Surprise, all! I know it's not December yet, but I decided to take a day off of NaNoWriMo, for my own sanity. Instead, I used today's writing time to finish out this chapter. I don't know whether I will take another "off" day to update again this month. But in any case, I really hope you still enjoy getting this update!

Your reviews give me life, and I love you all.

Stay safe out there!

ZzZzZzZ

"Breaking News this morning in the City of Seabrook." A crisp female voice announced.

"That's right, Zenaidah." A second voice chimed in, this one male. "Last night, Seabrook city officials learned that there is yet another race of individuals living amongst us. Mayor Missy and a special guest are joining us in the studio this morning, to provide more information regarding this exciting announcement."

Zed stirred, his brain latching onto the voices as he tried to make sense of their meaning. What were they talking about? Had he fallen asleep on the couch watching the television again? He must have come home after hanging out with the guys at the cemetery, and been too tired to make it upstairs. Maybe his dad had turned on the news.

"Good morning, Seabrook." Mayor Missy's voice spoke. "Today, I am thrilled to introduce our fine city to our newest citizens, the Lunites."

Zed's eyes snapped open.

For the second time in as many weeks, he found that he was not in his own house. Instead, he was yet again staring up at a pea-green ceiling with peeling paint. He turned his head from side to side, brows furrowed as he took in the familiar dim lights, lumpy bed, and washed out walls.

He was... Back in the hospital?

Zed turned his attention back to the little television, feeling his mouth pop open as he watched Addison's mom introducing an older female Lunite, who was smiling happily at the screen. They were discussing who and what the Lunites were, where they lived, and various other attributes of their people and culture. On the Seabrook Morning News!

What had happened last night, to out the Lunites and land him in the hospital?

Over the white cotton hospital gown, Zed rubbed his shoulder out of habit. He was expecting his fingers to brush against the now familiar brace, but to his surprise, he found nothing there. Actually, now that he thought about it, his shoulder felt better. Much better than it had felt, in fact, since the night of the Zombietown fires. The constant sharp, aching sensation was no longer there. He lifted the hospital gown to examine his shoulder, and found a neat line of stitches there. This was a little alarming, but it wasn't painful at all.

However, there was a different pain further down his arm, a familiar pain that he hadn't felt since he'd hacked his z-band so long ago.

Zed glanced down to his left wrist, surprised to see that the skin there was reddened and burned.

"Ow." He mumbled, reaching out with his other hand to rub the tender area around the band. What in the world was going on? What had happened to his wrist? He definitely hadn't been trying to hack it this time.

On the television, the Lunite female was still talking. Mayor Missy and the other two news anchors were asking her several questions, all of which she answered politely. For whatever reason, the Lunites had apparently decided to do their big reveal a few days ahead of schedule. Which was probably a good thing, considering everything that was going on. But he wondered what had caused the sudden change of heart. From what Qamar and the others had said, their elders had been dead set against changing their plans from announcing themselves at the Shore Day Festival.

Suddenly, the door opened, and Zed's dad strode into the room holding a paper bag filled with pastries, and a folded up newspaper. He looked tired, but his face brightened instantly as his eyes met Zed's.

"Hey, look who's awake! How're you feeling, son?"

"Um... Confused." Zed admitted, not even sure which question he should start with. "How'd I end up in the hospital? What happened to my shoulder? And my z-band? I swear, Dad, I wasn't messing with it—"

"Whoa, slow down, kiddo." Zevon said, raising up a hand to calmly halt Zed's line of questioning. "I'm a little confused about the details myself. But you don't have to worry. Everyone got out of the fire okay, and that Charles Moon guy is still in jail."

Zed stared at him, feeling even more confused than he had been a moment before. He had no idea what his dad was talking about.

"...What fire?" He asked, settling on the first part of the statement. There seemed to be a huge amount of information that Zed was missing. And his dad was looking at him with an increasing amount of concern.

"Son, what's the last thing you remember about last night?" His Dad asked.

"Um," Zed replied thoughtfully. "I was sitting on top of the hill with the guys, talking and looking down at the lights. Wyatt took us up there last night, after we went to the bowling alley. Then..." He paused, waiting for the rest of the story to fill itself in. But there was nothing. "Then, I woke up in here, with stitches on my shoulder and fresh burns around my z-band."

His dad looked a little concerned at this, but was clearly trying to sound calm and lighthearted with his vocal tone.

"Well, the stitches I can tell you about." Zevon stated happily. "Congratulations, son. You're the fist zombie patient in history to ever have orthopedic surgery."

"What?" Zed asked, in complete shock. He'd only heard of a few zombies ever having surgery, and had never met any of them, personally. And those had been due to severe illnesses, a phenomena that rarely occurred in his species. Zombies were generally a pretty consistently healthy bunch. "Why did I have to have surgery?"

"Well, I guess you don't remember, but apparently last night you tackled that Charles Moon guy hard enough to shatter your shoulder into multiple pieces. You have two metal plates and several screws in your left shoulder, now."

Zed was speechless for a moment. He really had missed a lot. . "So...I tackled Charon... And there was a fire... And the Lunites are on the news."

Zed felt a pang of guilt. He had promised his dad, not too long ago, that he would stop keeping secrets from him. That he would keep him in the loop. And here, he'd been keeping a huge secret this whole time; the existence of an entire other species.

"I'm sorry, Dad." Zed said, looking up at his father from the bed. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the Lunites. I was supposed to be more honest with you, and I didn't do it."

But Zed's dad just smiled. "Don't feel bad about that, Zed. It wasn't your secret to tell. And besides," he said, nodding his head towards the television. "It's not exactly a secret anymore."

"I see that." Zed replied, glancing back up at the screen and watching as the female Lunite showed the cameras her glowing hair, and the news anchors gasped in surprise and delight. For a moment, he and his dad watched in silence. Zed couldn't help but be amazed at how far the humans of Seabrook had come. He wondered how the Lunites would have fared, if they had decided to reveal themselves only a few years earlier.

"So," Zed finally asked. "What exactly did happen last night?"

Zevon frowned. "I think I'll let Addison fill you in on everything. She ran home to change clothes, but she should be back any second. She was there, so she knows a lot more than I do. In the meantime, I'm going to find the doctor and let them know that you're having some memory issues."

At that moment, the hospital room door opened again, and a clean and refreshed-looking Addison tiptoed in, clearly expecting him to be asleep. She was wearing pale green skinny jeans, white sneakers and a pink hoodie, which was emblazoned with a giant, metallic green mighty shrimps she looked up and her eyes met Zed's, he watched her face break into a wide, brilliant smile. The sunlight that filtered in through the window made her hair shine.

Jeez, she's beautiful. He thought.

Addison practically sprinted past Zevon and through the little room, rushing to gently take Zed's hands.

"Zed!" She said, her voice filled with relief. "I'm so glad to see you. We were all so worried." She reached out to run a hand through his hair, and he sighed and leaned into her touch.

Behind her, Zevon was grinning. "I'm stepping out to talk to the doctor for a minute, kids. Addison, you may need to fill Zed in on a few things from last night. His memory is a little fuzzy at the moment."

More like completely missing. Zed grumbled internally.

Addison squeezed his hand in a comforting gesture as his dad walked out into the hallway, shutting the door behind him. She looked back to Zed, and the inner knot of tension that he hadn't realized was building in his chest loosened. Addison's presence always made everything better. Even waking up in a hospital with no memory of how he got there.

"So you don't remember anything?" She asked, worry etched into her facial expression as she continued to stroke his hair. She sat halfway onto the bed, and he scooted over to make space for her.

"I just remember being at the cemetery with the guys, and then waking up here this morning. What happened with the Lunites? They were just on the news! And Charon's in jail?"

Addison placed a soothing hand on his cheek. "Don't worry, zandgrome. I'll explain everything."

ZzZzZzZ

As it turned out, dissociative amnesia was a fairly common side effect of trauma, which Zed had definitely experienced plenty of the night before. There was also a good chance that the morphine had messed with his memory, as well. Addison had thought that once she explained the events of the night before, he would regain some memories. But it was just a giant blank space in his head. It was pretty bizarre, to listen to and feel such a thing in his head. It was like someone had taken an eraser, and simply wiped away words that had been written on a chalkboard. It was just gone.

He didn't remember the house fire, or that he'd thought she was dead, or that he and the others had attacked Charon in retaliation. To be honest, Addison was glad that he didn't remember some of it. She would never forget how upset he'd been, and how much her supposed demise had broken him.

No, she didn't mind him forgetting that part at all.

Addison had stood behind the bed, listening as the doctor spoke to Zed and Zevon. She was explaining what side effects Zed should expect as he recovered, both from the surgery and from the morphine. Thanks to the morphine, Zed would have additional scarring on his wrist, due to the many strong electric jolts he had received. His chest would also be sore for a few days, due to the fact that he had basically died and come back to life multiple times throughout the early morning hours.

His dad was, rightfully, pretty mad about the morphine incident, and they had been assured that the young EMT had been reprimanded. He would be receiving additional training, to prevent any similar incidents from occurring in the future. They were also now making it mandatory that all ambulance and emergency workers take classes on zombie-specific health and medical treatments.

In Addison's opinion, this should already have been a requirement. It shouldn't have taken Zed getting hurt for something this important to be made a general policy. But Zevon and Zed both seemed satisfied with it, and weren't going to press charges against the hospital or ambulance service.

Zed was discharged shortly after the doctor spoke with them, with strict instructions to take it easy for the rest of the day. His shoulder, at least, felt immeasurably better thanks to the surgery. As it turned out, the bone had never healed correctly in the first place. Had they not ended up doing the surgery, he probably would have experienced pain issues in his shoulder for the rest of his life, and would probably never have been able to play football again.

On the positive side, thanks to Zed and the other guys, Charon was behind bars. Now, everyone knew what he really was, and what he had been up to. So far, there was no sign of the second moonstone. And so far, Charon had not let slip to anyone what he had been planning in the first place. Qamar was still at the jail helping to guard him. Later today, Mayar would be taking his place, so that he could go home and rest. Charon wasn't the type of being that you wanted a tired or unfocused person to be guarding.

Until the second moonstone was found, Charon needed to be safely locked away.

Addison found herself pondering the moonstone now, as she, Zed and Zevon sat and waited for Zed's release paperwork to be completed.

Where could it possibly be? It hadn't been at his home, which had now been searched by z-patrol officers. And it definitely hadn't been in Building Z, which was now in ruins. She thought back on the drawing that Qamar had made that day at the city council meeting. Each detail of the little picture was burned into her mind. The stone, suspended from ropes, swaying back and forth. The dark, cobwebbed room, and what looked like chain link fencing in the background.

Now that she was thinking about it, she paused. There hadn't been a tarp covering the stone in the drawing, as their had been in the picture. And the criss-cross pattern in the darkened background was far too large and close to the moonstone to have been the cages that she saw at Building Z.

Addison shuddered involuntarily as she thought of the cages again.

So, maybe, the drawing hadn't been completely wrong after all. Maybe Qamar really had drawn where the moonstone was hidden, and they'd just ended up in the wrong location. Charon had prepared for that, and set his trap in a place that looked just similar enough that they wouldn't notice the differences. But where else could it possibly be? She couldn't think of another spot in all of Seabrook that was so dark and dreary, with chain link fencing in the background. She felt like she was missing something obvious, but had no idea what it could be.

"Ads?" Zed's voice cut into her silent reverie, and Addison's head twisted up instantly to face him.

"The paperwork is done." Zed said, sliding out of the bed. They had let him put his clothes back on after the doctor had spoken with them. They were covered in grass stains, from his wrestling match with Charon on Bree's neighbor's front lawn.

"Let's go home." Zevon said.

Since Addison had gone with Zed in the ambulance the night before, she didn't have her car. Her mom would be coming to pick her up at the Eliza's house, once they had gotten Zed settled on the couch and made sure that he was alright. But, memory loss aside, Zed actually seemed to be doing well. He was definitely moving better and acting peppier than he had been in days. She wondered how much pain he must have been in this entire time, without ever uttering a single complaint. An improperly healed bone had to be awful to walk around with. Not to mention tackle a person to the ground with.

Zed was one of the toughest people she had ever known.

Tough or not, though, all patients were required to ride in a wheelchair when leaving the hospital. So Zed sat, looking slightly embarrassed, as Addison and Zevon walked alongside him with the young zombie orderly pushing the wheelchair. Once they made it down the elevator and out of the front door, the orderly allowed him to stand. They wished the little group a good day, and then quickly sauntered back into the sliding hospital doors, wheelchair in tow.

The bus that would take them to Zombietown arrived just two minutes later, and they all boarded it gladly. Addison had never ridden in a city bus before, and was a little excited to experience public transportation. Zed laughed as she took in the bus with a huge grin, and he allowed her to take the window seat next to him so that she could look out at the ocean while they rode. Zevon sat two seats ahead of them, immediately leaning his head back onto the seat and closing his eyes for a short nap.

Zed leaned his own head atop Addison's, sighing contentedly and dozing off almost instantly. She could hear the odd, half formed dreams in his sleeping brain within a minute. They largely involved her, and frequently involved some or all of their friends. One short dream included his mom and a tiny Zed standing on a step stool. His mom was showing him how to make rice-krispy treats. Addison resolved to take a trip to the grocery store for the right supplies, so that she could make some for him sometime soon.

Addison watched out the window as the wall of trees gave way to a spectacular view of the beach. Since everyone in school was out on vacation today, there were plenty of humans, zombies and wolves around, all enjoying the sea and sand. Now that the Lunites had gone public, Addison was sure that they would soon be mingled in amongst the other beach-goers. The thought made her smile joyfully.

As they drove past the pier which was built along the cove, she could see a variety of rides and attractions set up. A few boats bobbed happily back and forth in the water surrounding it. Nearby, there was a stage in place, where they would be doing their cheer routine in just two days. Addison was going to have to get some sleep before their practice today, which Bucky had blessedly rescheduled to seven at night rather than seven this morning. But for now, she could just sit and enjoy the sights through the little window.

Between the lovely beach view and listening to Zed's dreams, Addison had a pleasant first bus ride experience.

She didn't think about the moonstone again all morning.