"This is an incredibly stupid idea."
"You've said that twice now Y/n." Kiara informed. Gusts of wind surrounded the group, making the temperatures of the day vanish with the cold nighttime.
Y/n stared up at the extended metal gate that warded off the school building from intruders with unnerve. Cold air dishevelled strands of his hair and the boy removed the distraction out of his vision before stuffing his hand back into his pocket to protect his limbs from the dropping elements. "I know.-- And I'll keep saying it because it's true, this is stupidly reckless, and the risk is not worth the small chance that we'll find something on those cameras." Y/n stated, removing his eyesight away, an uncanny ambiance increasing the longer he stared at the building.
Ironic that the building he visits every day could cause his mind so much tribulation by just converting circumstances and time of the day.
Morgan took a step near the hindering gate with caution, conveying her body's fluctuating hesitance in their current actions. "No matter what we find, we need to be careful. If the security guard sees us wandering around, we're done for." She warned, recounting the grumpy facility worker who patrolled the halls after hours.
The h/c haired boy glanced at Clark, the brunet's skittish posture was cracking through his facade, threatening to expose his growing panic. "Whatever, let's get this over with." Clark said, shaking his hands to alleviate the adrenaline pumping through his veins.
Alex commenced the first progress toward the entry, grasping the steel bars and lightly rattling the gate to inspect its stability. "Can't open the gate. We'll have to climb over." With the statement, the blond moved his foot up to the lower railing before grabbing hold of the frame and carrying his weight up.
Once at the top of the rail, Alex maneuvered his leg over the other side and let himself drop onto the concrete, and dusted off the additional lint on his clothing, Alex proceeded to peek up at the others in anticipation. "You guys coming?" The teenagers gawked at the boy's performance but couldn't articulate a further comment, instead, advanced up the panel, with more leisurely pacing, to evade the gauging pickets above the gate.
Three of the four students made it to the guarded side of the pavement. Leaving only Y/n to blankly wander in his own headspace. 'This is not what I had planned for my evening.'
"Y/n, come on, we don't have all night!" The berate from the brunet brought the boy back to the situation and Y/n straightened his sweater before stepping to the entrance. He pulled up his feet to the lower rail, and inhaled a shudder then, with the support of the post, rose momentum to the top railing.
The boy crossed the gate with his lower body and plunged to the ground. The deed momentarily deterring his lungs from exhaling a stable breath. Patting down his composure from the fall. Morgan started progressing to the main entrance. "Question how are we going to get inside? The main entrance is always locked after closing--" The girl's hand stretched outwards to assess the firmness of the locked door, only for her attempt to be futile as the entry opened.
An anxious expression was given to the rest of the group and the amaranth-haired abandoned her prior declaration, silence festering between them. "Why is it opened?" Clark choked out in a low volume. "It's just the night guard, he most likely locks it when his shift is done." Kiara reassured, not taking the endeavour as an omen of anything abnormal in the facility.
"Most likely?" Y/n repeated the attestation, his eyes pointing to the entryway in narrowness.
"Let's just be careful, like Morgan mentioned, if we get caught, we're in for trouble." Alex said, zipping down his backpack and taking out six circular objects, tossing each teen one.
"Here's flashlights so we can see where we walk. Keep it on the lowest setting though." The covenant was acted in accordance. Y/n shook the tool to stabilize the correct degree of light with success.
Morgan flickered the radar of the flashlight into the corridor, reflecting the light in each corner to examine for signs of movements, but the hall remained uninhabited, with the only sound being the creaking of the front entrance swaying in the wind. "The coast is clear." She briefed, slipping into the facility without awaiting the approval of her companions. The group exchanged one last uptight look before entering the building after the girl.
The h/c haired was the conclusive person to follow his company inside, but the male stopped his entry halfway, a burning sensation tugging his body to a delay. The boy peeked back to the gate and over at the deserted parking lot, his stare indefinitely prying for the unseen anomaly that had left his nerves taut
But the scenery stayed dormant. With no further reason to survey the parameters, Y/n removed his gaze and continued his walk, shutting the door behind him as precaution.
The reserved setting of the school warranted Goosebumps to fill the air with each step the teenagers took. "Do any of us even know where the security room is?" Clark asked, addressing the reason for their unsavoury actions with castigate, surveying the label of every passing classroom.
"It's on the second floor, I saw it when I went to class some days" Alex recalled the memory of the specified area as he walked.
Kiara craned her light further down the extended corridor. "Then we're on the right track let's hurry."
.
.
The group ascended to the upper floor. Trusting Alex with the task of navigating them to the designated area.
Soon enough the blond ceased his escorted walk, and the flashlight beamed onto the labelled tag displayed above the upper hinges of a closed entrance. The minimal letters illuminating a clear title.
Security room
Y/n's shoulders slumped in ease, the sinking realization that the midway of their expectation was fulfilled. Yet a palpable feeling that he couldn't quite identify, invaded under his skin like crawling bugs. 'It's so quiet...shouldn't we at least have heard the night guard by now, somewhere?'
Whatever the tentative belief was, it remained merely a conjecture of the boy's inner voice as the other teenagers didn't seem to be plagued by the same notion.
"We're here." Alex mumbled, strolling to the entrance, twisting the handle downwards without hassle, keeping the threshold wide for the others to enter, and being thanked with mutters of appreciation at the gesture.
The security room had a mellow atmosphere, the colours were dull and the noises in the space, minimal, the tiny capability droning of the multiple devices was the only originating sound, leaving the pounding of teenagers' vitals to accustom the tranquillity.
"Okay, great, what now?" Clark insisted, his tone agitated as he enquiringly watched his black-haired friend for her managed speech. "We look at the footage...obviously" Kiara responded, sarcastically aiding the boy's memory. "Okay, how are we going to get into the system? We don't know the passcode." The brunet reminded, assessing the major fault in the current plan.
Kiara's weight shifted from one side to the other, her strained patience stretching thin, fuelling her irritation to her tongue and words. "We look for anything, something, a note, a scribbled reminder, something we can try to utilize." She noted, meeting Clark's gaze with a stale grim.
Y/n observed the discussion between the two, the tense friction only fanned the longer they glared at each other, the h/c haired boy stepped between the line of sight, breaking the silence with a hefty sigh.
"Guys not now, we do not have time for this, every minute we waste is dire." He scolded. Morgan cast a glance at one of the drawers once the bickering subsided.
"I say, Y/n you look at the footage, you know who Serene is and how she looks, Alex, Kiara, and Clark help me look through these drawers, perhaps Kiara is right, and we will find something." The amaranth-haired ordered, her voice solid, eating the prior argument up with little space for objection.
Kiara tossed strands of her dark hair over her shoulder as her final jab to the bothered brunet. "Alright." The girl moved on to a cabinet to scour the furniture in a meticulous fashion for any useful information.
The additional onlookers began browsing through their own vicinity. Y/n stood in the centre of the room; his visage burned with a nagging qualm. 'This case can't start being the reason that Kiara and Clark ruin their friendship.' The boy drove the worry down his conscience to resume his assigned task.
His e/c eyes roamed to the desk furnished with various apparatus, all purposed to survey the school's premises. Y/n approached the construction, sat down on the chair, and turned on the main monitor.
The artificial light boasted through, and Y/n let his hands rest against the edges of the keyboard, his facial expression idly watching each automated pixel slightly move over the screen. The trifling activity was the only pursuit that would pass the wait until progress to the expedition could form.
Time ticked away with each leap of impatient inhale the h/c haired took. 'The longer we stay here the risk increases of getting caught.' The boy's patience dragged thin, and he stirred to his companions to communicate his quandary.
"I found something." Clark shared, inspecting a sticky note, engraved with hastily written access information.
The brunet wandered across the room and presented the note to Y/n. The other teens neared the monitors after ceasing their search. "Who would just let that lay around?" Kiara questioned with a hint of perplexity.
The h/c haired boy familiarized the initials and input the accessibility into the login menu. "Probably someone who forgets their login frequently and doesn't expect 5 teenagers to break into the school and misuse their information." Y/n answered steadfastly, looking toward the girl at the final words, manifesting a stinging irony to her question.
Kiara's features twisted to an irked grimace, but she didn't reciprocate the underlying insult. Y/n shifted his face back to the screen, the loading process had finished.
Multiple computer titles filed the desktop and Y/n operated the pointed mouse around, checking off each name. "Files, browser... CCTV footage." The application opened, revealing innumerable boxes of different perspectives all around the facility.
The boy experienced a premonition from the solitary sight of the empty hall, the walls illuded as too long, his attention felt like he couldn't grasp every angle of each camera point, eliciting an insufficient feeling within himself.
Detaching himself from the wallowing inclination, he searched for the required date to rewind the footage.
"Let's say, Serene stayed behind in the school, and got attacked here, it should be around 4 pm, right? It's an hour after school stopped." Y/n analysed with an exemplify attitude.
"4 pm? Isn't that still school hours? why would the killer risk that?" Morgan remarked, gazing at the h/c haired for a cognitive reply.
"Only way to find out." Y/n flickered between the cameras to locate the light brown-haired girl. His visage neutralized when the female appeared in a classroom, her eyes lowered in inquisitive puzzlement over the assignments she was correcting.
The h/c haired pointed to the girl. "That's Serene." He verified her identity to the teenagers. There were still a few roaming students in the corridors, on the alternative monitors whilst Y/n tried to wistfully decipher what had overcome the girl.
Nothing in the visible eye occurred during the minutes that passed, observing the screen in the foreboding anxiousness that seeped from the group, Y/n increased the footage to a later timestamp. The halls were now void of people. Serene began rummaging together her papers and stepping out to the empty hallway, her journey was accompanied undisturbed, Y/n ascertained that his supposition was correct and there was nothing to find on the tapes.
Until, an individual came into view on a different camera, and Y/n paused the CCTV, angling his head in a direction that would permit a clearer perception.
A ball lodged in his throat as the actuality evinced up his mind and the boy was sure that regurgitation would spill out of his teeth from the sudden blow of repulsion. The footage was muted, any colour reduced to a mere accent of grey.
Even then, Y/n remembered the vizard of the person, bypassing his stunned stupefaction, he utters the words dragging on his tongue. "There's our culprit. The Runswick killer." The group inclined closer to view what the male was referring to. "Fuck..." Clark vulgar expressed.
"Why the mask..." Morgan queried, her body unconsciously shrinking away from the sight. "To conceal their identity, install fear into victims, it's harder to plead and reason with someone without a face." Y/n resumed the video irately.
The involvement of the individual only sealed the foreboding fate of the unaware girl. Death dragged after wherever this maniac was, and the pieces of the setting latched together in Y/n's mind.
Whatever happened next, Serene did not make it out of this building alive.
The killer traversed through the perceptions of the cameras until the auditory range reached Serene. However, she could not muster any reaction other than a quick glimpse into the path of the approaching threat.
The sound of ripping flesh and a pitched scream reverberated out of the speakers causing the group to cringe away from the ordeal. "Oh God..." Kiara croaked, hiding her mouth under her palm.
The injured brunette was pulled down to the stone floor, rendering her disoriented after the forceful collapse. Serene forced her sights upward to witness her assaulter, and the silence that swept over was an invoke to her disturbing Rationalizing of the situation
Before the lunatic could strike a fatal wound, the girl managed to formulate her surprise and kick the assaulter down, dislocating their disguise in the process, giving her an open time frame to escape to safety.
The killer was left moping in the failed attack, adjusting their mask and staring down the area the girl had scurried down to, then mindlessly angling a glance up at the camera facing the space.
Y/n switched the camera till they saw Serene, she reached the main door but was unable to depart from the compound. The bare surroundings were unpleasantly ominous, not aiding with Serene's ever-growing frantic emotions.
In a flash of decision-making, she dashed into a classroom to hide. The group exchanged perturbed looks, worrying over the outcome of the ordeal.
Seconds later the killer moved back into the scene, their measured front was leisurely calm as they counted the number of closed rooms, then advanced to Serene's destination.
The false sense of security that pursued out of the expanse was the moment the bystanders held their breath for the worst chances. Despite the low hopes for Serene's escape in the practically cornered position, she came running out, creating a makeshift barracked obstacle with a chair.
Not waiting around for movements, she took flight, sprinting further away down the corridor. Y/n changed the perspective to be able to observe the stranger who had been unbeknownst trapped inside the inside of the room. The person walked to the handle of the structure and tried to open it, with no success.
The killer glided their palm off the handle, once the action proved fruitless labour. Their head tilted to look at the camera once more.
"Why the hell do they keep looking at the camera?" Clark questioned, the nagging detail evoking distressed sensations from the male. Y/n considered the previous conception he had formed, The boy ticked away a series of different cameras.
"Y/n, what are you?--" The security room snapped onto the monitor, and the teenagers gaped at the screen.
"What the fuck?"
An individual was seated in the room, wearing a black hood covering up their visage, an unattended mask laid on the desk, their stance was distracted and captivated their attention to their thoughts, that was until the running of Serene trailed their occupied mind to the monitors.
They rose from their chair and neared the monitors to inspect the different cameras. Upon noticing the disturbance of the injured girl, the camera changed to the area where their presumably partner in crime had been trapped inside.
A whim of motion happened, and a lamp stationed next to the computer was hurled toward a wall, shattering into multiple pieces when the fragile material came into context with the surface with a smash.
The individual stared at the screen once more in the concluded silence of the security room after their pent-up anger had been lifted.
They reached for the mask, adjusting it over their countenance, and grabbed the wooden handle of an axe before walking out of the surveilled area.
Y/n kept track of the stranger as they moved through the various corridors of the compound, then ventured into the women's bathroom, abstracting the group's knowledge of any upcoming events by the lack of camera in the space, meant to preserve the privacy of students. The protracting wait only incited Y/n's concern in waves, and the splintering noise of wood forced it to a climax.
The killer soon exited the scene dragging an unconscious Serene out of the door and out of radius of sight of the camera's capacity.
The h/c haired paused the footage and standardized back to the current surveillance that still prove barren. However, Y/n's thoughts only adhered to the moments he had just seen. "you were right Kiara..." He mumbled, yet the statement was void of any sufficient emotion.
The confirmation that there were two killers was a factor that didn't affect Y/n's exasperation, anyone who scratched the surface of the case and possessed some type of observation skills, would eventually notice the defecting gap that the killings couldn't have been enacted by solely one person. It was more how much denial could one's judgment before they accepted the fact.
Two killers were bound to complicate the pure foundation of the town's spirit, bad enough with one homicidal lunatic running around murdering people, let alone two. No, that was not what grasped the boy's consideration, it was the uncertainness of their agenda, Y/n knew one of the killers was allegedly stalking him, but that's the point, he didn't know if it was only one of them. One of them could be stalking him, but the other one could very well have no qualms about gutting him if given the chance.
Even so, drawing the inference that a murderer wouldn't harm him regardless if they were stalking him for reasons not to kill him, was like assuming a wild animal wouldn't pounce to attack. It was a no-brainer to not rely on the preordained actions of unpredictable individuals established purely on a hunch.
"I don't see the night guard anywhere..." Kiara whispered, looking at each monitor, predicting to see the worker passing by in some part of the building, but her expectations remained vacant. "Weird... the security guard is literally nowhere to be seen." The black-haired haired announced in bafflement.
Hypervigilance sprouted in Y/n's awareness, triggering a cold prickling in his nerves. The boy quickly hoisted himself up from the seat, the impulse reaction gaining tense expression from the other companions. "We need to leave, now." Shutting off the device, the h/c haired boy hastily uttered the warning with no cognition of whether the others understood.
"What, why?--"
"The footage we just saw, is evidence that there's two killers, right?" Y/n muttered irritated, devising a short explanation that would clarify the danger they had stumbled into.
"Do you guys really think that the killer....killers, would want information out? The open entrance, the lack of sound... I think I know exactly why we haven't seen that security guard."
Morgan's posture faltered with the realization Y/n presented. "But, if that's the case, doesn't that mean..." The amaranth-haired's utterance was low and bordering on cracking from the tension piling up. Clark's expression contorted to something akin to terror and his breaths turned strained. "It means we gotta get the hell out of here!--"
"What are you guys talking about?!" Kiara interrupted the lack of insight into the trio's talk, making the other two teenagers exchange glances in the worry. "Doesn't matter we need to go."
.
.
.
After turning off the actuation to the computers and organizing the furniture to avoid anyone suspecting someone unauthorized had been in the room, the group dashed out while Alex and Kiara struggled to maintain regulation in the speed of the others.
"Can you guys at least try to explain why we're practically fleeing out of the school?" Alex mustered up the request but was met with silence from the others. Their pace rushing down the flight of stairs.
The palpable stress steered Y/n's eyes around the halls, and the element of the poorly lit environment only fixated the fear. "I'll explain once we're out, right now every minute we waste is a risk." The boy eventually answered, the undertone of the reply was worn out from the active exercise. Alex didn't argue further and retained his inquiry for later.
The corners they rounded came to a final turn, the main entrance just a few meters away, nevertheless it didn't extinguish the h/c haired's taut muscles. 'We're almost out, I need to calm down.'
Footsteps came to a screeching halt over the marble floor, the light from the flashlights shining down to the outstretch of the hall.
Wide-eyed the group observed the obstruction between them and the exit.
The individual who ceased their path stared at them with a low amount of surprise at the teenagers' presence in the building, noticeable from their body language. The mask they wore was dirtied and beige, the texture rough, and torn, the only difference was the two hollow sockets near the eyes, covered by black mesh fabric to hide their distinctive features framed by a hood.
The clothes they wore were dark and blended into the dimness of the corridor. The stranger watched them from the distance of the hall, The metal baseball bat in their hand swirled around in an axis in preparation for what was to come.
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Author note: Here I am again with a Monomania chapter!! If you like this story, feel free to check out my newest yanderes x m reader story GROTESQUE ADORATION, appreciate you <3