You didn't think you'd run for your life today when you woke up this morning.

It had been a morning like any other, one where you woke up at seven, took a quick shower, and got ready for the day. Today, your hair was tied up in a messy bun that really embraced its messiness, and you wore a comfortable graphic tee and some jeans.

Rubbing the sleep out of your eyes, you grabbed your messenger bag that was stuffed full of an assortment of books ranging from an autobiography that you'd borrowed for homework, to the third book in A Game of Thrones. It's thin leather was stretched with age, and the strap seemed to creak when you flung it over your shoulder.

You grabbed a banana and a granola bar from your pantry, doing your best not to wake up your parents on a Saturday morning. Snatching your keys from the rack on the wall, you head out into the brisk spring air.

Your car was handed down from your father, who hadn't kept it clean. The seats had tears with foam oozing out, and the passenger side door was permanently locked from the outside. Even so, you vacuumed the carpets when you received it, and now it looked less like a place where fast food went to die, and more like a simple beat up old car.

You grabbed the resident hoodie from the passenger seat and pulled it on, throwing your messenger bag into the backseat. You turned the key, and the car sputtered a few seconds before the engine could finally kick into gear and you were able to pull off the side of the road and head to the town's library.

You'd started working there when you were only fifteen, as a volunteer. You'd gone there every day after school, and the place had become a sort of sanctuary for you, a place where there you could cuddle up on the overstuffed couches, grab a random book from the shelf, and immerse yourself in another world for hours on end. And if some days you weren't feeling up to the physical pages, you plugged yourself into an audiobook and doodled on your sneakers, or sometimes your arm. It had become a second home to you.

You unlocked the front door and flipped the sign over so it read, "We're open!" in bright, cheery colors.

"Hey, Y/N!" Jonas was your fellow employee. He kept up with all the logistics, while you knew the library inside and out. Most of the time, though, he was playing a computer game in the back room, or challenging some middle schooler to a thumb war.

"Hey, Jonas," you said, yawning. "What's up?"

"Nothing much," he replied. "But I was able to bump up my score on the Pac Man machine before you got here."

"Really?!" You perked up. "How could you possibly have beaten your last score?"

"Guess I'm just that good," Jonas replied with a wink.

You fished one of your books out of your messenger bag and tossed the bag into the corner, reclining into one of the cushy swivel chairs at the front desk. Jonas whipped out his smartphone and disappeared into the back room as you opened your book to read.

Just before you could start, however, a fair-haired boy burst through the double doors, looking quite in a hurry. His shirt was covered in dust and dirt, and his pants looked singed at the bottom. Was that… was that blood on his sleeve?

You'd seen plenty of people come into the library, from hundreds of backgrounds, each person's clothing a different state. But this teen looked like he'd been in a car accident, and had ran through the burning wreckage directly into the library.

You stared at him as he glanced over his shoulder, brushing soot and dirt from his thighs. After a quick scan of the room, he walked up to you and asked, "Where are the computers?"

He had an English accent. Yet another strange thing about him. You didn't usually get English visitors here, not in rural Texas.

It took you a moment to reply, during which the boy in front of you waited politely, but nervously. "Uh, I- I'll show you the way."

You got out of your chair, abandoning your book without bothering to slip a placeholder in, and led the way to the row of computers that worked the best. The boy sat down at one of them and brought up the search engine immediately.

You knew you should mind your own business, but the state he was in, combined with the obvious hurry as his fingers flew across the keyboard, made you ask, "Are you alright?"

He didn't take his eyes off the screen. "I'm fine," he replied curtly, pressing the enter key with a little too much aggression.

"Do you need any... Do you want... um… help?"

He ignored your question and instead clicked on one of the recent articles. His eyes flashed across the screen fervently. It looked to be some sort of blog, with plants all over the page.

With no reply, you took this as your cue to leave. But you were only a few steps away when he called out to you again.

"Excuse me," he said. "Do you know anything about Telecorp?"

Telecorp? You turned around slowly. "Yeah, my Dad works there. What do you want to know?"

Something crossed the teen's face, but it was gone before you could identify it. "What's he working on right now?" he asked, whipping out a small device and snapping a shot of the computer screen.

This whole situation was incredibly strange. A sixteen year old with an English accent, dressed in tattered clothing, bursts into your library minutes after opening, asking about your father's work? Not something you saw every day.

Brushing away any suspicion, you answered the question regardless. "I'm not sure." The boy looked disappointed, so you added, "He has been going back into work late at night, though."

The boy looked up at you. "Has he mentioned anyone named Sylvia Morris?"

"Morris?" You think for a moment. "Yeah, that rings a bell. But why…"

You're interrupted by the sound of the front doors crashing open.

"Excuse me," you muttered, heading back into the front entrance. You're just able to get a glimpse of the scene there before the fair-haired boy yanks you to the side.

"What the-?" But you fell silent as he put a finger to his lips and shook his head.

"I will ask you one more time." A deep male voice wafted through the hall and into the room where you stand. Two incredibly large men in dark dress had been looming over the front desk, over Jonas. What was going on?

"Where is the boy?" One of them demanded, reaching across the desk and pulling Jonas closer by the chain that he refuses to remove from his neck.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Jonas squeeked, his voice an octave higher than normal. "There hasn't been anyone in today!"

"You're lying," the other growled.

"I swear, I'm not!" Jonas's voice fell silent for a moment before he says, "What do you want, money, or something?"

Then, there was the unmistakable sound of a bullet being fired.

Before you could stop yourself, you cried, "JONAS!"

And all at once, things got very bad.

You've leaped out from behind the wall that the fair-haired teen was still hidden behind to see some ceiling tile falling from above two burly men. Jonas was unscathed, but that could change any time. The two men shout, pointing at you and drawing their guns.

"Come on!" You hear, then there are two arms grabbing you by the waist and yanking you towards the back door.

You could hear the two men shouting from behind you, but you didn't look back as you and the boy sprinted across the room and burst out the back doors. A few steps later you realized he wasn't by your side anymore. You whirled around and spotted his tattered shirt still fiddling with the doors.

"What are you doing?" you cried. "We've got to get out of here!"

To your mild surprise, he did as you said, slipping something back into his pocket and backing away from the door. What on Earth was he thinking? Those guys would have no problem getting through that door, even if there were three fridges and a sink blocking the way. But amazingly, the double doors were holding under the two men's constant barrage.

Your phone still sat in your messenger bag inside, and the sidewalks were nearly empty this early in the morning. Figures. When there are two homicidal bodybuilders coming after you, there's not a phone in sight.

The blond kid still hadn't turned and run. What was he waiting for?

Then, the doors gave way, and one of the men burst through. You opened your mouth to yell at the teen, to get him to leave, but there was no need. The man's hand flew up to his neck, and promptly crumpled to the ground, out cold.

But you didn't have time to celebrate, because the second man was stepping through the doorway and over his partner's limp body.

You had just enough time to catch a glimpse of the teen tossing a thick pencil aside before he turned and ran, grabbing your arm and yanking you along.

You snatched your arm out of his grasp, frustrated that he wanted to rush you after he'd just waited for his pursuers to catch up.

You reached a turn in the sidewalk and motioned him to the right. "This way!"

There was an alley a couple steps in that direction, and the two of you ducked into it, diving behind a dumpster.

You could only see the man's feet as they pounded along the concrete, too-shiny shoes traveling past the alley at incredible speed. A beat later, you let out a breath and made to stand up, but the boy's hand reached up and pulled you back down again.

"Hey, what are you-?"

You fell silent upon seeing the shoes come back around, creeping into the alleyway. Raising a hand up to your mouth, you watched as his shoes passed the dumpster next to you. They avoided the puddles of grime, inspecting each corner, even checking inside one of the green trash cans on the other side of the alley.

There was a tap on your shoulder, and you slowly turned to see the boy urging you into some backdoor that looked as if it hadn't been used in a good few years.

You hesitated, wondering if maybe the man would just leave you alone. After all, it was the blondie in front of you that he was after. Then you remembered Jonas, and crawled through the door into the musty backstage of a long forgotten theater.

You were amazed the hinges didn't creak when the boy quietly shut the door, stuck a pin into the lock, then sighed and caught his breath.

"Who the hell are you?" you asked.

The boy looked at you a moment, seemingly sizing you up. "I'm Alex," he finally answered.

You scoffed. "Well, Alex, want to tell me exactly why there are two dudes with guns after you?"

But Alex was already on the move, maneuvering around racks of moth eaten costumes and spiderwebs that didn't look like decorations. "Listen," he said as you followed him down the narrow hallway. "It's complicated…"

"I could've told you that much," you replied.

There was a pause, and you remembered Jonas's face when you last saw him, pale and frightened. Was he okay? Would he call the police? What would he even tell them?

You blinked a few times, partly to wash those thoughts away and partly to get the dust out of your eyes. "Where are you going?" you asked.

You had reached the right side of the stage and Alex walked out onto it, hurrying down the steps in the center. "To get some new clothes."

You pushed the curtain aside, unearthing a few decades worth of dust in the process. "You can't just leave! That guy is still out there looking for you!"

Alex turned to face you, and you nearly bumped into him. "None of this has anything to do with you."

"But-"

"I've got to go," Alex interrupted, pushing open the emergency exit door. "Just forget about this, okay?"

You sputtered as he glanced over his shoulder one last time. "And if anyone asks about all this, would you do me a favor?" He gave you a little look. "Lie."

And then he was gone.

You were left all alone up the dusty stage.