Clack! The sudden sound of a gun cocking from a dark corner broke the silence.
Following the soft click of the gun, Felix spotted the dark silhouette of someone hunched in a corner of the room. Though he didn’t have any night-vision related skills or abilities, he could instantly tell who it was.
"...Ben?" Felix called in confusion.
The window passage was the route Felix and Kyle usually used to get to his room, initially only when his parents were at home—as you could say they were quite the strict type—until it became their everyday route into the house. Ben should be used to his window being used as a passage. And if things had changed so much during his time away that even Kyle didn’t visit anymore and disappeared just like he did after the Sage trials, it didn’t warrant Ben’s extreme actions and the fact that he now had a gun.
"S—Stay back! O—Or I’m going to fucking shoot—" Ben tried to sound tough as he threatened the two intruders, when suddenly he lost control of the arm pointing the gun. It slowly began moving on its own accord, retreating to hold the pistol’s muzzle below his chin.
"Ahhh~ P—Please, please spare me," Ben screamed in panic. No matter how much he tried to take back control of his hand, even using his other hand to hold it off, it didn’t budge.
Felix was confused and alarmed at the same time, quickly raising his hand. With a mental command, the pistol’s barrel twisted at an impossible angle and flew out of Ben’s grip, flying upwards and pinned in place to the ceiling. [Telekinesis]
"Is he the friend?" Lilith’s voice came from behind, and it quickly dawned on Felix.
"What? He was waving that thing at me," Lilith replied plainly to Felix’s perplexed stare. "He should be grateful I didn’t kill him outright." She added coldly.
Felix could only sigh as he turned back to Ben, now huddled in the corner. "Ben—"
"I swear I don’t know where he is—"
"He could be anywhere, a—and he’s not been taking my calls—"
"Ben?" Felix walked up to him and slapped him across the cheeks to pull him out of his panicked state. "It’s me. Felix."
Ben paused to take a closer look at the person standing before him. The room was dark which made it hard to see, but for some reason he wanted to believe it was Felix and quickly pulled out his phone and frantically turned on the flashlight directly onto the face of the hooded figure before him.
"F—Felix?" Ben instantly recognized the beautiful face.
Not only were her videos and pictures everywhere in the media now, but Ben had also been present somewhere in the crowd to welcome the Sage candidates—and Felix.
"It’s really you, Felix!" Ben’s face morphed from surprise to relief as he scrambled up to his feet. Thɪs chapter is updated by N0velFire.ɴet
He quickly navigated through his phone to the portable home app and turned on the lights. He stared at Felix for a good minute, alternating his gaze from Felix to the gothish beauty behind her, before snickering. "They really did you dirty, huh?" Ben commented, clearly amused, then shyly waved at Lilith who didn’t acknowledge his courtesy.
Felix wanted to smile at this, but he was more interested in what Ben had been blabbering about a few minutes ago.
"A lot seems to have happened while I was away," Felix said as she took a casual glance around the room’s interior. Nothing changed from the last time she remembered.
Ben sighed deeply and looked up at Felix. "You must’ve heard about your mom’s café. I’m sorry, man. We tried all we could..." Ben trailed off.
"What really happened there?" Felix asked in a serious tone.
Ben walked over to the comfy gaming chair before his top-notch PC set-up, hiding a limp Felix didn’t fail to notice, and sank into it.
He sighed again. "You remember Titan Capital?" Ben asked as he looked up to Felix, who nodded subtly.
"They were contracted by this construction company who wanted the entire residents of the Bongo neighborhood to move for a reconstruction project on the neighborhood. But that’s impossible because those residents can’t even sell their houses and move out with at least the money from that, because no one would be willing to buy from a neighborhood scheduled for demolition.
"So apparently they came up with this plan to use Titan Capital to lure everyone into this ’too-good-to-be-true’ loan agreement and further convinced them by using legal papers and documents—but I don’t know man, your mom didn’t tell us about it till we eventually figured it out. And honestly, when we saw the agreement it was..." Ben trailed off as he searched for the right words to use to not tick Felix off.
"Crazy? Yeah, I know." Felix admitted.
"You’ve seen it too? But here’s the weird part: when the Titan Capital goons came knocking for their monthly payment, all the residents were confused at the amount they were stating and claimed it wasn’t part of the agreement. The goons went ahead to start beating the residents who refused to pay the absurd amounts. The residents tried to report to the police with the document as evidence, according to them, it wasn’t the same as the papers they had signed with the Titan Capital."
"What?" Felix asked in confusion.
"Yeah. Some even claimed that particular document has been forged and exchanged with the real ones from where they kept it. But after investigation, there were no signs of any break-ins in any of the houses and the signatures on the documents had indeed been signed by the residents.
"Kyle and I had been at your mom’s café when the Titan Capital goons came knocking, and so he beat them all up and sent them packing—I helped a bit too. But they came again, enraged, and... destroyed the café in search of us."
Felix was silent for a moment as he processed all Ben had said, piecing it all together.
"Is that why you have your father’s gun?" That was one part Felix didn’t quite understand.
He knew it was Ben’s father’s gun because his friend had shown it off to him and Kyle one time after sneaking it out of his father’s safe.
Ben fell silent as he stared at Felix with a complicated gaze. "They came again, Felix. And when they didn’t see us, they began tracking us down... down to Kyle’s house, and they almost got him this time, Felix...
"Because they came with a Sage."