

Jack contemplated this for a moment, but then smiled and said to his friend, "Yeah, I'll still pass. People say enough about me already."

David shook his head. "Whatever." He took the suit and walked off through the door opposite the one leading to the foyer. It was a room similar to the one that he had just been in except on the back wall was a sliding glass door and to the left of where he had come in was a stairway leading up to the next floor. He went to the back door and tried to slide it open, but what the spike-haired boy had said was true. Some invisible force was preventing him from even grasping the handle or touching the surface of the glass.

This is insane, he thought.

He looked to the stairs and was tempted to go up but decided that now wasn't the time and instead opened the case again to take the suit out. He noticed something fall out as he did so and hit the ground with a loud thud. He bent down to examine what had fallen.

It appeared to be some kind of electronic device, like a PDA or something. There were several buttons and a large screen. This thing is weird, he thought.

Meanwhile, the rest of the kids were waiting in the other room, watching the black sphere and its cryptic message. Suddenly, the surface of the sphere changed. It now showed a large countdown timer that started at one hour and ticked down, second by second. Then, the entire group turned towards Harrison and several gasps came from the crowd. The top of his head was completely gone, the rainbow light from the black ball claiming him again, making first his head and then his neck and shoulders vanish into thin air.

In the back room, David was now fully dressed in the strange suit. The gun that had been in the black sphere was still clutched tightly in his right hand and the strange device was grasped in his left. Suddenly, he snapped to attention as he viewed his reflection in the sliding glass door. Half of his head was gone!

What the hell? David exclaimed, his hands shooting up to the missing part of his head. It was disappearing further, a mysterious rainbow light just like that which Lincoln had appeared in creeping down his body. Oh, God, please let this not be it! he thought hopefully, shutting his eyes and holding the gun in his hand even tighter, waiting for the light to pass over his body. Soon, it had and he was gone from the mysterious manor, as were the other kids in the black ball room, consumed by the same light. And now the house was silent, as if waiting in expectation for the events to come.

David slowly opened his eyes. He felt a wave of relief that he wasn't dead again. But he wasn't in the house either. Now he had been transported to some suburban neighborhood. Everyone else was standing around him, seemingly noticing the same thing.

While they had been in the room the sun had dipped below the horizon and early evening had turned to night. It looked like they were still relatively close to home.

"What the hell? This is a couple miles from where I live," exclaimed the redheaded kid. "What was all that crap about killing a monster?"

Suddenly, David was feeling a little foolish having put on the ridiculous black suit. He loosened his grip on the gun in his hand.

"Whatever, I'm going home," declared the spiky-haired boy. "I think there's a bus station near here."

"Me too," the cheerleader added.

"Wait!" David called out. This all felt wrong to him. Very wrong. "We were brought back from the dead! And now we're just going home like nothing happened?"

"Hey, count your blessings," the redhead boy responded, following the other two off down the road. Harrison was soon following suit.

"What about him?" David asked glancing over at Lincoln, who looked ready to soil himself he was so terrified.

"What are we gonna do?" redhead inquired. "Say he shot us? We don't look very dead if you ask me."

Despite what everybody was saying, something was off about the whole situation. It had seemed as if they would be sent on some big mission, not dropped right back home.

"Come on," Jack urged David. "Let's just go home and pretend none of this ever happened."

David was silent a moment before reluctantly agreeing. It wasn't as if he had any choice. Man, now I have to go home in this stupid outfit, he thought as he, Jack, the girl who had been with David at the school, and Lincoln all followed the rest of the group as they walked down the street.

David got himself thinking for a minute. This was a good thing. Despite all of the mystery and the horrible things that had happened, they were all being given a second chance at life. It was good. But something in David's gut argued that point. Something wasn't right.

"Hey, I see someone!" the spiky-haired kid exclaimed. He walked over to a man in a red jogging suit, running down the empty night street. "Yo, dude! Do you know where the nearest bus station is?"

There was no response.

The cheerleader piped up, raising her voice. "Hey! Do you know where the closest bus station is?"

The jogger still paid no heed. He only continued his run as normal, not so much as glancing at the group of teens.

At this point the man had stopped to check his pulse and David approached him. "He really can't see us," he examined, waving his hand in front of the man's face before he took off at a jog again.

"What the hell is going on?" wondered Jack as the man took off.

"This shit's getting' too weird," the Goth exclaimed, taking off down the road. "I'll find the bus stop myself."

Oddly, David's mind jumped to the handheld device that had been with his suit all of the sudden. He took it out and examined it. The screen seemed to show a map of the region. In the center of the screen, a red triangle that he assumed represented their current position was sitting right next to the edge of a large rectangular box that surrounded it and a very large portion of the map itself. Judging by the area of the map it covered, David guessed that the box was about a mile and a half square, give or take.

Suddenly, David noticed a steady, irritating beeping noise in his ear, his head pounding with every beep. He wasn't aware, but the whole group was hearing the same noise.

BLAM! David snapped to attention as an explosive noise was immediately followed by screams and the sound of somebody vomiting (Lincoln). He was horrified at what he saw. It was unbelievable. Sickening.

He saw the Goth boy who had been at the head of the group. His body slumped lifelessly to the ground. His entire head was missing. It had exploded before their very eyes.

His second chance was taken away from him, just like that.