After making up her mind, Stacy got up and left the apartment. The hike down the stairs was slow and uneventful. The surprise came when she reached the ground floor.

Sean was lying in his puke in front of her. She hadn't locked the entrance in case he came back, the locks weren't deterring anything either way. She did the sensible thing and decided to carry him to the first floor, she didn't feel it right for him to just lie there.

When he came to, the weight came crashing down on him. All the built-up tension from being near the wraith and the following run had thoroughly filled him with both physical and mental pain. He could barely move his body yet he still felt jittery because the adrenaline rush hadn't worn out.

Stacy was sitting on a chair nearby, his activity was soon noticed by her. Both of them had a lot to say yet they tacitly decided not to discuss it all at once. When Sean became a little less disoriented he spoke up.

" I heard an announcement when I was outside, there is a way to contact the authorities using the emergency line."

Stacy picked up her phone and dialed the number. The call rang for a while and then connected with a click. A voice came back from the other side.

" Hello?"

"Hello, we heard the announcement...."

" Yeah, for a moment I could believe that it worked. My name is Ralph and I'm speaking from a military base which I believe that you guys will find safer than your current hideout. Of course, I understand that moving might be risky for you, but we will take care of that. But here's the thing, there's not a large force present currently, and from our initial observation the place looks foggy, I wonder if you guys have run across any monsters yet."

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Stacy took the information in strides. They had doubts that it might not be a localized event but all their fears came true when Ralph confirmed them.

" I will need you guys to communicate with me to get you out of there."

Sean had heard the conversation and asked Stacy to pass the phone to him.

"Hello, I am Sean. I am happy to provide you with the information. It's just that we have not had anyone go out of the fog and return, so we don't know anything about how things are outside."

"OK, so I'll start from the beginning. A few weeks ago, a lot of people disappeared and no one knows why. Then weird shadow creatures started spawning everywhere which were easy to deal with. But they had regional variations, sometimes they weren't shadows at all. I got carried away and forgot to explain this to you. To make an effective rescue plan we need all the information you have."

Sean decided to relay all the information he had previously along with the new insights he had recently.

After listening to him, Ralph pinned their location on the computer and told him to wait for a few hours.

Ralph got off the computer and picked up the intercom. They had divided shifts among them to look over the helpline. When Ben and Jeremy arrived he explained the situation as he heard from Sean.

" We need more information than that. It appears that they have to rely on themselves to gather more information. It's not ghosts that we are dealing with so we must find out how they can be effectively killed. We will also need to enhance them if we want to make sure that all of them can outrun the damn things."

" There's not much speculations that we can make with the amount of information that we have."

Ben sighed as he thought about it.

"Let's just get stronger ourselves first and then gather monster cores for the survivors. Jeremy, you contact them and tell them about monster cores and our temporary plan, ask them if they have sufficient supplies, and if not inform them that we can help them using the speakers spread over the town but they have to take the risk."

" Sir, what if we used a remote-controlled tank to test the creatures? Even if we face interference it has a long enough range to safely collect data. If it works out, we could simply get them out with the tanks."

Ben heartily laughed and patted Jeremy on the back.

" Then that is what we will do, seems that the change in environment has really made me forget the basics."