Every few moments, my eyes darted to the rearview mirror, making sure no one was trailing us. We’d driven several miles, but the more we stayed on the main road, the more nervous I was. I kept expecting to see that SUV appear behind us at any moment. Thankfully, however, we never saw them.

  When things finally relaxed, I started to feel my ear throbbing in pain. Oliver’s own groans of discomfort were hard to hear. I tried driving as smoothly as I could, but every time we hit a bump, he would let out a shaking, pained whine. Emily wasn’t doing well, either. She had small gashes around her face from the glass, and I’d hurt her more than I realized when I grabbed her arm.

  I hardly remembered that moment. So many emotions had been swirling through my mind and body at the time. It had been impossible for me to stay in control of myself, but now Emily was the one who had to deal with the repercussions. The car was otherwise quiet, with everyone lost in thought, trying to not think about their injuries.

  Emily was first to break the silence. “Turn right here.” She said quietly.

  As we approached an intersection, I remembered Oliver showing me the turn signal, turning it on as we slowed. I stole a quick glance in the rearview mirror, still not seeing anyone before we were off the previous road. My body relaxed a bit. I knew they’d have a hard time guessing where we were headed. Come to think of it…

  “Hey, uh…where are we going?” I asked.

  “The vet office.” Emily responded. “I need to grab some things.”

  That idea was a bit confusing. “What? …the paperwork? Emily, I think we have more important…”

  She quickly corrected, “no, not the paperwork, all the files on you. They saw my car, and they clearly have connections. They can figure out who I am, where I live, and where I work. They’ll find out, and then they’ll find all the notes I have and who knows what’ll happen then.”

  She sounded irritated, angry. Oliver stayed quiet at the sudden change in mood.

  “I…okay…” I said quietly.

  A moment later she addressed me again. “What the fuck was that back there, Tess?”

  I froze a bit, but kept my concentration on the road.

  “I don’t know. Everything was white…I don’t know what happened. I was hoping you’d be able to tell me…”

  “Not that! Before! What was going through your head? If he didn’t pull that flashlight out, were you actually going to kill him? Were you genuinely going to do that? Because…I just…Tess, what was going through your head?”

  I squeezed the wheel tightly, gritting my teeth.

  “I don’t know Emily, I guess I should have had a clear state of mind and been calm after confronting the person that killed John, destroyed my life and has been chasing me ever since, along with his partner that was trying to kill both of us. I guess I should have really sat down and thought about what I was doing. Thanks for bringing it up!”

  The car was dead silent for a moment.

  “...and you’re welcome for saving you from him.” I finished.

  We drove in silence for several minutes. I was too angry to say anything. The truth was…I was caught up in the moment. I was angry, and I wanted to see that man suffer for what he did. Looking at it now, things felt strange. That rage was something I’d never felt until now. I didn’t like it, but it happened. If he hadn’t pulled out…whatever that thing was, I would have made a decision I could never undo. Emily was right, but I was too ashamed–and too hurt–to admit it to her out loud.

  Another six or seven minutes of driving later, we finally reached the vet’s office. It was a bit surreal to see it again, weeks later. The snow was long since gone. It looked very different from how I’d seen it the first time. The lights were on and someone was inside…it looked like a completely different building.

  “Stay here.” Emily told me, opening the door the moment the van stopped.

  Seconds later, she was inside the office, leaving just Oliver and myself. I sat in the seat, arms crossed as I thought about everything from the escape.

  “So…” Oliver said, drawing out the word, “I take it things didn’t go so great out there.”

  It hadn’t been a total loss, but… “I don’t know what happened…”

  “Well…I brought pizza.” He said with a smile.

  It was nice of him to realize I didn’t want to talk about it in greater detail right now.

  “Heh…thanks, Oliver.”

  Noticing a motion out of the corner of my eye, I looked through the windshield, seeing someone walking out of the vet’s office. They headed to the only other car in the parking lot. Soon enough, they were driving down the road and Emily was walking to the van.

  “Okay, let’s go.” She said, opening Oliver’s door.

  “What do you need me for?” He asked.

  “I need to take a look at that arm.” She answered, opening the back door and pulling out his wheelchair.

  “Wait, you’re not taking me to a hospital?!”

  “After all that?” She asked, incredulous. “That’s the last place I want to take you! We show up somewhere like a hospital, we get caught. No way. Besides, I work on this type of thing all the time. Usually it’s with animals, but it’s all the same. Come on, let’s get inside.”

  She helped Oliver into the chair as I awkwardly sat there, not sure if I should join or not. Emily started to push him inside the building, then stopped, turning to face me. “You coming?”

  I sighed. “...yeah.”

  ***

  As different as the outside had looked, the inside was exactly how I remembered, ugly lights and all. Everything in there had a terrible glow from the luminescence. Who in the world would put something so awful like those lights in here? I followed Emily to the back, watching her flick the front lights off as we walked. She brought Oliver to one of the tables, where a large series of instruments lazily rested. Helping Oliver out of his shirt, Emily did her best not to cause him too much pain. His arm looked pretty bad, a large bruise splashed across his shoulder.

  Emily brought out a large blanket. It looked heavy.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Here we go. We’re gonna put this here. Give me just a moment.” Emily said as she covered Oliver’s front, leaving the bruised shoulder exposed before moving a large, mechanical arm to his shoulder.

  Emily motioned me over to a small booth in the corner. We both walked to it and she started pressing some buttons on a computer. I had no clue what she was doing, but she stopped and looked at me, then up at Oliver.

  “Tess? Could you face that way for me?” She asked, pointing toward the doorway where we’d entered.

  “Sure. Why?” I asked.

  Her tone had completely changed, as if she wasn’t even angry with me anymore.

  “I just want to test something. Can you tell me what you see?”

  I still didn’t really follow her train of thought, but I turned, looking out the door. With Emily now honest about wanting to try a test on me, I felt a little bit more comfortable, even if I didn’t understand. Hearing Emily count down from three, I prepared for…whatever I was supposed to expect.

  “Three…two…one…”

  A bright flash filled the room for a split second, as if a photo was being taken. I turned back around to see a very excited Emily. There was a picture of Oliver’s shoulder on the computer screen.

  “So?” She asked me, a curious tone in her voice.

  “It, um…I dunno. It was a flash, I guess?”

  Her eyes went wide. “And…and what color was it?”

  I thought about it for a moment. It was bright, but some color I couldn’t really picture.

  “I…don’t know…” I responded.

  My answer wasn’t very good, and I wanted to give her something more concrete, but I really couldn’t think of anything.

  “If you had to describe it, though…” She said, trying to lead me to some sort of conclusion.

  “It…hmm…I guess…extremely purple?” It was the best response I could give.

  “But not purple?”

  “No.”

  “Okay…good…good, okay, that’s good to know. Anyway…” She looked towards Oliver. “Oliver, it looks like you just have a dislocated shoulder. I can pop that back into place. It’ll hurt for a while, but you’ll be fine.” Emily looked back to me. “Tess.”

  “What?” I wasn’t really listening much after the strange interaction with Emily.

  “You know where the files are. Can you bring those out to the van?”

  ***

  After fifteen minutes of carrying the massive drawers full of files out to the van, I was confident I’d found any and all files about me. They were stacked in the back of the van as I closed the door to the vehicle before I quickly rushed back into the office. Everything left there was all the documents on patients, lookups for procedures, patient information and other medical documents–nothing anyone wouldn’t expect to see.

  As I reached the door, I heard a loud scream. I froze, waiting to go through the doors after a few seconds. Each time I’d left the building, I’d looked around and took extra care to avoid anyone being nearby. If a car was coming, I waited for it to pass. This scream, however, was coming from inside the building itself. Certain everything was calm, I walked back through the doors, hearing Emily reassuring Oliver.

  He was sliding his shirt on his body as I walked into the room. Oliver looked at me, his face pale. Perhaps it was just the lighting, but he didn’t look like he was in very good shape.

  “Doing okay?” I asked him.

  He looked at me. “I’ll be okay. At least, I should be, I guess. But what about you? What’s all the black stuff?” He said, motioning to my head.

  “Gah!” Emily batted his hand away as Oliver tried to reach to me, “what black stuff?!” She moved to my other side. “Oh my gosh, I didn’t even notice! It was so dark and I was so focused on Oliver…what happened?”

  “I think I was shot.” I said simply. “It only hit my ear. Stings a bit, but it’s not bad.”

  Touching the side of my face, I felt dried blood…a lot of dried blood. There was so much happening, I hadn’t thought about it much, either.

  “Okay…you…didn’t bleed on anything, did you?” Emily asked nervously.

  I shook my head. “It was mostly dry by the time I ran into you.”

  “Good, okay, good. I need you to go wash up, though…as thoroughly as you can. We’ve got a shower in the room next door.”

  I was confused for a moment, but then I remembered the snake I’d encountered before I made it to Oliver’s house.

  “Ah…right…”

  I turned and left the room, heading the way Emily pointed. Looking at the shower, I sighed. She could have mentioned the shower was made for dogs.

  Thankfully, it didn’t take long to start it, and there was shampoo right next to the faucet. The dried blood washed off without issue. My ear still stung, but the wound had sealed itself around the edges, leaving a small hole in the bottom right bit of my ear. It hurt to touch, but at least it was healing.

  Dry, I rejoined Oliver and Emily in Emily’s office. I heard her down the hall going through things, talking to Oliver.

  “...extremely toxic. It does degrade quickly, which is good, so she’s not unsafe to be around or anything. While it’s fresh, though, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. You should have seen–Tess!”

  She stopped as I walked through the doorway. I stood there for a moment, then realized why she’d quit talking.

  “It’s okay, I already know.”

  “You do?” She asked.

  “While I was traveling, a rattlesnake bit me, and…yeah.”

  Emily winced. “Mmm…so…black veins, squirming?”

  I nodded. She nodded with me, continuing to grab papers off her desk.

  “I’m…sorry you had to see that.”

  “I’ve had to see a lot of things lately.” I responded, sitting in one of her office chairs.

  She looked at me for a moment, as if she were searching for something inside of me, then went back to organizing her desk.

  “Oliver and I talked and…I wanted to say, I understand you’ve been through a lot lately.”

  Oliver nodded and gestured toward Emily, rolling his hand. “And?”

  “And I wanted to apologize for yelling at you earlier. You have every right to be angry for what happened and it was an emotional moment. I can’t be upset at you for getting carried away.”

  Oliver smiled. “Good.”

  I shook my head. “No, Emily, you were right. I don’t know who I was, but I wasn’t myself. I’ve never…felt that way before. I don’t know what came over me. Everything happened so fast. What if…if he didn’t have that thing? What if he couldn’t stop me? What if-”

  Oliver stopped me. “Tess, you’re doing your best. A lot of stuff has happened to you, especially recently. Everything you’re going through right now is trauma, and it changes you. Trust me, I’ve been through it. It’s hard. You don’t act like yourself and random things will set you off.”

  I looked at him, knowing he might understand.

  “Remember when I yelled at you when you were helping me with the groceries?” He asked. “That was my trauma coming out. I lashed out at you, the same way you did. It’s okay. It’s normal. You’re still you, you’ve just had some traumatic experiences. You’ll be okay.” He smiled softly. “I promise you will.”

  Even if I didn’t know what to feel, I appreciated hearing Oliver and Emily knowing I hadn’t become some horrible monster…even if I felt that way. After thinking about it all for a moment, I looked at them both.

  “Thanks. I think I needed to hear that.”

  Emily gave a soft nod before looking back at her desk. “Okay, I think I have everything together. We should get out of here before they show up. Oh, speaking of which…where should we go? My house is out of the question now.”

  I responded. “We should go to Gav’s home to drop some things off.”

  The things we’d found in the ship with his expertise would be enough to make some progress. They had to be enough.

  Emily looked at me, then Oliver. “Who’s Gav?”

  Oliver answered. “He’s my brother. He, uh…doesn’t know about all of this, but he’s probably our best chance for reading whatever’s on that crystal.”

  “So…we can trust him?” Emily asked.

  “Definitely.” Oliver reassured her.

  Emily nodded, handing me the briefcase with everything she’d packed. With one more look around the office to make sure everything was there, Emily pointed to one last thing behind the door.

  “Oh, Tess, grab that, too.”

  Pulling the door as Emily started wheeling Oliver out of the room, I saw the case for an acoustic guitar, leaning against the wall.