Ah yes, finally a long chapter! I'm not sure if anyone's reading this but I shall not falter! If you do happen to be a reader I really hope that you enjoy this! Any reviews would be greatly valued, let me know if anything bothers you!

Now... enjoy for the mystery keeps rising :)

The pack had gathered at the McCall residence afterschool. They all stood around Scott's room thinking about what Lydia had felt.

"What do you think it means?" Kira questioned.

"I don't know but it can't be anything good" Lydia shifted uncomfortably.

Scott sat on the foot on his bed next to Stiles who inadvertently moved away.

"Okay, so what are we supposed to do? I mean, what do you guys usually do when stuff like this happens?" Malia questioned. The tense air was making her impatient. It felt like there was a barrier between everyone, limiting their interactions.

Scott and Stiles turned to each other, then back to Malia.

"Well we usually," Scott started and Stiles finished for him, "stumble around until we find something."

Lydia rolled her eyes but she knew they were right. Even if they tried to go at this logically they didn't have enough data to actually account for anything.

Kira put her hands on her hips, "You said that someone was about to die right? We know that the last person died somewhere near the forest, so maybe we should be looking there?"

"Yeah but the reserve is huge. Even if we split up there's very little chance we'll actually find this person." Scott said.

Frustrated with the lack of progress Stiles got up and started pacing around the room. He knew that there'd be more bodies until they could find something which could actually help them.

When he looked at Malia an idea popped into his head. It was a long shot but there wasn't anything better they could do right now.

They could go through attendance records at school and missing person's reports at the station to see if anyone was missing.

Everyone seemed on board except Kira.

"I really think we should check out the forest. You guys can use your senses to find something. We could even find the missing person."

She looked at Scott with a pleading look, then to the others.

"There's no point in not trying," Scott agreed and looked at Stiles, "Malia could go with her. No one knows the forest better than she does. Lydia can talk to her mom and you and I can go to the station."

"Alright," Stiles agreed and pointed at Malia, "but you, no getting kidnapped. Got it?"

XXXXXX

As she made her way to her mom's desk Lydia desperately hoped that her mom wouldn't be too much of a problem. She guessed that she was vaguely aware that at least something weird was going on even if she didn't know the whole truth about the supernatural.

She put on a smile when she saw her mom. She smiled back at her.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Just saying hello to my mom," Lydia smiled but knew that her mother saw through her.

"Really?" she pushed up her glasses, "what do you want?"

Lydia kept her sweet voice and smile on, "I was wondering if you could maybe let me see the absentee list?"

"And why exactly would I let you see the attendance record?" Ms. Martin laughed at her request.

Realizing that this would be harder than she'd hoped she said, "A life could be at stake here mom," as convincingly as she could.

"Really? How's that?"

When her daughter didn't answer Natalie raised an eyebrow.

"Please, mom? I'm serious, and there's no reason why you shouldn't. "

She looked at her daughter, Understandably so, her hair and make-up had been sloppier the last few months. Considering that she'd lost her best friend she seemed to be doing fine but Natalie didn't even believe for a second that that was the case.

She sighed, "fine. I hope this really does save someone's life," she opened a drawer and put a checklist in front of her daughter, "here."

Lydia mouthed a thank you and leaned at the table as she skimmed through the records. Not a single person was marked absent. She double-checked, slower this time. Her expectations were met with disappointment.

She took a deep breath and texted the others. Hopefully, their luck was better than hers.

XXXXXX

At the forest, Kira was circling a small area, "this where they found the body?"

"Yup," Malia answered, sure of herself.

They both stood quietly between the tall trees. It looked like nothing had happened. The scene had been cleaned but it still looked as if not a single leaf was out of place. After a moment's silence, Malia noticed Kira looking at her.

"What?"

"Where do we go?" Kira asked.

"I don't know, this was your idea."

"Can't you smell anything?"

"What am I supposed to smell? The rain washed everything away."

Kira looked around hopelessly when a sudden epiphany occurred, "They said the victim drowned right? So maybe we should be looking for water?"

"Yeah but the body wasn't near one"

"There could be something near the water to give us a clue."

"Okay," Malia shrugged and set a course towards the pond. She already knew the forest like the back of her hand, so she didn't have any worries as they crossed the reserve.

"How bad do you think this is going to get?" Kira nervously asked. She wasn't sure if anyone had the strength to fight anything like the nogitsune again.

"Probably not as bad as you say the dark spirit was."

"Scott keeps saying something about 'regression to the means' I can't say the last few months have been that great so things will probably get better right?"

"They probably won't get worse. But then again we don't know what this is. It

could be a deadly virus that slowly kills everyone."

Malia turned around for a moment to look at Kira. Noticing the distress she'd caused she said, "If things have to meet in the middle then things have to get better for the scale to tip the other way. We'll be fine"

"Yeah, I guess so."

They reached their destination a few minutes later. The pond was quite large. Just a bit smaller than the swimming pools at the school. However, it looked really deep, so deep that it could reach the center of the earth.

It was in the middle of an opening surrounded by the tall trees and a few empty beer bottles. Clearly, people had made good use of this beautiful place.

There didn't seem to be anything out of place. The light wind gently dragged the water, creating small waves.

Kira bent down and touched the water. It was cool. Something about this place made her feel really relaxed.

"Well? Smell anything weird?"

Malia breathed in deeply. All she could smell was the freshness of the water and grass, "No not really. It just smells like a pond."

"Great. This was useless wasn't it?" Kira said as she looked around the clearing.

"At least now we know there isn't anything weird here."

"Yeah, I guess. Hopefully, the others find something."

As if on cue both the girl's phones chimed. It was from Lydia.

"I guess it's Scott and Stiles now." Malia sighed, "come on we should probably be getting back."

As they started to walk back Malia suddenly stopped.

"What is it?" Kira asked.

"Did you hear that?"

Kira shocked her and squinted her eyes to see if anything was there.

"There!" Malia pointed and started to run.

"Malia wait!"

As Kira hurried after Malia, something caught her attention. Something white could be seen behind the bushes a bit further than they were. She stopped and called after Malia who was getting further away.

Kira couldn't help but move towards the bushes. As she got closer an odd scent filled the air around her. Dreading what she'd find she pulled at leaves apart and gasped at the sight before her.

Stiles turned the jeep's key with frustration.

"Oh come on!" he said as he gave it another turn but his attempts were futile. He sighed and put his head on the steering wheel.

"Maybe one of the pipes burst again?" Scott suggested.

"No, I just taped them yesterday," Stiles said as he looked up. He turned the key again just in case but it didn't work. It felt like they'd never leave Scott's driveway.

He gave up and got out of the car to inspect the problem.

Everything seemed fine.

Scott also got out of the car and joined him.

"Anything?"

"Nope," Stiles said and closed the jeep's hood a bit too forcefully. Scott raised an eyebrow.

"Are you okay dude?" he asked. He knew that he was probably far from okay. He could sense the waves of frustration and tension coming off of him.

"Fine." Stiles lied and got back in the car to avoid Scott but he just followed him into the car.

"Come on man talk to me. I don't know how to help you."

Scott was starting to get on his nerves. Stiles understood his motive but he didn't wanna keep talking about this. People couldn't stop bringing it up as if he didn't relive everything in his head enough.

He wished that everyone would just forget.

"What do you want me to say?" he said a bit more aggressively than he had intended. He continued after softening his voice, "That I can't stop blaming myself for everything? That I wish It'd been me instead of Allison?," he felt Scott flinch at the mention of her name, "Because I do! There isn't a single person that I haven't hurt and now I'm paying the price. So can we just-," he held his tears in, he didn't want to appear even weaker than he seemed now, "can we just not talk about this? There's nothing to help."

Scott tried his best, not to imagine himself holding on to Allison's cold and lifeless body but when he tried to block it out he was met with the blurred memory of hearing her heart give its last beat. He pulled himself together. She was gone now, but he wouldn't lose his best friend too.

"You know that it's not your fault right? I don't blame you, neither does Argent, or anyone. You fought as hard as you could and so did we. There wasn't anything that could've been done."

Stiles sighed, "I should've fought harder. I should've noticed that something was wrong earlier and I should've stopped it from taking over me in the first place. All of this happened because I was too weak. I-"

Scott interrupted him, "Remember what you told your dad after he found out about the supernatural? That he shouldn't get stuck on the ifs and instead try to help the ones he can now? So should you. Let's stop whoever's doing this before it can harm anyone else"

Stiles gave him a sad smile and turned the keys again.

"Wow it would've been really poetic if that worked." he scoffed and Scott laughed.

Thankfully the car roared alive when he tried it again and the teens finally got on their way.

It took them about ten minutes to get to the station. As they made their way to the door Scott said, "Your dad didn't seem too keen to let us into the case the other day. Are sure he'll let us see the missing person's reports?"

"That's why we got this," Stiles raised the bag of junk food.

The sheriff was at this desk, scratching his head while looking at a pile of papers.

Without knocking Stiles entered his office and Noah's head shot up in surprise.

"Hey kid," he said and buried his head back in his work.

"I have a surprise," he shuffled his way to his father and put the bag of food on his desk.

The Sheriff looked at his son with disbelief. He peeked through the bag and saw the curly fries and hamburger.

"Alright, what's the catch?"

"What catch? There is no catch I'm just a teen bringing his pops some food"

Scott retained himself from smiling. Mr. Stilinki raised an eyebrow and looked at both the teens. Stiles copied his dad's expression and returned the look.

"If you think I'm gonna-"

Stiles interrupted his dad, "Lydia had a premonition, someone's in danger."

The Sheriff looked at Scott, "Is this true?"

"Yeah, whatever it was I felt it too. Lydia said that she felt like someone's going to die. Whoever they are they might've been reported missing."

Noah sighed, "Sorry to disappoint you two but there hasn't been a new report in a long time."

"What? Not a single person went missing?" Stiles insisted.

"No."

"Any new developments that you'd like to share?"

The sheriff made a gruntled noise of indecisiveness.

"Come on dad."

He sighed, he knew his son would find out somehow eventually, "They ran the autopsy again. They found a small puncture wound between the 7th and 8th ribs on the right side. Almost invisible. We still have no idea what might have caused."

"How deep is it?" Scott asked.

"Almost to the lungs. The 'injury' would have to be a lot bigger if it were caused by a needle. This, this is barely a flesh wound."

Both the teens' phones pinged.

"Nothing from Lydia either," Scott said as looked at the others in disappointment. A few moments later the silence was broken by a frantic call from Kira.

"You found what!" he asked in alarm.

Stiles asked him what was going on but Scott paid no attention.

"Slow down, where are you guys?"

He hung up the phone in shock.

"Is everything alright?" asked the sheriff.

"Kira and Malia, they found another body"