“Nah, it's cool,” he chuckled, dropping to one knee and attempting to wrangle the sheets.

Alicia immediately dropped down and started helping, possibly out of fear of having a hex put on her. “I, I didn't mean to. I swear. It was an accident.”

Chase lent a hand, too, scooping up leaves of paper. She stopped long enough to read one of the flyers. In letters apparently cut and pasted from a magazine and then photocopied into monochrome, it read:

Double Feature!

I Tutored a Biker Mutant

and

Cannibal Cruise Liner VII: Full Sail Slaughter

Double the Dread! Twice the Terror!

This Saturday at the Sandman! Starting at 6 PM!

$5 Admission

One word in particular caught Chase's eye. “Leash! Look!” she shouted eagerly. Alicia looked at her, and she pointed at the word. “Cannibal!” She had a sort of exuberant pride, like a kid who got their picture in the newspaper and was proudly showing their parents.

The guy gave her a crooked grin, and picked up the last of the flyers. “You like horror movies?” he asked, standing back up.

Chase joined him. She didn't know if she liked horror movies or not, so she volunteered: “I like cannibal.”

He laughed. “Good enough for me.” He tilted his head and looked from her to Alicia. “Hey, wait a minute, you're those cheerleaders, right? The ones from the parking lot?”

Alicia wondered if she should lie, but decided if she was caught in the lie it might make him even angrier. She wanted to stay on his good side as much as possible so when he killed her he'd do it quickly and painlessly. “Y-yes.”

“Hey, sorry my friend gave you such a hard time,” he said. “I'm Torey.”

Chase and Alicia introduced themselves. He seemed hesitant about whether he should ask them this, but decided to extend the olive branch anyway: “You know, you should come to the Sandman tonight. Watch some movies, hang out. It'll be fun.”

Alicia didn't know much about the Sandman, except that it was the haunt of choice for Sunnycrest's scary kid population. It was no place for a cheerleader. This definitely sounded like a trap. “N-no thank you! I'd LOVE to go but I'm just incredibly busy!”

“That's too bad. What about you, Chase?” he asked. “Trust me, if you like cannibal stuff, Cannibal Cruise Liner VII is a must see.”

“Sure! Want go see cannibal cruise!” she said excitedly.

“Cool, do you drive?” he asked.

She didn't. She typically hitched a ride with Alicia anywhere she needed to go. When she told him this, he offered: “That's okay, we can come pick you up.”

Once he had her address, he collected the flyers the two girls had picked up, leaving them with one each, and left with a wave. “Alright, see you tonight, Chase!”

“Bye!” Chase waved. Alicia's mouth was an 'o' of shock, and had been during the entire time these arrangements were made. Snapping out of it, she quickly grabbed Chase's wrist and forced it down, looking around to make sure no one saw. “Ch-ch-chase! What did you just DO?”

“Am go to films!” she said giddily, showing her friend the flyer. “Why you no come?”

“Because I'm a cheerleader! We don't DO stuff like that, Chase! We don't hang out with those people! You have no idea what they could be planning!”

Lindsey and Caitlin walked over. “Hey, hey,” said Caitlin brightly. Sensing discord, she toned it down and added, “Uh, what's going on?”

“Chase is going to the Sandman tonight,” said Alicia reproachfully.

The conversation's two new arrivals were visibly shocked. “That run-down old drive-in where those weirdos watch movies?” asked Lindsey, mouth agape. Alicia handed over her flyer, and Lindsey read it quickly. She looked up, her one visible almond eye as wide as it could go. “Chase, you CAN'T go to this.”

Chase was confused. “Why not?”

Caitlin answered. “You remember the parking lot, right, Chase? They hate us. They hate YOU just because you're one of us. If they invited you along, it's probably because they have something planned for you. It's some kind of trap, or they just feel like laughing at you and making fun of you or something.”

This assertion was met with surprise, not just from Chase, but also her fellow blonde. “Wow. I never thought of that,” said Lindsey.

“Then why were you so afraid for her to go?” asked Caitlin.

“Well, because it's social suicide,” Lindsey informed her.

Caitlin rolled her eyes. “Here we go.”

Not liking the sound of that at all, Chase asked: “Lin, what so shul kill self?”

It was a complex question. Lindsey gave it some thought, then answered, “You see Chase, in high school, there's a certain thing called 'cool.' Have you heard of 'cool?'”

Chase shook her head, so Lindsey rolled on. “If you're cool, there's nothing better. You're on top of the world. If you're not cool, it's bad news. You don't get invited to the awesome parties, nobody wants to ask you to dances, nobody wants anything to do with you. Now see, you're in a good spot right now. You're good looking, you're a cheerleader, and you saved the whole school from a deranged sniper. That makes you very cool.”

“Yes!” agreed Chase. So far so good. She was liking this 'cool' thing.

Until Lindsey's tone darkened. “But cool is fleeting. Cool can be snatched away in a second. The easiest way to become cool is to hang out with cool people, but hanging out with people who are not considered cool can suck your cool away just as easily. Naturally, WE won't think any different of you. No matter what you do, we'll always be your friends. But if others notice you hanging out with these not cool scary kids, they'll think YOU'RE not cool...which means they won't want to hang out with you either, lest they share your fate!”

She put a hand on Chase's shoulder, and gave her a sympathetic look. “And that is why it's called 'social suicide.' By going to the Sandman, you are voluntarily choosing to end your social life. We care too much about you to let that happen.”

“Please don't drag us into this,” requested Caitlin.

Lindsey was shocked. “What? You don't care that much about Chase's coolness?”

“Well, of course, we do,” said Alicia. “We just think she has slightly bigger things to worry about. Such as them waiting until she's nice and comfortable and then clipping off some of her hair for a voodoo doll.”

“On second thought, I'd rather be dragged into Lindsey's thing,” responded Caitlin, perturbed. To Chase, she said: “Look, you're not gonna lose your cool or get a voodoo doll made out of you. And I know you're not going to just let them push you around. You can take care of yourself. I just don't want your feelings to be hurt if you find out these people aren't what you thought they were. Just know what you could be getting yourself into.”

The flyer felt very heavy in Chase's hands. She looked down at it, deep in thought. Was that really why Torey had invited her? Were they just bored and wanted some ditzy cheerleader around as a punching bag? It hadn't seemed like that...she thought he was being genuine.

She filed it in her locker and grabbed her books for third period.

…

Air. The rescued girl's lungs violently expanded, a sudden hard gasp for breath punching oxygen into them. Her back arched off the bed from sheer exertion, and her eyes snapped open.

“Jesus,” cried Agent Stevens, startled to the point where he nearly out of his chair.

“She's awake,” said Lawrence pointlessly, typing away at a laptop by her bedside. “Vitals look stable. All enhancements functional.”

The girl sat up and clumsily looked around. She put a hand to her head. Something felt...wrong. At first, she thought it was just her brain, but when she lifted her arm, she felt it there, too. Her eyes flew from Lawrence to Agent Stevens. “Where am I? Who the hell are you people?”

“It's okay, Melissa,” said Stevens, standing up. “We haven't met, but you can trust me. I'm Agent Stevens, I work for the United States Government. Two local law enforcement officers found you in the woods a few days ago. You were pretty banged up.”

Her head was swimming, memories thrashing around her skull, trying to untangle themselves. “The woods...I was...I vaguely remember...”

“Please lie back down,” requested Lawrence. “You'll be disoriented for a few minutes.”

Melissa gratefully lowered herself back to the mattress. Her eyes roved the ceiling, then lowered to her surroundings. She seemed to be in a basement of some kind.

Flashes of that night in the woods began to force themselves on her. She remembered the soldiers. The raid. The raid going wrong. The fire...

She instinctively raised a hand to her chest, and it took a second for her to realize why.

Arrows. She remembered arrows.

They were gone now, though. No wounds. She remembered running. The dark. The forest. Why? Why was she running? And then, she remembered...falling...

A memory of pain lit her body on fire. A sharp groan escaped her lips. Then, the pain receded. “What...the hell happened to me?”

“We found you in some kind of pit trap in the woods,” answered Agent Stevens. “Those cannibals must have set it. You fell about fourteen feet and got eight big spears through you when you reached the bottom. It's a miracle you survived.”

At the word 'cannibal,' Melissa shot back up again. “More. There's one more!” she alerted him, as the final piece of the puzzle came back to her. “She's still out there somewhere!”

“We know,” explained the man. “That's why you're here at the station instead of in a hospital. The SCPD needs your help to track her down.”

After the initial shock passed, the girl seemed to crumble into fear. “My help? But...what can I do? The cabin is gone. Guiding the cops there was all I could contribute. And even that nearly killed me. I'm not a soldier.”

Lawrence stepped over to her, straightening his bowtie. “Funny you should say that.”

Melissa truly noticed Lawrence for the first time, and frowned at what she saw. Looking at Stevens and jerking a thumb at the boy, she asked, “Who's this nerd?”

Faltering, Lawrence replied, “I'm...I'm the guy who patched you up! A little gratitude, please?”

But she didn't hear him. When she pointed her thumb at him, she had felt the same sense of wrongness, this time in her hand and elbow. They felt alien. Foreign. Like she was remote controlling someone else's arm from far away. She tested them, biting her lip. “What's wrong with me? Why do I feel so...so different?”

“In order to save you, we had to make some...changes to your body,” explained Agent Stevens. “You needed a lot of new parts.”

She looked surprised, then accusatory. This second look was directed at Lawrence. “How many new parts?”

He shrank back a bit. “Man-many are incredibly small...but uh, altogether, including all the nuts and bolts...A-about seventy-three hundred.”

That...was a lot more than she expected. Dumbfounded, Melissa looked down at herself, as though trying to find a seam. “Seventy-three hundred. Holy cow.”

“You're still human,” Agent Stevens assured her. “You're still running on a lot of your original parts—the ones you were born with. You're still human, but now you're a bit more. You have some machine in you, as well.”

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, and watched them dangle for a moment. They looked real enough...She kicked them a couple times, and felt that same foreign sensation. “You're saying I'm a cyborg.”

Stevens smiled warmly. “Well, I guess you could say that. If it's more comfortable for you to think of these changes that way.”

Every time he opened his mouth, Melissa felt herself relax little by little, her confusion soothed, her doubts assuaged. Stevens was known for his bedside manner. One would not think of it as a useful skill for a government agent to have, but he had weaponized it on a number of occasions, and was doing so now. Already, she was trusting him. She was trusting him before it could even occur to her to be suspicious of him.

“I...I can't afford this kind of procedure,” said Melissa, continuing to look over her skin. “Seventy-three hundred parts. I mean, thank you, and I sure as hell don't want you to take them back, but...”

Agent Stevens laughed. “Oh, no charge. It's the least I could do. I feel like this whole situation is partially my fault.” He smiled. “You see, I've been heading the federal investigation of the McGuff's Pass disappearances for quite some time. If I'd been doing my job better, this would not have happened to you.” He sounded almost casual as he tossed off this last bit: “Of course, if you still feel like you owe me something, you could agree to help me catch that last cannibal.”