Warning: This is gonna be quite a heavy chapter. Just sayin'.

A boy, a little boy, sitting in a corner.

I didn't immediately recognize him, but when I saw his dark eyes, I knew that it was the same boy as the boy I had seen that afternoon. He was wearing a blue-greenish shirt.

It was quite a strange image.

The first strange thing was that the walls of the room were made of glass.

The second strange thing was that the boy was chained. His arms were tied up to one of the walls.

The third strange thing was that the boy had silver hair. Of course, that wasn't that strange, but I found that little kids shouldn't dye their hair. And their parents shouldn't let them. It was irresponsible.

It looked quite good at him, though. There was a flash, and then the boy turned to me.

His eyes were full of fear and sadness, maybe even anger.

His voice was quiet and hoarse as he whispered to me: "I thoughts someone was finally gonna save us."

Then the vision started to fade, and sleep flowed over me like a wave of black ink.

The boy's eyes looked at me for another second before those disappeared as well.

"Hey, Carl."

I was in the kitchen, sitting on top of the table – I didn't think Charles would be very happy about that – with the phone in my hands. It was quite late in the evening, and it was cold, really cold. I was wearing a vest over a sweater.

It had been a normal day, a day like every day in the past couple of days; reading the newspaper to search for news about Sean, calling the police, worrying about Sean while staring at the wall, calling the police again, realizing I hadn't eaten in five hours, not caring because I wasn't hungry anyway, trying not to cry while thinking of all the things that could have happened to Sean, trying not to cry while thinking how miserable I was feeling, getting a headache of all that shit.

It was horrible to repeat that every day.

That was one of the reasons why I had decided to call my family, besides the fact that I was starting to get worried about them, too, for some unexplainable reason.

My stepfather's voice replied through the phone.

"Hi, Luka," he said, friendly as always. "Why're you calling?"

I thought for a second before responding: "I just wanted to know how you guys are doing."

I heard Carl snicker a little.

"We're fine, really," he said. "Soph's got a bit of a cold, but it's okay for the rest. How are you?"

"Not really good," I honestly replied.

I heard my stepfather sigh.

"I know it's hard for you that Sean's missing, darling," he said. "We're keeping our eyes and ears open. Even Soph is asking around at school. But Sean'll be fine, I promise."

I had to fight the urge to say, "No, it won't. It won't be fine, and you can't promise that. You know, I haven't told you about this yet, but my father has been shot just a couple of months ago. Two of my best friends and one of my mentors, whom I trusted, have betrayed me. A friend was killed right before my eyes. Another friend has been sent to war. My boyfriend has disappeared and I have no clue where to find him, and I'm pretty sure that if he dies, I'll die, too. Maybe my body won't die, but my soul surely will, and then I'll become just like my father; a depressed addict who is hated by everyone!"

I didn't say it, but I thought it, and at that moment, I was really, really happy that Charles couldn't read my mind.

(Even if he wouldn't use the serum and even if he'd be sober enough, he wouldn't be able to – for some strange reason, I block out his telepathy. Just saying.)

"Zoë?" Carl's voice pulled me out of my thoughts. "Are you still there?"

I realized that I had been silent for nearly half a minute, and I quickly replied: "Yeah, I'm still here. I just, eh..."

Suddenly, I got distracted by a knock on the door.

Who could that be?

What was going on?

We hadn't had any visitors in weeks.

"Eh, I'm sorry, Carl, I've got to go," I quickly said to my stepfather on the other side of the line.

He protested and asked what was going on, but I hung up and walked out of the kitchen.

I saw Hank walk towards the front door, with the same confused and surprised expression on his face as I was probably having on my face at that moment. Somewhere deep inside me, there was also a tiny spark of hope. It could be Sean. Or, though I doubted that, maybe Raven or Erik, coming to apologize.

If it was one of them, I would hit them in the face. With a chair.

Hank put his hand on the doorknob and pulled the door slightly open, just far enough to be able to peek outside.

"Good evening, gentlemen," he said, polite as always. I felt a small sting in my chest when I realized that it wasn't Sean. "I'm sorry, but haven't you seen the sign on the fence? It says 'private property'."

Someone pushed the door further open – I was pretty sure that one of the men did that. When I bent forward, I caught sight of them.

There were three men, all wearing sunglasses – even though it was already dark – and dark blue jacks with a logo on it. 'Trask Industries', the caption said. I had never seen it before.

The 'Trask'-man in the middle smiled a somewhat wicked smile; something told me that these guys weren't here to drink a cup of tea with us.

"Well, sir," he said to Hank, "this is a bit of a special occasion."

"You see," the man on the left continued, "we have discovered the presence of three mutants in this house."

Even though I could only see a part of Hank's face, I saw that he paled.

"Eh..." he stammered. "That information... could be right, yes."

The first man handed him a business card. Hank looked at it for a moment before turning to the three men again.

"'Protection against extinction'," he read out loud. "What does that mean?"

His voice trailed off, and I knew that we both realized the same thing at the same moment.

'Protection against extinction'.

These people were scared that the human race was going to extinct.

These people wanted to protect mankind from mutants, from us.

These people wanted us gone.

The man in the middle smiled his shark-like smile again.

"I think you already know what that means," he said to Hank. "Now tell me, kid... where are the mutants?"

The man on the right handed the grinning man a small, white-coloured device. It started to beep when he pointed it at Hank.

"Or are you one of them yourself?"

That was when Hank turned to me and mouthed: "Go!"

I didn't hesitate for a moment and immediately ran away, even though I'd like to secretly keep listening and maybe beat someone up, if necessary. I sprinted up the stairs, towards Charles' room.

"Dad!" I yelled as I dashed through the door.

He looked up from whatever he had been doing – reading, I thought, if he was even sober enough to do that. The empty bottle by his feet showed me that he wasn't sober enough at all.

I jerked him to his feet.

"Hey, what-" he sputtered, but I cut him off.

"There are strange men downstairs, and they want to take us away or even kill us, and we have to leave right now!"

My father looked a little vaguely at me before turning away.

"Yeah, sure," he said thickly, taking a sip of a bottle he had picked up from the floor. "Whatever you try, there is no way I am going to get out of this room."

He hadn't even finished his sentence when an ear-piercing scream split the air.

Tears popped up in my eyes when I realized who was screaming.

Hank.

They had Hank.

I was on the edge of crying – what was happening? Was Hank even still alive? What were they doing to him? – but I did have my father's attention, now.

"I think you are right," he said, walking in the totally wrong direction. "We should go indeed."

At that moment, I heard three pairs of heavy shoes on the stairsteps. I started to run away, dragging Charles with me.

I realized too late that we were trapped.

I went into a room before slowing down.

This was it.

We couldn't go anywhere else.

All we could do now, was hide.

Apparently, the drunk man next to me didn't agree with that. He immediately zigzagged towards the window and pulled it open.

I rushed forward as I realized what he was going to do.

"You're not planning on jumping, are you?" I hissed.

He turned to face me.

"Yes, I am," he said, surprisingly calmly.

I sighed in frustration.

"Come on, please," I nearly begged. "Dad, you're not thinking straight."

I knew he was terribly afraid of heights. So was I. Neither of us wanted to jump out of a window five metres above the ground and risk breaking our legs, or worse.

My father's eyes went hard again.

"Do you want to die, then?" he snapped. "Do you want to die? Like Hank did just half a minute ago?"

I bit my lip as I felt a sting in my heart.

Hank was dead. I had already known it, but now it got confirmed, and it hurt.

In a couple of seconds, we could be dead as well.

I could hear the heavy footsteps in the hallway behind me, and I closed my eyes for a moment.

No, I didn't want to die.

Yes, I knew that there were only two options.

Yes, I knew that those options were fighting the three trained adults (which wasn't going to work, because Charles was drunk like a skunk, and I just wasn't built to fight) or jumping out of that window and risk getting hurt.

No, I didn't like that. But it was the only way.

I opened my eyes again.

"I will go first," my father said, sitting down on the windowsill. "I will catch you."

"Okay."

"Okay," he repeated, suddenly seeming scared and nervous. "Three, two, one."

Then he jumped.

I didn't have time to see if it was going well.

The door behind me slammed open and the three men hurled into the room. I flinched when I saw that two of them were carrying guns.

Shit, I hadn't expected that.

They looked around for a moment – a moment in which I was frozen in place, hoping that they wouldn't see me – before the one without a gun pointed at me and yelled: "Over there!"

The others aimed at me, and exactly at that moment, I could hear my father's thick voice coming from outside.

"Jump!" he yelled.

I didn't hesitate.

I acted immediately.

Unfortunately, 'immediately' wasn't fast enough.

I jumped out of the window – not as smoothly as I was hoping; I stubbed my toe at the windowsill – but I didn't see that the man on the right fired his gun.

I also didn't see the small dart that shot out of it.

I only felt a sharp prick when it bored itself into the back of my neck.

Immediately, everything went blurry. I could barely feel that I was falling through the air. I could barely feel that my father caught me.

The last thing I thought was: Oh, an anesthetizing dart.

Great.

Then I passed out.

I know. I'm a horrible person.

I killed Hank.

Or not?

You'll find out... *evil laughing*