Elias made no immediate movement.
The alley was stifling with paper and wet concrete. One of the delivery trucks came by with its engine roaring and somewhere there was a radio playing a song he did not know. Life continued its incessant noise and negligence like something unusual had just touched his head.
Eligibility check... incomplete.
The words would not come out of him.
He wiped his foreheads and he laughed inwardly. A tired sound. The good people were the way their mind made them when they were trying to shield themselves against breaking.
Stress, he told himself.
That's all this is.
Suspension. Money problems. Hunger. Naturally his head would begin to play games.
Even then his pace was slower in quitting the alley.
He had walked till his legs were sore and the sky turned a low blue that precedes night. Neon signs flickered on. Windows glowed. Individuals were coming together in small groups conversing, laughing, leading a life that appeared so distant to his life.
A phone battery was depleted and his thoughts were poor by the time he got to his apartment building.
The passageway before his door was empty. Too quiet. He hung about and listened, and unlocked it.
Inside, nothing had changed. Same narrow space. Same small table. Same cracked ceiling. The room welcomed him as usual, without any judgment, without solace.
He caused his bag to fall and sat on the bed.
Suspended.
The word came into his head slowly another time.
No job meant no income. No income meant overdue rent. Rent arrears were questions. And questions always were a source of pressure.
Elias sat back and looked at the ceiling.
He had played by the rules. Stayed quiet. Stayed careful. Secure systems that were supposed to secure individuals like him.
And yet the system had disposed of him.
His stomach twisted.
He checked his phone again. Still no messages. No explanation. No apology.
Just silence.
This evening sleep was divided into portions.
He fantasized the infinity corridors. Shut doors before he could get them. Whispers which are out of hearing. Whenever he attempted to hear, the sound went away.
On waking the room seemed to be heavier.
Light in the morning had slipped over the blinds. His phone was hissing somewhere next to him- another bank alert, another hypothetical constraint.
Elias sat up slowly.
It is then that he became aware of something unusual.
The room felt... sharper.
Not brighter. Not clearer. Only sharper, as though the edges of things had been made lightly drawn. The electricity ticking in the walls sounded more. The ticking of his ancient clock was calculated.
He frowned.
You must get rest, you must get rest," he said to himself.
He stood up, went to the bathroom and dipped water on his face. The same weary man was seen in the mirror. No glowing eyes. No signs of madness.
Good.
It was another day he missed his breakfast and went out.
He was welcomed by the city with movement and sound when something appeared to be wrong. He heard little things that he was normally not attentive to, bits of conversations, a nervous person glancing at his watch, a woman holding her phone too hard.
His mind was almost like it would not tune anything out.
At one corner in the street a man ran on to him.
"Watch it," the man snapped.
I am sorry, Elias said in an automatic manner.
He stepped two times--then paused.
There came an abrupt certitude in his breast. Heavy. Uninvited.
That man is about to be robbed.
The thought wasn't a guess. It wasn't fear. It came complete like a fact recalled and not imagined.
Elias turned.
On the opposite side of the street, there was a figure that was too near the rear of the man. Too calm. Too patient.
His heart started to race.
Be not stupid, he said to himself.
You are fantasizing once again.
The figure moved.
A hand slipped. Fast. Clean.
The man shouted.
"What the--!"
The thief bolted. The crowd reacted too late.
Elias was paralyzed with half-suspended amazement.
It occurred just in the way he was aware of it.
Lo, the man swore, and looked in his pockets. There were those who shook their heads and passed. The city assimilated the time and continued onwards.
Elias's hands trembled.
Fate, his thoughts had told him.
But his chest said otherwise.
He continued on a brighter pace, his mind clattering.
The voice. The pressure. The knowing.
That evening, he tested it.
Small things at first.
He stood hesitating on one side of the road--and before he could cross some vehicle rushed on where he would have crossed. He stood irresolute in front of a cafe--and then, in a moment, there was screaming within.
It was the same feeling, first every time. Quiet. Certain. Unexplained.
By evening he was scared inside his bones.
In his apartment, Elias closed the door and crossed in front of that door puffing.
"This isn't real," he said aloud.
The room didn't answer.
He paced. Sat. Stood again.
And then, he said, scarcely above a thought, go on, you know, if you are there, speak.
Silence.
Then--
That pressure again. Behind his eyes. Stronger this time.
The air felt tight.
Condition met," the voice went.
"Observation phase extended."
Elias's breath caught.
"What do you want?" he asked.
No response.
The sense was taken away and his heart was beating faster and his inquiries remained unresponded.
Elias scrambled on the door until he sat on the ground.
Whatever this was it was no longer imagination.
Something had noticed him.
Something was watching.
And now Elias began to comprehend one thing more--
It was silence that kept him safe all the time.
Silence was beginning to get dangerous now.