Trigger warning: this chapter contains gun violence, blood, and death. please stay safe. 

prologue.

It was Mara's last week of work.

After she made it through the massive crowds, demanding guests, and high levels of stress, she would be free to attend college. Her grades would thank her for not having 6-hour shifts every weeknight.

All she had to do was deal with these snobby rich people first, and then she was home free.

_

She glided through the arrangement of tables, squeezing past pulled-out chairs and large groups of people with ease. Her destination was a booth on the back wall, a new customer that she had been assigned to wait on. It was a young boy, sitting alone, his menu pressed down on the table in front of him. He seemed to be around her brother's age, dressed in normal attire, except for the small bandanna adorning the bottom of his face. She paused for a moment, struggling to come up with an explanation of why he was wearing a mask. Was he sick? Was he embarrassed of his chin? Was this any of her business? No. She shrugged, knowing from her months spent in this restaurant that her pay wasn't enough to justify asking questions about her guests.

"Hello," she started once she'd arrived, making the young boy jump and turn to look at her. Her eyebrows knitted together before she continued. "My name is Mara, I'll be your server for today. Can I start you off with something to drink, or is someone else coming...?" she asked the boy, trying to be careful to not startle him more.

He slowly shook his head. "No, uh. No one else is coming. It's only me." His body language was all off, she noticed. He was leaning away from her, his head hanging, eyes darting around the room frantically. She suspected that there was more to this story. Was he was stood up, and embarrassed because of it? But he wasn't here nearly long enough to be stood up, right? And he was a little young to have a dating life...

Now that Mara was closer, she could hear his voice. Although it was muffled from his bandanna, she could sense his panic leaking through. He sounded something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. Like the world was about to collapse on this shoulders.

"Is everything alright, sir?" she asked before she could stop herself, for once her worry for a guest overriding her need to sleep at night.

He looked up, and she could see the fear resonating in his eyes now. He looked as if something was going to pop up from underneath the table and scare him so bad he would pee his pants.

"May I sit down?"

The young boy nodded, and she lowered herself into the booth across him.

"What's going on, sir? You seem to be in some sort of distress, and while I may not know why I can assure you I'll be able to help."

She could see the widening of his eyes as she talked before he cleared his throat. "I... Uh. It's nothing-" he tried to say, before coughing. "I mean- I- no, it's not nothing." He met her gaze, the seriousness of a thousand suns plaguing at the features she could see. Mara leaned back, surprised.

"If I don't do something to stop it, people are going to die here today."

She blinked at him. Once, then twice. His face didn't change, he didn't falter, and not once did his eyes appear crazy. His completely solemn face and the way he told her, the gravity hanging off of every word, meant that he believed it.

She took a deep breath. "Okay. What's your plan?"

He froze. She sighed.

"So you don't have one, huh?"

He shook his head, hanging it low from embarrassment. "Sorry," he mumbled, the tips of his ears going red. 

"It's alright. You told me, and that's enough to figure something ou. Do the police know?"

He nodded. "I went to them first, but they didn't believe me. So I had to come here and do something myself. I couldn't just... I had to..." he waved his hands around a little in an attempt to get the words out. "I couldn't just do nothing."

She opened her mouth to say something encouraging, to reassure the boy that it was the right thing to do. But before she could, a loud bang echoed across the room.

Mara quickly stood up, eyes scanning the area in search of something that could've caused it. The guests were looking confused, some scared, some plain unbothered. There was no way the sound was... no. They didn't have enough time, they didn't have a plan, she needed it to not be-

A second bang shattered the silence that had fallen, and she knew what it was. Gunshots.

The boy was right.

She turned to look at him, panic and fear and all sorts of emotions she couldn't name rushing into her at once. He'd hidden under the table, fear etched seemingly permanently into his features.

Mara reached into her pockets, crouching lower to the ground and fumbling around, looking for her phone. She pulled it out and pressed the home button, hitting emergency call as fast as she could.

Another shot rang out, and she looked up to see someone fall down with a thud, a dark red liquid spilling onto the floor around them.

She had to hold her hand over her mouth to avoid throwing up.

People were dying, and there was nothing she could do about it.

"911, what's your emergency?" echoed from her phone. Mara gasped in relief.

"I'm at a restaurant in downtown Sacramento, 2830 Main Street, there's a man shooting and-" bang- "people have fallen, there's blood, I'm scared. Please hurry, please-" bang- "there's nothing I can do to save them but you can, please be fast, it's at 2830 Main Street, please please hurry."

She hung up, not wanting to get caught from the sound of her talking.

She took a moment to assess her surroundings. Four people on the right side of the restaurant were laying on the floor, pools of red liquid surrounding them. She moved her gaze. Others hiding under tables, or booths, like she and the boy were.

She looked back at him, meeting his eyes. His face was full of the fear she knew he was feeling. How he could've known about this was anyone's guess, but she knew he wasn't associated. This wasn't his fault. He came to warn them. They just hadn't acted fast enough.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

She gave him the softest smile she could muster. "It's okay."

Mara directed her attention towards the people hiding, making her way towards them, keeping her footsteps light. She was positive the killer wouldn't be able to hear her.

A few turned back and looked at her, tears racing down some faces and others made of stone. She pointed to the door on the left side and pushed a finger to her lips.

Exit. Quiet.

Most of them nodded, serious, but one stood up immediately.

A laugh rumbled through the floor, and another shot rang out.

Mara winced, and a body thudded to the ground.

She kept her gaze off of it, focusing instead of getting them out. They would have to process this all later, now they didn't have the time. She pointed to the exit again, sure as the world that now they would listen. Together, they started making their way towards the door.

"Hiding, I see," came from above her. Mara jumped, swinging around so quickly that her head spun. A man coasted in blood stood above her, a devious grin on his face and an evil glint in his eye. The killer.

She scrambled forward, going as fast she possibly could to escape him. How did he manage to get over here so fast, without me noticing at all? Is he a ninja or something?

This time, his laugh was completely unhinged. He sounded absolutely insane, like he'd lost all humanity present. It shook her to her core.

He truly was crazy.

All of a sudden, she felt a great burst of anger towards him. He'd come here, into her restaurant, to kill her guests, to murder her friends, and to shoot her. He'd come here to end lives.

Mara decided, right then and there, that she wasn't going to let him get away with it.

She wove her way through the legs of the tables, tipping some over behind her to buy some time. The shots firing behind her kept increasing, and out of the corner of her eye she could see more people falling. Her breathing was heavy, her hands scraped and she was sure her legs were going to give out at any moment.

But he was chasing her.

She was distracting him, for the most part.

She was buying the police time.

And that's all that mattered.

Then she felt a hole burning in her chest, and suddenly it was hard to breathe. She slowed her desperate crawl to look down, and saw that what used to be her work uniform was now a mess of blood.

Her blood.

Oh no.

The shooter laughed, but she paid him no mind, instead looking around for something she could use to apply pressure to her wound. She had to be fast, or else the loss of blood would be what killed her.

The thought of dying now, alone, made her want to throw up.

A few tablecloths were some feet away, but there was nothing within grabbing distance.

But looking around the room had been a mistake.

She saw everyone that had been heading towards the exit had been shot.

She turned towards the boy, halfway across the floor now. His face was pale. His hand was covering his mouth, although his bandanna is doing a fine job of that, she deliriously thought.

Mara met his gaze, her eyes pleading, begging him to do something, anything-

And then there was another bang.

And then everything went dark.

a/n: sorry for the weird formatting! wattpad really do be like that sometimes. anyway, that's the first chapter, technically? it's the prologue but you know what i mean. hoping to have weekly or bi-weekly updates!