Rand watched the police car leave from the balcony.
He stood there in silence for a while and then returned to the room, went into the kitchen, and started pouring coffee beans into the coffee grinder.
Oh yes, of course he remembers the time he was vaccinated, but he felt like he was starting to get overwhelmed by the craving—the craving for that sweet, hot cheap instant coffee.
It was rare because he hadn't wanted to drink that stuff since the night he was fourteen.
Maybe it was just the unpleasant encounter with the police that brought back memories of him, Rand thought, but he found his hands shaking violently, dark brown coffee beans falling on the tabletop, and then on the ground floor of the grey-frosted kitchen room. superior.
I should clean up this place.
Rand seemed to hear another voice in his body speaking, muttering to himself, but all he could do was stand there numbly.
He found himself unable to move.
cold…
Under the high temperature of Kansas, Rand felt the chill in his kitchen that seemed to freeze his nerves. He took a deep breath of warm air, but the icy cold that seemed to spread from the depths of his body froze his whole being.
Rand was in a trance.
He seemed to have returned to the night when he was fourteen again, the lights of the police station were dim, the walls were stained with various unspeakable smudges, and the air was filled with a turbid smell - from those addicts, drunkards and people with thick Perfume-scented prostitutes bring.
He was sitting in a hard chair, rocking back and forth uncontrollably.
Everything around him was like a viscous liquid wrapped around him, his brain went blank, and someone came and asked his name...
he does not know.
In the past, he was a dazed fog, everything was so chaotic, and only a vague fear stayed behind the fog.
Then, the boy, who was much thinner and paler than his peers, looked down and saw his hands... There were jet-black smudges between his fingernails.
But Rand knew it wasn't a smear, it was just dried blood.
The cold hit him at that moment. His heart was beating like it was about to explode. He opened his mouth and tried desperately to breathe, but the air couldn't get into his lungs at all, as if there was an invisible animal. his hand jammed his windpipe.
It was strange that he could clearly picture the hand in his mind, dry, slender, with wet and cold skin.
After dozens of seconds, he was lying on the ground with his face ashen, and a female police officer noticed his strangeness (at that time he was rolling desperately on the ground, his legs stomping on the ground weakly).
"God, this kid has asthma..."
…
"Hey calm down, calm down, look at me... Rand... look at me... breathe... breathe... breathe... breathe... Rand..."
A voice spoke to him.
Rand instinctively followed his words, and it took a long time (maybe only a moment, of course) before he realized that it was Rogers who was speaking.
In the blurred vision his brightly colored hair almost stings the eyes.
He was kneeling on the ground with one arm around Rand and the other with a brown kraft paper bag over his nose and mouth. Rand looked at him from a very close distance, and found that Rogers had a pair of unusually pale gray eyes.
From a certain angle, those eyes are like reptiles, without any emotions that belong to human beings, which makes people shudder instinctively - of course, this is only a very short moment, even Rand himself He didn't realize it, because another feeling was bewildering him: familiarity.
Rand's consciousness shook for a moment, as if the scene in front of him had happened many times before.
(There was also someone who used this kind of reptile-like stare at him who was almost suffocating)
Rogers held Rand's neck in his hand. Compared with the anxious expression he was showing, his hand was unusually stable and extremely cold, like a dead person's hand that had been frozen in the freezer for a long time. Shrinking slightly under the influence of the cold air, there is a touch like crepe paper - but, damn, what is he thinking about!
Rand gave a jerk, and the whole world finally returned to him.
The air is warm, Rogers' voice is tight and loud, coffee beans are pressed under his body, and not far away, some messy daily necessities are scattered on the ground, obviously the cowhide bag in Rogers' hand was filled with them before.
"Hey, I think I'm fine."
Rand calmed down some breathing rhythms, and finally had the strength to slowly push Rogers' hand away.
Rogers blinked, his false eyelashes covered with tiny rhinestones and under his eyes, and stared at Rand.
"Dude, did you know one thing - if you have asthma, you should keep that life-saving spray within easy reach!"
He exclaimed, then as if he had finally recovered, he sat down on the ground with his hands on the floor behind him.
"You're scaring people to death!"
After a while he opened his hands and thumped his chest and added that he certainly looked terrified if he could ignore the resin rose trim on his fingernails.
Rand couldn't help but feel sorry for his instinctive resistance to him in that moment, after all Rogers seemed genuinely worried about him now.
"Sorry," he said dryly, "I didn't think about it either... just neurological asthma, I haven't had it in a long time, and I thought it was gone."
Rand slowly stood up with the help of the platform, his legs were still a little soft, but he was almost back to normal.
"Neuro... functional asthma?"
"Ah, yes, it's a kind of..." Rand struggled to find the exact words to explain in his still somewhat chaotic mind. "Psychological problems, I think."
Rogers looked straight at Rand, he blinked again (Rand couldn't ignore his blink because the rhinestones were just too shiny), opened his lips, but finally said simply: "Oh. Sounds like a hassle." Then he thought about it and added, "But everything will be fine, right?"
Clearly, he wanted to console Rand.
A wave of warmth swept Rand, and for the first time he betrayed a tinge of weakness in the presence of someone he didn't even know very well—he begged Rogers to get him a hot, heavily syrupy coffee.
Rogers, looking so concerned about his condition, forced Rand to eat some of his new snacks: butter cookies with marshmallows and peanut butter in a creamy chocolate crunch.
Even with his frail physical and mental state, Rand had to admit that the perhaps overly sweet snack gave off the illusion that everything was fine.
Perhaps it was this delusion, as Rand sipped his last sip of coffee, when he spoke out in a mysterious way.
"In fact, the doctor said I might have suffered some serious mental trauma."
he said to Rogers.
"I think you should know that I used to...was..."
"I was kidnapped." Rogers interrupted his hesitant words. The next second, the man with heavy makeup showed an embarrassed expression. He covered his mouth, "I'm sorry, I just accidentally..."
"Ah, no, no, it doesn't matter, after all, it's famous, isn't it?" Rand relaxed instead. "I heard my missing person was playing all over America at that time."
Rand was right.
Eighteen years ago, the kidnapping case about him can be said to have shocked the entire United States.
A female psychopath broke into Sivers' Los Angeles home one summer day, where he kidnapped Rand Sievers, then 10, and left. Rand's parents were both working on a very important experiment at the company at the time, and sixteen-year-old Vincent Sivers stayed with Rand at home.
However, Rand was still kidnapped.
If that's all there is to it, the whole story hasn't gotten to the point where it's still noticeable eighteen years later, and the real shock came a week after his disappearance when four quizzes were found in a luxury vacation home near Los Angeles. The corpse that was brutally killed—the corpse was the owner of this villa.
What makes people feel unbelievable is that according to the CCTV records in the villa, the victim was killed a week ago, on the day of Rand's disappearance...
Then, a young woman with Rand and another child spent a whole week luxuriously and happily as the owner of the villa. The woman even held a dance party, and almost everyone believed her rhetoric that "the former owner failed to invest and mortgaged the villa to her", after all, she was so funny, humorous and graceful.
Four bodies are decomposing in the basement as people revel in the open-air swimming pool.
The smell was almost unbearable in the end, but when the body was found, the woman had vanished without a trace, along with Rand and the other child.
This massacre was dubbed by the media at the time as the "Los Angeles double-blooded"—unfortunately, it was just the beginning.
Since that day, almost every once in a while, similar cases have occurred.
Sometimes the owner of a luxury villa, sometimes a happy middle class in a model community, sometimes a poor but happy family in the RV area... The woman changed her appearance in various ways, killed the owner of the original house and then After a fantastic family life with two children posing as the real homeowner, then quickly disappearing.
According to the very few materials that the FBI later leaked, the agency's internal judgment on the woman at that time was "unimaginably high IQ and cold-blooded."
She is literally the Lilith of the criminal world, completely playing with the law enforcement agencies of the time. The method of crime, her appearance and her whereabouts were impeccable, except for one thing she never changed, Rand.
She took Rand with her at all times.
until two years later.
"Lilith"'s criminal methods are too publicized and stereotyped. After spending a lot of manpower and material resources, the FBI finally caught her fox tail.
However, in the cabin where she eventually committed suicide, there was no sign of Rand and the boy known as "The Other One."
People only found a lot of bloody boy's belongings in the carry-on luggage of "Lilith", but according to identification, those bloodstains did not belong to Rand.
With the death of "Lilith", Rand's whereabouts become an almost eternal mystery.
In fact, after Rand returned to the Sivers family, if it wasn't for Vinson's terrifying ability to forcefully suppress the entire American media community with all the resources at his disposal, Rand Sivers would have almost It is impossible to have such a peaceful life as it is now.
At this point, Rand has to admit that he is unusually grateful to Vinson.
"But, when you appear two years later, everyone should be able to notice, right?"
Rogers sat next to Rand and said with a relaxed attitude.
Rand gave him a subtle smile.
"Oh, actually, when I reappeared, in addition to the memory loss... there were some other changes," he said. , and also, my blood type has changed. I don't think anyone would have thought if it wasn't for the final DNA test, I'm that Rand Sivers, in fact, I know there are many people even now Think I'm just a liar trying to divide the Sivers family's assets."
Rand said mockingly.
What was Rand like before the age of ten? He had seen the child on pictures, on video.
The Sievers family's past practice of consanguineous marriages from Europe led directly to the genetic disease of the entire family, and like Vinson, he has some mild albinism -- almost identical to his father. That bloodless white, pale blond hair was even once the hallmark of the Sivers family. However, when he appeared in front of the world again fourteen years ago, he was a normal boy with black hair and green eyes.
At the same time, his blood also became a rare blood type.
Rarely enough that Vincent strictly prohibited him from revealing his blood problems to anyone.
…
In this conversation with Rogers, Rand didn't actually say much - after all, talking to someone about a kidnapping that made no sense to him, or a case that was so bloody that many senior detectives ended up committing suicide... It's all. Very embarrassing thing.
Rand was just saying something about psychotherapy, he had a little ailment, and the doctor was always making a fuss. It even resonated with Rogers - years ago he was sent to a psychiatrist just for mascara.
"... Of course, the effect is not very bad, the doctor's stuff is incredible."
Rogers recalled, licking his lips at last, that there was some blush on his cheeks, but Rand guessed it was just blush.
Well, aside from some occasional remarks from Rodgers that made Rand feel a little uncomfortable, the conversation was largely pleasant.
The conversation with him made Rand feel relaxed and happy, although at some point, for a very brief moment, he still felt a slight dread of Rogers.
Rand doesn't know what the bloody drawbridge theory is or anything, or even just that abnormal mutation next to the Orml3 gene (the mutation that causes misregulation of sphingolipid production—a change that directly contributes to asthma), He still felt that Rogers made him feel like a friend.
As night fell, Rogers and Rand ended the encounter. When Rand sent Rogers away, he finally realized why he always felt that something was wrong.
The door lock of the apartment's main door was obviously detached, and there were clear footprints on the outside - no matter what it was before, but the ones now in Rand's sight are undoubtedly useless.
God knows how hard Rogers was kicking the door open, and Rand involuntarily stroked the door panel and found that the plank there was almost completely cracked.
"I'm very sorry."
Rogers put his fingers in his red hair, shrugged his shoulders, and said a little embarrassedly.
Obviously, the reason why he could appear next to Rand before was because he directly kicked Rand's door lock.
…
Rand didn't speak, he looked at him in confusion.
His asthma attack, even breathing, was a great difficulty, and he fell to the floor weakly and silently—in theory, the neighbor Rogers should not and could not have noticed. But Rogers broke into his room at the most critical moment and saved him.
This approach may be difficult to explain by coincidence.
As a man who was forced into a nervous breakdown by Vincent's desire for control, Rand's vigilance about this kind of thing has almost been carved into his genes. He really hoped that Rogers could give him a reasonable explanation.
"I just didn't feel right, so I didn't have the strength to control myself." Rogers took a step back and said to Rand, "Seriously, it's ridiculous, but as I passed your door, I thought I'd listen. Some kind of sound."
"sound?"
"Ah, yeah, I don't know how to describe it, all in all it was a very uncomfortable sound, I thought it was a bit like white noise, but... no, it's different... the moment I heard that sound I just felt Something terribly bad was happening in your room, so I broke in."
He blinked again, and there was a touch of emotion in his eyes that really belonged to him - doubt, which passed quickly.
Rogers knew he wasn't lying.
"Look, Rand, if you think there's something wrong with what I'm doing, I… well, I don't know how to explain it, but that's how it is."
Rogers looked very disturbed.
Rand lowered his head and smiled bitterly. He had to admit that Rogers was a man very good at infecting other people with himself, and at least when faced with an explanation that seemed like a joke, Rand found himself actually beginning to believe him.
"Well, maybe that was God's order."
he said to Rogers.
After calling the janitor to handle the locks, Rand was still baffled by the so-called "white noise."
An uncomfortable, emotionally charged sound just to hear
You know, apart from him (who was lying on the ground cramping like a madman), there was only one fish left in the room at the time.
Rand thought as he slowly approached the aquarium.
However, after seeing the state of the aquarium, Rand opened his eyes involuntarily.