Late. Late. Late. That’s all she could think about as she practically flew down the halls of the CHI Health Center. If it was too late… if they’d already done something to her… she would _never_ be able to forgive herself.

Cassia opened the door to her sister’s hospital room, flinging the it wide open, anxious to see what had become of her sister. She looked frantically around the room, hoping beyond hope that Rory was okay. She had to be. She was the only family she had left, only 13 to her 17. But there she was, sleeping peacefully on her bed, silhouetted against the moonlight streaming through the window. _She’s okay. She’s fine. Or, at least she will be unless KARI gets their hands on her. _If that evil organization even so much as _tried _to get their hands on either of them…. Well….. they might not still have hands come morning. That was the power of creatures like her. Like her sister. Halors, they called them, an incredibly rare type of monster that had the ability to crush someone’s life from underneath them, or build them from the bottom up. Their mother had been one. Their father had not. It was still unclear to her if he was even a human, or some other monster, waiting to strike inside of her. Only he could say, and seeing as he and her mother had both died in a KARI raid 11 years ago, that wasn’t going to happen. She had thought that when she had received a call, telling her that her sister had had a bad collision with a car, that KARI had finally found them. You see, there were never any car crashes in Mimeira. It was unheard of. Anyway, Cassia found herself so relieved that her beloved sister was fine. That no harm had come to her. She took a deep breath, and opened her eyes…. And what she saw made her want to scream. What she had originally taken as tubes for fluid coming into her arms, appeared to be a putrid green color. And her sister’s beautiful hair which she prided herself on was cut, jagged and short. Everyone knew that cutting a Halor’s hair was their one fatal weakness. It made their powers stop, made their blood stop pumping, made their heart stand still. Her sister wasn’t alive. She wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t alive either. She was kept just _there _by KARI. They were the only ones who could ever do this to them. The only ones that knew of them, of their secrets. And if the hospital had contacted her, then…. Suddenly the World started spinning, making her terrifyingly dizzy. The World blackened, and she fell to the floor. She had only a few seconds left. She looked up, and saw the man standing above her, gun in hand, and she realized that she recognized him. His sunken eyes staring into hers with very little remorse. _It couldn’t be. _Her father. Then, the World seized to exist, floating away in the darkness of the hospital room. One name called out to her, seeming to shout her name. Rory. She hoped she’d be okay, the only bit of family she’d ever really known… or so she’d thought. Then she slipped under the poison, and died.