For the seventh time since he arrived, he readjusted his headwear.
The first few times were just for the sake of comfort, but now, waiting in the deafeningly quiet darkness as he was, Alex started to feel the pricks of anxiety stab into his already damp neck.
Though, it was possible that he was just confusing that with the heat rushing through him, made inevitable by the oppressively hot black visor covering his face and discoloring his world.
Then, of course, there was his unflattering location.
Carl-and-Mason's—an attempt at a warehouse that the city gave up on, was within walking distance of his middle school.
Its seclusion was its next big selling point, making it an absolute cesspool for the seedier types, the ones that wanted to do things away from prying eyes.
To point, Alex kicked aside yet another discarded needle, idly wondering just how many people it had been in.
Beyond that, with broken bottles, cigarette butts, and various other things he didn't dare name, it only solidified what he already knew.
This was a den for criminals.
Something he wasn't.
But, if the next few minutes went as he expected, that might change.
Alex had woken up today stressed about his classes.
Eighth grade math of all things.
Math, that would only continue to get harder when he went to high school after a couple more months.
That was the only thing that had been marginally different about his Tuesday.
A trivial thing like schoolwork.
He felt like laughing. He didn't. Alex knew if he tried, it would only come out as a stifled breath instead.
He wished he could go back to worrying about something so stupid.
Leaning backward, Alex let the unevenly grooved wall catch his weight.
The obtrusively large helmet atop his head soon followed.
The seconds continued to tick past, and his eyes soon drifted upward, at the indescribably slow motes of dust plummeting from the barely visible ceiling high above.
So curiously ominous in how they fell, he couldn't help but liken it to the ash and soot that succeeds a volcano's untimely eruption.
It was fitting.
Terrifyingly so.
Nevertheless, not a single one of those specs of dust touched him.
The motorcycle helmet batted away each one harmlessly.
And even the needle that had disappeared into the shadows, he had kicked with sturdy boots, because his sneakers felt far too vulnerable.
His gloves too; they were ones that touched the large rusty old door, sliding it open, not his actual hands.
With this much of a barrier standing between him and sin, Alex felt he could continue exploring this unknown world unhindered, like it wasn't actually him here in this moment, but rather somewhere else, just looking in from his very own gray-scale lens.
But... that was just wishful thinking, wasn't it?
That was just him trying to escape reality.
Treating it as fantasy didn't change the words he had heard uttered with hushed tones, in his school yard of all places.
And...
It didn't change that he secretly wanted them to become true.
Because, if it did happen...
If someone really did come through that door, and the girl in question really had been taken as the words he had overheard detailed, then that meant Alex could do something about it. That meant he could save her.
It put a chip into his everyday where nothing bad happened, yes, but the opposite was also true.
There was now a shining light hovering over what would have otherwise been an uninteresting day.
This type of situation would have never happened normally.
Not when in any circumstance, Alex would have called the police.
He was a law-abiding citizen after all.
Beyond that, he was nothing but a mere middle schooler.
It was only natural to call the authorities when faced with something like this.
But he couldn't do that.
Alex couldn't report something that hadn't happened yet, that might not happen, and could very well just be the bumbling idiocy of a group of teenage boys talking out of their asses.
And even if the police did believe him, what could they do?
Send a single cop car during the time in question?
That wouldn't solve the issue.
It would just make it happen at a completely different place, a completely different time, and where the perpetrators were even more cautious than before.
No.
The only way to prevent this was to catch them red-handed.
And then he would...
He would...
Fight them... right?
The silence creeping around Alex this entire time, suddenly warped substantially.
He would have to... hurt them...
In the back of his mind, he had to have known this. It had to have occurred to him that getting physical with an opposing side was the only way to solve this. Gather evidence and blackmail? That only worked after the fact. Calling the police at this stage? If they arrived too early or too late, he would be just as screwed.
He would have to fight.
The problem was, Alex did not know what that was supposed to look like at all.
No, no. He had considered this.
But that was all.
That was all he had done.
Anyone could imagine yanking off and pummeling some sicko who was forcing themselves on a woman.
But for that, he would have to grab the man's neck or clothes. He would have to stab a foot into their side, kicking them away. And all the while, said opponent wouldn't just stay still and allow him to do so.
And that was just for one person.
How many people were allegedly coming to this warehouse?
How many people were collapsing on Alex's location at this very moment?
He... had not thought this through.
Alex started to panic.
Why did he think this had been a good idea?
He had heard something he was not supposed to hear. And he thought he could do something about it. That was what he told himself. He thought if he did nothing and ignored it, something like regret would strangle him for the rest of his life.
Someone like him, who was nice to people he didn't particularly like because he didn't want to be responsible for their lowered self-esteem.
Alex was that type of person.
He lived in a world ignorantly pretending 'kindness' didn't mean 'pushover'.
So how could someone like him be expected to bury this incident as nothing?
How could he be expected to go about his day and feel nothing?
But it was that weak part of him, that half-assed resolve of his, that had brought him this far.
And what he was looking at now was the shoddy result.
Fight them all off?
Was that a joke?
With what?
What Alex thought was martial arts, taught to him by biased as hell movies catering to the male audience? Shit. Shit. Would he scare them into fleeing with some intimidating part of himself that was equally nonexistent? Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit!
There were no good options.
"The police—I have to call them after all," he murmured frantically.
Alex lunged at the idea.
Maybe they would arrive just in time.
Maybe they would be speedy and efficient and solve all his problems.
And then he could put this all behind him, pretending it never happened, that he hadn't been stupid enough to do something he had no right, no experience, and no mind doing.
Deciding as such, he reached into his pocket.
Alex only got that far.
Laughter and a loud creaking shot through the empty air.
He wasn't sure which he heard first, but in parallel with that, he definitely felt the unforgettable way his body was so suddenly set alight, as if it had been doused in the smoldering volcanic air he had, earlier, been so convinced wasn't real.
And just as promptly, an anonymous yet palpable tingle teased the very base of his skull.
The shadows briefly left him as he rigidly tilted his head towards the entrance.
There, Alex witnessed the exuberantly surreal sight of the large rickety steel door sliding open.
Light poured through, exposing the warehouse's entryway to the sun's indiscriminate glare. It was not an act of nature that had done this, nor was it some off-shoot supernatural occurrence.
That became apparent when humanoid silhouettes appeared, trickling in without pause.
They were boys.
Three of them.
His age, some older.
And they caused Alex's heart to freeze over.
The first one made some breathless comment that was completely unintelligible. Chuckling, a second and third quickly filed in neatly from behind him.
No, the latter two stumbled and staggered forward, clumsily.
The reason why was obvious.
It was due to their fourth addition: the sole girl kicking and thrashing as she was forcibly strong armed between them.
She was screaming.
No.
She would have, if her cries weren't rendered muffled and muted by the scores of tape crisscrossed against her mouth, Alex not able to decide whether it was by incompetence or design.
Once he finally trailed up to her eyes, however, he found himself enslaved by something far more distracting.
The naked terror reflected in those quivering orbs; it was something that he had never witnessed before.
He could not look away, like the sight was wrapping around him and not letting go.
For that emotion to have been inflicted upon her to that degree, and to be treated with such unhidden amusement...
Alex felt an unrelenting shiver crawl along his body.
But?
His trembling form... wasn't being rocked with nervousness or dread.
He also didn't find himself giving way to anger, rage, or even hatred.
All those would have been fine.
All of those would have made sense.
But no, out of everything he could have felt, this, wasn't what he expected to consume in him in this pivotal, once in a lifetime moment.
Alex... was simply surprised.
Because—
Oh, he thought. These people are trash.
Alex maybe could have put faces to them if he tried, just for the sake of knowing for sure which among his peers, maybe even his classmates, had involved themselves in something like this. He maybe could have realized he hated one of them, or that one was a bully, or something else that would make things easier.
But...
Did he need to?
It no longer mattered who these guys were, just that they were right in front of him, and most un-explainably important, that they looked like they were having the time of their lives.
Alex's fear vanished completely.
His indecision withered away to nothingness.
In their place, a grainy film descended over his eyes.
Perhaps his gray-tinted worldview, the helmet making it so, helped with that.
Perhaps, he found himself feeling something he did not expect to feel, a feeling that he was far too distracted to rationalize his way through and assign a name to.
But, as the assholes tripped over themselves to get their coveted treasure deeper into the darkness, with expressions tinged with such excitement and glee, seemingly no longer able to contain themselves, as if they had any right to, Alex realized... he was the same, the exact same even.
He too could no longer contain himself.
So.
He didn't.
It was like a dream:
The way he grabbed the rusted rebar from the dust coated shelves, the ones just as deeply entrenched in shadows as he was.
How, Alex was so acutely aware of the steel's edge dulled by time and its most superficial of shines. And despite the fact that not a trace of familiarity existed between them, his gloved digits still decided to welcome it wholeheartedly.
And then his feet started moving too, and his darkness was replaced with light, even when he knew that only the opposite was true now.
Doing the right thing?
An arbitrarily created sense of justice?
His own regrets?
What the hell did that matter.
He no longer cared who he was doing it for.
Steel met flesh in a seemingly endless cacophony of screams.
...
...
...
The fight couldn't even be called a fight.
It was far too ugly, just a massacre of cheap hits and a struggle to breathe.
Alex's own came out harsh and inhuman, and it seemed to flare his already aching ribs.
He had been struck a few times.
That stopped happening when his wild swinging did the first real damage though, shattering someone's kneecap.
They had ceased fighting entirely after that.
It was almost funny.
No, it was funny, wasn't it?
Alex stood there, doing nothing, thinking about nothing, only barely cognizant of the groaning and slightly stirring forms at his feet.
Just the same, he also barely realized that his companion, his protector, his ally... was still tightly clenched between his fingers.
It was almost as if the rebar was clinging to him just as he was to it.
Alex continued to breathe.
He wondered... if he killed someone.
Yet, even as that horrifying thought crossed his mind, there was no panic.
There should have been.
He should have had an intense urge to check, to care.
That was something Alex Hunnigan would have been worried about, even minutes prior.
But... nothing like that gripped him.
Everything just felt... numb.
There was an absence, a distinction between what he knew he should have felt, and what he did not.
If Alex closed his eyes, he could imagine it again.
The indescribable feeling each time steel met flesh.
The way they screamed.
No, the way they eventually started crying, begging for him to stop.
Did I... really do that?
He was shocked by it, and not, at the same time.
A clatter jolted him from his stupor.
Alex's head snapped to the source, thinking that one of them was already up and raring to go—but... that thought withered and flew away as he stared at a figure further away, marginally different from the ones he had just savagely beaten down.
Disheveled hair and clothes.
Bound hands and feet.
Wide, quivering eyes.
Not a male, but female.
A girl.
Alex blinked.
It took forever to place what someone like that was doing here.
That is, until he remembered.
He remembered because he had completely forgotten.
Why had he come to this warehouse. There had been a reason. Well, he was looking at it.
He just stared at her, not breaking eye contact, or at least his motorcycle visor didn't.
Should he say something?
Common sense told him to do so.
What felt like his heart, willed him to do so.
"..."
Alex wet his lips.
Maybe, he should cement the idea that he was just a good samaritan. That he had her best interests at heart. That he had come to her rescue. That she was never in any real danger. That there had been someone looking out for her.
He thought of playing that kind of role.
It wouldn't have been a lie.
He had just momentarily forgotten it was the truth.
The part of Alex that still felt like he was a good person, in a show of determination, reached out a hand and—
The girl recoiled.
It was as if she had been struck across the face.
She was whimpering in fear, shaking her head left and right, and frantically scooting backwards.
She desperately sought distance between them.
Anything was enough.
Even mere millimeters were worth it.
That was what her body language said.
The fact that she couldn't, that she tried to escape further but found a wall behind her instead, must have been truly devastating.
And in that moment, Alex couldn't associate the unadulterated fear in those eyes, the nonstop quivering of her body, or why she was doing it all while looking at him.
Until.
He looked at his hand.
His gloved, dark as night, outstretched hand.
Only, it was no longer so dark.
Murky splotches covered it, and despite the gray-tinted helmet distorting things, he could tell it was a different color.
It was the same with the rebar, the darkened hues at the end, that from sight alone could have been rust.
From scent alone, it could have been, too.
But it wasn't.
He couldn't lie and say it was.
Rust wasn't damp and sticky.
Rust didn't drip vivaciously along the metal and onto the floor, cling to his gloves and clothes like a parasite, or steadfastly refuse to blend into the surrounding darkness.
The other thing did though.
"Oh."
That distant—terribly distant—sound left his mouth.
Alex didn't know how long he stood there, drenched in blood not his own.
But, eventually, he gave himself something to do, as it felt weird doing nothing.
So, he ignored the female.
Instead, he focused on the other gender.
Wordlessly and one by one, he checked the battered forms of the teens all around him, some passed out, and some close to doing so.
They were all alive.
he didn't particularly feel anything like relief at that news, but he didn't feel any overwhelming urge to finish the job either.
Alex hummed.
There was this... distance... that hadn't been there before. He wondered if he was traumatized—desensitized? He wasn't sure which one it was, which one applied to him. He also wasn't sure if it would eventually go away, or if he even wanted it to.
But, it allowed him to see things better.
It allowed him to focus.
Alex pondered for a bit.
Then, he pulled out his phone from his black jeans, peeling off a glove in the next motion. What he was doing barely even took a few seconds, a few taps.
Just like that, a dial tone resounded through the warehouse filled with teenagers.
He put it on a speaker phone.
Was that a courtesy to the girl who could not stop shaking as she looked at him, more misplaced self-righteousness?
Or was it something else?
Alex didn't know.
He really, really, didn't know.
A staticky female operator soon answered.
"911, what's your emergency?"
His mouth moved on its own.
"Ah, I, um, haven't really ever done this before, but, there were some, um, very loud sounds coming from this warehouse I passed a few minutes ago, a-and I thought it would be a good idea to call you guys. I mean, they... they kinda sounded like screams?"
Alex's voice was clearly distressed.
No.
He just made it sound that way.
It shouldn't have been that easy to lie.
It shouldn't have been that effortless to make it believable.
That isn't something Alex Hunnigan should have been able to do.
But he did.
On this day, it felt like something invisible clicked into place, something that hadn't been there before, like... it had been waiting to activate.
It hadn't been anything major.
He hadn't lost someone important to him.
The world hadn't wronged him in any particular way.
Just the same, something did happen.
Something changed, even if he still wasn't sure what it was.
And—
There were no longer any strings on him.