Clashing Obsessions

Chapter 14 - Agent Cassanova

A/N: Let's think of it as this really long chapter making up for all the really short Blayne chapters lol

• • •

I am lying on the floor.

Slowly, I pull myself up to a sitting position and look around, taking in my vaguely familiar surroundings. The carpet is white, the chairs are many and crowded in the small room, the windows are large and light floods in. Climbing onto the sofa beside me, I peer out the window but see nothing but grass and the occasional tree.

Where am I?

After several minutes of uncomfortable uncertainty as I pace the room, I realize it's Becca's childhood home. I've only been here once before, when I met her parents, who still live here.

What am I doing here now?

From a room behind me, muffled voices argue, then running footsteps echo off the walls, and I follow the sound.

"Becca?" I call. No response.

In my peripheral vision, a little girl appears by the entrance of a hallway. She's about 120cm tall and has dark brown mid-length hair, but her head is turned toward the floor, so I can't see her face.

"Hello?" I say.

She looks up for a second, but doesn't meet my eyes, and a fleeting moment later, the ghost of a girl and her ever-pattering footsteps disappear down the dark hall.

"Wait!" I start to run after her. "Come back!"

Long and windowless, the passage quickly loses the last of the light from the open main room. The girl is far out of sight, and after a while, her footsteps fade out as well. Still, I continue down the hallway until I reach a wooden door. At least, I think it's wood — I can barely see, but it feels sturdy and textured against my outstretched hand, though I can't tell if it's real wood or synthetic. My hand travels along the surface toward the door knob, and it passes over an unevenly raised section that feels strangely familiar.

Quietly and carefully, I turn the knob and ease the door open. On the other side, a small bedroom seems to await my discovery, silent and ever so still. There's a closet to the left, a bed with a dark blue duvet cover on the back wall and an open window to the left of it.

I recognise it immediately — my childhood bedroom.

The young girl sits on the bed, digiNotes tablet resting in her lap, and watches me, her dark brown eyes staring at me intently, like she can see into my soul. Only now do I get a good look at her face, and I realize who she is.

She's... me.

"Did you find her yet?" She asks me, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Find who?"

She holds out the tablet, now recognizable as her— my— our diary, and I take it with great hesitation. However, after switching on the screen and virtually opening the dark green fabric-patterned cover, I don't find pages upon pages of a child's fears and feelings, but my adult self's notes on the xCodebreaker01 case. Lists of names, financial records, screenshots from security footage, diagrams of cybernetic structure, and seemingly endless theories in messy handwriting.

"Me," her quiet voice replies, answering my question.

I look up, and the girl staring back at me no longer resembles my childhood self. She's the same age, barely over seven, but has raven-black hair, blue eyes that almost seem to glow, and her hands, which rest by her sides, are made of metal.