These bastards weren't just trying to kill him, after all. They wanted everyone else dead too. That meant something even deeper, somehow darker and scarier was going on here. Was this a cult? A group of religious fanatics who believed in some sort of apocalypse scenario involving the System and the world ending?

No, it couldn't be that. If they were like that then they wouldn't have attacked in such an indiscriminate way—they would have taken aim at specific people first, maybe go for the ones with high status points or whatever, before moving onto their next victim.

It had to be something with the System. Lance refused to believe that so many normal people had suddenly become insane.

So why hadn't he or Sophie been affected? Well, there wasn't really much point asking that now anyway: if they got out alive they could always look into that later when things had calmed down again. Right now though, what mattered more than anything was keeping himself safe while he tried to figure out how he should approach this situation. What was he supposed to do about this new batch of crazed ability-toting lunatics? He didn't even know where they'd come from, nor did he know who was behind them, or even why they were doing all of this.

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Okay, maybe it was too early to assume they were hostile. Many of them had been so far, but a few--like those two weird policemen--were still safe. Maybe these guys would be too.

That thought was part of the reason why he was going to try to get a better handle on these people by trying to communicate with one of their number instead of just fighting them like everyone else seemed to be doing.

Lance stood up from his seat and walked over towards the door of the room; the last time he had seen anyone move outside the hallway, it had been the cops. Whoever came through here next could potentially be friendly: after all, if not then he could always kill them as soon as they tried violence on him. And it would come down to violence if peace didn't work, he knew that. No use risking escaping for them to attack him again later on, or worse yet, have someone more dangerous than themselves show up and start killing innocent victims all around town.

If there were any other innocent victims still alive, that was.