phantoms in the dark. / madeline

There was a silence that haunted the streets of Thirteen.

You've been watching your back ever since the LUNAR directive shut down. Blinked once and they were gone. Something about it unsettled you, made your bones quiver, and your skin crawl. For weeks, you've felt like someone has been watching you, learning you, lurking within the shadows. When you leave in the morning and what route you take to work.

Your routine.

Like it's all being observed. You have no clue by who. Aren't sure if this was all just a test from the LUNAR directors, your first mission. It would make sense, a rational conclusion that you've come back to multiple times over the past few days. You were supposed to be spies, after all, noticing that someone is following your every move should be a compulsory exercise. But that voice inside your head is telling you to look somewhere else. You can't figure out what it is and it makes your stomach churn.

Sweet, little Madeline. You've built your life on solving problems - deducing the most complicated equations and calculating the taxes of possibility. You followed the string of whispers and found the directors of LUNAR, not the other way around. A long history of unraveling drawbacks, but this one has you stumped. Keep coming back to the evidence board you have hidden in your closet, three papers pinned to the ivory board, and not one gives you any clue as to what's happening.

Maybe it's nothing, maybe you're looking into something that doesn't exist. Trying to read in between the lines when the page is blank. But you can't afford for it actually be something and not to have a plan. Anything that threatens you, threatens Maisie and you can't allow that. She's the only thing you have left.

You can't help but look back after every few steps you take. Can never be too careful in a place like Thirteen. Everyone here operates in secrecy. So many plots and schemes going on at once, you never know when you'll become a plight in one of their plans. You center your focus on the shadows in the street, trying to see if you could make out the outline of a person within the darkness. No one. Part of you lets your shoulders relax and the other let out a malcontent sigh. Would it be better if it was nothing or something?

You pivot back around, letting the sound of your heels clack against the stone break the fragile silence. Just forget about it, you think to yourself. You pull your purse closer to your chest. Breathe in -- let it go -- breathe out.

You take this route to and from work every day, it's safe. Dull, but safe. It's a constant expanse of grey walls, a maze within a maze. As a girl, when you totally immersed yourself within fairy tale books, you wanted everything to be more colorful and vivid like the worlds in those stories. You've had a lot of growing up to do ever since Mason died. Sometimes you think of it as your second lease on life, a cherry-red reset button. Part of you hates yourself for thinking of his death like that, like you were somehow unburdened after he was gone.

Sometimes you can't look at yourself in the mirror in the morning.

You can see a lot of Mason in Maisie, and it makes your heart ache. Perpetually reminded about how you couldn't save him, that you didn't know everything no matter how hard you convinced yourself you did. In that sense, his death did open your eyes to the world. Made you see things for what they actually were.

You always seem to let your mind wander on your way home. Your foot catches in a crack in the stone ground. You catch yourself on the wall, planting your palms onto the stone and gritting through your teeth. Dumbass, you tell yourself. You take a second to catch your breath, your knees trembling a bit before steadying out.

Fucking Ripred.

And you aren't even religious.

"Ms. Seung," a deep voice calls out from behind you. What the fuck. You whip your head around to meet the voice. A man stood there, dressed in a slate wool jacket and pleated jet-black pants. A hat covers his face. You can't see his eyes. Your heart races in your chest. Thump thump. You can heart it beating in your ears.

"Please come with us."