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They didn't know who her dad was, so no one could say for sure on that one, but she didn't hear Uncle Cherry mention anything about it either, so he probably had nothing to do with her dad. She remembered him coming over all the time when she was younger, and chatting with her mom about all kinds of things. Even if he wasn't a real relative, he felt more like one than all the uncles and aunts she'd been staying with before he had come to get her.

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But that had been the reason he couldn't take her in right away. That was what he'd explained to her too, when he had first brought her over--- apologized for not coming sooner, and for everything she had been through since then, even though out of all the adults responsible, he was probably the least at fault. Said something about legal issues, and staying quiet about this and that.

By that point, Hazel had been so inundated with legal troubles that she hadn't thought of it as unusual.

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Hazel had, it seemed, become a legal project almost overnight. What was a little more legal this and legal that? It wasn't like she was talking to anyone anyway. She almost wanted to tell him that he didn't need to bother.

But he was nice to her. He didn't stop being nice because of what had happened. That had been a nice surprise. She wasn't sure if he was going to be, the way everything else was going. Everyone had seemed so determined to suddenly become monsters in her life.

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The computer had been something Uncle Cherry bought for her too. She'd asked, and at the time, Hazel finding anything urgent enough to speak up about it had been a big deal for him. She was sure it wasn't easy finding things to fit her specifications, and she knew it hadn't been cheap... Uncle Cherry had this house, but she knew he just ran a restaurant or something. He wasn't rich.

At least she'd been able to build it herself. She consoled herself with that. It would have been way pricier if she hadn't.

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And after she had gotten her computer set up, and started doing some of the same things she'd been doing before the accident, Hazel felt a lot more like a real human being again. Not completely like one, but closer. A whole corpse, and not a dismembered one.

But she hadn't forgotten about the men in suits. Everything that could be encrypted on her new machine was encrypted. She spent a whole three days just working on her own security measures, just in case anyone was keeping tabs on her.

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Even with those precautions, it was hard to know if she really was completely safe. She was just one kid. She knew she was smart, but there was a limit to what she could do by herself, and whoever it was those men were working for must have had the kind of money and power to afford a whole team of people, if they wanted one.

She was relieved when she saw that the measures she'd set up hadn't been disturbed, but still, the sense of unease remained.

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She pushed past it, and opened up a browser. Another time, she might have done something more mentally intense, but tonight she was just here to watch cat videos. It wasn't even that she liked cats all that much, but they were funny, and there were a lot of videos about them on the internet.

It was something to do. At least it would keep her occupied until her body felt tired enough for her to sleep again. And in the meantime, she didn't have to think about the nightmare.

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She was about half an hour into a compilation when a notification on her messenger app lit up. Curious, she opened the app. She only had a few people on there, and all of them were people she had chosen to add, so she wasn't particularly worried about talking to any of them, at least over the messenger.

Text was easier, for whatever reason. Maybe because she didn't have to look at their faces, or worry about how her voice was going to sound when she said anything.

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Hazel recognized the icon as the window opened up, before she even read the name. Akira. One of the employees at her uncle's restaurant. Normally, that wasn't nearly enough of an excuse to get her to talk to him, but she had her uncle's place bugged, and she'd picked up on some really interesting conversations between him and some of his friends there outside of operating hours.

She'd been the one to take the initiative and hack his phone. At first, it had just been a matter of curiosity.

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Hazel didn't like to admit it much, but... she was actually pretty bored sometimes, cooped up in her room by herself all day. You could only get so much mileage out of mucking around on internet forums. She knew that her hermit lifestyle was self imposed, but every time she thought about actually committing and going outside... She found it was easier just to stay in.

But the bugs in the restaurant gave her something to listen to if she wanted background noise. And then they'd picked up on something really strange.

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Akira had this one friend, Yuu. She'd seen him a couple of times before, after she learned his schedule. Her window just so happened to get a view of her uncle's place, and once she figured out which visitor he was, Yuu was pretty hard to miss.

Tall, skinny, dark hair... He had a weird way of walking, like he was floating on air all the time. She could never decide whether it made him actually look graceful, or if he just looked kind of stupid instead.

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He came over a lot, even by friend standards... Or by what Hazel thought of as friend standards, anyway. Her friends hadn't come over that often. It was possible that this was a guy thing, but she didn't think so...

Though, come to that, it was more likely to be a the-only-two-Asian-kids-in-class thing. She'd been in that boat before, though Akira had been living overseas, and when he came here, he was by himself. Whatever he was going through must have been more severe, if anything.

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At least, that was what Hazel had thought it was, until she'd overheard them talking about strange-looking creatures, and hearing voices in their heads. Which should have marked them as grade-A crazies, or possibly kids who had gotten their hands on some recreational drugs that they definitely shouldn't have had, except... it sounded a lot like what Hazel had been hearing lately.

Hazel had chalked it all up to the stress and post-traumatic whatsit until that moment. Actually, even hearing them talk about something so similar didn't rule that out.

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Akira was also living under some pretty stressful circumstances, and while her uncle didn't talk about it, she caught snatches of conversation that seemed to imply that Akira had been sent away to quiet down some sort of... scandal back home. So maybe he was dealing with a lot more than it looked like.

And as for that other guy, Yuu... Akira kept trying to convince him to leave his home, so Hazel thought something was probably up with his situation too, though she didn't know what exactly.

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But it was more than that. The more she listened, the more interesting it became. It wasn't just voices either--- it was visions, it was things they could see that no one else could see. Sometimes it was monsters. Not metaphorical ones either, but real ones... Ones, Hazel had realized, like the things she'd been seeing in her dreams.

It was at that point that she contacted them. It had been a bit of a rocky start, since she didn't know how much she could trust them.