I sat there, startled and trembling, for a few moments. Phoebe grabbed the mouse and tried to erase the files, but the computer denied her request, asking for a password.

'Oh, come on, you piece of junk!'

I was desperate. I was already picturing how they would take me to the Lair and infest me with a Shadow – and then they would find the others and do the same to them. We were doomed. Mankind was doomed. All because of a stupid recording on a computer.

'There's gotta be some way we can trash this!' Phoebe blurted, 'Seriously! Do we really need to tear that computer apart?!'

'It's no use. They can still get the disks and plug them to a new one.'

'So you're just gonna sit there waiting for Fletcher to come and get you? Come on!'

'What else am I supposed to do?'

'I don't know! Anything! Just don't give up like that!'

I clenched my fist around my cell phone. I couldn't think of anything to say. Of course, I knew that Phoebe was right, from an objective point of view – but it made me feel so humiliated, to think that we were checkmate even before starting to play.

'I can't believe you, Annabel! You-'

'Sssh!'

I suddenly waved at Phoebe to hush her up. Voices could be heard in the corridor. And they were getting louder. I quickly took my phone out and tapped the screen to check for calls.

'Anything?' Phoebe nervously asked.

'No, i-i-it's off.'

'What?!'

Phoebe swiftly rushed to the only other door in the office, dragging me along. We got away just in time, right before someone came in. We were in some sort of narrow closet, with shelves all around and countless folders sitting on them. I leaned against the wall next to the door, breathing heavily, while Phoebe was taking a look through the keyhole.

'Fletcher,' she whispered.

I gave an uneasy nod.

'What's going on?'

I had a hell of a job uttering:

'Claustrophobia.'

Phoebe rolled her eyes, but refrained from commenting further.

'I assure you,' Fletcher was pleading. 'We got things right under control.'

'I'm afraid Variscite Three does not share your optimism, Iolite Two-Two-Six,' a cold and harsh female voice fired back, 'Whoever witnessed Erlan's death got away and is now at large.'

'They were most probably students. We have recordings. We just have to find a match, it's merely a matter of time…'

So Fletcher had been infested, after all. I was curious to know who was the person he was talking with.

'He's not alone,' I muttered.

'Yes, I can see her. She's a student! I can't believe it! Looks like a senior.'

'Do you know her?'

Phoebe shook her head. She reached for her cell phone, but suddenly footsteps came awfully close to us and the door swung open. The weight on my chest got so heavy that my mind went blank for a second. I could feel my legs dropping and my body collapsing to the floor. Fletcher was going to find me, lying there, defenseless. He was going to ask what I was doing there. And since he had a recording of my voice right under his nose, ir would not take long for him to figure out whom it belonged to.

I lay there motionless, waiting for the principal to yell at me. One second, two, three – and since nothing had happened, I ventured a look. I could see Fletcher's head. I mean, not his face, his head literally, where the hair was getting scarce. On the other side of the door, a startled Phoebe was staring at me with eyes wide open. From above. It took me a while to figure out that she was actually the one looking up. I was actually lying on the ceiling.

Fletcher browsed his files for a few moments and then got out, closing the door behind himself. My heart rebooted and I strongly breathed in, filling my lungs up to the brim. Then I sighed as lightly as I could, while Phoebe silently uttered 'Oh my God!'. I tried to focus my attention on the conversation between Fletcher and the Infested student.

'They must be in there. All other students had finished earlier that day.'

'That still makes quite a lot of them,' the senior student doubtfully retorted.

'Students will not run from the school, it's just a matter of time-'

'Time is a luxury we cannot afford, Iolite Two-Two-Six – so I suggest you get on with your search real quick.'

Fletcher scowled.

'Yes, Thulite Three-Seven-Four.'

My mind was slowly getting clearer and the weight on my chest was starting to lift. Whichever power held me stuck on the ceiling was wearing out. As the senior student was walking away from the door, Phoebe was messing around with her phone's camera, trying to get a clear shot of her through the keyhole. The sound of my own voice echoed through the room, sending shivers through my spine.

'So, what do you think?'

'I don't know. Sounds awfully familiar,' the student pondered, right before the bell rang. 'I must get back to class. Down to work, Iolite Two-Two-Six! Variscite Three will expect results.'

'Of course.'

I could hear the office's door closing, and Fletcher let out a heavy sigh. He played back the recording a few times, possibly in an attempt to recognize whom the voice belonged to. I prayed that his memory wasn't good enough. Then he left the room too. A few moments later, the gravity suddenly went back to normal and I dropped to the floor silently, like a cat leaping from a window.

'Whew, that was close!' Phoebe whispered to me. 'Are you all right?'

'Yeah, don't worry.'

'What was that all about?', she asked while waving her hands to the ceiling.

'I don't know. More of my gravity-bending magic, I guess. It seems to always trigger when I'm going to die in fear.'

'Talk about close timing!'

We carefully opened the closet's door and made sure there was no sound outside and Fletcher was not coming back anytime soon. I checked my cell phone – it was still off and no button was responding.

'My phone's still out of order – I'm sorry, I swear I have no idea what happened...'

'It's okay, I already texted the others. Now we have to do something about that computer. We're not leaving until we get the recording erased.'

She tried the old tricks once again, but the file was definitely password-protected and there was virtually nothing we could do. Phoebe punched the keyboard.

'It's driving me crazy! There must be something – anything at all! And quit messing around with that damned phone, will you!'

She reached out for my hand and grabbed my phone. And as she pulled it away, my arm followed on its own.

'Ouch! Stop that!'

'Just let go!'

'But I am!'

Phoebe held my wrist and pulled the phone out of my hand. With a lot of efforts – lots more, in fact, than should be needed to take a small object out of a loose hand.

'Hold on. Don't move,' I said while slowly extending my arm. As my hand came a few inches close to the phone, it jumped right in it.

'Hey!' Phoebe called.

My fingers weren't even clutching on my phone, and yet it felt like it was glued to me, like my whole body was-

'A magnet.'

'What?!'

'It must be my powers again, I'm like- emitting magnetic waves or something. That's why my phone went dead! The field must have fried it…'

'And… Do you think it might fry that too?' Phoebe asked while pointing at Fletcher's computer.

'Well… Here goes nothing.'

I laid my hands on the tower and rubbed it slowly, trying to find the point were I could feel the most powerful attraction. Then I closed my eyes and focused. I tried to gather the most violent thoughts I could. I tried to remember Prince Erlan's death. I tried to remember the feeling of utter evil that Variscite Three conveyed. I tried to think of my hopeless fight against the Saurians, of how they chased me and threw me off a building. And my hands began to heat up, and soon the contact with the cold metal case became unbearable. I took a glance at the computer's screen. It was all blue, with a dozen error messages on it. Phoebe chuckled.

'Piece of cake!'

We met again at the cafeteria during the afternoon break. Phoebe and I had been late, and she told Ms. Lawson I had been sick – fortunately she wasn't too suspicious since it was pretty easy for me to feign sickness given how emotionally shaken the earlier events had left me. I tried my best to avoid any contact with metallic objects in case my magnetic power was still active – that would have been quite hard to explain, especially in front of a teacher who was probably Infested.

'How did it go? We were so worried about you!' Sophie exclaimed.

'I was fine,' Abiona retorted with a shrug. As Sophie looked daggers at her, she added 'What! They got out safely, didn't they? Those girls can take care of themselves, that's all I'm saying!'

We told our friends everything, from the recording to the senior student in Fletcher's office.

'Good thing you got rid of that recording before they could do anything with it! Are you sure there's no way they can get it back?'

'There better not be,' I muttered.

'So a student is possessed by Infested Fletcher's boss? How ironic.'

'Yeah,' Phoebe said as she drew her cell phone out of her pocket. 'I even got a pic of the bitch. Look!'

We all bent forward and took a glance at the photo. And then my heart stopped once again. I stood up and ran.

'What?!' Phoebe called, 'You know her?'

'Ellen Magnett!' Lynn said in a whisper, right before she started chasing me, 'She's her sister!'