"I told you already that you don't have to come along. She'll be all right," Matthew sighed.

"Well, I'm as worried as you are. She was... like a mother to me, too," Daniel reminisced.

"Fine, if you insist. You are one stubborn mule, Daniel. You know that?" Matthew laughed, although he seemed as if he were trying to distract himself from the fact that his mother was terribly sick and in a life-threatening situation.

"We have to hurry," Daniel said, ignoring Matthew's comment. "We should take your car. I'm pretty sure it can go faster than mine."

Matthew pressed his cold, sweaty palms together. He could feel the blood in his veins rushing towards his head to help him keep up with the stressful thoughts that were stirring around in his brain. He told himself that everything was okay, but it wasn't. He pretended that he was worry-free, but he wasn't. He convinced himself that Yael could be snapped away in one step so that he could focus on his family and friends. But it wasn't like that.

Matthew had plenty of other things to settle. Finding Megan, who may not have even been abducted by Yael. Being by his mother's side through her ill state. Returning to work on a daily basis and not skipping certain days of work to cope with other things. But one entity prevented it all from happening.

Yael.

And if that wasn't enough, taking down Yael wasn't going to solve his other problems. Megan wouldn't suddenly appear in front of Matthew's face. His mother's sickness wouldn't vanish suddenly. And his reputation as a no-show sergeant in the NYPD wouldn't go away instantly. It just wasn't easy.

"Uh, Matthew? Are you okay? You seemed a little... dazed," Daniel commented.

Matthew sighed. "Ah, it's nothing; it's just that—"

"Look," Daniel cut in. "I... I'm really sorry about what I said about putting everything but Yael aside. It wasn't right for me to say we should just forget about Megan like that."

Matthew shook his head. "N-no, that wasn't what I meant. Maybe you're right. Maybe the search for Megan has to wait. Still, I'm certain that Yael took her away so they could blackmail us. Only then will she be returned."

"Well, let's get in the car first before we continue," Daniel said as he tapped on Matthew's car.

Matthew slid himself into the driver's seat while Daniel positioned himself comfortably on the seat beside him.

"Anyway... I'm not angry about that anymore. About what you said, I mean," Matthew stated as he started the car engine.

Daniel shuffled in his seat a little as he fidgeted with his hands nervously. His lazy slouch quickly turned into an uneasy posture. "Then... what do you seem so anxious about?" he questioned.

Matthew drove the car up one level, pondering deeply while he did so. Finally, he found an honest answer. "I don't know," he spoke before pausing for a bit. "Frankly speaking, I don't have a reason for this. All this worrying and my outbursts, it just comes from all kinds of factors. Yael putting pressure on us. My mother's ailment. Megan's disappearance. The deaths of our work superiors. The boar-like creatures. The traitors. It's just all too much."

Daniel closed his eyes for a moment. "I know what you mean. Well, for all I know, you're going through a lot more than me. Your mother being in hospital is probably enough for you to worry about, and you have the responsibility of looking after Amelia every time Jean goes on a business trip. Also... your solo encounter with the creature in the Pace's house must have been traumatising." He then tapped Matthew's shoulder. "But don't let all that pull you down, all right? You're stronger than you think you are."

Matthew exhaled heavily as he pictured himself throwing out all of the negativity and pent-up anxiety together with the air that exited his nose vigorously. Maybe Daniel is right, he thought. Maybe, if I stop focusing on all my worries, I can actually put my brain to work on how to counteract them instead. "Well... I guess you're speaking the truth. If I don't invite negativity into me, everything will look much better," he reckoned.

Daniel nodded, happy to see that Matthew was finally looking at the bright side. "That's good. Anyway, focus on driving, my friend."

* * *

"Hi, I'm looking for a patient here," Matthew conversed with a nurse at the hospital counter.

"May I have her name, please?" the nurse inquired.

"Diana Davis," Matthew responded.

The nurse looked through the patient records on her computer. When she finally found her, she inhaled noticeably as if she were preparing to say something unpleasant, which she was.

"Sir, she is in surgery right now. You—"

"She's what?" Matthew yelled loudly in shock before realising that other people were staring at him. He turned and glanced at the patients and visitors, then turned away.

"I didn't think that Jean had meant that she was in surgery when he said that she was in critical condition..." he muttered to himself softly.

"Sorry?" the nurse excused herself, realising that Matthew had made a comment.

"Oh... it's nothing. By the way, can I have an overview of her condition right now?" Matthew requested.

"Sure," the nurse replied as she began clicking away.

Matthew continued to press his hands together tightly and shuffled his feet across the ceramic floors of the hospital lobby. The fact that his mother was in surgery disturbed him, as he finally realised how serious her condition was getting.

He almost thought that he could just shove his worries aside, like pushing closed case files onto the floor for wild dogs to chew on, but that wasn't going to happen. No one was going to fix his problems for him, and he clearly knew that.

"So, Ms. Stewart, there isn't any more medication for you, so you're good to go. Just make sure to drink plenty of water, around ten cups," a nurse at an adjacent counter spoke to a discharged patient.

"Of course I will," the patient answered with a recognisable smile, one that the detectives noticed.

As she was turning toward the building exit to leave, she noticed two familiar faces standing before her. She dropped her handbag as her delightful grin diminished, and the cheery atmosphere around her faded quickly. She inhaled deeply as if she were about to mutter something. Instead, she kept her mouth shut tightly, not knowing what to say to the people in front of her.

Expressing her emotions through her actions instead of words that she couldn't speak, she ran over to the two men immediately and pulled them together, embracing both of them at the same time. She breathed more quickly, hinting that she was about to break into tears.

"Why didn't you call us?" Daniel sobbed uncontrollably, ignoring those who stared at the group for the second time. "We were so worried! Matthew and I even had an argument about our priorities, and... you were part of it. If only you had told us earlier...."

Meanwhile, Matthew refused to speak. He didn't know whether he was upset or relieved—maybe it was both. But he was glad that they even had a reunion in the first place. He didn't have to search for her after all, as she had returned to them.

"I'm so sorry. I-I knew I should have called you guys over the moment I came round. It's... it's not because I was disappointed by your actions—by how you left me behind on that day. I... I just wanted you guys to focus on your main goal. If I had called you over, I would have disrupted your progress..." the woman explained in tears.

Matthew finally opened his mouth, his lips quivering. "Why did you think it would have driven us off track? Anyway, can we have a talk over some coffee, Meg?"

Matthew picked up the cup of coffee clumsily, struggling to keep it within the grip of his hand despite the corrugated surface of it. He then began gulping it down quickly, the anxiety in him wiping the heat of the burning drink away from his mind. He would always do that when he was nerve-wracked.

"Don't drink it too quickly, Matthew. You'll scald your tongue if you continue to," Daniel warned as he tapped his friend's shoulder, knowing immediately that he was feeling uneasy.

Following Daniel's advice, Matthew placed the cup down gently before looking up at Megan and staring at her for a few moments.

"Do you have something to say?" Megan asked, ending the awkward silence that created an unpleasant atmosphere.

"I think I have a lot, especially about things regarding Yael. You've missed out on tonnes of information ever since your disappearance," Matthew responded immediately.

"Well, you didn't call me over just to tell me we should meet another time to speak about work, right?" Megan questioned, laughing nervously afterwards.

"Of course not," Matthew replied. "Anyway, the reason why I came here in the first place was to visit my mother. I can't do that right now, though. She's in surgery at this very moment."

Megan gasped, placing her hand to her lips. "What happened? She was fine just a month ago," she asked worriedly.

Matthew cleared his throat, looking downwards. "She suffered from pneumonia. It began just before you went missing. It wasn't that bad initially, but then she had a lung infection. It has since worsened to the state that she is in now.

Megan placed her hand on Matthew's. "I'm so sorry about that. Don't worry about it too much, though. She will be fine. The surgery will be successful, I'm sure."

Matthew nodded dejectedly. "I sure hope so."

Megan raised an eyebrow. "Wait a minute," she began. "Where's Emma?" she questioned, looking around to see if her dear friend was pulling a fast one on her, hiding and waiting to ambush her with a terrifying jump scare.

"About that..." Daniel took over before pausing.

"Go ahead," Megan said.

"Emma is in a detention facility right now," Matthew sighed, shaking his head.

"What?" Megan screeched, standing up in shock, causing yet another wave of hospital visitors, this time in the café, to stare at the group. "Pardon me," she apologised to the glaring customers before sitting back down calmly.

"It's a long story, so I'll shorten it," Matthew continued. "Yael blackmailed Emma to kill us, and so she faked her death, causing conflict between us by making us think that there was a traitor among whoever seemed to be alive. It turned out that she was the one, and she tried to kill me. However, I convinced her not to, and so she didn't. Unfortunately, as she didn't fulfil her task, Yael took the chance during their chairwoman's trial to present manipulated evidence highlighting that Emma, Jake, and Jake's friend, Andy, were responsible for attempting to murder us. The judge made the verdict to consider Yael's chairwoman not guilty, so Emma and Andy are now awaiting their trial in two weeks."

"That's terrible. What are we going to do about her then?" Megan cried, her mouth kept open even after finishing her sentence.

Matthew shut his eyes for a moment, placing his hand on his forehead, which expressed his stress. "We can't do anything. All we can do is attempt to expose Yael's dirty crimes, which will, in turn, free her or lighten her sentence. But it won't be easy," he lamented.

"Which is why," Daniel added, "we need to uncover the things that Yael may be hiding. Just because the NYPD searched their known facilities doesn't mean they aren't concealing anything. A flash drive with their assassination plots on us. A hideaway building full of laboratories with illegal experiments being performed in them. An unknown facility holding those creatures, waiting to be released by Yael. Anything. We just need to find something."

Megan shook her head in dismay. Within a month, things had escalated so quickly. She would never imagine that a series of assassination attempts could cause so much trouble for them.

"Also, while you were missing, we managed to rescue the CEO of Palmer East Corporation, James Palmer. Basically, he owns the hospital that we are in right now. Anyway, he was trapped in a tunnel in Scranton Middle School, in which children were held captive by those boar-like creatures. There were sixteen of them, apparently. The local police attempted a rescue operation, which proved to be successful until they tried retrieving the last group of students. Those who drove the traumatised children off to hospitals were safe, but those who stayed behind were all killed."

Megan placed her knuckles at her chin, resting her elbow on the marble table. "So you're saying there was a hoard of creatures... at a school?"

"Yes," Matthew nodded. "We aren't exactly sure how so many creatures came about, but a teacher supposedly got infected and began spreading the virus."

"What virus?" Megan questioned anxiously as she felt sudden chills running down her spine.

"We don't know yet. I forgot to ask Mr. Palmer that day, but what we know is that it is infectious and spreads through blood and saliva. It also has a drastically varying incubation period of between a few hours to five days," Matthew elaborated.

Megan's jaw remained dropped, and she didn't speak for a moment, despite the slightly unconvincing reassurance from Matthew. Finally, her lips separated as her mouth opened to mutter a sentence. "So, the virus turns humans into those... creatures?"

Matthew nodded plainly. It was the best that he could explain the situation to Megan for now, but he knew that he would have more time some other day to fill in everything she had missed in the past month.

Or at least he thought so.

After hearing some noises from afar, he stood up slowly, peering through the glass of the café and glancing far away at the end of the west wing corridor. He could analyse the scene properly with some squinting, but it took a lot of effort before he came to realise what was happening.

It seemed to be a hundred feet away, but Matthew could recognise it clearly. Its size was unusual, and its skin was too dark to be normal. It stayed silent, but he could already imagine it emitting an eerie sound. But one feature that stood out the most told him it must be.

The feature of red glowing eyes.