Zero to One (G/t)

[4] Mouse Trap, pt. 2

"You found me. It's only fair if I do the same."

More mess drained from Lauren's lips, staining her clothes through to her skin, yet her physical self didn't feel as unclean as her mental state. She had dabbled in hacking jobs every now and then because money is money, after all. So, it was always a little more likely to come around back to her, a la karma. However, because of the supreme privacy under which she generally kept herself – encryptions, aliases, and locks galore – the idea that someone found her was impossible to put into words.

As a joke, they would've been concerning enough, but the handfuls of words on her monitor carried much weight within them. While Lauren got her gigs, she never pushed for people to come to her. She wanted offers and advertised, yes, but never strived for anyone directly. Word of mouth without a face to put it somehow did well for her. On top of that, with how reserved she was, engaging new relationships, platonic or otherwise, was never in mind.

Every sign pointed to supreme severity and only one nauseatingly fitting answer.

A shaky silence, only cut from more smoothie dribbles contacting the floor, endured for a few moments before the monitor spoke to her again, clearing out its first, discomforting message,

"Are you still there?"

Despite it yearning for her existence, Lauren had slight relief knowing that the mystery interlocutor wasn't listening in through her multiple mics or peeping through her collection of cameras. But a glance at her desk showed her lattice-leaking glasses and her multipurpose watch still on the same connection as her computer, even though they didn't have to be.

Her ways of apparently extra-planetary exploration were linked to her most private of personal pieces. Her presence was evident with them. Lauren's eyes expanded. No wonder she was found. They... it... he found her. How long had she been detected?

Why come out of hiding now?

"Don't bother hiding if you are," the messenger dictated, practically reading Lauren's mind, causing her to re-question her lack of being tapped with every word. "Besides the fact I know where you are, I'm not going to hurt you. It'd be such a shame to eradicate an aberration before knowing if it could bring me some use."

Surprisingly, or probably not, the envoi's assurance wasn't very assuring. Along with being unsafe, it wasn't very personifying, classifying Lauren as a number she'd throw around on a chart or something. Who was he to say how she lived her life? Though, if his visage was a mirror rather than a magnifier, then who was she to fight it and him?

He detailed, adding to the tension, "I just want to see what I'm dealing with here." His particular word usage was concerning; however, learning why it was didn't seem like a good idea. "Though, technically, that's inaccurate."

'Huh?' Lauren couldn't help expressing some confusion, though silent in form. Her head cocked at the latter clarification, curious as to why such a seemingly sagacious source would admit fault.

She soon found out he hadn't.

After a moment of stagnant staring, his sans-serif message popped off the screen, returning to a relatively standard state and the reappearance of her mouse cursor. Lauren stood in her puddle of punch, waiting for anything to occur within the dark void of her monitor for minutes, but nothing happened. Her pointer just floated in the center alone, just like she was.

For some reason, Lauren wasn't committed to believing that. The crater on the other side of the river and all of its calamity were still being dealt with. It's rather difficult to count the number of lost lives in a town when the said town was wiped off the map – literally written off by a pen. Knowing such damage came from so little, Lauren couldn't help but wonder if anything else in the world had origins as outstanding, all the while holding regrets for being unable to believably explain why.