“You're tense” I bit my lip, trying to calm my racing heart. He might be here, lurking through the camera connected to the doorbell, inside the microphone for my digital assistant, in the codes of my watch. He might be next to me. He might be watching me.
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And he knew that I sensed him. Never tried to hide it. He knew about Damari and Arnaxis, he knew about my identity. He knew about my whole life. Knew things far beyond digital information. Sometimes I feared, he might even know my thoughts. And I didn't even know his name. Never knew for sure if I was being watched.
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So, at least I had to try keeping Arnaxis and Damari, both behind me and growing more and more confused, out of this. This was my fight. “Wait in the hallway, alright?” Arnaxis frowned “Why?” I tugged my shirt into my jeans, my hands into my pockets “I won't be away for long” he nodded and I could leave, jump into my once beloved safe space. This wasn't safe anymore. This wasn't mine anymore.
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And the sudden realization I might not be able to go home again, hit me like a truck. This was my sanctuary. Had always been. I remembered renting it after my scholarship ended, after tiny dorm room with even more panic to be detected. I had loved this place. It had been mine.
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I sat down on the couch, my vision fogged up while my breath was getting faster, forced me to sit down on the couch that was mine once. Still was, maybe. I had been wearing no more connectable accessories since the incident.
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And now there was no more sign of intruders. No warnings on my phone or laptop, no glitches on the display on my fridge, not a loud siren screaming danger ahead. No. It was silent. He was there and he was gone again.
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How wrong the normality felt.
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It was childish stupidity to take my phone and open the documents before I ran the pen over the unfolded display without daring to breathe again. A few simple words, written in black on the digital board.
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'Are you here?'
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I waited. Didn't move or blink. For what must have been minutes and to the point where I gasped for air. But there was not a single thing that dared to change. Everything remained the way it was. No one answered.
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Maybe he was gone for good.
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Maybe he was never here, everything another illusion. There would be other explanations for a wound like the one on my arm. While stuffing my clothes into a bag and after writing a mail to Atticas Haslin, my boss that was most likely about to call and force me to socialize anyway, I found ideas, made hypotheses.
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Maybe, just maybe I was only loosing my mind, had gotten worried enough to slowly fall apart, break. Maybe there was something wrong with my meds. It happened before. Sudden fainting, bleeding, headaches nausea. They were untested drugs, made in moldy basements and rented warehouses. Maybe they had a bit too much kick or reacted with each other in unfortunate ways.
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I believed the theories my mind worked up, clinging to them like a drowning man about to be ripped into a torrent of uncertainties that would drown me and take my life if I lost the unfair fight. But my fingers lost grip when I opened the small drawer I used to keep my documents and meds, the moment I found a generous amount of small bottles in there, neatly ordered and sorted.
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They were marked with a scribbly handwriting, as if the person wrote their descriptions once too often. Scent blockers, heat suspension, hormonal stabilizer, and muscle stimulators were written in quotations, small chemical formulas written underneath them, dosages included.
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I never had such containers. And now I had a note with them, giving me information on the new ones for always desired effects and some never cared about, those meant for occasional issues, soreness, stress and nausea.
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There were more. Support for my immune system, new sleeping pills, supplements for slick production and digestion. Things that seemed so incredible harmless considering their source. As if the stranger wanted me to stay hidden as well as healthy and out of pain.
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I let the note drop and took pills from the bags given through my mother, as few as possible of the new ones. I had to trust them. If I wanted to survive, I had to. But I wouldn't take anything I hadn't taken before. No supplements. No stress relief.
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“You were here” I bit my lip, hiding the packages. The strange had been in this room and hid the meds before Arnaxis came, after he took me to bed. He had been walking through this door and stood next to my bed while I was unconscious and unable to react, unable to fight back. I knee it happened. I knew it did. I knew there was no other explanation. But it felt like a scene. Like a movie or a book. It felt wrong.
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It didn't feel real.
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It was something I couldn't comprehend. Not as a person. Not as an Aslaw. It was something I heard of during my university years. Yes, one time this was something we discussed. But, even then, it was nothing my mind could quite find a hold on, like throwing an anchor against a flat surface, I was trying to find a bump on the bottom of this act, a single information reaching out to my mind, allowing me to hold onto it and pull it along my racing thoughts. But I couldn't find it.
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This was something surreal. Something only taught to me because it was mandatory, me the boy everybody believed to be a weakly gamma, something I was never supposed to be bothered with again, not to mention faced.
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But I remembered sitting in the auditorium, with the professor discussing the case of a high end model, a beautiful woman, an alpha, stalked by a group of men for months, drugged and taken from her home with wife and children, days later, found in an alley, a few months later, brought home to break down and shatter.
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Cowards, had my professor called him once he finished his lecture, was only left with the overambitious students and answered questions. He told us that this made these men nothing but that. Stalking and threatening, drugging and taking advantage of the lifeless body.
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The stranger was a coward. Hiding in my systems, that was pure cowardness. Leaving me unaware what he planned, if he would come back, leaving me with questions, with a why, a who and a what.
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I took another breath, ruffing my hair. I was stronger than this. Stronger than a coward. “Show yourself” I hissed and let my system control drive up with the oh so familiar sound, the tablet, my glasses and the watch. I didn't wear them, only directing the cameras to my face, my muscles tensing in frustration. I was no coward, I knew he was there just as much as he knew I was here. And I, I wasn't afraid of showing my face.
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And for minutes, minutes feeling like sixty centuries each, I stood there, ready to fight a Trojan.
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Until I realized that this was useless. Ridiculous and absolutely useless. There was nothing to do apart from stomping back to the bedroom and packing the last socks, leaving everything just like it was. Going to the bath to grab a towel and a razor, slumping to the front door and look back a last time.
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Just to see the little bear on my couch. Sitting there how we left him, unmoved through the chaos. “Apollox” I mumbled, stumbling to my couch, grabbing the small robbed stuffie “Dad”
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With a small smile, I pressed Millows against my nose and let him join the rest of my stuff, well hidden under dress shirts and black, pocket less jeans.
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He was one of the rare things of the past I still wanted to be part of it, the smell of fresh rain and the memory of long nights, quiet giggles, warm smiles of my father and tiny moments of peace and relief.
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I sighed, activating the security system. Two weeks and the bare hope the stranger wouldn't come back, was to put ad acta. My eyes found their way to my collections of gadgets once again.
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“Leave me alone”
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I would never live in fear of a coward.
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Walking back to the hallway, a bag over my shoulder. And even before I saw them, I heard the noise of an ending kiss, a small chuckle. “You're a douche bag” Damari mumbled a few meters before he heard me.
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And when he did, he came closer, grinning in a way that made his face light up and eyes sparkle, his movement seem oh so carefree and graceful, the steps too big and the swaying of his hips too feminine. I smiled back at him, with Arnaxis lazily smirking at me just a moment later.
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“Can we leave?” he asked, tugging back a beautiful curl of brown behind his ear.
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I gave him my bag, let the tension leave my body, a small shudder hushing over my back in the progress.
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“Please” I answered.
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