Chapter 2: Echoes in the Alley

Chapter 2: Echoes in the Alley

David was still talking, his voice a frantic buzzsaw cutting through the funereal silence of the boardroom. Words like ‘unprofessional’ and ‘fumbled’ and ‘career suicide’ bounced off me without leaving a mark. They were pebbles thrown against a fortress of ice. The psychic scream had seared away all my mundane anxieties, leaving behind only the glassy, brittle shell of its aftermath.

“—after all the work we put in, Elara! Do you have any idea what you’ve just cost us?” David’s aura was a furious, blotchy red, smeared with the brown of financial panic.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My gaze was fixed on the city below, but I wasn’t seeing the architecture. I was sensing the hole. The psychic void left by the extinguished scream was a wound in the city’s emotional landscape. It wasn't fading. It was a lingering stain, a patch of absolute zero in a world of chaotic warmth.

“I need to go,” I murmured, my voice sounding distant and foreign to my own ears.

“Go? Go where? We need to do damage control! We need to call Henderson, apologize, beg—”

“No.” The word was quiet but absolute. I pushed away from the table, my legs unsteady. The migraine was a dull, pounding drumbeat now, a painful metronome counting down to something terrible. I grabbed my bag, my movements clumsy, and headed for the door, leaving David sputtering in my wake.

The lift ride down was an exercise in torture. Trapped in a metal box with three other people, their casual Friday moods—the low-key buzz of weekend plans, the relief of a finished work week—felt like sandpaper on my raw nerves. I squeezed my eyes shut, focusing on the cold spot, the tear in the psychic fabric. It was my only anchor in the overwhelming sea of normal.

Stepping out into the Octagon was like being hit by a wave. The usual downtown Dunedin rush—students from the university, tourists with cameras, office workers heading for a late lunch—crashed over me. A thousand minor emotions, a cacophony of small joys, petty annoyances, and fleeting desires, threatened to drown the delicate echo I was trying to follow.

Don’t lose it. Don’t lose it.

I closed my eyes for a second, right there on the crowded pavement, ignoring the jostling bodies. I let the noise wash over me and focused on the silence. The void. It was a tug, a psychic current pulling me north, up George Street, towards the university. It felt like the unnerving cold that leaks from a morgue drawer, a coldness that isn't just about temperature but about absence.

My professional life, my wrecked pitch, David’s fury—it all fell away. I was acting on an instinct I never knew I possessed. My curse, the one I had spent my entire adult life trying to suppress and control, was now a compass. A supernatural GPS pointing the way to a horror I couldn't yet name.

I walked, my pace urgent. I bypassed the trendy cafes and boutique shops, a ghost moving through a world I was no longer fully a part of. The people I passed were vibrant splashes of emotional color; a young couple’s infatuation was a brilliant, sparkling pink, a frustrated driver’s rage was a flash of dirty orange. But I was following the thread of utter blackness, of terrifying null-space.

The pull grew stronger as I neared the university campus. The grand bluestone buildings loomed, their academic serenity a stark contrast to the ugliness I was tracking. The cold feeling guided me away from the main thoroughfare, down a narrower street lined with student flats and graffiti-tagged walls. The sky, which had been a clear blue, seemed to darken as grey clouds rolled in from the coast, casting the city in a muted, somber light. A fine drizzle began to fall, slicking the cobblestones and adding a damp chill to the air that matched the one in my soul.

It led me here. To a narrow, grim service alley sandwiched between the back of the library and an old brick lecture hall. The smell of wet bins and decay hung heavy in the air. The pull wasn't a distant tug anymore; it was a suffocating pressure, a physical weight in the atmosphere. This was the place. The epicentre.

My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird in a cage of bone. Every instinct screamed at me to turn back, to run to my quiet apartment and lock the door. But the need to know was stronger. It was a terrifying compulsion.

I took a hesitant step into the alley. The psychic pressure was immense, like descending to the bottom of the ocean. The air tasted of ozone and old grief. It was quiet, save for the rhythmic drip of water from a rusty downpipe.

And then I saw him.

He was slumped against the damp brick wall, half-hidden by a large, overflowing dumpster. A young man, probably a student. He wore jeans and a university hoodie, his backpack lying in a puddle beside him. At first glance, he could have been drunk, or asleep.

I moved closer, my breath held tight in my chest. “Hello?” I called out, my voice thin. “Are you okay?”

No response.

I knelt beside him, my sensible work heels sinking slightly into the grime. His head was lolled to the side, his mouth slightly agape. His eyes were wide open.

And they were staring at nothing.

There was no physical mark on him. No blood, no sign of a struggle. His wallet was peeking out of his back pocket, his phone lay on the ground near his hand. This wasn't a mugging. This was something else entirely.

With a trembling hand, I reached out, not to touch him, but to use my sense. To feel for the flicker of life, the spark of consciousness, the emotional signature that every living being possesses. I braced myself for the residual terror, the echo of his final moments.

But there was nothing.

It wasn't that his emotions were faint, or jumbled, or overwhelmed by fear. They were gone. I was reaching into a human being and feeling the same horrifying void that I had sensed from twenty-two floors up. He was a shell. A mannequin of flesh and bone, the inner light utterly extinguished.

The scream I had heard, the one that had cost me my promotion, had been his. It was the sound of his soul being ripped out.

A wave of nausea washed over me, and I scrambled back, pressing a hand to my mouth. The cold drizzle intensified, soaking through my blazer, but I barely felt it. The predator that had done this hadn't just killed him; it had consumed him. It had drained the very essence of his being, leaving behind this hollow, empty vessel.

The truth crashed down on me with the weight of a granite tombstone. This wasn’t a random act of violence. This was a hunt. The chilling void I felt wasn't just the residue of an attack; it was the signature of the attacker. A creature that fed on human emotion, on life itself, was loose in my city.

This wasn't an ending I had stumbled upon. It was a feeding. And the hunter was still out there.