155 Plan B

The next day everything was back to normal, as if nothing had happened, they had at least expected something to come from all of this. Of course the students still gossiped about the events that happened behind the second year building, but because nobody really knew what happened that's all it was, rumours. The scene of the murder had been cleaned up quickly after the investigation had finished, and the second year students were allowed to enter their building again.

The rumours kept spreading between the students, one story was wilder than the next, so eventually the Generals decided to send out a general announcement to update all the students about the situation. They did this to avoid that rumours would turn into panic. So all the students were sent an emergency announcement through their wrist watch, everyone got the same voice message.

The message said, "A beast has escaped through one of the portals, it has been tracked down and it has been dealt with. A full investigation is underway to find out how a beast was able to get through one of the portals on its own, security around the portals has been increased to avoid the same thing from reoccurring." This message was repeated several times during that day, this gave all the students the time to listen to it carefully..

The military was lucky that Earl hadn't come from an important family, his death wouldn't have any direct or indirect consequences on the school whatsoever.

The day after the announcement, the usual suspects had gathered together in the boy's dorm room again, they were going to decide what to do with Peter.

"So do you feel hungry right now?" Layla asked.

"Not any more than usual when I wake up." Peter replied.

Vorden and Quinn had already bought plenty of raw meat for him to eat, and for now it seemed to be working in suppressing his hunger.

The actual problem was the system's words that worried Quinn the most. Now that Peter had eaten human flesh, it would be very likely that the hunger and craving for it would come back sooner. But because they didn't have a baseline on how long Peter could go between meals of human flesh, they didn't know when the next time he needed it would be.

If Peter had waited with eating human flesh until had had gone crazy for it, the system would have been able to make an estimate of the interval at which Peter needed to feed on human meat again. But because Peter had chosen to kill Earl on his own, and had then eaten parts of his body, it was impossible to predict when he would go crazy and need to feed on another human being.

This thought was on the back of everyone's minds en Peter's, but Peter felt he had to reassure the others.

"Guys relax," Peter said nervously. "I won't be doing anything like that again, and Quinn can testify to it that I'm not lying. I promise, as soon as I get hungry again, I'll let you guys know straight away!"

"Still," Vorden said. "That doesn't solve our problem of feeding you when you do need to be fed. We may have gotten away with it this time but we need something consistent."

The other three thought long and hard about what their options could be, but nobody had come up with a good plan yet. Vorden did have a plan of sorts, but it was definitely the 'last resort' type of plan. He still didn't trust Peter yet, and he wanted to see how loyal he would be, only after he was sure he could trust Peter, and all other options had been thought of would he tell them his plan.

"Have you tried drinking coffee?" Layla asked.

"Coffee?" the others said in unison.

"How does coffee help?" Quinn asked.

"Oh... well... never mind, I just read about it in a book once, don't mind me" Layla said smiling. "Can't we get human flesh from the cemetery or the morgue? The city has one."

Quinn had actually though of these suggestions himself, but unfortunately the system had bad news for him again. The mean Peter could eat had to be very fresh. To the point that it should be eaten off the bone of a living person, or someone who had just died. Even after an hour the meat would already be too old for Peter to consume.

Another problem with that plan was that people didn't just die in a military city like that. It wasn't like a regular city which had high levels of crime, or a population of elderly people. Also the consequences of getting caught stealing a dead body from the morgue or cemetery wasn't something they wanted to face. The only upside to it was that it's better than getting caught killing another student.

The pressure was getting to Quinn... No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't come up with a good way to get Peter some fresh human meat, he felt like pulling his hair out in frustration. The only solution he could come up with was killing people that deserved it, this way innocent people wouldn't accidentally be attacked by Peter.

The problem was they had to start making a list of people that deserved to be killed and eaten, and this wasn't an easy thing to do. Even after Quinn became a vampire, he still wasn't comfortable with randomly killing someone.

Vorden noticed that Quinn was getting stressed out and he said, "Quinn, relax. I have an emergency backup plan, trust me, I'll handle it when it comes to it. For now spend your day as normal as possible, to avoid looking suspicious. Layla and I will try to come up with something, if that doesn't work out we can use my backup plan."

"What exactly is the backup plan?" Layla asked.

Vorden then started at Layla and called Quinn over, he whispered something into his ear, while he kept looking at Layla out of the corner of his eye. It was clear to her that he was doing this to get one up on her. He had a plan that would help Quinn and Peter out, and she didn't.

Layla couldn't help but tap her foot and stare angrily at Peter who was in the corner of the room.

"Vorden I can't let you do that!" Quinn shouted, with shock on his face.

"Like I said, it's a last resort, we will only do it if it comes down to it. It's the only thing that we can do which won't put us in danger of getting caught," Vorden replied.

Although Vorden had helped Quinn through this process, what he was suggesting was just too much.

While Vorden and Layla were on babysitting duty for Peter, Quinn left to do his own thing. Whatever happened he didn't want Vorden to go through with his plan. The only other option he could think of was the hospital.

There were plenty of cases where soldiers would get injured in mock battles or out on training expeditions to orange and red portal planets. Sometimes they would even get lethally wounded. Sometimes they also caught a disease of some sort. It was the only place in the city Quinn could think of that both had fresh human meat and almost dead people.

But now that Quinn was outside, he decided to do some tests of for which he needed a secluded spot and sunlight. He was back in the part at the open area in the forest where the others had trained with Peter. The reason for him being there was that he wanted to test if his new suit would actually work. He closed the umbrella he was holding over his head and threw it on the ground.

When the light touched his skin the usual system message had appeared.

[You are being hit by direct sunlight]

[All stats will be reduced by 70 Percent]

"Shadow equip!" Quinn called out.

Unlike before the shadow started to wrap around his whole body this time, and after a few seconds the black suit that Logan had designed covered his entire body, and the demon mask was equiped on his face.

[You are no longer being affected by sunlight]

[All stats have returned to normal]

It was a total success! The outfit was working as planned, but there was still something Quinn would have to get used to. The outfit covered his whole body from head to toe including his eyes.

To make sure Quinn could still see, Logan had covered the eyes of the mask with virtual eyes, and on the outside the mask looked like an evil demon. Logan wanted the outfit to match Quinn's shadow outfit. So he thought there was nothing better than to make him look like a shadow demon.

The demon like mask had white glaring eyes, and the suit had red claw marks running up the side of his arms. The vision provided by the virtual yes was almost as good as that of a regular human eye, however it was still a far cry from Quinn's vampire eyes.

If it was him before he became a vampire it would have been fine, but right now the virtual eyes put him at a slight disadvantage compared to him at night.

Although the suit also had a night mode which allowed Quinn to lower the top half of the suit so his head could get some fresh air, while his face was still mostly covered by the metallic mask.

Even though the suit wasn't needed at night, it still gave him extra protection and would also help him to stay anonymous so it was best to use it when he could.

Quinn was over the moon as now there was no longer any need to hide his shadow ability from others.