Alone • Liam Dunbar

Nineteen

Valack's book wasn't much of a page-turner.

The book itself told the story of a group of close friends, all of them slowly turning into monsters and murderers as the Dread Doctors invade their lives and minds. They all met unkind fates, none of them surviving by the end of the novel. Not particularly my type of literature, but it still provided some useful insight into how the Doctors operated.

The three abandoned their names a long time ago, going by titles suited to the roles that they now lived with.

The Surgeon was the de facto leader of the trio. Valack implied that he was the oldest, as well as the first. He still never clarified their ages, but I decided I preferred not to find out anyway, as it would only make me feel insane. The Surgeon conducted most of the operations on the group's victims and was the mastermind behind the creation of the supernatural chimeras as a whole.

His colleagues were the Pathologist, the man who killed Lucas, and then the woman, the Geneticist. The two of them were responsible for the grunt work, following their leader's beck and call. They were the ones who chose the group's victims. They used their expertise to analyze potential candidates' DNA to find suitable patients for them to experiment on.

Valack's book also detailed their methods of electro-magnetokinesis, and how it was reliant on their suits. Their helmets were conduits for it, allowing the currents they thrived on to pass through their bodies and amplify their lives and powers. It gave them access to forces beyond any human's control, and even allowed them to tap into a form of clairvoyance similar to that of a third eye.

By providing that bit of information, whether he did it intentionally or not, Valack gave us a real opportunity to fight back.

The Dread Doctors couldn't survive without their helmets.

That's not to say they would die right after taking them off, they relied on something else to expand their life that not even Valack knew of, but their chances of survival dropped significantly. They needed them to fight, and without them, their connection to electromagnetic currents dwindled. It would leave them scrambling and vulnerable.

Without their helmets, they would become nothing more than walking corpses capable of a few party tricks, buying their time until the inevitable. It may not have been much, nor an easily accomplished task, but it was something.

After I finished the book I hadn't moved. I remained seated, staring at the back cover of the novel, waiting for a memory to haunt me or a sudden revelation to leave me in shambles.

Though, there was only silence.

Stiles and Malia were no longer in the kitchen with me, their mugs sitting on the island's counter, cold. I hadn't even realized they'd left because of how engrossed I was with the book. I assumed they migrated into the living room, though I couldn't hear anything inside the house beside a distant electrical hum of household appliances. There was also no other light source around except for the one hanging above the dining table, its dim orange glow keeping me warm.

I push my seat back, standing and allowing myself to stretch after hours of being hunched over. My joints pop in satisfaction, and my stomach makes itself known with a low growl. I'd gone all day without eating, too focused on the Dread Doctors to worry about such a measly task.

I bring my phone out to check the time, finding it close to midnight, and also discovering a text from Hayden.

She sent it not too long ago, checking to see if I was awake and possibly wanted to join her at Sinema. Tonight was their all-ages event which meant she was surrounded by teens in varying stages of adolescence, all of them 'draining her of her own youth', as she put it lightly.