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First Draft: December 19, 2021

Zayn sat like a stone at the back of the paramedic car, immobilized by shock. He could feel his insides turning to ice and a slight tremble shaking his very soul. With his back to the horror that had unfolded behind him, he tried to pull himself out of trance, but the bright red and blue of the emergency lights kept slapping his peripheral vision with the fear inducing luminescence of the grotesque crime they had just uncovered.

Zayn quickly turned his face away when he heard hurried footsteps. He could see the stretched shadow of several people rushing a stretcher to the ambulance. Zayn peeked a figure covered in a white sheet being lifted to the ambulance, and a mangled figure of a tall man stuffed in the small space of his car's trunk crossed his mind, making bile rise to his throat. Zayn quickly closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose and taking deep breaths to contain the sudden wave of nausea. He felt sick.

"Mr. Harris?" He felt a firm hand on his arm.

Swallowing Zayn looked up to see Agent Ben standing by him. Like the rest of his colleagues, he seemed quite pale in the face to see one of their own broken and folded like a ragged doll, drained of life.

"You need to come with me," Ben said.

Zayn nodded, pulling the blanket away.

"Keep that on," Ben suggested.

Zayn said nothing as the agent draped the warm cover back on his shoulders. He stood up slowly. His knees and ankles ached with stiffness. His legs felt shaky. Keeping a firm hold on him, Ben led Zayn to one of the black SUVs.

"Where's Alex?" Zayn asked, fighting another dose of nausea.

"She's one her way," Ben replied. "She said to get you and your car out of here. The area is cordoned off by the FBI, but keeping the media out in LA is a bit more difficult. It will be impossible for you to explain what happened if you are caught lurking around the crime scene."

Zayn nodded, grateful that he had called Alex the moment that rascal got out of his car and disappeared into the death of the night.

He knew something unpleasant was waiting for him in the trunk of his car but he had never imagined it to be body drained of blood. Had he opened the trunk instead of the agents that Alex sent, he would have lost whatever little of his sanity he had had and ended up in a mess he could not quite contain. How would Arethas Z. Grace be able to explain to anyone why he had stopped on the highway to check his trunk, and why did it have a corpse?

Zayn felt a raking shiver crawl up his spine, feeling another wave of nausea. Taking huge gulps of breaths, he turned to agent Ben just as he took a seat behind the wheel.

"Is he alive?" he asked, his voice emotionless and lifeless. He felt cold. His hands and feet felt like pieces of ice.

"Just barely," Ben replied with a sigh as he started the engine. "It's vampire bites."

Feeling his stomach churn at whatever gory hell was vampire bites, Zayn glanced at Ben in confusion.

"They make small incision along the carotid artery so the person slowly bleeds to death overtime," Ben explained, much to Zayn's horror. "He was probably pumped with a sedative before that so he did not struggle much. Looks like by the time they packed him your car, he was already immobile."

Zayn clenched his teeth as his stomach churned. Ben turned the car around and drove down the highway. They left the crime scene behind them but the ghost of it rode along with them in the car. Zayn was haunted by the idea that he had been carrying a nearly dead man in his car without his knowledge. It was probably for just a couple of minutes, from when the agent was stacked in his trunk up until Zayn was told about him, but any long was too long and the idea was giving him nightmares with his eyes open. In fact, it was a nightmare. He was living it.

Zayn bit down hard on his teeth as his recently eaten dinner kept trying to push its way up to his mouth.

"Can he make it?" Zayn asked, his eyes closed and focus firmly on keeping his dinner down.

"Supplying him with blood is the primary step," Ben replied. "How much has the loss affected his brain and other vital organs will determine if he can make it, and to what extent. There's a chance he'll survive but lose body functions depending on trauma to the brain."

Zayn drew in a shaky breath.

"How did you find out there was something suspicious in your trunk?" Ben asked.

Zayn rested his dizzying head against the head rest, staying quiet. Overtime, he had learned not to entertain any interrogation with anyone from the FBI, unless the interrogator was the one he was working for.

Zayn could sense Ben turning to him questioningly before looking away. The agent maintained his silence for a while, accepting the fact that Zayn was not to answer to him.

"I don't mean to get information out of you," Ben said after a while. "I understand that you deem it fit to only share your information with Agent Wickfield."

"Given the sensitive nature of your job, do you disagree?" Zayn asked.

Ben scoffed.

"Of course not," he said, sounding tired and resigned. "I'm just boggled who or what tried to kill him."

Zayn heaved a deep sigh.

"It's easy to figure out, isn't it?" he said. "He was killed, or there was an attempt to kill him, by the one who he was assigned to keep a watch on."

"To keep him off his scent," Ben said, looking grim as he kept his eyes firmly on the dark road.

"And to warn those who are trying to keep tabs on him," Zayn added.

"Boss!" Ben whispered.

"It's her." Zayn nodded in agreement before turning towards the dark night outside his window.

And me, he added in his head, feeling an overwhelming cold gloom his insides.

***

First Draft: Feburary 22, 2021

Salma huffed in defeat as she rinsed the glass. Spogmae and Burak Kaka and just been around to discuss something with her father. They had had shakes and sandwiches that Salma made but offered nothing in return. By nothing, Salma meant any news or information about Jason or his whereabouts. The fact that they refused to even tell her if she would see him again added to her frustrations. It kept her hopes up. For days now, Salma made quick trips to Entomology labs just in case the junior was miraculously allowed to return. Salma even went to the trouble of finding Jason's schedule and almost ran late to all of her classes because she spent a good few minutes peeking into the lecture rooms to see if a certain curly-haired red head was in attendance.

As the Green Coats left without telling her anything, Salma figured she would have to keep looking for Jason till she either ran into him, or lost hope in ever seeing him again.

The doorbell rang, shaking her out of her thoughts. Salma put the glass in the rack and dried her hands with a towel. She shrugged out of the apron, throwing a hasty look at her phone on the counter.

It had been oddly silent these days. Not that Salma had anyone to blame for it. With Zayn gone, her phone's inbox traffic was cut to a third. Except for the occasional goodnights, and good mornings, there had not been much correspondence between her and Zayn. Salma figured he was probably very busy with his training and catching up with his friends and team mates. She knew he had a couple of very big games just around the corner.

However, the absence of messages from him for planning their outings and dates and coffees, was supposed to be replaced by Sarah, James and Dean's messages, but Salma had been so engrossed with Jason's sudden removal form her life that she had barely been paying attention to anything else. She knew the boys and Sarah were probably a little disappointed that she was ghosting them once again, heck, maybe even Zayn was a little upset that she did not respond to him on time.

"Could this be the reason for his silence today?" Salma frowned at her phone, a little anxious that Zayn had not texted her last night, or even this morning. What if he was checking to see if she would text him good night if he didn't? Salma bit her lip.

Salma started composing a quick text to check up on him when the doorbell rang again. Salma turned towards the sitting room with a scowl.

Why was no one getting the door? she huffed, turning back to her phone.

Salma: Assalamo'Alaikom Mr. Grace

Salma: You've been oddly quite. Is everything alright?

Salma: Sorry that I didn't get in touch last night. Something came up and I've been on the clock.

Salma: Hope you are well. Sending you lots of prayers.

As the bell rang again, Salma quickly dropped her phone and ran towards the sitting room, grumbling under breath.

"Salma!" her mother called from her room. "Can you please get the door?"

"I'm getting it!" Salma called back, grabbing her scarf on the way. As she fixed it, Salma saw her mother remove her reading glasses and close the Qur'an she was reciting.

The bell rang a fourth time.

"I'm coming! I'm coming!" Salma bolted before her mother would tell her off for lazing around.

Salma quickly checked the peephole. She saw a broad shouldered, tall man, dressed in a grey, hooded flannel impatiently stretching his neck, as he waited with his back to the door.

Salma gasped happily.

"Mum!" she yelled. "It's Will!"

Biting back an excited squeal she quickly unlocked the door, just as Will turned around, a huge grin splitting his face, ear to ear.

Salma blinked, coming to a sudden and abrupt halt. The grin that was about to stretch on her face, froze and contorted into a shocked gap.

Will's eyebrows shot to the heavens as she continued gaping at him.

"Err. . . Assalamo'Alaikom?" he said awkwardly.

Salma swallowed, trying to find words but unable to say anything. It was Will alright, but it was not the Will she knew.

"Wa – wa' alaykom Assalam . . ." Salma muttered her greeting as she studied him from top to bottom once again.

It was definitely not the Will she knew. Salma took a small, uncertain step back, grabbing the door.

"Is everything alright?" he asked, making Salma turn back to him. The familiar green eyes crinkled in amusement. In fact, that was about the only part of the Will she knew.

"Curls," Salma croaked stupidly.

Will chuckled, running a hand over his head, currently missing his mane of brown curls.

"Yeah, I buzzed it," he said, then paused. "Or like - I mean, you mean my hair right? By curls - or are you calling me 'Curls'?

Salma felt her mother walking up behind her.

"Where's Will? Why are you still standing guard by the door –"

The two turned to her, but like Salma, she too, had stopped, her eyes going wide and lips parted.

"Alley!" Will cried as he advanced towards his aunt, arms outstretched.

Salma quickly stepped away to the let the tall skeleton wrap her mother in a hug. Poor Aliya. She looked utterly confused and downright scared.

"Willy?!" she cried in surprised feeling the bony boy's back. "What – why are you-? What happened?!"

Salma took in a deep breath.

Same, mum same! She sighed, watching her dangerously underweight and gauntly pale cousin try to laugh their shock off. If Salma had thought he looked weak in the video call a month or two ago, it was nothing compared to what he looked like now. His clothes were a few sizes too big for him and his cheeks were sallow and face peeking. If it weren't for the familiar warmth of his deep voice and the twinkling green eyes, she would turned him away for being at the wrong door.

"I came back, that's what happened!"

"You barely came back!" her mother cried as she stepped back, pointedly staring at half of what was left of him. "What did you do?"

"It wasn't drugs!" Will raised his hands in his defense.

Salma chuckled as she walked in after the two.

"It honestly wasn't!" he said, somewhat offended by Aliya's grumbling under breath.

"I know that!" her mother responded, "but what is this?! I didn't send a skeleton to MIT. I send my son and this is what they send back? A bag of bones?"

"I got a stomach bug," Will said as he lounged on the couch, resting his head on her mother's lap. "I'm lucky I didn't puke my guts out. I thought I'd just die gagging on life."

Her mother smacked him lightly as he laughed at his own stupid joke. Although a familiar sight, Salma still felt annoyed to see her mother running her fingers over his buzz.

"And you also cut your hair? You had such beautiful hair!"

"You wanted me to cut it!"

"Yeah cut it, not go bald!" Alley returned before turning to Salma. "Please get this skeleton something to eat. He's starving –"

"I'm good!" Will cried, sitting up suddenly. "Honestly, I'm filled to my throat! Please Sally, mum just tried to stuff me like a sack. I came here to escape her!"

Salma shrugged and started walking towards the stairs as her mother and Will started arguing about his poor diet, unhealthy eating habits and generally disappointing proportions of food he consumed. Salma was eyeing Will distastefully for, once again, putting his head in her mother's lap, when she almost knocked into her brother racing down stairs.

"Is Will here?" he asked excitedly, dodging past her.

Salma opened her mouth to tell him off for ignoring the bell earlier when she saw her brother suffer the same freezing shock at the sight of their now skeletal cousin as her mother and her.

"The heck happened to you?!" Asim shouted.

Will raised his hands again.

"Not on drugs, bro!"

Salma laughed again.

Oh, you'll be saying it for a while now!

Author's Note:

Will's back! Who's pleased?

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Lot of Love.

J.