Monster

Chapter 12 - Shadow

While walking out of the grocery store one evening, I nearly ran into someone. He muttered an apology and kept going, with his head slightly lowered in deference. I muttered my own apology, but the spark of familiarity struck me like a wet plug in a socket: that nondescript brown hair, the unremarkable height and build. The face you'd forget until you saw it again.

My shadow was back.

I immediately dug my hand in my pockets, ensuring that my key and phone were both where I'd left them. I removed both and double checked that they were in fact mine and untouched. So the near miss wasn't an attempt to pick my pockets, but probably a chance to get a closer view of my face to verify my identity.

I walked home with a casual, unperturbed gait, all the while screaming in my mind to hurry. I refused to look behind me, though I took every rounded corner as a chance to glance discreetly in the direction I had come. But I never saw even the slightest hint of him. Still, upon reaching my door, I quickly unlocked it and smoothly stepped in, rounding to shut and relock it before dropping my key back into my pocket.

I took my bag of groceries to the tiny kitchen and set it on the counter. My heart pounded with adrenaline. I blinked – my eyes were dry again. I reached into my back left pocket for my bottle of eye drops and discovered that it was missing. So he had nabbed something after all. I wasn't sure why he'd want my eye drops, unless he already knew that I needed them frequently enough to keep them on me. After watching me for so long in Geneva, he probably did. He probably also knew which brand I preferred, and that meant having this bottle was a verification of my identity.

Also, I realized belatedly, were the fingerprints on the bottle. Wonderful.

I retrieved another bottle from the bathroom, making a mental note to switch to another brand as soon as possible. Then I went through the small apartment and searched for any minute sign of someone else's presence: a whiff of fragrance (though I hadn't smelled any the few times I'd been near him), a shifted object, a footprint in the carpet. There were none. I grabbed some clear tape and cocoa powder and did a quick fingerprint dusting on the door knobs, but came up with none but my own. If he had entered my apartment, he'd been careful, but I was decently convinced that he had not.

To be safe, I double checked the box at the back of the closet in the workout room. I had brought some of Francesca's old clothes with me from Geneva for the sake of creating a cover for my important documents. I carefully removed the neatly-folded fabric, then the false-bottomed wooden box stashed underneath. It and the papers and IDs hidden inside were untouched, as were the articles about Her which I'd put in the main compartment. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding then returned everything to its proper place.

I returned to the kitchen to put away my groceries. As I folded up the bag to throw in the paper recycling bin, I noticed a glint out of the corner of my eye. I nonchalantly walked over and pretended to open a cabinet, all the while glancing at the tiny, black plastic object tucked underneath it. It was a camera and the glint I'd seen was light reflecting off its lens.

There was only one thing to do: pretend it wasn't there. My safest course of action was to keep calm and carry on as though I weren't being surveyed, while doing nothing worth catching on surveillance. That, and find any other surveillance devices and figure out their blind spots.

I was certain that the camera had not been there the day before, and relatively certain it hadn't been there when I'd left for my trip to the store. This meant that my Shadow had installed it and any others around the apartment in the short time I had been out. Walking a mile to the store, buying a single bag of groceries, and walking back had taken me about an hour. Breaking in, installing cameras, and leaving without a trace would have had to be quick if he were to meet me at the store as I was leaving.

With that knowledge, I determined that there couldn't be many devices. So in order to get as much coverage as possible, they'd have to be positioned where they would get the best view but also be discreetly hidden. The kitchen camera could see into the sitting room and balcony, but not the bathroom, bedroom, or workout room.

The bathroom was tiny enough that I would have seen something during my first search, so I skipped that. The workout room was also small and bare other than my equipment, so a quick sweep of that was easy and revealed nothing unusual, thankfully.

In the bedroom however, I discovered a second camera, attached to the back of the dresser and facing the closet. I smiled inwardly at the almost clever location; the closet door had a full-length mirror, allowing a complete view of the room as well as anything being removed from the closet. It was also how I saw the camera, however. My stalker's oversight in checking for the camera's reflection, as well as failing to consider that I might keep my important documents somewhere other than my bedroom closet, was heartening.

That night I spent my time being completely boring. I played Swan Lake through my state-of-the-art speakers as I made myself a simple dinner of Chicken Marsala and Linguine. I ate with the balcony door open to let in the warm evening breeze. I sat on the balcony and drank a glass of wine while I watched the city lights dance and sparkle in the night. Then I sat on my couch and watched a rugby game before turning off all the lights, checking for new lights or sounds, and then going to bed. I never touched my computer. I brushed my perfect and expensive teeth and wiped down my phone with alcohol to remove all prints. Then I went to bed and, under the covers, added a second level of security to unlock it, pretended to set an alarm, and then rubbed off any smudges and went to sleep.

The next day, I thought about my predicament during my early morning workout. I came to the conclusion that the most natural way to disable the cameras without drawing suspicion was not to turn them off, but to intercept their feed. The best way to do this was do disable the Wi-Fi they were undoubtedly using. So after showering and dressing, I laid down on the couch with my computer on my stomach, hidden from view of the kitchen camera, and looked at the nearby Wi-Fi networks.

There were no new networks. I nearly laughed out loud at my luck. Had he really hacked into my own Wi-Fi to spy on me? Well that certainly made things easier.

It also probably meant that he had been on my computer and would have installed a key logger virus. So I used my phone to remotely turn off the router, and once the Wi-Fi was disabled, I started a virus scan. I then set the computer down and went into the kitchen to turn off and examine the camera. It was wireless, the kind with a battery that lasts for months because its recording is motion-activated unless you remotely request a live feed.

I placed the camera back where it was, turned it back on, and then did the same to the bedroom camera, ascertaining that they were the same model. I then went back to my computer and deleted both the key logger and remote monitoring viruses the scanner found, then cleaned the registry. Finally, I turned the router back on, and changed the Wi-Fi password. That would keep the cameras from being able to sync any new footage and give me some surveillance-free time.

I spent the next hour packing a suitcase with three days' worth of clothes and my toiletries, a satchel with my computer and false-bottomed box, and buying a train ticket to Paris with Henry Von Stein's credit card. I used the same card to book a hotel suite. I used a card registered to Justin Mortiz to buy a plane ticket from Paris to Bucharest. As a last minute decision, I turned off the cameras and took them with me.

I took the 14:28 train to Paris. After the 6 hour trip, I stopped in a convenience store on the way to the hotel. I looked up and saw a CCTV across the street aiming right at me. Perfect. I entered the store and used cash to buy hair dye and Henry Von Stein's card to buy some cheap food.

I checked into the hotel and asked that I not be disturbed during my week-long stay. After arriving in my suite, I ate my dinner then bleached my hair and beard blond. I wrapped the hair dye trash in the store bag and tucked it into my satchel. I reset the cameras to sync to my own phone and set them up in both the sitting room and bedroom, connecting them to the hotel's Wi-Fi. Finally, I switched my identification papers with the ones for Justin Moritz then went to bed.

The next morning, bright and early, I donned a hooded jacket and left the room with my satchel. I walked down the back stairs and out the side door. Throwing the convenience store bag in the dumpster I passed, I walked to the curb of the hotel next door and hailed a cab to Charles de Gaulle airport. My flight to Bucharest left at 10 am.

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(Word count: 1,675)