Section E's pov :
The classroom of Section E was usually the loudest place in HVIS. It was a chaotic mess of laughter, shouting, and the occasional flying paper airplane. But for the two days Jay Jay was at home, it felt like a graveyard.
Ci-N sat at his desk, his head buried in his arms. He didn't even open his laptop. To a genius like him, the silence was deafening. Every time the door opened, he would snap his head up, his eyes wide with a desperate hope that died the second he saw it was just a teacher.
"She's not coming today either, is she?" Ci-N whispered, his voice cracking.
David leaned against the window, staring out at the parking lot. "Gemma said she's staring at the walls, Ci. She won't even eat the soup."
Edrix and Rory were in the back corner, the blue light of their monitors reflecting in their glasses. They weren't gaming. They weren't hacking. They were staring at a single screen: OTJ101.
On the map, a small blue dot was frozen over Tita Gemma's house. It hadn't moved in forty-eight hours.
"Her battery is at 12%," Rory muttered, his throat dry. "She hasn't plugged it in. She probably doesn't even care if it dies."
"We're pathetic," Denzel spat, kicking a chair. "We let Keifer talk us into this. 'It's for her safety,' he said. 'It's part of the plan,' he said. Look at that dot! That's not a person anymore, that's a target we leashed."
In the very back of the room, Keifer sat alone. His "cold as ice" mask was so thick it looked like he was carved from marble. He didn't join their conversation. He didn't offer words of comfort.
But his phone was gripped so tightly in his hand that his knuckles were white. He was staring at the same blue dot. Every time the signal flickered, his breath hitched. He hadn't left for London yet; his suitcase was in the trunk of his car, but he couldn't board that plane. Not while the dot was stationary. Not while he knew he was the reason she was broken.
"Keifer," Kit called out, his voice filled with a rare anger. "You happy now? The plan worked. Aries hates her, she's crippled, and she won't speak. Mission accomplished, right?"
Keifer didn't even look up. He just raised an eyebrow, his gaze returning to the screen. "The plan isn't finished until I'm in London. Stay focused."
"You're a monster," Ci-N sobbed, hiding his face again.
Keifer didn't flinch. But under the desk, his boots were tapping a restless, frantic rhythm. He wanted to drive to her house. He wanted to break down her door and hold her until the hollow look left her eyes. But he couldn't. His relatives were watching. His father's men were circling.
He had to be the villain so she could survive the war he had brought to her doorstep.
-
Kuya Angelo's POV:
I stood in the kitchen with Gemma, watching the steam rise from the sopas she had made for the tenth time that day. I'm a man of medicine, a man who understands how bones knit and how skin heals. But looking at Jay Jay through the crack in her bedroom door... that wasn't a medical problem.
"She's hollow, Angelo," Gemma whispered, leaning against me. "Her eyes... they're like two dark pits. There's no light left."
I squeezed my mom's shoulder, but my eyes were fixed on the stairs where Aries had just passed. I saw the way he looked at her door—a mixture of agonizing guilt and a cold, stubborn fury.
"The trauma of the accident is one thing," I said softly, my professional voice barely masking my own heartache. "But the psychological shock of the betrayal... that's what's killing her. She doesn't trust the ground she walks on anymore, mom . How can you expect her to eat when she feels like the world is trying to swallow her whole?"
Jay Jay's pov :
It was currently 8 pm and tomorrow I will be going to school , I didn't want to at first. But then I thought about graduation so eventually I gave in
I reached into my pocket and gripped my phone. It was vibrating. Not a ringtone, but a low, steady pulse, like it was mimicking my own heartbeat.
Why is it doing that? I pulled it out and saw the OTJ101 icon again. It was pulsing red. I tapped it, but it asked for a password I didn't have. I felt a wave of nausea. I felt like a bug pinned to a board, wings still fluttering while the collectors watched me die
Percy brought me oranges again. The smell of the citrus usually made me feel safe, but tonight, even that felt tainted. I watched him leave the room, his shadow long and protective, but the second the door closed, that feeling of being watched returned.
I lay in the dark, the cast on my leg feeling like a lead weight. I turned the phone face down, but I could still see the faint glow from the edges of the screen reflecting off the nightstand.
Someone is there, I thought, a single tear tracking down my temple. Someone is watching me breathe.
I didn't know what it was. I just knew that in a house full of people, I had never been more exposed, and I had never been more alone. I closed my eyes and prayed for the sun to come up, even though I knew that going back to HVIS meant walking back into the mouth of the wolf.
I just didn't realize the wolf was already under my pillow.
*****************************
Hiii I'm sooo sorryyy for uploading kind of short chapters but I tried to make this chapter long cuz I didn't want to write Jay Jay's return to HVIS in the same chapter , I wanted to make jays return in a whole new chapter
That's it plsss comment your ideas so I can be more motivated and not losing interest in writing this book
Comment plss and BYEEE
Love u all !!!! 🎀🤍