A/N: I took some slight creative liberties with the conversations in Episode 2 to avoid just repeating everything verbatim.

Max stared at the missing person poster plastered in Blackwell Academy's hallway, one of many. The enigma of Rachel Amber. She had an undeniable beauty about her, and Chloe referred to her as her angel. Yet, the graffiti around Blackwell wasn't as kind in regards to her, no matter how many admirers she had in the school. It felt impossible to learn anything about her.

The posters filled her with an eeriness. An uneasy crawling of her skin. They were reminders that someone was there one day, and then she was just gone. No answers. No clues.

With a deep breath, she turned to head towards art class. Although she wanted to be a photographer and it was an honor to be taught by Mr. Jefferson, she was having a hard time forcing herself to go to class.

She saw Kate talking with Mr. Jefferson outside the door to the classroom. Something about her demeanor felt strange as she turned and stormed past Max.

"Stop! Don't come near me!" she yelled when Max tried to follow her.

Max turned her head and watched Kate pass the missing poster of Rachel, and her stomach turned cold. For a moment, it was Rachel's back facing her as she walked away, not Kate. It was Rachel disappearing into thin air once she left the doors of Blackwell. The urge to throw out her right hand nearly overwhelmed her, but what could she do to help anyone with the short period of time she could reverse.

She saw the shadow of a raven with its wings spread wide on Kate's back. But when she blinked it was gone, leaving her uncertain it had been there at all. It seemed bizarre, but for every ounce of logic that told her it was impossible, another ounce of instinct insisted that it was real and existed in all ways that mattered.

Her organs felt like ice chunks, not flesh. Something was wrong.

Something was really wrong.

When she turned, she saw Mr. Jefferson looking about as unhappy as Kate had, though without the deep sadness that embraced Kate. His unhappiness had an angry tone, almost a frustration to it.

Never thought I'd be able to read emotions this well.

She kept her head down and headed into the classroom, only to be stopped by Mr. Jefferson.

"Hey, Max… Can I talk to you for a second?" he asked.

Talking was the last thing that Max felt like doing at the moment, but she obliged. "Yeah, sure."

"Are you okay? You look worried."

Max shrugged one shoulder. "I'm worried about Kate," she said. "She's been really down lately."

Not that Max could blame her.

"Is this about that viral video?"

"Kate is really freaked out about it. How is she supposed to focus on anything when she's being tormented all the time?"

"What if she brought this upon herself? She means well, but maybe she doth protest too much… She seems like she's holding back the truth. Have you talked to her?"

"I have talked to her," Max said, sounding as exasperated as she felt. "She needs friends and support… I just wish she'd let me help a little more. I don't want her to become the next Rachel Amber."

"Rachel Amber? What does she have to do with this?" Mr. Jefferson asked, the aggressive tone in his voice forcing Max to restrain herself from physically recoiling.

"I just..." She gestures to the hallway. "It's hard not to think of her with all these posters. I don't want Kate to disappear, too."

Mr. Jefferson looked skeptical, but why would he think that Max wasn't telling the truth? The only piece she held back was the fact that seeing images of Rachel while both awake and asleep were definitely not helping. How could she not think about the ghost that seemed to haunt her?

He opened his mouth, but was cut off by the sound of his phone ringing before he got any words out.

"Excuse me, Max. I have to take this."

He walked away, and Max heard bits of a one-sided conversation, but she didn't care to hear more of his voice at the moment. Not when their talk left a sour taste in her mouth.

She headed into the classroom, not knowing to savor the bits of calm before the next storm hit.

She stared at the photograph of her and Rachel, taking another long drag of her cigarette. They were dancing on the beach, but Chloe had rarely felt the urge to let herself be free without Rachel around. She remembered the look on Rachel's parents' faces when she showed up asking if Rachel was okay. If she was just upset at Chloe or something because she'd been ignoring all her calls and messages.

They would have found out that Rachel had gone missing eventually, but Chloe still felt that tinge of guilt in her stomach that she broke the news, like she was responsible simply because she broke their bubble of ignorance.

It was nice to fool herself into believing that Rachel just left her behind to chase a dream, but Chloe knew that there was more to it. There had to be, but it was probably something that she was better off not knowing.

Having Max back was great—even if the lack of communication from her over the years still stung—but nothing felt the same. She'd grown accustomed to having Rachel around. They may have never given each other labels, but that didn't mean they didn't have a connection deeper than friendship.

"You were my angel," she whispered. "I wish… I wish I could have been yours."

Her heart had yet to calm down after talking to Kate on the roof. She'd read stories about suicides. She'd had the usually mental health section in her general health class—even if they skimmed over more material than they should. But she never thought that she would be the one left to talk down a loved one from jumping.

"It feels like I'm in a nightmare and I can't wake up!"

Her head was killing her, but she didn't think that it was the pain that made Rachel Amber's visage stand before her, tears streaming down her face as she stood on the ledge in the rain.

The relief when Kate stepped away and into Max's arms was unimaginable. The mesh of emotions from the day had her acing hear spinning.

"'Viral' is the right word. Like a disease."

Warren's question brought Max back to reality. In her thoughts, she'd forgotten he was there at all.

"You watched it?" Max asked.

"Just one… and a half times."

As much as Max liked to think Warren was a decent person, he was still an average teenage boy. Of course he watched it. Almost everybody at Blackwell had.

"There's something ominous going on at Blackwell. I don't know what, but I have a bad feeling," Max said. She couldn't shake the idea that there was something she needed to do, but she didn't know what. It was like she was running out of time… even if she could rewind it.

"Today proves that," Warren said.

"I think that Kate and Rachel Amber are somehow connected. I just need to find the missing piece to fit them together."

Warren shrugged. "It feels like any conspiracy is possible at Blackwell, and I'm not a big conspiracy guy. There's an air at this academy though, like when you watch a horror movie and you know the monster is right around the corner. You just hope that you can avoid it anyway."

Max felt a chill begin to creep into the air, and not one that could be solely attributed to the evening hour. She looked up and saw the sun fading as it was eclipsed, its light being blocked from reaching the world.

"What the…?"

Warren shook his head, vibrating with a nervous energy. "There's not an eclipse scheduled today—and believe me, I would know."

Max shook her head, rubbing her arms to fight the cold. Warren moved closer and wrapped his arms around her, but she barely felt them. This had to be related to Rachel. She didn't know how or why, but it had to be.

After all, everything Max knew about Rachel made her seem like a force of nature.