He’s smiling at me, and the sight of it makes me gag.

Something he said the other night burns like fire in my brain. “Not if I can help it.” That was his reply when Trinity declared she was going to marry Vic. I have a bad feeling that this is what he meant by that.

“Grab her,” he says to one of the men standing beside him. Hands reach for me, but I’ve got nowhere to go and nothing left to fight with. I swing at them anyway. Like a cat pinned by a dog, I’ll fight with all my claws. “We’ll use her to lure Victor outside.”

The first punch to the jaw hurts, but it’s the one to my stomach that knocks the air out of me. Then there are just too many of them, boots slamming into my back, my stomach, the side of my head.

I end up choking on blood on the grass in front of Prescott High.

“You are pathetic,” Kali whispers to me, reappearing for the first time since I fucked Victor in his closet. Standing behind her, I can see all of the others, too. I can see Coraleigh Vincent, Neil Pence and Ivy Hightower, Eric and Todd, Mitch and Logan. I’m so conflicted and twisted up with all of my own bullshit that I’ve written a metaphor so real inside my head that I can see it now, right there in front of me, with eyes wide open. “This is always how you were meant to find your end.”

Jimmy saunters up to me, trying to roll me over with his boot. But I’m not a dog. I don’t perform tricks. When he can’t get me to move, he kicks me as hard as he can, and I vomit blood. It’s involuntary; I can’t help it.

“Stupid, frigid bitch,” he bites out with a laugh, leaning down to look at me. “You’re lucky your buddy stumbled in on us at the party.” He sweeps some hair away from my face as I lie there with all of my failures, my critics, my betrayers, standing above me and gloating. Is that how I want to die? Quiet and bleeding and shaking? “I was going to fuck you and kill you right then. This is better.”

He stands up and pulls a gun from his shoulder holster, sea glass eyes as empty and cold as a bottle with a note that will forever drift on an angry sea. The barrel is aimed right at me; I’m staring down the face of death in the form of some misogynistic sister-fucker.

No goddamn way.

“Victor Channing, I’ve got your girl!” James calls out, looking up at the barred windows of the school. “You’ve got two minutes to get your ass out here.”

Breathe, Bernie, breathe. I decide that my best option here is to throw myself at James the way I did with my first attacker, aim my elbow for his dick. Maybe he’ll drop his gun? Maybe I can grab it? There isn’t much else I can do.

But I’m going to fight until endless darkness finally takes me, that much I can promise.

Guess I’d forgotten yet again that Havoc never does anything in half measures.

One of the cars across the street—a vintage one belonging to a member of our crew—explodes, bathing the air in yellow and orange flames. The wave of heat alone is enough to make James stumble, and that’s before the second bomb goes off. And then the third.

Hael.

I shove up to my feet, and I run, bleeding and broken but not beaten.

No, never that.

Never.

Callum Park

Ten minutes earlier …

Trouble has a smell.

I know for a fact that it does because I always catch a whiff of it just before shit goes down. It tastes like wet copper on the back of your tongue, and its scent is as sharp as rubbing alcohol. Even before my phone buzzes in my pocket with an incoming text, I can sense it.

Something is wrong.

Ignoring the droning words of my first period teacher, I slip my phone from my pocket and stare down at the text from Bernadette.

Mare’s nest.

It’s an interesting phrase, isn’t it?

Actually, it’s been around for hundreds of years. According to the 1811 edition of the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, you could say something like, “This man has found a mare’s nest and is laughing at the eggs” to indicate insanity. During that same time period, it also came to mean a place, situation, or condition of great confusion and disorder. As if, say, someone had wreaked havoc in their wake. That usage stemmed from what was very likely a misunderstanding of the original phrase.

And that’s why it’s perfect for us as a safety word.

It means havoc, but only to some people. Everyone else just misunderstands and the meaning changes. Only we know what, exactly, that phrase means to us.

I stand up from my chair so quickly and so silently that nobody else in the class seems to notice. My footfalls are mere whispers as I creep along the back of the classroom and exit into the hallway.

My absolute first destination in any crisis is Bernadette which means I head straight for Mr. Darkwood’s class in the main hall. Before I even round the first corner in that direction, I hear heavy footfalls traveling my way.

Without a second thought, I haul myself up and onto the top of the metal lockers that line either side of the hallway, waiting to see who it is that’s coming with such confident, sturdy footsteps.

Two men round the corner, wearing ski masks and carrying pistols outfitted with silencers.

Executioners.

GMP executioners.

It takes them a second to spot me, but that’s enough time for me to pull the knife from the pocket of my shorts and chuck it at the throat of the first man like I’m playing darts. The blade digs into his throat, spilling blood as he pulls the trigger on his weapon and sends several stray shots into the ceiling and, coincidentally, into his partner as he flails around and bleeds all over the floors of Prescott High.

The alarm goes off, the automated system warning of a school shooter on campus. That’s about as advanced as our technology is here at Prescott. There are no automatic locks on the classroom doors, no live security feed with which to follow the intruders’ movements.

This is something Havoc is going to have to handle personally.

As the two men bleed and struggle in the hall, I get on my knees and remove the vent directly above my head, crawling into the metal duct that’s been carefully reinforced for the sole purpose of holding my weight. We made this alteration during sophomore year, but we’ve never had a reason to use it.

I’m beyond grateful for it now.

As soon as I slip into the duct, I pull the rubber skeleton mask from inside my hoodie and slide it on, shimmying down the length of the hallway and in the direction of Bernadette’s first period class. There’s no room in my head for panic; panic doesn’t do anybody any good.

Instead, I focus on getting to her as quickly as I possibly can, not bothering to hide the sound of my movements and opting for speed over stealth. The alarm continues to blare as I work my way around the corner and pause. A distant howl catches my attention, followed shortly by one directly below me.

I know immediately that the sound of the first one was Bernadette.

I crawl as quickly as I can, finding the vent cover closest to where I heard the sound of the first howl, and then I carefully lift it up so that I can pull it into the ceiling with me. Lying on my back, I lean my head out of the hole so I can see what’s going on before I drop down.

Yes, I’m upside down, but I can see everything I need to see from here without having to put myself in an awkward position. That, and I know that to anyone looking, I’m scary as fuck.