"Five years. Five years worth of work, just destroyed," Sophia muttered, and Jaxson could hear the tears in her voice. He was sitting next to her, surrounded by the rubble of her lab. He looked around. It was crazy to think that everything in here was all made within five years; it seemed like it would only have gotten this full when made by a team of people, over quite a few decades. But it was a testament to Sophia's intelligence. She was able to create super high tech creations in the matter of hours, so even though it was devastating to see everything in here destroyed, he was confident that Sophia would be able to rebuild all the important stuff in no time.

Max seemed to share the same sentiment. "It's alright, Sophia. I know you. You'll be able to remake all the important stuff in no time, it's no challenge to you," he stated, crouching down to be on the same level as her. She didn't move, or even seem to respond to his statement. He and Jaxson shared a look. They had never seen her like this before. She was always cocky and confident, and loved to act like she was above everyone.

But the woman sitting there on the floor was completely broken. She just sat there, motionless, besides the occasional shudder of her shoulders, which they could tell were suppressed sobs. Khalia watched from afar, tears in her eyes as she looked around. The amount of lost technology made her heart hurt.

Suddenly, the sound of a phone going off broke the tense air. Jaxson realized it was his, and answered it. "Hello?" Max and Khalia watched him, not being able to hear the voice on the end, and he had no discernable emotion on his face. After a few moments, he nodded to himself. "We'll be there as soon as possible. Bye."

"Who was that?" Max asked as the other man hung up the phone and stood up.

"The mayor. There's another victim," Jaxson stated, and Khalia looked concerned.

"That's three in one day!" she exclaimed, and he sighed and nodded his head.

"I know. Whatever is going on is a lot more serious than I thought," he said, exasperated.

"I'm coming with," Sophia suddenly said while standing up, scaring Jaxson and causing him to yelp.

"Are you sure?" Max asked, seeing that she still had a pained look on her face. She nodded.

"Whatever the hell is going on has caused my lab to be destroyed. I'm going to get to the source of this, and get my revenge on whatever is causing this," she stated with hardly any emotion; it honestly scared everyone else in the room, so no one wanted to argue.

"Alright, I'll stay here to make sure nothing else happens to the house. The rest of you go investigate," Max said, and everyone else nodded in response. Jaxson's phone buzzed, and he looked at it.

"The mayor just sent me the address, lets head out."

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"Goddamn, finally!" the mayor exclaimed when the three walked through the front door. "You finally brought Sophia-"

"Why is this place trashed?" the woman in question interrupted him, and he paused for a moment before looking around. It looked like a tornado had passed through the apartment they were standing in.

"It was like this when we came in," the police chief chimed in. "My boys actually came because of a noise complaint from one of the neighbors, and found the man standing in the middle of the room just like the other victims."

Jaxson looked over to the man just standing like a zombie. He wondered if the apartment being trashed had any connection to what happened to make the man into a victim of whatever was happening. He then noticed that nearby the man was a computer, and he immediately went to investigate it without saying anything. Sophia watched him, then grabbed Khalia by the arm and started dragging her towards the victim.

"Ow, that hurts-"

"See if their soul is also blocked," Sophia interrupted, and Khalia rubbed her arm as it stung from the sudden harsh grip. But doing as she was told, her hands started to glow purple and she hovered them over the man, closing her eyes and trying to ignore the sound of Sophia impatiently tapping her foot. After a moment, she opened her eyes and her hands stopped glowing.

"Yeah, it's the same as the others," Khalia said, and Sophia cursed under her breath.

"How is that even possible?" she muttered to herself, before looking over to Jaxson. "Is that computer also not working?"

"This one is actually fine," he replied, motioning for the other two to come to him. They looked over his shoulder, and saw that the screen showed a social media page. "Looks like this dude was also scrolling on social media before something happened to him."

"Hey wait, look!" Khalia suddenly said, and reached over to point at something on the screen. She was pointing at a comment that said 'wanna be friends' with the victim replying to it. "Didn't we see this exact same exchange on the other dude's computer?"

"Wait, yeah, we did!" Jaxson replied, and Sophia rubbed her chin while thinking.

"Two instances of the same thing?" she muttered, and then reached over Jaxson to start typing on the computer. She tried responding to the comment again to see if anything would happen, but nothing did.

"Check their account," Khalia chimed in, and Sophia did just that. It didn't lead to much, though; it was a mostly empty profile, except them replying to a bunch of posts with just the same message. Probably a bot.

"This doesn't really do much for us..." Jaxson grimaced. Sophia sighed, before stepping away and started to pace around the room. "What you are thinking?"

"I don't know. It's slightly off topic, but something is telling me that the people that attacked the house are somehow connected to this zombie thing," she said, and Jaxson tilted his head in confusion.

"What makes you think that?" he asked.

"I don't know. It's just a hunch. Plus, the woman suddenly gaining consciousness at the exact same time that a giant group of people showed up with the intention to hurt us seems like too much of a coincidence," she explained, and he hummed, seeming to understand where she was coming from. She stopped pacing for a second, before reaching into her lab coat pockets and suddenly pulled out a syringe.

"Woah, what the hell?" he exclaimed in shock, and Sophia gave him a deadpanned look.

"Relax, I just want a blood sample of this victim," she responded, and walked past one of the police officers that tried to stop her from approaching the victim. The police chief waved the man away, seemingly just done with the situation.

"Why do you want a blood sample?" Khalia asked as the mad scientist injected the syringe into the man.

"I wanna see if there's something in their system that we're missing. If there is something different, I wanna compare it to the blood of someone that attacked the house to see if there's a connection. It's a long shot, but its worth a try," Sophia explained, getting the blood sample.

"How would we get blood from someone that attacked the house?" Jaxson then questioned, and she looked at him like he was the biggest idiot on the planet.

"There's most definitely blood spilt somewhere in the house. It'll definitely be dry, but that won't stop me," she said, and started walking out the door. "Come on, we're done here."

The other two did as she said and followed her out, with the mayor just watching with disappointment. Another victim, and they still have nothing.

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"The TV!" 

As the three walked into the mansion, they heard the scream from the living room. Jaxson peeked a look as they stood in the main hall.

"It'll be okay, Hayden. We can get the TV replaced-" Max tried to comfort the larger man, but to no avail.

"But all my shows were recorded on that TV! It's now all lost, I won't be able to see whether Jennifer takes back Mark or not!" Hayden exclaimed, sinking to the ground. Max rolled his eyes.

"You do know that everything is on streaming services, right?"

Ignoring them, Sophia leaned down, and spotted something red. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a scalpel, and scratched it off the floor. It all came off in one fell swoop, and she could immediately tell it was dried blood.

"Perfect," she grinned to herself, walking off to her lab, Jaxson and Khalia following behind while trying not to pay any attention to Hayden as he had a meltdown on the floor.

"I'm going to have to rebuilt my analysis machine," Sophia said, stopping in front of her room, "since it got destroyed with the rest of my lab. It shouldn't take more then a few hours, and then it shouldn't take long for me to analyze and compare the blood samples. Until then," she pointed her scalpel and Jaxson, which still had the patch of dried blood on it, "try to find as many clues as you can. If you can find something useful, maybe it'll help contribute to whatever I end up finding."

Sophia then walked into her room, slamming the door behind her. She was clearly still upset about her lab being destroyed, and Jaxson and Khalia were not going to push it. They walked back towards the living room.

"I just wonder why a giant group of people would just suddenly attack the mansion unprovoked..." Jaxson wondered out loud.

"Maybe it wasn't unprovoked," Max chimed in, bringing the two's attention back to the men in the living room.

"What makes you say that?" Jaxson questioned, and Max shrugged.

"Maybe the people that attacked us are similar, if not the same as the zombie victims," Khalia then said, and all eyes went on her. Suddenly sheepish, she tried to explain. "M-maybe the reason their souls are blocked is that there's something not natural that's controlling them that's causing their souls to be blocked, and that could also be why I can't detect it with my magic."

"Where did you get that idea?" Hayden then questioned, seemingly out of his meltdown

"I don't know. I just watch a lot of sci-fi movies when I'm procrastinating on homework."

"You might be on to something with the 'not natural' part, though," Jaxson replied, sitting down on the couch. "According to the wife of the second victim we've encountered, he had what looked like a seizure, although we don't have confirmation of it. He was using the computer beforehand, though, so maybe something involving computers is causing this, considering the fact that every victim we've found so far have been right next to their computer."

"It definitely seems like the computer is most likely the cause for that guy," Khalia responded, "so it could have happened to the others as well, we just don't have eyewitnesses for those."

"That's also just the ones we know of, too," Max muttered under his breath, and everyone looked at him. "These are just the cases that have been reported. There's a good chance that there's a lot more cases that have been unreported."

Jaxson stood up suddenly, scaring Khalia for a second who was standing next to him. "I want to go back to the first victim's apartment," he said, suddenly walking back towards the front entrance. Khalia tailed behind him.

"I'm coming too!" she exclaimed, and the two other boys looked at each before shrugging and following along. Jaxson called the police chief as they headed out to see if there was still any police presence at the first apartment. 

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"The chief said just to not mess anything up, since it's still an active crime scene," the police officer said, unlocking the door to the apartment and letting the four heroes inside. They all piled in, and the police officer stood by the door, just keeping an eye out. 

"You guys check around for anything that might have been missed, I'll look at the computer," Jaxson said, and everyone else nodded as they went off in different directions. He sits down at the desk, and to his surprise, the computer actually turned on. Although, he could tell something was wrong with it, as it was running really slow, and it sounded almost like an airplane taking off with how loud it was.

He ignored this, and started looking around the computer. It had shut down on it's own, so there was no recently opened programs or tabs. He decided to just see if he could find the woman's social media account on the computer, as that was the only lead they had at this point. Luckily, when he opened up the internet browser, he got a notification asking if he wanted to restore the previous session. Clicking yes, multiple tabs popped up, and as he suspected, one of them was a social media page. He checked the page, and found what he was looking for.

"Hey guys," he said out loud, getting the attention of the other guardians, "it's that one account again. At least, I think it is. Hard to tell with the username just being a random jumble of letters and numbers."

The rest of the team crowded around the computer as he clicked on the profile of the mysterious account.

"That's three victims with the same account with the same message, this has to be more than a coincidence at this point," Khalia commented, and Jaxson nodded in agreement.

"Can you look at all the people that this account has responded to? It might lead us to more victims," Hayden asked, and Jaxson went to the reply section of the account. He started scrolling, before Max leaned in further.

"Wait a minute," he said, and suddenly grabbed the mouse from Jaxson who looked at his friend in confusion. "Someone, get something to write in." Khalia instinctively pulled out her phone and opened up her notes app.

"What am I writing down?" she asked.

"Names," he stated simply. "The profile pictures on these accounts that this account has responded to, I recognize some of these from the crowd that attacked the house." Everyone's eye widened. Max's memory was good, but they didn't realize he would be able to pick multiple faces out of a crowd like this. He started saying names to the accounts that he recognized faces for, Khalia writing them all down.

"So the people that attacked us, seems like they responded to this account, and probably became victims, but seemingly in a different way than the zombie victims," Jaxson pondered out loud.

"There's only one way to find out," Max said, and everyone looked at him. "We have to find these people and investigate them."

"If we go to the police chief, he might be able to give us information on them," Hayden chimed in, and Jaxson nodded, suddenly standing up from the desk.

"Time to roll out."

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

"Where the hell is that screwdriver..." Sophia mumbled to herself. She managed to gather up all the pieces of her analysis machine, so it was mostly a matter of piecing it back together. She went to go find her toolbox, but saw it across the room with the lid blown off and all the tools scattered around it. She sighed. It would take forever to just organize the chaos in her lab in general, and then there's no telling how long it would take to rebuild every single thing in it. Even if she spent all her time working on it, it would take months at the quickest.

She walked over to the toolbox and searched around the clutter to find the right screwdriver she needed, and then started walking back to the desk she had set all the pieces on, before feeling something tugging on her ankle. She looked down, and saw a hand grabbing onto her. she followed the arm, and saw that it was the woman who caused all of this in the first place. She looked like she was on the brink of death with how beaten and battered she was. If anything, Sophia thought she actually got killed in the scuffle, so she was surprised to see her ankle being grabbed by her.

"Oh. Forgot you were a thing," she commented, and easily pulled her ankle out of the woman's grasp. She walked back t her desk, and then looked back at the woman, who slowly started to sit up and stared at the scientist with a blank expression. She was definitely no threat in this state, so Sophia didn't pay much mind to her and returned her eyes onto her scraps.

"Got anything to say or are you just gonna sit there and stare at me?" she eventually asked as she continued to feel the woman's eyes on her. The voice that then came out of the woman didn't sound natural, and almost like it was disconnected from her body.

"You are unable to stop the inevitable. The plan is too far into action to be stopped."

"What plan?" Sophia asked as she turned to look at the woman, suddenly curious. She was only met with silence, however. She sighed, then decided to ask a different question. "What's your role in this so called 'plan,' then?"

"I am simply a puppet," the woman said, her voice completely monotone.

"Who's the puppeteer, then?" Sophia asked. Again, she was met with the woman just staring at her blankly. She groaned, and looked back at her scrap. "You aren't any help, are you?" she said sarcastically. Suddenly, the woman started muttering under her breath.

"He will rule over all. Humanity is so fragile, so easy to control. They will follow him, a click of the finger and everyone drops dead. He will bring peace and unity, I am a simple servant who will help him reach his goal-"

Tiring of the rambling, Sophia looked around the desks near her, and saw a specific gun laying underneath one of that that looked like it was still in working condition. She grabbed it, and shot at the woman. A tranquilizer dart shot out, and the second it hit the woman, she was knocked out and flopped down.

"Annoying..." Sophia mumbled to herself, before continuing on with her work. A part of her, however, wondered what the hell the woman was mumbling about.