“Fuck.” I mumbled under my breath, quiet enough to not make a scene. “Fucking shit fuck… What the fuck… I’m… God I’m so fucked…” Someone—or hell, a whole group of someones knew about me, and I didn’t have a coherent way to react in that moment other than existential panic. Was it government? Some… X-Files bullshit that knew about me? I knew I might’ve fucked up at the bank, but the park? Who the fuck would even know about this, and how?
	I couldn’t stabilize my breathing worth a damn, and while I hadn’t ever experienced a panic attack this had to be the closest I’ve ever felt to it. Whatever emotions were going on in all the coworkers around me were like sprinkles of rain, compared to the hailstorm of dread simmering in my mind. I just put my hands over my face, rubbing my eyes, catching the sweat starting to bead beneath my hairline. I needed to think, and I needed to calm myself down. No matter what happened, or was going to happen, I couldn’t just cower by my desk and wish it all away. I counted down from ten in my mind, breathing slow with each number. When I reached one, I opened my eyes and looked down at the envelope.
	Alright… First things first. I go down to grab my drink, I’m gone for hardly 20 minutes at the most, and when I come back the envelope is here. Whoever set it on my desk, knows where I work and probably has to know where I live. That much was obvious. But depending on when they left it, they might still be in the building. Maybe I just missed them by a minute or two. But even if I did, it took a couple moments to process all of this, so the clock was ticking, every second. I needed to be fast.
	I knew everyone who would normally be on this floor in our office, whether they were remote or not, others that were here would stick out. I started reading, one by one, not digging into anything just verifying who they were, like scanning mental ID badges. A bit Orwellian, but I wasn’t digging around just for the fun of it. It took a few seconds, but I recognized, or had at least seen, everyone who was here. “Shit.” I whispered to myself.
	Alright, so they’re not here, at least not on this floor. And I sincerely doubt anyone at this office had the resources or the cojones to pull something like this off. Besides, nobody was feeling the slightest amount of panic here except for me. But they had to have walked in and out of here, so somebody would have the memory of an unknown person walking in to the office. The most obvious choice was Susan at the front desk.
	I was already starting to break my rules now… I knew her, I’d speak to her every now and then, and even though I probably haven’t had longer than a three minute conversation, this was breaching into my own code of ethics. I looked at the paper again, them knowing who I was, and knowing what I could do. I don’t know they know exactly, or think they know, and I don’t have the faintest clue as to their motivations. I wasn’t going to control anyone, not for this, but maybe for the moment I could read just what I had to and nothing else. I didn’t need to know anything deep about Susan other than what faces she saw coming in and out of the office in the last half hour. And that’s all I would look at.
	I focus on her recent memories, like digging into a computer and searching for the most recent files. One’s mind is actually a lot like an OS, just a disorganized one that leaves most of the files on the desktop like a slob. Thankfully I know where the computer log is, and I don’t have to scrape through the sludge on the front-end. I tap into what she saw and felt at her desk, about 30 minutes ago. She was talking to some older coworker, Cole. He’d basically just come to her desk to talk and flirt as he often would. While I felt it her emotions of it watching that stream of memory like a fully immersive movie, I didn’t care about any of that. All I was watching for was anyone out of the ordinary, off the corner of her eye.
	Most of the people were walking out, I even saw the back of myself headed to the downstairs elevator. I’d keep watching and watching, paying attention to faces she probably wasn’t even looking for. But I wasn’t seeing anyone entering. Until… a man in a FedEx suit holding a parcel of various envelopes and letters, approached her desk. He even interrupted the little flirt session, that was more one sided from Cole’s point of view given how she just took it all like normal talking. “Here, I have a package for someone here.” He hands her the envelope, looking a bit perplexed herself, but reading my name and the building address and floor on the back of it, she knew where to put it. “Oh, alright, thank you.” She says as the worker walks away, her getting up to head to my cubicle and drop off the package. It was just some delivery guy, of course.

-14-

	I break away from the stream of consciousness, her unaware of any probing, but me having a lot more to consider about my overall situation. I didn’t even know if the guy was still in the building, or if he would even know anything. I pick up the envelope again, look at the back which I’d evidently not cared to do before, seeing my name and work address listed. No return address, figures, but I’d double check anyway. There was nothing on the back of the pictures, except the listed dates on the other two from before the bank, I’m guessing just for clarity.
	Well now would be the hard part, and I wasn’t sure if it’d work given that the longer I waited, the harder this would be. There were several thousand people in this building alone, a few dozen entering and exiting every couple of minutes. Scanning each and every individual to check who they were would take a hot minute, and if the person was about to leave or had already left, the odds of tracking them down would decrease exponentially, as thousands become tens of thousands outside of the building. My hope was he still had packages left in this building to deliver.
	Closing my eyes again, I started my way down, combing through each mind looking for instead of a name, something much different but familiar. Everyone had a residual self image of themselves, a literal photograph in their head of what they saw in the mirror and who they identified with. Excluding some dysphoria, basically all I had to do was compare the face she saw, running it along the faces that everyone else felt in themselves. If he was still here, I’d have a match. Doing it programmatically made the process feel closer to running through a system, one only I had access to like this.
	He was about 20-something, male, african-american, short hair. I could start by eliminating characteristics quickly, shelving all the women to the side to cut my search in half. Then by race, then age, get a smaller and smaller sample set. I could connect to everyone in the building at once, but I still had to look individually. Grouping everyone like nodes in a mental mesh made it easier to parse through, like slapping faces onto cards and sorting them into piles. Soon I was left with only around 40 people, and then I just looked with my mind’s eye one at a time.
	It took a few moments, but then I saw it, the same person who handed the package off. When I came to it, I opened my eyes, him still being in the building only a few floors up. I didn’t have to go anywhere yet since I was already looking at him. His name was Markus, 24, single, worked at FedEx for a couple years. He really was just a worker and didn’t know anything. My package was nothing special out of the hundreds to thousands he’d deliver for his route today. Him being someone I didn’t know, and someone who might have at least a bit of information I needed, I didn’t have as many moral issues going deeper, to see if he had any memory at all of the package.
	He didn’t. He hadn’t any specific information on the package other than it just being on his list, which tracked with him being just another employee. I thought maybe he’d know someone I could track down further, someone back at the distribution center he’d know would run the computers, track the packaging number. I went back into his memories while he blissfully continued on his rounds of delivering. Rewinding to earlier in the day, I searched for someone he’d interacted with—someone who might’ve had a clue as to where the package came from, even if it was something tiny and insignificant to them.
	Knowing locations was another aspect of this sort of thing. Technically I could read anyone in the world, if I have some general idea of where that specific person is. I don’t even have to know exactly where, if the other person who I’m reading knows exactly where. He knows where he drives from, so now I know where the distribution center is. I know who his supervisors are, and if they’re in that building, it takes mere seconds to trace them to that location and find them. If I have their mind to lock onto, it’s no different if they’re 10 feet, 10 miles, or 10 states away. Excluding the monotonous details of rummaging around the minds of disinterested and busy postal workers, at some point I was able to trace onto a person who may have known something, an Operations Admin who was on site. I had to be careful and slow, because knowing from them how it worked, almost all these packages were automated. Just because they had access didn’t mean they’d actually hone in on any specific package that day, unless there was some kind of issue.

-15-

	I looked for a moment, any point where they’d skim over a webpage of transactions, tracking numbers, anything I could spot my name out from. There were a few moments, the little times they seemed to actually be doing their job, where they’d have such a list open. The problem was, they weren’t scrolling, they were just searching for automatically logged tracking numbers. That wouldn’t help me unless mine popped up, which after a few minutes of carefully analyzing, I didn’t see my work address at all.
	That was a dead end. If I really wanted to, It wouldn’t be hard to just make her look it up, check the number real quick. But that was crossing into dangerous territory… she had nothing to do with any of this, and even if it was an insignificant moment, this wasn’t an emergency to anyone other than me. It’d be more than selfish to take away that autonomy, even for a few seconds. And that’s beyond the fact that I’d be digging myself a deeper hole. If I was really being watched, if someone really knew about me, everything that I did from here on out could be scrutinized. What if I raised suspicion in simply making some employee look something up for me?
	I never saw those cameras before, even if at the bank I expected them, they weren’t quite at the top of my mind. But the park, the subway, I wouldn’t have the slightest clue someone was looking—or maybe looking back at my history, somehow knowing what I did. I pulled away from her mind, and the ongoing breadcrumb trail of heads that took me to nowhere. I thought, even if I made her do something, find out the date the package was received and from where, I’d probably have to control more than one mind in order to figure out the truth.
	The letter said they’d contact me soon. I didn’t know what exactly that meant, but I hated not knowing. In a fucked up kind of irony, someone knew more about me right now than I knew about them. And even if they didn’t know much, I was still on the losing end of that comparison.
	I shuffled the pictures back into the letter, throwing the outer portion of the manila envelope away and just keeping the inner sleeve. Setting the letter in my bag, I checked the time to see that barely 20 minutes had passed. Continuing on work as if nothing had happened wasn’t going to sit with me, the level of priority being so beneath consideration it seemed like a joke. But nobody here was going to understand any of that, so I needed to come up with some excuse. I hopped onto my laptop real quick, sending out an email that I’d be taking the rest of the day off, that I’d be at a doctor’s appointment. It was a little early, and they might expect to finish up remote but it was close enough to just stick with it.
	Once sent, I turn my laptop off, shuffle it into my beg, collect my things and start speed walking out of the office. Susan waved me out as I passed by, giving a half-assed wave on my way out, too focused on getting home. Down the elevators I went, escaping from here like a plague had just been unleashed and I was the only one who knew about it. Then again, I was probably the only afflicted. Once I was out into the lobby my head was on high alert, feeling every minor emotion like bugs crawling on my skull. I don’t know if I was focusing me, it didn’t feel like I was, but like my subconscious in defense mode feeling for the slightest hint of danger. It made me want to itch all over, but it wasn’t coming from anywhere physical.
	Back onto the streets crossing the street overpass, I must’ve looked like I was tweaking, casting glances at every bystander, checking for any kind of tell. I thought maybe if someone knew who I was, had some idea of what I could do, maybe just me looking at them could make them panic a bit, and I could feel it as soon as it seeped out of them. It wasn’t working, or at least it wasn’t eliciting any kind of feeling that I’d hoped. There was certainly brief emotional flinches between individuals, but more just the awkwardness one feels when a stranger looks directly at them. It was a general uncomfortability, not anything suspicious.

-16-

	The hot summer air beat down on my black cloth jacket, not quite a fashion choice as much as it was just a habit I hadn’t broke out of. In the morning, or even by the time I clocked out it could usually cool off to manage, but the sweat was pooling with the sunlight hitting directly now, edging too close to noon. Part of it was probably the stress, the brisk stroll to get out of here as quick as I could without running. I don’t even know what the hell I’d be running from, someone could be watching me from a mile away and I wouldn’t know. That spidey-sense of mine only worked about 50 meters or so. If someone kept their distance I wouldn’t instinctively know.
	I made it back to the carcass of the slain beast, its ribcage shining the sunrays down onto the scavengers below, its glowing effect almost mythical. Everyone was darting their way to and from their various routes, the trains stopping for no one. A thought occurred to me that anyone watching me from the outside would lose track of me here, unless they were in here with me. If I felt a panic, a sense of fear, suspicion that I might knew, this would be close enough proximity to tell. I slowed my walking pace down, letting some people pass by me while I took my time feeling everything around me. It was still a buzzing of feelings, rushed, hungry, frustrated—all the typical daily commuter emotions. Noisy and bothersome but nothing out of the ordinary. Until there was a slight tick of something, perhaps a slight panic of something?
	I started heading over towards it, seeing if it would grow the closer I came to. It did, me not yet aware if it was proximity or the actual panicking sensation of a target getting closer to you. The latter they wouldn’t be able to hide. The panic turned more into a fear, an anxiety of someone anticipating the worst. I had them, I was going to look right into the eyes of whoever was sent to watch me, confronting them before they had any additional time to plan or whatever they had in mind. I step through and around the crowds drawing in near before seeing a man looking away from my direction, towards a woman sitting on the bench.
	He wasn’t interested in me, the whole feeling having nothing to do with me at all. Her purse was right there at the edge of the seat, more than arm’s length away from her while she talked on the phone. He was deciding as to whether or not he’d get stopped if he nabbed it and ran. It was a genuine panicking sensation, but nothing but a basic purse snatcher deciding if it would be worth it. It was almost underwhelming, and I decided whether or not I should just walk away. He was gonna go for it, but maybe this wasn’t the time or place to intervene. Really she just needed to look and he wouldn’t have the chance to do anything, so I thought of an easy solution.
	Shifting the bag and tugging on the weight of it, the bag shuffled ever so slightly closer to the edge without a single touch. It tilted over, falling onto the floor, nothing of note falling out of it, but the sound and peripheral view of it collapsing to the marble floors made her look towards it. The man who was approaching slowed down, an almost relief washing over him as his decision was made for him to abandon his mission. She reached down and picked up the bag, now moving it closer to herself as she wouldn’t let it fall again. The other guy continued on walking past her, not making any further attempt. Neither had been aware of any kind of intervention.
	The relief was also my own as I turned my cheek and sauntered off to the station platform. Nobody was here with me, none that were watching my every move, at least not in person right now. I was certain if there were I’d feel them. I didn’t know how I felt about that, if I knew even half of what I knew about myself I probably wouldn’t leave someone like me without eyes on them at all times. So either they weren’t watching, which would be dumb of them, or they were watching in other ways I wasn’t keen on. More than likely they’d probably be keeping their distance, but that wasn’t an easy pill for me to swallow, and it didn’t allow for any kind of rest.

-17-

	The train would take a few extra minutes before it arrived, people swapping like an orchestrated ballet of sorts, swiping past shoulders and funneling to and from. When I slid my way in, I sat down keeping an eye out for anything. I didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary aside from my own conflicted thoughts. I wondered all the cameras tapped in with live feeds to some room or office. Was I being tracked? Maybe they only needed to watch where I ended up, figuring I’d show up home eventually. Then again, what if I ran? What If I decided to disappear and get away from all of it? The obvious became apparent, that aside from the brief intermission periods under the subway, they didn’t need to do anything with my phone in my pocket. If they had the access they’ve already teased, I carry a tracker with me every day.
	I take my phone out of my pocket, no signal at the moment, a possibly ambivalent moment wherein someone expecting me to pop out at a particular stop might lose sight of me. I didn’t need my phone for anything right now anyway, so I just held the power and turned it off. I didn’t think that would help much, I did still have to get home. And that’s when it dawned on me. What the fuck was going to be waiting for me at my apartment?
	The rest of the ride couldn’t have been any slower. I was alone from prying eyes, or at least eyes that cared to stare over at me. People were still minding their own business as I slipped my hoodie up over my head, covering my face from any cameras above as soon as I reached the station. The dingy mold stained concrete from back to front welcomed me on my trek to my place of residence. I was looking down, not using my eyes as much as I was just feeling my way around, keeping from bumping into others and sensing every fluid silhouette that carried forth their own journey.
	I knew there were cameras above, being this was where I’d already been photographed, but hopefully I was at least a bit obscured now. Shuffling with the crowd I’d end up on my street, more on my own the closer I came to arriving. It was only a few minute walk, and I’d already been pacing quicker than I normally would. I considered if I should try taking another route, coming in from some back entrance, but I didn’t see what purpose that would serve. The hallway outside my door had cameras, if those were tapped into, they’d know as soon as I approached, if they were really watching. I figured it didn’t matter. Whatever was inside, outside, I was going to handle it.
	Still looking down at my feet, I open the front door to the plaza and head inside. Immediately I was scanning like radar, feeling for everyone who was here. I only felt the tenant on the first floor, who I was pretty sure had a different work schedule than I did. They were asleep regardless. I’d pace myself up and around the metallic stairs, the low lights setting down on the thin, cheap carpeting as I reached the second floor. Nobody was in the hall, and nobody was in any of these rooms. Mine was what I was most concerned about.
	Approaching the door, I pull out my keys, and before I stuck them in I hesitate and jostle the handle. It was still locked, thankfully. I continued on, unlocking the door while giving full focus to every inch of that room, feeling for any movement, any whisper out of place. I didn’t memorize every inch of my room but I was still looking for anything and everything I could find. I could hear my heart beat a pulsing thumping into my temple as everything else seemed dead silent, tension you could cut with a razor.
	I paused for a moment, looking around the dark edges of the room, as if expecting an unseen ghost to pop into my view. I hated not knowing something like this, at a time where I needed to know more than anything else. I flicked on my light and the suspense died in an instant. There was nothing but my apartment room and how I’d left it. Walking in and breathing a deep sigh, I walk in setting my bag on the cheap couch I’d thrifted a couple years ago, puke green and filled with tolerable tears and scuff marks that showed its age. It was comfortable enough to sit on, which I didn’t hesitate to. It’d felt like I walked here on both pins and needles, yet carrying the weight of cement blocks with all the built up anxiety. I needed a drink.
	After a few moments to myself, the little brief trip to my open kitchen ensued, parsing through a scavenged fridge that needed restocking. There was still plenty iced-tea inside however, one of the quick and easy things to make I helped myself to. I grabbed and Pouring it into one of those plastic promo cups—the dumb oversized ones from some movie tie-in. It was already sweating with beads of water, and it wasn’t until I’d turned back around after putting the jug away did I notice the small black envelope sitting on the corner of the kitchenette table.

-18-

	For a moment it didn’t register, it seemed so trivial, like something I’d forgotten I set on the table. But it was unopened, untouched, and I knew damn well I haven’t received any black letter in any mailbox. Maybe it was denial of being so thoroughly caught off guard that made me redirect my thoughts to thinking this was probably just something I forgot about. I pick up the envelope and turn it around, seeing no address or postage stamp. There was an indent of what seemed like the same symbol as before, three inward pointed arrows in the circle, inside a gear, but with a lack of highlighted color it was more subtle.
	Where it was located made the feeling hit like a gut punch, realizing that this was personally delivered and placed here. Someone would have picked their way into my apartment to get this here, and left it for me to find. I felt more vulnerable in my own apartment than I’ve ever felt, and I was barely able to fully process it at this moment. I flipped it back around and carefully ripped open the envelope, letting a folded paper fall out onto the table. Opening it up showed in hand-written ink, a neatly printed phone number, with the message underneath “Call when you are ready”.
	I probably stared at that number blankly for at least five minutes, like there was some kind of clue or avenue to explore from it, but really there was nothing. It was just a number, an instruction I could follow or ignore, much to me knowing it wouldn’t be accepted if I did, and I was now at the mercy of an unseen force keeping their distance, but showing me they knew who I was, where I lived, and enough of what I could do to know to stay out of sight. I wondered thought, how long that would continue to go on for.
	Letter in hand, I dropped back onto the couch and stared at the powered-off TV. I drank my tea and tried to make sense of the mess unraveling in my head. Many different thoughts ran through my head, if I’d be on the run for my whole life, if my family was in danger or under threat, many different scenarios of how my life and how it was might be over. I was so mad at myself, feeling like I fucked up by ever intervening. Like I should’ve just pretended to be like everyone else in every way I could, even when people were about to be killed or hurt or robbed.
	But I knew I couldn’t. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I let everything happen as it would’ve otherwise. Some time had passed, and by this point the emotions of it all had overwhelmed me, a bit of swelling in my eyes that I wiped off into my sleeve. A little sniffle and sharp exhale, and I mentally slapped myself in the face a few times to snap me out of it. I did the right thing. I don’t care what government or shady business or whatever the hell person has been seeking me out, I wasn’t going to let that change anything. Fuck them if I was gonna be hunted over saving some people, fuck anyone or anything that expected me to watch someone’s brains splatter on the walls without doing a damn thing. You found me? Fine. You saw me save some people and do a good thing, so what? Bite me.
	A bit of mentally psyching up to myself to regain my confidence back a bit, and I was already booting my phone back up, not caring if I was being tracked. Maybe they knew I was home already, maybe they didn’t. But I wasn’t going to let that have control over me, whoever ‘they’ were. Maybe they’re just hotheads who think they’re tough shit and want something out of me. maybe they haven’t the slightest clue of how dangerous I could be. I never had to prove it to anybody before, but the scenarios had certainly crossed my mind.
	My phone chimed to it’s little carrier intro, and I quickly dialed in the number. I paused for a moment before I hit call, thinking of what I might say. To be perfectly honest I hadn’t really gotten that far in my head. But I was going to force myself to be ready regardless. Fuck it. I hit call, place the phone to my ear to hear the ringing, the longest couple of seconds I’d felt in years, maybe ever in my life so far. The ringing turned into a little abrupt click, and silence, like someone on the other end waiting for me to say something. I gave a sharp gulp, and found the strength to speak. “...Hello?”

-19-

	A few more seconds had passed, it felt like days at this point, but the tension was cut like a wire as soon as an artificially deepened and distorted voice spoke back at me. “Is this Samuel Alwyn?” The voice was like that of what a serial killer would disguise their voice with. I didn’t know if they were trying to be mysterious or if they really cared that deeply about protecting their identity. It was off-putting, but maybe not in the way they could’ve intended. “..Yea, and who is this? Did you leave this number in my apartment?”
	The voice continued, a razor thin line to interrupting me at the end of my sentence, like they didn’t care what I had to say. “I presume you have received both letters, is this correct?” I was a bit taken back by the careless yet clinical attitude towards invading my privacy, like it didn’t matter. “..Yea, I got both letters. Who is this?” Right as I ended, they snapped back right to the point, not even an acknowledgement to my own questions. “Mr. Alwyn, as outlined in the first letter we have sent you, we have taken an interest in events that have circulated around you as outlined in the photographs we have sent you. We would like to discuss these further with you. When would you available for a possible meeting?”
	Straight to the point, again. I didn’t know if it was cockiness, arrogance, or if they actually were this serious unironically. I didn’t know whether to be unsettled or irritated. “...I don’t—what do you mean by a ‘meeting’?” To me that sounded like a setup or an ambush. But then again, why the hell show me all this? Why even let me know they’re watching? “If you agree to meet, we will have an liaison meet you in a public setting, nearby to your residence. We do not mean any harm, we merely wish to talk.” The ominously distorted voice attempted to reassure through the phone.
	It wasn’t much of a comfort, although that might’ve just been the distorted voice on the other end. The whole thing was even a good play from them, adding layers of separation between them and me. I could read almost anyone from anywhere, if I knew where they were, or know who they are. But over the phone to some anonymous voice, I might as well be talking to a robot, no way of reading or knowing anything. I wondered if even a potential meeting would be nearly as compartmentalized.
	I thought for a moment, I really had no thoughts of going into work tomorrow, with this consuming my every thought, I’d probably just take the rest of the week off. “...I can meet tomorrow.” I half-mumbled out in hesitation, as if wondering if I should take time to work out a game plan in case it all went wrong. “Very well. Down the street from your apartment on the corner, is a coffee shop. At noon, there will be an agent waiting for you. Confirm you understand.” An agent of some kind—I suppose that made sense given the scale of all this, unless they were just larping. “..Yea, I got it.” I responded back. The voice on the other end paused for a moment. “We will see you there.” Click. And just like that, my fate was sealed, whatever that fate might be.
	I sunk deeper into those shitty worn-out cushions, not nearly as deep as my heart was sinking into my guts. This was first time driving, first time moving out, all that shit and more. Wherever this was headed, I knew it was going to be monumental for me. There wasn’t a single easy way out of this. It’s like in that moment, I was regretting every single action I’d taken to lead me here, no matter how steadfast I was in them being justified. It wouldn’t make this any smoother.

	I didn’t eat much that night, and I certainly didn’t get much sleep. I had vivid nightmares, which was not something I’d normally get, as I usually have complete control of my own dreams or have some kind of heavy influence over them. But this time by subconscious got the best of me, showing me a nightmare of me being caught by some kind of military-swat team, everyone pointing their guns at me and shouting. I couldn’t read any of their minds, which was more likely a side-effect from it being my own subconscious mind I was trying to read, but it played out like I lost my powers, and thus my ability to defend myself.
	I couldn’t do anything, I could hear them scared and yelling that I was trying to read their minds. They opened fire on me from all angles, and I woke up in a jolt. It wasn’t real, but the fear of it all was deeply rooted. I didn’t know if I could go through with today. I was crawled up in my bed, clothes strewn about without any attention to cleaning up, not wanting to leave. I was tired, hungry, and scared. All of the things that make us at our worst and most dangerous. But I didn’t feel dangerous, I felt helpless, staring at an impending doom. But I still needed to wake up, I needed to get out of these sheets, and slouching myself into a sitting position on the edge of my bed, I needed to be ready.

-20-

	I did my normal morning stuff, teeth, pulling the knots out of my long shaggy hair and finding something to wear. I’d managed to call in sick for the rest of the week the night before over email, and I put my phone on do not disturb. As far as they were concerned I could’ve been in the hospital, not like I was on anything important anyway. I needed to mute that part of my life for today, figure this other part out.
	I had about 30 minutes to noon, and it was a short walk to the coffee shop at the corner. I threw on my hoodie jacket, my unintentionally torn up jeans, and walked down the stairs and out to the streets. I knew the coffee shop they were referring to, it was more like a gentrified restaurant that served coffee and baked goods more than anything, but it was the only one on that particular corner. I didn’t put my hood up or try to conceal who I was, nor would I bother with my phone. It wasn’t going to matter as far as I was concerned. Someone was probably watching me anyway, from the moment I stepped out of my apartment to the very moment I’d be sitting down confronting whatever I was going to see.
	I didn’t feel anything, some people walking by and across from me but not a peep in terms of how they felt. It was just the normal lunch crowd taking a mid day walk to wherever they’d be going out to eat. I dreaded the walk every step, like I was marching right over to my execution. I kept thinking of my nightmare, wondering if such a thing happened to me what I’d actually do. Maybe I’d just freeze and panic, overwhelmed by the gravity of the situation. Or maybe I’d quickly lash out, maybe in a way I don’t intend to and regret, trying to get away. Earlier that week was a dicey situation, but I was effectively invisible to a bunch of nobody thugs. Today I’d have crosshairs pointed at my head by people who knew too much about me, even while I couldn’t see them.
	I had finally made it to the little corner restaurant, colorful and modern inside through the windows, outlined by rustic bricks of what must’ve been a century old or more at this point. Aged, but new. It looked like it was at least half full, not the busiest I expected but more than enough to keep the lights running. Soon as I walked in, I gazed around, checking for any eyes on me, but feeling more for the slightest tinge of anxiety. The feeling of looking at a target that you’re tasked with keeping an eye on and talking to. I didn’t feel anything but satiated hunger, a feeling I was quickly becoming jealous to.
	The place was self seated, and I located a wall seat by one of the open windows, a bit away from most of where everyone was gathered. It was the closest I had to a corner away from everyone, but even then it was brightly lit and exposed from the afternoon sun. I was a couple minutes early, not quite noon yet, but I didn’t really know how punctual they would be. A thought crossed my mind that I hadn’t considered, of maybe they wouldn’t even show up. I still didn’t feel anything, and I expected to sense at least a bit of something.
	I saw a couple come in, as quickly as a few others left, the in and out flow of customers. I looked up at them, expecting to catch someone’s beady eyes locked on me or searching for me, but none of them seemed to stick out or pay any mind to me. Maybe this was a bust, hell maybe I even fucked up and went to the wrong place somehow, or there was a mixup. It’s not like the people on the phone seemed too bothered with my concerns or worries at the time, maybe they didn’t even bother explaining the place I was supposed to actually be at.
	I tensed up as someone walked up to be and close to me but then they continued on walking to somewhere else behind me. I looked at my phone, it being exactly noon now, I deeply sigh, rubbing my eyes in tired frustration and exhaustion of all of what I’d been feeling. Maybe this shit was in my head. Maybe it wasn’t real in the way I thought it was. Maybe…

-21-

	With my eyes closed I felt the light shift in front of me, and heard shuffling like someone sat right in the seat across from me. I felt their presence, and as I opened my eyes, seeing a woman across from me. She gave a light smile, dressed in a completely inconspicuous casual attire, like anyone you’d see on the street walking their way down town. She placed a leather booklet of sorts on the table to the window side of the table, keeping her eyes on me. Not with suspicion, but with a casual and calm demeanor. I didn’t feel anything from her, not anxiety, not anything but a normal presence. I blinked a few times unable to be sure if this was who I was supposed to be expecting, or if it was just some random person.
	She looked at me for a moment, gauging my emotions a bit. I probably looked like a deer in headlights in the awkward silence before she finally spoke out. “Hello Samuel. My name is Dr. Locke, I’m the person you’ll be meeting today.”

-22-