“Dev!” I roar. “Just keep working!”

“How the am I supposed to keep working when this is happening?” he yelps.

“ing ignore it! We have no chance of saving Lucy unless you-,”

Jungkook raises his hand, about to perform some magical spell, when Jimin and Tom simultaneously throw shining white bolts of power at him.

The force is enough to knock Jungkook off his feet; in the next moment, however, he has risen once again, a sneer on his lips.

“You keep forgetting that I’m getting exponentially more powerful by the second,” Jungkook drawls, and claps his hands. Jimin and Tom both topping to the floor, shouting in pain.

My eyes dart over to Dev. By some miracle, he’s facing the computers, typing vigorously. I rip off all my amulets and place them around Dev in a protective circle. The loss of my magical barriers causes my head to spin with the power of the chi around me.

Tom, Jin, and Jimin have drawn Jungkook out of the computer room; now, they are duking it out in the middle of Lucy’s stairwell, suspended between the first and second floors. It’s become more of a stacked match; the pure energy radiating off the three of them is unbelievable. They’re unmasking the layers of protection over their powers, bringing them out to match Jungkook’s. The temperature around us has rapidly rocketed up. I feel like I’m standing in Death Valley.

. They’re bringing out more and more of those powers. I recall how scary it was when Jimin unmasked his powers for those thirty seconds at school. That.... times three sorcerers.... for an extended period of time...

No. Dev needs my amulets. Otherwise there’s no way we can stop Jungkook.

It feels impossibly dense in the room, like the atoms in the air have thickened and thickened. The burning sensation in my chest has disappeared. Now, every breath I take seems to leave me thirstier for oxygen.

At a certain point, I stop feeling. I am simply a brain existing in the middle of nothing, clinging onto the absolute truth of magic. I become remotely aware of the sound of crying.

Soon, even that disappears.

I am simply left with myself.

And then nothing at all.

My lungs suddenly kick into overdrive and my entire body writhes in shock; I cannot take in air fast enough. My hands clamber up to my chest- I have hands, I can feel my hands. I splutter, spitting out loose strands of hair that have fallen into my mouth.

Slowly, my vision stops spinning. Everything starts shifting into focus, like I’m adjusting the lense of a camera. A tall, limber figure is standing above me, encased in a halo of silver.

I blink.

The figure has long, black hair and a familiar-looking sweatshirt on.

I blink again.

Lucy.

Except this isn’t the Lucy I know. I’ve never seen that cocky, self-assured smirk on her face, that confident manner in which she holds herself.

Not-Lucy her lips, her eyes blazing with an unfamiliar power.

“Luce?” I croak uncertainly, my voice barely there.

She looks down at me. Her smirk widens.

“You did good, Joo,” she drawls.

I realize that there is a shimmering wall of air separating us- a protective barrier. My mind whirls; but who- how-

I gasp.

“Your memories,” I breathe. “You got your full powers back.”

“Hush,” she replies. “Mama’s gotta go kick some .”

And she walks out the door of the study room.

Someone places their hand on my arm. I turn; Sofia is staring at me with a look of trepidation on her face. Behind her is Dev, staring after Lucy in astonishment.

“What happened?” I breathe.

“I stopped the transmission of Lucy’s memories from the Kado servers,” Dev says quietly. “And then right as I was trying to figure out if I could send the memories back, Lucy finished getting her memories from Jimin’s... mask... thing.”

“But how does she have powers? Didn’t Jungkook take them?”

“I have no idea. All I know is that Lucy just had 15 years of magical training and information restored to her. So here we are,” Sofia says.

The three of us exchange looks. None of us want to say it, but all of us are thinking it:

The real Lucy is terrifying.

She’s standing on the stairs, looking down at Jungkook, Tom, Jin, and Jimin. The four of them are gaping up at her in shock.

“Morning, boys,” she calls. “Isn’t it a little early to be fighting like this?”

“Luce, g-get back inside,” Jin coughs. The entire left side of his face is covered in blood. “What are you-,”

“Telling me to stay inside and avoid danger?” Lucy fake-gasps. “Jin, who’ve you become?”

Jin narrows his eyes. “What? What are you-”

“I see you’ve gotten back all your memories,” Jungkook grins. I can barely recognize him- the features on his face have been intensified, his eyes dark as coal, his mouth a gash on his face, his cheekbones jutting out of his skin. There is an unhealthy, sickened glow about him.

“That doesn’t mean you’re keeping my power, dip.” Lucy swings herself over the railing of the stairway. My breath catches in my throat- she’s 15 feet up, she’s going to splatter like a pancake- but she lands gracefully on her feet, like a cat.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s a little too late,” Jungkook scoffs. “I have your power.”

“You have a temporary hold on my power,” Lucy responds. “I didn’t view my memories through the files I retrieved. I saw them thanks to dear old Jimin. Just give it a few hours. They’ll disappear.”

Jungkook snorts. “That’s a technicality.”

“Well, we’ll just have to wait and see, huh?”

Jungkook draws himself up, gold silt swirling around his figure.

“I don’t want to wait,” he utters. “I’m just going to get rid of you here and now.”

Lucy lets out a terrifying laugh.

“Go ahead and try,” she leers.

Jungkook launches flashing blue needles of magic at Lucy, sending wave after wave in rapid succession. My breath catches in my throat- there are millions of them that Lucy can’t possibly hope to evade- but she merely chuckles, somersaulting out of the way. I watch in awe as she springs into the air, her body blazing with silver light. In the next moment, she has flung herself at Jungkook.

“She’s going to get knocked over,” Dev breathes, and I can’t help but agree; Lucy’s too small to even make a dent in Jungkook. What is-

My jaw drops as Lucy delivers a breathtaking sequence of kicks to different parts of Jungkook’s body; her feet slam into his solar plexus, nose, groin, and neck. Jungkook shrieks in pain; the force of Lucy’s blows cause him to collapse to the ground, clutching his body. Lucy seizes his moment of weakness and grabs his skull, smashing it into the ground with a force that makes me, Sofia, and Dev gasp in horror.

Jungkook has been knocked clean out in the matter of minutes. A feat that Tom, Jimin, and Jin couldn’t do with their powers combined.

I am in utter shock.

There is a heavy silence in the air; an unsettling quiet following the absolute chaos of the last hour.

“Is he dead?” Sofia finally whispers.

I tentatively step out onto the stairs. Jungkook is bleeding profusely from his head. The metallic glow around his body is still shining brightly, though. Lucy draws a circle with her hands in mid-air; a golden bubble of light surrounds his body.

A healing orb, I realize.

“Give it 24 hours,” Lucy says, seeing my horrified expression. “He’ll be all back to normal. His hold on my magic should be gone, too.”

“He needs to go to a proper healing center,” Tom says. “The effect of all that magic on his body... I don’t know if he’s going to be okay.”

“Where do you propose we take him?” Lucy asks, cocking a brow. “The Kado headquarters? How are you gonna explain this to them?”

“Well, we can’t just... leave him like this-,”

“You can figure that out. I have more important things to deal with.”

In a flash, Lucy has grabbed Jimin by the scruff of his neck and slammed him up against the wall so hard a picture frame falls to the ground and shatters.

“We need to talk,” she snarls.

Jimin has been silently appraising her the whole time, his expression unreadable.

“Make it fast, then,” he finally utters after a long pause. “The Hado or the Kado forces are going to come storming in here any second. We’ve generated enough energy in this house to send red flags up and down the entire East Coast.”

Lucy curls her lip. “Make it fast? Make it fast? I had to wait two ing years-,”

“Jimin has a point,” Jin says, gently placing a hand on Lucy’s shoulder. “We need to figure out what our story’s going to be, Lucy. How do we explain all this?”

Lucy looks at Jin’s hand in disgust. She violently shrugs him off.

“Why are you treating me like I’m a ing china doll?” she snaps. “This is so weird. You’re my best friend- am I the only one that got her memories back?”

“Everyone in this town would have to put on the mask to remember everything,” Jimin says.

Lucy punches Jimin square in the face. His neck snaps back from the impact, causing his head to slam into the wall.

“Lucy,” I breathe, storming down the stairs. I yank her off Jimin. “Can you get a ing grip? What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me? Oh, I don’t know, I had my entire life taken away from me and I’ll never get it back-,”

And then I feel an icy burst of air behind me and see Taehyung, Namjoon, Laila, Hoseok, Yoongi, and Evan materialize in the middle of this chaos, magical weapons in their hands and ready to attack.

My stomach plummets to the floor.

“,” Sofia swears.

The six of them take in the destroyed house in front of them with wide eyes, bewilderment and surprise and sheer astonishment on their faces. Yoongi sees Jungkook lying in the orb and rushes over to him.

“What the happened?” he asks, aptly summing up what’s running through all their minds.

We’re ed. How are we supposed to explain all this? We’re absolutely, positively, ed.

Taehyung strides over to me, his brows knitted together. I involuntarily jerk backwards, expecting him to knock me out, but he merely takes my face in his hands.

“Who did this to you?” he utters in a low, terrifying voice.

“Did what?” I choke out.

“Are you ing kidding me right now?” he asks, his voice cracking. To my utter surprise, Taehyung looks like he’s about to cry. I can’t tell if it’s from anger or grief or what. What is he talking about?

And then I catch a glimpse of myself in the shattered shards of glass that used to be a decorative mirror.

My stomach flips over.

There are angry red blisters covering every bare inch of my skin. I look like a burn victim- holy , I can’t even recognize myself. Vomit begins to rise in my throat and I force myself to hold it down. How in the hell did this happen?

And then it dawns on me. These must be the effects of staying unprotected in the presence of unmasked magic for an extended period of time. I look grotesque. A shudder runs down my spine.

“Sofia, what happened?” Laila presses, taking her arms. I see Sofia bristle, but in the next moment, she has burst into tears.

“I don’t know,” she sobs, and Laila wraps her arms around her and clutches her to her chest. “W-We were all just hanging out, and then the house just exploded- and Jungkook and Joo were r-right by the explosion, and they got knocked out, and Lucy called Jimin a-and... I don’t know what happened.”

Sofia dissolves into tears. Laila looks absolutely furious. With one arm still over Sofia, she whirls around to face her Kado teammates.

“We’re launching an investigation right now,” she growls. “This is ed. I don’t know how or why-,”

Jimin steps over to her. “This house is located on a magical power line,” he murmurs quietly into her ear. “I looked into it. It appeared to be a chain reaction- someone must’ve used their magic in a specific spot aligned with a specific place in the house-,”

“So you’re telling me this- this was all a ing fluke?” Laila shrieks.

“We can investigate further,” Jin pipes up. “But we should probably talk about this... privately.” He gives Laila a meaningful look. “For confidentiality and all.”

“Oh, save it,” she snaps. “We all know they know about magic.”

My eyes widen. Dev, Sofia, and I exchange panicked looks.

“I’m not going to wipe her memories,” Taehyung says, his fingers tightly interlocked with mine. His eyes are silently pleading with his teammates. “Please. Guys. They’re leaving Windsong in a year. Please.”

Namjoon grits his teeth. “This is against protocol-,”

“They’ve known about magic for a year now,” Laila states. “And the most that’s happened is them ing around with magical objects. I vote we let them be. Don’t report them to the Kado.”

“Are you guys insane?” Evan crosses his arms. “Jooyeon was already pushing boundaries when she refused to join the Kado. We basically have confirmation that the most at-risk individuals in Windsong know about magic. And you don’t want to report it?”

Lucy snorts. Everyone’s heads snap around to look at her.

“What’s so funny?” Hoseok says in a biting voice.

“All of your heads are stuck so far up your asses,” Lucy drawls. “Since when did all of you take yourselves so seriously?”

Alarm begins to rise in my chest; I throw Jimin a frantic look, willing him to somehow make Lucy shut up! If she reveals something she’s not supposed to, we’re utterly ed.

“All of you are hiding things. Whether it be.... hmm, I don’t know. A secret relationship with a member of the Hado... magical steroids to make your powers stronger... hidden therapy appointments because you’re mentally unstable...,” Lucy’s lips quirk up into a smirk. “This would just be something else to add to the list, huh?”

The effect of her words is shocking. Every member of the Kado force’s faces have gone utterly white. Hoseok- who had previously been so condescending and aggressive- now looks like he’s about to throw up.

“How... do you know about this?” Namjoon chokes out.

“Mmmm.... lucky guess?”

And she lets out a tinkling laugh that sends chills down my spine.

Her unspoken threat hangs in the air. Slowly, the members of the Kado begin to nod.

“I vote yes,” Hoseok spits out. “Keep it a secret.”

“Yes,” Yoongi says softly.

“Fine,” Evan snarls. “But if this comes back to bite us in the ...,”

“It’s settled.” Taehyung says. “What happened in this room, stays in this room. Joo.”

I look at Taehyung. He is sitting down besides me, a heartbreakingly sad look on his face.

“Hey,” I whisper. “I’m... so sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing?” he murmurs. He reaches through the protective orb separating us, his hand taking mine.

“I didn’t know everything would culminate in... this.”

“Can you tell me something? Honestly?”

“Yeah?”

“Was this all... really an accident?”

“Yeah,” I lie without a moment of hesitation.

“I trust Joo,” Taehyung tells his teammates, his grip on my body firm. “Let’s start getting this site cleaned up. Namjoon, Laila- we should start constructing a story for HQ.”

“Later,” Laila says. “We should cover up this mess first.”

It’s funny. I’m so ing petrified that I can’t feel anything anymore. There is a numb feeling in my chest as Taehyung places an orb around me, mutters ancient incantations to heal the gruesome blisters on my skin. The members of the Kado are almost acting like there’s a sense of camaraderie between us. Like now that we have this shared secret, we’ve come to an understanding.

But as I watch Sofia hug Laila, her face dull and expressionless now that no one’s watching her; as Dev, Tom, and Jin force concerned grimaces as they crouch over Jungkook’s healing body; as Lucy chatters away to a stone-faced Jimin, beaming in the fakest, most unsettling way, the reality of the situation sets in.

They do not know the most dangerous force in the world has just been unleashed.

I look over as Lucy giggles like a schoolgirl, twirling her hair around her finger.

Her eyes are blazing with vicious anger.

I meet Jimin’s gaze.

His lips are curved up into a bland smile.

But I can read what he’s thinking.

For the first time since I’ve met him, he looks utterly terrified.

My entire body is trembling.

I am frightened for our future.