A/N: NEW CHAPTER! And this was written almost entirely when I had a broken thumb, so it better be good, lol. Thank you for the reviews, and keep reading!

Disclaimer: I don't own Scott Westerfeld's characters or ideas, only my own.

Chapter Eight: Surprise

"He tried to kill us!" Melissa growled into the phone. "Dess, he's controlling those Darklings, claims it's a higher form of mindcasting."

Allison glanced out the window, watching a bird hop around the fence. She shuddered, realizing that just moments before that bird would have been climbing over a Darkling corpse.

"You can?"

She spun around, Melissa gripped the receiver of the phone tightly, her fingers white.

"What is it?" Jonathan called to her. She held up her hand tensely, silencing him.

"Yeah, call me back."

She hung up and let out a deep breath. "She's going to ask Rex about the mindcaster."

Jonathan stood up in surprise. "He's alright?"

"She says he's getting better." Allison could hear the hope in her voice, though she was trying desperately to smother it. "I warned them about Robert, that he might come looking for Madeline."

Allison glanced around the room, watching Brett across the room, crouched over his computer as always, chatting with the other polymaths. He spent every Saturday at Madison's, and though Allison didn't go all the time, she was sure he spent all his time on the internet. Garrett sat in a nearby corner, his knees against his chest, seeming to be playing some video game but she could see the distraction in his eyes.

She plopped down next to him and nudged him with her elbow. "What's wrong?"

He glanced up at her for an instant. "Nothing."

"Come on now, we've been friends since the third grade. You can't fool me."

He sighed and ran his hand across his head. She noticed they were shaking slightly. "I can't forget the other night. That creature almost killed me. I keep seeing its eyes, feel its breath on my face, its teeth against my neck…"

She hugged him tightly. "It's going to be alright."

"Easy for you to say. Everything is a weapon for you. All I can do is run away."

"Being invisible has more benefits than just escaping. I mean, come on. It's one of the coolest powers out there."

"I don't know what I'll do if another one attacks me, Aly. I can't do it again."

"You're scared, Garrett. It won't be so bad in a few days."

He glanced up at her almost angrily. She sighed.

"Sorry."

"It's alright. I just – I didn't know this was going to be like this. I thought it would be cool, you know? Having our own special time, being able to turn invisible? Doing whatever we want. But now… now I would give it all up just to be ignorant again. This could kill us, Aly! And look what it's done to us! We're sneaking around, tense all the time. Garrett is hobnobbing with a bunch of nerds, I'm running scared like some sissy boy, and you're focusing so much on this that you're not the same either. You quit the cheer squad?"

"You know this is more important. It's not just Big Blue, this mindcaster guy is working in the daylight hours. And you heard him, you've heard Melissa. This guy can mess with people's minds. Innocent people. And he's training other kids to do it to. They could go after our friends and families."

"You really think they'd go that far?"

"He tried to kill you. I don't think he'd hesitate for an instant."

He moaned lightly.

The phone rang again and Melissa pounced on it, pulling it into the kitchen. Jonathan followed.

"What do you think's going on?" Garrett muttered.

A while later Jonathan stepped out of the kitchen, grabbing his keys.

"What's going on?" Allison called.

"Talk to Melissa. I've got to go. I'll be gone a couple days."

And he stepped out of the house. As the roar of his car echoed in the driveway, Melissa walked out of the kitchen.

"You three, go get the rest of your friends. I have to talk to you."

"Why?"

"Rex and Dess are coming."

"Maddie? You okay?"

Madison heard Carrie's muffled voice from behind the door. She lay on her bed, her arms under her head, staring at the ceiling.

"I'm fine," she responded.

"Melissa's teaching us more about defense. Nicky can almost focus her sonic screams to the size of a pin from across the room."

"Cool," Madison muttered.

"You sure you're alright? You don't want to come down?"

"Nope. I'm just tired, Carrie."

"Alright," she stated, unconvinced.

Madison waited for her friend's footsteps to reach the base of the stairs before rolling over and sighing loudly. She wanted something, or perhaps there was something she was supposed to be doing; either way, something wasn't right, she didn't know what it was, and it was making her frustrated. She wanted to act, to accomplish something, but as more time passed, she couln't will herself to get out of her bed.

A few minutes later, a sharp knock struck her window. She sat up lazily and noticed a small stone wedged in her windowsill. She propped the window open and glanced down. Jason stared up at her. She felt a surge of conflicting, uncomfortable emotions.

"Meet me by the door!" he whispered up to her. She almost refused, remembering everything Robert had said the night before, but there was something terribly different about Jason… His eyes were darker, wider, as if frozen permanently in shock. There was also a humility about him that she had never seen before. She tasted guilt.

She nodded and crept down the stairs, careful to seem completely disinterested in the lesson, ignoring the look Melissa gave her, knowing that without Jonathan, she didn't have the time to chase after her. Even Jessica wasn't able to help. With Jonathan gone and the danger level fairly low at the moment, she had decided to get some sleep. With her only really alive for one hour out of the day, she could easily sleep for a week if left uninterrupted.

Once she felt Melissa's attention return to the rest of the Midnighters, Madison risked opening the back door and stepping outside.

Jason was waiting near the back fence, shifting uncomfortably, constantly glancing at the ground, kicking around the small, gray rocks that looked pale-blue in the Midnight hour.

"I'm surprised you came back, after that little show your teacher gave us yesterday. He nearly killed us," she hissed, crossing her arms frustratedly. "What do you want?"

He glanced up at her angrily, his eyes hardening until they glowed in the night air like dark marbles. She took a step back, but she could feel that his anger was not pointed at her.

"I need to use your phone."

"What?" she questioned, shocked a bit out of her anger by his request. "Why?"

"Read my thoughts," he commented.

She tentatively looked into his mind, careful to look for some kind of trap, but she found him completely open, unshielded. Stranger still, his taste had changed. He tasted strange, she couldn't name it. It was tart like a green apple, but at the same time, sweet. She didn't know what to make of it. And even odder was the emotions pouring off of him. Betrayal. Guilt. Even fear. She closed her eyes, delving deeper. She saw the attack from the night before, though it was obviously through his eyes. He was farther away, in a tree, his thoughts spinning from a conversation with Melissa. She saw him questioning Robert about it, angry about the attack, and she saw the blocks Robert had placed over Jason crumble.

Madison wrenched away from his mind, her emotions spinning even more. Melissa had been right.

"He kidnapped me. Just like he tried to do with you, just like he's done to dozens of others. Made me forget what he did to my friends. He killed our Seer. Controlled the Darkling that took him down. And he's trying to kill yours to. I need to call my friends, let them know that I'm still alive. Then I need to talk to Melissa."

"She won't listen to you," Madison huffed. "After what Robert did to us, I barely trust that you're not just under some other mental block.

"You don't think I haven't thought of that? Melissa spotted my blocks before. She'll be able to see them again. And if I can get ahold of my friends, perhaps they can confirm what I think is true."

"Then what are you going to do?"

The hard stones that were his eyes blazed like fire. She had never noticed that he had such expressive eyes. Robert's control over him must have silenced part of who he was.

"I'm going to help you stop him. You have no idea what he's done to me. He's taken away my sanity. I never know if what I'm thinking is real, or just something else he's placed in my head. If what I'm doing is the right thing, or if I'm just furthering one of his plans. I can't trust myself anymore, and I hate that. He's a murderer, and if we don't want our world to fall to him, he has to be stopped. And I don't have to tell you that if he can control even a small part of the Midnight world, the waking world is soon to follow."

Madison glanced at him in shock. Shed never really thought of the ramifications her private little world might have on everyone else. Like Midnight was some amazing dream she had every night, but he was right.

"Come inside," she beckoned.

She led him inside the house and straight into the kitchen, where Melissa immediately stopped speaking, looking them over.

"He needs to use the phone once the Blue Time is over," Madison announced, wincing slightly, waiting for Melissa's sharp retort, but Melissa only looked at him, her eyes just as intense as his had been, perhaps even more so, and it seemed in that instant that Melissa, despite her youth, was something not quite human, anciently old, and wise. The moment passed an instant later and she simply nodded.

"Take him to the living room and let him sit down. I'll talk to him later."

Madison nodded and led him into the sitting room, wondering if Melissa could sense that he was being honest, or if she had something else in mind.

"I'm still good. You spread the word to the others?" Jason muttered into the receiver. "Yeah. I'll keep in touch."

Melissa watched as he hung up the phone for the fourth time that day, leaning against the doorway to the kitchen, her arms crossed over her chest. She could sense the absence of the mental blocks she'd felt before, but she still didn't know if she wanted to trust him. She had felt something in Robert, a conniving that wouldn't allow for something as messy as letting his main agent in stealing away Melissa's protégée escape and return. There had to be something else going on, and the fact that she didn't know what it was scared her.

"So what's your story? Madison told me what you told her last night, but there's a lot of holes in that summary," she announced as he sighed and made his way into the living room, plopping down in an armchair. Melissa stood over him, matching his gaze mercilessly.

"It's just as I told Madison. I was kidnapped. Robert has this… school of sorts. He's using mindcasting to 'educate' whole groups of mindcasters and then sending them back into the world to spread the word. He has a few other friends helping him, but they're not mindcasters. He sent me here when he failed to take Madison. He saw you and your friends as a threat. You knew about Midnight, you could sway people away from him. He was counting on the ignorance of the new Midnighters, that's why he's killing seers. He doesn't want Midnighters to know the Lore, to see what came before. They're supposed to listen to him and his mindcasters. But then you started spreading a different message, and people have noticed. He's going to do everything he can to stop you."

"He has an actual school? How many students?"

"By the time he sent me, he'd already had over a hundred go through, perhaps another few dozen being educated. I have no idea how far this has grown since."

Melissa was momentarily shocked into silence. She knew what that kind of force could do to the world. Mindcasters spreading Robert's beliefs with a single touch. How many had already destroyed their first person with their newfound, uncontrolled powers mixed with their arrogance? How many had liked it?

As she thought in dread f the ramifications of this whole project, the door swung open and Jonathan stepped inside. Her eyes grew wide. She'd been so busy thinking of Jason she hadn't noticed his approach.

She watched in surprise as a tall, blonde girl followed. It was Sara, the polymath from the cemetery. Jason leapt to his feet and hugged her tightly and the connection clicked in Melissa's mind. He was their mindcaster they feared had been killed in the desert. The coincidence was so strong in Melissa's thoughts that she almost questioned its validity.

Her attention was immediately ripped away from Jason as Dess clumped into the room, looking around with her hands on her hips.

"Sweet setup, Melissa," she commented. And then, shuffling behind her, his form gaunt, his skin paler than normal, and his shoulders hunched in a way that betrayed the pain he was still in, Rex stepped into the house.

"Hey Melissa," he muttered.

Dess tossed her hair slightly. "So, whose butt are we kicking this time?"