Zzzzip.

  The sound of the backpack zipper seemed like a rifle shot in the muffled silence of the room.

  Alex stopped. Not for fear of being heard, but because the room had started spinning.

  He leaned a hand on the desk, closing his eyes.

  His heart beat in his chest like a bird in a cage, an irregular, syncopated rhythm. Thump-thump... thump... thump-thump. Arrhythmia.

  He felt emptied. His hands shook so hard he could barely close the buckle. It was a deep, marrow-deep exhaustion, as if his bones had turned to lead.

  ?"What are you doing?"

  ?Alex opened his eyes with effort.

  In the doorway, his mother stared at him.

  She hadn't knocked. She wore a light silk robe and had her arms crossed, knuckles white. Her eyes darted from the tactical backpack to the flashlight Alex held in his hand.

  ?"Empty it," she ordered. Her voice trembled.

  "Mom... I have to go," Alex wheezed.

  "You're not going anywhere!" she screamed, entering the room. "Look at you! You're pale as a ghost! You can barely stand!"

  She approached, grabbing the backpack and dumping it onto the bed. Batteries rolled away.

  "I almost lost you three days ago," she hissed, pointing at the bandage on his ear. "You're half deaf. You have head trauma. And now you want to go out in the dark with a curfew? You stay here. I'm locking this door."

  ?"No," Alex said. He tried to take a step forward, but his knees gave way. The hum in his dead ear was deafening, a static whistle covering his thoughts.

  His mother ran to the door, blocking the exit, spreading her arms to act as a human shield.

  "It's for your own good! The world will eat you alive if I don't protect you! I stayed alone for you, I sacrificed everything..."

  ?"Move," Alex whispered. His heart physically hurt.

  "Never!" she cried, weeping.

  ?Alex advanced. It wasn't anger. It was desperation. Survival instinct.

  He reached out to move her, to get her out of the way.

  His fingers closed on his mother's shoulders.

  ?Zzzzzak.

  ?The exact moment he touched her, it happened.

  It wasn't a shove. It was a connection.

  Alex felt a violent shock run up his arms. But it wasn't pain. It was... nourishment.

  He felt the heat of his mother's body flow through her clothes, enter his palms, rise up his veins like hot, golden liquid.

  Pure energy.

  Alex's heart, which a second ago was stumbling, gave a powerful leap and started beating. THUMP-THUMP-THUMP. Strong. Regular.

  The fog before his eyes vanished instantly.

  ?But under his hands, his mother's body went limp.

  "Alex..." she moaned. Her voice had become a slur.

  The color of her face went from rosy anger to ash gray in two seconds.

  ?Alex realized what was happening.

  He wasn't moving her. He was drinking her.

  "NO!"

  He broke away from her with a scream of terror, retracting his hands as if he had touched acid.

  Without his support, his mother collapsed onto the velvet love seat, helpless.

  "Mom?"

  Alex leaned over her, not daring to touch her.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Her eyes were half-closed, breathing slow and heavy. She looked like someone who hadn't slept for a week and had just collapsed from total exhaustion.

  "I'm... so tired..." she murmured, and an instant later she was asleep. A deep, comatose sleep.

  ?Alex looked at his hands.

  He felt them tingling. They were warm. Too warm.

  He had absorbed her strength. He had stolen her life to recharge his own.

  "I'm a monster," he whispered in the silence.

  He couldn't stay there. He grabbed the backpack with strength he shouldn't have had. He felt full of energy, stolen energy buzzing under his skin.

  He fled the room, leaving behind the scent of lavender and the sleeping body of the woman who gave him life.

  ?He arrived at Tony's house skidding on the gravel.

  Cristy was already there. As soon as she saw Alex, she got up from the wall.

  "Hey," she said, immediately noticing his wild expression. "You okay? You look... electric."

  ?Alex got off his bike, keeping his hands in his pockets, terrified of brushing against Cristy even by mistake.

  "Let's go inside," he said dryly. "We need to move."

  ?In the garage, the smell of engine oil and sawdust welcomed them.

  Alex retreated to the farthest corner, sitting on an empty beer crate. He still felt the disgusting warmth of his mother under his fingertips. And the worst part was that he felt good.

  ?"Curfew starts in twenty minutes," Tony said, lighting a lantern.

  Cristy opened her MacBook on a stack of tires.

  "I have an idea," she said. "If we want to avoid checkpoints, we need to know where they are."

  ?The screen lit up with strings of green code. Cristy typed fast, biting her lip.

  Connection established.

  "Got 'em."

  A map of Stonemouth dotted with icons appeared on the screen.

  "I hacked the traffic camera feed."

  The grainy image showed two Humvees at the intersection of 4th and Elm. Armed soldiers were stopping a civilian car.

  "They're everywhere," Tony said.

  ?Cristy switched views. Town Hall Square: blocked. School road: blocked.

  "Not everywhere," she corrected, pointing to a dark zone. "Look here. Pine Road. The cameras are offline."

  "Malfunction?"

  "No. Turned off. The feed was cut ten minutes ago." Cristy looked up. "If the military doesn't want to be seen moving something toward the clinic, they turn off the electronic eyes. That's our route."

  ?Tony checked his watch.

  "7:48 PM. We have twelve minutes before the cage snaps shut. Let's go."

  ?They slipped out the back like thieves, pushing their bikes through overgrown gardens.

  They reached the entrance of Pine Road. It wasn't a road, it was a scar of asphalt cutting into the dense woods.

  "Lights off," Tony ordered.

  ?Pedaling in the dark was a nightmare. Roots lifted the asphalt into invisible bumps.

  Suddenly, a dull rumble vibrated the ground.

  "Get down!" Cristy hissed.

  ?They threw themselves into the side ditch, dragging the bikes into the mud.

  Two xenon headlights cut the darkness above their heads.

  ?A Humvee passed slowly. From the turret, a soldier scanned the woods with a thermal visor. The red laser beam danced on the trunks, eighteen inches from their heads.

  Alex pressed his face into the mud.

  While the others trembled, he felt an unnatural heat radiating from his stomach. The stolen energy circulated in his veins like pure caffeine. He felt like a parasite. He felt invincible. And that contrast made him nauseous.

  ?The vehicle passed.

  Tony waited ten seconds. "That was close. Too close."

  ?They got up.

  "Almost there," Tony said, pointing to the dark silhouette of the clinic against the purple sky.

  It was there, silent and massive. But this time, it didn't seem abandoned. There was static tension in the air.

  The beast was in its lair.

  ?They reached the cut fence.

  Tony signaled to stop.

  It was too quiet. No night birds.

  "Something's wrong," he whispered.

  ?The woods exploded in white glare.

  Four halogen spotlights turned on simultaneously from the trees, aimed at them like the eyes of God.

  "FREEZE! HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!"

  ?Metallic, amplified voices.

  Shadows detached from the trunks. Men in black tactical gear surrounded them.

  Alex was the first to fall. A contractor hit him in the shoulder with a rifle butt, sending him sprawling.

  "Alex!" Cristy screamed.

  Two hands grabbed her and forced her to her knees in the mud.

  Tony found the barrel of an assault rifle pointed at his nose.

  "Down. Now."

  ?The circle of soldiers opened.

  A figure emerged from the dark.

  She wasn't wearing fatigues. She wore an immaculate camel trench coat. She walked with an elegance that made those dirty woods her hallway.

  She stopped in front of them.

  ?Cristy stopped breathing.

  It was the woman who had dined at her house.

  "Good evening, Christina," Lydia said. Her voice was velvety, terrifying. "Looking fit. A bit dirty, but feisty."

  ?"Lydia..."

  "Director Vance, please. We are on the clock."

  ?"How did you find us?" Tony growled.

  ?Lydia made a sign. A contractor slashed Cristy's bike tire and extracted a black chip, size of a fingernail. He tossed it in the mud.

  "Passive GPS tracker," she explained, bored. "We installed them the first time. We only lost your signal, Anthony, since you destroyed your bike. But we knew you'd get back together. Rats always return to the cheese."

  ?Lydia stepped closer. The air around her smelled of ozone.

  "Now, let's skip the pleasantries. I know you've been under."

  She pointed at the clinic.

  "My men found the freight elevator. Nice piece of engineering. But it doesn't work. It's dead."

  She leaned toward Tony, so close he could see the gray in her eyes.

  "Yet, we know you went down. And came back up. Which means only one thing. You have the key."

  ?"We don't know what you're talking about," Tony lied.

  "Bullshit," Lydia hissed. She straightened up. "There is something down there. Something my instruments see only as a void. And you will take me to it. Now."

  ?"Go to hell," Cristy spat.

  ?Lydia sighed. "I was hoping to avoid rudeness."

  ?In a fluid movement, she lunged.

  Not at Cristy. At Alex.

  She grabbed him by the collar and hauled him up. Alex gasped, the parasitic energy useless against that iron grip.

  Lydia spun him around, pinning his back against her chest.

  She pulled a black Sig Sauer.

  She pressed the cold barrel against Alex's temple, right over the bandage on his wounded ear.

  ?"The choice is simple," Lydia said. "You can keep lying, or you can make that elevator work."

  She pressed the gun harder. Alex felt the cold metal digging into the wound.

  "You have five seconds to decide if your friend lives long enough to see the sunrise. Five."

  ?Alex closed his eyes.

  The sound of Lydia counting became a distant echo.

  All he could feel was the circular cold of the barrel against his skin, the smell of gunpowder and expensive perfume, and the terrified beat of his own stolen heart waiting, in a deafening silence, to stop forever.

  Author’s Note ??