Chapter 002 - A text message from you?

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Cyan exited the school grounds as he walked in direction to the apartment he lived in, luckily it was just a 10 minute walk from the school gate so there was no need to spend money to take the bus or a train to get there, he could just walk from his room to the school classroom without much problem.

The only problem right now is that the streets are far more empty and eerie than usual as the number of people that used to use them has decreased by a wide margin, the good news was that the traffic jams are now very an uncommon occurrence as people are afraid of even going out of their houses and suddenly disappear, mass paranoia has almost become visible at the present of course not everyone was acting like that.

But uneasiness feeling was growing in people with all the posters of [have you seen this person?] lying all around littering the city streets, while one person which job was to clean the street was going around gathering all the posters that were now on the street floor, this was maybe one the most hated job from all the world right now as you would have to stare to the faces of people that are no more into this world.

However other people who have also started to hate their jobs are appearing all around like the people of the Wildlife Rehabilitator Center or WRC, soon their job will become a living nightmare.

As Cyan was walking he recognized a wagon car from the WRC parked in front of his building while two people in uniforms were trying to catch a small dog in the entrance building. Lately Cyan has seen this wagon and this scene play around a few times already that’s why he knew they were from the WRC.

This dog even though cute and fluffy on the outside in the inside it was hiding a ferocious animal, and even though it has a leash on him meaning it was a domestic dog it was acting like no other dog Cyan has ever seen before, growling with a menacing sound all the while trying to bite off the fingers of the WRC workers, the most shocking thing were the eyes the dog that have become red like if they were filled with blood.

Because the WRC workers were on building entrance Cyan could only stop walking a few meters away from their direction as he waited for them to finish their job and leave all the while hearing the conversation WRC workers were having.

“…it bite me…what happens to this stupid dog…”

“…I don’t know it probably has some kind of rabies or something like that like all the other dogs…”

“…hold it still while I put it in the cage…alright, let’s take it before it bites someone else…”

“…what do you think they will do with it...”

“…I don’t know probably they make it into a can of food…”

“…haha I guess you are right…wait you are bleeding a lot…we should take you the doctor…”

“…ah you are right…those dam teeth must shard as razors to go throughout this glove…look how deep this is…let’s dropped it off with the other crazy dogs first…I may even require a few stitches now…”

“…hey don’t you think it is crazy how all the dogs are starting to act all crazy like if trying to bite people necks…it is like we have become their worse enemies or something like that…”

“…I don’t know…with how crazy things are right now with the all missing people and all that crap about the hack…the world could be ending tomorrow and folk like us would not even know…”

“…yeah I guess you are right…hey do you think that if the world ends tomorrow we would still have a job...”

“…why are you even asking that for…even if the world were to end tomorrow there still should be plenty of crazy dogs going around for us to catch…so I would not worry about not finding a job…”

“…haha you are right… but right now I just want to get home and find a cold beer to drink…”

“…it says here…this the last dog on the list so you will get your wish may be granted now…”

THUD THUD as the sound of two doors closing the wagon started its engine and it went away.

Cyan shudder at the sight of the small pool of blood that on the floor that was created when the WRC worker took his glove off, Cyan shook his head as is trying to shake off the memory from his head as he entered the building and took the elevator.

After Cyan entered the apartment he went directly to his room and plumbed down into his bed while letting out a long sigh that contained all of his stress and anger to himself that he accumulated for running away today from Alice as he immersed himself into the feel of his bed that unlike the cold and hard outside world his bed was warm, soft and smelled nice making him start to feel sleepy.

Cyan was an orphan since the day he was born as he was left in the west orphanage front gate the same day he was born into this world so he never got to meet his parents not that he wanted to anyway, what kind of parents will abandon their child without a reason if only to avoid the responsibility of raising a child.

This apartment instead was something he shared with other people while he was is in high school, as part of the scholarship program he got enough money from the world government due to his excellent grades so he could rent this room, getting bad grades would have meant returning to the orphanage and no matter what Cyan didn’t want to go back to that place ever again, now with 16 years and in his last year of high school getting into a good university wasn’t just a dream anymore.

Even though the scholarship wasn’t much, he still had enough to rent this room, creating his own personal space where he could study and be free from the worries of the outside world even if just for a very short moment.

And he could meet with Alice his neighbor his first and only friend that he could manage to make, however now he didn’t know how to approach Alice, and on the day of the new school year at the same day a text message that shook the world started to be spread around, now one week later the world was in chaos with a lot of missing people, even some of his teachers are missing now too.

However since he got that message Cyan didn’t felt like himself, he felt there was a knot in his mind and the cause of the knot was that text message he was for sure, that dog from today remind him that the word was in a weird place right now.

Cyan turned his head around as he took out his phone from his pocket, after he flipped the screen to unlock his cellphone, the message was still lingering in front of him and his reply [refuse] still in the waiting for the send button to be pressed, Cyan was playing to press send as soon as he got to his room and then he will send another message to Alice saying he had [refuse] it, ending this chapter of his life so he could move on to other things, maybe everything will go back to normal for him after he sends his reply.

He could not help but to think in Alice, she probably would have [refuse] it already if he did have not said anything today, Cyan even hoped that Alice won’t listen to him at all and she will send her reply with a [refuse] before the day is over, however he knew Alice far too well and because he seriously had asked for her to wait, she most likely would wait one more day as a favor to him.

[Cyan]: “I shouldn’t ask Alice to do that”

Cyan lamented himself as he went over the flyers Alice have handed to him. If Cyan could see right now he would see an Alice waiting for Cyan to write back to her but he couldn’t.

[Cyan]: “I am such an idiot, I shouldn’t have told her to do that”

Even if regret it now, nothing would change, this time for sure Cyan gathered all his of courage and moved his finger one last time to press the send button on the screen ending this nightmare, but at that time a new message notification arrived that stop him from doing so.

[Notification]

Sender: [Unknown]

Message: “Don’t refuse it just yet Cyan”

Cyan had a sense of Déjà vu here, he had said those exact words to Alice in the classroom this afternoon.

This time the sender was really an [unknown] instead of [], in Cyan phone if he didn’t have the number of the person recorded in it would show the sender as [unknown] just like right now, maybe because that text message also was shown as [unknown] in his phone that he got scared stopping him from sending his reply this time around.

As for the contents, it was probably someone from his class but to send him this kind message to him, what a bad joke this was.

Still there was a probability that some other student overheard his conversation with Alice this afternoon, after all the classroom wasn’t empty at that time and he had made quite a show by screaming all out of the sudden in the middle of the classroom, then this was no other than another student from his classroom playing another bad joke to him but who.

[Cyan]: “Who is this?”

Cyan tapped onto his screen as he opened the detailed information window of the sender, however, he was frozen stiff when he saw the unique identification number that shouldn’t be possessed by anyone else other than the sender, however, this number was also in his own phone as the unique identification number.

Sender: [Unknown]

Number: #########

[Cyan]: “Wait isn’t this my own number?”

Cyan didn’t have his own phone number recorded into his phone, after all, he knew it from memory, so he didn’t need to save it, and not to mention the concept of having a phone number was something that was going away anyways, one could register one account and people would use their usernames to add each other, after all, remembering phone numbers was a pain, remembering someone username was way easier, even if that brings the unwanted consequences of using improper usernames or having to type username999999, even so, unique phone numbers still existed under a layer of software that you will need to tap into to read.

To test if his eyes haven’t gone bad Cyan added his own phone number to his contact list manually and opened the chat again.

Sender: […]

Message: “Don’t refuse it just yet Cyan”

And the fact the sender has changed didn’t bring him any joy what so ever.

Without a doubt it was his own unique number, Cyan could only think hackers have come a long way now and this maybe was now a new way kind of hack to rob you of your phone identity, one that you couldn’t trace back to its roots because it shows other people phones as the sender, this was a scary thought for Cyan, wouldn’t people believe oneself as the responsible from sending all kind of messages that other people sent and not you?

Wouldn’t people call him crazy if he says it was someone else that used his unique number when security systems are so high-tech that now using other people phone line without their phones and without their permission was practically impossible?

Even so, there was a group of hack that had taken over all the networks but they didn’t have made any changes, better yet they were protecting the system from being hacked into, as the world government tried to hack into their own system, or prevented them from sending [refuse] by stealing other people phone lines.

However, the fact that since a week ago people could actually go missing from replying a text message and that the world government had has made a public announcement broadcast informing of a massive network highjack escaped Cyan mind as he put all of his focus into the sender information.

Sender: [You]

“…”

Cyan could only say swear in his mind.

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Chapter 002 - A text message from you?