Dr. Aris Thorne looked at the four students before him in silence. They seemed almost nervous at his sudden appearance.
'The hallway is empty and any word will be echoed for a while. He clearly heard what we said yet he doesn't seem to want to address it.' Alex looked at him with a faint worry in his eyes.
"O-of course, sir. We will wait by the gate for you sir." Prince stuttered a bit, bowing, before walking out of the castle with a nervous walk.
Layla, Alex, and Tony followed suit in silence. They had come to the same conclusion as Alex and wanted to speak as little as possible.
Alex looked at the castle shrinking in the distance as they walked to the gate, 'The pressure he gave off is far more potent than what a normal person can emit. I know that he is a superhuman-'
He looked away and at the gate, '-but he seems to be insanely powerful. I wonder where he stands compared to Blessing Of The Sky.'
'When will I even be able to express such power?' Stars danced in Alex's blue eyes as he almost got lost in imagination.
The quartet stopped just short of the gate and waited for it to slide open. They crossed over and a black SUV parked in front of them.
"Oh? We couldn't use our limousines for such a minor task, so we settled for our SUVs." Layla didn't waste the chance to flaunt their school's wealth.
Prince nudged her slightly with eyes that said 'Calm down'
The driver's window rolled down and a man wearing a black suit with dark shades came into view, "You will have to get in now. Mr. Thorne just instructed me to take you to the facility without him."
He grimaced, "He also said that I should mention this, so permit my tone and lack of context; 'Someone called me about a plant so I will have to stay back owing to the need of fixing a faulty production line.'
In one line, a shiver ran down the spines of the four.
The driver jolted a bit before his face went blank, he turned to face the road and wound up his window in silence.
Prince blanched and Layla started sweating bullets. Alex and Tony weren't doing much better, but it seemed that a lack of knowledge about Dr. Aris' nature was sparing them from the level of fear expressed by the other two.
With his spirits down and head hung low, Prince opened the car door himself and entered. Alex followed, then Layla, and finally, Tony.
The ride to the facility was silent and dreadful. A faint, eerie air of foreboding was starting to fill up the space around Alex, and he couldn't shake it off.
'For some reason, I feel like I might be in danger.'
Alex looked at the tinted windows and sighed, feeling a bit claustrophobic, and the feeling only worsened.
"Hey, I feel like something might be up. Something doesn't feel right." Tony looked at Alex like he was crazy.
"Of course, something doesn't feel right. We antagonized one of the most influential people in the country. How was I unfortunate enough to end up here with you?" Tony placed his head into his open palms.
Alex couldn't let that feeling fade, 'It couldn't be my Beast Art. I hid it so well that even if I told you where it was, you still wouldn't find it.'
He remembered Layla and the sonic beast art she had shown a bit of, 'Unless that person has a sensory beast art! Shit!'
All of a sudden, he wanted absolutely nothing to do with the joint exercise.
"Excuse me." Prince finally spoke to the driver, "I know I've only been to the facility a mere handful of times."
The sense of urgency that had been bubbling beneath the surface in Alex suddenly erupted into panic.
'Something is wrong.'
At the same time, Prince completed his statement, "...but I'm sure this isn't the way."
The driver suddenly accelerated and drove over the curb, passing through odd intersections and tunnels in a rushed, random pattern.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING??!!" Prince screamed and grabbed the head of the driver and it fell clean off.
A loud scream left Layla but the body of the driver kept on driving. A mere puppet.
A mushroom grew from where his neck ended.
"What in the LITERAL FUCK?!" Alex and Tony screamed at the same time.
A truck horn blared before it made a head-on collision with the car, sending it off the bridge they were on and onto the concrete underbelly of the bridge.
The initial collision hit Alex with so much force that some of his bones shattered. The ones that didn't, dislocated or fractured, and once the car fell and landed upside down, he lost consciousness.
_____
His eyes flew open and he could see himself being dragged along grass and thick shrubs. Following consciousness was the pain one would expect from breaking all your bones.
'What the fuck?!' He could barely think with how much pain he was in.
He used his beast art and a cooling sensation washed over the white-hot pain that was coursing through him, calming him a bit.
Some of his bones snapped into place while the rest became, to an extent, stable enough to stand.
Alex stopped using his Beast Art to conserve as much energy as possible. The last thing he was going to do was make himself any weaker than he already was.
He stole a quick glance at the person carrying him.
'I don't know this person.'
Without an alternative, he pretended to still be unconscious while trying to listen to anything useful, "I can't believe I still have to go back and carry the other two." His kidnapper groaned as he struggled with Alex's body.
'So he's alone? Perfect. Thank heavens for the frustration of henchmen.' Alex used his beast art at full power and threw a sudden punch at the henchman with as much force as he could muster.
The man was stunned at Alex's sudden burst of movement, tried to dodge, and so, the fist hit his neck, breaking it and killing him.
As the partly deformed corpse fell, one could make out a tattoo of a wolf devouring a moon on his neck.