The surveillance recordings are even worse. He slumps as if his spine is allergic to confrontation. Nicely put, he has the social presence of an expired yogurt. His password is the digital equivalent of wet cardboard. One click, and I am in his home network. Two clicks, and I am watching him microwave oatmeal with the intense stare of a man defusing a bomb.
“Should I just stab him with a spoon?” I ask the laptop screen, sipping my wine.
But hey—work is work, and a number is a number.
CHAPTER 6
AZRAEL
Four days of no contact. Not uncommon. Not uncommon at all.
Subjects always retreat when they sense the grip tightening. They go silent, thinking this somehow revives some of the autonomy they lost. But it never lasts, and she should know better. I try to occupy my time by figuring out what Subject 738 is up to these days. The number of letters my ex-psychopathic subject sent recently is alarming, but none of them hold any information.
But no matter how hard I try to ignore her absence, my thoughts keep rolling back to my new stalker.
She was only allowed in my personal space because she intrigued me. She looked like someone who could potentially meet the standards and perform as I wanted her to.
This stupid behavior only makes her too ordinary for my taste.
For a moment—no, for several—I entertain the possibility that she is simply useless after all. That the precision she was embodying is an accident. Maybe she isn’t calculated or precise.Maybe she’s just chaotic like any other dopamine-chasing human. Wouldn’t be the first time I’d overestimated a subject.
She didn’t look like she was faking it, but I only got the details through those fucked-up text messages. Why the fuck did she even bother to attend that stupid class on Thursdays if she had no intention of playing a real game? Fucking stalker.
What a waste of my fucking time.
I almost put her file under “False positives” between a schizophrenic math teacher and that finance major student who thought he was Satan reincarnated.
Almost.
But then Thursday comes. I’d grown used to the rhythm, my class, her presence. I walk into the lecture hall, fully expecting the pattern we agreed to, to be there, only to find it broken. She isn’t here.
The moment I notice, something in me recoils. A feeling between disappointment and rage. I didn’t allow her to interrupt the experiment so abruptly. Who does she think she is?
The sixth-row seat stares back at me, empty.
I start the lecture, but I’m not focused on the material. The words leave my mouth on muscle memory alone, each syllable automatic. Instead, I watch the stupid door like a lunatic. Every time it opens, I pause briefly, pretending I need to adjust my tone or glance at my notes. But I’m not adjusting shit. I’m just checking that fucking entrance again and again.
Not her.
Not her.
Still not her.
By the fourth interruption, I want blood. By the sixth, I want it to be hers.
My fingers itch to correct the situation and find out why that insignificant subject is missing. She is deviating in a way I did not anticipate, nor did I approve of.
Every student who walked in late became a problem. Each time, my eyes flicker back to the sixth row, mocking my experiment. I hate that seat. Hate how I am fixating on it, how much I expected to see her there.
My mind spirals while I try to keep my composure. It replays every interaction, every stare, every line of dialogue we shared, looking for signs I missed. Signals that she plotted this—this pathetic, silent retreat.
As I end the class, she is still not in the room, and I’m already planning the many ways she will suffer once she is back. Because she will be back. And when that happens, she will suffer all the complications she brought upon herself.
“Professor Lennox,” the horny student—Samantha?—purrs, so syrupy it almost makes me puke. “I’m a little lost in the material. Is there any way you can explain it to me, maybe in your office?”
Ever since she started attending my classes—which is too long ago for any normal student—she’s had the same eager look in her eyes. She’s the kind of girl who reads American Psycho and thinks the violence is foreplay. One of those pet-project masochists who thinks degradation is sexy but has never really tasted it.
She looks just as stupid as she is. The performance of staying in the first row every time is not because she’s a brilliant student or because she’s willing to learn everything. The only reason she’s doing that is because she wants attention, my attention. And I have a feeling she’s gonna get it tonight.