Keifer's POV
I was still standing in the driveway, my jaw throbbing and my head spinning.
The sting of her punch was nothing compared to the shock of seeing her-the girl we had been hunting like a phantom-casually dropping my brother off at the back door.
What the hell is happening?
I pulled out my phone with shaking hands.
I didn't care that it was nearly midnight. I started a conference call with the only people I could trust: Edrix, Rory, Yuri, and Angelo.
"She was here," I said, the words coming out strained because of my swollen jaw.
"Who? Elara?" Rory's voice jumped through the speaker. "Where? We're still circling that empty apartment!"
"At my house," I grunted. "The back entrance. She just dropped Keigen off. They shook hands, Rory. They looked like they were in on a secret together. And when I tried to stop her..." I paused, touching the bruise on my face. "She leveled me. One hit. I'm on the floor, and she's gone."
The line went silent. Usually, Yuri would make some joke about me getting beaten up by a girl, but not tonight. The tone was too heavy.
"Keifer, listen," Yuri said, his voice unusually sharp and serious. "If she's at your house, she's not hiding anymore. She's showing you that she can get past your security whenever she wants. That's a message."
"He's right," Angelo added. "And the fact that Keigen is involved makes this personal. Did she kidnap him? Is he hurt?"
"He's fine," I said, glancing toward the house. "But he's acting weird. He told me she's been taking him to a psychiatrist. He calls her 'Ate.' He's protecting her."
"A psychiatrist?" Edrix's voice cut in, followed by the frantic clicking of a keyboard. "Keifer, I'm looking at your home security feed right now. The cameras... they didn't even trigger. I'm looking at a loop of an empty driveway from ten minutes ago. She's using a high-grade jammer. I've been trying to bypass it, but I can't track a single thing. It's like she doesn't exist in the digital world."
"How is that possible?" I yelled.
"She's a student! She sits in Section E and drinks strawberry milk!"
"She's a professional, Keifer," Edrix said, sounding defeated.
"And she's better than me guys," I muttered, looking at the time. It was almost midnight.
"Get inside," Angelo warned. "If your father is back and Elara is moving in the shadows, your house is the most dangerous place in the city right now."
I ended the call.
Fine. If everyone wants to play a game with no rules, I'll stop following them too. But Elara made one mistake-she left my brother behind. And he's the only lead I have left.
Angelo and I decided there was only one thing to do: bring everyone in. No more secrets.
I called my head of security, my voice cold. "Double the guard. I want men at every entrance. No one gets past the gate-I don't care if they say they work for my father."
Once the mansion was locked down, I headed to the meeting point. The room was packed with the entirety of Section E.
It was a strange sight-the most chaotic students in school all gathered in one dimly lit space. Some looked serious, some were whispering in corners looking scared, and others just looked completely lost.
In the middle of the crowd, I saw Jay-Jay and Felix. They both looked pale, but they were shaking their heads as I spoke.
"I'm telling you, she was at my house tonight," I said, pointing to the purple bruise on my jaw.
"She dropped off my brother, Keigen. They've been meeting in secret for weeks. He says she's been taking him to a psychiatrist."
"No way," Jay-Jay stepped forward, her eyes wide and stubborn. "Keifer, are you sure? Elara is... she's just Elara. She's quiet and tired all the time. She wouldn't just punch someone and act like a spy. There has to be a mistake."
Felix nodded quickly beside her. "Yeah, man. Maybe someone is framing her? It doesn't make sense. She's just a girl from our class. How can she be some high-level professional?"
They didn't want to believe it. To them, she was still the boring girl who sat in the back.
Aries leaned against a table, his face uncharacteristically grim. "I always knew she was scary,"
he muttered, his voice low. "There was something in her eyes that made my skin crawl. But I didn't think she was this much. I didn't think she could wipe her digital footprint like she never existed."
Percy chimed in from the back. Usually, he'd be making a comment about his own looks, but tonight he was actually focused.
"If Edrix can't find her, then she's not using normal tech. She's playing a different game than us."
I looked at Edrix, who was hunched over his laptop, his face lit by the blue screen. "Tell them," I commanded.
"I've tried everything," Edrix said, his voice flat with frustration. "I've hacked the street cams, the private security feeds, everything. Nothing. She's using jammers that shouldn't even be available to civilians. She's not just a student. She's a ghost."
All looked at each other, the reality finally sinking in.
The quiet girl who sat in the back of the class, the one who always looked bored, was someone-or something-else entirely.
"She's been watching us," I said. "Every day, she was studying our patterns. And right now, she's out there, and we have no idea what she's actually planning."
Jay-Jay looked at the floor, her bottom lip trembling. She, cn and Felix were still struggling to let go of the version of Elara they thought they knew.
But the bruise on my face was real, and the silence from the security cameras was even more real.
Jay's pov
I sat there, staring at my hands, feeling like my brain was spinning in circles.
I just couldn't believe it. Elara? A dangerous professional? A spy? It didn't fit the girl I knew.
"Maybe it's something we aren't seeing," I whispered to myself. "Maybe she's doing all this for a reason."
The room was a mess of voices. Now that the initial shock had passed, the boys started throwing out their own theories.
Even in a crisis, Section E couldn't stay serious for more than five minutes.
"Maybe she's a secret agent for the government!" one of the boys shouted from the back.
"Or a ninja!" another voice piped up. "I saw her eat a sandwich once without making a single sound. Only ninjas eat that quietly."
"I think she's just really, really grumpy because she needs more sleep," Percy added.
He actually went a whole minute without checking his reflection in his phone, which showed just how stressed he was.
"Quiet!" Angelo shouted, slamming his hand on the table. He looked exhausted.
"Spill everything. I want to know every single thing you know about her. No matter how small or stupid it seems. If she ever did anything out of the ordinary, say it now."
The sixteen boys of Section E, along with Aries and Percy, started talking all at once.
It was like a chaotic confession booth.
"She's scary! One time she looked at me and I felt like my soul left my body," calix said, shivering.
"But she helped Edrix with those hackers," Felix countered. "She wasn't mean then. She was like... a guardian."
"She looks cold, like she's made of ice," kit added.
"She was like an 'Ate' to some of us," Cn added, nodding. "She looked out for us when we didn't even ask."
The comments were all over the place. To some, she was a monster; to others, she was a protector. It was making my head hurt.
"ENOUGH!" Keifer roared, his voice cracking like a whip.
He stood up, his face tight with frustration, the bruise on his jaw looking dark and angry under the lights.
"Not like these! I don't care if she was 'nice' or 'cold'! Tell me the things that felt different!"
He leaned over the table, his eyes scanning every single boy in the room.
"Think about the times she didn't act like a student. The times she knew things she shouldn't know. The times she moved too fast or looked at a situation like she was calculating exactly how to take everyone down. Give me that."
The room went stone-cold silent. We all started looking at each other, trying to dig through our memories.
Keifer is right. We were looking at her as a classmate. But if you take that away... what was she actually doing while we were all just being kids?
Keifer's pov
I looked around the room.
I honestly wondered if they were even human. In a situation this tense, they still managed to create a mess of noise and pointless chatter.
"Focus!" I snapped, but the floodgates had already opened.
Felix stepped forward first, looking a bit sheepish.
"Actually... she saved me once. I made a stupid bet with some street basketball players. I ended up tripping and injuring my ankle at school, so I couldn't play. I was also not having money, so they started beating me, but Elara just stepped in. She played for me-and she defeat them. I've never seen anyone move like that."
"And didn't you see how perfectly she plans things?" Mayo added, his voice serious.
"Think back to the Freya and Edrix situation. "
The room was getting quieter as the pieces started to click.
Then, Jay-Jay spoke up, and what she said made my heart stop.
"The most suspicious thing happened when I brought my dad to the hospital,"
she said, her voice small but clear.
"Only Elara was with me. The hospital staff wouldn't admit him because I didn't have any money on me, and Papa's wallet was left in his coat at home. I was panicking. But Elara... She made a phone call, handed her phone to the head of the staff, and their faces went pale. They started panicking and admitted him immediately."
We all stared at her. A phone call? Who could a high school girl call that would make a hospital staff move like that?
"That's not the only time," Jay-Jay continued, her eyes wide. "When he needed surgery, they said they needed an adult's signature. I was terrified. But she called someone again, and suddenly, they didn't care about the signature anymore. They just started the operation."
The silence in the room was heavy. This wasn't just "scary" or "cool." This was power. Real, high-level influence.
We were still trying to process that when CN stepped forward. His face was a blank mask, his expression unreadable.
"She knows how to use a gun," he said flatly.
He looked over at Jay-Jay.
"We went to a gym with her once-there was a shooting range in the back. She made both of us learn how to shoot."
"I went with her twice," Jay-Jay admitted, her voice trembling slightly.
"The second time was right before Yuri got kidnapped. Remember the garage? When I used the gun? It was Elara who taught me how to hold it. It was her who taught me how to aim."
Angelo stepped toward Jay-Jay, his face a mix of shock and anger.
"Why didn't you tell us this, Jay? Why keep something that dangerous a secret?"
Jay-Jay looked down at her shoes, biting her lip. "She told us not to. She said... she said it would be better if you guys didn't know yet."
She didn't just watch us. She trained us. She influenced our families. She manipulated the systems around us.