Maybe this is why Lola has been so tightly controlled by her parents lately. She did not go to school even if her burnings were not that bad. Probably they feared she would do some nonsense. Due to the accident, they will lose some money, but things might get worse, as Lola will likely have to answer in one way or another for driving without a permit. Her permit was not fully valid at the time. She had passed the exams, but the license becomes fully valid only once she is eighteen.

Now, I think I could really help her, but what if my gamble does not work?

I know I am crazy; I am already talking with myself, and I am doing all kinds of stupid things but is this not just too crazy? Trying to go into the police station and spell me a driver's license!? And tomorrow I'll tell them: 'tadaa, look here, I have a driver's license?'. What if they discover later that it is not valid?

I sighed.

OK, this craziness would involve only me. If this thing is discovered, I am the only person who gets fucked. Her problems cannot get worse than what she is getting now, so yeah, I can try it; it is my fun only. If this works, Lola is out of the problem. If not, we both will have our shitty issues.

I watched my face in the mirror.

I was feeling guilty about her troubles. She only tried to do her best for me.

Yeah, I am going to give this shit a try.

I undressed my pyjama and dressed again: trousers, blouse, tennis shoes and a simple jacket. This should work. There is no public transportation at this hour; it is past two at night, but I can walk; it would take less than an hour to get to the central police station where the driver's licences are being issued. I wonder what Flo will do once there. What could she do? Well, anyhow, I'll be there and stop her if she tries to do anything too risky.

I took deep air into my lungs, trying to gather all my courage. Fuck, I am not used to walking out late in the night through the town, even if this town is reported safe. It's something else to walk here in the neighbourhood. Eh, whatever, it should be ok.

I went to my window, checked if nobody was looking at me, and then did my favourite tree gymnastics again.

“Hey, let me remove your burnings, will you?”

“Why? If somebody sees me, I should still have them?”

“I don't like them. It is a clear identification mark.”

Hmm, my alter ego thinks we are inside some action movie?

“My face is enough for identification even without the burnings.”

“I can fix that too!”

“Really?”

Now I was curious. I let her the lead.

“OK, Let's see what you can do!”

Maybe I shouldn't have said that. The next moment a transparent mirror appeared in the air. She laughed.

A young naked deviless was looking at me. A succubus or something like this.

"Very funny, you want to walk like this through the town and not raise suspicion? We don't have carnival time now!"

She shrugged.

"You wanted to see what I can do. I just had a little fun."

Looking much like the weather lady, a young miss was watching me.

“Ahm. OK, that is really impressive, but if somebody asks me to show them my papers, then what?”

She grabbed inside my pocket and retrieved my student id. The same face was grinning at me from my id: Sonja Appletree.

I laughed at the name. She is true to herself with her tree theme.

“I hope you can make it back? It is my only id?”

She laughed happily:

“Sure. It is only a visual trick, a magic layer covering the previous layer.”

“But what do you do with the chips? This one doesn't have one, but many do?”

She shrugged.

“I can mess with those too, but the best is to fry them. We'll see, case by case!”

As she was in the lead, I could not laugh aloud even if I felt the need. My alter ego seems to have developed a frying chips passion.

I walked further through the deserted streets. I realized an interesting thing: I would be afraid if I were alone.

If I were alone?

I was alone, yet with her, I did not feel alone.

We saw a couple of dubious persons, but nothing that should really scare me. I saw various police cars at least three different times. I did not know our police were so active during the night. I should feel safer with so many police moving around.

I let her in the lead as she was enjoying the walk a lot. She watched everything with interest, buildings, bus stations, taxis, banks, and even closed shops.

She entered a 24/7 small shop and bought a juice. The owner, an old Chinese man, offered me a discount to buy some Chinese food, so I ended up eating Chinese food in a 24/7 shop together with the owner. I was hungry!

It was past three when I arrived in front of the police station. There was some activity there, but Flo went directly towards the entry.

I started to panic.

“What do you do!?”

“Calm down; they do not see me.”

That did shock me. I was walking through the middle of the police's parking, there were other people there, but nobody was looking at me. Is it because she walks so nonchalantly, or is it real that they do not see me?

“How is this possible?”

“Have you never learned of prisms? You've seen I can make magic mirrors in the air? I can also do prisms and more!”

What do prisms have to do with invisibility?

I was mute, but she was merciful with me and explained further:

“I just redirect the light a couple of times; it is as if the light would go in a curve around you. As simple as that, you become invisible.”

She was carefully keeping a distance of about two meters from everybody, but it became more complicated when she came closer to the entry.

From the side, a pair came. They passed on this side of the parking and entered the building through a revolving door. There was room for only one person inside the revolving door, and once something was activated, I suppose with a keycard or something similar, the door turned, closing the person inside. When it opened again, the place was empty. The second person followed… and Flo jumped behind her.

“What do you do? Take care!”

Suddenly when we were near her, the wall began to grow, and she fell to the floor. Panicked, I watched up and saw two giant policewoman's feet almost walking over my face.

“hayaaa!!!”

“Stop screaming in my ears; it is OK.”

“It is OK.? What have you done? Why is she so gigantic?”

“How romantic!”

The policewoman said that, looking at me.

A door opened on the other side. She picked me up from the floor.

“Surprise, surprise!”

“Wait, what? What, what is this? What have you done to me?”

An older policeman appeared from behind the second door with a coffee in his hand:

“What do you mean?”

“I mean this white flower. Look how pristine and beautiful it is!”

The policewoman put me over an ear and wrapped me in her hair. She advanced a few steps and watched herself in a mirror. A lovely young woman's face appeared facing me with incredible blue eyes, brownish hair and something like a delicate white rose over her left ear. I am a flower!!

“What have you done!?”

She laughed at my surprise:

“You are a flower!”

“Are you crazy?”

“No, why? As soon as we want, we can switch back, but I would propose not to do it now….”

“But, but…”

“Relax. Trust me….”

I sighed inwardly.

“This 'trust me' starts to make me nervous...”

“Oh, keep cool. Have you seen how her eyes literally scintillated? That's magic enhanced eyes! I guess this young girl has some magic affinity. Interesting case!”

I was getting worried by her confabulations:

“What does this mean?”

“Oh, stop worrying about each word you hear. It only means she is naturally inclined towards magic; she could learn magic easier if she were given the possibility. That's all.”

“Flower? Oh, Sam, you have a secret admirer who comes here by night?”

“Hm, Max just went through the door. Can it be him?”

“Max?”

The old man had a disbelieving voice, but he conceded: “Yes, I saw him passing through when I went to take my coffee.”

“Did you see him putting the flower?”

“No, but I did not look. I just went to grab my coffee.”

She watched him with a smile:

“And it was not you?”

He shrugged and made a sorry face:

“I was not so inspired, and besides, Greta would eat my liver if I would give flowers to my young colleagues… It was either Max or Houdini himself.”

Both laughed and walked together.

“OK, I'll keep the flower to thank my anonymous admirer. I just had an argument with Max and wondered why he did not wait for me. Is this his way to say I'm sorry?”

“This does not sound like Max, but what do I know? It is really a seldom, wonderful flower!”

The old man said that, locking his gaze on me. I was feeling highly uncomfortable whilst Flo was feeling amused.

The young policewoman grinned:

“Ahem. If you keep staring so obviously, you might get into trouble, not only with Greta.”

“Oh, sorry!” - caught by surprise, the man tried to explain himself - “It seems to be a seldom flower; I have not seen such yet!”

“Oh, it was the flower you were looking at?”

Both laughed. He sighed.

“You know I have a passion for flowers and beautiful eyes...”

In the next minutes, it was hilarious to see all the eyes that the flower attracted, but what do I do if this woman keeps the flower indefinitely?

Actually, it was not that bad. There were too many people around; I did not expect this activity at three fifteen in the morning. What is this all about? How should we search for the driver's licences area with all these people haunting the environment? And it looked like more and more were coming.

Sam joined a group of people; they were talking, mostly speculating on why they had all been summoned for a three-thirty meeting. Couldn't they wait until seven in the morning?

A young man came:

“The captain is here; the meeting is starting earlier; please join us in the conference room.”

The conference room was a relatively large room housing a long table with about twenty chairs around it. Sam came with another girl and found a place standing behind the line of chairs. There were still a couple of sitting places available, but she preferred to stay.

Soon all sitting places were taken, but people kept filling the room until about forty to fifty people gathered there. A massive guy came and took position on the right about in the middle of the room. I thought I recognized the person with whom Sam came. That must be Max. What was remarkable with him was not only his huge stature but the total hateful look he sent me. He looked directly at me as if he would recognize what I was. Those eyes! Oh my, if he could, he would send waves of poison through them. That's the look of a hungry ogre for a thieving dwarf he just found scrounging his soup.

Sam made a friendly sign to him, and he answered halfway but kept his eyes pinned on me. OK, whatever problem these two had, I don't want to be part of it.

Suddenly the noise ceased, and I saw two people entering the room: one small about 50 years old man and a tall young woman on his side.

“Morning, ladies and gentlemen.”

Some moans came as answers, then Max shouted a: “Morning Sir!” and got some unfriendly views immediately; he did not seem to be very loved here. The older man did not look impressed; he went directly to a table and turned a projector on:

“Gentlemen, we have an alarm code red. As red as it can be.”

The silence that followed made me feel it was something severe. On the wall, a map became visible. The man made a gesture with his hand towards the woman, who continued:

“I am agent Sewod. What you see here is the Bounty County.”

Somebody from behind commented:

“Yes, we saw that!”

She continued undisturbed:

“The reports are contradictory. We do not know exactly what is happening; we assume a terrorist group is acting in the region.”

A couple of voices this time:

“You assume?”

She continued further:

“Your job is to block the highways, here and here and deploy over these roads there.”

“You assume?”

The captain wanted to say something, but agent Sewod leaned towards the man:

“Yes, we assume. You'll get a better understanding soon. It is important to register any person coming out from the region. They will be picked up and delivered to especially for this purpose organized camps. There should be no operating unit smaller than 5 persons. Is this clear? You have to report any suspicious behaviour.”

"What is suspicious?"

"Anything you deem suspicious."

“But the fields around are not guarded if we guard only the highways….”

“The fields are already occupied by our special forces. The national guard is mobilized and will build a second line behind them and you. We have mobilized all police officers from neighbouring counties to block the other roads over there.”

“But why police, if you got the special forces and the national guard?”

“The army may be deployed too. We want the police to come in contact with the civilians. I must warn you that we are dealing with a ruthless group. Their ranks are estimated at about one hundred. They are very well organized, act coordinated and seem to have good knowledge of the territory even if we did not find the local connection. Yet.”

“What would they do inside the Bounty County?”

“There are some possible targets, as the nuclear facility in Boca-Raton and the chemical factory at Bytons, and three of our biggest five software companies are located there.”

“Software companies?”

“What about surveillance? Where is that info? There are hundreds or thousands...”

“Surveillance failed. There must be some advanced electromagnetic devices that take every digital camera out of function. Everything, including the mobile phones from the area, failed one after the other”

“EMP?”

“It is possible, but the outages happened in a strange way: not all at once, but gradually, or area wise. What kind of EMP is that? Or a set of many smaller EMPs? It is a technology we haven't encountered yet. We do not know.”

“Who can have this kind of technology? It must be a state actor!?”

“Probably.”

“Is this war?”

“We cannot exclude that!”

“With whom?”

“That is the very question we want to answer as soon as possible! Currently, we do not know. Somebody may be testing us.”

“But, but you cannot encircle them and let them do what they want inside a whole county? One hundred desperadoes, I don't know how you came to the number, but even us here, we should be able to cope with them before morning; what the hell! Not to speak of the army?”

The captain leaned on his knuckles over the table and spoke in a tired voice:

“Tom, please wait until you've seen all.”

“But captain? Any delay would give them time to do more harm...”

Agent Sewod raised her voice, looking at Tom with cold eyes:

“Our best special operation forces are already on the field and will get into action soon. The army is preparing to deploy as a backup."

The captain leaned in:

"Leave the shit to the special operation forces. Your role is to receive the civilians and ensure that all are registered and go into camp. No exceptions! I do not want to have one bastard escape with the civilian flow. Am I clear enough!?”

“Yes, captain!”

“But, but what did they do?”

Agent Sewod shrugged:

“We have until now 16 registered homicides, including 3 police officers at Boca-Raton… We lost connection with all police units in the area. I will show disparate pictures and short films, most feeds up to the cut-off time when the respective camera fell. A couple of cameras have recovered for a short time but then fell again, so it may not be a permanent disabling function; however, most seem to be definitively lost by now.”

A succession of pictures followed as if picked up from a horror movie. Then the captain nominated the teams and their target destinations, and with it, the session was dismissed. While waiting for the room to get empty, I was struggling with my alter-ego about what to do.

“Flo! we should tell them, explain to them what is happening!”

Maybe it was good that I was not in the lead. I would have revealed myself instantly.

“And what is happening if you dare explain me?”

“That magic came to this world? I can show them magic?”

“Are you crazy? If I appeared out of nowhere here, they would start shooting before asking questions. Have you seen the pictures? What do we know?”

Yes, I saw the pictures; that's why I wanted to act.

“But, but...”

“And explain to them what? Magic? Even Matt asked if this was a prank!? Or that you, I mean, I came from a different world? How does this help them?”

“Actually, from a game...”

“That's even worse... If they do not shoot you, they'll close you at the insane and interrogate you hours after hours to find out what trick did you use to appear here and how did you enter the building.”

“How can you know? You are not from this world?”

“Do you know how they react to magic in my world? Do you believe this world is different? I fear even worse, but tell me, you must know better..”

She is my alter ego; why do I ask stupid questions. What they said about mobiles and cameras was not EMP but magic. I could demonstrate to them that if Flo supported me.

“Captain!”

“Yes, Sam? Is there something unclear?”

“Captain, you haven’t told us all isn’t it?”

“Sam, who knows all the truth?”

She seemed to have something good with the captain as she continued pressing:

“Captain, what is really happening there?”

“We do not know Sam, we do not know. It looks as if some of the actions would have been done by people living there… That's the hardest part to digest. There has been no requirement, no negotiations. Who is doing this and why? This does not make any sense. There were some inexplicable conversations that we've heard, so we have no clear answer so far. I do not know more. Frankly, I do not like the situation; it does not smell right. Now, this is about all I know. Do you feel any better?”

The implications of what I saw and heard here were much more significant than what I previously thought. Who is there in that district, and what do they want?

Sam left. She shook her head:

“Why have I answered the phone? Why?...”

I heard steps behind but could not see who was following. As Sam entered an office, a huge hand on her shoulder stopped her. She turned, and I was suddenly facing the ogre.

“Max? Oh, it was kind of you...”

He asked her, brutally picking me and straining her hair in the movement:

“What's this?”

Oh my, what an idiot. He should have not said a word, and everything would have been fine. She was so happy with the flower?

She gasped, surprised at his movement:

“A flower. Was it not from you? But I found...”

“From me? Who gave it to you? You cross me?”

“What?”

“With whom have you been?”

“What?”

“Don't lie to me!”

“What?”

Each time the light in her eyes got darker.

“If you say that again, I'll… I'll… ”

This time thunders lighted her eyes.

“You'll what?”

He kept peddling his nonsense:

“You crossed me!”

Meanwhile, Flo commented:

"He had been influenced by some dark magic; I can smell it!"

The woman with blue eyes sighed:

“I don't know what you are talking about, and I am less and less interested to learn it!”

"What do you mean influenced?"

The ogre yelled:

“If you turn now, it is finished between us! Don't turn!”

She turned. He screamed loud and threw the flower on the floor. That was nothing; even if the view was shocking, I did not suffer much, but when he crushed me under his heavy boots, the pain was immense.

It felt as if each and any of my bones had been mashed under a giant roller. And as he crushed further the flower as if trying to integrate it into the floor, strains of pain invaded my mind from each and every piece of skin and bone, overwhelming it.

I was pain incarnate.

There was another hard discussion between the man and the woman, but I could not hear anything they said; the pain was too much.

Everything was pain; all I saw, all I felt, all I heard was just pain. Pain, pain, pain. As if I would have one thousand teeth that were being boreholed by one thousand sadistic dentists.

Then suddenly, it went off; just an empty void remained.

“Am I dead?”

“No, I healed you.”

How can so much pain exist, and it did not kill me?

“You healed me? Why did you have to wait so long?”

“I had to wait for them to leave.”

“You had to wait? You let me suffer that pain until they left, even if you could have stopped it before?”

“What do you think would have happened if the flower had popped back to normal under his eyes? I suffered the pain too….”

“I do not want… I do not want it anymore… I want to separate! Let me free! Let me leave! Free me, please!”

She sighed.

“I cannot do it. It does not pain anymore, look, you are OK? See how beautiful you are?”

There was a small mirror on the wall, and the weather lady was smiling at me. After a short moment of uncertainty, I realized it was the new face White Flower put for me. Confusing, not to recognize yourself in a mirror.

This confusion helped my brain focus on something else instead of the former pain.

“It is still you, exactly your curves, your body, just minor adjustments.”

She said that, trying to comfort me.

“How could you still think when in the form of flower goo?”

She shrugged.

"Let's not forget why we are here!"

"But we need to warn them!"

"Everybody left. We can think to warn them, but first let's finish the work, then we will think about what we should do."