AN: Sorry I didn't update last week. Real like and my ambitions got in the way. So, I'm posting two chapters this week.
The rest of the weekend was rather uneventful. No breakthroughs, but at the same time no attacks and before anyone knew it, it was Monday.
Monday was the first time Tanya saw Ram's injury or even knew it was injured. She was so stunned her stooped when she stood and exclaimed, "Oh my God, Ram, what happened?"
"I'm not sure." Ram admitted, "The doctors told it I fell into some kind of sinkhole. They say I was lucky it's not worse than it is."
"A sinkhole?" Tanya repeated.
"That's the headline for you?" Ram questioned.
"Ram, if it was a sinkhole, you'd be dead." Tanya explained, "You'd be sucked into the ground and either be by debris, suffocation, or dehydration."
"Well, maybe it wasn't a sinkhole." Ram responded, "I don't know. I was more focused on the fact that my leg was half-skinned."
"Half-skinned?" Tanya repeated.
"Are you just going to repeat everything I tell you?!" Ram snapped.
Tanya shot him and angry look.
"I'm sorry." Ram told her, "I just don't won't to rehash this again, especially since this has the potential to ruin my life."
"I'm sorry." Tanya remorsefully relented. After a moment she requested, "One more question. Just one more, I promise."
Ram sighed. "Alright, what?"
"Where did it happen?" Tanya asked.
Two hours later when the hall around the locker room was empty, Tanya carefully hurried down the hall, trying to be aware of her surroundings, stopping in front of it. There were two stripes of yellow tape crossed over the entrance in a X. She simply docked under it, going inside. As she walked through the rows of lockers, there was one thing she took notice of.
"There's no sinkhole here." She murmured allowed to herself, "There's no hole here at all."
She had also taken noticed that some of the lockers were strangely battered. She went for a closer look and that was when she saw it.
A few flakes of what looked like dried blood.
"Look, Ram, I know you don't want to talk about it, but there's something I need to ask you about the accident." Tanya began over a video call that night, "And before you say anything keep in mind I just walked you step by step through over twenty problems."
Figuring he did owe her for that, he reluctantly agreed. "Go ahead."
"Are you sure it wasn't the lockers you hit?" Tanya asked.
"What?" Ram responded.
Tanya was silent a minute, then said, "Okay, don't freak out, but, I snuck into the lockers room today and, while there were on holes of any kind, but I found blood on the lockers."
"Tanya!" Ram exclaimed, horrified at what he was hearing.
"Come on, Ram!" Tanya reasoned, "That story doesn't add up and you know it. Now, you said it yourself, this thing could possibility ruined your life, don't you want to know what actually ruined it?"
Ram was about to answer when suddenly some sort of—vision, there was no other word for it, flashed before his eyes. It was blurry, but he could see a man with dark hair, and something large and metallic gray. He could hear screaming and he wasn't sure what was going on.
"Ram!" Tanya called out, "Ram, are you with me?"
"Yeah." Ram replied, shaking the vision off, "Look, Tanya, just let this go."
But she didn't. The next day, Tanya made and excuse to go to school early and suck back into the locker room. She didn't know what she was expecting to find there now but it was her only lead. She was looking at the battered lockers again when she heard the sound of footsteps on the cement floor.
She ducked behind the nearest locker and prayed whoever was coming didn't look there. After a moment she carefully peered over the side.
That how she saw Miss Quill, walking into the room. She went down a roll of lockers in the middle, dangerous close to Tanya's row, causing the teen's heart to beat faster. However, Miss Quill never even noticed she was there, opening one of the lockers and fiddling with something inside. Tanya wanted to try to see what it was but didn't dare get any closer.
Miss Quill some notes on a pad of packer, put the paper in her coat, then walked out.
"The signal's becoming dimmer." Quill declared gathered in her classroom with the others, putting the notepad down for all of them to see.
"It's getting a little dimmer each day." Charlie noted, staring down at the paper.
"Oh really?" Quill responded, rolling her eyes, "I hadn't noticed."
"But only just a little." Fox added.
"Is this obvious observation day?" Quill asked.
Everyone shot her various displeased looks.
"Sorry." Quill responded half-heartedly.
"But it's only dimming by a fraction, sometimes less." Susan pointed, "At this point it'll take months for the signal to fade."
Charlie glanced at Quill who stared back at him at him as they processed the implication.
"That means the signals we found could've been from months before." Charlie said, gravely, "Years even."
As if the concept weren't frightening enough, Fox added in, "And who knows what came through the tears." In past fortnight they had encountered two predatory wild animals, a murderous alien wasp that might have very well been a serial killer, and a dragon who flayed people alive at the whim of a roid-filled sociopath that had its mate hostage. And in that same fortnight, three people had died, two had been injured, one seriously, not mention the female Mog stalked Charlie fully intent on killing him, only stopped by Susan's intervention. Who knew what carrange had been wrought over time?
"We can find out." Gwen spoke up, pointing at Quill and Charlie she continued, "You two kept records of all the signals, right?"
"Yeah." Quill responded nodding, Charlie copying her nod.
"And we have records going back over fifty years." Gwen continued, "You've already done some of the leg work on that. And with the monitor in the locker rooms, we can compare the deterioration to the scans, then pair that with the incidents and maybe we can desirn some sort of pattern. "She paused for breath than said, "Look, I know it's a long shot, but—"
"It's all we got." Fox finished for him.
"I've heard worst ideas." Susan added.
"Eh, beats sitting on our asses waiting for something to happen." Quill responded.
"Ah—" Gwen began, gesturing to Charlie with her eyes.
Realizing that, yes, if Charlie use that word she'd probably at least call him out, said, "Oh, Charles, don't say ass."
Shortly after that the group poured out of the room to do their assigned tasks as sethily as possible, thinking the hadn't been seen.
None of them knew that Tanya had finally dared to come out from her hiding pace and find out where Miss Quill had went. Except by that time the first trickle of people was showing up for the day. She turned a corner to fast only to jump back as a slight girl with long dark brown hair did the same.
"Sorry." April responded.
"It's alright." Tanya responded, running past her.
"Hey," April called out, turning around, "Where are you going?"
Tanya wasn't aware of April following her, even when they both stopped short near the physics room, close enough to see, but not to be seen, and saw everyone leave.
The girls didn't have much contact with each other until the end of the day, when April shut the door of her locker and found Tanya standing next to it, a very serious look on her face.
"Oh." April began, "Hello again."
"Hey, April," Tanya began, "Listen, ah, I wanted to talk to you about what happened this morning."
"How do you—" April began, "Never mind, what about it?"
"I don't know if you know this or not, but there had been some weird things going on." Tanya explained, "Things that might have gotten my sorta-kinda-friend hurt. But I think you might have noticed other things and I was hoping…maybe we…we could compare notes?"