The 4th Subject

Chapter 7: It's Just a Feeling, Right?

It had been three weeks since I came to California, and I'd gone through so many emotions. Over the span of two of the three weeks, we had the safe break, the hole in the floor, and that was just the beginning.

A couple days after the hole, Matt got a notification from Nest. Someone tried to break in. This had happened before, but this time, they were successful.

~ * ~

"Matt!" I yelled, "They got in!"

"They used a key fob!" Matt said.

We watched as this stranger went through Kevin's desk, the large cabinet by the armory, and the storage area in the back. He went into the office in the front, then Megadesk.

"He could not handle..." Woods said lowly.

I snorted and laughed.

"He couldn't handle Megadesk." Matt uttered in his deep Overkill voice.

We watched the hooded stranger go upstairs and break into Sam's office. He began to do something. Woods, Sam and I leaned in, as if we could hear it. Suddenly, Matt stepped back and set the headphones down.

"What?" Sam and I said in unison.

"He's screaming."

The three of us stood and walked over to the desk. We each took a turn listening to the screaming man. When it was my turn and I heard the deep scream, I threw the headphones off and stepped back.

"Nope, nope, nope..." I turned away. Why on earth did he scream like that? It sounded like a pain scream, as if he just got stabbed. It honestly could've been mistaken for a gorilla.

Something in the back of my mind was telling me I knew what was wrong. I blocked out what the others were saying as I racked my mind for what it could be. Then it hit me.

"Sam," I uttered.

"What?"

"The safe."

~ * ~

Since then, we discovered what was inside. The stalker left the safe open, so we were able to get into it. He left a strange item. It was what looked like an injector gun with a sinister-looking logo on it. The logo was three snakes intertwined. We later discovered that the injector gun was very similar to a meat injector.

In the safe, there was also a broken vial with the same snake logo symbol on it. We figured the bottle bottom had shattered when Sam dropped it. That also meant that the liquid inside the safe came from the vial.

We also noticed that there were two more spaces for two more bottles, one of the same size, the other was larger. The spaces were empty, as if they were already used. We came to the conclusion that whoever the stalker was had injected himself with the strange liquid that had burned through the floor.

Over this time, I was supposed to go home. I was supposed to be on a flight back to Florida. But, then my flight got canceled.

In fact, the entire airport was shut down because one of the workers earrings fell into someone's food. Yeah, it was a whole tiktok chain on the butterfly affect. It was also kinda funny, if you didn't consider the fact that I wouldn't be able to go home for another week or two.

Anyways, a couple days after that, we were able to buy the abandoned mountaineer. That scary, disgusting, red car was now Matthias. The real question now was, did we really want it?

After searching it and finding an assortment of sketchy stuff, we left the mountaineer outside. That was an awful idea, because the stalker broke into and vandalized it. Among other things, he spray painted "STRIKE 1" onto the side of the car. He was looking for something. And we weren't sure what.

~ * ~

Matt began to slip into a hazmat suit. He was going back through the mountaineer to find whatever the stalker was looking for. He checked the seat behind the drivers seat.

"There's literally... it's like right there in the center," Matt said, feeling the middle of the seat. He took the knife and said, "I'm just gonna cut."

He slowly cut through the top layer of fabric. Then, the first layer of foam. He pulled it back and dug his hand in.

"I'm not sure if that's anything, but it feels like something," Matt muttered, his voice muffled by the mask he was wearing.

He cut more fabric and foam away. He reached deep into the seat and pulled out what looked like a small, flat black box. I looked at it closely. I saw what looked like pages in it.

"Is that a journal?"

~ * ~

So, yes. We found a journal in the mountaineer. We looked all through it and saw nothing. We used black light, checked every individual page, nothing.

Every day was just more and more unsettling. I was supposed to go home. I was supposed to be home. And yet, I was still here. The closer it got to the day I'd be able to leave, the more unsettling it got. The more unsettled I felt.

Ever since the safe dropped, I'd been feeling something. Something strange. Something that told me I had to stay. Something that told me I was needed here.

I couldn't explain it, not even to myself, and yet, I felt like it was right. I felt like I had more purpose here than I thought. However, it was just a thought. Just a feeling.

It meant nothing, right?