The morning of the SATs, my parents suddenly stormed into the testing center. Ignoring the proctor’s furious shouts, they physically dragged me out of my seat. "Chloe, we would never hurt you!" "If you want to live, you have to come with us right now!" I had absolutely no idea what was happening, but I followed them. We ended up on an Amtrak train heading deep into the Rocky Mountains of Montana. That afternoon, a news notification popped up on my phone. My entire body turned to stone. Just as the morning reading section had ended... Every single person in my testing center—all 1,020 students and staff, except for me—had dropped dead. My face deathly pale, I turned to my parents to demand what the hell was going on. But they were pointing at the train window behind my head, their faces twisted in absolute, primal terror. "Don't look back! We have to get off this train right now!" Just half an hour before they stormed the school, they had been smiling, cooking me breakfast, and wishing me luck on my exams. But then, they appeared in the testing center, their faces grim and aggressive. "Chloe, come with us. Now!" I looked at the dirt smeared on their clothes, and then at the campus security guard lying unconscious on the floor down the hall. My mind went completely blank. "What happened? Why did you knock out the security guard?!" They grabbed me, one by each arm, their grips like iron vices. "We would never hurt you! Even if we have to knock you out too, we are taking you out of here today!" The proctor saw what was happening and rushed over to physically block them. "What are you doing?! This is the SAT! This dictates your daughter's entire future!" "Whatever emergency you have, it can wait until the exam is over!" My mom showed zero hesitation. She shoved the proctor hard against the doorframe and screamed: "Is a test more important than her life?!" Before I could even process the situation, I was dragged out of the building. We didn't go home. Wearing their dirt-stained clothes, they hailed a cab and rushed us to the nearest train station. It wasn't until the train started moving that the color slowly returned to their faces. But their eyes remained bloodshot, darting around, hyper-vigilant of our surroundings. They looked like fugitives running from the law. What were they hiding from? I couldn't hold it in anymore. "Mom, Dad, what is going on? What are you so afraid of?" "And where are we going?" My mom put a finger to her lips, her voice chillingly cold. "Don't speak. And don't ask why." Their paranoid, fugitive-like behavior quickly caught the attention of the conductor, who stopped and questioned them aggressively for several minutes. I asked the passenger in front of us and found out this train was an express line heading deep into the Montana wilderness. My parents didn't know anyone in Montana! Why were we going there? While they were busy distracting the conductor, I pulled out my phone. I was bored and wanted to see if anyone was posting about the SAT reading prompts online. But the moment I opened my browser, a breaking news headline dominated my screen. [BREAKING: 1,020 Students and Faculty Suffer Simultaneous Cardiac Arrest at Local High School Testing Center. All Confirmed Dead...] I clicked the article. The blood in my veins turned to ice. The testing center in the article... was the exact same one my parents had just dragged me out of! They were telling the truth! Every single person in that room was dead! If they hadn't pulled me out of my seat, I would be lying under a white sheet right now! But... was this news real? How could 1,020 people die at the exact same second? I was just about to text my homeroom teacher when my phone vibrated. It was my best friend, Emily. "Chloe! Are you okay?! Mr. Davis is dead! The class president is dead!" Her voice was trembling violently. She was sobbing in sheer terror. "Everyone in your testing center is dead!" "Emily! I'm fine! Do you know what happened?!" Before I could even finish my sentence, my dad violently snatched the phone out of my hand. "Do not trust anyone!" he hissed. I was completely lost, desperate for answers. "Dad, you obviously know something, otherwise you wouldn't have pulled me out! Tell me! What is going on?!" "Why is everyone in that room dead?!" My mom let out a heavy sigh, gently patting my leg to comfort me. "Chloe, knowing too much won't do you any good." "Just know that your father and I would never—" Her voice abruptly cut off. I looked at her, only to realize her face had turned ashen and completely drained of blood. "Mom! What's wrong?!" Hearing my panicked voice, my dad turned to look at my mom. The moment he did, his expression froze in pure terror. Their eyes were wide with fear, staring fixedly at the space right behind my head. Through their trembling pupils, I could see the reflection of a blurry, shadowy figure standing right behind me. But behind me... was nothing but the train window. Was there something terrifying outside the glass? Instinctively, I started to turn my head to look. But my dad's hand slammed onto the back of my head, holding me rigidly in place. His lips trembled, producing a voice I had never heard from him before. "Don't look back. We have to run!" I could clearly feel my dad's hand shaking. He was absolutely terrified. At that exact same moment, a blast of freezing, icy air blew directly against the back of my neck. The next second, my dad yanked me up by my arm. He grabbed my mom, and we sprinted frantically through three entire train cars, running as if hell itself were on our heels. It wasn't until the train pulled into the next station that he finally slowed down. Without a single word of explanation, they dragged me off the train. "Mom, Dad, what did you see back there?" I was met with total silence. They refused to speak, but I couldn't forget the sheer terror etched onto their faces. It was as if, had we been one second slower, we would have met the exact same gruesome fate as everyone in that testing center. What were we running from? Was it that blurry shadow? Seeing that the sun was starting to set, I suggested we book a hotel room in this town for the night. But my parents, their faces grim, flagged down a taxi instead. "There's no time! Take us to the airport!" my dad yelled to the driver. I was shoved into the back seat of the cab. During the ride, Emily called my phone again. I was just about to answer it. My dad, sitting in the passenger seat, whipped around and glared at me. "Do not answer that!" My mom looked at me with intense paranoia. "Chloe, listen to your father! We cannot trust anyone right now!" The taxi driver shot us a bizarre look through the rearview mirror, but I ultimately let the call go to voicemail. However, I secretly texted Emily on iMessage, telling her I was safe and doing fine. She never replied. Half an hour later, urged by my dad's frantic shouting, the driver finally pulled up to the airport. He was visibly annoyed by my dad's yelling, but when he noticed the dried blood on my dad's shirt, he looked terrified and sped off the second we got out. The earliest flights to Montana were completely sold out. I begged my parents to just wait until tomorrow, but my dad didn't say a word. He just stood there, staring blankly at the massive TV screens broadcasting the evening news in the terminal. I took one look at the screen, and every drop of blood in my body turned to ice. Just ten minutes ago... The Amtrak train we had just fled had suddenly derailed, plunging directly into a deep river gorge. Over a thousand passengers were on board. There were zero survivors. The conductor who had been questioning my parents just an hour ago was now floating pale and lifeless in the river. Two consecutive brushes with mass-casualty death. I was officially terrified. My parents were right! There was something actively hunting us, trying to wipe us out. Despite the overwhelming shock, my dad was the first to snap back to reality. He pulled out a burner phone and made a call. He seemed to trust the person on the other end implicitly. He just nodded and kept repeating, "Okay, understood." When he hung up, he looked like a man who had made a desperate decision. "Let's go. We're flying to Miami!" Wait, weren't we trying to get to Montana? Why Florida all of a sudden? I was trembling. "Dad, shouldn't we call the police?!" My dad's face was dead serious. "The police can't help us! They'll just die with us!" I don't know what kind of strings he pulled, but he somehow managed to secure three tickets for a flight boarding in ten minutes. I peeked at the boarding passes. The destination was Montana. But didn't he just say we were going to Miami? Why did it change again? I was getting more and more confused about where we were going and what we were doing! Right before we boarded, my dad powered down his burner phone and threw it directly into a trash can. Without a second thought, my mom tossed hers in as well. They both turned to look at me. "Chloe. Phones transmit location data." Faced with a life-or-death situation, I didn't hesitate. I followed their lead and threw my iPhone into the trash. Once the plane successfully took off, my mom finally leaned in and whispered to me: "Sweetie, I know you have a million questions, but Mommy can only tell you this:" "Once we reach our destination, we will explain everything." "Right now, the only thing that matters is staying alive!" I was about to speak, but my dad suddenly clamped his hand tightly over my mouth. "From this second on, if you don't have to speak, do not make a sound!" "No matter who talks to you, do not reply, and absolutely do not say your name!" I didn't know why, but I nodded vigorously. Half an hour into the flight, a cheerful ringtone suddenly pierced the quiet cabin. Everyone turned their heads to look at me. I suddenly remembered—I had a backup burner phone in my backpack! My parents' faces turned a horrifying shade of gray. A flight attendant walked over. "Miss, please turn your phone off immediately." Awkwardly, I pulled the burner phone out of my bag. The caller ID flashing on the screen read: Emily. "Wait, you guys get cell reception at 30,000 feet?" a passenger in the next seat asked curiously. I froze. A wave of pure, nauseating terror washed over me. I suddenly remembered a terrifying fact. This backup phone... didn't even have a SIM card installed! Even if there was a signal up here, it was physically impossible for Emily to be calling me! While I sat paralyzed in shock, my dad violently snatched the phone from my hand and smashed it against the floor of the cabin. "Dad, I..." I tried to explain, but my dad glared at me with murderous intensity. "Shut your mouth!" "Hey man, take it easy! Your daughter didn't do it on purpose! Stop yelling at her," the passenger next to us tried to mediate. But I knew my dad was just reinforcing the rule: Do not speak. The phone was shattered and silent, but due to the impact, the cracked screen glitched and automatically opened the iMessage app. It stopped perfectly on my chat log with Emily. Our conversation had ended with the text I sent her after getting off the train, telling her I was safe. But three seconds later, a new message popped up on the cracked screen, sending me into absolute despair: [Chloe, I am so glad you're still alive. Unfortunately, I wasn't so lucky. Mr. Davis and I died in the exam room this morning.] Emily was dead! How was that possible?! I specifically remembered she was assigned to a different testing center than me! If she died this morning... who was the person calling me all afternoon?! It couldn't be a ghost, could it?! I looked at my parents in sheer terror. They looked just as horrified. My mom's face crumbled into absolute despair. She muttered under her breath: "It didn't fall for the Miami trick! It found us..." So my dad saying we were going to Miami was a trick meant to throw it off our trail. But my mom said it was here! Where was it? I looked frantically around the cabin but saw nothing suspicious. Who—or what—was it? No one could give me an answer. My dad swiftly shot my mom a meaningful look. After taking a moment to steady her breathing, my mom gave me one last, heartbreaking look. Then, she pulled a small pill from her pocket and shoved it into her mouth. "Mom..." What did you just take? Before I could finish the sentence, my dad clamped his hand over my mouth again. "If you don't want to get everyone on this plane killed! Shut up!" Watching my mom begin to violently foam at the mouth, I had to physically bite my own tongue to keep from sobbing out loud. Once my dad let go of me, he caught my mom's collapsing body. "Sarah! Sarah! What's wrong?!" "Help!" he screamed, his face a mask of agonizing grief. "My wife is having a severe seizure! We need an emergency landing immediately!" Seeing this play out, I finally understood what my mom had swallowed. This was their contingency plan all along! If they needed to force the plane to land, this was the only way. To prevent a medical fatality on board, the pilot initiated an emergency descent and landed at the nearest regional airport. The moment we touched down, we followed the ambulance straight to the hospital. My dad looked at my pale, traumatized face, a single tear rolling down his cheek. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. If we hadn't forced the plane to land, it would have crashed. We, and the hundred other passengers on board, would have all died." Fighting the urge to cry, I pulled a pen and paper from the nurse's station and wrote: [Dad, are we being hunted by the Grim Reaper?] That was the only logical explanation I could think of. But my dad just shook his head. "Wait until we get to Montana..." After an hour of emergency treatment, my mom was finally stabilized, but she remained in a deep coma. At the exact same time, we received another horrifying piece of news. The hundred or so passengers on our flight hadn't died in a crash. But every single one of them had fallen into a bizarre, unexplained coma, exactly like my mom. My dad wanted to grab me and run. He said we had to make it to Montana before dawn. But I absolutely refused. If we left, what would happen to my mom? Maybe my dad couldn't bear to leave her behind either, or maybe he knew I wouldn't budge. He didn't force the issue. Instead, he deadbolted the heavy door to the hospital room and issued me one final, severe warning: "Tonight, no matter who knocks on that door, do not open it! And do not speak a single word!" After giving me that warning, he fell back into a chair and fell into a deep sleep. Or rather, it looked more like a coma. Just like the passengers on the plane, he had fallen into a strange, unbreakable unconsciousness. At exactly midnight, a knock echoed at the door. "Room 301, nightly rounds. Please open the door." It was the voice of a young, female nurse. I was about to stand up, but my dad's warning echoed in my head. Whether it was a real nurse or not, I refused to open the door. The knocking continued for a few minutes before stopping, and the shadow beneath the door vanished. Ten minutes later, the voice of my best friend, Emily, suddenly echoed from the hallway. "Chloe? It's Emily. I heard your mom was in the hospital, how is she doing? Can I come in and see her?"
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