The leather seats of the G-Wagon groaned softly as I shifted into park outside the WELB 7 news station. Morning sunlight filtered through the tinted windows, casting amber shadows across Janet's face as she gathered her things—purse, tablet, that ridiculous oversized coffee tumbler she refused to go anywhere without.
"Thanks for the ride," she said, leaning over the center console.
Her lips pressed against my cheek, warm and fleeting, leaving behind the faint scent of vanilla and something floral I could never quite place. It was a simple gesture, one we'd repeated countless times, yet today it felt weighted with something unspoken—a tenderness born from the nights she'd held me together when my mind came apart at the seams.
"Anytime," I managed, my voice rougher than I intended.
She paused at the door, hand on the handle, studying me with those perceptive eyes that saw too much. "You sure you're okay?"
"Yeah. Just tired."
It wasn't entirely a lie. Tired didn't begin to cover it, but it was easier than explaining the truth—that sleep had become a battlefield I lost more often than I won.
Janet hesitated, then nodded. "Call me if you need anything. I mean it, Elijah."
"I will."
The door closed with a solid thunk, and I watched her disappear into the building, her red coat a bright splash against the gray concrete. Only when she was gone did I let my head fall back against the headrest, exhaling a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.
The nightmares had started three days ago.
Not the normal kind—the ones where you're falling or being chased or showing up to work naked. No, these were different. These were visceral, all-consuming horrors that dragged me down into depths I didn't know existed within my own psyche. And at the center of every single one was that thing. That *Azaqor*.
Even now, in broad daylight with the city humming around me, I could feel the phantom weight of its presence pressing against the edges of my consciousness. Those eyes—if they could even be called eyes—burning with an intelligence that was both ancient and utterly alien. The way reality itself seemed to warp and buckle around it, like the universe was recoiling from something it was never meant to contain.
*It wasn't real*, I told myself for the thousandth time. *It was an illusion. A trick. Some kind of hallucinogenic episode brought on by stress or contaminated food or—*
But the logical explanations rang hollow, even to me.
---
The memory came unbidden, sharp and intrusive.*
Three nights ago. Our bedroom dark except for the pale glow of the alarm clock reading 2:47 AM. I was thrashing in the sheets, my body moving independently of my will, caught in the grip of something my conscious mind couldn't control.
In the nightmare, I was back in that place—that impossible space where the Azaqor had manifested. But this time there was no illusion to break, no clever trick to unravel. This time it was real, and it was speaking to me in a language that bypassed my ears entirely and carved itself directly into my brain.
Words that weren't words. Concepts that had no human equivalent. And underneath it all, a promise—or maybe a threat—that resonated in my bones like a struck tuning fork.
"Elijah!"
Janet's voice cut through the nightmare like a lifeline thrown to a drowning man. I felt her hands on my shoulders, shaking me, her voice pitched high with fear I rarely heard from her.
"Elijah, wake up! You're dreaming—it's just a dream!"
I came to gasping, my heart hammering so hard I thought my ribs might crack. The sheets were soaked with sweat, twisted around my legs like restraints. For a horrible moment I couldn't remember where I was, couldn't distinguish between the nightmare realm and reality.
"Hey, hey, look at me." Janet's face swam into focus, her hands cupping my cheeks, forcing me to meet her eyes. "You're okay. You're home. You're safe."
"Janet—"
"Shh. It was just a dream."
But it wasn't. We both knew it wasn't. These weren't the confused fragments of an overactive subconscious. They were too coherent, too purposeful. They felt less like dreams and more like... visitations.
Janet pulled me against her, and I went without resistance, letting her arms wrap around me as my breathing slowly returned to something approaching normal. Her heartbeat was steady against my ear, an anchor in the chaos.*
"I've got you," she whispered into my hair. "Whatever it is, we'll figure it out. But right now, just breathe."
So I did. I breathed, and I held onto her, and I tried not to think about the way the shadows in the corners of the room seemed to move with a life of their own.
---
I shook off the memory as I navigated through downtown traffic, taking the familiar route to Halvern Robotics. The facility was housed in a nondescript building that could have been anything—an accounting firm, a tech startup, a call center. That was by design. The real work happened below ground, in levels that didn't appear on any public blueprints.
The entrance to the underground parking structure yawned before me like a concrete mouth, and I descended into its fluorescent-lit depths. My G-Wagon looked absurdly out of place among the sensible sedans and electric compacts that populated the employee lot. I found my designated spot—E-17, executive level—and killed the engine.
For a moment I just sat there, hands still gripping the steering wheel, staring at the concrete pillar in front of me.
Everything is connected.
The thought appeared fully formed in my mind, carrying with it a certainty I couldn't rationally justify. The waitress from that café—Sarah, with her too-knowing smile and the way she'd looked at me like she could see straight through to something I didn't know was there. The bizarre, illusioned encounter with the Azaqor that should have been impossible but had felt more real than anything I'd experienced in years. The nightmares that were eating away at my sleep and, increasingly, my sanity.
They were pieces of something larger, a pattern I couldn't quite discern. Like trying to see a constellation when you're standing too close to the stars—I knew the shape was there, could feel it at the edges of my perception, but couldn't pull back far enough to see the whole picture.
"But *what*?" I muttered to the empty car. "What the hell is the connection?"
The concrete pillar, unsurprisingly, offered no answers.
I grabbed my briefcase and headed for the elevators, my footsteps echoing in the cavernous parking structure. The elevator bank was busy—morning shift change, the underground facility coming alive with the day's work. I stepped into an available car just as the doors were closing, joining half a dozen other employees in the ascending metal box.
The elevator was one of the newer models, all brushed steel and soft lighting designed to make the descent into the earth's bowels feel less claustrophobic. It didn't really work, but I appreciated the effort.
I positioned myself toward the back, pulling out my phone to check emails and avoid the awkward elevator small talk that seemed inevitable whenever more than three people shared a confined space. But something caught my attention—a woman standing near the front, leaning close to whisper to the man beside her.
She was maybe thirty, dressed in the business casual that marked her as administrative staff rather than research division. Dark hair pulled back in a neat ponytail, glasses that kept sliding down her nose as she spoke, an energy about her that seemed to vibrate at a slightly higher frequency than everyone else in the elevator.
The man she was whispering to presented a stark contrast. He stood rigid, shoulders hunched inward in that universal posture of someone trying to make themselves smaller, less noticeable. His face was a study in misery—eyes shadowed with exhaustion or resignation or both, mouth set in a line that suggested he'd forgotten how to smile sometime in the distant past. His skin had that grayish quality that came from too little sleep and too much stress, and there was something in his expression, something in the way he held himself, that screamed depression louder than any words could.
The woman nudged his shoulder, apparently undeterred by his obvious desire to be left alone.
"Oh my god," she whispered, though her voice carried in the enclosed space. "Do you see who that is? That's *him*. That's Elijah."
I felt multiple sets of eyes shift in my direction. Great.
"The Elijah," she continued, her whisper growing more excited. "The outstanding scientist on the Halvern robotics team. Wow. Just... wow. I never imagined in my wildest imagination that in my first week here I would get to actually *see* him in person. How exciting is this?"
The depressed man's response was to make his face somehow even more miserable, his features twisting into an expression of pure irritation. His jaw clenched, a muscle twitching beneath his ear. It was the look of someone who had long ago exhausted their capacity for other people's enthusiasm and was now running on fumes and spite.
The woman, oblivious or uncaring, pressed on.
"I heard that the robotics department is working on some seriously secretive stuff. Like, breakthrough levels of innovation. Things that will revolutionize health, technology, science itself. Can you imagine? Something that could change the entire blueprint of the world as we know it, make everything better, solve problems we haven't even figured out how to articulate yet."
She paused, her face falling into an exaggerated expression of disappointment that would have been comical if it weren't so painfully earnest. Her lower lip actually jutted out slightly, her eyebrows drawing together, her whole face collapsing into theatrical dejection.
"I wish I was part of that team. I really do. I'd be doing such incredible, meaningful work. But unfortunately, I'm assigned to the desk job division. Data entry and filing and scheduling. It's kind of boring, if I'm being honest. Not exciting at all compared to what you research people get to do."
She cast a glance in my direction—quick, furtive, like she was checking to see if I'd noticed her noticing me. Then she leaned even closer to her unwilling companion.
"You know, is it just me or..." Another glance my way. "From up close, this Elijah guy is kind of really cute? Like, objectively attractive. But it's too bad that someone like him would never notice an average girl like me."
Her face transformed again, this time into a look of mocking self-contempt. Her mouth twisted, her eyes rolling slightly, her whole expression radiating a sort of practiced self-deprecation that suggested she'd worn this particular mask many times before. It was the look of someone who'd internalized every dismissive comment, every overlooked moment, every time they'd felt invisible, and had turned it into armor disguised as humor.
I stood frozen, speechless, unsure whether I was supposed to have heard that or if I should pretend I hadn't. The social protocol for "overhearing someone call you cute in an elevator" had somehow been omitted from every etiquette guide I'd ever encountered.
The depressed man's irritation crystallized into something sharper, more hostile. His face darkened, his eyes narrowing to slits, his lips pressing together so tightly they nearly disappeared. It was the expression of someone whose last nerve had just been thoroughly and comprehensively trampled. The look of a man who had reached the absolute limit of his tolerance and was actively considering whether assault charges were worth the satisfaction of making the annoyance stop.
The elevator chimed, announcing arrival at the R&D level—my floor. The doors slid open with mechanical precision.
I moved to exit, briefcase in hand, already mentally shifting into work mode. But something made me pause. Some instinct, some awareness at the periphery of my consciousness.
The depressed man was moving.
Not toward the elevator doors. Toward the woman.
His body language had shifted in a way that triggered every alarm bell evolution had wired into the human brain over millions of years of survival. There was intent in his posture, purpose in the way he was closing the distance between them. And that purpose wasn't benign.
Not your problem, a thought whispered through my mind, clear and insistent. *Keep walking. Mind your business.*
And alongside it, a feeling—a strange, detached sensation of disinterest, of walls sliding into place between me and everything happening around me. It was like someone had injected emotional novocaine directly into my limbic system.
The thought and feeling were both so foreign, so utterly unlike my normal internal dialogue, that they actually confused me for a moment. I stood there in the doorway, the elevator doors trying to close and bouncing off my shoulder, my brain trying to process why every instinct I had was suddenly telling me to ignore what was clearly a threatening situation unfolding three feet away.
And then, just as suddenly as they'd appeared, the thought and feeling... evaporated.
Like someone had flipped a switch, and all the artificial static clouding my judgment just stopped. What remained was clarity. Pure, uncomplicated clarity about what was about to happen and what needed to be done.
I moved without conscious decision, my body acting on an understanding that bypassed rational thought. Three steps put me between the man and the woman, my larger frame creating a physical barrier. I didn't touch him, didn't speak, didn't make any aggressive gestures. I just looked at him.
Really looked at him.
The effect was immediate and dramatic.
His eyes met mine, and I watched his pupils dilate, his face going from angry red to ashen white in the space of a heartbeat. His body began to shake—small tremors that started in his hands and spread upward through his arms, into his shoulders, until his whole frame was vibrating with something that looked a lot like fear.
I hadn't said a word. Hadn't done anything. But something in my gaze, some quality I couldn't name and didn't understand, had reached into him and triggered a primal response that his conscious mind had no control over.
He stumbled backward, putting distance between himself and the woman, pressing himself into the far corner of the elevator. His shaking intensified, and I could see his chest heaving with rapid, shallow breaths.
I stepped out of the elevator.
The doors closed behind me, but not before I caught a final glimpse of the scene I'd left behind—the woman looking completely bewildered, her head swiveling between the corner where the man cowered and the closing doors through which I'd departed, trying to piece together what had just happened. And the man himself, still shaking, still pressed into his corner, looking at the space where I'd been with an expression that suggested he'd just stared down something far more dangerous than a fellow employee.
I walked toward the robotics division, my footsteps automatic, my mind churning.
Why do I have this gut feeling?
The question circled through my thoughts like a vulture over carrion.
My thoughts and feelings... they're clashing. Fighting with each other. Like they're not both mine. Like something is trying to influence what I think, what I feel, steering me away from acting, from engaging, from caring.*
But that was insane. Thoughts and feelings were internal. They came from you. They were you, in a very fundamental sense. The idea that they could be externally manipulated, that they could come from somewhere else...
Maybe I'm just imagining things.
The thought was reassuring in its simplicity. Stress and lack of sleep could do strange things to perception, to judgment. I was working long hours on a groundbreaking project, having nightmares about impossible monsters, probably not eating enough or drinking enough water or getting enough sunlight. Of course my internal experience would get a little weird. That was normal. That was explicable.
But even as I tried to convince myself, another part of my mind—the part that had built a career on questioning assumptions and following evidence wherever it led—whispered a different truth.
Something was happening to me. Something had been set in motion that night when I encountered the Azaqor, or maybe even before that, going back to the waitress and who knew what else I hadn't consciously registered. Threads were being pulled, patterns were forming, and I was at the center of something I didn't understand.
The question was: what was I going to do about it?
I reached the security checkpoint for the robotics division, pressing my badge against the reader. The light flashed green, the lock disengaged with a heavy click, and the door swung open to reveal the pristine white corridors and humming machinery of my workplace.
I stepped through, leaving the question unanswered.
But I knew, with a certainty that was becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss, that an answer was coming. Whether I wanted it or not.
---