Hollows In Time (✔️) | 'Hollows' Book Ⅱ

Chapter Sixteen

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H o l l o w s I n
T I M E
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12/09/16
Twelve months ago

Someone was following me. I could feel it. It was either a Guardian or an attacker. But I didn't want to take the chance. I whirled around, facing my stalker. A Guardian—was what I thought, but I couldn't be sure.

"You're taking the back routes." They greeted me with. It was a man, maybe in his thirties, with dark hair and light skin that was illuminated under the dim lights.

I nodded, "Trying to avoid civilisation here..?" I gestured around the alleyway that we were standing in. Dangerous, I know, but it was a normal route for me—back before the Academy ever existed in my world.

"You're also making it very hard to keep an eye on you." The man chided with a small shake of his head, then offered his hand to me. "Let's go back to civilisation." He announced, and so I followed him out of the dark tunnel.

"Are there others here?" I asked as we emerged into the street I was trying to avoid. Not a lot of people were out; it wasn't Friday—but it also wasn't Monday afternoon. I was coming back from my extra tuition after school, and the sun was starting to set a little earlier now that we had just broken into September.

I felt the Guardian peer at me from the corner of his eye, probably trying to suss out my motives. "Yes." Well, he didn't lie.

I gnawed at my lip, "Is Jameson here?" I asked in a quiet voice and I could feel the air suddenly become thick. We were walking under streetlights, my house in view, with a dispersing sunset in the background, the pink and red glow outshining the moon, a faded dime in the sky. But the Guardian stopped. I halted too late, and nearly went crashing face first into a driveway filled with pebbles. If Jameson had been here, his arm would've went flying out, ready to catch my fall.

But this Guardian was different. He was stiff, his gaze elsewhere. And I read the signs.

"He is here, isn't he?" I jumped straight onto his uneasy facial expressions.

"Where?" I shot at him next. Jameson is here. At a date of September the twelfth, it has currently been a whole three weeks since I have been within a one metre, and closer, radius of Jameson. And I still loved him. And I wanted to see him. And I wanted to kill the rule makers of the Academy. The three step guide to success.

The Guardian showed no other signal that I had picked up on a trail that I shouldn't have, except for his grimace on his face.

"I can't let you see him." He told me. But I had to. And when you have that kind of want coursing through your veins, there's nothing, no one, that can tell you that you can't do it. Impossible as it is, I will do it.

Then it hit me. "Jameson has been here the whole entire time?" It smacked me in the face with full force that, whilst I had been falling—or crawling—into a pit of endless depression, Jameson had been near this whole time. He had been here.

The Guardian shifted, but didn't make any attempt to try to force me into my house. "He's been in and out of the mission for two weeks now—you know, messing around with security cameras at our base several miles out—and other amateur things." I ignored his final comment.

"Several miles out."
"At a base."

The Guardian placed two strong hands on my shoulders and steered me up my drive. "If you don't hurry up you'll miss your tea." He told me, clearly fed up of talking about this. He took his hands off my shoulders to place a firm knock on my front door, then whizzing off in true Guardian fashion. I turned around, looking for a lingering shadow or whisper of a Guardian. I could find none.