Jay's pov
The room was so quiet you could hear the sweat dripping off Mayo's forehead.
I was standing there, trying to process the fact that my "boring" best friend was actually some kind of underground gun instructor and hospital-whisperer.
Honestly, my life is a mess. I should have just stayed home and eaten the pizza Kuya Angelo promised me.
Then, CN stepped forward. CN, the guy who usually has the emotional range of a teaspoon, looked at us with a totally blank face.
"Should we just call her?" he asked. "We can just directly ask her then."
I stared at him. Is CN seriously out of his mind or what? Like, hello? Earth to CN? You don't just call a mysterious, gun-toting, shadow-ninja and ask, 'Hey, are you a spy? Lol.'
That's how you get deleted from real life.
Before any of us could tackle him to the ground, he had already pulled out his phone, pressed her name, and hit the speaker button. My heart wasn't just beating; it was trying to parkour out of my chest.
The phone rang once. Twice.
I expected it to go to voicemail or explode. But then, a familiar, bored voice filled the room.
"Hello?"
CN didn't even flinch. He looked like he was calling his mom to ask what was for dinner.
"Hey Elara, how are you and what are you doing?"
"Hey CN, what's up?" she replied, sounding completely normal. "Doing nothing in this boring life. How's the rest of Section E?"
CN was seriously unaffected, while the rest of us had our mouths open so wide we could have caught flies. Keifer looked like he was about to have an aneurysm.
"They all are good," CN said, acting like we weren't all currently having a collective heart attack. "Just scared of you."
A light chuckle came through the speaker. It was a soft sound, but it sent chills down my spine.
"It's okay, let them be. And one more thing... Edrix? Stop trying to track me. You're giving your laptop a fever."
CN's eyes went wide, and he looked nervously at the seventeen other people in the room. "Edrix is not here... it's just me."
"CN," Elara said, her voice dropping into that flat, "I'm-smarter-than-you" tone.
"I know that you all are there and the phone is on speaker."
I couldn't take it anymore. I leaned toward the phone, my voice trembling. "Elara... are you really planning something bad for us?"
There was a long pause. I could almost picture her leaning back, looking at the ceiling with those tired eyes. She sighed.
"Jay, I can't tell you anything right now. So assume whatever you want. Because soon, you'll all come to know."
My stomach dropped. That wasn't a "no." That was a "just wait."
I was about to yell at her to explain herself when a sharp, deafening BANG echoed through the phone. It was unmistakable. A gunshot.
"Oh, shit," Elara cursed under her breath.
"Elara?!" I screamed.
"Okay, bye CN, Jay," she said, her voice suddenly turning sharp and professional, the "bored" girl completely gone. "I'll see you soon. Bye."
Click.
The line went dead. We all stood there in the silence, staring at CN's phone like it was a live bomb.
Keifer's POV
The silence that followed the gunshot was deafening. I felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. My mind was racing—was she hurt? Was she the one shooting? And who the hell was she fighting? I don't even care if she got hit bcoz the way she is playing, it's irritating me.
I whipped around to face Edrix, who was already hunched over his laptop like a gargoyle.
His fingers were moving so fast across the keys they were practically a blur.
"Edrix!" I barked. "Can you track that call? Tell me where she is right now!"
"I was already trying the second the phone rang," Edrix muttered, his eyes reflected in the blue light of the screen.
"Even when she warned me to stop, I didn't. I thought I could find a backdoor through the signal before she noticed."
"Try, Edrix. You're the best we've got. You can do it," I urged him. I needed a location. I needed to move. I couldn't just stand here while the world was exploding around us.
"Almost there..." Edrix whispered, sweat beading on his forehead.
"I'm bypassing the jammer... I'm tracing the tower ping... I've got the coordinates—"
Suddenly, he stopped. His hands froze over the keyboard.
"Damn, bro," he breathed out, his voice sounding hollow.
"WHAT?!" we all yelled in unison. I think even Percy forgot to look cool for a second. We crowded around his desk, pushing each other to see the screen.
Edrix slowly turned his laptop around so we could all see.
The screen wasn't showing a map. It wasn't showing coordinates or a blinking red dot. It was completely, pitch-black. And right in the center, in bold, stark white letters, was a single sentence:
'Edrix, I told you.'
Jay-Jay's POV
Thank god , tita n tito were already in Seoul for some business purposes and mom n dad are in NYC.
My head was spinning from all the talk about guns and hackers, so I decided I needed a break. "I'm going to the washroom," I muttered to no one in particular.
I walked up to my room, used the bathroom, and splashed some cold water on my face.
Suddenly, something heavy and cold slammed into the back of my head. My vision shattered into a million white sparks, and then everything went pitch black.