Headsets For Fear

VILLAIN 02 : AMARA

Sixteen years before

Amara entered her cabin in the Web, panting slightly. She had gone outside to enjoy a little walk in the morning. Her office was feeling way too stuffy to live in. However, she hadn't taken into account that walking for nearly two miles could make her tired beyond imagining.

She always hated the fact that even though she had above average intelligence, she was weak. There was something wrong with her heart from childhood, because of which she got tired very easily. Perhaps, it was nature's way to humble her, to remind her that she wasn't all powerful. She didn't mind it most of the times, as her work didn't involve anything more than typing characters and making machines. Still, it couldn't hurt to go for a walk sometimes.

She slowly sat down, taking deep breaths to calm her racing heart. It would take around half an hour for her to recover from this. What a waste of time.

She was about to grab her water bottle, when Leah came in. The annoyed scowl in her face was enough indication that Amara needed to prepare herself for a rant.

"Child problems?" She asked.

Leah nodded. "I had no fucking idea that taking care of a ten year old would be so damned hard."

"Why, what did he do?"

Leah sighed, wiping her forehead dramatically. "He stayed up all freaking night to read a book about criminals. I had to sing a lullaby to him to put him to sleep, since he was so scared I thought he would wet himself."

"But he didn't wet himself," Amara clarified.

"Of course he didn't! He's ten years old, for fuck's sake!"

Amara bit her lip to keep herself from smiling. "And since when did you become a singer?"

Leah rolled her eyes and shrugged. "I'm decent enough to put a child to sleep."

Amara chuckled at that.

Leah and Tom had tied the knot around six months ago. Leah wasn't the best when it came to conjugal life, but she did okay. They wanted a kid, but Leah said there was no way she was going to suffer for nine months and change the diapers of the kid for a year more. She wanted to adopt a more or less grown child. And there they were.

Amara was glad she herself didn't have any distractions to pry her attention away from her job. But it was Leah's life, so she could do whatever she wanted with it.

"Anyways, I tried out the code you sent me in my machine, and it was full of glitches. Doesn't send any fear waves at all."

"I wasn't expecting it to work," Amara murmured. "I was hoping you could tell me what the errors were."

"Yeah, come over to my house, and I'll give the full list. But Amara, it's been almost two years. Aren't we proceeding a bit too slowly?"

"We could've proceeded faster if we had more people who knew brain hacking. Which we don't," Amara replied.

"You mean them, right?" Leah asked.

Amara didn't reply. Mark's death hadn't affected her as much as she thought it would, which was a good thing. But when Andrew suddenly abandoned her, running away stealthily in the dead of the night, it was a shock hard to recover from.