Everything happened so, SO quickly, Cat couldn’t even think straight. The rush of the amphetamine felt incredible - utterly incredible - almost euphoric once Cat realized she hadn’t been sedated. Shortly after her legs jumped in response to the surge of drugs coursing through her bloodstream, a hand was at her side and Cat grasped it immediately, desperately. Max yanked her sideways as another shrouded black figure lunged up from behind the dean and practically tackled him face-down onto the white bed next to where Cat was scrambling to get up and away. The dean reached out to grab for Cat - or, she assumed he reached out to grab her and prevent her from leaving - but only succeeded in grabbing the ruffled lace hem of the skirt of her dress. He grabbed it so firmly and tightly in his fist, the entire bottom ripped away as Max pulled her off and away from the bed. The two girls stood stunned for a split moment - black and white standing hand in hand - they both looked down at Cat’s ruined dress, the skirt torn clear up the back, hanging in two halves leaving Cat’s ass completely bare to the room around them.

After the initial shock of that moment, the entire room erupted into chaos. Cat felt something soft and heavy thrown over the top of her head. Someone had provided her with a makeshift black shroud to hide the white flash of her ruined dress from the black sea of the crowd surrounding her. From somewhere within the folds of her friend’s black shrouded robe, Cat saw the flash of a silver scalpel emerge in Max’s free hand and she began to pull Cat through the throng of ghouls closing in around them as the dean practically roared in anger from somewhere behind them on the ceremonial bed. Cat didn’t dare look back over her shoulder.

Cries, gasps and actual screams followed in their wake as the two girls made their way back to some nondescript corner of the room. It wasn’t until they were nearly through the shrouded individuals that Cat realized Max had selectively, and literally, sliced her way through the crowd. Four figures were on the floor, blood pooling out onto the marble tile of the room. Somewhere in the center, an entire circle of black surrounded the bed while the dean roared out threats and obscenities, then begged for help from faceless individuals who might or might not be in the room.

It would take Cat days, if not weeks, to piece together snippets of the evening that she’d witnessed before she and Max fled The Great Hall to retreat within the tunnels. Max had dragged her through a hidden door, and then down, down, down into an endless maze within the All Saints network. She’d locked the both of them away in a simple room containing a bunk bed and two desks. Max had encouraged Cat to take a tiny pink pill, and… that was it. She didn’t remember another thing from that moment until - what Cat assumed was - the following morning when she, inexplicably, had awoken in their shared dorm room completely alone. As Cat recalled moments from the night of the Winter Formal, she began to wonder just how she and Max had, seemingly, escaped without notice or great effort. As the days went by following the event, she began to wonder and worry why Max had seemingly vanished without a trace.