“Exactly, that’s why I know he’s a brat.”
Sydney tossed her head back and laughed, surprised she could find her sense of humor despite what they just learned. “Well, what do you think?” she finally asked.
“I think we need to be worried,” Xander nodded.
“I agree. But what do we do about it? We can’t call the cops.”
“Right. At least not yet.”
“What do you think is causing the smell?” she asked the dread killing off any light moments between them.
“Something not good.” Sydney knew he was right. Xander pulled out the phone Pan had given him. “Do you think we can trust this thing?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think we have a lot of choices. And he seemed to come in and out of the weirdness...so maybe its fine?”
“Yeah,” he muttered unlocking the phone and exploring it. “He said this couldn’t be tracked?”
“That’s what he said. He said we could email from there and everything.”
“Alright. Well I’m going to toss my old phone and use the bathroom. Do you need anything?”
“Yes. I’m starving. Can you bring me some chips or something? And candy bars! I wish I had kept one of the ones I gave the kids.”
“Sure. Anything in particular?”
“Nope. I’d eat an entire horse right about now.”
Xander’s eyes flashed at her. “That’s sexy.”
“Shut up,” she chuckled.
It was her turn to watch him jog across the street to the station and she wished for a moment that they were anywhere but where they were. Or if they were in Vegas it was getting wasted, gambling and yes, fucking their brains out, instead of trying to solve one creepy ass mystery.
When he returned, some of her thoughts must have shown on her face because he grinned. “What? You look like you want to eat me alive, and I don’t know if it’s in a good way or not.”
Her cheeks burned. “Give me food or you’ll find out,” she tried to laugh it off.
Xander handed her the bag and she grabbed it, not bothering to look before she ripped it open and started shoving the chips into her mouth. “Has anything changed?” he nodded towards Pan’s apartment.
“Nope. He’s still in there,” she said around a mouthful of cheesy chips.
“OK, I’m getting tired of waiting,” he declared a short time later, shoving trash into an empty bag.
“What?”
“Let’s do something,” he said.
“Like what?”
“Let’s go up there and knock on the door.”
“That’s a bad idea,” she shook her head.
“What else do you recommend?”
“I don’t know. Let me try to email him first.”
“Fine. Hurry.”
“Alright, alright. Give me the phone.”
Sydney pulled up her email and was surprised by how slow it was but she figured it was because of whatever Pan and done to it. A couple of strange icons blinked in the notification bar before the page opened.
To Pandaren87
From: SydneyInfinity
I need to talk to you. Can I come to you?
“Do you think it will work?” he asked.
“No idea. We will just have to wait. He normally responds pretty quickly.”
This time it was no different. Less than five minutes later the phone pinged with a notification. She opened the mail and her stomach sank. “Shit.”
“What?”
“Look at this.” She held the phone out so he could see.
“Damn.”
The email reply was gibberish.
To: SydneyInfinity
From: Pandaren87
you whoulen’5 dom3 h343l
Xander scratched at his beard. “What the hell does this mean?”
“That things just got worse.”
“Let’s just go knock on the door. See if there is anything we can do. If not, we call the cops and get the hell out of here. Because I don’t know what else to do.”
“I don’t either. OK. Let’s do it. Do we even have a weapon?”
“We have multiple,” he rummaged behind the seat. “These are non-noisy ones.” He pulled out a crowbar and then a tire iron and held the tire iron out to her. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what the noisy ones were. At her surprised look he shrugged. “Did you think I wasn’t going to come prepared?” he grinned.
“Well, good I guess. Let’s go.” She opened her door and Xander met her on her side.
“Here,” said spinning her by the shoulder. Without even warning her first he shoved the pointy end of the tire iron down the back of her pants.
“Holy shit that’s cold. And it’s in the crack of my ass,” she sputtered, clearly not happy.
“If you’d rather, I can put something warmer there,” he breathed in her ear.
“Good lord, you don’t turn it off do you,” she laughed, more breathless than she would like to admit.
“Nope,” he wiggled his brows at her. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sydney found it hard to breathe as she followed Xander towards Pan’s building. It was hot, but it wasn’t the air weighing on her chest. It was the fear of what they would find inside the supposed smelly apartment. As they crossed the parking lot to the stairs that would take them to the second floor, she was sure someone was going to pop out and ask them what they were doing. Or maybe another Short Man—why do I keep picturing doppelgangers of the same guy?—to jump out and try to kill her again.
Her and Xander’s footsteps clanged loudly on the metal steps and she cringed at how much noise they were making. He stopped in front of Pan’s door. She took a deep breath and raised a fist but Xander stopped her.
“Wait,” he whispered. He leaned close and put his ear to the door. After a moment he straightened. “I can’t hear anything. Go ahead.”
Sydney knocked sharply three times and they both waited. After a seemingly long time with no sounds from within, she knocked again. When she saw shadowy movement at the peephole her whole body stiffened. She wondered for a moment if she and Xander should be standing to the side of the door, just in case Pan started shooting. I really hope that isn’t a possibility. She didn’t have time to move even if she had wanted to because the movement at the peephole was followed by the sound of a lock disengaging. Without planning to do so, she reached out and grabbed Xander’s hand and was relieved when he gripped hers back.
Pan’s sweaty face appeared in the crack and at the same time a faintly sour stench wafted out and smacked Syd in the nose. Oh, yeah, that’s definitely something dead or he has a serious trash problem. She glanced at Xander and she could tell he smelled it too. “Hi,” she forced a smile and was amazed at how normal she sounded. Pan just stared at her. She decided to take a risk. “You got my email, right?”
He looked confused. “Email?”
“Yeah? I told you we needed to come talk to you. You said that was ok. I told you we were on the way.” Sydney refused to look at Xander or she was sure she would lose her poker face.
Something that looked like vague recognition flittered across his face. “Email. Right,” he opened the door a little wider. “What did you need?”
“Well, you had to leave so quickly today, we didn’t get a chance to discuss stuff.”
“What stuff?”
Sydney knew that he recognized them both. But he was confused enough to not be able to remember details. The weird email he sent them. The conversation earlier. She was hoping that he would just go along with her. “I was hoping you had found new information. Maybe gotten ahold of John.”
At the mention of his English friend Pan shook off his confusion. “Oh, right. Come on in.”
His face returned to its slightly nervous look that it had when she first met him and she let out a breath and felt Xander relax a little as well. He stepped back further and when the light hit the inside of the apartment Sydney wasn’t surprised
that it smelled. It was trashed. Dirty dishes and food wrappers and clothes littered the floor.
“Thanks,” she smiled again and stepped inside with Xander right behind her.
Pan pointed towards the couch and they had to move several articles of clothes and a dirty plate to make room to sit down. It was hard to sit with the tire iron down the back of her pants, even though it wasn’t cold anymore it made her sit uncomfortably stiff. Pan sat in a recliner on the opposite side of the room. As the moments passed, he seemed to grow more and more normal, or at least the normal that Sydney had known yesterday.
“Are you OK?” she asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. How did you know where I live?”
Sydney smiled comfortingly, at least she hoped it looked comforting. “You sent me your address.”
“Oh, right,” he chuckled to hide his confusion.
“So...were you able to find John?’
Pan sighed. “Kind of.”
“What does that mean?”
“I found a notice in the town’s paper. He’s dead.”
“Shit,” Syd winced. “I’m sorry.” Xander was staying carefully quiet. His presence seemed to make Pan more nervous so he was pointedly making himself as unobtrusive as possible.
“It’s OK,” Pan sighed. “I kind of figured he was anyway.”
“Still it doesn’t make it any easier. Have you found anything else out?”
Pan leaned back in his recliner and put his hands over his face. He looked as exhausted as he was dirty. “I’ve been trying to figure out what the connection between us is. That seemed to be the best place to start.”
“Any luck?”
“Well, John and I both have been beta testing video games…have you ever done that?”
“I don’t know,” Sydney shrugged.
“Oh, right. Memory problems.”
“Yep. Anything else?”
“I tried searching for deaths or other missing people that hadn’t been solved. Obviously, there were a lot of those. So, I tried searching for ones that involved people working in technology. I found multiple records going back about a year ago.”
Sydney’s stomach lurched, and not just from the ever increasing stench of the apartment. Am I one of those reports? She couldn’t bring herself to ask so she waited for Pan to elaborate. “The first one was in New York early last year. A video game designer died.”
“How?”
“That’s the crazy part. He was beheaded.”
Sydney’s entire body flinched and she tightened her hold on Xander’s hand. “Beheaded?” The memory of Don’s body lying in his storeroom missing his head flashing through her brain.
“Yep. There are a few other reports of missing people and some other deaths that are only notable because they worked with computers to some degree. They may or may not be related.” Pan rubbed his temples as if he had a headache. “I’m guessing they are related, it would be too weird of a coincidence for them to not be.”
“Right,” Syd nodded.
“Then the next thing is all of us having that dream.”
“I need to figure out who and what I am.”
“Yeah, cause right now we’re just guessing that you fit into the pattern.”
Sydney had grown tired of waiting. “Did you come across a missing person that fit my description?”
“I don’t think so…I haven’t gone through them all though. I was focusing on the deaths first.”
The combination of the awful smell of the apartment and the stress of learning about the other deaths and missing people caused Syd’s stomach to lurch again. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she gulped. “Can I use your bathroom?” She let go of Xander’s hand and stood up.
“No!” Pan snapped, sitting up straight in his chair.
“Um, please,” she swallowed hard.
“No. It’s broken.”
She felt Xander grab her hand and pull her back onto the couch. She wanted to look to Xander but she knew if she did their unspoken knowledge would be all over their faces. There is no doubt in my mind Pan has a dead girlfriend in this apartment somewhere. At the same time, Pan’s eyes returned to their confused and glazed look. “Sorry,” she mumbled, willing herself to not throw up on the floor.
“Why did you come here?” Pan asked, grabbing at the side of his head and flinching in pain.
“We came to talk,” she said slowly.
“I think it’s time to go,” Xander spoke under his breath.
Pan’s attention refocused on Xander. “Why are you here?” he shouted. “Who are you?” The young man’s face twisted in fury as he grew more confused. “How did you find me?”
“We’re going to go,” Sydney raised a hand and slowly stood.
Pan returned his attention to her and snarled, “Did you follow me?”
“Hey, man, we’re going, OK,” Xander stood with Sydney and tried to pull her behind him. His actions only seemed to anger Pan more.
Moving faster than Sydney would have expected of the scrawny, computer geek, Pan launched himself out of his chair and in one leap was flying through the air at Xander. Neither of them were able to get out of the way in time and Pan’s weight slammed into Xander hard enough to knock him off his feet and into Sydney. All three of them crashed to the floor. The weight of both men landing on her knocked the breath from her lungs with a loud whooshing grunt.
At first she couldn’t tell what was happening, but when an elbow grazed her chin, clacking her teeth together, she realized Xander and Pan were fighting on top of her. She began to squirm and wriggle, trying desperately to get herself out from underneath them. The metal of her tire iron was digging into her spine and Xander’s crowbar was cutting into her chest. It wasn’t until she found the leg of the couch that she had some leverage to pull herself free from the tussling bodies.
Once she was free she rolled onto her side and struggled to catch a breath. It took her so long to get her breath that black spots danced across her vision, but finally her diaphragm relaxed and sucked in a gasping lungful of air. She coughed several times and struggled to pull herself to her feet. Xander finally got in a good hit that snapped Pan’s head sharply to the side, stunning him enough that Xander was able to toss him to the floor. But, before Xander could get completely to his feet Pan was back, snarling and with something in his hand. It looked like a statue of a dragon with one broken wing.
Xander was bigger, stronger and better at fighting, but he was off balance and Pan’s weight sent him over backwards. As Pan raised the statue, Sydney retrieved her tire iron from where it had fallen. Pan was bringing the heavy looking statue down when Sydney swung the iron at his head. The metallic clang reverberated throughout the apartment and, in slow motion, Pan fell to the side and crashed to the floor.
“Oh, god,” Sydney moaned seeing the huge gash in Pan’s forehead.
“There wasn’t anything else you could do,” Xander assured her, pushing Pan’s legs off his and climbing to his feet. “That little fucker caught me off guard.”
“Is he dead?”
Xander bent over the body and put two fingers to his neck. After a moment he shook his head. “He has a heartbeat.”
Sydney’s shoulders relaxed a little. “Should we look for the girlfriend?”
Looking wary, Xander shrugged. “Stay here.”
Sydney didn’t argue. Using his jacket sleeve, Xander opened the door that she assumed lead to a bedroom and bathroom and she could see more trash and an unmade made inside. The smell grew worse and Syd pulled her shirt over her nose, hoping it would help at least a little. It didn’t. He was only gone for a minute before he hurried back out. “Go!”
“What did you see?”
“Just go. She’s dead.”
“Does she have a head,” Sydney dared asking.
“Yeah. It’s still attached” he grabbed her arm and led her towards the front door. “It’s just not really recognizable anymore.”
“Shit.”
�
�Yeah. Let’s get out of here in case someone heard us fighting. Did you touch anything?”
“No. You?”
“Nope.” Sydney pulled her arm loose. “Wait.” She turned back towards the messy and cluttered desk. “He has to have a computer here somewhere.” There were two monitors not attached to a tower, so she looked for a laptop. A messenger bag rested just inside the leg space of the desk. Taking a cue from Xander, she used the bottom of her shirt to unzip the bag. Inside were papers, folders and a laptop.
“What are you doing?” he asked picking up the tire iron and his crowbar and tucking them inside his jacket.
“Looking for this. It’s his computer. If he’s been doing research I want to see what he’s found. Plus, a safe computer would be handy.” A twinge of guilt flickered through her stomach. Not only did she almost kill Pan, but now she was stealing from him too. She started to feel sick again. “Come on,” she hoisted the heavy bag onto her shoulder and followed Xander from the apartment.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
They hurried towards their truck, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. Considering they were both sweaty and Sydney was pale while Xander had scratches on the side of his face, they were doing a poor job. With each step, she felt the adrenaline subsiding and her limbs felt like they were made of rubber. Shit just keeps getting worse and worse. But no matter how bad she felt about Pan, she couldn’t deny the exhilaration she felt at being alive. And not only was she alive, she had fought for her life. Well, I fought for Xander’s life, but it’s the principle of the matter. She was doing something to help herself.
“I can’t believe Pan got the best of you,” she snorted, feeling morbidly giddy.
Xander glared at her. “He caught me off guard,” he insisted again.
“Big, badass biker almost got beat up by a computer geek.”
Xander’s grip on her arm was fierce as he spun her and slammed her against the passenger door of the truck. Neither his hold on her nor his pushing her against the truck hurt. Instead, it caused her stomach to quiver and her breath catch in her throat. The look in his eyes was almost feral as he leaned over her. Oh, there you are. I had almost forgotten about you.
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