CORRUPTED FILE [Lumina Chronicles Past Drafts]

Level Two

[ELLE'S PoV]

I knew something was off when Mags didn't kick down the door at four o'clock on the dot demanding to play the DR demo.

I had pulled an all-nighter just to make sure I'd extracted every interesting bit from the code. While Mags was in class, I bought a giant bottle of Dew and two family-sized bags of nacho cheese Doritos in preparation for our epic night of fangirl dreams come true.

When four became eight and my texts turned from jokes about her dying of excitement, to threats of kicking her in shin or worse if she didn't answer soon, to literally begging for a response... I knew something was really off.

I paced our dorm stuffing my face with Doritos (I was stress-eater.) And when our RA announced ten o'clock quiet hours, my panic turned to nausea. Mags wasn't the type of person to just drop off the earth. And she definitely wasn't the type to vanish without at least texting me about what was up. We told each other everything, that was just the law.

Anxiety eventually got the best of me and I scrambled to my nest. I had a program on my laptop for emergencies only that let me connect to any cellphone I had the number for. Like yeah, that sounds creepy and a tad stalkerish, but when I installed it I had a feeling it would come in handy eventually. And there it was, coming in handy. Score one for paranoid Elle.

I entered Mags' number and fidgeted in place while the program took its sweet time loading. Her phone was off. It had been since noon. That was worrying in itself, but the fact that the phone was off meant I couldn't track its location. I had no clue where she was.

I didn't sleep that night, not that that was anything new. I went to the Campus Security Office first thing the next morning.

"What can I help you with?" The officer asked, barely looking up from her paperwork and Starbucks.

"I need to report a missing person." Ugh god, those words felt awful in my mouth.

That at least caught the officer's attention. She looked up at me, dyed red eyebrows arching. "Go on."

"Magdalyn Rose Darrow, my roommate." In my mind I repeated: Don't cry. You're a warrior. Stay strong, over and over and over. It wasn't achieving much.

The officer pulled out a long, detailed looking document and a pen. "Alright. When did you last see her?"

"Seven-thirty, yesterday morning." Pen scratches.

"When did you last hear from her?"

"The same time." More pen scratches.

"Any chance she could be staying with a friend? A boyfriend?"

I laughed out loud, a short quick burst, before shaking my head. "No. We're both sort of loners." Mags hadn't had a crush, let alone a boyfriend, since she dated that jerk Ben in eighth grade.

"Mhm." Scratch, scratch, scratch.

I was already on edge. That pen wasn't making things any easier. I tapped my finger on my thigh and bounced in place.

"Age?"

"Twenty. Her birthday is March 22nd."

"Home address?"

I answered so quickly she had to ask me to repeat it.

For what felt like hours and mere heartbeats, I answered question after question until the form was completed. The officer sighed and looked the form over again before looking up at me.

"Normally a person has to be gone for forty-eight hours before we file a missing persons report, especially on a college campus. Have you tried calling her house? Perhaps she just went home—"