MONSTER OF THE UNKNOWN

A DAY OUT

"Okay, I'll try, but I can't promise you anything," Laura finally agrees to Sara's request as she takes a bite from her food with her fork. "If you don't mind me prying, I can't help wondering why you're so devoted to Aaron."

"What do you mean?"

"I wasn't trying to be offensive or anything, I understand that you two are a couple and you're supposed to care about each other. I'm just a little curious about how both of you got so close and connected."

"Ohhh, you want to know how Aaron and I got together. I guess I can tell you about it, but don't get high hopes. It isn't some romance movie plot," Sara makes it clear to Laura as she drops the cutlery in her hand. "It happened a few years back, when we were in middle school. I got severely injured during one of my fencing practices at school and ended up being hospitalized for a little over a week. My parents were always too busy with work to come visit me, and all my so-called 'friends' disappeared after the accident, so it was just me and the doctors day-in and day-out. Apparently, nobody bothers enough to check up on you once you get admitted into a medical facility, but it unexpectedly changed one day. I surprisingly had a visitor and it was Aaron. We weren't even friends at the time, I just knew him as the loner boy in our class that only talked to his unstable bestie who always seemed to be dealing with some messed up personal stuff."

"Do you mean Mathéo?" Laura cuts off Sara's narration for a moment with this question.

"Yeah, he hasn't always been the over charismatic you met. Back then, he was going through some personal problems that he only ever told Aaron about," Sara answers before continuing the story. "When Aaron met me in my hospital room, the first thing he told me was that he was sorry he wasn't the one I was expecting, but he came anyway 'cause he didn't believe anyone should be alone while experiencing something so horrible, or maybe I'm remembering it wrongly. That's how I recall it playing out anyway. Whatever he actually said, it touched me deeply and we kept on talking more and more after that, and before we realized, we had fallen for each other. He's been by my side during some of the worst times in my life, and now that he needs me, I want to do the same."

Upon hearing Sara's love tale, Laura is almost pushed to tears. The latter is a die hard fanatic for anything intimate and love-related, and for her, the story embodies both. She was anticipating something plain and uninspiring, but instead she got full-on emotional.

"I don't blame you if you think I'm being selfish by trying to push the problem to Mathéo and it's okay if you don't w-"

"I'll do it," Laura suddenly caves in. "I can't possibly refuse after everything you just told me. I will find a way to persuade Mathéo into forgiving you two, and hopefully he'll do the rest on his own. It's going to be difficult, but I'll do it somehow."

"Really? Thank you so much. I'm truly grateful."

After that, silence settles in between the two girls as they proceed with eating their expensive meals. A few moments later, when Laura is done with hers, she gets up to leave but Sara stops her.

"Before you go, I wanted to give you something as a show of my appreciation." The dark skinned girl pauses her food and brings out a sparkling red envelope from her bag. "It's an invitation to the annual Fondation de Dons de Sang gala next week. I usually go with Aaron as my plus one, but he said he won't be able to make it this year. It's yours if you're interested."

"No, thank you," Laura politely declines the offer. "My brother was also invited to the event because of his job and he's letting Mathéo and I come along as his escorts. I'm sorry if you're disappointed."

"It's okay, it's not a problem at all," Sara assures her as she returns the card to where she brought it from. "I guess I'll see you there."

* * * *

Despite how dark it is outside, Aaron stealthily sneaks into an abandoned warehouse through one of its windows. He immediately turns on his phone's flashlight to illuminate the darkness surrounding him and all he sees is a vast space filled with nothing other than rusted dust-covered construction equipment.

"Is anyone here?" the teenager calls out, but his voice just echoes round with no response.

Growing increasingly skeptical, Aaron takes another look at his messages with the stalker to ensure he has come to the discussed location, which he did. So, why is no one else here? Is this supposed to be some initiation ritual or something? Nevertheless, the boy proceeds deeper into the edifice for clues.

"Here you are," a mysterious eerie voice whispers into Aaron's ears, causing him to instantly turn around, but nobody is there.

'Who said that?' he wonders as he looks back and forth in utter confusion and extreme worry. Is someone watching him somehow by using a zegen ability? As Aaron gets ready to leave the building, an invisible hand suddenly grabs his left foot and literally pulls his entire body through the ground beneath him.

"Aahhh!" he screams in horror at the top of his voice as he feels himself phase through endless layers of solid rock until he eventually lands on a firm surface.

"What just happened?" Aaron groans as he forces himself off the floor and realizes that his location has completely changed. He appears to have been transported to an orange conference room, and at the center of it, there's a large round table with a dozen people he has never met before sitting around it, discussing in a language he doesn't comprehend, but one of the faces there quickly strikes him as familiar. It's the man who invited him there, the stalker.

"You're here at last," the man gets up from his chair to welcome Aaron with a malicious smile. "I hope your trip down here wasn't too unpleasant. I specifically told them to bring you here as gently as possible."

Every other person in the room immediately goes silent and turns to focus on their guest. It seems like they were all waiting for Aaron's arrival, but the teen boy is too pissed off and frustrated right now to wonder why.

"Can't you just cut the shit for once!" Aaron bursts out angrily. "I came here for answers, not to be tossed around like a ride in an amusement park."

"I need all of you to excuse us for a moment," the stalker instructs the congregation behind him and they waste no time to vacate the room, shutting the door closed behind them in order to give the two complete privacy. "If you desire answers, then that's exactly what I'll give to you."

The grown man then goes on to tell our protagonist about how normals have always despised zegens because of how powerful they are in comparison to them, but their aversion is at its peak when it concerns the members of the Zomer cult. This is because the group is well known for their many innovative and progressive experiments that have successfully amplified their followers' zegen abilities, and in some rare cases, even granted them new ones, and for this same reason, UDAP was formed to exterminate every last one of them. So, when the normal organization found out that someone belonging to the Zomer delivered a baby that could grow up to put the weaklings in the position they deserved permanently, they went ballistic. UDAP didn't take long before they captured the infant and took him to a country where they could easily monitor and control him—Belgium. To ensure that no other child that powerful was ever born, the agency killed the baby's mother as well as anyone they knew was involved in her first conception.

After hearing this shocking and immensely disturbing revelation, Aaron is instantly enraged. He begins to ask himself why people would be so cruel and selfish as to separate him from his true parents just 'cause they're intimidated and insecure. It just doesn't make any sense to him.

"It's infuriating, isn't it?" the stalker asks the boy, but he's too angry to respond. All he wants to do in this moment is let loose the whole fire of his rage burning inside him without fear of any repercussions. "If you're interested, I know a way you can get revenge for your dear deceased mother."

The stalker's last statement strikes a chord in Aaron's head. It has unlocked the much darker side of the boy's mind, one he never knew he had.

"How so?" Aaron replies and what he says causes a big mischievous grin to form on the stalker's face.

"I've received information that one of the UDAP executives involved in your mother's demise just so happens to be Rudi Vervoort (the Minister-President of Brussels) and he'll be hosting a certain high-profile event soon. I need you to kill him. What do you think?"

"I'm in."