To be prey [1]

'...how should I go about with my life with this now, I wonder?'

Gazing out the window of the car, my mind wandered, expounding upon the questions that had bugged me since I left that government building disguising itself as a pharmaceutical company.

Honestly, it felt like a fever dream. All of it, I mean. The Anomalies and me being an Aberration.

But then again, I'm someone from another world, so what that lady named Roosevelt said didn't sound too outlandish.

Amidst my thoughts, however, I suddenly noticed something odd. 'Hmm... Now that I think about it, why am I acclimating to this info so easily?'

Surely finding out about all of this information would have made me, a fairly emotional person, think about existential dread for a few days at least.

But for some odd reason, I was accepting it rather easily.

Almost as if...

'Almost like how Roosevelt explained it.' My gaze sharpened upon forming that thought. 'Like how Anomalies became an integral part of reality and won't be questioned...'

Was I being affected by an Anomaly right now, then? One that warped perception, dulled fear, numbed awe?

Perhaps that was the reason. Or not. Either way could be valid, to be honest.

As I looked at the distance, engrossed in my thought...

- Beep!

Out of nowhere, a blaring horn suddenly jolted me from my thoughts, startling me. Then another. And another.

A sudden cacophony of car horns broke through the air, sharp and dissonant, shaking the glass slightly.

"What the..."

I blinked, turned my head outside, and realized that a traffic had completely stopped. A long, seemingly unmoving line of cars stretched ahead along the freeway in the middle of the day.

I leaned slightly forward, peering past the windshield. 'Huh. Did something happen? An accident maybe?'

Wanting to shake the weird silence inside the car, I looked at the driver and decided to speak up. "Hey… looks like we hit some traffic. Maybe there's a wreck up ahead?"

No answer.

The driver continued staring straight ahead.

I maintained my placid smile. '...yeah, you're getting two stars from me, buddy.'

"...Mister?" I tried again, this time leaning forward a bit more.

After that second call from me, the driver finally seemed to have snapped from his daze and, slowly and stiffly, he turned his head toward me.

Right from the bat, I felt that something was off. The movement was too mechanical and delayed. It felt unnatural.

And when his face finally came into view, my breath caught in my throat.

Blank.

His eyes were wide and unblinking. Seemingly tunneling through me, yet saw absolutely nothing at all.

Then, with a voice too soft and too strained, like it was echoing from far off in a tunnel, he muttered, "Light..."

What followed then was a strained and dragged on groan, one that unsettled me in an instant.

"You...!" I reeled back instinctively, my body pressing against the car door.

What the hell was that?

He didn't blink once. He just kept staring at me.

My hand twitched, hovering near the door handle, ready to bounce out the car just in case.

And then, as if prompted by some kind of signal, I glanced outside the window to assess what was happening. But when I did...

I froze.

'The other cars… the other drivers...'

They were all staring at me. All of them.

Every last one had the same vacant face, eyes focused on me through windshields and mirrors and side windows of their vehicles.

They were all completely silent and were only watching me in the middle of the day, in the middle of a freeway.

"What did I get into this time?" I grimaced, finding the whole situation bizarre and terrifying.

But then I remembered Roosevelt's words from earlier.

"Aberrations..." My mouth opened, remembering what she said. "Can detect Anomalies..."

Is this... Is what I'm currently experiencing caused by an Anomaly?

But instead of me finding them via detection, it's the Anomaly itself finding me through attraction?!

"That doesn't make sense." I reasoned to myself upon that thought. "If I'd been an Aberration for a week now, why is it that this is the first time I've attracted an Anomaly?!"

"And where even is it?"

- Whirr

And as if responding to my words, a sudden buzzing sound suddenly cut through the air and produced a sharp piercing sound to my ears.

"Agh..." I groaned as I covered my ears. It felt like being blasted with a frequency.

Following that, I felt a strange connection suddenly forming inside of me, like something had tugged some sort of string that felt both tangible and intangible at the same time.

I shifted my eyes and looked out, and right outside the window, above the roof of a car, someone suddenly appeared, standing there and looking at me intently.

It was a young woman with light blonde hair swaying in the wind, wearing what seemed like a campus inform, standing upright.

Unlike the rest of the people watching me with vacant eyes, only she appeared to have some sort of control over her expressions. Although she was a bit far away, I could vaguely make out a tight-lipped smile plastered on her face.

Suddenly, she raised her hand and pointed directly at me who was covering my ears inside the car, and opened her mouth to utter a word.

Although I couldn't hear her directly, I managed to read what word her lips uttered.

"Light."

My blood ran cold.

That was all she said. One word, but was seemingly laced with intent, as if it were a declaration or a verdict.

And following it was chaos.

As if awakened by some kind of signal, the people who had been standing, sitting, or idling in their vehicles suddenly began to move. No, they began to get out!

Doors opened one by one, and from them, people poured out. Drivers stepped out from their vehicles, passengers followed, and some who appeared to be incapable of marching only turned their heads to me as if to keep watch. Every one of them, their vacant expressions flickering ever so just slightly into something else.

Then they started walking, no, marching towards me.

The driver, still seated ahead of me, reached towards me slowly, but this time his eyes weren't vacant. Rather, there was a hint of… eagerness. A kind of desperate devotion lighting up in the dimness of his pupils.

His hand stretched, fingers curled like claws meant to grasp, reaching out to grab me.

'No, no! No thank you!'

I flung his hand away and backed away almost instinctively.

Then with a burst of adrenaline surging through my limbs, I grabbed the handle, shoved the door open with my shoulder, and leapt out into the still freeway.

"Move, move, move...!" I hissed to myself as my shoes hit the road hard and I broke into a run.

Behind and around me, the asynchronous footsteps of too many people began to echo against the concrete, steadily growing louder.

Among them, I caught a fleeting glance at the girl who said the word that seemed to have agitated everyone. She, too, had descended from the top of the car and began to chase me. Her stride was calm, composed, but was not in any way slow.

She was ahead of the mob and was coming straight for me at full speed, bearing that scarily composed expression.

"What did I even do to you?!" I yelled as I bolted between the unmoving cars. "I—"

Suddenly, a hand from one of the cars grabbed onto my white dress shirt, causing me to stagger a bit.

Not wasting time, I pulled my shirt back from their grip, but it proved difficult. After another attempt, it finally let go.

Turning to look back at the mob, all I saw was that it had grown much bigger now that more people have gone out of their cars, both behind and ahead of me.

I clenched my jaw. "...just perfect."

Desperate to get out of here, I picked myself up once more and began sprinting. No matter what, even if what was ahead of me were a couple people, I need to get through them.

Because there was no way I would ever...

I looked back, and saw the suspected Anomaly's determined expression to capture me.

I shivered.

'Please... Just leave me alone...'

It's been a hard week.