In the morning, Elliot checked to make sure none of his flat mates had had any accidents in the night. He was relieved not to find any pools of vomit, but left them to sleep off their hangovers. Feeling the need to get out though, he donned running clothes, and set out for a morning jog. The sun was just burning up the last vestiges of a mist by the time he got to the park, and he was thankful for the clear weather. He jogged for his usual forty minutes, iPod clipped to his bicep, passing the homeless people who had spent their night on park benches, under grungy blankets, as the city woke up around him. Cars warmed up in the sun and then rolled onto the roads as their owners started the day, and the city of Los Angeles returned to it’s daily bustle and flow. When he stopped for a drink, he was amazed to find his forty minutes over already. Usually, he’d be drenched in sweat, panting for breath, muscles burning ever so slightly as the lactic acid started to build up.

            He set out again, this time going further into the park and taking the paths he normally avoided for their rough terrain. He ran and ran, pushing himself further. Finally, the ache came and he slowed to a walk before slumping onto a bench to catch his breath. His clothes were soaked with perspiration, but he felt… amazing. He’d been running a full hour longer than he normally did. When he recovered, he walked into town to the Starbucks he normally went to after his jog. The girl at the counter spotted him as he came in and started making his usual before she’d even said hello.

            ‘You’re late today. Good run?’ she asked.

            ‘Better than usual.’ He took his coffee from her, her fingers brushing his briefly. His breath caught as he felt the warmth from her hand slip into his. He imagined the capillaries under her delicate skin pumping full of tiny red blood cells, coursing through her body to her heart—He recovered before she noticed anything, and quickly took a sip of his coffee as he turned to leave.

            Sensation flooded his mouth. Satisfying warmth rolled across his tongue, followed by the bitter-sweet of crushed beans, cream and sugar. His taste-buds went wild and then the dark liquid slipped down his throat. He felt it warming him from the inside out.

            ‘Wow!’ He gasped. ‘Have you added something to your coffee?’

            She looked at him worriedly. ‘No, why? Is it alright? I can make you another one if—’

            Elliot shook his head. ‘No, this one’s… fantastic!’ He took another sip and pushed through the doors onto the street.

            ‘See you tomorrow!’ She called after him, and he waved absently, totally absorbed in the assault on his taste buds.

            Everything seemed brighter on the way home, somehow sharper, cleaner. And the city felt louder than normal too. At the apartment, Tanya was awake, but only barely. He found her in the kitchen, glowering at a coffee pot, hands gripping the counter for support. Elliot slipped his arm in past her and flicked the switch on the machine, turning it on. She groaned and slumped onto a stool at the breakfast bar.

            ‘I think someone replaced the dance floor with my head last night.’

            Elliot grunted in amusement and poured them both glasses of orange juice. She grimaced and chucked hers back in gulps.

            Between sips, he tried to explain to her about his senses. ‘Tan, it’s like… colors are brighter and… richer. Like my eyes are sharper, and I can see details I’ve never seen before. God, and the taste of things…. like little explosions all over my tongue… and the smells!’

            She glowered at him since he’d begun talking louder as he continued. ‘It’s your adrenaline. It does that to the brain. You jogged longer; of course you got your body working harder.’

            He started to argue, but she growled and the coffee machine gurgled with liquid. He sighed instead and set his cup in the sink before heading for a shower. As the bathroom door locked shut behind him, he heard her yell out.

            ‘You use all the hot water and I’ll break your kneecaps!’

            To which the house responded with a chorus of groggy groans and pillows being pulled over aching heads.

            Byron strode purposefully down the street, coming to the corner where several women loitered, mini-skirts hitched high, waiting to procure customers for the night. One of them saddled up to him and placed her hand on his chest, feeling his muscles bulge.

            ‘Looking for a good time soldier?’

            He looked down at her and then lifted her hand off of his chest. ‘I’m not that kind of customer. I’m looking for Cassandra.’

            She snatched her hand from him and back-stepped away. ‘She’s making home down on 47^th now.’

            He inclined his head respectfully and slipped around them, continuing along his way. ‘Be safe ladies. There’s all kinds about this town.’

            When he reached 47^th street, it wasn’t hard to know where to go. The building front was draped with gypsy weaves and blankets. An evil eye had been painted in something dark and red over the doorframe, visible only once you were standing beneath it. He pushed open the door and heard a chime sound deep inside the building. The foremost part of the building was a brothel, serving both as a literal front and a front to the lady’s real service. The whores in front plied their wares to him in vain, until a door at the back opened up and a woman gestured for him to follow her. The others quickly lost interest.

            He followed his guide down a flight of steps, his eyes bright in the darkness. The stairs ended and he felt the cold of the underground around him. This part had been built specially, for it was far deeper than the foundations of the rest of the structure. She led him down a long hall with several private rooms, to the door at the end. It opened into a waiting room, chairs set about elegantly, interspersed with chaise-lounge’s. The tasteful décor contrasted sharply with the garish upstairs. She gestured to another door on the far side of the room, and heard her whisper to his mind.

            ‘Mistress Cassandra will see you now.’

            He bowed his head and entered slowly into the room beyond.

            Cassandra sat deep in the shadows, a further veil covering her face. As soon as the door shut behind him, a cacophony of whispers filled his mind and he struggled to tune them out.

            ‘Close your ears Byron.’ She muttered. ‘The silence is our friend down here. An ally from listening minds. And pay no head to the spirits that seek your attention. You can give them nothing.’

            He closed his inner ears and took a seat in one of the padded velvet chairs, slipping a tear of paper onto the table. Her hand snatched out and slapped across his, pinning it to the table, the paper below it.

            ‘Becoming superstitious, Byron?’

            He shook his head.

            ‘Shame… it might do you some good.’ She chuckled.

            ‘Two of my family—’

            ‘Justin and Alyssa.’

            ‘—Yes. About a month ago, they caught a Fear Feeder hunting a boy. They didn’t get to him in time to save him… but we left him safe. Last night, they say they saw him again. They said he was unchanged. I went to the Tome and looked for an explanation. I found these two words mentioned, and then nothing else in the entire volume.’

            ‘And you want to know what they mean?’

            ‘And what he means.’

            A tome, far larger than his shot from the shelf on their right and opened on the table before her. ‘Yours is a smaller version of a greater original. Much was left out of the versions created for the families.’

            Byron felt his hand grow hot beneath hers. The pages of the tome flickered past on their own before stopping finally. She passed her free palm over the text, her lips trembling behind the veil.

            She lifted her hands from both places and sat back heavily on her chair. He listened to her heavy breathing in the dim light for several minutes before breaking the stillness.

            ‘Well?’

            She chuckled. ‘Have your kids watch him. Protect him if it comes to that. Make sure he isn’t picked up by another family.’

            ‘Should I bring him in then, to my own?’

            Cassandra leaned forward again. ‘Oh no. I wouldn’t do that yet. It may be nothing. Nothing at all… But… if it isn’t…’ she trailed off. ‘You’ll want him in your gang. I must converse with the others.’

            He bowed his head, though he didn’t understand, and stood, backing to the door. As he opened it, he heard her voice now in his head. ‘Keep him safe, Byron. Keep him out of sight and out of mind.’

            As days passed, Elliot found things changing about and around him. But always minor things. He became faster at reading. His hands moved faster when writing. Daily, he’d push himself further when exercising, And his eyes had begun to grow more sensitive to light. His optometrist told him nothing had changed, that his eyes were the same as they’d been since he was twelve, and couldn’t explain the increased sensitivity. Alone, each thing seemed as nothing, but when combined, they created an intricacy of paranoia that settled around him. He paid increasing attention to the people he encountered and became suspicious of those he seemed to run into repeatedly.

            He confessed all of this to Tanya one night, curled on the couch. ‘I think I’m going crazy, Tan.’

            ‘I think you need to get laid.’

            ‘Oh right. Because a series of debauched one-night stand with inappropriate men would do wonders for my mental health.’

            ‘Fine. But at least come out with us this weekend. You might meet someone. Ya’know?’

            ‘Sure. Maybe I’ll wake up locked in a cell again.’ It was as if someone had thrown the brakes on his train of thought. He moved to his room without explanation to his friend, and opened his computer. He found GoogleEarth and moved from his area code across the city, looking for something familiar. Finally he found it. The Factory.

            He skipped class the following day, taking a bus downtown as close as he could get, and then walked the rest of the way. He stopped outside the gate, staring up at the decrepit building. Broken windows gazed down at him like eye-less sockets, and the rusted gate yawned like a set of old teeth. He took a seat on a low wall across the street and waited.

            Hours passed, as did a few people, but none showed any interest in him or the building. He left finally when his stomach started to rumble, but had already decided to return the following day.

            By the end of the week, it had become something of an obsession. He found time in every day, to make his way downtown and perch on the wall outside. He wasn’t sure what he was waiting for—what he was expecting, but he was drawn to it. There was something so perfectly abandoned about it, that it seemed… protected. As if it were kept in a state of perpetual abandonment by some purpose or will.

            His Friday night came and passed in a drunken haze. His flat mates convinced him to join them once more, and before long he found himself doing shots of brightly colored liquor with them. As the film of inebriation descended, he watched the lights spiral out of control. Bodies writhed around him, grinding and pulsing like cells in the blood flow of music. He backed into someone by accident and felt a shock run through his body. They both turned, and fell still amongst the other dancers. Something passed between them—a moment of surprise and recognition on some lower level of consciousness. The other man’s eyes seemed to catch the glowing light and refract and intensify it until his eyes gleamed.

            Elliot felt his world shudder and flash. Noise became muted. The dry mist around their feet rose and the other dancers faded into translucent shadows that flickered between them. The walls of the building faded too, until he could see in all directions. He saw more opaque figures moving through the ghostly ones. He looked down and found a web of lines slicing through the mist around his feet, crisscrossing and connecting each of the solid figures to himself and to one another. There were a few others in the club, but he could make out many more moving outside, through the walls of the buildings and across the city.

            Someone bumped into him and he staggered. The lines touching him curled back on themselves and his world shuddered back into life, the vibrancy of the club returning like a blast to his senses.

            He looked up, but the man was gone. Their shared moment lost.

            One of his friends forced a drink into his hands and he lifted it to his mouth unconsciously, the sweetened alcohol almost cloying, but enjoyable and energizing as it slid down his throat.

            What followed, he couldn’t remember, but eventually, he realized he was stumbling towards the factory’s gates. How he’d got there, he had no idea. He staggered, reached out, and caught himself on the chain. It tore off in his hands, and he fell hard against the wrought iron. He felt a sharp pain in his arm and looked down,

            His shirt had been sliced open by the rusted metal, and the skin beneath parted to show muscle. He stared dumbfounded as his flesh knitted itself back together, without leaving a mark. He blinked several times and then prodded his arm stupidly.

            He sat up slowly—when had he sat down? The paving stones under him kept swaying and drifting. He rose awkwardly to his feet and looked behind him. The gate stood ajar and he struggled to move towards it, the ground rocking like waves on a sea beneath his feet. He saw the street through the iron bars, and then the wall he’d sat on, beyond. He halted, and then pivoted. He looked up at the building rising before him, and then looked back at the road. Somehow he was already inside the compound.

            The weeds that pushed through the flagstones felt like arms grappling at his legs. He tottered down an alley created by shipping crates towards a corrugated steel door. It rattled as he collapsed against it and finally blacked out.

            Alyssa and Justin sat atop the compound wall near the main gate.

            ‘What’s he doing?’ He asked.

            ‘I think he’s passed out.’ She answered.

            ‘Did you see in the club when—’

            ‘—He connected to the net.’

            ‘We should tell Byron.’

            ‘About his arm too.’

            ‘Well we can’t just leave him there.’ Justin kicked his feet against the wall.

            ‘Why not? He made it this far drunk. He can make it home when he wakes up sober.’ Alyssa rose to a crouch as if to leave.

            ‘What if the police find him? Or someone else. I’m going to stay until dawn, make sure nothing happens to him.’

            She stood and kicked her heel on the stone. ‘Fine. I’ll go tell Byron. Leave yourself enough time to get home.’ She kissed the top of his head and then ruffled his hair before leaping to the ground—a good ten or twelve feet below—and headed back into the city on foot.

            He waited several hours after which the boy had yet to move from where he’d slumped to the ground, before climbing to his feet and stretching. He moved along the wall a ways and then ran back, launching his feet sideways from the edg. He hurtled through the air and landed on top one of the shipping crates nearly half-way across the courtyard. He teetered on the edge, bending his knees and waving his arms to regain his balance.