Hollow

"The other door," Seto said, and he and Mokuba went to either of them to make sure they were locked. Seto wasn't convinced it would do anything, but maybe the illusion of safety would give them a moment to think this all through.

"What about the windows?"

"Probably not."

The windows in the library were two floors high and took up nearly all of the far wall. If Gozaburo had gotten ballistic glass for the front windows, he certainly would have for an entire wall of them. But even if they did break, streams of white drizzled down the outside of them. It might have had the same effect in liquid form as it did in solid, and Seto needed to consider the risks associated with it, both known and unknown. If the feeling returned to his hand, he might be more willing to chance it getting on them.

"We could hide in one of the secret rooms," Mokuba suggested.

"Until when?"

But hiding Mokuba…no, Seto needed to keep him close to make sure nothing happened to him. Someone else was around. Someone else was doing this to them.

They checked the room to be sure they were alone, and only then did they sit down.

"What do you think it is?" Mokuba asked. His foot kicked the bottom of the couch, sending out an empty echo through the shelves, and he didn't look away from the mist at the door. "It was like, I could see it, but there was nothing there. You touched it, I guess, but you also sorta didn't."

"It doesn't have any sensation," Seto said, and flexed his hand again. "There was nothing, not even the temperature of the room or the feeling of air moving across my skin."

"What are you doing with your hand?"

"Nothing," Seto said, and stopped messing with it. "We can't stay here much longer."

"But we haven't figured out what's chasing us."

"What do you mean, what?" Seto asked. "We will find out who it is."

Mokuba shrugged and kept his shoulders raised defensively. "Who could do all this?" he asked, and kept bouncing his foot. "If we aren't in VR, how is any of this possible?"

"We've seen a lot that I would have assumed impossible before. We'll get our answers."

"Where do we start?"

"There is little chance they got all the exits," Seto said. "I can think of a few unlikely to be blocked."

Mokuba gave a little unbelieving stare, prompting Seto to ask, "What?"

"After all this, you really think there's a way for us to get out? The whole cloud is raining down. What if we open a door and it gets on us?"

It took effort not to return to flexing his hand. He could find a way around it if he needed to, but there were so many things that could have gone wrong. Even if they found an umbrella or thick coats, there was no guarantee it wouldn't start misting the moment they stepped into it. It needed a crack or an opening to get through the walls, but clothing and umbrellas were too porous to count on.

"No one could have devised a perfect trap," Seto said.

Mokuba rubbed his lips together and nodded. "That's kinda what I meant."

"You think this is some sort of supernatural occurrence? That it's more magic?" Seto said, and tried to keep the condescension out of his tone. Mokuba was afraid and needing answers was understandable. And after all they had gone through, Seto couldn't really blame him for jumping first to the more extreme conclusions. Seto couldn't say it was an impossible assumption, not after what he had seen.

"It's happened before."

"I'm sure there's an explanation. When we find him, we'll get it out."

Seto got up to check the windows, trying to gauge whether the rain was falling only on the house or farther out. It was difficult to tell with the amount of white already coating on the panes, but in the narrow gaps, he didn't see any staining the grass. Then it was some sort of man-made construction, likely set on a boundary to only cover the house.

Maybe it was paint and the mist was something else. It didn't explain the loss of sensation, unless maybe the mist had some sort of numbing agent? It couldn't have been a paralytic since he could still use his hand, but there must have been something in the mist.

He could work within that understanding.

"Did you pull out a book?"

Seto put his hand on the window, another cold one, and shook his head. When he lowered his hand, an outline remained in frost. It was possible, he told himself, but required so much effort. Why go to such an extreme as to frost the glass?

"Why?"

"There's one open."

They were in a library, so an open book wasn't as out of the ordinary as the other things on Seto's mind. But for Mokuba to have mentioned it given their circumstances, it must have been something else off.

Before Seto could turn to look for himself, Mokuba said, "Take me back."

And that grabbed Seto's attention. "What?"

Had Mokuba been taken over again? He hadn't been aware of writing the words, but saying them? Seto rushed over to check, kneeling in front of Mokuba, whose expression gave him away, exasperated and still tinged with fear.

"It's still me. That's what the book says."

Mokuba pointed and Seto let his gaze follow Mokuba's finger. The book was on the table in front of the couch, and in large, elaborate scrawl, Take me back. The handwriting was different than Mokuba's but also different than the words carved onto the counter, and that meant it was more than one person working on this ruse. Seto had assumed as much, but they had just checked the room for anyone else.

"It's a prop," Seto said, and picked it up to show Mokuba. "The rest of the pages are blank."

The terror didn't leave his eyes, but he did flip through the pages, from the message in the middle of the book to the back cover, and then to the front. He paused on the first page, which from Seto's angle, was as blank as the rest of them, and then turned it around.

Written on the first page in the most familiar writing Seto knew, was his own name. His handwriting had changed slightly since it looked as it did on the page, but it was undeniably his. There was nothing on the spine to indicate which book it was supposed to be, and that proved Seto's point. It was a prop; they hadn't known which books he had written in.

"It's a message for you," Mokuba said. "Who would be saying this?"

"There are a lot of people who have reason to hate me. Years after taking over KaibaCorp, people still hold grudges."

Mokuba rolled his eyes, but it seemed more to keep from crying than as a response to Seto. "So what, it's like the Big Five coming after us again?"

"Well, I'd hope they are gone for good."

Because if they weren't, it meant Gozaburo wasn't.

"I don't think this is VR," Seto told him, setting down the book to put his left hand, the one that still had feeling, over Mokuba's. "You don't have to worry about that."

"That's not what I'm worr—"

They both turned toward the door they had come through, where another crack had broken from frame to ceiling. It filled in, but nothing started dripping. The mist remained the same size and stayed mist. But too soon, they would have to find somewhere else. Or they would have to really start the search of the house.

"Niisama."

"Yes?"

"There's another book."

Seto took the second one from the table in the same spot the first one had been, but instead of the single sentence, the same three words were written in immaculate print on every page, front and back.

Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back.

Every page, cover to cover.

Seto checked the table for trap doors or mechanisms that would have made the book appear so suddenly, but it was solid wood without any spot Seto thought might possibly have contained any sort of mechanization. He would have noticed someone sneaking up to place the book, and there wasn't an obvious explanation.

Mokuba stood and went to the nearest shelf, taking down another book.

"It's the same," he said, and opened the book to Seto. The words were the same, and book after book, all came up with those words—Take me back.

"We should go," Seto said. "Their message has gotten through."

"You know what it means?"

"I don't care what it means. Someone has a grudge and we'll find them."

They didn't return any of the books to the shelf, leaving two of them empty from Mokuba's search. None of this was theirs anymore, and once they got out, they would never look back.

"I don't care who it it," Mokuba said. "I just want to go home."

The mist began to grow, and Seto took Mokuba's hand. "Okay. We'll see if the balconies are open."

"What about the rain?"

Seto only needed to concern himself with one thing at a time, first if the balconies were open, and then if they could protect against the rain. The house was still so full, there must have been something to help them get out without being exposed to more of the numbing agent. If it wasn't falling anywhere aside from the house, they didn't have to make it far.

"We'll find a way."

One of the doors they had locked was closer to a staircase, so they started for it. Seto glanced over his shoulder at the building mist, where it branched into a height just below eye level, and for a moment, took on a human shape, but in a blink, began to solidify.

"We need to get upstairs before it does."

They closed the library door behind them, and when it shut, the mist began to pour from underneath.

Thanks for reading and reviewing!

You can expect an update on Tuesday, October 17th.