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The back alleys in this unfamiliar part of Stellis are easy to get lost in, and you've accomplished it without trying, thanks to your predicament.
Booted footsteps keep an even pace behind you. You'd turned down an alley, then turned again, to see if they made the same turns you do.
You'd expected to be able to stop in an alley, wait your "pursuer" out, and find out you'd been mistaken—that it had only been a case of two strangers taking a similar route by coincidence. Then you’d backtrack and be on your way home.
It hasn't worked out that way. He's matched you turn by illogical turn. He—whoever he is—really is following you.
You catch another glimpse of his figure as you turn down the next alley. He doesn't have a threatening build, like a bouncer or gang member who intimidates on size alone, but he isn't a small man either, taller than you and clearly fit.
It's then you realize you'd been so concerned with sizing him up that the issue of whether this alley had an exit at the end had been forgotten. It doesn't, and it's too late to turn around; you'd run headlong into the man.
Adrenaline drowns you. Your heart pounds so hard it hurts. Shaking fingers reach into your purse and retrieve your pepper spray, and your eyes dart around for a place to hide. Behind the dumpster? Too obvious—
The sound of boots approaches the corner. There's no time. You crouch behind the dumpster, trying to calm your breathing—or at least silence it—
The boots turn the corner and pace slowly into the alley, and you focus on them in an effort to learn a few last key details about your pursuer. They’re slow and thoughtful, but steady. He's... confident. Which tells you that either he doesn't understand why you're hiding or that he does, but he doesn't care.
The light from the street casts his long shadow down the alley ground, exaggerating strong, bare shoulders; as it approaches, you shrink back as if the shadow itself could see you and alert him.
Maybe he'll walk past you and allow you to dart out behind him. You squeeze your eyes closed for a brief moment. You have maybe three seconds until he'll be able to see you; you can spare two for a quick prayer.
The footsteps stop.
You open your eyes, expecting to see him looming over you, looking down at you, but he's not there. His shadow is gone, as well.
Slowly, quietly, you peer around the corner of the dumpster, but you see and hear nothing.
Gone, like so much smoke. Had you imagined it all? Impossible. Had your prayer worked? Unlikely. Had he just lost interest in you? After all these turns following you, had he fallen for your hiding place, assumed he'd lost you, and left?
You let out a breath that shakes with a stifled, ragged sob. He's not here, that you can see.
Sweaty fingers drop your canister of pepper spray. It rolls out into the center of the alley; like a lifeline, it's all you can see, missing the glint of glasses and presence of boots pressed against the wall on the opposite end of the same dumpster you hide behind.
As you abandon your cover to reach for it, you quickly realize your recklessness. Strong hands grab you and manhandle you into position; one arm comes around your waist and crosses up to your opposite shoulder, pinning you against his toned chest, while the other clamps over your mouth.
"Shh. It is alright. I will not hurt you."
You begin evaluating for evidence to turn over to the police if you make it through this: voice unaccented, deep, soft, vaguely familiar. You discard other less helpful descriptors like soothing and attractive, mildly humiliated that these came to mind at all at such a dire moment.
"I just want to talk. If I take my hand away, can we talk?"
You nod rapidly; anything to get out of his arms and have a fighting chance in case this still goes badly despite his reassurances.
It angers you that you think he smells good.
He relaxes his grip and lets you go, and you turn. Oh—
It's... the keyboard player. The handsome one with the impressive-sounding solo, who'd called you the other day on a dare—you remind yourself again to lecture Louis for giving out your number.
The recognition must be clear on your face, because he comments immediately. "You remember me. That saves us a little time."
"From the band.” You nod, then leave a breath of silence between you, hoping he’ll fill it with an explanation; he doesn’t, so you press him instead, “Why were you following me?"
"I had thought to ask you the same." Something cold in his voice and eyes halts the process of your gradual calming of breath and heart; both pique to a quieter form of alert, ready to flee at any opportunity.
Why would he think you were following him? Had you accidentally wandered the path to his home? "Um... do you live around here, or...."
"Heh." He shakes his head. "No."
His refusal to elaborate intimidates still further, and you decide to put his assertion that he just wants to talk politely to the test. "Well, sorry if I was following you. I'm going to go...."
You try to step around him, but he steps to the side, keeping his body between you and the alley's exit, not letting you leave. He then loosely grasps your elbows with a touch so gentle it deceives you in its purpose; he directs you into place with your back against the wall, where he can block your way past him, before you realize the motion had ill intent.
Your mind starts tallying evidence again, noting the manipulation as deft and confident, like he's used to touching and guiding people. It reminds you of the way a healthcare professional can comfortably ease people into unpleasant procedures.
This close, you catch his scent again, and it seems as vaguely familiar as his voice. But you haven't been close enough to him since meeting him, so how...?
He interrupts your thoughts with a warning. "It is dangerous alone in these dark alleys. You should not allow yourself to be placed in these situations. You know too much confidential information to be so imprudent."
Had he overheard your conversation with Kiki and Louis about being a lawyer...? Or....
You remember a recent message from King revealing your enemies have unknown foreign investors. It's uncomfortable that the revelation made you start thinking like this, but... this man is clearly foreign despite lacking any accent. There's a possibility you're in far more danger than you'd realized when your imagination had been limited to mugging or other personal violence.
You resort to defiance; your bark is far worse than your bite, especially deprived of your pepper spray, but there's a chance he won't be willing to take that risk. "Stellis is one of the safest cities in the country, and average criminals”—you emphasize the word, ensuring he knows what he’ll be if this interaction goes wrong—”would have no idea that I know anything they could make money off of."
"There is no need to be defensive," he reassures, soothing, almost seductive. "Besides, your face has been on the news often enough. You represent celebrities. Corporate heirs, idols—even Louis."
You cross from defiant to demanding, desperate to shift the momentum between you. "Speaking of Louis, why did you get my number from him for your dare? I want you to erase it."
"No."
His response is flat, tolerating no questions, but you ask anyway: "Why?"
"Because I did not get it from him. Now, answer my question." He sees through you and turns the tables. "Why do we keep meeting? Is it intentional? Have you found information I need to clean up? Or... is it fate?" The last phrase leaves him with a confusing ghost of a smile, like he wants to hope but doesn’t dare.
"We never met before the other day when Louis introduced you." You pause, furrowing your brow. “Right?”
"Hmph.” The man shakes his head, silver fringe catching the street lamp. “This is our sixth encounter. Seemingly random happenstance each time, yet taken together...." He leans closer as if the action could push your memory harder. For a madman who has you trapped in a dark alley, if he’s right, his intensity is almost understandable. You’d wonder, too, about such frequent encounters.
He has a striking, unique look that you feel like you should remember from... somewhere? But nothing comes to mind, and you shake your head. "I don't remember."
"We had cabins on opposite ends of the same train car on the Barosk tour."
"Huh? I was just helping my friend Evelyn with a travel piece." But now that he mentions it, you recall a near-forgotten glimpse of a silver haired man looking panicked once in the corridor. You’d been preoccupied with dropped luggage when he first caught your eye, and when you looked up to find him again, he was gone. You'd convinced yourself you’d imagined him after the entire remainder of the trip had passed without seeing him again.
"Skadi Island. I saw you interviewing people when I was at a seminar near Faerie Town."
"What...?” You’d been helping Evelyn again, though your investigations into the haunted manor hadn’t gone far, and you focused your reports on the lively townspeople instead. But he's right—part of that had involved interviews in that charming village.
"Snowfall Village. You went with one of your friends in the winter. You bought a wooden squirrel figurine for a local child only minutes after I bought a similar one."
You answer only with uneasy silence; despite his accusation that you had been following him, feelings that you’d been stalked and exposed at every innocent trip outside of Stellis bubble up from within.
"Mr. O'Connor's banquet. You nearly fell when a girl stumbled into you, but I steadied you."
"Oh." His palm on your back; his proximity. That's where your vague memory of his look and scent came from. It’s no wonder you hadn’t connected the keyboardist to that man at the party; that man had been even more intimidating than this one—until now. His stern poise had made you feel more out of place than any other guest, showing more elegance in that supportive hand than your every movement.
"I see you remember that one. And....” He smirks, using the tension to his advantage. “You attended my public lecture last fall."
"Lecture?” You hadn’t set foot on campus except to study for your junior exam, except— “Wait. The psychology lecture? That was an amazing class.” The professor of that class had covered an incredible breadth of topics with ease and expertise, and you’d had your face so buried in taking notes that you barely thought of the man himself except to praise his excellence as a teacher. “That class helped me with so many interviews,” you enthuse, fear nearly forgotten, as if the fact that he’d helped you in the past makes the present some sort of misunderstanding. “What was your name... Um...."
"Then you truly do not know. Heh..." He smiles, but the light fails to reach his eyes, and a chill settles back in your core. "How deeply you have vexed me. I told myself time and again not to pursue you, that it was unintentional... and then....” For the first time since he positioned you against the wall, he lays a hand on you, grasping your chin and holding your gaze. “And then, I bargained with myself, said that if I saw you in my world again and you were not pursuing me on purpose... I would have to accept that you are my fate. Only days later, Louis introduced us."
"Fate? No—" His other hand’s knuckles stroke your cheekbone, his fingertips brush your lips, and you tremble, unthinking, unprepared for this situation.
"Since you first started working with us, your every word, your every action, I have watched from afar. Sharp, decisive, logical... but overflowing with empathy, intent upon carving your own path around any obstacle." He's bearing down, intense, that reverence creeping into his tone again, and you only wish you could shrink away more. "Every choice you make, every case note I read, I feel that much more drawn to you, and I can no longer stay away... Rosa."
You gasp. If this man has access to your case notes, and he knows your code name....
You don't know your coworkers in the NXX, having been brought on to investigate the disappearances of the previous two members. It was meant to be both for your safety in case the group had been targeted, and to prevent bias in your work. You’d worked out Libra, the legal expert, easily enough since Artem brought you in. Raven and King are more uncertain—one of them might be a von Hagen keeping track of their missing son—but there’s only one possibility for a psychology expert.
"Adjudicator." Under any other circumstance, you’d be relieved, but this....
Somehow his smile grows even more deranged. "You put everything together so clearly with only the slightest reminder. Remarkable. I knew we were meant to be."
"Meant...? N-no, I don't—” He muffles your words with his mouth, kissing you forcefully, worming his tongue past your lips, a satisfied noise slipping from his mouth into yours. You might have been able to handle it until he tired of kissing you, had he intended to stop there. But fear gives way to abject terror when he reaches down and grabs your knee, pulling it up to his waist to wrap around him, and you lose all rationality and begin to fight and flail. You try to rip your head back away from his with all your might, but it’s the mistake that proves to be your undoing; you succeed, but you hit the brick wall behind you with a sharp everything—sound, force, pain—that makes the world darken.
On the edges of your awareness, a muffled voice reassures you that everything is alright and it would never hurt you. You rest your cheek on something solid, trusting it even as hands first cradle your aching head, then carry you across a blur of consciousness.
NXX-031
Disappearance of codename "Rosa"
Libra: We haven't heard from Rosa in two weeks, and there haven't been any demands from captors. It's time to acknowledge this might be related to our work.
Raven: No sightings in all this time on city or national surveillance, even with our best facial recognition systems. Either she's gone somewhere rural or she's been imprisoned.
Adjudicator: I should have been allowed to evaluate her when she joined. I could check hospital admissions if I knew anything about her. This enforced anonymity will only hobble our efforts.
Raven: She should never have been brought on to this project in the first place.
Libra: Work the problem instead of retreading the past. Can DAVIS predict where she might have gone?
King: The only prediction was that she might try to find and reach out to her parents, but its analysis already flagged her real missing persons report as suspicious. I'll attach it to this file later.
Libra: Do we know when she was last seen?
Raven: Some bar in Stellis Harbor. It’s not really her scene, so it’s worth looking into. I’ll see what I can come up with there over the next few days.
Adjudicator: I do not feel that is wise. She is the third member we have lost. If this is related to our work, whoever has taken her will be watching to see whether anyone outside the police takes a special interest in finding her.
Raven: You don't know me, so I'll let your underestimation slide.
King: Guys... are we doing the right thing with all this?
Libra: She thought so. Let’s honor that and get to work.
Your dreams are vivid and repetitive; a man you don't know searches, another mourns, another paints your portrait in tears. You know their names in the dream, but when you wake, you know only the elegantly handsome doctor who gives you so much kindness, personal attention, and eventually love as you recover from your head injury and amnesia.