Breakfast had been a tense affair that morning, with everyone practically glaring daggers at Mevia– with the exception of Nell and Jesse and Hadrian. In fact, Hadrian had even offered to get another cup of water for her when he'd accidentally knocked it over with his elbow. Mevia had accepted the offer, slightly concerned about the fact that he was being so nice after what had happened last night.

It seemed there hadn't been any need to worry, though. Hadrian had simply handed her the re-filled glass of water after going to refill it and nothing had happened beyond that.

Now if only she'd stop feeling so sick.

Mevia was feeling dreadful after the events of the previous day and night combined. Hearing Jesse's pleading scream for help after hours of almost no sleep, running in to see that the girl was curled up on the floor against the wall looking absolutely terrified about something, something strange and something Mevia was pretty sure she knew what it was, hugging the girl even though her instincts screamed at her not to be stupid and not to let Hadrian possibly see, everyone pulling them apart and Isa hissing angrily at her out of Jesse's earshot.

"Haven't you caused enough damage for one day?"

"Haven't you caused enough damage for one day?"

"Haven't you caused enough damage for one day?"

Isa's furious whisper was echoing around Mevia's head as she wandered the halls, trying to remember how to get back to the dining area for lunch, because even though she'd travelled in the straightest path possible, she was feeling so sick and tired that she might as well have strolled straight into the Nether and back out in a different area, for how hard it was to find her way to the dining hall.

Isa had never sounded that furious before.

Well, there was the time someone had handed her a stack of cooked chicken, but that had been some idiot trying to play a prank, not Mevia or Harper or Otto or Hadrian or one of them.

Isa had never sounded so angry with any of the Ancient Architects about anything. A bit annoyed, sure, because sometimes she just didn't eat enough or didn't sleep enough or something, or someone did something dumb.

But she'd never glared at anyone with such undisguised anger towards them as she had with Mevia last night.

Mevia felt sick about the whole thing. She'd pretty much given Jesse a beating, and then put the small, petite girl's life in danger by hugging her the night before when Hadrian had specifically warned her not to. What Jesse had done to end up there was a mystery, but the matter remained that Mevia had just put the small girl in even more danger than before.

... wow, if she was feeling this many emotions then she must be really sick. She hadn't felt this awful in a long time. Physically and emotionally.

Her head pounded with each stumbling step she took along the hallway, one hand on the wall to keep her from turning around and accidentally making another wrong turn, her mouth dry, her chest aching with pain.

By the time the dining room came into sight, Mevia was sure that something was wrong. Even from a complete lack of sleep, she should not have felt so sick. Admittedly, this morning she hadn't been feeling that bad. Just a little sleep-deprived, with a dose of constant worrying and fear and concern that she might've just ended up putting Jesse in danger– but not that bad at all.

In fact, she hadn't really started feeling this constant pain in her chest or her raspy, lumpy throat until sometime after breakfast–

"Mevia?"

The pale-blue-haired woman blinked blearily and looked up, still feeling like she wanted to pass out. Her vision swooped and split into twos and threes as she raised her eyes back up, only to see Jesse staring at her with concern in her eyes. The dining room was full of people, many of them still staring coldly, and the rest looking at her with concern.

Mevia couldn't be sure since the room was splitting into twos and threes and swooping up and down and all over the place with such dizzying vagueness that she couldn't quite make out their faces, but she was pretty sure that everyone in the mansion was there. Her eyes scanned the people, head mentally scrambling to put together a headcount...

... before she stalled to a halt at Ivor.

Ivor, who was standing behind Jesse, didn't look cold or concerned.

No, he looked panicked.

"Are you okay?" the shorter girl asked, frowning at Mevia from where she was sitting and making to get out of her chair.

"No," the pale-blue haired woman gestured vaguely for Jesse to sit down. Then she realized that could be taken the wrong way and waved again. "I mean, no, you don't have to stand up, yes, I'm fine."

"No you're not," Ivor spoke, so sharply that Harper, who was seated on Jesse's left (Mevia's right), actually looked at him in surprise.

"Of course I'm fine," Mevia replied, a little more faintly. Everything had just turned blurry. And green. Was it supposed to be green? "I'm perfectly..."

There was a black spot above her head. Her eyes trailed upwards to follow it, but the spot started moving further back, and further back, and there were more spots forming–

Mevia was out before she hit the floor.


The moment Mevia's eyes started rolling up into her head, Jessi had shoved her chair back with enough force to knock it over– in fact, it did actually fall over– and raced over, diving forward in the nick of time to keep Mevia from suffering a nasty collision with the floor but also ending up with the older woman lying on top of her with her elbow smarting from where she'd just banged it on the floor and the taste of blood in her mouth– she'd bitten her tongue by accident.

Ivor was the next person over, helping shift Mevia off of Jessi. "We need to get her to the infirmary."

"Can't we just take her back to her room? It's closer, and I'm sure she just didn't get enough sleep," Cassie meekly contributed. "I mean, I definitely didn't after–"

"No." Ivor's voice was sharper than a dagger. "We need to get her to the infirmary, now."

Jessi looked up at her foster father, now realizing that his face was a little paler than it had been before and his jaw was tight. "D– Ivor? What's wrong?" she asked, feeling a little lost because she didn't know why he looked as if he was about to panic as he leaned over Mevia, eyes narrowing as he examined her quickly.

"She's been poisoned."

Jessi felt her shoulders tense at that.

"Poisoned?" Otto sounded alarmed here. "Are you certain?"

Isa sounded uncertain when she spoke. "She just looked a bit tired to me... I think it might just be–"

Ivor sighed with annoyance and glanced at Jessi. "Jessi, look." He pulled back a shut eyelid to reveal Mevia's eye, the iris mostly rolled back in her skull. But now that Jesse looked at it, the pupil took up most of the iris, leaving only a small rim of dark brown in its place.

Jessi wasn't sure what Ivor was getting at with that, but she could tell he was expecting something, so she said at last, "Her eyes are still dilated?"

He nodded, still looking at her as if he was expecting something.

Jessi stared at Mevia– and then it hit her. "It's the middle of the day. There's light pouring in everywhere. Her eyes shouldn't be dilated."

"Bingo. For some reason, Mevia's system isn't reacting to stimuli the way it should," Ivor agreed instantly, pointing at Jessi slightly. "Not to mention, she's breathing very shallowly for some reason, so–"

As if on cue, Mevia gave a shuddering gasp, before her breathing went back to the shallow inhales that had been so quiet that Jessi hadn't been able to hear them.

"Most people don't breathe like that, even if they pass out from sleep deprivation," Ivor continued, as if he'd actually said something, absentmindedly testing Mevia's pulse– and then his face went even paler.

He abruptly stood up, looking at Gabriel. "Get her to the infirmary. I have to get the heavy duty potion stand." And the man started towards the last place the heavy-duty potion stand had been, which was the basement.

Gabriel hesitated for only a second– and then Ivor turned to look over his shoulder and shot him an acidic glare. "Now."

"What? What's going on? What's wrong now?" Lukas asked, simply looking totally bewildered from where he'd been sitting near Jessi before she'd jumped up and run over to keep Mevia from banging her head.

"Well, if we don't give her an antidote in the next ten minutes, she's going to die," Ivor replied, tersely.

He proceeded to take advantage of the stunned silence that filled the room to slip out and head for the basement to get the heavy-duty potion stand.

Jessi stayed kneeling on the floor next to Mevia, blinking several times in shock, before turning to look over her shoulder.

Soren looked as if someone had just cracked a wooden sword over his head, he was so stunned. Isa was looking at Milo with such a lost look on her face that she could've sworn that Isa was actually, physically lost. Cassie was blinking rapidly as she tried to process this fact, Harper was half-out of her chair and looked totally confused, Otto looked as if he wanted to grab someone...

Hadrian was smiling slightly.

He noticed that Jessi was staring at him, and his lips curved into a smirk.

That makes my job much easier.

You won't stand up to me.

Not if you want to keep your friends alive.

She'd stood up to him. Maybe in a bit of a cowardly way, in screaming for help instead of fighting him back, instead of yelling and bringing everyone running, instead of finding a way to out him.

But she'd stood up to him.

And now she was paying the price.


Olivia strode through the hallway rapidly.

She couldn't believe it. Mevia had beat Jesse up– had even convinced Nell and even Jesse, who was the one who'd been getting beaten up in the first place, that she hadn't meant to do it– and now she was poisoned.

She didn't feel happy about that exactly... but she didn't feel as upset about it as Jesse did.

Her fists curled up at her sides. Ivor had managed to wrestle out the heavy-duty potion stand and whip something up to expel most of the poison from Mevia's system, although it had mostly come up in the form of Mevia coughing blood that was tinted a nasty, dark green. Olivia had seen potions of poison before...

But the poison that had been in Mevia's system had to be the worst Olivia had ever seen.

At least Mevia would probably survive a little longer and give Ivor more time to figure out exactly how much of the antidote he had to give her to expel the poison from her system entirely.

Aiden had asked why they couldn't just give her a huge amount of the antidote to expel the potion, and Ivor had stared at him before saying, as if stating the obvious, "Because in overly large doses, the antidote that Mevia needs for the poison in her system is more dangerous than the poison itself. It'd end up killing her."

So that was a bit of a nuisance.

Jesse had gotten really upset about Mevia getting poisoned. It was almost like Axel, or Lukas, or Petra or Jace or Olivia or Ivor had gotten poisoned– and if Jesse continued denying that the two of them were like a little makeshift family at this point, Olivia was going to punch the girl in the shoulder and shake her to her senses– and not someone who'd tried to hurt her yesterday, someone who'd nearly killed her.

Olivia suddenly realized someone was standing behind her.

It wasn't even a smooth transition to realization– she just shook herself out of her deep thoughts and realized that there was someone standing behind her, just as she prepared to head down the stairs.

She didn't even have time to turn to see who it was before a pair of hands slammed into her shoulders and knocked her forwards, off-balance. Olivia instinctively stepped forward to keep herself from falling– before realizing she'd just prepared to head down the stairs and the spot where there would've been more floor to catch her was thin air.

The foot she'd used to try to catch her twisted badly as it landed on the stair, and the dark-haired girl stumbled before she suddenly toppled forward, letting out a yell of fear as she threw her arms over her head to keep herself from any fatal injuries.

Her ribs slammed into the staircase below and the curly-haired redstone-engineer-in-training let out a gasp of pain as acid seemed to flood into her rib cage, pain spreading up her side.

She barely had time to process that before her elbow clipped a stair, her twisted ankle took advantage of the momentum to throw her body forward again, and then she couldn't tell what was up or down or right or left, she just knew that the stairs were battering her, her head ramming full into one stair and jolting something loose in her head, her kneecap cracking uncomfortably as it collided with the wall, her twisted ankle twisting even worse as it smashed into the wall–

Olivia suddenly realized she wasn't being battered by the stairs anymore, lying on her back with pain flooding her ribs like someone had just dumped acid on that area. Her elbow was oddly warm and also felt like it had been dipped in acid, while her kneecap stung with a vengeance and her ankle was throbbing. She felt as if someone had just finished giving her a beating with a wooden club.

She kept her eyes shut, not daring to open them– with how badly her head was throbbing, she was sure she was going to start hallucinating if she opened her eyes.

"Olivia? Olivia?!"

The girl let out an incoherent groan and let her eyes flutter open against her will. Axel looked as if he was about to have a panic attack. At least he cared. Olivia smiled– and immediately regretted it as something in her jaw proceeded to complain vocally. "Ow."

"Dude, what happened?!" Axel exclaimed, looking as if he was trying to figure out how to pick her up without causing her injury. "Did you trip down the stairs?"

"No... pushed," Olivia managed through what felt like a red-hot wire being threaded through her jawbone.

"You were pushed?"

Olivia managed a grunting sound– and bit her tongue so hard she tasted blood when Axel scooped her up to keep herself from screaming, because it hurt, it hurt so much

She forced herself to stare at the top of the staircase, pain making her eyesight fuzzy.

But she didn't see anyone.


"Jesse?" Lukas called, looking around for the girl as he walked down the hallway.

She'd disappeared somewhere after Gabriel had carried Mevia away, and even Reuben hadn't been able to find her. Said little pig was with Jace right now. He, Petra, and Lukas were all currently searching for the petite girl.

"C'mon, Jesse, Mevia'll be fine."

Not that I care that much, something muttered inside his chest.

And then he proceeded to feel guilty.

Sure, the Old– Ancient Architect had beat Jesse up, but Harper's explanation about Mevia's weird training made sense. And Nell had even come over to them and told them that it was an accident, and warned them to keep Jesse away from Hadrian.

The entire group hadn't taken it seriously– they just thought that Mevia had managed to fool Nell into thinking that she wasn't at fault for the incident. But after Mevia had gotten poisoned this morning... well, Lukas was starting to debate that Nell had actually been right.

He couldn't imagine anyone in the group of watchers having the mental capacity to poison someone– heck, to basically kill them, because if Ivor hadn't managed to whip up an antidote Mevia would probably be flat-out deader than a doornail right about now.

And I'm supposed to keep an open mind until there's solid proof of something, he thought gloomily.

But he hadn't done a very good job of that so far; lashing out Jesse for no reason earlier during the seventh episode and not even allowing himself to think that Nell had actually been right. That she hadn't just been fooled into thinking Mevia wasn't at fault.

He sighed a little as he turned a corner into another hallway. Some open-minded guy he was.

"Jesse? Y'there?" he called out, cupping one hand to his mouth to try to amplify the call–

Something caught his toe, knocking him forward awkwardly. Lukas gasped and tried to twist around to catch himself, but his center of gravity had already moved past the point of no return and the ankle of his foot that had tripped on whatever it was was twisting awkwardly as it didn't turn the way Lukas had expected it to–

Something whipped past his ear, missing it by a literal inch, and Lukas looked up just as his ankle fully twisted and he landed flat on his back with a yelp of pain.

The blonde gasped for breath and out of slight pain as he scanned the hallway, but there didn't seem to be anyone in sight.

On the wall, opposite where his head had been seconds before, was an ominously quivering hammer, the sharp prongs that people used to pry nails up with embedded in the wall.

Lukas gulped nervously, feeling a bubble of air travel down his esophagus and a dull pain throbbing in his ankle.

He wasn't sure if that was just a thing in the house that had already been there, or if it had to do with Mevia's poisoning, or even if this had been set up by one of the watchers– for all he knew, it had been set up by Ariza or Gommie or Red or someone, any of the previous inhabitants of this house.

But he was suddenly feeling much more ready to believe Nell about Mevia.

Clambering to his feet and leaning most of his weight onto his not-twisted ankle, he started limping towards the infirmary as fast as he could.

He had the uncomfortable feeling that someone else was there, even though he was standing in the hallway and there was absolutely nobody in either direction.

He didn't know where they were. But he did know that he didn't want to be caught alone with whoever it was.


A/N: Mevia, Lukas, Olivia... three of Jesse's friends have suffered some... unfortunate incidents.

Hmm, wonder who could be behind this? (stares at Hadrian thoughtfully)

Okay, so here's the deal– I've changed my update schedule (yet again). I'm currently focusing on my story The Fairytale Curse, which is... actually, I'm really proud of that. If you like my writing, please check that one out– it does start sort of slow, but my boyfriend (x3) Toni42 has been spoiled to a little bit of it and he said it gets really awesome later on.

So if you liked Hybrid, you should probably check that out, because I'm really proud of what I've got planned for the story, even though I'm still in the middle of the first episode.

Basically I update that until I get bored of it, then I update this story until I get bored, then I update Composite until I get bored, and then I update Minecraft: Normal Mode and Just a Game until I get bored, then I go back to The Fairytale Curse... so on so forth.

Responses to reviews!

LunarTheMooncake: (laughs) I don't think he'd like that very much.

NoItsBecky: (snorts) (laughs) You're the first person to pay, so you get to be first in beating Hadrian up.

Savannah-the-Caracal: Only for people who know Jesse's name is spelled 'Jessi', so only from Jessi's POV or from maybe Hadrian's. Later Ivor might pop into the list. / Hehehe

Kairi4ever15: Haha, true! / If this was actually real, I think I'd be rich by now. xD

Emily The Avenger: Oof indeed xD

AquaK13: (takes your 8 dollars) / I don't think Hadrian wants to play the game, but too bad for him. I'm making him play the game anyway xD / I just know that that's funny. I don't know if there's supposed to be something inappropriate about it. xD / I try to avoid making Undertale jokes at the moment just because I feel like legit every reader would point it out. xD / Ye :3

ItzJaiden: So far I have... 148 dollars from opening up this 'kill Hadrian' thing. xD

Toni42: Actually, only Jessi's POV will be spelled 'Jessi' since nobody else knows it's 'Jesse'– eventually everyone will realize her name's spelled with an 'i' and not an 'e' and the chapter will change accordingly. x3 / Haha, yes he is, Tonibear.

KaosRuin: True, your statement is.

andie: (laughs)

french pizza: (smiles) Oh, I'm not going to even ATTEMPT to kill Jessi. She already stood up to Hadrian, even if it wasn't in the bravest way. Now, Jessi's FRIENDS... well, that's a little more up in the air at this point. They'd better watch out, never mind if Jessi cries, because even if she begs and pleads, Hadrian might just cause them to die. (... whoops, just made a dark version of that song 'Santa Claus is Comin' to Town' xD)

SiSiren: (laughs) / Okey :3

Destroyered: (takes your 20 dollars) / (laughs) Hadrian's going to be quite mauled after this is all over.

Guest: (shrugs) / Oh, I watched it the day it came out! It's really nice. Very nostalgia-inducing x3 / (watches as Hadrian runs away)

ShiningHopeBeast: It's not AS sudden as some people seem to be thinking it's gonna be– I'm not just suddenly going to start spelling Jesse's name 'Jessi' since most of the watchers don't know that's how her name is actually spelled. / Jessi has surprisingly good intuition. / I hope so! xD

CamronXTheXGamer: Sure, knock yourself out xD

NovaAurora10: Either it's her intuition, or... something else. / Very generous of you xD

Mikaza1498: Ahhh, that sucks. / Not that unique, I think it's an existing name, but I like it xD / (laughs) I think if we were at the games he would've died, like... fifteen times already. / Quite soon, actually!

J.M.M.: Two kids, one adult so far... (squints) let's see, there's seven or eight total that Hadrian could go for...

EnderKitty68: 0-0 uhh, save some of that money for later xD

Guest: Currently I have, courtesy of most of it being from NovaAurora10, 1000000000000000000000000213 dollars from opening this 'Injure Hadrian' thing, and a few other ambiguous amounts of money. xD xD

EllieRose27: I'm glad you like it! / Nah, that's cool! / Sure thing :3

Darkbeast Dend: Sure, here you go. / xD Y'all are violent

Rabbits rule: (hands you tickets) That's fine, and don't worry about it– you don't have to review. It's not an obligation. xD / (chuckles) / Uhhh, I think most of the money I already have covers it, so... sure. xD

Shadow: Jessi doesn't need to do so much of the watching out. Her friends, now... that's a different story.

Raven: (hands you about 70 dollars worth of tickets) I'd give you more, but I think I should leave some for the other people. xD

Guest: Nice. :3

Guest: (squints) What exactly is stolen? You need to be clear when typing reviews, it's a bit troublesome to go back to the chapter you review on and reread the whole thing to figure out what you're talking about– especially because sometimes I still can't figure it out once I've reread it.

Crystal: Don't throw your phone!

Guest: Sure :3

Princess of Muffins: (laughs) Uh, sure. / Yeah, he doesn't particularly... like it. Too bad for him. xD / (laughs)

Guest: Ahh, yes. That one was great. xD

Guest: (snorts)

THEOVERPOWEREDBLADE: Aw, I'm sorry to hear that. / (giggles) Very true.

Oh, also, I mentioned this on The Fairytale Curse, but... last week, I told my crush I liked him, and he and I are dating now, and a week after the fact, I'm still so happy about it.

I love you, Toni. :3

x.X. A.L. X.x