4:35am, Thursday the 9th October, 2132.

Aiden stood in front of the mirror in Nami’s bathroom, wearing a pink towel around his waist. He was in complete silence, except for the noise of cold water being forced from the sink faucet, staring at himself. His hair was long – past his shoulders now, and his blue eyes seemed lighter than they had been before. Not brighter, but less colourful – like the ice clear eyes of an arctic wolf.

He barely recognized his reflection in it. He was thin, but with more muscle than he had ever had before – and it was defined in a way that looked like his skin was stretched too finely over him. His face was also different. It was definitely his, for he recognized those minuscule, intrinsic features that he had known all his life, but he was visible older. Not old… But no longer a teenager on the verge of adulthood. He was a young man. The roughness of a new-growing beard was like a shadow on him, and it felt like sandpaper when he ran his hand over it.

Aiden took a pair of plain, stainless steel scissors from a nearby cabinet, then began to cut his hair until it no longer reached past the top of his ear. He collected his discarded hair in the sink, then tossed it into a disposal bin beneath it.

“You alright in there?” A feminine voice asked through the closed door.

“Yeah, I’ll just be a minute,” Aiden replied to her, his voice fatigued.

He heard the woman walking away, then looked back into the mirror again. He looked better now. Smarter. He took a hair towel and began to dry himself off, then folded it neatly and placed it on the top of a plastic washing basket. “Shit…” He whispered to himself, at the entire damn situation he was in. It still didn’t feel real, how could it? He half expected to wake up at any moment.

Suddenly Aiden noticed something. It was difficult to spot, and he only saw it due to the yellow light of the bathroom reaching him a different way as he repositioned himself, but there was a small, incredibly thin mark running down the centre of his chest. He touched the top of it with his fingers, running them down to where it ended just below his ribs. A scar? Aiden was no doctor, but it was no butcher’s mark; a surgeon had made it, and a good one too. Scars from invasive surgery tended to be noticeable but his hadn’t been, and there were only two ways a scar could heal as well as this one. First, a secondary cosmetic surgery had been performed to dramatically reduce it. Second, and most likely, there had been excellent and incredibly expensive aftercare.

He had been in a hospital at some point, and Aiden was certain it was connected to what was happening to him.

Suddenly the bathroom light switched itself off and Aiden was standing in darkness. He had been still for so long that the movement sensor had flipped, but even in the dark he could still see himself in the mirror. A pale ghost, half-dead and not completely alive; a lost beast in a forest of architecture. He felt a thirst in him then, a desire for something he couldn’t recognize… And it wasn’t food, or water.

Aiden blinked, and waved his arm to turn the light back on again. He decided that he couldn’t stay in the bathroom forever, so climbed back into the clothes he had stolen. At least they had been clean, and Nami had found him some socks and underwear that belonged to someone who didn’t live there anymore. They were clean too. He had checked.

Aiden walked to the bathroom door, opened it, then stepped back through into Nami’s apartment. Nami’s apartment was surprisingly nice. It wasn’t the cleanest, but it was open – a large, single-room place where the living room, bedroom and kitchen were all in the same area. He closed the bathroom door quietly behind him, then walked over to a small fold-out table with various bottles on it and sat down on one of the plastic chairs.

Nami was in the middle of the room, sitting on dark grey satin bedsheets with one leg hanging over the side. She had a cup of coffee in her hand, which she sipped carefully while watching a muted movie play on a glass screen. When she realized Aiden was there, she looked at him. “You move super quietly, you know. It’s weird,” she said.

“I didn’t mean to,” he replied, looking out past the glass screen and to the apartment window. Nothing could be seen outside except for the tower opposite them, and just like hers the windows there were tinted. Privacy, but only from the outside. “Thank you for helping me, Nami. I don’t know what I’d do if not for you.”

“I’ve been in similar situations,” Nami told him, sipping from her coffee again. “Did you manage to call someone?”

Aiden shook his head. “I lost my earpiece,” he explained. “I don’t even know when.”

Nami sighed, then stood up. “Well, I don’t have a spare, but I do have a phone around here somewhere…” She explained, leaning over the other side of her bed and rooting through a pile of her things.

Aiden turned his eyes away from her as she did so, looking instead at Nami’s apartment. It was quaint, with walls coloured a soft, dark grey and dozens of posters of bands, movies and webcomics on all of them. There was a slightly gothic, techpunk feeling to it, and it was clear that Nami was retro. Very few of the conveniences of modern apartments could be seen – no home A.I system, no brand-new holographic entertainment suite, no netplugs – just a music system, a glass screen, a video game console, and a touchpad. There were barely even any lights, and the room was only partially illuminated because of Nami’s movie.

“Found it,” she said, sitting back up on the bed and holding out an incredibly thin, hand-sized rectangle of something that resembled plexiglass. A small, gold metal square sat on the back of it, housing the phone’s computer system.

“Thanks,” said Aiden as he leaned forward to take it, and with a swipe of his finger the clear screen suddenly became a user interface. Nami and an unknown man were on the background cover, but Aiden ignored it and pressed on the call icon. A keypad came up, and he quickly dialled his sister’s number.

“I’m sorry, that number is not recognized,” the phone said in a man’s voice, as natural as anyone who could be sitting there in front of him.

“Damn it…” Aiden mumbled, panicking slightly as he entered a second number: his mother’s.

“I’m sorry, that number is not recognized.”

“Shit, shit, shit…” Said Aiden. He was getting scared now and knew of only one thing left to try. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves, then dialled in the number of his childhood best friend, Jack.

It rang, the monotone dialling tune playing repeatedly, and the screen lighting Aiden’s face. Aiden held his breath for an unbearable eight seconds, until someone finally answered.

“Heyllo, who’s this?” A man’s voice said. It was only 7pm where Jack would be, and a baby could be heard crying in the background.

“Jack?” Aiden asked, his expression brightening. “Thank god. It’s me.”

“Me? Who’s me?” Jack asked, clearly talking with something in his mouth.

“Aiden. From school?”

Jack went silent for several long seconds. When he spoke again, he did not sound happy. “Okay, I see. Fuck you.”

“What?” Aiden asked him, confused. “It’s me. It’s Aiden.”

“You fuckin’ piece of shit. Whoever’s doing this, you’re a god damn psychopath,” Jack growled, his voice barely containing his anger.

“No, it really is m-“

“I’m contacting the police. You know his sister was a police officer, right? When she finds out who you are, you’ll think twice about doing these sick calls again, you slimy prick!”

“No, wait, Jack, listen!” Aiden begged.

“Fuck you,” the man said, and then the call died.

Aiden stared at the phone in silence, in shock and scared, with his grip slowly loosening until the phone slipped out of his fingers and clattered against the table.

“Uhh… The hell was that?” Nami asked. She had heard the entire thing, and she was sitting on the edge of her bed, clearly feeling awkward.

“I don’t know,” Aiden told her honestly. He took in a deep breath. “I don’t know anymore.”

“What on earth happened to you, Aiden?” Nami asked, her discomfort being outweighed by concern.

“I woke up somewhere. It was abandoned, and I don’t know how I got there, and I don’t remember anything that happened before it.”

“Amnesia? Look, maybe I should take you to a hospital.”

For a moment the hospital sounded amazing. Warm beds, doctors to help him, to tell him what was wrong, and chance to contact his family. But then he remembered what he had done, how something terrible was wrong with him and he had no idea what it was.

“I… Can’t. I know you have no reason to trust me, and I don’t know how to explain it, or even why, but I just can’t. I can’t go to a hospital, or the police.”

Nami looked at him. He couldn’t tell whether she was empathising with him or thought he was lying, but after an unbearable period of silence she answered. “Alright,” she told him, “no hospitals. But you need to get help, or sort something out, because you can’t live the way you’re living.”

“I know,” Aiden said, standing up from the table and turning towards the apartment door. “Thank you for your help, Nami. I won’t forget it.”

“Where are you going? There’s no way you can go out there like you are,” Nami told him, causing him to turn back to face her. “You’re confused, have no idea what you’re doing. You can stay here and at least sleep, for fuck’s sake.”

Aiden felt overcome by gratitude. “I’ll pay you back, I promise,” he told her.

“I feel like you keep saying that,” she said, turning off her television with a press of a button on a remote. They were in darkness now, except the tiny amount of natural moonlight filtering through the apartment window. “It’s late, and I’m tired, and I have work again tonight. I’m going to bed. You can sleep wherever you can get comfortable.”

“Thanks,” Aiden said, sitting back down in his chair as Nami undressed in the dark.

“You keep saying that, too,” Nami told him, before sliding under her bed covers and pulling them up over her head.

Aiden slid down against the wall, letting his head fall back against it. Suddenly, with no light to pollute his eyes, he felt exhausted; more than at any other time in his life. As Nami’s breathing settled into something approaching sleep, he felt himself being dragged into it with her. He slid down again, allowing the side of his face to rest against his arm on the table, then slipped off into empty dreams. There was no pain there, no nightmares – he was too tired for them. But there was no comfort either, no satisfaction.

There was something wrong. Something missing from it – from him. A thirst that he had not quenched, a desire that his body would not let him forget about. He squirmed, and groaned, and moaned; and though not conscious, or having any recollection of what it was, he could feel it urging him closer. It wanted him to feast as much as he wanted to feast on it, and the very suggestion of its taste, of its intimacy, began to stir him.

There was a warmth now, and a softness. His foot slid down, and he felt it brush against something similar. Nami moaned softly, his body pressed down gently against hers with the heat and weight of bed sheets over them, and in the dark they held each other. He kissed her, and she kissed him back, and he began to realize that he was conscious. So was Nami, but he had no idea what he was doing, or how he had come to be in the embrace of a woman he had met barely hours before.

Aiden’s kissing turned from her lips to her face, and as though he was guided by some unseen force, some primal instinct, he reached her neck. Her breathing was heavy in his ear now, her arousal a state for him to savour, if not the object of his desire. It was another thing that he sought; another scent that drove him wild beyond character. He had no idea why, or how it was possible, or if he could stop himself even if wanted to, but there was no denying it now. He needed it more than anything.

Aiden sank his teeth into the side of her neck, just above her shoulder, and Nami moaned in ecstasy as her sweet blood filled his mouth.