"What the heck could this mean?" Alex asked confused but Emily knew exactly what George meant to say.

"The misery that Nick and Clyde brought back," Emily began, "was the stone." Emily turned to face Clyde, "Remember you told us that you and Nick took the stone from his old house but then it disappeared the third night?"

Clyde nodded.

"Then what does this word, 'HAZE' mean?" Alex asked going through the letter once again.

"Do you two know anything about it?" Emily asked Helena and Ryan thinking that maybe since they both were his friends, they could know something but the only response that they gave her was shaking their heads.

"We are really close to finding the final piece, I knew it!" Alex folded back the letter as she searched the box again in the hope to find something else.

"Yeah," Clyde looked at Alex who was searching the box but got nothing, "now the only thing that is in our way is the mystery of 'HAZE'."

"Did you ever hear George saying this word before?" Emily looked at Helena and Ryan. But again, they both looked at each other and then shook their heads. "C'mon guys, think harder. George wouldn't just write a word so random at the bottom of his letter. It has to mean something."

The room was filled with five brains working together to solve the meaning behind 'HAZE'.

"It doesn't even relate to or makes any link to anything in his letter. " Alex replied sitting on the bed. "It was super random for him to write it."

"Guys!"Emily exclaimed which made everyone look at her. "Think about it, anyone who wrote a note or a letter to include such a random word or even a phrase which has no meaning to it among all the other words makes no sense at first when you read it. Maybe it was meant to be that way."

"What are you suggesting?" Helena asked looking lost.

"Maybe we don't have to relate it with the letter," Emily continued, "Maybe it doesn't even relate with anything. Maybe we are looking at it the wrong way."

"Ok, you are confusing me now," Alex opened the letter again and began to scan it.

"What I'm saying is that," Emily began to explain, "maybe we think that George put the word in his letter for no reason or super random, as it doesn't even mean anything when you look at his letter, but maybe when you look at the word separately, it could mean something. I mean why would George end his letter with such a random word out of nowhere? Something tells me that George had put the word there for some reason."

"What if," Clyde said looking as if an idea - a jackpot - hit him. " 'HAZE' is not a word? What if 'HAZE' is a code?"

"A code to what?" Ryan was intrigued.

"If 'HAZE' is a code to something or someone," Emily replied, "a person that writes or talks in code could only do that if they had done it before too." Emily looked at Ryan and Helena and asked, "Think guys, do George used to talk in codes or love to use code words?"

"Not specifically that I could remember," Ryan replied thinking hard. "He never talked with me in code words and we never had our secret language."

"What about you, Helena?" Emily's eyes looked into Helena's. She could clearly see her mind playing all footage she had of George - a trip down the memory lane.

Emily was just about to turn away feeling lost again when Helena's voice gave her a ray of hope. " It's true what Ryan said though. George never talked or wrote many codes before. But yes, I remember something - he used to love a good mystery and maths."

Hearing that George loved maths, gave Emily giggles. Confused as to what just happened to her for her to shift from a serious to a funny zone, Alex asked her if she was alright.

"I just remembered how once Hannah and I were in the cafeteria and she was frustrated with maths and tell me why in the world do we study it - it's not that we calculate sin, cos, tan of an angle before shooting the ball through the hoop or using integration - differentiation in real life. George and Hannah are poles apart in this topic. If she were to meet George, I bet the first question she would've asked him right off the bat would be 'how and most importantly why in the world you love maths?' "

Her words caused the room to fill with laughter.

"Hannah and I are on the same page on this one," Alex blurted out, still laughing in between, "Long live calculators then who reduced our work with all the complex calculations."

"That's it!" It was like a huge rock just got lifted from Emily's chest and the clouds of anxiety that was circling around her were blown away.

Ryan, Helena, Clyde, and Alex looked at Emily confused as they watched her go towards Hannah's desk, pulling drawers after drawers and fossicked in a haste but she finally turned around grabbing something from one of the drawers.

"Emily?" Helena asked still with a confused expression.

"I got it. Look," Emily took the letter from Alex's hands, and with her another hand grabbing the item she found in the drawer, she sat on the bed. She pressed the letter with her hands to smooth out the creases.

Everyone else gathered around her as they listened carefully to what Emily said next, "All we need to do is put two and two together. Watch this,"

On her left side, George's letter laid flat on the bed while on her right, she was pressing some numbers in the calculator.

She pressed some numbers, deleted them, cleared the screen, pressed some numbers again, till she said, "Aha!" which made the rest look more closely at the calculator screen.

"What I see is just the number 57738. Tell me, Alex, what do you see?" Emily asked with the calculator screen still facing her.

"An inverted 57738?" Alex responded still at lost. "Wait a minute," Something was coming in her head like Emily and Alex were kinda thinking on the same frequency. "It's an old calculator trick!"

"Exactly!" Emily and Alex smiled at their victory. "Hannah and I used to do this all the time when we got bored during a math lecture."

"If we go like this," Clyde began with the same feeling of thrill, "E could be made from a 3,"

"Z could be made from a 2," Helena responded.

"A could be made from a 6 in some way," Alex said giving it a deep thought.

"And finally," Helena joined, "H could be made from a 4."

"There we have it!" Emily said merrily, "That's the code behind 'haze' 4623. Now, what's 4623?"

Alex facepalmed herself. They solved a code only to be faced with another code.

"Have you ever heard of the number 4623 from George's mouth?" Emily asked Helena and Ryan.

Helena and Ryan shook their head.

"I'll just come," Excusing herself, Alex went outside and walked down the stairs.

"Great!" Emily replied in a sarcastic tone, "One step forward only to walk one step back. No worries, if together we solved the mystery of 'haze', I'm sure, we'll solve the mystery of the number 4623 too. But we have to act fast. The number could mean anything or can be of anything. Locker number, book number, car number, engine number, serial number, " Emily began saying the things which came to her mind.

"Emily," Helena said, "I think that we will find the mystery behind 4623 in or around Nick's old house. I mean George lived there and if this box was found in that house, maybe we could decode this number by searching that area."

It was nearly five minutes in their discussions when Clyde spoke," Where's Alex?"

They all looked around the room. "I'll just check up on her," saying this Emily got up and went to look for Alex while Ryan, Helena, and Clyde discussed the possibilities that that number could bring.

"Alex?" Emily yelled cupping her hands but no reply came back.

It's not even that much of a big house with many rooms and hallways to get lost in. Where could Alex be?

Suddenly, Emily's attention was caught by some sort of muffled sounds that was coming behind the closed door of Mr. and Mrs. Jackson's room. She cautiously approached and placed her ear on the door. The muffled sound intensified but when she tried to listen more carefully, she heard some more unfamiliar voices. Alarmed, she looked through the keyhole and saw a boy and two girls whom she had never seen before in the room.

At first, she thought about going upstairs to inform the three, but then she thought what if the muffled sound belonged to Alex? Or worst what if they held Alex captive inside and want her dead? There was no time to go upstairs and return. There was no guarantee of what these people might do to her in the time being.

She took a deep breath and looked around the house. A metal vase spotted her eyes. She grabbed it and loudly threw it against the door and hid behind a wall.

Hearing the loud noise made the door open and the boy and two girls came outside the room to look around. Taking one look at three of them confirmed that they were Diana's pawn. If they are here, that means that Diana knows that Emily is alive and she must have sent them to kill her. She cannot let Alex sacrifice her life because of her.

Seeing it as a great opportunity, Emily ran as fast as she could inside the room - being careful not to get caught by any of the pawns. She whispered Alex's name quietly and followed the sound of the muffled sounds. She has to be quick for the pawns could return any moment now.

Soon, Emily spotted Alex tied to the bedpost with her mouth shut with duct tape. Seeing Emily caused Alex's eyes to lit up but Emily gestured her to be quiet.

Hearing the sound, Helena, Clyde, and Ryan came down and saw Diana's pawn looking for something all over the house.

Emily removed the tape from Alex's mouth and looked over through the door to see if any of the pawns were coming.

Just when her hands were untied, Alex hugged Emily and began sobbing. "I just went to drink water from the kitchen when these guys attacked me out of nowhere. I was really scared. Thank you,"

"Don't worry, remember you told me that I remind you of your sister? Well, how can I leave my little sister in trouble?" Emily winked at her, "Now, let's go before any of the pawns come back," Emily held Alex's hand but just as they were about to make a run for it, they found themselves in front of a familiar face.

"And where do you think you are going?"

"John," Emily whispered. "Leave us alone,"

John scoffed, "You think I'll be that generous?"

John's footsteps began approaching Emily and Alex.

"I came here to finish what Scarlett couldn't."

Slowly and slowly he was closing in on them.

"Why are you so surprised looking at me? Let me guess, you thought that I thought that Scarlett killed you. You were hiding from me, didn't you? You are so stupid, Emily," John laughed.

As his footsteps approached closer and closer, the girls slowly moved backward with their hands gripped tightly with fear. But fearing wasn't going to save their life.

"The time you came to the motel, you and the rest thought that I wasn't there, but I was right there in the hideout, keeping an eye on my prey,"

Saying this, John lunged towards Emily.

"Run!" Emily screamed at Alex.

"I'm not leaving you," Alex replied back still holding onto Emily's hand.

"Don't worry about me," Emily said, "find the rest and the box."

John grabbed an empty glass that was kept on the bedside table near the bed and began to throw it at Alex as she ran through the door but before he could injure her from the glass pieces, Emily held his hand.

"You'll regret this, Emily!" Saying this, John smashed the glass on Emily's head near her ears which caused a ringing sound in her ears as she struggled to balance herself.

John pushed her on the bed and yanked the lamp so hard that the plug along with the socket came out.

"C'mon, John, you are not like this, wake up from this trance! You have to remember who you are!"

"Bubye, Emily," It was like John didn't care about what Emily had to say, and with an evil look on his face, he lowered his hands gripped tight on the lamp, and charged it towards Emily.

In the nick of time, Emily rolled around dodging the attack and kicked John in his guts which made him tumble back.

With an effort, Emily was back on her feet, with her blood staining the white sheets and the floor but all that mattered at that time was to get away from John and the other pawns.

It didn't take John long to balance himself. He threw the lamp at Emily but she ducked down causing the lamp to shatter on the wall behind her.

John screamed in anger and picked Emily upon his shoulder and then threw her hard against the curtains causing the rod to fall on Emily.

Even though she was in so much pain, she had promised Alex to get her out of the trouble. It was all because of her that Alex was in a situation like this and be it by blood or not, she was like her little sister and she couldn't leave her like that.

With her legs wobbly and vision dizzy, she waited for the right time, and just as when John's hand was just inches away from her neck, she hit John with the curtain rod causing John to stumble and fall back on the ground.

She got up and remembered suddenly that once Hannah told her that her parents kept a baseball bat in their cupboard for safety since the day a robber broke into their house.

Wasting no time, she dashed towards the cupboard, opened it, and found the bat just where Hannah told her it would be.

She picked up the bat and was just about to hit John with it, something hit her on her head from behind. The room was spinning as her body tried to maintain a balance. She turned around and saw John with a painting in his hand. Emily fell to the ground, the baseball bat escaped her grip as it hit the floor and before blacking out she heard Alex screaming her name.

Alex charged forward and grabbed the bat dodging John's every attack. No matter what, she had to save Emily. With a tight grip, she showed no mercy hitting his head hard with the bat multiple times before John blacked out on the floor.

"Alex!" Helena yelled from behind forgetting that she can't hear her, "Don't kill him."

Clyde and Ryan followed her to the room.

"Emily," Clyde began innocently, "you should've seen the way we tricked - NOOO...!" Clyde's and Ryan's eyes quickly fell upon Emily lying unconscious with blood on her head, inside an almost destroyed room.

Alex threw the bat on the floor as she kneeled down beside Emily, "Wake up, Emily, please, wake up," She was shaking her body, rocking it back and forth, but she wasn't moving.

"We need to leave this house. RIGHT. NOW." Helena said in a military tone.

"How to tell her that?" Ryan asked hinting towards Alex.

"Well," Clyde said looking at Alex, "she is touching Emily. Let's form a circle around them. Will that work?"

Helena nodded.

Ryan, Helena, and Clyde formed a circle around Emily and Alex - who was still trying to wake Emily up - and disappeared from the scene.