CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

"OK, smile!"

The flash of the camera went off and Christian stepped forward, taking off his graduation cap. "Thanks Mom," he said, giving his mother and father a bright smile. "We'll meet you at the restaurant later." He waited until they were out of site before turning back to his friends, his smile fading slightly. "You ready to go?"

"Are we ready to confront a guy that may or may not be an evil mastermind ready to kill us all?" Renee crossed her arms. "Yeah, I think we are."

Nathan managed a small smile as he looked over his shoulder, taking in the innocent people milling around the front quad. Graduation from college was supposed to be a festive time of year; a time where accomplishments and hard work put into a degree that would hopefully manifest in a career. He was supposed to be having the time of his life, celebrating with his family and friends as he already had a job lined up to get started on.

He should've been.

Yet the only thing he could think about was the fact that there was darkness lurking around their campus that could more than likely destroy them at a moment's notice. It was like Renee said, they were ready. He wasn't sure if the outcome was what he was looking forward to, nonetheless. There was a chance they could be walking right into their death.

Or creating the deaths of many others.

"C'mon, we should get going now." Turning on his heel, the bottom of his graduation gown dusted the tops of his boots as the group made their way towards the building that housed Professor Trethaway's office. He had been doing a good job of steering clear of the five students as the rest of their college career progressed.

Every moment they would try to get into one of his classes he would make sure they were put in another section. When any of them tried to catch him in his office, his secretary would tell them that he was sick and wouldn't see any of the students. There hadn't been any other incidents since they returned from Japan and as far as they were concerned, whatever it was that had taken over Professor Trethaway was probably watching them at all times.

Maybe lying in wait.

"So what are we going to do when we get there?" Kristen asked. She chewed her lower lip in anticipation as they went on. "Knock on his door and throw the element stone of light at him? It might work with demons and Holy Water, but something tells me it won't work here."

"There has to be a reason why he's been avoiding us, yeah?" Reed pointed out. "Maybe whatever it is that's taken him over is weak and doesn't want us to know." All of a sudden the sky darkened and the wind picked up, causing the group to stop and look around. "Beauty." He sighed. "I didn't think it was supposed to rain today." He tilted his head back and looked towards the sky, eyebrows furrowing together.

Kristen's frown deepened as she looked at the sky as well. "Something tells me it's not storm clouds."

"Something tells me you're right," Renee agreed. She shielded her face, turning away as the wind picked up even further. Decorations for the graduation brunch blew around the front quad, little brothers and sisters of graduates screamed, knocked over by the wind, people ducked in cover as the branches of trees around them broke off and went flying through the air, threatening to embed themselves into their targets. "What's going on?!" She shouted over the wind.

"I don't know," Christian shouted back. He had one arm covering Kristen's head the other shielding his eyes from the dust and debris as it flew around. The sky continued to darken as the seconds passed, the wind increasing even further.

Reaching his hands out, Nathan dug his fingers into the ground, crouching low so that he didn't allow himself to get picked up by the wind. His graduation cap went flying off his head, swirling through the air. Eyes narrowed into a squint, Nathan looked up and saw what appeared to be a opening forming in the sky….or was the eye of a hurricane? The winds swirled in a vortex and as he watched, he noticed a lone figure on the roof.

"It's Trethaway!" He called. What's he doing up there? The group continued to watch as Trethaway stood on the roof, arms spread out wide. As the seconds passed and the vortex continued to grow, the teacher started to glow a dark, shadowy color, mixing in with the color of the sky. Bolts of electricity shot from the vortex, striking the ground at different intervals. "Quick! The stone!"

"Right." Renee reached into the satchel that hung against her side under her graduation gown. Carefully, she and Kristen pulled out the element stone of light and held it tightly in their hands. The stone glowed as brightly as the bolts of lightning that were raining down.

The stone started to shake in their hands, making it harder to keep their grip. All of a sudden it blasted out of their hands and rocketed up into the middle of the vortex. There was a second of silence than the loudest explosion any of them had heard, the shock wave ripping through the immediate area. Windows of the nearby buildings blew out, trees were felled, and the ground rippled and rose in front of them in waves.

As the group looked up towards the sky, there appeared to be a nebula hovering in the sky. The cosmic colors swirled around each other, gliding in and out, mixing and matching as what appeared to be stars gliding through the galaxy. The darkness continued to get sucked up into the vortex and when it disappeared there was one more bright blast of light bright enough so there was an absence of all color.

When Nathan woke up again he, Reed, Christian, Renee, and Kristen were sitting in their folding chairs in front of the graduation stage once more. As the president of the school announced their graduating class, their classmates stood up and whooped and hollered, throwing their caps into the air.

Nathan's mouth dropped open and he turned to his friends to speak.

"Yeah," Renee cut him off before he could say anything. "That really happened," She breathed.

"Did we go back in time?" Kristen asked quietly.

"Not so much back in time than the more probable thought of it being that things were reset so the existence of those that had witnessed what just happened wouldn't remember," Reed corrected her. "We only remember because we've been exposed to this before."

"So what happened to Trethaway?"

"I don't know."

Nathan swallowed thickly but didn't respond. He and his friends went through the motions of their congratulations and picture after picture once more, minds stuck on what had occurred that day. Even the next morning, when they were moving out of their dorms, they scoured the newspapers to see if there was anything mentioned in an article.

Nothing.

It was as if it had never happened.

Then they had all gone their separate ways.

Through the years that followed their graduation Christian and Kristen moved to Canada, Reed and Renee moved to Australia, and Nathan immediately went to work for the CIA as he had managed to crack through their firewalls and security systems in his freshman year, they constantly kept in touch. On the outside it appeared that they were doing everything in their job description, Christian moving up in the ranks to become a chemical engineer and Reed becoming a rocket scientist they continued to work on the elemental research they had stared in college as their side projects.

No one needed to know what really happened that day until they made a massive breakthrough in the project.

Not that Nathan would forget as ever since that day he answered to the name of Core.

Named after the day he was sure he and his friends had seen the core of what they would later learn to be the Element World.