I didn't go home. I was too stubborn.
It was starting to get dark out as I went back to my car. Since it was parked at the bar, I decided to take a picture of that wall, then head home. Even if Zander didn't want me involved, someone had tried to kill me. I was involved now whether he liked it or not.
I walked inside the bar behind a group of twenty people. The gruff bartender now had another, younger one helping out. Good. The place was filling up quickly.
I sidled over to the wall of pictures and looked around while I fished Zander's phone out of my pocket. When I pulled it out, it had another message.
M4N513THO: Where's Zander?
I got irritated.
2463573Z4B: Who is this?
I sent the message, then opened the camera app. I pointed it at the wall and took a series of photos, hoping I'd be able to zoom in later and see every image clearly. Glancing around, I made sure no one was staring at the idiot taking pictures. No one was.
Ordering a water, I sat at an empty table with two seats and began scrolling through the pictures to make sure they were good enough. I zoomed in close and found the image that the bartender had shown us earlier. The faces were clear and recognizable in the picture.
I recognized the guy from the bar, and the asshole who’d tried to kill me. I hadn’t ever seen Sophie in real life, but her face was clear in the picture. There were still three out of five unknowns.
"Five psychopaths," I muttered to myself.
I spent some time looking at the other images on the wall. None of the five were appearing in any other photos. Then I came across one picture that startled me.
David Fucking King's face stared at me from the wall. My heart exploded in my chest, and my palms started to sweat. I closed my eyes to take some deep breaths. Just a picture. David King is dead.
When I was calm, I looked at the image again. He was grinning his usual charismatic smile, but had his arm around someone. I zoomed in on them.
It was Sophie Atrikson.
The confirmation was startling. David King had known Sophie Atrikson.
Then Zander's phone pinged in my hands.
The same person had sent an image. It was a picture of me. In the bar. Sitting at the table, phone in hand. They had taken it from an angle where you could see my face.
Fuck.
I could tell from the image that they had taken it from the front door of the bar. I looked around, searching for any of the five faces.
Nothing.
But the place was packed.
And, as a result, I was safe. Right?
I took deep breaths and tried to look as calm as possible. The picture was a threat meant to scare me. If I acted normal, it would throw them off.
Ping. Another message.
M4N513THO: Where's Zander?
I replied.
2463573Z4B: I don't know.
M4N513THO: Don't know or don't care?
2463573Z4B: Both.
M4N513THO: Come meet me outside.
Nope.
2463573Z4B: Fuck off.
M4N513THO: It'll be easier.
2463573Z4B: What will?
No response. The phone didn't ping for ten, fifteen, thirty minutes. The stalker had left. I only assumed it was one of the five, but we knew there were more. It could have been anyone.
My water ran out and I had to piss, so I passed through the bar to the bathroom. I looked around before I went in to be sure no one was following me. Everyone was sitting, talking, and enjoying their evening.
I walked in, went to the urinal, and started my business. A toilet in the stall flushed, and someone walked towards the sink. I ignored them. Number one rule of the men's restroom: don't make eye contact.
Something cold and sharp materialized on my throat.
"Hello, Clark," a woman's voice whispered in my ear. I swallowed, which flexed my neck into the blade. I quickly zipped up my pants.
"Told you it would be easier," she said. I could hear her smile.
"You're insane," I said. "There must be a hundred people outside. All I have to do is scream and you're caught."
"If you want to stay alive, you won't scream," she said. "So, how's Zander?"
"I already told you, I don't know where he is," I growled.
"My friends seem to disagree," she said. "So I decided to ask you again when you're under a little pressure." The blade was pressed harder into my throat.
I'd trained for this. I'd trained for this exact situation: knife to the throat, facing a wall. I couldn't keep a small smile off my face as I grabbed her wrist and ducked down to get behind her. Her elbow smashed into my face as I ducked, then she shoved me to the ground. I hit the tiles towards the bathroom stall.
She laughed while I pulled myself backwards. I took a good look at her.
She had black hair that was cut short and definitely wasn't one of the five from the picture. She was my same height and approximate age. She played with the knife in her hands while she watched me, trailing her fingernails across the flat surface.
Definitely a psychopath. Fantastic.
I scrambled to my feet as she brandished the knife in front of me. I took my arm out of the sling, ready to fight.
"They told me you knew some self defense," she taunted. "You probably should have practiced more."
"I'll remember that the next time we meet," I said sarcastically. My eyes were desperately searching for a way out. She was between me and the door. Behind me was the single stall which contained nothing useful enough to be a weapon.
She stepped forward and swung at me. I jumped back, pushing the stall door all the way open. The woman lunged for me, and I swung the stall door into her face. She grunted and held her nose with one hand, backing up.
That's when the door behind the woman burst open.
Zander God Damn Mother Fucking Jones charged into the bathroom, tackling the woman from behind. She slammed to the floor with a thud. The knife left her grasp and slid towards me.
“Holy shit,”was all I could say as the woman started to slowly got to her hands and knees.
Zander walked around her towards me. He didn’t look me in the eye. Without a word, he snatched the knife off the floor. Using his free hand, he grabbed her by the shirt collar and dragged her into the stall. He held her head over the toilet and set the knife to her throat.
"Where's Sophie?" He asked evenly. She was still dazed and took a moment to respond.
"As if," she spat.
"Last chance," Zander replied.
"What're you going to do? Kill me? You wouldn’t even make it out of the building."
"You'll be dead anyway, so it doesn’t matter to you," Zander said. Then he pressed his knee into her back, covered her mouth with his hand, and stabbed the knife into her neck.
"Jesus Christ," I hissed, backing away.
Blood splattered on the wall and dripped into the toilet. Zander held her there as she struggled and bled out. When she stopped moving, he propped her up so she was limply on her knees, head in the toilet.
I could only watch in horror.
"That'll buy us time to get out of here," Zander said. He slipped the bloody knife into a pocket on the inside of his jacket. The bathroom thudded with the music outside, but I could hear the slow drip of blood into toilet water.
I didn't realize I was hyperventilating until Zander put his blood-free hand on my shoulder. I looked at him and saw dark rings under his eyes. His face was hardened since the last time I'd seen him. He looked... defeated.
"Clark," he said calmly. "Clark. Hold it together. Just until we get out of here, okay? Just keep it together."
I took deep breaths. Zander went back and locked the stall from the inside. He then crawled underneath to get out. From this angle, it just looked like someone was puking into the toilet.
It sounded like it too.
Oh, God.
Zander put his hands into his pockets, and we walked out of the bathroom. I kept my face normal as we took an eternity to walk past everyone out of the bar. The door hissed shut behind us and the sounds of the city took over.
Zander guided me to the right, and we walked for a couple of blocks before turning into an alley. The same alley where the girl had been kidnapped, incidentally.
Then I lost it. First came the tears. Then the sobs.
"ZANDER, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!" I sobbed loudly. We separated, turning to face each other. I pulled at my hair, terrified.
He was shaking his head, also tearing up. "Clark, I'm sorry. I didn't want you involved in this. I didn't."
"What have you done?!" I shouted.
"Keep it down, just a little," Zander said, stepping forward.
"Zander," I growled angrily. "Tell me what’s going on."
"These people aren't fucking around like David King did," Zander said. "David King resisted killing. The game was in manipulation. For these guys, it's about seeing what they can get away with."
"What does that even mean?" I asked.
"David King wasn't working alone, even when he was targeting me," Zander said.
"Yes, I know about Sophie knowing David," I spat. “You may have made Katie slow me down, but I know that at least.”
"I told Katie to lead you away from this because of what these assholes are doing."
"And what are they doing?"
“Ruining a lot more lives than David King ever did. They're kidnapping people and torturing them. If they pass the test, they learn to become just like David King. They learn how to ruin people's lives and join the team.”
“If they can't pass it, they become prostitutes or slave labor or whatever else. I know it doesn't sound that horrible, Clark, but I've seen what they're doing to people and it's sick." Zander breathed heavily. He squeezed his eyes shut..
"It makes me so mad," Zander burst out, turning to kick a dumpster. He lowered his head and clenched his fists. His right hand was still red from the woman’s blood.
"Why did you kill her?" I asked. "If she knew where Sophie was, why did you kill her?"
"I already know where Sophie is now," Zander said, turning back around. "I just recently learned that. But I gave her a chance to change her mind. I gave her a chance to live.
"I'm hunting down every last one of these fuckers because they don't deserve to live. Especially Sophie. They've done things to people that you can only imagine. I'm making sure they can never hurt anyone ever again.
“But you can't be involved in this, Clark. When you started to chase after me when I went missing, I had to keep you away. You found the house while I was there, so I left the hard drive, police reports, and my phone there for you to find. I hoped they would distract you from really looking for me. I hoped that all the information would keep you too busy reading to come find me.
“I told Katie to keep you behind me until I could finish these bastards off. Now they’ve pulled you in to get to me.”
“You’ve manipulated me!” I shouted.
“That’s nothing compared to what could happen to you now. Clark, I need you to go underground again, just like with David King, but further."
There was silence between us. He watched me carefully.
"Zander, I'm really pissed off at you," I said quietly.
"I know that, Clark, but I--"
"Let me finish." I interrupted. "I saved your life. I fought David King with you. I went under the radar, moved around, laid low, hid from everyone, set traps, and god damn it, I took a bullet for you!
“I don't care how horrible and sick these people are. You don't get to decide for me. You don't get to decide whether I jump in and help you or not. You tell me the truth, and then I decide."
"What David King did is child's play compared to them, Clark."
"I don't care," I said. "The truth, and then I make my own decision.”
Zander hesitated. "Fine," he sighed. "Fine. First, read the hard drive. You haven't seen it yet. Go home. Read what's on it. Then make your decision.”
“Why can’t you just tell me, Zander?” I ranted.
“Because you need to see the scope of what they’ve done. Give me my phone," he said.
I hesitated, but handed his phone to him. He typed in his new number and saved it. He also saved the password to the hard drive as a draft text and handed it back to me.
"Call me when you've made your choice. I expect you to want out."
"I expect to want in," I retorted.
"Go," he said, then turned and walked towards the exit at the other end of the alley. He raised the hood on his jacket as he turned right at the adjoining street. I took deep breaths and tried to calm down.
What the hell has happened to Zander Jones?
I drove home very distracted. The knife plunging into the woman's neck kept popping back into my mind. Zander's now weakened face did too.
It took an hour longer than usual to get home. I walked inside to find it empty. My mom had left a note on the table.
"Working late tonight! Dinner is in the fridge! Love, Mom."
The microwave heated my broccoli and cheese casserole while I booted the computer that contained David's hard drive. A black screen appeared, asking for a password.
'KnightvsDragon,' I typed, referencing Zander's phone. The computer hummed and began the boot process. I set the phone on the desk while I walked over to pull my food out. I took a bite and sat back down to start my search in the My Documents folder.
That's when Zander's phone pinged. A new account.
50PH13: Where's Mom?
I dropped my fork. Everything began to spin.
I ran to the kitchen counter, snatching up the note. There it was. The 'o' in "Working" had a line through it.
No.
It was a code we had established as part of our security routine. Any note left under duress would have a line through the first word that contained an 'o' or a zero.
No. No. No.
I called Zander. He didn’t answer.
I grabbed the casserole dish and hurled it at the wall. The glass container shattered, spreading casserole everywhere and making a dull ring fill the apartment.
“GOD DAMN IT, ZANDER!”
I gripped the side of the kitchen counter with my unslung arm, wanting to rip it apart in anger.
The phone pinged. Another message.
50PH13: Where's Zander?
Thank you all for following along as I've tried to find Zander in these last posts. Thank you for your support, your encouragement, and your suggestions.
This could very well be my last post. This could be the last thing I do before I die.
I'm turning myself over to them tonight.
There's no hope. There's no chance. All I can hope for is that they'll release my mom if I do what they say. All I can do is trust Zander.
You may have noticed that the first posts started out covering each day, but then I was unable to keep up with the current day's events. I came home to find my mom missing on July 26th. It's now been three days. I've spent that whole time hiding a couple towns away in case they came to my home for me.
During that time, I've read David King's hard drive.
That's how I know we're fucked.
Let me fill you in as quickly as possible. I have to leave soon.
I called Zander a million times after getting that last message. It took him so long to call me back. An entire day.
So I read. I read all day and night on the 27th.
I found entire databases on us. All of us. Katie, Zander, me, Ivan, our parents, everyone. There was also one on Sophie, Jack, and Kraig. Guess that’s how Zander found their names to request their police reports.
There aren’t just entries on us. There’s entries on Detective Hernandez, his colleagues, his boss, the public defender’s office, the prosecutor’s office, and others.
The databases contained… everything. Our social security numbers, birthdays, routines, past relationships, copies of our entire social media profiles, almost everything you could think of. David knew us. He knew us inside and out.
The worst part isn’t that these databases exist. It’s who wrote them. Each observation and fact is initialled. DK is a common initial. David King. But so is SA. And JH. Sophie Atrikson and Jack Hemsey. And four others: JN, MT, LR, and PW.
Which means that Sophie knows us as well if not better than David did.
How could they know so much about all of us? Why would they devote that much time and energy? Why?
David’s file on Sophie, Jack, and Kraig was written solely by him. I can assume that it was written only for his personal use. So far as David’s file is correct, this is what I’ve learned about Sophie.
It isn’t completely clear how they met, but it was obviously a sexual relationship. They met up repeatedly. David would tell her about his “Zander problem” and she would offer suggestions.
David’s analysis of her stated that she was very similar to him in some ways, but drastically different in others. They were both cold people who got bored with life easily without a challenge. Sophie has less of a moral compass than David, according to him.
Sophie is more of a risk taker, while David was a risk calculator. The more risk and chance of getting caught, the more excitement Sophie gets from it. David enjoyed the careful planning and meticulous calculations. He recognized their differences.
She confided in him once that she’d been abused and molested by her father while she’d grown up. When her father had come to her bed on the night of her sixteenth birthday, she’d stabbed him with a kitchen knife that she kept in her room that night.
Sophie got away with the murder by sneaking pieces of her father’s body out of the house in her backpack that night. One by one. She hid the pieces far away and the body was never found. Her mother was devastated, but the police never found out what had happened to him.
She told David that it was the most exciting night of her life. An inexperienced sixteen year old girl murdering her father and trying to get away with it all in one night? Thrilling.
Because of her history, she firmly believed that horrible events make people strong and capable. The weak cower in the face of horrible events, while others become their best selves. This rang true with David and he agreed with her.
Before meeting David, she had already decided to personally make as many people into their best selves as possible.
Sophie told him that she mugged people during her weekends. She loved to see them fight back, hoping that her actions were making them better in the long run. But she wished she could see the fruits of her labors.
She fully supported what David was doing to Zander. She believed the same as David: that he was making Zander into a better person by making him fight. When David began to grow bored of Zander because he wasn’t fighting back, she brought home Jack. Jack had someone he wanted to ruin, and Sophie convinced David to help him as a side-project.
In a matter of weeks, Jack’s enemy was in jail.
David was satiated. Jack was pleased. Sophie was ecstatic.
So Sophie brought home another. And another. And then she started kidnapping.
Behind David’s back, she kidnapped people and locked them in a custom basement she had made with the help of her new friends. Jack and the others all felt like they were their best selves while helping Sophie. They all wanted to make others the same way.
So they began to torture people. The worse they were treated, the better they thought the person would turn out. And for some, it actually worked. For others, they ‘failed’ and were pushed into prostitution or forced labor.
David found out secretly about their activities, but didn’t reveal anything to them. Instead, he did something that I don’t completely understand. He messaged the FBI.
He began feeding them tips in exchange for access to some of their databases. The tips were small enough to keep them away from Sophie, but juicy enough for the FBI to arrest a few of Sophie’s friends. He doesn’t mention what data he was accessing.
That fact confuses me. Whose side was David King on? Was he just using Sophie for information? Or did he actually want to stop her without revealing it was him?
That’s when the data on the hard drive ends. I assume David had an updated version on another computer after this hard drive was stolen. But this data is enough to tell me how fucked up Sophie is.
And how small the chance is that we’ll ever survive this.
Zander finally called me back yesterday morning. He didn’t have any good news.
He’d been planning and spying on where they were, trying to figure out the best way to get my mom out. And that was when he’d seen his own parents. Sophie had kidnapped them too.
Zander was calling to tell me that he was on his way over there to turn himself in. It was his best shot at getting everyone out alive, he said. He asked me not to tell Katie, but he was telling me in case it didn’t work. If he didn’t contact me in a day, I was to go to the FBI and give them David’s hard drive. The stubborn asshole refused to tell me where they were ‘in case you try anything without thinking.’
Only a few hours after the conversation with Zander, I received a new message.
50PH13: Where’s Clark?
The license plate told me nothing. No one at the DMV would tell me anything about who owned the dark green honda with the license plate. It was futile. Zander might have been able to do something with it, but I was stuck hanging up in defeat.
I still can’t figure out what the apps on Zander’s phone are. I’ve turned them off, but kept moving just in case they were tracking apps like some of you suggested.
There’s still so much I don’t know, and that contributes to my depression and hopelessness.
Zander had resisted telling me their location in case I tried anything without thinking.
Well, I’ve thought about it. A lot.
I also listened to what you all had to say.
Finding Jackson was easy. He was staying at our old apartment still.
I wasn’t sure if he knew where Sophie was when I first attacked him. Seeing him at the warehouse as a coroner was too much of a coincidence, so I hoped he really was in on the plot. He was. The bastard.
I pretended to be as insane as Zander and even brought a knife with me. Jackson believed my character. He had a few broken fingers by the time I got what I needed, but he’ll live.
I couldn’t kill him though. I only left him a couple hours ago. He’ll have told them by now that I asked for the address. They’ll expect me. In fact, it’s probably a trap.
I’m going in after Zander. It’s only been a day, but I’m going in. I tried to trust Zander, I really did. But I can’t rely on him to get my mom out. And with Hernandez under Sophie’s oppressive thumb, I can’t turn to the police either. I saw it in his file. They have a massive target painted on his daughter’s back, and he knows it. I don’t blame him. Even the other officers have notes on them for leverage points. I can’t trust any of them.
I can’t trust anyone.
I don’t know what else to do. We are now in the present, everyone. I’m numb, defeated, and depressed. No matter what I’ve done, I’ve been dragged inevitably to this point. If I resist, they’ll hurt my mom.
You guys have been sitting and hoping for some big reveal. I know you’ve been hoping that this is all one big elaborate trap. But it isn’t. I have no plan. I’m just a regular guy who happened to get wrapped up David King’s mess. I’m a bystander. I’ve tried to be Zander and come up with some plan, but I have nothing. And, seeing what Zander has become, it terrifies me to even attempt to become him.
I’ve done what I can, but I’m not Zander Jones. I’m Clark Ulysses.
I’ve sent a copy of the hard drive to the local FBI office, left a voicemail for Katie, and am standing at the edge of the treeline near the old church they’ve purchased and holed up in. I’ve brought Zander’s phone and the hard drive with me in case they hurt my mom to get me to bring it. Anything to keep her from getting hurt.
All that’s left now is to press ‘submit’ and walk over. The guards will see me, and it will be too late to turn back.
If this is the end, goodbye, Reddit. You’ve been great friends.
-Clark
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