Gravity still sets Ece's head firm on the dew-scented pillow when she unlocks her eyelids. Darkness consumes her vision, and nothingness covers her earlobes.

However, her fingertips find something to feel. The pulse on her wrists. The puncture wounds marking her arms and knees. The stinging graze ripping her shoulders.

Tracing the outline of her onyx, which loses a sliver of its beauty thanks to the scientists' urge to collect samples, she mourns over her humiliated pride.

For the first time, Ece tastes the harsh sensation of defeat. The thought is always far beyond her head's wonders. It's never this close.

But she still has ammunition, though insignificant.

Those agents thought she was sleeping during their trip to the institution.

She was a witness of it all. How Hadassah Marisol was worshipped like she was Queen Beatrix from the Netherlands. When the gates of the site creaked open after a fingerprint. Where they had taken her before they plunged her into this cell.

When those scientists used a laser-producing item to slice a minuscule component of the onyx. Weren't they aware how her brows frowned at the scene?

Besides ammunition, she has motivations. Way fiercer and merciless than before. They scorch heat into her veins, boiling her head with a towering temperature. Her knuckles produce a satisfying crack as she curls them.

She'll find those who have escaped from her grip. Memory loss will be their prices.

Included in those will be her two minions, who were also there with her back at the shelter. The onyx's effect will wear out within days, and by then, their knowledge will flow out quicker than a flood.

"You're not Robin Hood." Raiden's voice tickles the patience within her.

Then she'll damage whoever has involved Hadassah Marisol. She wouldn't arrive in that certain scene if someone hadn't informed her. Especially in that witchy hour.

Who has been prying with her plans?

If that's someone she's trusted, or known, or have met before, their prices shall be a beating. They must suffer darkness, similar to the one she's enduring. Pain must exist along their physique, sourcing from the unhealed wounds.

Everyone may have muffled her mouth, sealed her eyes, deafened her ears, and trapped her hands. But nothing, even nightmares, can stop her brain from plotting.

She may be fourteen. Yet her brain is capable of doing things a fourteen won't ever do.

But how will Tayana accept the news of her crimes? What will Tayana say once she has been told by her captors?

👣

"I don't know what you're rambling about, Hadassah."

Hadassah removes her eyes off the lens, blinking several times before narrowing them in an unnatural width towards Tayana. No signs of a smile are visible on her sleepless features. The black sockets of her eyes declare her exhausted status.

"I have a feeling you know what I'm asking you." Hadassah's light-brown pupils scan over Tayana thoroughly. "How could you know Ece was there, at the shelter?"

Never once has her faith rests upon Tayana's actions. She hasn't stopped bombarding the latter with queries since they've settled themselves in her laboratory.

"I told you it wasn't my idea. When I messaged you to come to the shelter, I gave you a precaution. I may have learned the pattern of the shelter attacks anonymously."

"Then why did you come out of that room at the shelter, shortly after I paralyzed Ece?"

"I told you, I was sleeping back at my flat when you called my phone."

Hadassah's intimidations aren't bearable for her recently-healed physique.

"This all has to be more than just a coincidence. It's a too accurate one." Hadassah treads backward, away from the inspection desk. Her eyes flicker to the purple horizon briefly, before parting ways with it and return to Tayana.

"Check the CCTV on my flat's hallway and you'll find me there. Maybe these aren't coincidences after all. I'm devastated to find Ece in the midst of this chaos, but if that's what she's done, then let it be."

Tayana tightens her aquamarine mantle by strapping the ribbon around her waist. Her eyes barely meet Hadassah's scrutinizing ones. Her fingers won't stop fidgeting.

"Where are you going? I'm not done with you." Hadassah ends her speech with a sharp octave at the end, emphasizing her dislike of Tayana's attitudes.

On the contrary, Tayana brushes the implicit warning off, like it's merely a common breeze. "Home. I've just slept after a marathon of Korean dramas, shortly before you called with urgency."

Wiping her eyelids with her mantle's sleeve, Tayana's booted footsteps trail haughtily out of the polished room.

As if she doesn't want to cope with Hadassah in this room any longer.

👣

Is delayed sleeping that crucial for someone who had spent her time until 12 AM to stick with a serial filled with smooches, flirts, and white-washed characters?

Hadassah is still in a complete daze of Tayana when the glass door of her private laboratory zings open, the mini-speaker announcing, "Welcome, Senior Forensic Scientist Palchuk."

"Should that program mentions my complete title?" The entering man approaches Hadassah's desk slowly, a smug grin on his face. "It'll be pleasing to hear, really."

"Quit shitting around, Palchuk. You've terrorized my researches with your shit calls." She can't stop violence from tainting her words. Her eyelids are as heavy as barbells. The legendary Sandman must've done his job to sprinkle his sleeping sand on her.

"I'm not shitting around." His eyes crinkle from behind his bold glasses, amused. He gazes over the spacy room and discovers the set of couches for guests on the far edge. Bouncing on his heels, he lands on the widest furry couch and lay there.

The grin has never left his face. And it sets Hadassah uneasy.

"If you're just going to sleep there," she taps her manicured fingers on her desk, using the same voice while scolding Tayana, "then leave. This is my private quarters."

"Are you still going to shoo me out if this genius Indian has something for you, Hada?"

Ignoring his self-made nickname for her, she stops tapping and focuses to retrieve the onyx from the microscope instead. Sweat glistens under her laboratory gloves' transparent surface. She puts the microscopic sliver into a sterile pouch, before peeling the gloves off her hands, slapping the silence within the room.

Just seeing Palchuk's rest on her couch—the one she used to sleep on a lot, to be honest, lures the sleepiness in her more. Her brain's heat must be equalizing a steam engine's after several days being tormented with her hard work.

"Miss Hard-Work, I thought you're listening?"

She doesn't even realize that she's just lost half her consciousness while pinching the bridge of her oily nose.

"Yes, Palchuk. I am." She removes herself off her work desk, and with shaky steps, reach for another unoccupied couch, which is on Palchuk's opposite. Without second thoughts, she collapses on it face-first, earning a burst of laughter from her colleague.

She can care less about losing her dignity in front of Palchuk. Resting is her priority.

"Promise me you won't get back to work after what I'll tell you, busy bee."

Her ears can only catch fragments of his words, but nevertheless, it keeps her awake.

"So I've also checked those samples we've gathered back at Rescuing Refugees. And I've listed the crucial facts that you must want to hear."

Twinkling little stars are meeting each other beneath her closed eyes.

"That red petal we found in Raiden's room has his fingerprint, but none others. Not even that Bangladeshi—"

"You mean that refugee we rescued from the streets while storytelling blood to the passers?" Hadassah's remark is muffled by the couch's fur plush. Tiredness drags her sentence, taking forever to finish it.

"Yes, that's it. It's odd, isn't it? If Raiden's the first to found it, he must've known its original state before someone stomped over it. And there's a stain on the petal, one which I can't configure yet. But I'm wondering, where does it come from? The Bangladeshi has never kept flowers in his room. Proven by the lack of fragrance there."

"Maybe he's drunk when someone gives him a flower and proposes to him. Not realizing when a petal withers off its stem."

Palchuk's chuckles hover above her ears like buzzes of a bumblebee. "Someone should've found you in this state instead of me. You're very humorous now."

However, she gives no retort. Officially beginning her hibernation phase. Though oxygen must be struggling to reach her muffled nostrils, she doesn't seem bothered. Soft snores have even fogged over Palchuk's ears like a machine's hums.

Palchuk fixes his position, from laying to sitting. His dimples pop out as he smiles, admiring his colleague's efforts these last few days to hunt down Ece, the troublemaker.

Both of them have just been promoted as seniors last month, but she has kicked the pedal earlier than him and speeds past him by kilometers afar.

The crackles of his earpiece, however, split the tranquility of his muse apart. "SFS-1. Report your whereabouts to the headquarters." It's the same woman from Hadassah's chamber's programmed voice.

"This is SFS-1 reporting." His gaze flicks over to Hadassah's figure for the briefest of seconds, noticing the crackles also resounding in her earpiece. "I'm at SFS-2's quarter."

"Expect the officials' arrival soon. They're here to interrogate the prime suspect."

Palchuk's eyeballs immediately roll like dices within his scleras. "Understood."

"And wake up SFS-2 too if she's there with you. Need I remind you of the division's protocol, section 6, about the relationships between coworkers..."

Blush attacks Palchuk's cheeks quicker than a heating oven. "No, I've understood." He's thankful that he's speaking to a program, not a real individual. His too quickly-spoken remark can evoke teases from the hearer, whoever that is.

The line disconnects, leaving Palchuk conscious of his drumming heartbeat.

He's about to leave his comfort when another call interjects his movements, sourcing from the earpiece. "SFS-1. We're on a 'Dr. Brown' code."

Palchuk stills. It's a code he's known from his early days while training as a medic before becoming a forensic scientist. A warning to all medics of a loose patient.

A patient who poses a threat to others. And in this institution where ninety-percent of its patients are unconscious or losing their minds, it hasn't ever occurred before.

Unless there's a new addition on the patients' list. Ece.

"No, not Dr. Brown. Code Silver. All securities head to the eighth floor's cells. The suspect is armed. I repeat—"

Both of them are on the eighth floor.

That fact only is enough to carry Palchuk's legs as fast as they may, thudding against the linoleum floor and alerts Hadassah out of her slumber. His feverish pants, added with his constant mumbling, race against the slipping seconds.

Hadassah wipes her eyes and groans. "What are you doing?"

"D-Didn't you hear the announcement?" His hands grope over the bare walls, searching for that hidden button used to double the shield of the laboratory's glass door. "We have an activated Code Silver."

The protocols rush into Hadassah's mind like a tsunami, rolling over her sleepiness and replacing it with full alarm. "What? Who's out?"

"It must be Ece. Now come and help me find the—"

"I believe it isn't needed, professor." An eerily calm voice snakes into the corridor, approaching into their vicinity. Palchuk's yet to breath when a grip around his wrist injects him with a saccharine, yet lulling puncture.

He feels like a drained bucket with an aperture. Like water's leaking out of him. But in this case, his insides are losing themselves.

"Hadassah Marisol, you're at the top of my hunting list. However, if you're willing to cooperate by giving me a mere citizen's name, I'll move you somewhere in the bottom."

This girl, is she really fourteen years old? Or...?

👣

A/N: Now at 8.4k out of the 12k for Round 3. Sorry if I spam your notifications with updates after this, I'm rushing to get mine done, lol.

I just noticed that the book has to be finished, not to be continued, after April 2. I misunderstood the rules, so...yeah *cowers in shame*. This story will end in several chapters, so bear with me (and this book). Man, it's a lot shorter than my original plan, tbh :')

Thanks a lot for sticking with me and this story so far. It's my first time almost finishing a book, and I can't believe I'll get this far without your support, in whatever way that is.