Page 7 of Those That Don't Exist
I have to admit her work ethic is flawless. She’s clearly dedicated to completing her degree on time. Every spare moment she has she’s in the library.
She’s quiet, spending quite a bit of time alone, but maybe she’s just an introvert. I didn’t know her before the car crash so can’t judge. She does, however, become more animated around her two closest friends. The two females she lives with.
I’d brought some of my work with me to the cafeteria the other night and was reading through a report when I heard a giggle from across the diner that sent goosebumps erupting across my flesh.
I’d looked up and sure enough the three females sitting several booths down had burst into laughter. I hadn’t been paying enough attention to know what they were talking about but the noise had caught me off guard. It’d made me realise this was the first time I’d seen her laugh, smile even. Whatever had caused it made her entire face light up. I’d seen a fiery lightness to her in that moment that I’d not seen before and I couldn’t look away. The way her shoulders shook as the giggles descended into full belly laughter made the soft waves of her auburn hair bounce across her chest.
They’d quietened down after a few minutes, resuming a conversation about each other's days. I went back to reading. That image though, of her face in happiness, returned to me later that evening as I recounted my day to Adicious.
After that I found myself taking my work to the library or the diner more often so I could be around her a little more, so I could catch any happy moments she had.
Not today though, I had a particularly pressing article to get written up so I was in my tiny square office.
As distracting as Adicious’s project was becoming, I wasn't about to neglect my PhD work. The war had broken out just as I was about to start studying at this level so I’d never had the opportunity. It hadn’t been hard to edit a few certificates and fake an ID. One application, and an interview later and I was on a research grant to study the psychology behind the construction of the death camps.
It was as fascinating as it was morbid, and it meant no questions were raised for all my access requests to the prisoner data.
Both sets of research had made great headways. The piece I was typing up was for a journal, my first publication, and we’d had word from the group sent off on the lead from my other research. They think they’re getting close to finding him, having found evidence he’s living in the remote town of Creysant on the northern shores. They are going to convince him to return to our pack any day now.
I had mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I wanted all of us survivors reunited. It was in our nature to band together. However, I knew what they’d be walking into. Adicious did not run the pack in the same way as it had been before the war.
Not like my parents had governed it.
Pain lances across my chest at the memory of how things were. I think they’d want me to reunite any remaining members if I could, even if things were different. It had taken me decades to pull my head out my ass and do it, but I was finally making progress. Even if I was doing it from under someone else’s rule rather than ruling myself.
I failed to save them. The guilt still stalks around in my head, I’ve just learned how to keep it behind bars. I’ll never be able to lock it away fully but I’ve finally stopped letting it consume me.
My research has been cathartic in that process. Learning about how each individual met their end, putting together the final pieces of their puzzles feels good. It's depressing as shit but as I write up each one and send letters to their remaining family members, if they have any, feels like I’m finally doing good in the world.
As much as I hate it I also have to thank Adicious for my current sobriety. He had sought me out several times over the decades succeeding the war. I’d refused him each time. Five years ago, however, he came with a folder of death certificates and enough of an idea that some were falsified - that evidenceis what finally snapped me out of the thirty-five-year bender I’d been on.
I took the blood oath that night and returned to Froan City determined to find anyone I could that had escaped. It took three years for me to get clean enough to go undercover at the university without blowing my cover, and another six months to put the right documents together.
It's been a tedious process but I’m finally piecing together some patterns. I was close to finding more survivors, I could feel it. Today wasn’t going to be that day though, following a couple more hours deep diving I had to concede that another death certificate was legit, another one was actually gone. I noted their name and began the work to trace their former pack, to see if there were any survivors I could inform.
My phone alarm chimes, bringing my mind back to the here and now. I had to be home for a pack meeting tonight. As I’d been too absorbed in my work I hadn’t gone to see my little demi-Fae yet today.
Sighing, I shut down my work, lock my office and leave the post-grad building. I pause on the street before crossing and striding under the archway onto the main plaza. Aurora would be in the library currently, having finished her last lecture an hour ago, so I cut across the square and walk along the river past the lecture halls to the library behind.
Just as I’m walking through the glass doorway and finding my pass to swipe at the entrance turnstiles I catch her scent. Halting, I turn to see her swiping her card on the opposite side, leaving earlier than she ever has since she got back.
Why today, I mentally sigh. I needed to be home in two hours and finally she is doing something interesting. I had intended on just watching her for half an hour from the stacks before heading off.
She’s messaging someone on her phone as she passes by me. I hadn’t yet pulled my card out, so I fein patting my pockets like I’m searching for it before faking a sigh, turning and leaving immediately.
Adicious will be interested in her change of habit so despite my lack of time I begin to follow her back through the main campus.
I stalk her from a distance. Following her scent I have to admit my own curiosity has peaked.Where are you going, little project?
I don’t have to wait for long to find out. She heads straight, along the river path until she’s passed the lecture halls and then turns right. Ducking down the cobbled street of housing we arrive at the student gym.
I haven’t watched her in the gym since she got back to campus, having seen enough of her hospital physio sessions, but I need to know why she’s here early. If she spends any time at all here, which lets face it, is likely, I am going to be late home. It takes at least thirty minutes to get across the city and to the valley where my homestead is. And that’s with my supernatural speed.
I shoot a text to Mitch, one of the few males in my pack I would consider a friend, to explain I’ll probably be late. I’m going to pay for this but my gut tells me to follow her.
Mitch: Adicious is going to be pissed.
I know, tell him it's about the female though, I may have something.
