Mary. That was the last thing he remembered. Mary and the delinquent who died with Michael's brother. Their picture had been up on the big screen, before Madison Walsh had hastily apologized and continued on with Victoria Marcum's tribute.

Michael couldn't see anything, and he was pretty sure his eyes were closed. But as much as he tried, he couldn't pry them open. There was just a dark void in front of his lids, as his eyes darted around in the dark, trying and failing to see anything else.

His mind started to wander as his injured head tried to make sense of everything that had happened in the moments leading up to the black void. Mary and the delinquent. Jordan Conrad's brother...Neil. That was his name. Neil Conrad. The boy who died in the car crash with Michael's brother. Michael's brother. His name was...his name was...

Michael's head began to hurt as he tried to remember his brother's name. He stopped trying and instead focused on what he could remember: his name was Michael Hadden, he had a twin sister named Mary, and he was currently...for some reason...not awake.

Which honestly made no sense to his brain, since he was incredibly capable of thinking.

So he continued to think. He thought about opening his eyes. He thought hard about opening his eyes. He thought about seeing what was in front of him, and feeling what he was laying on, and hearing noises around him. He thought about waking up.

But eventually, thinking about something he couldn't control became exhausting. Too exhausting. And so his mind wandered again to something else.

He thought about a memory that was incapable of escaping him. The memory of the night he had been smacked in the back of the head with a rock and forced to the ground, dropping the ring on the ground. He remembered waking up to it not being there anymore.

His brother's ring. His brother's class ring, a ring that his brother had had specially made just for him. It was unique, and easily recognizable as his brother's.

A brother whose name he couldn't remember.

If that ring had been on the ground, yards away from where the car had crashed, that meant that they had more than one stalker. That meant that someone ran the four teenagers off the road and that someone else was waiting to kill them at the bottom of the ravine. Someone else dragged them back into the car to make it look like they had been killed on impact. Who was the second stalker, and why were they hiding behind the first one?

And for some strange reason, the fear that that thought brought to Michael's chest was enough to throw the poor boy out of his miserable state of darkness.

He blinked his eyes open.

***

"Michael? Michael, how long have you been awake?"

Michael shrugged slightly, looking around the hospital room. It was a large room, larger than the one he had been in when he broke his leg freshman year. There were posters on the walls—the kinds that advocated against smoking or unprotected sex. They were similar to the ones plastered in Barnum Prep's school nurse's office, or the ones that the guys who came to elementary schools to tell kids why drugs were bad used.

The posters were what caught Michael's attention far more than the pretty blonde nurse who was attempting to force Michael to speak. The posters grabbed his attention because in one of them, Erin Green smiled down at him. The one on the ceiling. The caption, in big block letters under her face, read, "Smoking would ruin these pearly whites. So why risk it?"

Michael blinked and then realized that the photo wasn't of Erin. It was a different girl, a different teenager with a big white smile and long brown hair. So Michael finally turned to the nurse.

"I don't know. Like ten minutes or something." He responded to her initial question, causing her to step back and breathe a sigh of relief. "What happened to me? Why am I here?"

"You seem to have had a concussion for about a week now, and no one knew about it." The nurse's nametag read Abby, "Did you suffer a blow to the head during practice last week? Because coaches are really supposed to report stuff like that."

Michael shook his head.

"No, I didn't. I tripped in school the other day and hit my head on a locker." He offered the lie quickly, hoping that it sounded authentic. "Maybe that's what it's from?"

Abby raised her eyebrows skeptically.

"You hit the back of your head on the locker?"

Michael felt his hands go numb.

"What? I didn't say I hit the back of my head—"

"No, but the enormous bruise on the back of your skull says that you did." She sat down in the chair next to Michael's bed. "So do you want to tell me what really happened?"

Michael shook his head firmly, the events of the forest swirling around his mind and causing his vision to go blurry for a second.

"No."

Abby sat in silence for a second before nodding.

"Alright, then. Don't tell me. But the fact remains that your lack of proper care in the past week has caused your condition to deteriorate, which is why you passed out during your football game last night." She stood up and walked towards the door. "We'll be dismissing you after a few tests, but you'll need to stay home and rest for at least another week, and we'll schedule a check-up for then."

Michael nodded and settled back slightly in his bed, unsure of what to do next.

"Oh, nurse?"

Abby turned around, her hand on the doorknob.

"Yes?"

Michael cleared his throat, knowing it was a stupid question but feeling the need to ask anyways.

"What's my brother's name?"

The woman sighed slightly, looking at him with a mixture of pity and concern.

"Eddie. Your brother's name was Eddie."

***

"Can I come in?"

Michael had just barely settled into his bed at home that afternoon when there was a knock at his door and Mary poked her head in. He rolled his eyes and gestured for her to come in.

"Yeah. But close the door behind you."

Mary nodded and did as he asked, shutting the door quickly and walking over to sit on the side of his bed.

"How are you feeling?"

Michael shrugged.

"Fine, I guess. But I'm a bit more interested in talking about you." Michael shook his head, "Neil Conrad? I didn't realize you were into people who vandalized schools and didn't have an athletic bone in their body."

Mary rolled her eyes and laughed slightly.

"Yeah, I didn't think it would take long for you to ask about that." She leaned back slightly before realizing there was nothing for her to lean against and sitting back up. "I don't know how to explain it, Michael. But it...it was like you and Rachel."

Michael felt his chest tighten at the mention of her name. Rachel had broken his heart by dumping him a year before. Of course, Michael knew he had deserved it—he had cheated on her once. Just once, and she never would have found out about it if it weren't for someone else in the crashed car.

"Me and Rachel?"

Mary nodded.

"You and Rachel. It felt like...it felt like everything in the world was right when I was with him."

"Then why were you dating Parker? Why not just legitimately date Neil?"

Mary shrugged.

"You know how it is. How I am. I like my popularity. I like my social status. Dating Parker keeps me on top. Dating Neil would have forced me to the bottom." She shook her head, "Now it all seems so silly. Neil's dead, and Jordan—"

"Have you talked to her...since?"

Mary shook her head.

"Not yet. I don't know how to talk to her about this. You should have seen the look on her face when that picture hit the big screen...she looked like she had just been attacked. Because in a way, she had. I'm supposed to be her best friend, and I dated her brother for two years without saying a word." She wiped a lone tear off of her cheek. "Her dead brother."

Michael looked at his sister with pity in his eyes.

"I'm sorry, Mar. But I think Jordan will understand eventually. She'll talk to you eventually."

"Well, she's going to have to tonight."

Michael raised his eyebrows.

"And why is that?"

"Because," Mary stood up, "I invited everyone over tonight. Jordan, Roland, Lindsey. We're all talking about the stalker. I'm giving up on the whole not-doing-anything plan. That clearly didn't work, if last night was any indication. So we're going to have to come up with a new plan." She headed for the door, opening it before turning around to address her brother one more time. "We have to take this person down."

She left the room, and Michael watched her leave, staring at the door for a few minutes after she left. He knew his sister. He knew that she didn't change her mind at the drop of a hat, even after something like Friday night's events happened to her.

The stalker had called this meeting, and Michael was sure of it.

As he turned over in bed, he heard a soft ding from his phone on the bedside table. Despite direct orders from Abby not to look at electronics during his week of rest, Michael flipped over and opened the message, feeling his heart drop.

A/N: It's back! Regular Wednesday/Saturday updates for Killer Instinct are officially up and running again. I'm so sorry for the hiatus, but it was something I needed and was a result of personal things going on in my life. Thank you guys for understanding and be sure to follow my blog, www.katherinepowellbooks.wordpress.com (external link to the chapter) to be kept up-to-date on everything going on with my books, because I have a few exciting things coming up in the near future!

-Katherine