Seek {Superhero AU} - Ending 1

21: What Do You Want From Me?

A/N: You know things are about to go horribly wrong when the track is Billie Eilish again lmao

WPOV

Track: bury a friend, Billie Eilish

Nico and I part ways after the park. I'm sure we'll meet again tonight to stake out Underworld Ores some more, but for now, I'm more just ready to collapse on the couch and take a nap. It's been a long week.

I whistle as I walk down the street to my house. I'm going to be home a little earlier than usual today—this whole week I've been home earlier than usual. I used to study in the library every day after school for an hour or two to get my homework done. I'm not as productive at home. But recently I'm just too tired to go directly to the library.

As I step into my driveway, I think I see someone in the window of my house, but they move too fast to really get a good look. It's probably my mother—sometimes she moves around quickly like that. I think her work as a custodian makes her a very efficient person. When you have only a small team of custodians to clean a building as large as Underworld Ores's headquarters, you adapt to moving quickly, I think.

Also, my mother is desperate to get promoted at some point. She won't admit it, but I think we struggle more than she lets on. A custodian doesn't make much—when we first moved here, we couldn't keep power. It got so cold; we sometimes lost heating. At some point, she got a promotion, and we were able to move out of our shitty apartment to an actual house in the suburbs. I don't quite know how she managed it—this house should be too expensive for us. Any house should be expensive for us. New York is already so much more expensive than Texas. I feel horrible that my issues forced the move, but sometimes I think my mother does like it here.

The cold is worth it to me; I'm willing to suffer the ice if it means I keep the community I've found here. But sometimes when my mother gets home from working a double shift, the dark bags under her eyes force me to remember that I'm not the one sacrificing so that we can stay.

I step up onto the porch. My hand reaches for the doorknob, and I'm just about to turn it and call to my mother that I'm home when I get goosebumps. There's no obvious sign that anything is wrong. I don't know why I suddenly feel sick to my stomach. It's similar to how I felt the weeks after I was attacked in Texas: the feeling that if I open this door, I will not ever come back. If I open this door, I die.

I back away. Something is wrong. I can't go in there. I can't quite breathe correctly—my lungs freeze and then exhale too hard and then I can't breathe in and—

And then I hear it. A robotic voice—muffled. Quiet. Coming from inside my house.

"Shit," I whisper. "Oh my God."

I turn to run, and then panic over and my mind turns fuzzy. Because I can't run. What if my mom came home between shifts? What if she didn't even have a second shift today? The murderer could be in there threatening my only family. If I run, the villain might get my mom instead of me—assuming they haven't found my mom already. My heart beats in my throat as I force myself to turn around and face the house again.

I can't go through the front door—that would be death. If it's a trap—and it probably is—then they're expecting me to come in through the front door because that's how I always get in. I exhale, trying to take control of my senses again, and hurry to the back of the house.

The kitchen window is open on the side of the house. That must be how the murderer got inside. I duck under it as I pass—I can hear the robotic voice more clearly here, and the fear of hearing the voice so clearly paralyzes my muscles. I wish Nico was here with me—I don't want to have to face this alone.