Volume 2 – Chapter 6: The Watcher's Eye

[April 26 – 7:35 AM]

Other than our hurried footsteps, auditory tranquillity ruled the lanes the rest of the time. Every breath sounded like the way my lungs were sucking up the space — how the air was suffocating the space around us, diffusing something I had yet to put words to. I looked at Rika, at the tension in her face, the fearful glint of her eyes, as she scanned from side to side, worrying that any instant something bad would jump out at us from the dark.

Perhaps that is why we have no paused, not a minute, not a second. That figure — a queasy engraved pictogram in my mind — was all in the subsequent moments, leering coolly back at me. It wasn’t just happenstance, I knew that much. All of it had been thought through, thought out. It wanted something. But what? And why now?

Rika grabbed my arm tightly and snapped me back into reality. "Kaito, what was that thing?" She spoke low, her voice almost lost in the distant hum of the city, but I heard the tremor in it, heard the same doubt that filled me.

“I don’t know,” I said, my voice a whisper. “But right now we can’t even think about that. We can’t focus on escape.”

We rounded another bend, the contorted streets unfurling before us, an infinite helix of decaying edifices and winding lanes. The world was no longer home, it was a prison, and with every step we descended farther into its festering heart. Not hardly, you wrote, there was no escape. Not from people, not from the Wyrd, the things that hunted us, not from the city.

And yet I felt this strange magnetic draw to continue on. Something more than fear, something about survival, the urge to know what was happening — what we had entered into.

“Do you think we’re being pursued? Rika was anything but a whisper. Not for the first time, and with each iteration it became a more desperate tone, more an affirmation of something we each dreaded.

I froze, looking up and down the streets in front of me, my heart pounding inside my chest. The air was too thick, too quiet. “I don’t know,” I said, in a low voice. "But we can’t stop. Not until we’re sure."

As we passed along, I couldn’t shake the feeling we were walking right into a trap. With its sagging infrastructure, its crushed dreams, the city felt as though it were holding its breath, waiting for us to screw up. And the longer we marched, the more I felt that the eyes must be upon us — though I couldn’t see them.

I looked at Rika, her face a dust grey in the failing light. She was doing her best to look calm, but I knew she was scared. She was clinging to me as if I were the only thing standing between her and the void.”

“We’ll get through this,” I told them, even though I didn’t believe it myself. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

She didn’t say anything, but I could feel her grip on my hand tighten, as if my words were a lifeline she was hanging on to. We walked, the sound of littering debris crunching beneath our feet the only sound we heard in this city once filled with life.

Or at least that’s what I kept telling myself. The truth was, I was scared. Afraid of what was pursuing us, afraid of the truth we were evading. But mostly I was scared of the unknown — of whatever was going to be waiting for us at the end of this grotesque game we got sucked into.

A sound before me, simultaneously. Not in soft scrape-scrape, metal on cement. My heart jumped into my throat and I instinctively pulled Rika tighter to me. “Stick close” I hissed, reaching my hand for a knife hidden in my jacket.

I froze and tried to pinpoint its origin because it sounded louder. A kind of breathy shudder had stilled my breath, because at the end of the street was the dark silhouette of a figure. It was tall, too, looming, and the features were lost in the murk, but something about it was unmistakably familiar — the same feeling of being watched, of being hunted.

Rika stiffened next to me, holding her breath. "Who is that?" her voice shaking, her stutter breeding apprehension.

I didn’t know how to respond. My instincts shrieked: Run. I watched helplessly, but something made me watch. The figure moved closer and I stiffened, preparing to pivot, to respond. This time, however, it had changed. The figure did not return towards us. It just stood there, waiting.

At that time, it felt like time stood still. The world held its breath.

And then, the figure spoke. It had a low smooth nearly hypnotic voice. “Been having a long running time, aren’t we?”

By the color of my face, I could tell the blood had drained out. How could it know that? How could it possibly know?

I drew my breath in hard, wanting my voice to stay steady. "Who are you?" I marveled, all teeth and steel, though a twinge of doubt somewhere deep in my chest undermined my daring.

The individual did not reply right away. Instead, it advanced cautiously, as if testing our reactions. Rika Nervous Paris, I could feel her hand tremble in my clutch, it gripped tighter around me, and I wouldn’t serve her a single scare beneath my skin. Not yet.

“I’ve been watching you” were the words of the creature, dripping with a disturbing placidity. "You and your friend. I think we need to talk."

My mind raced. I couldn’t show it my fear.” "What do you want?" I spoke, quietly but defiantly.

The figure’s eyes glimmered in the dark. “Nothing for now,” it went on, all but savoring the moment. "But soon, you’ll understand. There’s no escaping this. Not anymore."

A register is frozen down my spine. "What do you mean?" I demanded, my heart racing in my chest.

And the figure laughed, a sound that reverberated through the empty streets. “You’re already in the net. The only question now is when.”

And then all the pieces just fell into place. This wasn’t random. This wasn’t a coincidence. We were named, and we could not unname ourselves.

The figure approached, heavy and several times the size of the average human. “We’ve been waiting for you,” it said — a death sentence.

And with that, the lights went down.